Lisa Shock

IIRC, manufacturers fought hard to have that measurement expressed that way -so all they had to do was tweak the portion size on the label, not change the product. This is why I boycott Girl Scout cookies. I also read ingredient labels carefully, and ignore a lot of the nutrition label.

I make my own mayo in lots of flavors, too. So it's a really versatile sauce for a lot of different applications and, I don't get tired of sandwiches because sometimes they are dill/lime flavor or ginger/soy flavor or balsamic/basil flavor.

I haven't seen this, but, I have seen an infestation of rope. Some bad microorganisms won't leave unless you wash everything in the bakery, including the walls and air ducts, with disinfectant. The old school treatment was to wash everything with full strength vinegar.

Everyone has different tastes and dietary needs. Egg dishes and cheesy things are easy and there's nothing really wrong with them, you just don't want to get tired of foods by limiting your diet too much, IMO. (BTW, I always hated hotdogs from early childhood onward, but I like a type of soy-based hot dog called Smart Dogs here in the US. It's mostly because they aren't greasy. That said, I buy them maybe once a year for myself and occasionally more often if I am cooking for kids.) I think the biggest transformation that helps people stick with the diet is to stop thinking of a meal as protein in the center plus 2 veg and a starch, or whatever. So, the trick is to stop trying to replace the slab of meat that's the usual protein. A nice curry with an onion and tomato based sauce featuring a variety of veg plus some garbanzo beans and a side of rice is a perfectly fine meal. So is a veggie lasagna and a salad. You can get protein from eggs, dairy, beans and grains, etc. and generally you don't need as much as you think you do. To help avoid backsliding to fast foods, I like to cook big batches of certain foods and freeze them in single servings. I can usually thaw out some soup, a curry dish, a slice of lasagna, etc. that I keep frozen just to avoid temptation. I also learned to cook better than most carry out places, so a lot of it no longer has any interest for me. (once I perfected falafel, red cooked eggplant, peanut noodles, and, pizza, I pretty much stopped getting take out food) I prefer beans cooked from dry to the canned type, so, I make big batches and freeze some plain for quick use later. (like maybe burritos or enchiladas) But, that can seem daunting, and canned beans will be ok -if more expensive. I also make vegetable stock from vegetable trimmings and freeze it in 1 cup and 1 liter blocks. Start slowly. Find a few recipes you like and try freezing single portions and see how that goes. Diving in and trying to make meals from a couple quarts of cooked beans when you don't have tried and true recipes you love would be difficult. Try making one bean-centric meal per week and see how that goes. Good luck!

I've been a vegetarian since 1979 and have never met anyone who made their own regularly. The recipes out there are for taking tempeh or baked tofu, slicing thinly then baking in a sauce which usually contains liquid smoke. This stuff isn't really like bacon. The texture is crispy/chewy but the flavor isn't like bacon at all. Most agree that 'Fakin Bacon' and Bac-os are a bit tastier and a lot easier to serve. There isn't really any very good imitation bacon, at least in the US. I think it has to do with trying to copy the fat layers in real bacon. Sausage on the other hand, I have actually fooled people with the 'Gimme Lean' sausage on pizza and in a lasagna. That all said, IMO, it's better to celebrate vegetables in all of their diversity than to try and use meat substitutes. I only eat the fake meat a couple times a year. The rest of the time, I cook beans or use nuts for protein.

Sorry, got carried away thinking about old catering menus!

Just off the top of my head, some popular dishes from my catering days: Chicken Country Captain Arroz Con Pollo (although the place I worked at used a recipe without onions & garlic in it, and subbed adobo seasoning for the saffron) Green Chile Chicken Stew you can sub fresh, roasted and seeded and chopped chiles for frozen -they're in season right now. Baked Apricot Chicken I always added a little toasted sesame oil to the sauce. Steamed Lemon Chicken We used whole boneless breasts and steamed in a container that held the sauce and the chicken together. Sometimes, we just served the meat, sometimes we'd thicken the sauce with cornstarch after cooking the chicken and serve with the thickened sauce.

I second the guacamole idea. You can also make pasta sauce from avocados. You could make bisque soup from a variety of seafood items. (it's thickened with rice) Terrines and pates seem like they might work for you. And, what about souffles, both savory and sweet?

Once you have some warmth in there, it will probably only take 5-10 minutes for the oven to rebound and come up to the temp you need. No need to leave it on for 45 minutes between items. BTW, this is the perfect time to make some extras to take advantage of the heat and make cooking easier later. You could put garlic heads in foil and roast them, make a tray of roasted potatoes or vegetables for dinner now or in the next few days. If you have tons of tomatoes or fruit, dehydrating them in the oven is good prep for sauces or pies of the future. There are a lot of things you can make with maybe 5-10 minutes of prep.

You should ask about this, but, I have had good luck serving flourless chocolate cake to diabetics. I use a very rich recipe that is fairly low in sugar, if you use the bittersweet chocolate. That said, they have to like dark chocolate. This stuff is so intense, I often get 16 servings per cake. Small serving size + lots of fat + egg protein = physically tolerable dessert that's really satisfying.

