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Something from Delfina: dessert menu or Masa? more Farallon Emily L! I guess the question is, are there any good pastry chefs working in fine dining places, and will they allow you to come in just for dessert? We can even go to Canlis for Neil's fabulous desserts only and not really get any 'tude. I'm not sure what the places are to eat in SF today - but look at those that aren't quite so hot but still doing great food.

Pickeled (or just hard boiled) eggs, peanuts, pretzels, and if you were really lucky, hotdogs. This was from a tavern my friend's Mom owned circa 1970, southern California.

I forgot - the indoor lemon tree came up with one perfectly ripe lemon in time for Christmas. In Seattle. In the snowiest days we've seen in 20 years.

Wow, this is so sad. Does this include restaurants that you could slip into for a late dessert? We've taken to visiting a few nice places for this purpose - like Lark and Licorous (restaurant and lounge) and I could see hitting up Poppy, Steelhead Diner, and on and on. I'm not alone in this, here in Seattle.

It's a might bit snazzier, but a variation of an old cake - tried and true. We baked them in hotel pans for the coffee house at UCSC back in 1975 - and we weren't the first. They never came out cleanly, so there were always way too many crumbling pieces to be had...20 pound freshman bulge! I still have the recipe for the carob version, and the kind of german chocolate topping, I think.

We received two bottles of wine last evening. The grapes are grown in our neighbors' back yard and they bottle the stuff in the basement. This is from last year (well aged.) Mid-morning, pop. One of the corks blew (nice puddle on the counter)! Fizzy red. We had a bottle of this in September - if you like a fizzy red, light body, not bad. We opened both and put them in the fridge for cooking. No drinking happening around here at the moment. We opened the fancy Carr's crackers - the Cheese Melts. "A Platter of Figs" and "Vij's" cookbooks.

Never cooked with octopus, but looking at the picture and recipe, there has to be a step missing. There is a char on those babies that wouldn't survive braising - and the pre-braising cooking is until the octopus changes color - nothing about getting it to look like that. Anyone have have a later edition? Ah, the recipe is also on the website: they don't call it barbecued Maybe the oven cooking isn't really braising - it's "dutch oven barbecuing".

We got four more - and I suppose I should count up my partner's books one of these days since they have co-resided with mine for the past two years! He's cooking steadily from "Vij's - Elegant and Inspired Indian Cuisine" - and I am happy to enjoy his adventure.

I was just coming back to post with this idea. Excellent.

We're still at the part of the season where all you have to do to stay in is to not screw up: slow and steady will get you pretty far right now, and taking risks in not really rewarded. There are enough remaining contestants right now that you can be relatively certain that someone is going to make something that is downright bad. Ariane has enough experience under her belt to get her through this part of the season, but I too question whether she has the chops to make it to the finale. ← Re-watched the lamb cooking. Ariane put it in late, she apologized for it, and did not insist that they wait - just said she needed two more minutes. Her team mates said they didn't want to serve raw lamb, Stefan said they could do an assembly line to get it plated and make it - and Jamie said, okay, two more minutes.

She cooked the lamb - and almost messed that up! Jamie came up with the menu. Radhika made the marinade and the sauce. So now we know Ariane can cook turkey and lamb. Big whoop. The judges were so happy to have properly cooked lamb that she won? No, they loved the flavors. She had little to do with that and she knew it.

That seems like an amazing amount of drink and I can't find the first food...other than at Bonita? (Ah, this was later in the evening, post MB?) Thank you for the food trip - Vancouver is fun that way. Travel is really.

While I don't really understand it, it is the energy "leaked" by leaving all the small electrical items plugged in that is the real energy problem. Using the small items isn't so much the issue. The efficiency experts all say to unplug anything anything that is not in use. nice explaination

Queen Mary in Seattle? Well, truth be told, I have never been. I've heard too many rants over the years, though there are quite a few raves on Yelp. I would head to the Fairmount Olympic Hotel or Sorrento Hotel (holiday season only) long before that place - decor alone. Or far more casual, and uber hip, Remedy Tea. Are all these places in the $30-35 range, per person?

Your effort, no one else suffered - I say they are all yours.

To keep us off topic - I think it was a yuzu based dressing for something - it was a lovely green color. No recall on the rest of the dish. Could have been tuna.

Anyone been to the Herbfarm with the current chef, Keith Luce? FYI - January is all truffles - PNW, but trufflicious. If you go to the website, they are also offering to throw in a suite for an overnight stay on Sunday night, limited offer this month. That's quite a deal! http://www.theherbfarm.com/ronsweekly/curr...ff&XCharsX=2716

most places here-abouts are definitely cheaper, but none of them has Bruce's hand with a sauce. You started out at the top ← Funny you should mention - every dish was heavily sauced, which I'm not used to, and they were amazing. I wanted to lick everyone's plate. I resisted though - didn't want to come off as an uncivilized New Yorker. ← We had a great dinner at Mashiko's in West Seattle recently - $30 each I think. Hajime makes lovely "sauces". One was so good, I asked him if it would be wrong for me to pick up the dish and drink the remainder. He said he would be flattered. It's a lot more casual though.

Nice showing in Seattle...though they missed quite a few.

That was a pretty good rundown. I'll add, if you are providing customer seating, you may need to provide restroom(s) that do not require access through the kitchen. Building construction permits and health department permits and licenses are typically separate things with overlapping requirements and separate fees. Plan on everything taking twice as long to happen - permits and construction, and costing twice as much as budgeted - renovation can be full of interesting surprises. Best of luck, really. Go for it!

That would be gyp rock (for gypsum sheetrock) or GWB (which some of us stopped using the last 8 years!) - gypsum wall board, and bare concrete floors. Cement is one of the components of concrete. Since you asked, kind of.

No leftovers, no pie. (Leftovers stayed with the hosts.) Oatmeal, if you can believe it, for breakfast.

And in Seattle, this has happened at Culinary Communion: "This inaugural Community Bread class is the first in our monthly offering of $10 bread classes for the Beacon Hill community. We'll fire up the brand new brick oven and prepare a few different breads each month. Learn everything from the initial measuring of ingredients and mixing of doughs to proofing and shaping loaves and then baking them in a 700-degree brick oven. You will learn techniques and recipes you can reproduce at home in your own kitchen, but at the same time you'll have the unique experience of the brick oven and meeting fellow foodies from the neighborhood. This kind of baking (and community camaraderie) is a treat - don't miss it!" But I can't more on the oven on the site: home page

If rate the plate is correct: Radhika made the Roasted Veggie Vegan Corn Bread Stuffing. recipe too!

Isn't it just a small sized loaf? Or, I also know of a pico that is a baguette with "deep flavor and chewy interior coming from the preferment as well as the sweet, caramelized crust." I know nothing.