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Talk about coincidence! I was just talking with my brother, who returned from deer hunting trips with an old friend of ours, and I inquired how the friend was doing. It turns out he and his wife have a house in Columbia, where her nephew owns a couple restaurants. With a bit of Googling I discovered that Mr Friendlys and Gervatis are owned by a Kristsan Niemi. I know his entire family on both sides, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles! They're all from Chisholm, here on Minnesota's Iron Range. If anybody has ocassion to visit these establishments and speak to Kristan, please send him regards from his old home town. And mention where you saw the information too. SB (maybe you'll score a comp'd bottle of wine?)

Well I'll be damned. That's pretty neat, although I suspect that around here, where snow on the ground and below freezing temperatures prevail half the year, their utility would be somewhat diminished? I suspect they may have these carts downtown Minneapolis, but I avoid going there during daylight hours. THANX SB

Well, I'd say they're entertaining, and you can tell he had a great time writing them. SB

Have you read his fiction novels? SB

Sounds right to me - sounds like something I would have said - but I don't remember saying it. There may be something in the intro to Tender at the Bone. Just looked. It is the intro; here's the quote: "Everything here is true, but it may not be entirely factual. " The part I like best is a couple of sentences later. "I learned early that the most important thing in life is a good story." ← Thanks so much for substantiating the quote, and I agree with you about the importance of a good story, especially if it's humorous. In fact, I'll have to rank you number two on my list of Favorite Food Writers. I hope you aren't insulted, but that's the highest spot I can award to a living writer; second only to MFK Fisher. SB (you are number one on my sister's and cousin's lists though)

Ms Reichl, I'm not sure if it was in your memoirs, or in response to a question about them, where you were quoted as saying the stories were meant to be "accurate, but not factual", or something to that effect. My memory, even assisted by Google, is unable to come up with the exact wording. In context, I thought it was a good description of writing non-fiction without being pedantic, yet you don't sound like a cornered politician either. I've attributed convoluted forms of this quote to you several times, (accurately if not factually), but I would appreciate knowing the exact phrase. THANX SB

Carolyn has emailed me her nearly completed review of the Summer 04 issue of Gastronomica, which I will complete and post asap. Coincidentally, I received my Fall 05 Gastro the same day. While I promise to continue catching up on the chronicaling of past issues which Carolyn so bravely began, I was wondering if I might not generate a little more discussion on this board by concurrently jumping ahead to review the latest issue? What does anyone else think? SB (big shot eG "Specialist")

What could possibly be better than fresh bread? I don't know about the newer models, but the recipe book that I got with mine about fifteen years ago had several good recipes designed for the mixer. SB (uses his a couple times every week)

RE: Racheld: "And I made him tip her double for the memory" See, I'm not the only one!

The coffee services will offer several options ranging from economical, (dishwater but cheap), to some pretty good grinds. They'll usually provide the hardware and misc supplies if you agree to buy all your coffee from them. This helps to offset the added expense, in case your purchasing manager or accountant aren't coffee lovers and need convincing. SB (thinks good coffee should be an OSHA requirement) PS: If nothing else, the quality of the coffee is noted by your companies clients and associates. I've seen firms go to a lot of expense to lavishly furnish a conference room, and then serve prospective clients terrible coffee in a styrofoam cup. (I once chose a law firm on the basis of their coffee, the diffference was so extreme.)

My second best restaurant experience story, (from a customers standpoint anyway), is about the time my friends Petey, Perko, Slide and I were heading out East on nerfarious business and pulled into a truck stop in Ohio one morning for breakfast. In those days truck stops and truckers were a bit rougher than the semi service plazas and husband and wife driving teams we see today. Truckers tended to favor butch haircuts, white t-shirts and cigars, and to look unkindly upon smart-ass hippie degenerates, a description that just happened to fit the four of us well. Undetered by the piercing gaze and mumbled insults of the truck stop denizens, we stode into the restaurant bouyed by the exhuberance of youth, no sleep for two days, and the fact that we were heavily armed. Our waitress, who depended upon the good will and tips of the regular customers for her living, made no attempt to welcome us. In fact, the service was so slow and rude we were having a great time joking about it, further alienating the other customers in the process. Nearing the end of the meal, Slide had the terminity to ask the waitress to bring him another glass of milk. She replied testily, "You can have another glass of milk when you finish the one you got." All eyes were on Slide as he pushed his chair back an slowly stood up. It was like the scene from a western movie where a cowboy has been called for cheating at cards. (And recall that we were heavily armed, as I suspect were a good number of other patrons.) In a weary but sincere voice Slide said, "We didn't drive one thousand miles in the last twenty hours so I could be bitched at by my Mother." The assembled throng of previously hostile truck drivers broke into laughter, and even the waitress cracked a smile. We paid our bill and hit the road, having left my customary lavish tip for poor service resulting in a good story. SB

