JeffSenter

I took the extended basic knife class. It was 1 night a week over 3 weeks. It covered a lot of basic and advanced knife work, and threw in a lot of interesting cooking skills work. I like to think of myself as a good intermediate home cook and I think I learned all sorts of little interesting things. The teacher was fantastic. The class was well worth the time.

You may want to look at some of the ACADIAN and French Canadian history web sites. A lot od Cajun trafions come from Acadia. I remeber reading an article a few months ago about cultural exchanges between So. Louiaiana ana Nova Scotia and how every one was amazed on how the cooking was the some but with such differnt local ingediants. Jessica Harris has written seveal book on infulace of African cooking on Blackinng in Americai. While these are primarly cook books there are some intersting hisrical notes that relate to Creole cooking.

I went in and ask them about it. They have a 4 stage wheel grinder. And they do it on weekday only. They also will not do japaness knifes.

I saw that most of the recipes were using olive oil and also a belender/food processer. I was always told not to use ovile oil in make mayo in a blender because excessive beating of the oil gave it a bitter taste. I am just courise if that is another cooking old wives tale.

I went to The University of Alabama and graduated in 1982. I lived in a dorm that required a food plan my first 2 years. Having grown up in New Orleans I was accustomed to a fairly high standards for food and the University cafeterias did not meet them. After the first few weeks my taste buds had acclimated to the swile they were serving and declared that they were not going to take it any more. I went to the VP of Student Affairs and complained and was told that the food service company, SAGA, had a monthly meeting with everyone who was interested on the cafeteria food. So I went to the meeting thinking I would tell the food service people to get their act together. When I showed up at my first meeting there was the 3 cafeteria managers, the 3 senior cooks and 2 University administrators. That was it. Apparently I was the first student in months to come. I said how bad I though the food was and to my amazement they agreed with me. They apparently had figured out that they could buy local ingredients cheaper and make them better. But every time they did many students would complain that the food did not taste like their mothers. One of the cooks and I had a long philosophical debate on the "proper" way to make string beans. But as he said, "I can make them al dente. I can braise them for 3 house, but is I do not turn them into mush no one will be happy." I started going and talking every month and got an interesting view of the issues of intuitional cooking. But the bottom like was that the University wanted the food service to cook to the lowest common denominator. My last two years I lived off campus and eat much better. The cooks from the cafeterias pointed me to a whole lot of good sources for ingredients.

I was wondering if anyone knew anything about Hammersmith copper pots. The copper assocation sayes they are the last American copper pot maker, but there website is 2 years old and they have not answered the e-mail I sent too them. Does anyone know if they are still in business?