Teri Everitt
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Posts posted by Teri Everitt
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Lasagne, but I was a teenager....and drunk.
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I've had some interesting experiences taking my son out to eat. He has autism, and we've been treated quite badly at a neighbourhood place that promotes itself as a "family" place when my son was not even agitated or misbehaving. We've also had a very compassionate restaurant owner very graciously box up our half eaten meal for us when my son was in mid-meltdown. It turns out he also worked at a children's hospital and he was very sympathetic.
That was a couple of years ago. And while it would be nice to enjoy my son's company in a REAL restaurant with good food, I now only take him out for fast food. I don't particularly enjoy the food at Subway, and at Mc Donald's I won't even get any food, I just keep my son company while he eats. The bottom line is that in a fast food place, my son knows what food they have, he can order for himself and he always knows what is going on and how to act. None of these things is true(for him) in a proper restaurant, and even if they make him food that will suit his picky eating habits he isn't comfortable and it is unfair to put him in an environment that will make him uncomfortable. If I want to go someplace nicer I get a sitter and take my girls.
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One of my first jobs was in an open kitchen. Image was very important to the management, and hats were NOT allowed. There were 3 or 4 girls in the kitchen, and we were supposed to look cute, so I had to work with my hair ineffectively contained by a headband. One night I'm sauteeing something, and smell the unmistakable stench of burning hair. On my break I had to run to the washroom to confirm my suspicions, instead of a pesky lock of hair that was constantly falling into my eyes....I now had bangs!
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Well, he's now my ex-husband, but the first meal we ate together....he tried to impress me with blackened chicken (in an apartment without a hood fan). We had to leave the apartment for awhile.
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I'd have to say.....kid's birthday parties.
A few years ago my younger daughter switched schools. Her new school is more culturally diverse than her previous school. She's now the "white kid" at the birthday parties. So instead of the cakemix/storebought cake and crappy packaged snacks that ruled at all her older sister's friends' houses, she gets to eat Cambodian food prepared by the birthday girl's grandmother, at another party there was an entire feast laid out that was only for the guests as the family was observing Ramadan and wasn't eating til later. There is always too much food and they always ask me to try some when I come to pick her up.
So where have you found some cool foods in unexpected places?
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My sisters and I were strictly forbidden to snack after school....so PBand J eaten as quickly and discreetly as possible. Dinner wasn't til 6:00 or 6:30!
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A friend and I were wandering on Robson Street in Vancouver looking for someplace to have lunch. Neither of us knew of a good place to go as I had just moved from Banff and he was visiting from Victoria. We were standing outside of an Indian restaurant, looking at the menu, when we noticed movement in the window. A nice-looking family of four were waving to get our attention. When we looked their way, they made subtle but very clear motions that we should keep on moving. Sort of a wry grimace with a slight 'no' shake of the head. I'm sure that restaurant had one of their slowest afternoons that day.
Gold!
I once got hungry doing some errands and stopped at a small restaurant that was on my way from work/the bank etc. and I was the only person in the place. Looking around at the dirty windows, layer of dust on the pictures on the wall etc. I decided not to take chances and ordered a chicken burger...I mean how hard is it to take a frozen breaded chicken burger and deep-fry it? Anyway, after about a 5 minute wait I hear a "beep" from the kitchen and think "god I hope that isn't my chicken burger." It was.
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You can use them either way....just make sure if you make cheesecake the lip is down, otherwise you'll never get your offset underneath to loosen the crust. Unless its firm enough to be flipped upside down. For batter cakes I just use it lip side up, it gives you a tiny bit more depth in the pan.
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One of the places I used to work had 2 pie doughs, a pate sucree and a regular pie dough. One morning I was feeling energetic and decided to make my staff quiche with mushrooms, spinach and cheese. It would have been much better if I'd remembered that the "regular" pie dough had a pound of brown sugar in the recipe. Tasted pretty weird.
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I'm not sure what a Whoopie pie is exactly, but for a recent staff party we made fake Joe Louis. We just used a chocolate chiffon cake and a vanilla bean buttercream made from Italian meringue, then dipped the cake sandwiches in chocolate. It's amazing how much our nice cakes with real buttercream tasted like the cheap cakes from the store. Must be all the chemicals they're loaded with!
Chocolate Chiffon Cake
1/4 cup cocoa
1/2 cup boiling water > dissolve
3/4 cup flour
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt > combine in mixing bowl
4 egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup corn oil > combine in measuring cup
4 egg whites
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar > whip and set aside
Stir egg yolk mixture into dry ingredients and add cocoa mixture and combine thoroughly with a whisk to blend ingredients well.
Fold egg whites through gently but thoroughly enough that mixture has no streaks. Sheet batter into a silpat or parchment lined half sheet pan.
The instructions I have say bake at 300 degrees for 20 minutes but I have no idea how long I actually bake this cake for at work because I usually do 2 full sheet pans and we never change the oven temp .....it stays at bread temperature all day so we bake pastries by placement in the oven (i.e. bottom decks are least hot, higher ones are hotter etc.)
