chromedome

An odd little thing that might work as a gift is grapefruit spoons. Remember them? Like a teaspoon with a serrated edge, for scooping out your grapefruit in the morning? I know they may seem quaint to many of you...the culinary equivalent of cufflinks or antimacassars, perhaps...but I have several, and find them surprisingly useful for any number of things, such as scraping the pulp from little Delicata or Sweet Dumpling squash (two of my favorites) or whisking the seeds and membranes out of halved peppers. Faster than a paring knife, easier to handle in a gloved hand (if the peppers are hot) and with notably less potential for cutting more deeply than intended.

Somebody has to say it, so I'll step up. "Everyone goes to Rick's." Apparently there is a replica of Rick's-from-the-movie in Casablanca. I doubt the food is worth going for, but personally (having worn out several copies of the movie) I'd take a picture there.

If you open the can without shaking it, there can be anything from 1/2 cm to 1/2 can of "cream" separated on top. You just spoon that off, and use the rest for another purpose. You'll find that higher-quality brands have more cream, so buy one each of the brands available to you in your location and compare them. It might be possible to buy cans of just coconut cream. I've done that in the past, but found the availability to be spotty. In the UK, I'd suggest trying Caribbean or Indian/Asian groceries.

The rules we teach in food safety training are to separate into shallow, small containers (less thermal mass, more surface area for evaporative cooling) and for larger quantities to use a water bath or chilling instruments of some sort (gel packs, etc) to bring down the temperature quickly. I keep a large number of gel packs in the freezer, and will drop anywhere from 1 to 8 into a pot (depending on its size) to cool it in a hurry. Stirring is important, btw, whether you nestle your pot into an ice water bath or drop cooling gel packs directly into the food. I've taken a Dutch oven full of stew from a simmer to room temperature in about 5 minutes, that way. At room temp, you're not going to overwork your refrigerator even if you put the whole pot in there. If you plan to portion some or all of it for leftovers or freezing, of course it makes sense to do this first and distribute the containers around your fridge so the (relative) warmth isn't concentrated in one spot. Don't stack them, because they'll keep each other warm.

The canopy should be the right size; 10 X 10 is the most common (and those that aren't are usually smaller, rather than bigger). One thing to check is the legs. Most brands stand up vertically, but a few splay the legs and may take up more space than the stated canopy size.

Have you tried separating and using just the coconut "cream" (not creamed coconut) as opposed to whole coconut milk? I've used it in lieu of dairy cream for a vegan ice cream (worked pretty well) and suspect it might work in a pourable caramel.

I had two notable examples of that while my restaurant was open. The first was two couples from Germany...one had booked months ahead, the other came off the road because of bad weather and followed our signs. They got talking in the dining room, and it turned out they lived a block apart from each other at home in Germany. Go figure. The second involved an older couple travelling with their grandson (the boy was keen on cooking, so I let him help me make the fresh pasta for my lobster ravioli and pappardelle. He was thrilled). A younger couple turned out to be from the same state, and then from the same town, and then from the same neighbourhood. Eventually it turned out that the older couple's grandson and younger couple's son were on the same hockey team, and they'd somehow managed never to meet. I remember being surprised that there was junior hockey that far south. IIRC they were from somewhere in one of the Carolinas. I guess that means the NHL Hurricanes are having at least a modest impact.

Alliteration is a wonderful thing on the commercial menu. I can remember having an extra couple of cases of romaine, and making rosemary-romaine soup. It went pretty well. So did the chicken and chestnuts, come to think of it....

Twenty isn't that large a quantity, if the price is reasonable. Two or three for yourself (so you don't have to do this again any time soon), eight or 10 as lightweight Christmas gifts, and probably a handful distributed to other interested eGulleters. I've reconciled myself to Y peelers, simply because I haven't been able to find a decent vertical model for years, but I'd cheerfully pay to have one of the 20 shipped to me here in Canada.

Yup. I know it's a common and well-loved combination, but I just can't choke it down. (Shrug) What can I say...some people even dislike asparagus or cilantro.

Oddly, that's a combination I was never able to get behind. I like burgers just fine, and I love blue cheese, but to me blue cheese on a burger tastes exactly like beef that is sadly past its prime.

Meat birds are slaughtered very young, so that's not an issue even when they're free-range. My GF's parents had a dozen Meat Kings this year, and at two months old they'd outgrown their legs and could barely move on their own. I'm guessing your birds were a dual-purpose breed, and slaughtered when they were a bit older. There's also the possibility your first bird was an outlier, and the others will be fine. It's hard to say. Low-and-slow is always worth a try.