Did it work? ← I never went back. I figured it was better just to have them anticipate giving me good service if I returned, whether out of guilt or greed, it didn't matter to me. SB (would rather have a good story than a good meal anyway)

1. Shame Them 2. Reverse Psychology 3. Kill Them With Kindness 4. Do Unto Others .... 5. We Anticipated Great Service the Next Sunday SB

Once I owned a pool hall in Superior, Wisconsin for a little while. On Sundays I didn't open until noon in order to clean up and do bookwork. One Sunday my friend Chuck came over to help so we finished up early and decided to go out for "brunch". The only place opened to eat was a hotel restaurant. It wasn't expensive or fancy, but was rather formal in that old hotel sort of way. The Sunday morning clientele consisted of families and older women obviously paying a regular visit after attending church services. Although Chuck and I may have been out of our element, I don't think we looked all that bad. None the less, we were seated at a table in the far rear corner of the room, given menus and glasses of ice water, and then totally ignored. No waitress ever returned to take our orders. Despite employing tactics that evolved over time from nuanced motions to articulated gestures, we were unable to attract the attention of any of the matronly wait staff. We drank our water, let the ice melt, drank the melted ice water, and after having waited exactly one hour, got up and quietly exited. We left a huge tip; pretty much the entire amount we had anticipated spending for a meal. SB (if figured as a percentage, I guess the tip was infinitely huge!)

It's kind of funny now in the retelling, but at the time it happened the potential humorous aspects of this event were obscured by the element of surprise. I was with a group of four or five friends hanging out late at night in the local pizza place. We were seated at a table in the middle of the dining room. I noticed an angry looking woman, followed by a man, enter the restaurant carring a pizza box. She stopped behind my friend Brado, who was seated across from me, opened the box, and smacked Brado over the head with a pizza! I jumped up, ran around the table, grabbed the box and pushed her away. Her male companion rose to her defense, and he and I exchanged pushes and expletives. The cooks came running out of the kitchen, and the other customers either loudly voiced their displeasure with the scene or cheered the entertainment. The police showed up shortly. (The Chief of Police was the brother of the restaurant owner, so the two operations got mutual priority service.) The woman and her husband contended Brado had tripped the woman when she had picked up their order, causing her to ruin the pizza. Brado contended, quite honestly, he'd never seen the woman before. From my perspective across the table I remembered having seen the woman earlier. (Okay, I remembered because she had a nice butt and tight jeans), and I know that neither Brado, nor anybody else in the room, had tripped her. She and her male friend were noticably tipsy, and I imagine she'd dropped the pizza on her way home and made up an excuse for companion. The police calmed everyone down, and nobody wanted to press any charges. The couple left, muttering insults. Because we were regular customers, we were allowed to stay. We even got to eat the now twice traumatized pizza! SB

Some people like lousy coffee. Some people don't even like coffee but drink it anyway, so they don't care. At least your folks don't drink decaf! SB (who's Mom makes weak coffee, and insists it's too strong)

Before discussing money, make sure your insurance and tax status are properly documented. These things could end up costing more than the rent. SB

I don't care for the stronger taste either, especially at a higher price than other walnuts, but I know the tree is probably worth a small fortune as lumber. Black walnut is prized not only for furniture, but for custom made gun stocks. SB

They probably mean well. I just let it go. SB (it bothers me that they can vote though)

Snow, That knife looks just like the one my friend Dave, the now retired butcher, always used. His had a special left-handed edge on it. I'm sure he's been using it the past few weeks cutting up a few deer in his garage for cash on the side. SB (admiring your knife and your zeal) PS: As of last report my brother has three deer so far. One muley from New Mexico, a nice buck shot on his farm in Rauch, MN, and another one yesterday morning up in Manitoba.

