stovetop

about earls food consultants Yes; this shows how small our world is, they worked together, so there is that contact. These days a chef might want to have a family and a life so choices a chef might do could be a little different then the past, might choose something because of lifestyle and family life, being a hotshot chef can hamper a social life and definately crumbles most home lifes. Myself I see many big name chefs changing lanes, many of them have done there time in vancouver, leaving for a better life and more money, it is hard to buy a house in van on a chefs wage. steve

Jamie; I worked at the Armoury restaurant with Jack fuller and Chef Henry Bachman, a great kitchen and front of house staff, many years later many front of house staff work for Earls. The front of house staff at the armoury all were very good, it was one of the best crews I have worked with. steve

Thankyou Jamie for the news. My vote goes to George Tidball I think I have an even more curious inkling to check out Earls, I was wondering where Michael Noble was?? What is the latest on this, is there a press release??? steve

Thanks for the honest re-ply. I was so very curious of the standards of both theses places, being a chef in Whistler is a challenge; good staff is very hard to get, if you are a chef in whistler and get good staff, you will go far, because the work load can get to be like 80 hours a week, this stress can burn out the best, the night life can be inviting, when you work that much, you go out, it can burn you out even faster; sports, whistler is good for that, great skiing year round, mountain biking that is extreme, all water sports, camping and hiking that is limitless. The sports keep you in shape cause you need to be, to work that much. steve

Your right Paul; I would say it would be a great holiday right now like say from Port Alberni, I have to get there one of these days, I dieing to do some good eating and have a few pops. It has been very warm the last few days, shorts are back on, I love the nights being as warm as they have been, some nice breaks in the day, would make for some beautiful walking on Long Beach. see you out there steve

In Canada we use a Supply Management system and with that comes quotas, let's see a farmer buys quotas to produce so much milk, the farmers are the ones with the Co-op, the milk producers are corporations?, but that is a good question; once again you enter into the world of semantics, slippery world that is. My opinion though I do not see how you can change the rules as you go, we as the customer in Canada subsidies the farmers through paying high prices but I do think the farmer gets what they deserve, they are the best part of Agriculture in Canada except for maybe cattle and wheat. Can a Co-op grow outside of the local Market like say Provincial but theses companies are becoming Multinationals, they are beyond Provincial rules. So when does a company stop being a Co-op? steve

I hear a lot of places are closed right now, the weather has realy sucked. I would do your homework. steve

http://www.dairyinfo.gc.ca/pdf_files/dairyprofile.pdf http://money.canoe.ca/News/Economy/2004/03/04/370181-ap.html http://www.parmalat.com/en/fset.html?sez=aaa

Another Quebec Dairy Company on the Buy, Agropur wants to buy Island Dairies http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...=0entry814904 I have a lot of links and was learning how few owners there are in the canadian dairy industry. steve

Thanks steve

Ha, Ha It caught me a couple of times; I had to go back and re-read, oh those are not the same person, very similar graphics. It is funny. steve

Thanks All Yes it does clear things up The one thing though is with a gumbo, it does seem like there is a lot of variance in people’s interpretation of this classic dish. Now I have an even harder question: “How does the Cajun and Creole parts play on both these dishes, or are both classically Cajun??" steve

Very good Question??I do not know? would I still buy, you bet. It is weard though. I think the organic industry is being bought up by the big boys So will organic mean any thing any more??? Dont know how will the public react?? steve It is the money holders that I keep seeing around, dupont shows up a lot, look at the board of directors of these big companies, you see who sits on the board, and how much bones they have in each other, when does one end and on e begin, I am amazed how little degrees of seperation there really are.

Phillip MorrisSab/Miller beer Altria Kraft foods (include: Jacobs, Maxwell House, Milka, Nabisco, Oreo, Oscar Mayer, Philadelphia, Post and Tang.) There is almost the weirdest connection here, this is one very big company, it has a huge world market share like # 2 in the world- beer -food and cigerates, boy talk about covering the angles. I would invest in that company and so did a lot of other people. the merger of Grand Metropolitan and Guinness, which formed Diageo. Diageo Booze and food what a combo They also own a organic food company Cascadian farm Now Delmonte owns Heinz steve

Try it both ways choose what works best steve

Maybe just a quick bath??? I have done it raw, it is even more tedious.

Most of the meat is encased in a shell and the legs, it would be a lot easier to blanch it and then put in a ice bath then take out all the meat, it is slow and tedious hand work. steve

