Peachpie9

Huh? The amount the government gets (the sales tax on your meal) is not changed by the amount you tip. In the sense that the waitron is reporting her/his tips and paying income tax on it, yes, that tax amount is changed...but even then, this comment makes no sense: "Don't give me a raise, boss. I'll just have to pay income tax on it." Maybe I should stand up, but this one went right over my head.

Hmmm. Depends on who's doing the talking...and the computation. On a $20 tip, a difference of $2 is 10%, not 1.5%. I don't know about you, but I would miss 10% of my income were it to suddenly disappear. But again...I am simply addressing the math computation above, NOT the tipping percentage. I think 20-25% is fine. It's interesting that the tipping percentage keeps climbing. It's a PERCENTAGE, a standard part of a whole. As inflation marches on and prices steadily rise, tipping a certain percentage ensures that tips will rise commensurately. The plight of restaurant workers has not changed, yet they are receiving a larger piece of the pie via this increase in tipping percentage. Personally, I like it where it is now and feel it's more fair than the previous 10-15%. Where will it end though? Will we soon be tipping 100% of our meal price? I know that restaurant work is grueling and thankless. That's one reason I took out thousands of dollars' worth of student loans and earned two degrees, so I could do something that yielded me a higher standard of living. This course of action is available to all. As someone got nuked for saying earlier, and I probably will, too...you can walk in off the street and score a wait position. If you want to earn more, perhaps you might pursue the education that would facilitate that. Why do you think doctors can charge such disgustingly high fees? It's all those years of medical school. Most people are not willing to spend that kind of time in school. It's definitely a weeding-out function. If it was easy, everyone would do it. I also question the very low pay rates that restaurants are allowed to use for their employees. The employees are key to their business, yet they are allowed to ignore the minimum wage standards to which everyone else must adhere. A well-run restaurant makes a lot of money. Otherwise, they wouldn't be open. When diners keep upping their tipping percentage, it just facilitates this inequity. Catherine

I have read that the key to keeping meringues from sweating or weeping is SEALING the dessert with the meringue. That is, when you mound the meringue on the filling, be SURE to seal completely by making sure the meringue contacts the crust UNINTERRUPTEDLY. If you leave the tinyest hole, the filling reacts with the meringue to cause the sweating or weeping. It works for me every time, but my husband hates meringue, so I make it infrequently. Mmmmmm, lemon meringue pie! Catherine

Well said, Ghostrider, on all points. As to your personal quotation, my favorite tea saying is an old Chinese one: "Better three days without food than a day without tea." I drink it every day. Catherine

I LOVE LOVE LOVE Vancouver, B.C. I visited once with a wonderful person and we had the time of our lives. We stayed in a corner suite at the Pan Pacific with a view of the cruise ships and the water. I don't remember where we ate, but it was all great. We took a float plane to Victoria and stayed one night at the Queen Victoria. We went whale watching and saw 26 orca, several pilot whales and a huge gray. It's one of the best vacation memories I have. Catherine

Sarah Phillips, Your technique looks great. The only thing I would add is that if your recipe calls for sugar, and that sugar is to be caramelized, you will get a very different result by only caramelizing part of the sugar and just adding the rest of it to the other ingredients. When sugar is caramelized, its flavoring power is INCREASED, but its sweetening power is DECREASED, at least by half. If your recipe calls for 1/3 cup of sugar, caramelized, and you only caramelize a couple tablespoons and just add the rest of the sugar to your recipe, your dish will be about TWICE as sweet as it was meant to be. *gag* Catherine

Bryan, Don't be afraid to add water to your sugar for making caramel or burnt sugar. It cooks down pretty fast and is nice and smooth and delicious. One important point: when you add liquid to your caramel, be very careful. If it's very hot, it can explode, but I'll bet you knew that. Catherine

This is exciting. I have a couple of questions, too. What EXACTLY is a cook-off? Do you make the dish, photograph it, review it, and post the results? I am new to this site and love it already. Also, where on the site can I go to read about the basics (something tells me I should already know what a cook-off is). Thank you. Catherine

