chromedome

I had a recent culinary grad working for me at one point, a youngster from mainland China (I don't remember where exactly, but he said it was just a bit north of where the Olympic rowing took place). I offered him a taste of pulled pork from my Big Green Egg one night, when he came in. He took it rather suspiciously, but when he tried it his face lit up immediately. "This is kind of like how we cook dog," he said, to the shock of my servers (dog lovers, all).

Yeah, I know...but you were the one who threw out the caution about reduced salt, so that's why I quoted you. It's all good.

You can compensate for that by reducing the yeast a titch, or fermenting the dough at a lower temperature, or shortening the time you let it rise. Just play it by ear, basically, and be prepared to throw a batch or two into the compost if necessary (flour is cheap).

Wages in the restaurant business are terribly low. So are margins. That's not a happy combination, no matter how you slice it. Here in Canada most jurisdictions don't allow a reduced minimum wage for tipped employees, so it's even tighter for restaurateurs. I've been seeing a lot of articles about top restaurants in Toronto and Vancouver -- the kind of place ambitious cooks should be fighting to work -- struggling to keep a kitchen staff, because wages and local cost of living are so far out of sync. Perhaps I'm selling my colleagues short, but I think in the longer term it will be a tempest-in-a-teapot situation. Remember when smoking bans were going to kill the restaurant (and bar) industry? That never happened, and the restaurant business showed itself to be resilient. I think it can survive paying a living wage, as well.

Now *that* is a keepsake worth having.

That's more or less where I am, though I use cheapie containers from the dollar store rather than Cambros. My freezer is a big Frigidaire upright with wire shelves, which are great for airflow but bad for standing additional wire racks on.

I have taped commonly-used recipes to the inside of a cupboard door over top of the cupboard workspace. Need the recipe? Open the door while working. The occasional bruises on my forehead are incentive enough to learn the recipe and not need the hard copy any more.

I found a mummified mouse under the stove in one rental. ETA: How they got all those bandages 'round the little critter, I can't imagine.

LOL She isn't a software (or other) engineer, perchance?

A CAT scan can pick up subtle flaws undetected by the human eye...

I had to write an article recently listing 20-odd uses for them. Most weren't especially appealing to me, but a couple of the craft ideas were practical enough I suppose. I'm one of the rare few who don't care for the combination of mint and chocolate, so bark wouldn't cut it for me. Sure does look pretty, though.

A few years ago, when my US-bred wife was alive, there was a major blizzard working its way towards us up the East Coast. My wife was tracking it through the various weather services, and after monitoring the storm's process she switched over to the news. She started with several US outlets, which showed endless lines of people cleaning the stores out of milk, bread, and bottled water. Then she turned to the local CBC website, which had a video of staff shaking their heads over a run on beer that had nearly cleaned out the liquor stores. "That," she said, "Tells you everything you need to know about New Brunswickers." ETA, for the benefit of American readers: New Brunswick, like most Canadian provinces, maintains a provincial monopoly on alcohol sales. You can only get beer at government-run liquor stores and their official agency outlets (in smaller towns that wouldn't support a full-scale liquor store).

I don't use 'em much, to my taste they don't have much flavor underneath the acidity. Of course, you may well get better Grannys than I do up here.

You only have four kinds of flour? (Kidding. I have probably 8 or 9 -- and 3 or 4 kinds of salt -- but it's an occupational hazard) My late wife belonged to the camp that believes there is is One Perfect Way to make anything, and that it's the cook's job to figure out that One Perfect Way and do it that exact way, henceforward, every time. Her apple pie was only, ever, equal portions Golden Delicious and Granny Smiths sliced thinly. It was a good apple pie, but I prefer locally-grown Cortlands and I may bake a thin-slices pie or a thick-chunks pie on any given day depending on my mood. We squabbled a *lot* about food.

When my kids were little, we used to do "Indoor campfires" in the fireplace. We'd cook hot dogs on sticks, and toast marshmallows. The neighbour kids always came over to join us for those nights.

