Badiane

What is the recipe that you are using? Perhaps your flour has a different gluten content than that in the US? What is the leavener that you use? I have some recipes that call for baking ammonia if that is more common in your area, let me know. You might try this and see what the results are like: 2 cups regular all purpose flour 4 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon salt Heavy cream (must be cream, not milk as this is the only fat) Stir together the dry ingredients and the add heavy cream until it is a thick batter you can pat out or add a little more and drop from a spoon. If you have only sour cream, add 1/2 teaspoon baking soda as well. if they are for shortcakes, I like to brush the top with cream and sprinkle with sugar before baking.

I've been lucky enough in my life to have several brushes with the famous and the not so famous at the time but famous now... I've grocery shopped with Johnny Depp at least a dozen times...back in the 21 Jump Street days...he wasn't famous yet. If I'd only known. I once took a sandwich from the restaurant where I worked in Stanley Park down to the Sea Wall. I shared it with the guy on the bench who I thought was just some random homeless guy. Turned out to be Sting in a very ratty outfit. I've got a million of them...living in Vancouver in the late 80's and early 90's, and working for a well known Canadian at the time, I got to rub elbows with some pretty funky folks.

Actually closer to Abbotsford than Harrison...but in reality it's closest to Chilliwack. Very close to my place, really. Drive by it almost every day. I will make the offer that if anyone wants some, I will pick them up and deliver them for a small fee...say some gingerbread pudding and a few kolaches or the equivalent Polderside Farms 4843 Giesbrecht Road, Chilliwack, BC V2R 4R1 Tel. : 604-823-7324

Y'know you can read them online or at the library for free, right? You don't actually have to invite them to share your home, which is nice, since they never pay half of the rent. Gourmet/Bon Appetit also maintain a recipe database and they are all there for the taking, no charge, no clutter. Of course if you are looking for magazines for her, I would be delighted to contribute to her collection. Just let me know when you will be home and I will have the truck stop by.

I'm guessing that this is one of those 'if you have to ask, you can't afford it' situations. Of course it could double as your office...you could write it off! (I would make a joke here about cold blooded food writer/restaurant critic types here but I'm not nearly as verbally creative as you are and I would no doubt get the worst of it).

They actually did two full seasons - about 26 shows. Just seems that it's the same 10 all the time. I did enjoy one episode...and it's going to be on in a couple of days...were a young woman from a cooking school comes begging for a shot in the kitchen and they not only allow it, Guy is incredibly kind to her at the end and actually gives her a job. That was cool.

I know that is a typo, but it's darn funny Something else from eGullet that is destined for the family lexicon.

What???? Where do you live??? Here in BC, the bake sale is still alive and kicking and happening in the local mall every weekend....potlucks abound at the Legion, the office and every church in town...I just won the Chili Cookoff at work, and I catered my own wedding right down to the peanut brittle favors. Now I feel the need to draw the curtains and hide my crockpot Really, I've never heard such a thing here. I can get behind the idea behind this - it has some validity, and I completely agree with Rebecca that not all memories need to be food based. I'm living proof that it might have been a better idea to send me to school with some erasers and stickers rather than all those cakes, cookies and squares...a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips, as it were. It's when they start telling you what you can pack in your own child's personal lunch that I get peeved.

A few years back???? It's still on every freaking day. The same 10 episodes, over and over and over and over. It's like being trapped in some Food Network Groundhog Day...two freaky looking dudes destined to repeat the same schlock day after day after day. I keep hoping they will get it right and finally move on. While I am always glad to hear that someone has found culinary inspiration from something Canadian, I am so far over that kind of food, presentation, pretension and attitude that I can't find the Rubinos anything other than ridiculous.

DC DUBY Apparently molecular gastronomy is alive and well and living somewhere in Vancouver... Dominique and Cindy Duby seem to be well on the way to bringing ravioli blobs to the masses. They were featured on Chef at Large on the Food Network the other day. Quite interesting to see what they have come up with. Above is a little blurb I found that will also lead you to thier website. edited to add: I just loaded a little 'Science Kit' video from the website...you can buy a kit that will allow you to try making some of this stuff at home, including little jelly blob thingies - looks like fun. I think Ling is just the gal to try it out and let us know how it works!

Veau Morille.... It is the single best thing I have ever eaten in a restaurant that I didn't cook myself. Onion Tart was exceptional as well.

How do they pronounce it? ← I always pronounced it to rhyme with booster...Wooster. And Shire the obvious way, just like it is written. It's actually supposed to sound like wuss...Wuss-ta Shire should sound like sure...or Shure. So it's either Wuss-ta for the town, or Wuss-ta Shure for the area. This from a nation with villages called Lower Piddle, Upper Piddle and Piddle-through-the-Hole.

never seen them but it's a great concept...I just had a flash of that fabulous looking horse sashimi that Ling and DaFonz had the other night...drapped over a rice bun with something pickled and zingy...yeah, okay, I would buy them. I wonder if it's a commercially produced item or if you could make them yourself..probably work pretty well with some sushi rice and one of those tupperware hamburger patty making doo-dads. Hmmmm....who do we know that has a restaurant that would be willing to try these...hmmmm....do we know anyone in the food business? I have one of those tupperware doo-dads somewhere...

