chromedome

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.

That's a very large category for me, and yes...cookie dough is one of its occupants.

I've asked them to just put it on a side plate for me. The locations here seem open to that.

I've eaten at a few of their locations. If I was still working the line, I'd be somewhat tempted by their breakfast-and-lunch only format. On the upside, lots and lots of fruit on their plates. On the downside -- at least in the locations I've visited -- it's often underripe and poorly prepped.

Yup. The biggest obstacle for a new technique or method is an ingrained conviction that "hey, that just ain't right!" Programmers like to joke that the only reason God was able to create the heavens and the earth in six days was that he didn't have an installed base of users.

It's actually one of the hot culinary trends, right now (the things I learn while working....).