chromedome

I have three. One's a Kenmore of 1960s vintage, making four of the old-school thin, rectangular waffles at a time (probably not unlike the Sunbeam Andiesenji endorses). It's not non-stick, of course, but makes very good waffles. I also have a Cuisinart Belgian waffle maker, the rotating variety, which is adequate but no more. My third is the same as the Cuis but dates from when they were sold under the Waring Pro brand name (a 300, rather than a 300c) and is somewhat better built and makes a better, crisper waffle. Unfortunately it's currently in pieces... again. I've reassembled it twice after it was dropped and broken; this time it happened during a move when it fell and then had a heavy box drop on it. It's a little "more broken" than usual, and I've only found time to halfway reconstruct it. Also I'm out of epoxy at the moment.

Just to be clear, here, is the problem a) that it's either too fine or too coarse for a conventional shaker; or b) more about portion control than actual "salt delivery"?

The rule at my place was that as long as you were in by my last seating time, you had the whole menu at your disposal (as long as I hadn't sold out of something, of course). My situation was not universal, though, because my last seating was at 9 pm and my last diner might not leave until 12 or 1, because I was inside the hotel where they were staying. Also the kitchen was mostly just me, and I had no equipment to shut down and clean...just a couple of electric ranges and a few other bits and pieces. It was quite a challenge, serving dozens of five-course meals out of there in an evening. After the first season I learned how many covers I could handle in any given hour, and booked accordingly.

I just recently learned that Guaraldi's drummer from those days moved to my hometown of Halifax, and has been teaching and playing sporadically around the city for decades.

When I was working my way through school, my favorite example of this was the customer who wanted the seafood medley, but without shellfish because she had an allergy. The medley consisted of an empty lobster tail stuffed with risotto; with the tail itself, some prawns and scallops served around and over it and a sauce made from the shrimp shells. That was good for a collective facepalm in the kitchen.

Very good. Our zones are a bit different up here...I believe most of New Brunswick would be a 3 or 4 by US reckoning. Still, it might be worth a try. It's been a good 15, maybe 20 years since I last looked into it.

I find theirs cooks reliably, but lacks flavor. Quite partial to Lundberg's multigrain rice mixtures, though. Separating out those sliver-sized grains of wild rice for use in blends was a stroke of genius.

They're biennial when grown from seed, so if your grower had started them indoors last year you won't see any buds until this year. God help me, if I'm ever in a place where I can garden for more than one year at a time I'll try some again.

Bear in mind they'll all differ at least a little bit in their cooking characteristics. Consider using a bit less water than with your usual brand, or use the pre-soaking technique. I've had good results with both of those alternatives, when working with basmati I found to be a bit dodgy and uncooperative.

I addressed that at my place by working a schedule of 7 months on, 5 months off. My servers, OTOH, were all part-timers.

Saint John calls itself "the most Irish city in Canada," but that doesn't translate into inexpensive corned beef in March, unfortunately. Pickled beef in a bucket is always available, but at just under $30/bucket I don't like it *that* much. Also, it's not at all the same thing.

I so wish that was a "thing" here. Instead, St. Patrick's Day just means it might be available.

Here in New Brunswick, restaurateurs pay full retail for wine. To put that further into context, a $9 bottle of wine in the US is a $19 bottle of wine in Canada. The usual rule of thumb is to mark it up 100%, so now we're up to $38. Yeah, it adds up in a hurry (and also places a lot of emphasis on "value" wines).

...with added criticism as a bonus. You betcha. It gets to be a problem pretty quickly, in a small city with a limited pool of line cooks. The worst of it is that it's so counter-productive. After three months as her chef de cuisine, I had even the surliest of the kitchen crew problem-solving and contributing (I challenged each of them to come up with one new dish using existing mise, which would go up as a daily special with their name on it...a couple of them were popular enough to become part of the regular menu). Then she sacked me because things weren't changing quickly enough. Aye, well.

...which, really, says it all.

The joy of working for amateurs, right? The last time I worked for someone else, the owner was a very bright woman with an excellent concept and a great grasp of the food-production side of things. Her shortcoming was a belief that every single person on her payroll should approach every single shift with an owner's passion and intensity...for, you understand, just over minimum wage. When she didn't get that level of commitment, she would hang around the kitchen and berate the cooks, often as soon as their second shift. Needless to say, that didn't work out very well.

Print directly to a DEC LA-120?

I encountered this just yesterday, with Alinea's new (and not completely functional) website. Not, alas, because I'll be dining there. (Edited to clarify: The actual text on the site is perfectly legible black-on-white, but the menus on the main screen are in white on pale grey. Somewhat less than ideal, to my mind.)

I couldn't tell you how many people told me "you should open for 'X', it would be a real money-maker for you." No. No it wouldn't.

Seriously, it's the water. I've had people do blindfolded taste tests of tuna packed in water vs. tuna packed in oil. When it's packed in oil, tuna tastes like tuna. Packed in water, it tastes like the inside of the can. I'm not talking about the fancy, super-expensive stuff from Spain or Italy, mind you, just plain old supermarket varieties. Fat phobia is so 1980s, people. It's a tablespoon or so of vegetable oil, which you'll usually drain away anyhow. Buy oil-packed.

It's a stormy night, so I pulled leftover choucroute garnie from the freezer (FCO points!) and boiled up some potatoes to go with. Perfect cold-night comfort food, but not photogenic.

An almond tuile, maybe? Almond florentine? Either one would be relatively easy to cut during the brief interval after it comes out of the oven.

My GF had a hankering for risotto tonight, so I made saffron risotto and breaded chicken thighs with carrots and a bit of kale from my parents' garden that I'd blanched and frozen a few months ago. No pics, because I just didn't think of it. Don't usually do anything "chef-ly," though, so I thought I'd mention it.

I see them pre-packaged here like spring mix, rather than done in-store as the prepared salads and fruit trays are. I'd assumed it was done mechanically, but there may indeed be large squash-processing sweatshops. I honestly don't know. Food-prep staff typically make minimum wage or barely over, in either case, except in areas where living costs are exceptionally high.

There is zero GMO wheat commercially grown at present in the United States or elsewhere. The "wheat belly" argument hangs on some very shaky assumptions, but in any case it refers to normal hybridization and selective breeding rather than genetic modification.