gfron1

And @eglies now that my daytime restaurant is closed, and I'm two months til my next...DM me any questions you want and I'll see what I can do. I totally understand your need. My questions are very specific to my set up, my desired outcomes, my target market, etc, and these threads, while they contain every possible answer, are really hard to sort through at times.

I have been sitting on this lead til now. Gonna start shopping some of these ideas.

Those are beautiful. Thanks

We're all the biggest critics of our own work. I think is a really great design.

Now calm down y'all...mushroom hunting and eating is safe as anything else with proper education. Always have a mentor that you can use for verification (I still do this even after all these years). Always do a full identification from a true guidebook (yes, even the spore print). And only cook those mushrooms that you know how to properly prepare. Once people start saying, "You need to do x,y, or z with a specific mushroom to make it safe..." that's not one for you to cook unless you're an expert. But once you get past that, oysters, lobsters, chanterelles, morels and a few others are easy to identify and easy to prepare. *Then I add the asterisk that says there's a thing called a false morel. It looks nothing like a true morel, but for some reason every season us mycos have an annual argument about their safety. I don't/won't eat them because why risk it. But a morel?...heck yeah!

Hope you don't mind i edited out all of the line breaks...they were making my eyes go bonkers Your point is taken, and I'll just say that I have a diverse set of dishes, some commercial and some custom. I thisnk the point is that the flatware needs to be neutral enough to work with all of it. I have a few bright plates that black flatware would be ugly against...we could change out for those courses, but that's a silly unnecessary step at my price point. The pieces I've shown so far would easily work with my food.

See my ETA on that post. Amazon reviews nixed it for me. I'm guessing all of the black stainless has the same issue. There's a reason flatware has been silver for quite a long time.

I have some dishes from that designer. Love them and way too expensive for a restaurant. I'll check out the flatware though. Now, not that this is a democracy or anything, but let me show you another I've been looking at that actually addresses some of the comments that have been made. I found that last round immensely helpful so let's roll the dice again... Its called Kaya Black Pearl cutlery and is a black stainless. Stays on the plate. Has some girth. Stylish but hopefully not annoyingly so. ETA: Read reviews on Amazon and these are an absolute no-go. Scratching issues.

No matter how busy we may be, definitely say Hi!

I'm going to show you something I've been eyeballing and reading all of these comments is making me second guess it. While I'd prefer my flatware stand out, it would be okay if it just disappeared all together - meaning good enough to make sense but not remarkable on a positive or negative side. LOOK HERE

I'm in the process of choosing new flatware for my new restaurant. My last restaurant used THIS. I liked the style but it turned out they were too big for many guests, especially women who preferred to use the small fork and spoon. I don't want to make that mistake again. My new place is much higher end and the flatware needs to match. Higher end doesn't mean expensive necessarily, but a stylish design. I'm interested in hearing (or better yet seeing) flatware that you've liked when eating out. Bonus points for contemporary design.

We have bathrooms! I'll be closing down Squatters Cafe on Oct 31st so I'll be sure to share so much that has been going on with Bulrush then. These days I seem to be obsessing over the perfect flatware.

I always wish it had been kept up. It was exhaustive when it was complete

Tape. Vinyl or electrical tape, although many people use painters masking tape.

I've not heard of it as a food in North America, but certainly for medicinal purposes. The Chippewa and Cheyenne both used it for pain relief, and I seem to recall other tribes using for other medicinal purposes. But, as for food that is new to me.

That's so odd that they're that far north. I didn't realize they were any higher than say Ohio...I guess its not that much further though.

They've become my largest (by volume) forage since moving back to the midwest. We pulled over 100# post-processing in three days. All vac-packed and ready for future use.

That's what they say. My 50 year old eyes didn't see it, but yes, that's what I was doing.

Jim - you know the difference between an online class and an in-person class? One teacher lets you shmoosh your cocoa butter from cavity to cavity on the cotton ball while the other tells you to throw the cotton ball out after two cavities. And that, my friend, made my good shine great.

My How I Spent My Summer Vacation collection (all the new skills and techniques from my summer chocolate workshops) : Citron creme brulee, bananas with caramel and rum, Pecan gianduja with Tahitian vanilla, Passion fruit cream, and Sesame honey caramel. #connoleyfinechocolates

Welcome @Nickos! Nice work. As you start exploring the forum you'll find all sorts of chocolate topics that might be of interest, and certainly can benefit from your experience. Here are a few that we regularly revive: Our showoff topic: Showroom Early years learning; HERE Trouble shooting: Backroom Confections: HERE

I addressed that in my press release, but so far none of the media have picked that up Maybe they will later. They are both forms of Southern cooking, and the distinction lies in the ingredients and a few techniques. For example (while none of this is exclusive), Ozark cuisine uses more pawpaw, persimmon and spicebush. Sorghum is the traditional sweetener of choice. There is a preservation technique that we're hurriedly researching where wax coated burlap is used to top fermenting foods. Again, you may see this in all of Southern cooking due to migration, but those specifics seem to have a stronger prevalence in the Ozarks.

Our big press release went out today: FEAST MAGAZINE

I thought we had a recent topic about this but not seeing it. I bought 5 packs of 5 beans each of $13.99 Tahitian. A little shorter than normal but they are definitely moist. Great deal! I'm stocking up.

Some more suggestions of recent topics: Storing bonbons in freezerHot weather chocolate production Making your own cocoa butters You'll quickly see that someone on here has always gone through what you might go through, and we are also happy to see new questions because often times it brings up an older topics that we haven't discussed in a while, and all of our skill levels have grown potentially giving us better information to share in our responses.