There's a whole field of study about how colors and commercial art affects consumers. IMO, the most important thing is to match your look to the clientele you are trying to attract. In other words, red velvet walls and marble floors don't match well with subs and quick service. There's so many sub places nowadays, finding a name will be challenging -don't afraid to be a little crazy here, people will remember a place named 'exploding submarines' or somesuch. Speed is important for a drive through, you should look at ways to streamline ordering and assembly. I agree that quality is important. For me, I think the bread is key. Try to find a bakery that will make good french or Italian bread. I've tried subs at many of these newly expanding franchises and don't like any of the bread. And, of course, Subway's bread is awful. As much as I enjoy a good Italian sub, I'd like to suggest that you make 2 specialty subs: banh mi, and a cuban.

I found this NYT article interesting. I wish I hadn't given up my Chinese lessons after just one year....

If anyone is interested, there are units for sale on eBay at a much lower price.

I am wondering if it's possible that the oil has gone bad? Like if someone let it get too hot, or dumped a lot of salt in it, or it's juts plain too old....

Sounds like the same dish. I had it in people's homes in the Appalachian part of Maryland. It was chicken stew with hand-rolled noodles, although, I was informed here that one can buy the noodles in a box.

Timpano Slippery Pot Pie Hiyashi Chūka Soba

Will this menu be available for people to take home, or is it just available onsite when a server hands it to you? IMO, it's annoying to see things you cannot have when you are there and ready to order. You say you want to update the website menu daily, which is fine, but, if I am onsite right now, I want an accurate list of what's available for me to eat. I don't want to have to go to your website after I've been seated. Do you have a menu board on the wall that also changes daily? When you talk about enticing people with what you could serve them, what do you mean? What events would have to transpire for you to serve these things that you cannot serve now & how is your customer supposed to be involved in those events? (I mean most chefs can make almost anything, it's choosing what they will serve that defines a restaurant's character.) As a customer, I check a restaurant's website a few days in advance to see if they have anything that I want to eat. Daily specials are ok, but a core menu is very important. Also, unless you do a lot of carryout business and are handing out printed menus all of the time, I don't see a menu driving people to a website -I mean, I'm there talking to a server, I'm not going to start searching for online info on my phone when I could just ask the server. And, if the menu's a mess, like half of it's unavailable when I am there, I doubt that I'd be checking online for specials on future days because I probably would not return.

My favorite potato is Sangre, a red variety that is very flavorful. I used to get organic starters for it from Irish Eyes, but they no longer carry them. A quick search finds them being sold by several organic sources. If your soil is poor or tends to be hard, you can grow potatoes in straw. Some people even grow them in raised wire mesh circles for easy harvesting and prettier skins. I also like cinnamon basil a lot, it's best served cold, like in a salad. It becomes more ordinary basil-flavored when cooked.

IMO choosing an olive for a salad depends on which dressing I am making. I keep several types of olive in the fridge plus a couple more in the cupboard cans, and generally choose based on how the dressing turned out, which also means that sometimes olives are not on my salad because the flavor would not be complementary.

I make my own extracts and can see a lot of potential.

If you ever get a chance, try black apricots (an apricot-plum hybrid, as opposed to plum-apricot of a pluot) I like using them when I can in apricot confections. They show up seasonally here in PHX at Trader Joe's.

Some of us might help you test a few things. I know that after I left Santa Fe, some of my recipes never came out right again, even with very calculated adjustments.

I'm still on my first cartridge, so, I don't know. It's big, though. It takes up most of the back post of the machine. The machine requires that you screw a bottle onto the underside of the top to work. The proprietary bottles have a rather wide mouth, I have not seen anything similar. Generally, I just pour everything into the manufacturer's bottles and go from there.

Yes, that's it. Works great for me. IIRC I paid a little less, but, would still buy it again. Actually, a quick look at eBay shows several sellers with units well below that price. If anyone is interested, get some of the extra bottles while you can, the bottles from the other soda machines will NOT fit this machine. BTW, the bottles are 500ml or 1l. I use the 500ml which is perfect for one or two people and fits nicely in the fridge. The cartridges for it are called 'Sparklers' and are refillable at sporting goods stores like Dicks for about $3. Amazon no longer sells them, but eBay has a few. I got one in addition to the one that comes with the unit, just in case.

Parchment will not protect against grease. IMO, you should run tests baked on sheet pans, just to make sure you don't mess up the stones. What I do with breads where there's an add-in which I don't want exposed to the air, like lentils that get rock-hard, is I make two batches of dough. One batch has the add-in, the other is only about 25% the weight of the first, without the add-in. I scale out portions then roll out the plain dough and place the main dough (already bench shaped) in the center and wrap it up, bench rest, and then do final shaping -gently. For cheese, I grate it on a large holed grater and toss with my final flour addition so it doesn't clump when mixed in. I personally do not like the big holes that happen with larger chunks of cheese.