chromedome

I have a handful of heavy aluminum skillets left over from my restaurants, and they're in much the same state. Over time, as the non-stick surface eroded, they "seasoned" themselves with a nice, functional polymer coating without me doing anything much about it. Eggs don't skate quite as beautifully as they do on some of my other pans, but *will* cook without sticking and that's all I ask. These ones are a mix of brand names but appear to have come from the same factory; I picked them up from the Winners/Homesense chain of liquidation outlets over a 2-year period.

When I was an adolescent living in northern Newfoundland, crab was a nuisance to the local gillnetters. When a crab gets tangled in the net it struggles to get free, which means it gathers up quite a ball of mesh around itself. That means an attractively scalloped edge at the bottom of the net, where all that mesh has been lifted up, which in turn means hundreds of pounds of fish swimming un-caught through the gaps where that mesh should be. The usual "fix" was to have a crewman standing at the gunwales with an axe handle or a big stick, and one hand on the lever that starts and stops the net puller (the "Gertie"), usually a small Briggs & Stratton motor. When a crab came over the gunwale this crewman would stop the net puller, smash the crab with his stick, and fling the pieces back into the water. Then he'd restart the Gertie. In those days the fish you were bringing in typically fetched 12 to 14 cents/pound, so if you went to ol' Skipper Eli and offered him 10 cents/lb for all the crab he wanted to bring in, you'd find yourself the next day with a hundred pounds or more of very fresh snow crab sitting on your doorstep. We'd eat ourselves gaspingly full, then shuck the rest and bag it for the freezer. I still shake my head to think of it...10 cents/lb, even in those days, was a heck of a bargain. Here in New Brunswick the local Jonah crabs are a by-catch for the lobstermen, and one of my neighbours came to my restaurant once and asked if I'd like some to experiment with. I incautiously agreed to take "a few" for trial purposes, which resulted in a tote filled with 200 lbs. of crab the next day. They turned out to be the cussedest things...not especially sweet or powerful, and with the most heavily armoured shells I've encountered so far. Eventually I learned that their claws are considered the only really useful part of a Jonah crab, and they're often harvested as a sort of poor man's stone crab (or shady man's stone crab, if they're illicitly sold as such).

Usually the culprit is steam escaping from the food within the batter, and the inner layer of cooked-but-not-crisp batter in the case of thicker mixtures. I know of only a limited number of ways to deal with this: Batter only foods with low water content; fry them until they're completely crisp and dry throughout; or give them -- as @Yiannos says -- a rest in the warming oven where the dry heat aids the escape/evaporation of steam but keeps the exterior crisp until you're ready to eat. The first two options are thoroughly problematic, so I lean to the third. It too will only take you so far, but it's a good and practical technique.

I haven't done chocolate classes but I have done a ton of cooking classes, and I treat them differently depending whether it's a straight-up demo or a hands-on session. I usually worked backward from the time involved, then added in my costs. Once I knew what I needed to make an appropriate profit on the session, I usually submitted a proposal on a basis of "$(x) per head, $(my desired dollar amount) minimum, enrolment capped at (x) number of people." The number of people can be higher for a straight-up demo, as long as everybody can see. I charged more for hands-on sessions, on the basis that they're a PITA and I usually had at least one additional cook overseeing the participants. I'd venture to guess that the risk of your students burning or cutting themselves is probably lower than I faced. If you're doing a hands-on session, minimize the number of skills and techniques you'll try to do. In a straight demo format you can do lots of things, but when others are getting involved it slows you down tremendously. I don't know how much of this is transferable to your scenario, but it's offered up FWIW.

My current car was around that price. Slightly lower, actually.

She's doing okay, so far. Lots of family have arrived already, my sisters get here on Sunday, and I'm leaving momentarily to collect my son from the airport. The ratio of cloud to silver lining is not especially good, but you embrace whatever positives you can.

I have been quietly playing along in a limited fashion, whittling away at both my fridge freezer and my upright. Now I have a new challenge. My father, who has cooked for my mother for most of their marriage (once he got out of the navy and wasn't away at sea, of course) is now in palliative care. They have two freezers full of produce from their garden, this year's deer, cod from my relatives in Newfoundland, and so on. Over the next few weeks I'll be turning most of that into ready-to-eat meals she can put into the freezer and use up when I'm not here to cook for her.

