Reefpimp

I have subscribed for a couple of years and like the magazine. It's pretty straight forward and the recipes are pretty accurate. I've made a number of recipes from the magazine and I don't think there were any failures, or "what were they thinking" moments. ← As opposed to the Cook's Illustrated chicken piccata, which would de-molecularize your tongue and send it spinning to Calabria! Holy Lemon! Also, I did their recipe for gumbo (1999) step-by-step and ended up with a pretty good vat of soup that was absolutely crying out for a generous glug of sherry. How could they miss something that obvious? I think CI is pretty conservative when they're not whackadoo over-the-top.... I wish they'd reach a happy medium.

Sports Afield, Outdoor Life, and Field&Stream also show up ridiculously early. That's OK; half the fun of a fishing/birding/hunting expedition is in the planning. Can't cook 'em if I don't shoot 'em, right?

. In one case I could get a company 100% financing, quite a hefty tax credit and a guarantee of a 10% energy saving based on today’s rates. Positive cash flow from day one and they wouldn’t buy it. You are right, it is strange. ← