chromedome

Oh, hon...that's just brutal. All the pain, without the closure.

Top sirloin is by far the tenderest of the sirloin cuts, so it doesn't need extended cooking. When cut as a steak, it's tender enough for straight-up grilling. I often opt for it instead of pricier rib or strip steaks, because I find it's more flavorful than the premium offerings and almost as tender (usually).

When I lived in Edmonton, one of the leading restaurants there called its daily special "soup of yesterday"...because as everyone knows, most soups are better on the second day.

No, that was just a "Wow...weird." Maybe it's a Canadian thing, but they're pretty easy to find in supermarkets here. Usually Ocean Spray, and often a couple of other brands as well.

No, no. Cane sugar. Trade with the sugar-producing Caribbean has been a part of life here in the Maritimes pretty much since Day One. Sugar beets are a prairie thing. There have been sugar refineries in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick for some time as well, though the one here in Saint John closed a while back. http://www.sugar.ca/International-Trade/Canadian-Sugar-Industry/History-of-the-industry.aspx

I reasoned similarly when my wife passed away unexpectedly a few years ago. I had little interest in food for the first while, but I approached it the same way I did everything else...just went through the motions of normalcy. I got up at the same time as usual each morning, had my habitual bowl of steel-cut oatmeal, worked for the usual number of hours (I'm a freelancer), ate everyday food every day at the appropriate times, and so on. Eventually the colors and flavors came back, so to speak, and in the meantime I found that keeping my life structured helped me hold things together.

??!!

Drowning in anything would be an unpleasant way to go, but at least in water you can try to swim. Molasses? Not so much.

Football for me, too...Hotspur at Chelsea.

Wow, yeah. Dysphagia's no joke to deal with.

My chef at that place was very fad-averse, so no MG for her either. Her attitude was that fads come and go, but good technique is forever.

It was fine dining. Not international state-of-the-art kind of fine dining, but comparable or superior to anything else in the city (Edmonton, AB) at the time.

Sounds about par for the course. I was fortunate, I never did an unpaid internship (I was a career changer with a wife and two kids, so that wasn't really an option). The restaurant where I worked my way through school had a female chef as well, but she wasn't one to raise her voice. She'd just gaze at you -- well, me -- in unbelieving silence for a painfully slow moment or two, and then *lower* her voice. I've had a shouter or two along the way, but this was infinitely worse.

McGee played around with them at length, somewhere along the way (I don't recall which book or column). His end recommendation was to roast them low-and-slow (200°F for 8 to 10 hours). I don't usually have any issues with them, and in fact just got four or five pounds from my father's garden. I don't know how they'll work for my GF and her daughter, though, so I'll be cautious.

I would have done the same, in that context (I left them in the passionfruit sauce I made for my coconut-cream ice cream, for instance, when I had my restaurant). Those who don't mind the seeds can crunch 'em, those who want to can pick 'em out. They do definitely add to the visual appeal.

LOL Yeah, there's that. Not exactly fine chocolate work, but it *is* kinda cool to do the tour.

Well, St. Stephen is a pretty small place but it's the shopping hub for a large area. I guess that makes a difference. I do understand that there are plenty of remote, far-flung places in Ontario. I once spent 14 hours with my thumb out at the Pickle Lake turnoff, before getting a lift from just the third (!!) vehicle to pass me all day. I guess as a Maritimer I have the usual engrained belief that Ontario gets all the good stuff, and we get the leftovers. I can't fault Sobeys as a chain on cleanliness or selection. I do little of my shopping there, except for specials, but that's a function of cost. Superstore, No Frills and various local stores all have better pricing, and I'm a cheap bas frugal.

At the restaurant where I worked my way through culinary school, we catered a Jewish wedding once during my tenure. They specifically requested bacon-wrapped scallops, so yeah...definitely there's a distinction to be drawn. On the more comedic side, a customer once asked if it was possible to get our seafood medley without any shellfish in it. The seafood medley consisted of lobster tail, scallops and large prawns served in and around the emptied shell of the lobster tail, on a bed of citrus-and-saffron scented rice with a sauce based on stock made from the prawn shells. Soooooo....you want a plate with a bit of rice on it? Okay...

Heck, go for the gusto. A bunny in a Santa suit, with turkey tailfeathers and shamrock "bling" around his neck. Good for the whole year.

I find serranos pretty regularly at Sobey's. They seem to have a better selection of fresh peppers than Superstore, as a rule, though Superstore is now carrying more dried peppers (no more trips to Maine for anchos, hurray!). I live in a different part of the country, of course, but I have to guess if they're available in small-town New Brunswick (I've bought them in St. Stephen) you should be able to find them pretty much anywhere in Ontario as well.

A chef I know of used banana bread soaked in egg to make French toast, and served it with lemon curd. It was a pretty popular menu item for him.

Sounds like it was a very cool experiment. I wonder if a bit of oil blended into the sweet potato would help preserve a bit of the lamination effect.

That was in the first book, IIRC, when they lived in "the little house in the big woods." The cow's pasturage would probably have been pretty limited at that point.

I always wind up straining the seeds out of anything I make with passion fruit, now that I'm not "restauranting" any more. I'm not a fan of crunchy seeds (even with pomegranate I spit 'em out) and the unfortunate resemblance to frog eggs doesn't help.

It looks to me like bits of the polymerized fat from the seasoning could be detaching from the pan. I've had that a couple of times on pans I've picked up in various places. If that's the case, the solution is to take it down to bare metal and start over on the seasoning. That's not as bad when the pan is relatively new, and you haven't got serious time invested in the finish. Don't take my unsupported word for it, though. I love my cast iron, but I'm not a serious maven like some of the others around here.