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It's interesting reading the replies to this topic. My youngest child has a disability, and since childcare is fairly impossible to get for him, I made the decision a long time ago to fit my work around my life, not the other way around....but I know from working in the industry for 19 years that for most people working in kitchens life outside the kitchen can be practically non existant.
I have a pretty sweet job, Monday to Fridays, almost complete control over my own schedule and I only ever work nights or weekends voluntarily, my boss has never asked me to do it. My ex and I are fairly co-operative at dividing up school holidays so that neither of us takes too hard a hit in the paycheck. I really can't complain. Downside is that I don't make a lot of money, but I don't need to make a lot of money.....I only need to make enough money.
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Right now I'm into the last nine weeks (OMG!!) of planning and preparation to open my own restaurant. This entails learning the regulatory environment of another province (I'm living in Alberta, but moving to New Brunswick) as well as finishing my cashflow projections, finalizing the financing, planning the initial menu, contacting suppliers, establishing some food costs...y'know. Stuff.
Then, utterly exhausted, I get to open the doors and deal with tourist season.
Wow! Sounds exciting but exhausting. What kind of food are you thinking of doing? Hope everything goes smoothly.
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Slightly off topic, but can miso be frozen? I can never seem to use it up fast enough, or find it in a small enough package that I don't have to throw any away. And how long can you keep it?
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A hotel I used to work for (briefly) had a very unsavory practice....reusing food! We did a lot of catering, and food that came back to my pastry kitchen (uneaten apple squares, cookies etc) was supposed to be stored and used for other functions. I am not even talking about fully wrapped food that hadn't been touched for instance if they made 7 cheese trays and only used 5 etc...I mean stuff that had been out on the buffet.
First off, the catering contract calls for a specific amount of food, and the client has already paid for the food AND
more disturbingly, the food has been out and could have been handled by the public.
I hope this practice isn't widespread in catering....I can't really tell as I only worked for the one hotel, and I left there as soon as possible.
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Well, first off I think a lot of chefs and cooks will fire back the answer SLEEP!
but, what do you do on your down time?
I take a printmaking class, hang out at art galleries and rock shows when time permits (helps that I'm a pc who doesn't work nights). A couple of my fellow chefs at work teach hobby classes, and one guy plays bass in a band (a pretty good one) as well as teaching a children's cooking class and regularly haunting shows in Ottawa and Montreal. Another fellow pastry chef's hobby is training for and running in marathons (better her than me!)
So how do you spend your day off?
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Chocklateer
I agree with Kate, this sounds like a nightmare to serve. However, if it's what they absolutely HAVE to have.....I'd go with mousseline instead of pastry cream as a filling. It's much more stable and way nicer to cut. That's what we use for the millefeuille pastries at the bakery where I work.
Love the idea of the divorce cakes. I actually saw this guy once driving around in his car honking the horn etc with streamers and a sign saying "Just Divorced" on his bumper.
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The trump card... And in shockingly bad taste - do not read on if you are squeamish....
Don't say I didn't warn you!!!
I've spent a period of time in hospital during recent months. I ended up being tube fed through my nose. They feed you a brown mixture of pre-digested protein and carbs with other mixed 'nutrients'. Even tube fed, you still kinda get a taste. This is the worst 'food' I have ever 'tasted'.
To follow, I vomited up five tubes in total. Not quite a ward record, but pretty good going!! So firstly you get to taste the pre-digested c**p they've put in your stomach. Then you are left with a tube going up through your nose and hanging out of your mouth...Choices...Do you a)wait for the nurse to come and cut it off at your mouth and pull the tube out of your nose? or do you b) bite off the tube yourself and pull it out of your nose yourself? - Option b) was the least unpleasant as far as waiting time is concerned.
Sorry to be gross guys, but sometimes you just gotta share (Perhaps this wasn't one of those, but hell, it was cathartic
)So was the "food" worse than whatever illness or trauma led to you getting your meals through a tube?
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This happened to my aunt this Christmas. She had guests coming over on Christmas day, due to arrive shortly. She gives her dog Skootch (miniature daschsund) a bone. Then she decide to change the candles in her votive candleholders and pops them in the microwave to loosen the wax. She then notices that the bone has had an unwanted side effect on the dog and she picks up the dog and tries to get it outside before it makes a mess. Unsuccessfully. Then after cleaning up the dog mess and putting the pooch outside to finish it's business, she returns to the kitchen to see flames on the inside of her microwave, hits the door button without thinking it through. Glass fragments and hot wax come flying out of the microwave. She did manage to get things cleaned up and her dinner went off without a hitch.
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hmm, I can't remember if it was this year or possibly late in the last, but it was beef with hijiki seaweed puree at wd-50. It was like licking the inside of a dirty fish tank, a filthy dirty fish tank. I couldn't imaging being a cook there and having to check the seasoning on that one every time it went out. Maybe it wasn't worst of all time but when you're in a cuisine driven restaurant and all the ingredients are put together with such precision and care, presented so nicely, one doesn't expect such a sucker punch. I had invited a friend, we both had the same dish, and we both fell silent after the first bite. Our eyes fell to do some inspecting and suss out the situation, when we had the second que'd up eye contact was made and we both kind of dared each other to go for it. We were playing chicken with the beef.
