chromedome

I actually planted some lemon balm (the North American name for melissa) simply because that's my landlady's name. I used to also create dishes with ingredients that started with the same letter (alliteration) just because it sounded good on the menu, and people seemed to respond favorably to it when used in moderation.

Feeling for y'all. I'm still using/loving my 80s-vintage Japanese-built Cuis, but hope to pick up a spare from eBay or Kijiji against the evil day that it finally gives up the ghost.

LOL Forest...trees... It was a running joke between my ex and I that there is a well-known blind spot directly beneath one's nose.

Those look dry cured, to my eye...is that the case? "Canadian" bacon (here we call it "back bacon, or "peameal bacon" if it's rolled in cornmeal) is not. It's basically just a pork loin, cured and smoked but not dried.

When I was a kid, my mother called those "dollar fries" because they supposedly resembled silver dollars. That was in the days before the loonie, y'understand.

I think it's one of those things that can't be reasoned over...like people insisting they can't eat anything rare because of the "blood."

@David Ross The presence of French on the label doesn't necessarily mean the lamb went through a Francophone part of the country. Food sold in Canada has labels in both official languages, by default.

Not to hijack the OP's query, but I'm curious to get a shout-back from my fellow Canadians...I've lived on the Prairies and both coasts, and the default egg everywhere in the country seems to be over-easy. The only times I've had diners order sunny eggs, they've either been American or from Ontario. I note that Ashen fits the latter category...anyone else care to weigh in? Personally, though I made them to the (eventual) satisfaction of my late California-bred wife, I never took to sunny side up and know few others who care for them. "Don't want my breakfast looking back at me" is a comment I often hear.

Careme supposedly characterized pastry as the most important branch of architecture...

My class was the last to graduate before the kitchens at my school were extensively remodeled (I joked at the time that "Now I know what Martha was doing while she awaited sentencing..."). I'm sure the one at the CIA was more lavish by an order or two of magnitude, but this was still pretty impressive. I had the same comment for my former instructors, when I went back for a visit. When your school kitchen has as many Rational combi-ovens as most of the rest of the city put together, for example, going out into the real world and working with a cranky 40 year-old Garland has got to be something of a letdown.

When I was in culinary school, we made Persian-style rice pudding in international lab. It was scented with rose water, of course. One of my classmates unthinkingly blurted, "It's like eating my grandmother," and did not hear the end of it until the semester was over.

I did chuckle over her summation of the air fryer as "a glorified Easy-Bake oven."

I hadn't seen this before, but the style seemed strangely familiar. Then I realized it was the same guy who does the "This is why your team sucks" blog for each NFL season.

I gather from your preamble that the diners were your academic peers?

Yup. I can't tell you how many endless conversations I've had with friends, relatives, co-workers, acquaintances, etc about their latest round of "stomach flu" (sic) and why it keeps hanging on in their household. Unfortunately, a certain percentage will always get very upset and defensive ("You're saying my home is dirty?!!"), which makes it harder.

Also light switches, doorknobs, cupboard handles, drawer pulls, and -- especially -- the faucets of the sinks where you both wash your hands.

Here they have blue bins in (sparse) locations around town, and you're supposed to drive there and put stuff in the bins yourself. Some do, most don't.

The picture does look a lot like the color plates in my 1940's vintage American Woman's Cookbook.

My worst-case story comes from an Edmonton location of a very large fast-food chain. The kid mopping the floor spilled a box of gloves onto the wet, newly-mopped (with a gray, nasty, shaggy old mop) floor. He picked them up, stuffed them back into the box, tucked the box under the counter, and kept mopping. Ugh. There are legitimate reasons to wear gloves, as Lisa Shook points out (a lot of people are Staph A carriers, for example) but mandatory-glove laws largely just create a false sense of security. They're popular with legislators, I think, because they give the appearance of doing something tangible.

Don't feel too badly. When I was in my first year of culinary training, the chef-instructor one morning told us we would need to double the recipe we'd been given. A collective groan went up from my (mostly very young) classmates, who complained, "You didn't tell us we'd need our calculators today!" I was genuinely shocked. I mean, seriously, children...if you can't multiply by two, just frikkin' measure everything twice, no?

Is that the model with the Flex Duo oven? I wrote a few articles about those for Samsung.com.

That's a sweet-looking piece of kit.

Well, I'd say keeping hubby out of the kitchen would be step 1. Gloves, scrupulous hand-washing, diligent surface/implement sanitation etc are the best anyone can do, really. Of course, if some of the people on your list are immuno-compromised, you might want to let them know about the situation and offer them an "IOU" for future redemption, just in case. My ex and I got noro on our honeymoon, at (long story) my brother-in-law's wedding reception. It made for a long and unhappy week for us both...not at all improved by my poor bride passing a kidney stone just when she was getting over the virus.

That's priceless...right up there with IKEA's Apple-spoofing catalogue-launch video.

Cool...I hadn't really thought of it as the kind of project that could be carried on from year to year. What do you do by way of storage between Decembers?