Bulk Barn often has them, though they may come and go with the seasons. I've seen 'em there but they aren't a particular favorite of mine, so I don't keep track of what time of the year it is.

I can't answer for others, but it's covered at length in McGee. The relatively harsh bleaching process makes the flour granules more porous, and therefore lighter and more absorbent as well as whiter. In the case of White Lily, my understanding is that they simply mill low-protein wheats for their flour. Chlorine bleaching isn't something I personally get exercised about, because chlorine is routinely added to most municipal water systems anyway as an antibacterial agent. If it causes me a health problem, it will certainly be from drinking water as opposed to eating cake flour.

Ah, yes..."mordanting." One of my favorite words, the year I was 10. "Anadromous" was high on the list that year, too (I learned it while the shad and gaspereaux were running). (ETA: I read most of an encyclopedia and most of a dictionary that year, and literally had more words than I knew what to do with. In retrospect, I must have been hilarious to the adults around me as I tried to find casual ways to use them in conversation.)

The word "powder" didn't come into it anywhere...you may have misread "power blender," perhaps? I was referring to the Vitamix/Blendtec kind of machine. I guess it would have been clearer if I'd called out the corresponding part of Ess' post as a quote, but I hadn't yet had much caffeine.

The pit. It's nutritious and high in fibre, so there's been a fad lately for processing and eating it. A few quick links... http://www.livestrong.com/article/31737-eat-avocado-seeds-nutrition/ http://www.californiaavocado.com/blog/march-2016/is-it-safe-to-eat-the-avocado-seed http://www.health.com/food/no-you-shouldnt-start-eating-avocado-seeds

It "can" be eaten, but there's a reason it's not. Even sites/bloggers advocating for its consumption concede that you need to grind it finely and hide it in something, because it tastes dreadful. By all means give it a whirl (yeah, that was a power-blender pun) if you feel in need of the fibre and vitamins, but you probably won't make a habit of it.

LOL I should probably just shut up at this point, but I'll have another go...I'm fairly confident the "microwave burrito/mac & cheese because that's all I know how to do" demographic is under-represented here.

Understood. I'm fairly confident the microwave burrito/mac & cheese demographic is under-represented in this particular community. When I'm insufficiently caffeinated, I can be Captain Obvious.

That's one of the classic, fundamental use-cases for the aforementioned device.

The one on the right came up in my GF's facebook feed the other day, and she swore she'd get it for me. I'm the kid who read his encyclopedia cover to cover because nobody thought it necessary to tell me that wasn't how most people use one.

I make a batch of creme brulee every so often, by popular demand, so I always have extra whites hanging around and often use them to lighten waffles or pancakes.

I would guess it's a 20-oz imperial pint, given the context. IIRC a number of pubs in British Columbia got into trouble a couple of years ago for selling 16-oz American pints, rather than 20 oz pints. We're officially metric here too, but the 20-oz pint remains the standard for beer.

Canadian AP flour runs in the 12% range, give or take.

...$999 for the 325-watt mixer? That's some serious marketing chutzpah, right there...

For any non-Anglophiles reading this, "corn flour" in the UK context is what we call cornstarch in North America.

Chilling and slicing is just a convenient way to handle a soft, high-fat dough. As with spritz cookies, the end result is very delicate.

You have to toast the chickpea flour in a dry skillet until it smells, well...toasty...otherwise you get a distinctly "bean-y" flavor in the finished cookie. The flour will get a little bit browner, but your nose will tell you when it's done. It goes from smelling rather leguminous to aromatic and fragrant, more or less all at once. Stir it constantly though, or it'll scorch.

Salted and unsalted butter seem to be the same price in the US, but they're predictably $1 apart anywhere I've lived in Canada. It seems to be a circular thing: We buy less because it costs more, and it costs more because it's not as popular. I don't think shelf life is necessarily the issue because a lot of stores keep it in the frozen section. As for method, I just cream the sugar and butter and then add the flour. It's kind of a "don't overthink it" recipe. Years ago I was looking for a gluten-free "shortbread," so I tried an Iranian cookie made with rice flour and an Indian cookie made with pan-toasted chickpea flour. I found the Iranian one gritty and the Indian one too earthy, but then had the inspiration of doing half-and-half with the rice flour and chickpea flour. That worked pretty well (I used brown butter, for extra flavor) but it was a long time ago and I have no memory of the exact recipes I used.