I agree completely. Hi Taboni, Your calculations do not quite hold up. If you and your wife spend $50 per person to dine out, that's $100, $120 with a 20% tip. Done four times per month, you spend a total of $480 per month on dining out. The same dinner with a 30% tip would total $130, which you could enjoy 3.69 times per month for the $480 you are already spending. Increasing your tipping percentage from 20% to 30% would mean that you enjoyed 0.31 fewer two-person dinners out per month, or about one fewer two-person dinner out every three and a half months. That said, I think your tipping habits are perfectly respectable as they are. That's my opinion, which counts for nothing here. What counts is what YOU feel is fair. Tipping is a personal, optional and confidential practice that should be done according to each person's conscience. If you feel you tip too low and must curtail your dining out activities in order to accomodate a fairer rate, I say that's the honorable thing to do (again, opinion). My son is studying law and working at a nice restaurant to pay his bills. He tells me that he hates to see a family with young children come to his area because they will more likely than not require lots of his time and attention, and even more likely tip lowly. Harking back to when my children were small, our incomes were less, and the deep pleasure of sitting with my family at a table and enjoying a nice meal was one of the few treats upon which we spent money (we tipped 15% in those days), I try to remind him of that. I tell him I hope that he will treat them like princesses and princes, because there will be plenty of people along the way who will make abundantly clear to them the "error" of their ways. In the meantime, although no monetary gain will come his way, he can be a part of a very sweet time in a young family's life. By the way, when I dine there, and a certain handsome young man attends us, I tip 100%. As to the before tax/after tax issue, proper etiquette (at least what I have read and what I was originally taught) is to tip on the before-tax amount. One reason for this is illustrated by the fact that I live close to the line between two states, one where the tax rate is 6% and one where it's 9%. Why would I tip less because a state's tax rate is less? I don't. The impact of pre- vs. post-tax tipping in the 9% state, on a $20 tip, is $0.36. I calculate my tip by upping the before-tax meal price to the next largest whole dollar, calculating my tip, and upping the resultant tip amount to the next largest whole dollar. I then add the whole-dollar tip to the whole-dollar meal cost and pay that. I'm pretty sure I usually add at least $0.36 over my tip percentage, and I feel it's equitable with respect to the differing tax rates in the two states. I thought it out so I could dispatch paying for meals with ease, fairness and speed. I am an accountant and I quantify pretty much everything. When I go out on the town, though, here's what I like to think about: people first (including the wait staff), food next, and dead last, money. Catherine

Hi Daniel, As an example of what you are talking about, Patagonian Toothfish, which are ugly suckers but delicious to eat, are more palatably known as Chilean Sea Bass. On another food site, one person insisted that Chilean Sea Bass "do not exist," because, he said, the name was invented to cover up the fact that they are really ugly fish. Well, they do exist (and are threatened, so don't eat them!). The common name Chilean Sea Bass was coined because Chilean fisherman were the first to bring this wildly popular but slow-growing fish to American markets, 15 years before the fish became threatened. Catherine

Hello ChrisAmirault, Ohhhh, I am excited to try this. I love Thai food, and Pad Thai is a favorite. I have tried it before, and got the noodles cooked satisfactorily, but my problem is with the sauce. I love the flavorful, slightly sweet, slightly spicy sauce in the restaurants, but mine turned out (Time 1) so spicy I couldn't eat it, and (Time 2) muddy and icky in appearance and flavor. I'm going to look for a good recipe from among your suggestions. Thank you! Catherine

Hi, Miami Danny: My absolute base tipping percentage is 20%; below that I will not go. When I go out for dinner, I am usually focused on whomever I am with, and I won't pull my attention from that to analyze the waitperson's performance or motivations. I do not have enough information to base my compensation level on what I observe in the few minutes the waitperson is in my company. If I tip generously for bad service, I am glad because that person probably needed it more than anyone. I DO take the time to meet the server's eyes and smile, and to thank them verbally as well as monetarily. It embarrasses me to be in the company of someone who considers a server to be beneath the call for ordinary good manners. Things that motivate me to exceed my 20% base: service so stellar that it DOES get my attention; excellent food; a sunny day; any accident or mishap that the server has. I enjoy making contributions regularly and this underpaid type of worker (waitpeople) is a good place to do that. I worry that, when people are subjected to rude and careless service in many areas where tips are not an issue, they take out their built-up frustrations on the hapless waitperson, first chance they get. I also feel that many people look for a reason not to tip fairly. Iamthestretch, Iamimpressed. It IS gauche to discuss things like this in public, but we're among family here. I am new to this site, but love it already. Miami Danny, I have to say, your dinner experience sounds absolutely divine. Thanks for sharing. Catherine

Hi Bochalla, SO much good information! I know this concoction as burnt sugar. I make it to add to cake and frosting for my Dad's favorite from the old days, Burnt Sugar Cake. Wendy DeBord, great explanation. Thank you! I learned the hard way about adding more liquid and cooking it down: I had made burnt sugar painfully from dry for years. One day, I was making peanut-crusted chicken with Thai dipping sauce. I had the sauce (sugar, water and hot peppers. etc.) heating on low when I was called away. I returned in a panic a half hour later to find the dipping sauce cooked down to a spicy burnt sugar sauce. My guests absolutely raved about it as they dipped their garlicky, peanut-crusted chicken wings. But I was excited because I had finally discovered (by accident) how to make burnt sugar with ease! The lemon idea is worth trying, too. Would it flavor my cake, though? I don't like lemon flavor except where it's supposed to be. Catherine

Well: Anything baked: yeast breads, cakes, pies with butter crust, cookies, muffins, scones. Candy. Filet mignon with mustard cream sauce (so easy and so deliciously perfect, I always am surprised). Garlic shrimp pizza. Seafood pasta. I get asked to bring my potato salad to events so often that I actually resent it. Hollandaise sauce. Badly: Roasts. I finally figured out grilling and broiling (via a little thermometer with a sharp point), but don't do roasts well to this day. My baked potatoes are only occasionally great, usually just ok. I know where that "fine line between raw and mushy" is for veg, I just often cross it. Getting everything ready at once for company eludes me; I ALWAYS underestimate the time/work things will take. But people just talk and laugh and I'm so glad they're there! Would like to learn: Thai food. I love this cuisine so much and would like to learn to make some of the dishes at home.

Oatmeal chocolate chunk cookies I made this afternoon.