Well...little visible effect, anyway, but chaos theory suggests there could be implications. I think "European Son" would make a rather striking metaphorical butterfly, in any case.

Apparently I joined in January 2004, while living in Edmonton. I was absent for several years in between, though...didn't have much time to participate starting in the summer of 2007, when I opened my restaurant, and only returned again (on any kind of regular basis) this past autumn.

I don't supposed you'd unguardedly mentioned a longtime affection for The Velvet Underground?

As for the Absolut, Igor said they had better vodka in Russia but the brands he liked weren't sold in Halifax. He considered Absolut to be the quality/value point for what he could get over here.

...because you know, of course, that it'll never taste right if you cap it and put it away. At least that's the explanation I've been given by many hard drinkers over the years (ie, the portion of my Newfoundland family that dies in its 50s). When my kids were little, we used to do a specific theme every year for Christmas: As we were taking down one year's decorations, we'd decide on the next year's theme. One year my kids chose "traditional Russian Christmas" as the upcoming motif, despite having no recent connections to Russia (my ex-wife's family were Mennonites, and had come to Canada from Russia and modern-day Belarus, but were culturally German). As it happened, that autumn I was dabbling in conversational ESL, and was paired up with a Russian family. The wife was doing graduate work at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography (Canada's equivalent of Woods Hole, I suppose you could say), while the husband stayed home with the two kids (boy 6, girl 6 months). As Christmas got closer I asked the husband if he could give us some guidance on the whole Russian-Christmas thing, which appealed to him greatly. Rather than helping us plan something at home, he suggested instead that we should come over to their apartment and experience it first-hand. Of course, we agreed. The meal was excellent (especially the pelmieny), but the first thing that struck me when we sat down to the table was the large bottle of Absolut vodka. Igor twisted the cap off and threw it over his shoulder theatrically, explaining in sheepish tones, "I usually am not much to drink...a glass or two of white wine, maybe..but is Russian tradition." As the evening wore on and hilarity advanced apace, "is Russian tradition" became a catchphrase. When he stumbled over a kid's toy and did a faceplant, he rolled over laughing and proclaimed it to be "Russian tradition." He strummed his guitar and sang Cossack songs loudly and well (his wife was an ethnic Cossack), assuring us that it was "Russian tradition." He eventually gave us a florid goodnight before passing out, and I helped his wife drag him off to bed. I left while she shucked him down and tucked him in, and set about gathering up my kids and all their winter clothing. As she came out of the bedroom, his wife gave us a look of dry humor, jerked a thumb toward her unconscious husband, and said, "is Russian tradition."

I had an instructor in culinary school who used to deliberately hand out sabotaged recipes as an object lesson. His point was that you needed to review the recipe critically before starting, to see if everything made sense in the context. A few years later, at the place I worked in Edmonton, one of the recipes from corporate called for 1kg of black pepper...I thought of that instructor as I took the black pepper from my new cook's hand and spoke to him (cough) gently of the need to think before adding ingredients.

Ditto. I'm a very fast reader, and learn better from books than from visuals. Also I have ADD, so sitting through a five-minute video of something I could read in 20 seconds is sheer, rage-inducing torture.

I was lucky, and found a portable dishwasher in a thrift store for $49. I bought it for my GF as a housewarming present for her new place (now the "old" place), and it has certainly earned its keep. It now resides in a little alcove off the kitchen, formerly a second laundry room.

No, nor I. ...and I would never, under any circumstances, stash said hypothetical pan of dishes in my oven because it was the closest available empty space. And I would certainly not turn on said oven several hours later to roast potatoes without checking to make sure the oven was empty, because why in the world would there be a pan full of dishes in my oven? Speaking hypothetically, of course.

My last rental in Nova Scotia had just one large sink. I put an inexpensive plastic tub from the dollar store into one side (it took up 2/3 of the space, roughly) and rinsed on the side where there was no tub. It worked pretty much the same. ETA: It's nice sometimes to have the full-sized sink space for large pots, roasters, etc.