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MissAmy

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Everything posted by MissAmy

  1. That is stupid. No one eats the Per Se tasting menu every day. Conversely, there are plenty of people who eat McDonald's either every day or very frequently. I think the nation's waist line is not the result of too many gourmet tasting menus. Please.
  2. Carrot Top, that is the saddest story I have heard in a really long time. Breeders who sell to traditional pet stores have some very, very bad practices. I wish I could offer some constructive advice beyond "eat the little bugger" but I can't. Do you have an outdoor patio area where the rabbit could be kept while you guys aren't home?
  3. The only things I really won't eat for breakfast are things that are overly spicy and rich or overly sweet. I don't not understand, for example, how anyone could eat a Poptart for breakfast. That's candy! Conversely, at Hoover's here in Austin, one of their breakfast items is a plate of buscuits covered with fried chicken strips smothered in shrimp etoufee. Ugh. Just... ugh. How anyone can scarf that down before noon is beyond me. That said, I do eat "weird" things for breakfast from time to time. My friends think I'm strange for liking fried rice for breakfast, but I think it makes a great breakfast. Especially a simple egg fried rice: egg for protein, carbs to give you a little more energy, and a little flavor (but not too much) to wake up the palate and stomach for the day. There is also a taco truck that stops by our office every morning, and I love getting their chicken tacos for breakfast. Much more than the ones with egg. The chicken ones have grilled chicken, caramelized onion, and cheese. They are wonderful. I love breakfast for dinner. French toast, pancakes, omelettes, etc are my favorite weeknight dinners. Since I don't get to cook nice breakfasts that often, it's fun to do so at night.
  4. Peter, I have thoroughly enjoyed skivving off any meaningful work this afternoon by reading your wonderful account. I love your dry, wry writing style! Thanks for sharing!
  5. Thank you both! I have some fig and balsamic jam. I think I'm going to pair it with the foie and some nice bread for a dinner party I'm hosting in a few weeks. Yum. Thanks again!
  6. Eh, it was standard Bourdain. Amusing, over-the-top, cracked out. The... elipses.. were a little odd, though.
  7. My roommate just returned from a European vacation, and brought back many fun and lovely gifts. One of those was a jar of foie gras from France. I have never used jarred foie gras, and only have experience with fresh, raw foie. Do I use this stuff the same way? Can I sear it with the same results? Will it taste the same? I love foie gras, and this was a very thoughtful present, I simply need some advice as to what to do with it! Thanks so much in advance.
  8. Other people only truly bother me when they are terribly loud. People I'm dining with, on the other hand, only bother me when they either have the picky palate of a four year old or try and stiff the server. I had a boss who was a terrible tipper, and I hated going out with her. I always had to pull the "sneak a few extra dollars on the table when her back is turned" trick. Ick. Hate that.
  9. Kent, thanks for the update of Lola's. I've driven past it a million times and always wanted to go in, but never have. The fried chicken looks great.
  10. Yeah, I've mentioned this in other places here, but I really feel I must reiterate: raw tomatoes make me gag. I don't care if they are organic heirloom $40 per pound homegrown in a little old lady's back yard from her 50 year old varietals, they're still just gonna taste like slimy dirt to me.
  11. So, Sullivan's was #1, but who goes to Sullivan's for a burger?!
  12. Any place that is overly precious sends off all sorts of alarm bells. So do places where I can't smell any food, that are empty during peak times, and places where you notice many unbussed tables around. There's also the "ethnic" restaurants with no one of that ethnicity around, places that smell of old grease, and places that charge more than $9 for a burger. Glossy, laminated menus with giant pictures also tend to be pretty bad.
  13. I always had a snack after school. In the States, it was PB&J, crackers and cheese, fruit, or something similar. In the Philippines, my mother's maid had a freshly cut mango waiting for me every day when I got home. Sometimes, she would make sushi for parties, and save the end peices for me as a snack. I looooved her!
  14. Amazing, compelling story. Great writing. I can't wait for more and will most certainly be buying the book. Thank you so much, Chef Jeff, for sharing this with us!
  15. Thanks for posting the pics! They are beautiful! Yes, the meal was a great success. My favorite items were the cold dish platter, the soup, and the duck (but not the pancakes - they were way too thick for me). Everything was delicious. I have not had a meal like this since my family left China in 1994. It was really a special treat and one I will remember for a long time. It was a fabulous way to start off the Year of the Boar!
  16. Not so unbelieveable. There were a couple of people in my class at culinary school who were some of the pickiest eaters I have encountered. It boggled my mind on a daily basis when they would bypass the samples chefs sent around. What were they doing there?! I even said as much to one of the girls one day. She refused to try anything, so finally I broke down and asked her, "So, why are you in culinary school? I mean, since you seem to not really like food all that much?" She replied by telling me that she considered herself a really great cook, and would cook most things she wouldn't eat. "But how do you know if it tastes good or not?" I countered. She claimed to "just know." Yeah, right.
