Jaymes

I'm not with you on that one. I know a person who owns a small restaurant. She has a cook and one server working at any given time. During one of those shifts, her daughter is the server. She does the same work as the other servers, gets the same pay as the other servers and has the same living expenses as the other servers. Why is she less deserving of a tip based entirely on her being the owners daughter? There was a Chinese restaurant in our small town. It was run entirely by the family - mother, much older dad, two teenaged boys. The dad basically hung around and did absolutely nothing, other than (very) occasional cash register duty. The mom did all the cooking and much of the cleanup and often dashed out of the kitchen and over to the cash register, while the dad sat on his rear at a corner table, reading and keeping an eagle eye on the diners. The sons waited tables and helped with cleanup. I always tipped 20%. But very few locals (if any) other than I tipped at all. Those two boys went to our local high school and everyone knew them. They said that as soon as they got a table bussed, and picked up the tip, they had to hand it over to the parents who were about as miserly as it's possible to get. After that got out, nobody I knew was very much in a mood to tip them. I owned a small business in that town, though, and tipped very well in local restaurants, regardless as to service, etc. Part of my marketing ploy, I figured. Elsewhere, although I will adjust the tip based on aspects of service, the only reason I have ever not tipped at all has been because my server was not only incompetent, but surly, rude or insulting. So, no money on the table, and a word to management on my way out. And that's only happened a very few times over the years.

Can I assume most of you folks talking about tomatoes rotting on your kitchen counters do not have air-conditioning?

I went to the Amish farmer's market a short while back, specifically to buy corn. Unfortunately, by the time I got there, the corn was all gone. I expressed my disappointment to the farmer, and he said, "Well, I've got a couple of sacks of corn with caterpillars at the top. Those are the ones we usually eat, since few customers will buy them. It works out really well for us because the ones with the caterpillars are the best. For one thing, you know for sure that those ears are ripe and ready. Just cut off the top where the caterpillars are. We've got so much corn right now back at the farm that I'm not sure we can get to these before they spoil, so if you'd like to take them, you can just have them." So I took home three large brown paper sacks full of corn. Got home, shucked it, cut off the worms, cut the kernels off of the cobs, made a huge skillet of southern fried corn, and we ate great the rest of that week.

I'm looking forward to the blog, too! But, for kayb, many folks start roasting coffee in their hot air popper. The only thing to be aware of is that not all hot air poppers work equally well for coffee beans, so do a little research. There are several books you can buy that talk about that method. But here's an old eGullet thread on this subject: Roasting my own coffee

And in the winter, when the grass was sparse, or non-existent, having been covered with snow, we were hauling hay out to the fields. Hay is grass.

While all cows are capable of eating grass, it's availability to grain-fed cows is remarkably low if it even exists at all. While these cows may have access to grass for a very brief period, they live the vast majority of their lives eating exclusively grain. It is not necessarily "finished" on grain as much as it is completely raised on it. I suppose everyone's experiences differ. No news there. But my experience leads me to find your comment utterly astounding. After having driven thousands and thousands of miles through cattle country grasslands during my lifetime, and seeing what must have been literally millions of cattle out grazing on that grassland, including my own father's herd, that are then, after having been raised to yearlings while free roaming and eating grass, sold to the feedlots where they are indeed, just as BadRabbit says, "finished" on grain, I can't imagine what cattle it is that you think "live the vast majority of their lives eating exclusively grain." What on earth are all those cattle out on all those plains doing with their heads down in the grass all day long?

I was taught the same thing, although Modernist Cuisine seems to disprove that theory though and advocates flipping things very often. I dont know what to think on that subject anymore And I don't know what to think on that subject anymore, either, and maybe what I always heard is wrong, but, in order to determine the exact point at which the steak is perfectly cooked, i.e., medium rare, you should watch for "pearling," when the juices rise through the steak and begin to pool or "pearl" on the surface. Easy to do if you only flip the steak once. With repeated flipping, not sure the juices would ever rise properly to the surface. Not that that necessarily would ruin the steak, but it sure would mess up my method for timing. ETA: And since we're talking about grilling beef, how about those folks that flip the burgers repeatedly, and smash down the patty with a spatula with each turn in order to squeeze out every last drop of juice? Not sure what they have in their pantries or refrigerator doors, and quite possibly they are brilliant cooks in other ways, but they sure don't know how to produce a juicy burger patty.