I do the bag and drop...then when I have workable smaller pieces, I grate it in the food processor and store it in a plastic container in a cool place. That way I only have to get the processor dirty once, I don't wear out my wrist with the chopping, and I am ready to go when I need to melt some.

Well, if it was ME making the dinner...and we were going to get all fancy like, this is what she'd get: Toast Points with a bit of Gentleman's Relish on top. Steak and Kidney Pie with a bit of Mashed Swede on the side, maybe a roasted spud or two. Spotted Dick with jam sauce A nice bit of Stilton and some biscuits If it's good enough for the rest of the country, it's good enough for 'erself. My friend Wendy was the flight attendant on thier plane during a visit in the late 60's...she has a great story about the kids - they were goofing around and overturned a tray of tea sandwiches. Elizabeth swatted at them with her magazine and made them not only pick the sandwiches off the floor but eat every one of them. And of course there is the famous story - famous in our family, anyway - of her visit to Saskatchewan - they had a dinner in one of the small towns and the woman who was clearing the tables said 'keep your fork, there's pie'. Supposedly she obediently licked her fork and put it back on the table, waiting for the pie.

We call it Jim Horn-nuts. What exactly are those Timbits supposed to represent, anyway? I think that guy had a sick sense of humor I always called it Woostershire...until I married a man from Worchester...the tauting was endless and I finally learned to say it right.

Chesticles? This is a new one on me. ← Also known in our family as breasticles... you know...two dangly bits...okay, that's enough out of me on that subject. I really MUST find a job and stop hanging around here.

Just be food safe...two P's you don't want? Ptomaine Poisoning.

I'm so glad he's still out there terrorizing young chefs...while I could have cheerfully gutted and barbecued him, I know he only rode me like he did because he cared and thought I had it in me to succeed. If he could only see me now...I know he would be proud. I am what I am (at least in the kitchen) due in part to his extreme drive for perfection. There are several cringe-worthy memories about him in my head...to this day I cannot eat mango salsa without thinking of him...and I still guard his recipe for Pear Anise soup with my life - he told us that if he ever came to someplace we worked and saw it on the menu he would gut us like a halibut. Every time I make it, I toast his memory. I really MUST email that man... Awesome stories in this thread...really brings back those days in culinary school.

I was a nanny in another lifetime, and looked after a little boy, who, at the age of two would demand to be taken on the bus to get some Fuck Me Fried Chicken.... He did love his KFC, that little monster My mother's name for basmati is 'badnasty'. She honestly thinks that is what is says on the bag. She's starting to drift on me, I think.

You must let me know if you encounter my old nemesis, Olivier Andreini...I understand he is a chef instructor there now. He was one of the chefs at the cooking school I went to. We nearly came to blows a couple of times - I nearly quit during exams, we had such a go 'round. You must let me know if he is still in the habit of yelling 'ok, people, LETS HAVE IT' when it's time to plate.... He scared the crap out of me...must have worked, he is still one of the voices in my head

Why is it that when I think of Giada, all I see is her giant head and enormous teeth - and if I posted that I would get hopped all over for being horrible and nasty but when a MAN thinks of nothing but chesticles and says so right here in front of everyone, no one flinches? I mean no woman would come here and say wooohooo...how ever DOES Flay find pants that fit? and that Chairman...he is SOOOOOO flexible!!! Shame on you boys!

I always thought the Four Horsement of the Apocalypse were Chain Restaurants... Any y'all KNOW you are going to watch it...you have set the Tivo, marked it on the calendar and purchased a box of those pre-cooked 'dim sum style' appies and a bottle of plum sauce for the occasion. You will all be glued to the tube, in your jammies, laughing yourselves silly and planning all the witty remarks you can log onto eGullet with to entertain your online pals. Ahem...cough. Perhaps I am projecting. I can't wait to see it. I'm twisted that way.

That location closed down several months ago, much to my eternal disappointment...no more trips to Costco with a side trip for biscuits. Sigh. Not that I don't know how to make those biscuits, but it's nice to have someone else do it for me. Guess I will just have to wait for Costco to bring back the lobster rolls so I have an excuse to go there again. The old location is for lease...anyone wanting to start a fried chicken empire could use this space as a launch pad...all the equipment is still intact, by the look of it.

Oh me too...believe me...complete and total bum magnet. I look back and can't even believe some of the stuff that has happened. I once invited a seemingly normal reasonable guy over for dinner...he had a good job and I knew his mom and everything. Well after dinner was over, he asked if he could take home the leftovers. Ummm...okay, sure. Then he laid on my floor and watched the hockey game. After the game he jumped up, slapped my behind and said 'I'd really like to stick around and have sex , but I have to get the dog home'. She was in the car waiting for him. I also once had a guy over to dinner - with two other couples - and in the middle of dinner there was a knock on the door. It was his live-in girlfriend. She was tired of waiting in the car and needed to use the washroom. Annnd...my final even remotely food related horror....I went on a date with a man who was employed at Microsoft in Redmond...he had a very low employee number...under the 200 mark. He was stinking filthy rich. He ordered my lunch for me and then made me pay half the bill. Fortunately he was one of my last dates. Shortly thereafter I met the man I married What a relief.