chromedome

Alexander Keith's IPA is brewed entirely in Halifax NS, in one brewery on the corner of Agricola and Young streets. I used to live a few blocks from there, and walked to cooking school with the smell of their wort in my nostrils. It's not a bad thing. Alexander Keith's 1820 brewery has been restored to a glistening, touristy parody of its original state, and is used to produce seasonal microbrews four times a year for the local bars. They're pretty good, and Keith's (okay, call me a "home-r") is my favourite mainstream brew. It is available pretty reliably throughout Canada, and is classed as a "domestic import"; ie Canadian but out-of-province. Kokanee, likewise, is all brewed at one plant in Creston BC. Most of the artisanal beers in Canada are only available locally, which (I sometimes think) is as it should be. If you're in Halifax (for example), you have Granite Brewery's various bitters to savour; and Propellor Brewery's legendary porter (adjudged one of the world's best in head-to-head competition); and the Maritime Brewery Company's "1749" and "Black Pearl." Here in Alberta the heavy hitter is Big Rock. I find their Grasshopper to be, like Moosehead, too sweet for a light beer; their darker Traditional Ale is quite acceptable. The most widely available artisan brews, I think, are Unibroue and Granville Island Brewery. I love the Unibroue products, which are fermented "on the lees" and have a phenomenal flavour. They've just been purchased by Sleeman's, who are in the process of growing from a scrappy regional player to a noteworthy national player (they've also purchased the Maritime Brewing Company). Could write more, but the wife (and a garage sale) are calling. Maybe later.

Calls to mind Mark Twain, in The Innocents Abroad, lampooning his fellow countrymen (and -women) who affected to have forgotten how to speak English during their three whole months in France...

Tempest in a disposable plastic cup, anyone? I mean, really! Come to think of it, I got royally chewed out once, when I was working in retail, because I used the phrase "rule of thumb." Anyone besides me (and the chew-er) know why that's offensive? As she stalked out of the store, I shook my head and thought to myself, "Okay, so when you and I are dead, there'll be *nobody* left in the world who remembers how that got started!" -Chromedome (has Metis brother-in-law, mulatto brother-in-law, neither of whom really give a rat's ass what they're called)

...and after all that, you can name your daughter after it. (Melissa) [/smartass]

I don't have any personal knowledge of Seattle, but I would suggest an upscale market rather than a hotel or restaurant. Won't hurt you quite so deeply in the ol' student budget. The forcemeats are, all told, rather fun...but peeling the skin off the chicken in one piece for the galantine is a pain in the arse. You may want to buy a few whole chickens; I'd be inclined to practice that particular skill more so than training my tastebuds. Just a thought, from one who'd "been there done that" during the fall semester.

Check that...should read "gourmet shrooms"... (I agree with those who find "gourmet" the most irritating. What the hell is that supposed to mean? Aside, that is, from the obvious "double the mark-up." [/rant])

Oh, good, she's open! I'm desperately eager to hear how things are going, but realistic enough to know that we're somewhere down around the 479th priority on her list right now. And rightly so. Oh well, it sounds like there'll be a few other Gulletters in a position to give us updates now.

One of my colleagues worked for a local chain, Joey Tomatoes, right across the street from an Earl's (a powerhouse regional chain). They collaborated frequently on perpetuating the "gas the new guy" tradition. One favourite was to send the newbie across the street to ask the hostess for a "longstand." The hostess would say something like, "Okay, hon, I just have to seat a couple of tables and then I'll look after you." After ten or fifteen minutes, that one would generally sink in. I guess every industry has these. At Radio Shack, one of the standards was to get the new guy to count the bulk wire and cable at inventory time. "How do I do this?" was their inevitable question. We'd point to the floor and say, "The tiles are 18 inches. Just pull all the wire off the spool, count the tiles, and do the math." And then we'd see how long we could keep a straight face. My brother-in-law works in the oilpatch, and they've got some *serious* practical jokers there. One of his co-workers got pushed into his locker, the lock was closed and then the lock was welded shut, and the locker was then transferred to a remote portion of the site and left for two hours. ....of course you know, payback is a bitch...

I think that the underlying motive behind many of these foods was, simply, desperation. When the alternative is starvation, humans can be very creative. People get sick from eating "x"? Why don't we try cooking it? Still get sick? Hmmm...let's try soaking it first and rinsing it. Not quite as sick? Let's try cooking it two or three times and squeezing the water out reallly well, in between. Hey, look at that! We're still standing! Funguses in general strike me as being a big one. I mean, aside from their observable tendency to make people twitch and die, they just *look* rather...icky. I mean really, think about it! "Aw, crap, my ears of corn have been overtaken by this black slimy stuff! ....<pause> I wonder what that tastes like?" The Chinese, I think, are the past-masters of this. My father defines the Chinese approach to food and cooking as, "If it's carbon-based, we can cook it. If it's not carbon-based, well, we'll at least think about it a bit." I mean really...birds' nests? Made of twigs and spit? How hungry do you have to be to play around with that?