I've arbitrarily decided to declare THIS post the winner, for several reasons. One, the description "like licking the inside of a filthy dirty fish tank" kinda made my stomach clench up. Secondly, the description of the highly anticipated dish as a "sucker punch" and thirdly because obviously chankonabe and guest were in elegant surroundings and therefore unable to spit out the offending food without causing a scene.
Honorable mentions go to Begerka because I had to look up the dish in her post and it sounded pretty much as described, and to Sus because the thought of having a big mouthful of pork fat is completely scary.
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I love stinky cheese. Love it, love it, love it. But, a few years back I purchased a soft cheese at Whole Foods that could best be described as tasting like electric feet -- funky and acidic. I had to had to gargle with a glass of Sancerre for 15 minutes just to survive.
I've eaten a cheese like this....it wasn't the same cheese because it wasn't soft but electric feet is a really good description.....it not only tasted terrible, but it actually made my mouth tingle, and NOT in a good way. I can only describe the taste by imagining what it would be like to go to the dirtiest dive bar in town and licking the floor. Ewwwwwwwwwww! I wonder if there is a specific cheese mold or bacteria that causes the tingly feeling in your mouth?
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Huh! Appropriate topic! Most of the year I work really sweet hours (7 am to 3 pm) or (9:30 am to 3:30 pm) BUT at Christmas all bets are off. My youngest child is autistic and good childcare is impossible to get, so last night I went home at 3:30 to meet my son's taxi, fed the kids supper and went back to work and worked 6 pm to 1:30 am dressing and packaging Christmas cakes. My work has been understaffed for months because of injuries/vacations/etc and we're really feeling the pinch this year.
However, I really love the work (just not always the job), and couldn't really imagine doing anything else. The thought of being trapped in an office cubicle for 8 hours seems like cruel and unusual punishment to me.
If I had known then what I know now when I started in this business 19 years ago I would've spent the money on GOOD shoes.
And I've got that whole week in January booked off.......
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I used to work in wholesale. Some of the problems included lack of control in how restaurants were keeping/serving the desserts. I got a call from an angry client demanding a refund for a "furry" cheesecake. I checked back through my salesbook and the restaurant had purchased it 3 weeks ago! I refused his request and chewed him out for damaging MY reputation by trying to serve spoiled food. I don't think his customers were getting the best indication of our product by eating in his restaurant.
We also had to turn down a client who wanted us to change portion sizes, use newer and more expensive packaging, and had outlets all over town and in the burbs. Almost all of our restaurant clients were in the downtown core, but this was a franchise (Great Canadian Bagel) and their locations are scattered everywhere. Factor in gas, labour costs and general hassle, and this client would have been more work than was profitable to accomodate for a small bakery with 3 employees and 1 delivery van. A lot of new businesses hesitate to turn down clients, especially in the beginning, but be careful who you accept as clients. You could have to plan the workings of your business (labour, scheduling, delivery time, product and product sizes) around this one client that may not make you enough money to be worthwhile.
Another factor is lack of recognition. When I was doing wholesale, I supplied some of the better restaurants in town. Restaurants will not claim that they made your product in-house usually, but they are happy to let their guests assume so.
Advantages are that wholesale has a lot less waste than retail. Mistakes do get made, but in general you are filling orders so you don't make things that clients don't ask for. The biggest change for me switching gears from wholesale to retail was getting used to all the waste when business is slow.
Hope that helps.
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The only way I can describe the flavor is "Burnt Sour". Disgusting. It's been 15 minutes, I only took 2 bites, and I still can't get the taste out of the back of my mouth.
Don't ever try this. Just don't.
JLam..... this looks like a contender for my "Worst thing you've had in your mouth 2006" thread. Unless you've had the misfortune of tasting something WORSE this year
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I've been looking over the adjectives used so far in this thread:
Shriveled, congealed, gelatinous, sawdust, chemical taste, half-frozen, pasty, slimy, artificial goo, rancid, aftertaste and perhaps most disturbingly the words "hospital cafeteria" (the patients HAVE to eat there if you can walk or run, run somewhere else to get some food!) and "airport". Have none of you ever watched the British TV show "Chef!" ....I'll quote Lenny Henry directly right here.
"Airports....where food goes to die."
Anyway, after reading through the above I'm thinking that this thread should be banned for bad language. I'm sure ALL of these words and phrases could be considered swears when applied to food.
If this thread hits 50 posts maybe I'll ask everyone who contributed to it to PM me the name of the poster they feel sorriest for (even if it's yourself) and we'll declare a winner.
Worst meal at someone's home - Part 1
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted
I have to object to this post on behalf of women named Terry (or Terri, or Teri) who CAN cook!