I don't know... I do most of this "bad" stuff. And most folks I know consider me to be a pretty good cook. In the fridge there is Miracle Whip, Duke's Mayo (the very best store-bought brand, by the way), and two varieties of my homemade mayo. Miracle Whip has just the right amount of tang for several of our favorite recipes, including an Apple Tuna Toss that features walnuts, mandarin oranges and chopped lettuce in addition to the tuna and apples, and the dressing is soy sauce, lemon juice and MW, and I've never had anyone turn up their nose at it. There's always instant coffee in the pantry. That's because sometimes we run out of the home-roasted variety that I keep in the freezer and grind right before brewing, and I really want some coffee and that instant will do for one morning. Or maybe I'm not completely out of the home-roasted, but don't have much left, and a little instant strengthens the weak brew. Instant coffee sure beats getting a headache around 3 or 4 in the afternoon. Also, I've got quite a few dessert recipes that I sprinkle a bit of instant coffee over (don't use the freeze-dried kind for this), including a "Bourbon Cup" or a "Jamaica Cup" wherein you put a dollop of (our home-made vanilla) ice cream into a brandy glass, pour over a spoonful or two of bourbon, or Jamaican rum (or coffee liqueur or other favorite liqueur), and then sprinkle with the instant coffee. Or sprinkle some over flan, or chocolate pots of creme. In fact, those of you that are turning up your noses at instant coffee should go buy yourself some. The uses for it are endless. There are both the green and yellow plastic squeeze bottles in the fridge door. Daughter likes to squeeze just a touch into her ice water. She could squeeze the juice from the two dozen or so de-zested lemons that are currently in the freezer, having given up their flavorful yellow skins for my limoncello, but that would take a whole lemon that I would rather be using for something else. Just a quick squeeze from that plastic lemon suits her fine for her water, or an occasional glass of iced sun-tea that she then garnishes with a few sprigs of one of the four varieties of fresh mint from the garden. My very expensive knives are in my special drawer so that (sorry) nobody else in the large extended family (daughter, her husband, their three children) with whom I live can use them. Of course, I slip them into the same sleeves they came in before I tuck them away in that drawer. Way too many spices, many of which are dusty and old, because I have a bad habit of buying new all the time, rather than using up old ones first, and then I'm hesitant to toss the old ones, worrying that they might still be "good" and would be a safety net should I run out of the new ones I just bought last week. We do have an "array of commercial bottled salad dressings" in the door of the fridge. Along with several jars of home-made. So shoot me. My son-in-law often marinates stuff that he's going to grill outside in various types of dressings, and since he drags in from work around 6:30 pm, would rather just grab a jar of something, instead of searching the pantry for all the right ingredients for the perfect marinade to brush over the steaks or shrimp or chicken or salmon. And the three year-old likes to dip her carrot sticks into Ranch Dressing, and we're thrilled she's eating carrot sticks at all, and I don't feel like talking her into sticking her carrot sticks into my Stilton dressing. I do have a Rachael Ray cookbook. And I've cooked from it, too. In fact, I'm making the pasta e fagioli from that book tomorrow night. Even though I'll use Rancho Gordo cannellini beans instead of the canned ones it calls for, the recipe is still easy and (relatively) quick and my family loves it. So by y'all's standards, I'm a pretty rotten cook. Luckily, my cooking suits my family - and me - just fine.

It was fantastic! Smoky and vinegary and deeply savoury. I've made your carnitas (your posts are how I first heard of carnitas!) and love the hit of brown sugar to caramelise, so when the recipe I had for the chilorio (used this one) had no sugar, I was a bit doubtful that I would love the taste so much, but I kept the faith and have to say, I think an edge of sweetness would not play well here, to my palate anyway. I'm sure there are chilorio recipes with sugar in them (no?) but I really liked how deeply..savoury the meat was. I must say, I admire your persistence! I know it can't be easy to source Mexican ingredients Down Under. And thanks for the compliment about the carnitas. Do you cook your Mexican specialties for your Aussie friends? What do they think? That you're quite mad? Or that you're quite wonderful.

Well, I made it! It wasn't easy getting anchos and guajillos but nothing a little internet shopping couldn't fix. Mine is much less saucy than yours, so I might need to track down that Mexico the Beautiful cookbook and see if I can improve mine. Thanks, Bruce!! It looks wonderful. How did it taste?

Based in large part upon this comment, I bought the book, and eagerly looked in the index to find the gumbo. But there must be a half-dozen recipes for "gumbo." Which one did you make?