My mother has a photo which never fails to bring a smile to her face. Let me set the stage: When I was about four, and my parents were just in their mid-twenties, we lived on a small back road in rural Nova Scotia. My father went out fishing one day in the shallows of the lake down the road from where we lived (a part of Grand Lake, for those who know the area). Failing to catch any fish, that day, he was intrigued to spot a turtle lounging along the shore. My father was always up for trying something new, so he pounced on the turtle and brought it home in a bag. He went into the house and announced proudly to my mother that they'd have turtle soup that night, as a special dinner before he went to sea the next day (I'm a Navy brat). He fetched his axe, gave it a few (entirely unnecessary, knowing him) licks with the stone, and plopped the turtle down on the chopping block. The turtle, knowing what was good for him, hauled all of his extremities into the protection of his carapace, and stayed that way. Dad, for his part, hovered at the chopping block - axe raised - like a vulture waiting for its prey to expire. The standoff lasted for well over an hour. Mom got a picture. Eventually, the turtle decided (fatally) that the coast was clear; and Dad prevailed. By that time of course, it was much too late to start the soup; so Dad cleaned the turtle according to the instructions in an old cookbook he had, and froze the meat. Unfortunately, while he was at sea, our refrigerator calved and everything in the freezer went out to the garbage in consequence. So, Mom never did get her turtle soup, but she still pulls that picture out once in a while and snickers over it.

That's major. I'm reluctant to even surrender the bones.

I'm at the oven all day, every day. Frequently I don't even notice that I've burned myself until I go to wash my hands. Then the hot water reminds me! I've had a few good ones, over the years. Like the time I pulled the stock pot off to the side of the burner, because it was too hot (boiling, not simmering). Having adjusted the flame, I reached up and pulled the pot back onto the grate...using the handle that'd been over the flame. Matching blisters, finger and thumb. Then there was the heating-my-sugar-to-start-work-on-my-centrepiece incident, which saw a large bubble of lava explode over my right hand. The blisters lasted a few weeks, but (bloody-minded sort that I am) I bandaged and gloved myself and proceeded to pull the damned sugar. In my defence, let me say that I iced my hand every ten minutes for the rest of my lab time that day. And at school, of course, there were always people who were "too busy" to stack things properly on the cart we used for hauling our stuff to the dish pit. So periodically one of us would have to go and organize things. I always seemed to be the one who organized sheets straight from the oven, or saute pans straight from the stove. That loud sizzling sound is classic comedy, every time.

Okay, the food was not even secondary in this instance. The food was somewhere waaaaaayyyy, waaaaayyyy back in the overall scheme of things. There was this girl at the call centre I was working at, you see. She wasn't conventionally beautiful but I found myself rather drawn to her. After she'd been there for nearly a month, she happened to mention that the Canada Day holiday was also her birthday. Now, please understand that by this time I'd reached the point where I was in despair after work on Fridays, because I wouldn't be seeing her again until Monday. So I invited her to join me that night, June 30th, at a bar in Gastown that I frequented in those days. She said she'd come out. I went home, showered, downed a hasty mouthful, and went straight to the bar. Sat there for hours (it couldn't have been any later than 6:00 when I got there, but I wasn't taking the chance that she'd show up when I wasn't there); getting a crick in my neck from watching the entrance so intently. She finally got there at around 11:00, by which time I'd been through several cycles of intense depression ("She's not coming...dammit, dammit, dammit...I should just go home and forget about it...but maybe she's just running late...maybe something came up...maybe she went somewhere else...she's not coming..."). She met my friends. We talked, we laughed, we drank, we talked some more. We closed the place down. We walked to a 24-hour restaurant a few blocks away, and sat and had a big meal of steak and eggs and lots of coffee and talked and talked until sunrise. Then we walked up to her place in Mount Pleasant, where after some more talk we dozed off in each other's arms, in companionable (and non-sexual) coziness. A couple of hours later we were awakened by the arrival of her aunt, from the West End, and her best friend (& friend's husband) who'd driven in from Edmonton as a surprise. Surprise! Ummm.... everybody? This is Fred.... That was seventeen years ago, this past ten days. I woke her up on July 1st with her now-traditional birthday breakfast of eggs Benedict. There's still nobody I'd rather cook for. <'scuse me...gotta go hug somebody now....>

BB's are a tiny sort of shot (like small ball bearings) which are used in air rifles. Their purpose, in this application, is to weigh down the balloon and stabilize it. Anything will do, I guess, as long as it is both dense and small enough to pour through the neck of the balloon.