So many of us restaurant people used to meet at Bistro Praha; Edmonton, the early eighties had many places for us industry people to go after a hard day at work, Bistro Praha was a different breed, even then, it was beyond Edmonton but not above, so many good times had there. I have been a customer now since what 83??. I went again this summer twice, when I was in Edmonton and went to the Praha I reminded myself what a special place it was. I just walked back in time, entered the restaurant and become part of living History, A piece of Edmonton, memories of days gone by, I began My food Career in Edmonton and have many great memories of people and places that make the Edmonton food scene, so many people still call Edmonton home and still work in the greatest industry in the world, the restaurant business, Edmonton has been good to many restaurateurs, there is so many restaurants that go back to the eighties, they have moved with the times and have survived so many years in a business that turns over so many great men and women. I have always wondered what make a restaurant survive for that long, when I was in Toronto in 2000, I went back to where I used to live and was surprised how the Danforth area changed so much, there was but a few places still around from 1987, there was the Only which I believe was the parent for the Fringe cafe in Vancouver, both these restaurants have some of the same roots but are thousand miles apart, if you have been to booth you will understand what I mean. That great Greek area was so different and I used to walk up and down the Danforth and was surprised by the amount of boarded up buildings the closer you would get to Scarborough, the big mall must have effected the business on this strip, it had so many cool cafes and little ethnic shops, but in 2000 there were all boarded up, it got me thinking what makes a restaurant last, after 20 years a restaurant almost becomes part of history, being 20 years in a customers life the restaurant almost becomes like a family. People come and go, customer leave for years then come back to find many familiar faces, it is an easy reentry into an old nebourhood and where nothing is familiar. So here is a toast to all you old dogs out there

Now that we have beaten GMO'S to death, why don't we talk about how few food corporations there really are, I have posted some but I have a few more, I am going to try and list all the big companies and show how corporations control all our food choices, that is why choice is always so important, if we do nothing and go with straightest lines to the cash and not investigate what it is we are eating, I think we are missing out on something. steve

British Columbia to me has a few missing years of it’s history; the region that is our namesake for this Province; the great Columbia basin was once more then a concept, it was part of France’s great domain, the Mississippi Delta also was in the land reserve that New France great Adventures trapped and explored and mapped all the lands within her great borders. There is about a hundred years that this great Province of BC sharpened its personality with characters, Hardy, brave, courageous, friendly and incredable adaptable. This ability to blend with ones environment is what made the early settlers and Natives people that lived on the land at the time. Early New Caledonia; before Douglas; Métis, Voyageurs and Cour de Bois roamed the water ways, trading with the peoples of the land. This great land had many long and great rivers, the rivers where the highways; moving furs and people all over France’s huge domain. The Travelers were the beginning of cuisine on the road; the French, Scottish and Métis where all over the Pacific Northwest living working and trading. It was home for almost a hundred years. From the sea and now land the face of the Pacific Northwest was forever changed, the battle for control of the resources; the food, the land and the waterways. Canada once spanned the whole Mississippi delta down to New Orleans. When the French lost control of this huge resourced based waterway, they lost a huge part of history in the process, more then we realize, but somehow the character of all the early peoples somehow seeped into the nation’s psyche. After the war of Eighteen twelve, Hudson’s bay lost grip on the Columbia basin which was part of its business empire. The new border changed the land forever, many of early BC characters where left behind in our history and become part of early Pacific Northwest American culture and history. In Canada if we look south to our neighbors and read snippets of their past we begin to see that it is so much part of our past, that is why I call them the missing years. There is so much French culture that is beyond Quebec’s boundaries, Minnesota, North Dakota, all along the Mississippi River, back up to Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and back down to the Columbia basin, this was a huge trading area and all part of a once huge trading region. I see this as part of my Canadian History and being part Acadian, Newfie, English, and French Canadian this brings me some amazing food cultures and I have been lucky to experience this cooking first hand.

So what is the diference then between an etouffee and Gumbo, do both have a Roux base???; if a gumbo does not have okra is it then thickened with file or is it called sasafras(sp)??? or are they the same?? thanks steve

When I grew up in Edmonton back in the seventies and early eighties Peters always was on top, 30 years later it still is on top, I have not been there for twenty years so I can not say what it is like today, but a search proved it is still Calgary's FAV. steve

Is it not Okra that makes a gumbo a gumbo?? steve

Chef Fi Fi La More: I agree with your point of view to the food at Granville island, I too have been very frustrated with going there, after about ten years, I began to see that it really did not matter what the season was, there was the same stuff, it could have been the height of the growing season but you could not tell by what was in the market. I have been to Seattle’s Pike Place Market and you know what growing season it is, there are actual farmers there every day, not the few great farmers who work hard in Vancouver promoting local agriculture. Yes you do have to work hard to find good bread, coffee and other fine foods but they are there, Vancouver is very spread out and the population is not that big so the market can not always be. We export all our great things, I have been looking for years for Northern Pike fresh water fish, you see it every where in Minnesota, in all the restaurants, I do know that we have a huge fresh water fish marketing board but we export most of it, so we as Canadians probably in the West do not get to try so much of our best foods and seafood’s, sometimes I find it funny that a place like BC, so many people do not like seafood and being on the coast it makes it even more Ironic, to add to the irony that a city like Edmonton has just as many good seafood restaurants and have just as fresh Fish as Vancouver, Alberta has a huge Fish company called billingsgate and they have as much buying power as most local fish companies so they bring in fresh fish every day from al over the world. Any way I hope that you had some good experiences in vancouver?? steve

jsolomon are you being the devils advocate?? What is your position? I guess you are totally for GMO and that companies like Monsanto should not have to disclose anything, what is your position on this. As for the other science; research that is not paid by companies like Monsanto, the sustainable food industry does not have the huge research grants and lawyers that Monsanto has but they are moving forward with some very valid points. Science is not the culprit we are, science created fusion, but we built the bomb. UNDERSTANDING AND MANAGING THE MULTI-DIMENSIONS OF SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE John Ikerd* University of Missouri