But they aren't scaled down. I would love a pastry recipe for one serving, but what she gives is a big recipe (2 cups of flour and 14 tablespoons of butter) and then tells you to freeze the extra. She doesn't even give a yield -- even something like "divide the dough into x portions" would have been helpful. To be honest, I hadn't attempted the pie crust recipe, I noticed it on my way to the cheese souffle and flagged it mentally for another time, so I didn't read it carefully. However, we're going to have to agree to disagree about the bread, as well as about the rest of the book. 2 small baguettes, or a baguette and a pizza crust is a perfect size yield for me. And I like the occasional suggestions as to recipes that freeze well. That's really valuable to me, as that's something I do often - prepare something that I can eat one serving of tonight, and freeze individual servings for later.

I have this book, cook regularly from it and love it. Not just for the recipes, tips, suggestions, ideas, etc., but also for the tone, sentiment, prose and attitude. It makes me feel as though she is a dear and nurturing friend urging me to value myself and to treat myself kindly because I deserve it. Unfortunately, two of my friends recently became widows and I gifted each with a copy.

I know some folks that put chocolate syrup on their pancakes and waffles. And a big dollop of whipped cream. Not for me. Despite the fact that I love chocolate, that doesn't even sound good. But my friend says that it actually tastes a lot like a chocolate-filled doughnut. Course I don't like those much either. So I guess there's something for everyone.

Quite likely you're right that "grade A was intended for condiment usage, while grade B was for use as an ingredient." I know a great many folks that I'll refer to as "non-foodies" (for want of a better word) that prefer the more refined, less-intense maple flavor. But for me, I want it as "maplely" as I can get it. I love maple and, just in general, prefer strong flavors. At first, I also was somewhat surprised to see that just about everybody here prefers B over A, like I do. But when I think about it, it does seem logical for eG'ers to make that choice.

Warm cajeta. Fruit on the side.

Wow. Don't get me wrong, I like In-n-Out as much as the next person. We lived in Southern California for a couple of years and that was our family's "I-don't-want-to-cook-tonight" burger go-to. And it's still our favorite fast-food burger, for sure. But that line is just crazy. There's got to be some other motivation for waiting that long, especially if your car is using up $4 a gallon gasoline the entire time. Maybe a status thing? So when somebody says, "I heard that In-n-Out just opened in Dallas." one can say, "Oh, I know. I already went."

You've recommended quinua flour here before on other threads. Have to admit that I was not really familiar with it, but am looking forward to giving it a go, especially in that lemon cake recipe you gave us. In our family, we've always used Wondra for white gravies and sauces. Also for coating fish before frying. But one nice thing about eGullet is there's always something new to learn.

I love dining alone, as I've said elsewhere. And can't imagine drinking an entire bottle of wine by myself and then driving myself home. Surely there are better "strategies for dining alone." Like what I do... Go where you please. Sit where you please. Order what you please. Tip well.

I can imagine no higher calling for a fine fresh tomato than tomato-basil soup. MIL is insane. You're right about fresh tomato soup of course. Ambrosial, and something you cannot do with canned tomatoes. And wouldn't want to do with hard tasteless supermarket ones. _________

Personally, I think it's relevant to consider how many home-grown tomatoes one has access to, and whether or not one grew them him/herself. If you grew them yourself, I don't think it's anyone else's business what you do with them, even if all you want to do with them is to throw them into the backyard for the birds to eat. But if you don't grow them, and you know someone that does, and you indicate you'd like some, the chances are that everybody else they know also is hounding them for some. That's certainly been the case with me. I never have had the space for a large garden - just a few plants in pots on a terrace. So I apportioned out my gift tomatoes with some considerable thought, denying some relatives/friends a few tomatoes in order to share them more widely. I guess I probably did hope that they were sliced up to serve adorned with only salt as a side for that night's dinner, or sandwiched between two pieces of white bread slathered with Duke's mayonnaise, or stacked with fresh mozarella for an Insalata Caprese, or chopped up as a topping for bruschetta (which I find puzzling that somebody upthread objected to as it is one of my very favorite things to do with homegrown tomatoes and something that requires fresh tomatoes and something I never do with tasteless store-bought ones). But I never did really give what they actually did with the tomatoes a moment's thought until this thread. And in truth, have no idea. And agree with Andie that once they were gifted, their destiny was no longer in my hands. But thinking this over, I can see how someone might feel as though, if they had only, say, twenty tomatoes, and they figured they'd keep ten, and give out ten, and they denied their neighbor, who loves to simply sprinkle them with sea salt and then eat them while standing over her sink and rolling her eyes heavenward in orgasmic rapture, an extra two or three, and instead had given those two or three to somebody else who then whizzed them up in a blender with a bunch of other herbs and spices and/or cooked them to make soup or something, it would be a little discouraging. I suppose the gardener might think to herself, "If I had known he was going to do that, I'd have just given him a couple of cans of Muir Glen or some other really fine canned tomatoes." There are, after all, many ways one can use canned tomatoes, but standing over a sink and eating them fresh isn't one of them. For that, you need a good, fresh, tasty, homegrown tomato. So I guess I can understand how someone that had parceled out a precious few of her very limited crop of good, fresh, tasty, homegrown tomatoes to somebody that she believes could just as well have used good-quality canned tomatoes, might feel as she would if she had traveled to Mexico for several weeks, and the neighbor had watched her house, and in gratitude she used her entire alcohol import allotment to haul back a $200 bottle of fine anejo agave tequila to thank the neighbor, and the neighbor had whizzed it up in a blender with some margarita mix and several handsfull of crushed ice.