I like them with rum, myself. Not a standard combination, but it appeals to me. Personally I like them tart, but I'll sweeten them depending what I put them with. I'm not a summer person (I detest hot weather, and I avoid the sun) but to me there's nothing better than the smell of a blackberry patch under a hot August sun (they're an August thing anywhere I've lived. Maybe the very end of July, in a good year).

Throwing my two cents' worth into your new Newfoundland thread reminded me that I'd neglected to mention a few worthy artisan bakers to check out in Halifax. Boulangerie la Vendeene is located in Mahone Bay on the South Shore, but comes to town for the market at the Brewery on Saturdays. Their breads are all organic, and very old-country in style (Marc is an old-country French-trained boulanger). I've had most of their breads, and they're very good. Didier Julien, another French boulanger located on the South Shore, has two permanent outlets in Halifax. One is on Dresden Row, just off Spring Garden; the other is in the Hydrostone Market in the North End (just blocks from my former home, and a stone's throw from the current Keith's brewery). Julien's has decent coffee and Euro-style pastries, as well as the breads. The Ginger Bread Haus, in the South End (a few minutes' walk from Halliburton House or the Granite Brewery) is owned and operated by a former instructor from the Culinary Arts faculty at the NSCC. They specialize in Mittel-European pastries and European-style coffees. It's a good 'un. Oh, and on the subject of coffee I'll mention Java Blend Coffee Roasters, just north and west of the Commons on North St. They were my favourite place to buy coffee when I lived in Halifax. They've been family-owned since 1938, with the third generation currently acting as roastmaster and a fourth generation now in incubation. They roast their coffees in small batches, daily, and offer organic and/or fairly traded coffees which will knock your socks off. This is their website. Their organic dark blend was my standard daily dose, but I've also enjoyed about half of the coffees in their line (they've expanded the line greatly since I moved away). They are Greek, so expect some triumphant Euro 2004 memorabilia. Oh, and while my fogbound brain is free-associating, the Bluenose laundromat is just a couple of blocks from Java Blend. George and Maria (also Greek) are the sweetest people. The Bluenose is a little community, where everybody knows everybody else. If you're going to need your clothes washed, where else would you take them but the city's best laundromat?

Dunno if it's still there (I last set foot on the Rock in 1982) but Ches' Fish & Chips ruled. People used to take big boxes of it on the plane back to the Mainland. I never understood that; no matter how good f & c is before the flight it's crap afterwards. Go figure. I don't remember exactly where on the highway it is, but I loved one place I ate as a kid in the back seat. It was called the Pinchgut Diner (Pinchgut being the name of the town...Newfoundland has some of the most colourful place names anywhere). The food was ordinary, but I loved the name and still remember it. If you spend a night in Corner Brook, the place to do that would be the Glynmill Inn. I've no idea what the food is like, these days, but the hotel is quite beautiful and so is its setting. Although it is unlikely, given the climate of Newfoundland (nasty and brutal), there are actually a few small wineries there. The most interesting, to me, is the Rodrigues winery. They are an exclusively fruit-based winery, with two unusual distinctions. One is that they are kosher-certified. The other is that they have their own in-house distillery, which they use to make (wait for it) slivovitz (???!!!). They are located in Whitbourne, at the narrow neck of the Avalon Peninsula, so they will be an easy visit going either to or from St. John's. They are part of the fruit-wine equivalent of the VQA organization, a standard-setting body. The Weil winery, in Twillingate, and the Flynn winery in Shoal Harbour (near Grand Falls/Windsor), are both viable side trips from the Trans-Canada. September is the best month to visit Newfoundland, as the fall colours come early there. If you find the opportunity, try to visit some bog country...if Cezanne had seen a Newfoundland bog in September, they'd never have gotten him back to France. If you can fit it into your itinerary, on no account should you miss Gros Morne National Park. It is simply one of the most breathtaking spots on the planet. I can't speak for any culinary excellence in the area, but I'd eat dry bread for a day just to be there. It is an easy drive from Corner Brook; the official site is here. I still have friends and family down that way, but most of them are out in the boonies. I'll see who I can track down for some up-to-date recommendations.