  17. I have friends who are very limited eaters who do this sort of thing all the time. If I suggest anything that's not TexMex, Bad American Chinese, BBQ, or other terrible American food, they go, "EEEWWW! GROSS!" It pisses me of in the extreme. To the point that I have begun going to great lengths to avoid eating with them. Food is a huge part of life, and to me a large portion of enjoyment of that area is experimentation. I actually feel sorry for them when I think about what my food life would be like if I had never tried real Chinese, Indian, Thai, Mexican, and many other foods. How limiting.
  18. I've never heard anyone on the show rave about his food. It's always more of, "The presentation is interesting, and the combination of flavors is unique, but... it just wasn't exciting to eat." It seems to me like Marcel's food is lacking soul. That said, he must really intimidate the hell out of the other contestants seeing how much they enjoy smacking him. I feel sorry for him, lack of soul or not. Cliff got what he deserved. I want Elia to win, simply because I like her and would probably enjoy hanging out with her.
  19. I got to meet Bobby Flay, and I must say that from what I saw, his reputation is wrong. Although a bit distant, he was perfectly nice. I would certainly stage for him if I ever got the chance.
  20. Ok, I think the "food" through a nose tube wins this thread. I'll go ahead and throw in my two cents, anyway. Another poster commented on a Lean Cuisine. I will second this emotion. I went to visit my mother, and because of work, she ended up not coming home until several hours after originally inteded. Hungry, I went rummaging through the fridge. The only thing that I found were several Lean Cuisines and a few cartons of cottage cheese. I should have just had the cottage cheese, but at the LC instead. What a mistake! It was a rubbery, salty, mass of goo. How do people eat those things?! I once worked in an office populated by Cosmo reading, silicone enhanced sorority girls who literally ate Lean Cuisine every single day at lunch. Every. Single. Day. At around noonish every day, the office would fill with the stench of microwaved Lean Cuisine, causing me to gag then escape to find sustenace. I guess they got botox injections into their tongues to deaden the taste buds or something. A close second would be the inedible quesadilla I was served a one of those dinner and drinks movies theaters. Usually the food at that place, while not the best in town, is edible. This, however, was not. The quesadilla came out cold, the cheese wasn't even close to being melted, and there were large chunks of raw onion. I took a bite, then another to verify that it was indeed the worst thing I had ever put in my mouth, then sent it back and ordered something else. God! It was truly horrible.
  21. I totally hear you. This is the sole reason that I don't use my culinary degree to cook in restaurants. (Well, that and the fact that every time I go for an interview for a kitchen job, I'm talked down to like I'm a silly little girl who doesn't know what she's doing.) And for a lot of people it'll take a lot more than ten years to pay off those loans. While in school, one of my jobs was as an assistant to the director of financial aid, under the federal Work Study program. I got to see all the final "bills," detailing how much people would be paying back. Due to the popularity of "living assitance loans," there were people who graduated from my school owing fifty percent MORE than the actual tution. I have no freaking clue how these people will EVER pay back those loans, based on salaries in the industry. It blows my mind, really, that in restuarants where meals can cost upwards of $50-$100 per person, the staff that actually COOKS those meals are living with substandard wages. If this profession is going to ever be taken seriously by society at large as a legitimate career, salaries are going to have to change. I don't know if the answer is tip-outs to the BOH staff, or what. I kind of don't think it is - waiters have to tip out enough people already - but something needs to change. I would gladly spend more money on restaurant meals, and eat out less often, if I knew the workers who cooked my food were making a living wage.
  22. God I am ever glad Betty's gone. In the beginning of the show, I thought she'd be cool, and a nice change from the typical cooking show contestant. I was wrong. Sayonara, whiny old lady. I would bet good money that Marcel's about to do something REALLY egregious, and get kicked out next episode. Why else would they be painting him in such sympathetic brush strokes?
  23. MissAmy

    The Salmon Croquette

    I grew up in Texas eating salmon croquettes on a regular basis. I have no idea why, I only remember that they were good, and as a child we were the only people on our street who ate them, so in my mind they were very sophisticated and exotic as well. I should make those again sometime soon. It just seems such a shame to use canned salmon when wonderful fresh salmon is so readily avaliable these days.
  24. This is really wonderful, what you're doing. I hope, hope, HOPE she qualifies for WIC, as that will alieviate a lot of the pressure. WIC isn't as hard to get as food stamps it seems, so hopefully she will. I would tell her how to make things that don't cost a lot of money, but make a lot, and will last for a long time. Like soups, stews, chili, casseroles, etc. Like everyone else has said, avoid heavily-processed items and those "kits." They are really expensive and don't make as much as cooking the same thing from scratch would. Also, help her research making her own baby food. Besides being healthier, it's also WAY cheaper. Since babies don't eat that much at a time, anyway, you can make a big batch and it will last a good long while.
  25. Isn't that what ever reality competetion is about? ← You know, yes! You are correct! You win the desert island and the internship at Trump!
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