Me too. Also I like a place that has adequate light. At one local Mexican restaurant, most of the seating area is rather dim but they know me rather well and when I show up, they always take me to a rear booth that is usually saved for employees and family, where there is a light right above the table that is much brighter. The chef, one of the owners, often comes and chats with me. He used to live on my road, three houses away. I don't really have to order, they know what I usually order and just ask if I want something different. If not, I get a selection of things they know I like. One of these days, Andie, I'm going to slap on my sunglasses, hop into my coche, point it west on I-10, and join you in that back booth. Something tells me we'd get along brilliantly.

I first started dining alone back when I was pretty young. I was in my early 20's; the world was in its mid-60's. In those days, it was considered really odd for a woman to dine alone. The general opinion was that there could be no good reason for it. Either she was scandalously brazen or pathetically lonely or, most likely, trying to cure the latter by being the former. But I was born with a wandering heart and an adventuresome spirit and wasn't about to grant someone else the power over me to decide whether or not I should eat at any particular restaurant just because I was alone, often having just blown into town solo earlier that day in my shiny red Austin Healey 3000 Mark III. Regarding the conundrum of not being able to order two desserts, or two anything, or three for that matter, or more, if I want to try several things, I order whatever I want to try, and then ask them to bring me the to-go boxes with the meal, not after. Then I portion out what I think is a reasonable amount for one meal, including half (and usually less) of each dessert or appetizer or whatever, and put all of the remainder into the boxes to take home. Usually, they’ll put the boxes into a bag and hold them for me in the kitchen until it’s time to leave. If not, I just put it in an adjacent seat or on the floor so that I don’t have to look at it throughout the meal. All that food is out of sight and no longer tempting. Also, it’s untouched by fork or saliva, so it’s still attractive and sanitary, and still fit for human consumption in the event I have anyone waiting at home that might wish it. Or for me to eat over the next few days. Long, long ago, I, too, would take a book or magazine along. But I found that I never even looked at them, much less read them. I was too busy enjoying my meal, chatting up the waitstaff, or other diners when they initiated it (which they often did), or wondering what others were eating, or following along with the fascinating interplay of the restaurant. And I don’t and won’t sit at the bar. For many reasons. First, I’m not particularly comfortable perched up there like a parrot. Also, usually that would mean I have my back to the other diners. Not only do I not like that view, I’m well aware that my backside on a bar stool is not the most attractive view of me. And I can’t watch the unfolding stage act of the restaurant, either. So I prefer a booth or small table along a side wall. And I see to it that I’m not stuck in some spot that I don’t like just because I’m a woman alone. If they try that, I just point to something I like better and say, “I prefer that one, if you don’t mind” and immediately head in that direction as though they’ve answered in the affirmative. Also, I tip very well. I know that the reputation of women dining alone is that we are wretched tippers, and I try hard to counteract that.

I'll agree that a BLT during tomato season is pretty terrific. But frankly, I often don't get that far. Who needs to take the time to wash lettuce and cook bacon when you can just slather a couple of pieces of white bread with mayo, stick a huge slice of just-picked-and-still-warm-from-the-garden-summer-sun tomato between 'em, and eat your sandwich over the kitchen sink while tomato juice runs down your arms. Oh lordy and slap your grandma, that's some good eatin'. ____________

One of my most successful dinner party mains is Butterflied Leg of Lamb. You can grill or broil it. Recipe here: Butterflied Leg of Lamb