My late wife provided a website and operational advice (her mother had been a successful chef and caterer) to a similar service in California years ago. They eventually folded when the proprietor got cocky -- after my wife had moved on -- and sunk too much of their operating capital into a refrigerated delivery truck, just as the 2008 recession hit. They'd been delivering just fine with Cambros and picnic coolers in a random assortment of SUVs and pickups, but the proprietor had her heart set on the big truck...which, of course, was hard-pressed to meet the delivery schedule in their far-flung area of the Sierras.

I think for me, I'd sum up the case for owning physical cookbooks as "curation." I can find almost anything on the internet, but it makes for a pretty large haystack when I want a specific needle. With my cookbooks, I can find a given recipe from a trusted source in moments. I don't use 'em often, because I seldom cook or bake anything that requires a formal recipe, but I want them when the occasion arises. More often than not if I open a cookbook it's just for the sake of browsing and seeking ideas. In fact I have some cookbooks I would never cook from, but I keep them on hand for when I need to "dumb down" for a cooking class or a recipe that'll be posted online as part of an article. I spend too much time around proficient cooks, and often write for non-proficient cooks, so it's a useful exercise. Some of the cookbooks I enjoy most are what I think of as "contextual"...they provide a lot of historic or cultural context to go along with the actual recipes. Duguid & Alford, Anya von Bremzen, Claudia Roden, Paula Wolfert...I could go on, but each of you could come up with a similar list of names. Those are good reads in their own right, aside from the quality of the recipes, and I keep them on hand for their entertainment value. I know I could get them as ebooks, but those (to my mind) are singularly unsatisfying for this kind of book.

I've actually done that. The wild rice in the Lundberg blend I've used was unusually thin, and I suspect it was culled from their regular wild-rice product specifically because it was undersized and would therefore cook decently in the same time as brown or red rice. Other blends I've purchased used normal-sized wild rice, which was still crunchy when the rest was done. It actually doesn't take very long to sort out the wild rice from the mixture; then I just started the wild rice 15 minutes ahead of the rest. It worked out. Eventually I realized that the blends were quite pricey relative to the cost of the respective ingredients, so I started making my own. I still start the wild rice first.

That's gotta be The Big Lebowski.

The salt pork I'm familiar with is all fat, or at most has a thin streak of muscle through it. It's very salty. When rendered, it gives what I guess you'd call a kind of pre-seasoned lard. In Newfoundland, where my family originates, it's rendered for cooking fat and then the cubes of rendered fat -- "scrunchons" -- are strewn over the meal as a garnish and flavoring.

That's a definite anomaly. Typically Canadian book prices are about 30% higher than US prices.

I read that one. There was a more recent study this year that compared blow dryers, and found that the intense blast from a Dyson Airblade hand dryer spread water particles notably farther than other models.

That's the nut of the argument, right there. The issue is what's called the "infective dose" -- the population of a given pathogen that's required, in order to make you sick -- and it varies wildly between pathogens. A few thousand will do it with some, while others require populations well into the millions. The larger the starting population, the more favorable the conditions and the longer they have to reproduce, the greater the likelihood that you'll reach that threshold. Straight-up cleaning with hot soapy water sharply reduces the number and viability of pathogens. Sanitizing with an appropriately-diluted substance reduces pathogen populations sharply (several orders of magnitude, IIRC) while leaving your surfaces still food safe (sanitizers themselves can be toxic in inappropriate concentrations). Sterilization takes things a step further, but you won't find an autoclave in very many kitchens because outside of specific healthcare scenarios there isn't much of a case for it.

When I'm cooking, i usually have a sink full of hot water spiked with bleach so I can wash (most) things as I use them. I'll usually wipe down my thermometers' probes in the sink, then rinse them. I also have a spray bottle filled with restaurant-style quaternary ammonia sanitizer, which I use at the end of a session before putting it away. That's gilding the lily, though, with a strong pinch of "because I have it and want to use it up."

The cottage roll Mmmmpomps mentioned isn't the same as a picnic ham. A picnic is a piece of shoulder that's otherwise -- for lack of a better term -- ham-like. A cottage roll is salted pork shoulder, more along the lines of old-school "pickled" pork or beef. At least that's what it is here in Atlantic Canada...Alberta might be different.

This is no help and nothing to do with your problem, but the first reaction of my non-caffeinated morning brain was "If you're leaking chocolates, it's time to stop eating them..."

My favorite name for that one is "mock-aroni" and cheese. Proved to be a big hit with the grandbabies.

Welcome aboard! I spent as much time here as I could afford when I was a student and then an apprentice. Maybe more time than I could really afford, when I think of it. Learned a lot, though, so it was totally worth it.