My parents made a lemon pound cake with wild blueberries, when they owned their bakery in Nova Scotia (where blueberries are a major industry). Use your favourite lemon pound cake recipe, but stir in a quantity of blueberries at the last minute. Top the still-hot cake with a thick mixture of fresh lemon juice and sugar. Very nice. I'm tired and might have missed it upthread (apologies if so), but you might also cook your cobbler in a pot on the stovetop. Just leave room for the berries to steam and simmer, and cook it in a pot with a tight-fitting lid (rather like the old-fashioned chicken soup & dumplings beloved by North Americans of rustic roots). This dessert has various regional names (grunt, bangbelly, and similar inelegant terms) and is quite delightful, if not especially attractive. Serve with cream or ice cream.

Thanks, all. I will be doing some digging during my (less than copious) free time...I am a freelance researcher, after all...but needed a few quick ideas to get me started. The links above are all that and more, and "strata" (thanks, Andiesenji!) is precisely what I was grasping for as a label to use for menu-writing purposes. I can run with that, now that I know what to call them! I'll improvise variations on those themes, and bake them off on sheet pans or in two-inch hotel pans, and cut 'em in wedges to go with my roasts. Shouldn't be too difficult to co-ordinate pudding w/sauce w/roast. The carving station has been rather fun for me. Making up sauces for the roasts has been an amusing diversion from the pizzas and pastas; makes me feel like I'm getting some practical use out of all that class time. And my "Repertoire", of course, is small enough to fit handily in my locker at work.

Over the next week, at my day job, I'm taking up my new duties as "team leader" in the bakery (essentially manage that department). We've just recently switched to a new bread supplier. These are artisanal breads of excellent quality from one of the leading local purveyors; the price points are higher and part of my job will be selling the new product to our longtime customers. However, because of the higher costs, another part of my job will be ensuring that we get maximum utilization out of the unsold product. For the unflavoured breads, I don't anticipate any difficulty locating recipes for upscale bread puddings (or using them for breadcrumbs or stuffing or what have you); but many of the breads we're buying are savoury...black olives, peppers, onions, cheese, and many other suchlike ingredients. Are there any traditions of savoury bread puddings out there? We do a carved item every day, so I wouldn't lack for meals to pair them with, but I'm unsure about how they'd be received. Bread puddings, for a lot of people, conjure up memories of frugal grandmothers and stale-tasting sodden goo. If there was a traditional style of savoury bread pudding, now, I'm thinking that I could put it across as an ethnic specialty...something that would perhaps garner a more sympathetic ear from my customers. Anyone know of anything? Got any ideas?

I got tired of combing the second-hand stores for one of those waffle irons a couple of years ago, and bought a small two-waffle modern version. Back in February I was in a thrift store here in Edmonton and found an old four-waffle Kenmore with the cloth-covered cord. Works like a charm, and makes better waffles than the new one. Hmmmmm..... Come to think of it, I haven't made waffles for a while. Maybe I'll mix up some batter tonight before bed.

I love my Kitchenaid, and I use it a lot, but it's useless for bread. I made the mistake of buying a model with the 4.6 qt bowl (I was on a budget). It's got the 350 watt motor, so I've got power enough to handle bread dough, but the dough climbs the hook and winds itself around the head unit. I spend more time unsticking the damned dough than it's worth. Usually I start the bread in the KA, let it go to the point that it climbs the hook, and then take it over to the table and knead by hand. It's quicker in the end. As I said I give my machine a lot of use, but bread was one of the primary reasons I bought it. I'm still a little miffed about that.

My mother bought a Proctor & Gamble toaster oven in the mid-70's. She used it for about eight years, then gave it to my sister. My sister used it for another three, and gave it to me after receiving a newer model as a gift. I used it for a further four years, a rather respectable total for an inexpensive model. When it died, I purchased a nearly identical model to replace it, which lasted me for eight years. My current model is at the three-year mark and counting. It is microprocessor controlled, and beeps/shuts off when the toast is done. Doesn't broil nearly as well as the older model, but it makes decent toast. All of these cost less than $35 CDN, which is pretty lowball up here. I used to have a separate toaster, but gave it away because it did nothing but take up space in my cupboard. I doubt I'd ever buy one again, unless it was a wedding gift...

Being a Downeaster, I'm a biscuit man all the way. Having said that, fresh strawberries are of course a perfect accompaniment to any ol' pieces of angel food, white cake, genoise, sponge cake, or similar substance you happen to have lying around. It's just not strawberry shortcake, is all.

Been using mine regularly for a year and a half. In Canada at least, they come with a 90-day warranty. No problems so far <crosses fingers, spits over shoulder, knocks wood>