Too late to be of any use to you today, but I see where Lodge is now offering factory-seasoned cast iron wares. SB

As luck would have it, I had a real life "Children as Meal Planners" experience yesterday. As previously noted on this thread, my grandson Zach, age two, is a bit young to understand the concept of menu planning. However, he isn't shy about offering, ne demanding, input into selecting food for his immediate gratification. Lately he's taken up grabbing me by the hand, leading me into the kitchen, and saying, "Cook Poppa." Last night, having preparation for dinner already well in hand, I asked what I should cook. "Cake!" Zach replied. (He's only recently learned to distinguish various baked sweets from each other. They all used to fall into his catchall category of "cookie".) I didn't have a lot of extra time before I needed to make dinner, so I decided to throw together a simple pan cake previously known as Mock Chocolate Cake: Preheat Oven to 350 degrees In a 9x13 Baking Pan combine: 3 Cups AP Flour 2 Cups Sugar 1/2 Cup Carob Powder (Cocoa would work as well, but more on that later) 2 tsp Baking Soda Pour In: 2 Cups Strong Black Coffee (room temp) 2/3 Cup Vegetable Oil 2 Tbl Vinegar 2 tsp Vanilla Mix Well Bake 30-35 minutes. You can eat it as is, dusted with powdered sugar, or frosted I like to use this easy Carmel Frosting: 1 Stick Butter 1 Cup Brown Sugar 1/4 Cup Milk 1 tsp Vanilla 2 Cups Powdered Sugar Melt Butter in heavy medium-sized Pan Over Med Heat stir in Brown Sugar Bring to a boil for 2 minutes Add Milk, return to boil 1 for 1 minute Allow mixture to cool to room temp Add Vanilla and Powdered Sugar Stir until smooth and apply thick coat atop cooled Cake In honor of Elmo, the Muppet character we'd been playing with on the computer, Zach and I renamed the cake "Tickle Me Cake". Besides being distinctive, this name provides me with the opening to ask, whenever the subject of the cake comes up, (which is quite often), "What kind of cake is it?", to which Zach has to reply, "Tickle me!". Then he gets tickled and laughs uproariously. It works every time. Now, the reason Tickle Me Cake uses Carob rather than Cocoa is because a significant portion of everything Zach eats ends up on the floor and subsequently is consumed by our dogs. Chocolate isn't healthy for dogs, although they can eat carob. (In fact, the reason I used carob in this recipe the first time was because I had some left over from making Dog Brownies.) Zach always eats the frosting off the cake first and then asks for more. He's always told he must finish what he has on his plate first, so he either stuffs the entire cake into his mouth at once, or sneaks some to the fore-mentioned canine cohorts. Ah, a chunk of Tickle Me Cake, a Sippi Cup of chocolate milk, and a Shrek dvd. That's Livin'!

I'll admit I wasn't a big fan of some of former President Clinton's policies and exploits, but I wholeheartedly support Healthier Generation, the branch of the William Clinton Foundation which focuses on the problem of childhood obesity. http://www.clintonfoundation.org/050305-fe...-initiative.htm Ex-President Clinton admits that poor eating habits developed during his childhood contributed to his recent health problems. The web site provides information and links. All citizens, whether parents or not, should be more aware of the risks posed by an overweight society. SB (non-partisan today)

Although I'm not a hunter, and I'm not inordinately fond of wild game, my brother has hunted all over the world, and hunts deer in at least three locales every year, so I've had occasion to sample venison from many sources. One thing people forget about venison is that there are no standards in breeding, feeding, or processing like there are for domestic meat animals. An 85 pound crop-fed doe from Mississippi is an altogether different animal than a 215 pound swamp buck from Northern Minnesota. To paraphrase Brillat-Savarin/Tiny Tim, "They are what they eat". The Mississippi doe, owing to it's diet, would be closely akin to good beef while the Minnesota swamp buck would have distinct overtones of, well, muskeg swamp. The texture of the two animals will also vary considerably. Although even corn fed deer will have less fat than lean beef, it can be very tender when prepared properly. On the other hand, describing an old buck as "shoe leather" does a disservice to shoes! It's best to consider not only the cut of meat when choosing a recipe, but also the age and probable diet of the animal. I'm still inclined to consider mocassins the most useful by-product of dead deer, with good venison/pork suasage running a distant second. So, while I believe in "different strokes for different folks", ("live and let live" seemed like an inappropriate aphorism to refer to hunting), I can't see much point in devoting much time to hunting an animal that can yield, at best, a few pounds of choice meat. Especially when said animal can, with no notice, leap out of the ditch and destroy a 2 ton $50,000 pickup truck! SB (ruggged indoorsman)

They probably don't want to say "high heat" on advice of legal council, since you can kill a canary that way, and you know how some people are about either following instructions or litigating remedies to their own foolishness. SB (figures DuPont lawyers favor food of palor)