chromedome

Makes a nice stocking stuffer...

Police in nearby Prince Edward Island deterred drinking and driving this past holiday season with the announcement that anyone incarcerated for a DUI would be treated to a nonstop Nickleback playlist in the lockup. That should work, if you're up for the necessary abduction beforehand (it would logically be part of any torture scenario, anyway...).

LOL I had a similar experience once, making spice cookies. It turned out someone had repurposed a spice jar labeled "Ginger" and it now held garlic powder. I didn't notice until they were in the oven, and the smell started to circulate through the house. Mind you, if you're going to make that particular mistake, a punk house filled with heavily intoxicated skaters is the place to do it. They inhaled the entire batch, and demanded a second round.

My mom, second wife and current GF are all painfully slow eaters. My father -- who grew up in a hardscrabble fishing village with several brothers and sisters -- learned in childhood to eat in a hot rush, with his elbows well up to protect his food from older siblings. Watching my parents eat is definitely a study in contrasts. My dad sets out my mom's plate (he does the cooking) then goes back into the kitchen for beverages and to get dessert ready. Then he makes up his own plate, sits and eats, goes back (usually) for seconds, makes the post-dinner coffee for each of them, watches the news, patrols the garden for critters, harvests anything that's ripe, washes and packs it into the fridge, tops up my mom's water glass, reads half a book...and *then* rejoins my mother at the table for dessert. They don't eat out much.

I did half-portions on request and simply set aside the other half as a staff portion for me or one of my servers. It wasn't that big a deal in my instance, since my dining room was small: I had a maximum capacity of 28 to 30, and in practice learned never to seat more than 12-14 in any given one-hour stretch since that was the most I could deal with (it was a very limited kitchen, and I ran it single-handed most nights).

Winter is a good time to play with vinegar-making. As I've observed on another forum in the past, "Anyone who says 'You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar' has never tried the experiment."

I had a recent culinary grad working for me at one point, a youngster from mainland China (I don't remember where exactly, but he said it was just a bit north of where the Olympic rowing took place). I offered him a taste of pulled pork from my Big Green Egg one night, when he came in. He took it rather suspiciously, but when he tried it his face lit up immediately. "This is kind of like how we cook dog," he said, to the shock of my servers (dog lovers, all).

Yeah, I know...but you were the one who threw out the caution about reduced salt, so that's why I quoted you. It's all good.

You can compensate for that by reducing the yeast a titch, or fermenting the dough at a lower temperature, or shortening the time you let it rise. Just play it by ear, basically, and be prepared to throw a batch or two into the compost if necessary (flour is cheap).

Wages in the restaurant business are terribly low. So are margins. That's not a happy combination, no matter how you slice it. Here in Canada most jurisdictions don't allow a reduced minimum wage for tipped employees, so it's even tighter for restaurateurs. I've been seeing a lot of articles about top restaurants in Toronto and Vancouver -- the kind of place ambitious cooks should be fighting to work -- struggling to keep a kitchen staff, because wages and local cost of living are so far out of sync. Perhaps I'm selling my colleagues short, but I think in the longer term it will be a tempest-in-a-teapot situation. Remember when smoking bans were going to kill the restaurant (and bar) industry? That never happened, and the restaurant business showed itself to be resilient. I think it can survive paying a living wage, as well.

Now *that* is a keepsake worth having.

That's more or less where I am, though I use cheapie containers from the dollar store rather than Cambros. My freezer is a big Frigidaire upright with wire shelves, which are great for airflow but bad for standing additional wire racks on.

I have taped commonly-used recipes to the inside of a cupboard door over top of the cupboard workspace. Need the recipe? Open the door while working. The occasional bruises on my forehead are incentive enough to learn the recipe and not need the hard copy any more.

I found a mummified mouse under the stove in one rental. ETA: How they got all those bandages 'round the little critter, I can't imagine.

LOL She isn't a software (or other) engineer, perchance?

A CAT scan can pick up subtle flaws undetected by the human eye...

I had to write an article recently listing 20-odd uses for them. Most weren't especially appealing to me, but a couple of the craft ideas were practical enough I suppose. I'm one of the rare few who don't care for the combination of mint and chocolate, so bark wouldn't cut it for me. Sure does look pretty, though.

A few years ago, when my US-bred wife was alive, there was a major blizzard working its way towards us up the East Coast. My wife was tracking it through the various weather services, and after monitoring the storm's process she switched over to the news. She started with several US outlets, which showed endless lines of people cleaning the stores out of milk, bread, and bottled water. Then she turned to the local CBC website, which had a video of staff shaking their heads over a run on beer that had nearly cleaned out the liquor stores. "That," she said, "Tells you everything you need to know about New Brunswickers." ETA, for the benefit of American readers: New Brunswick, like most Canadian provinces, maintains a provincial monopoly on alcohol sales. You can only get beer at government-run liquor stores and their official agency outlets (in smaller towns that wouldn't support a full-scale liquor store).

I don't use 'em much, to my taste they don't have much flavor underneath the acidity. Of course, you may well get better Grannys than I do up here.

You only have four kinds of flour? (Kidding. I have probably 8 or 9 -- and 3 or 4 kinds of salt -- but it's an occupational hazard) My late wife belonged to the camp that believes there is is One Perfect Way to make anything, and that it's the cook's job to figure out that One Perfect Way and do it that exact way, henceforward, every time. Her apple pie was only, ever, equal portions Golden Delicious and Granny Smiths sliced thinly. It was a good apple pie, but I prefer locally-grown Cortlands and I may bake a thin-slices pie or a thick-chunks pie on any given day depending on my mood. We squabbled a *lot* about food.

When my kids were little, we used to do "Indoor campfires" in the fireplace. We'd cook hot dogs on sticks, and toast marshmallows. The neighbour kids always came over to join us for those nights.

Well...little visible effect, anyway, but chaos theory suggests there could be implications. I think "European Son" would make a rather striking metaphorical butterfly, in any case.

Apparently I joined in January 2004, while living in Edmonton. I was absent for several years in between, though...didn't have much time to participate starting in the summer of 2007, when I opened my restaurant, and only returned again (on any kind of regular basis) this past autumn.

I don't supposed you'd unguardedly mentioned a longtime affection for The Velvet Underground?

As for the Absolut, Igor said they had better vodka in Russia but the brands he liked weren't sold in Halifax. He considered Absolut to be the quality/value point for what he could get over here.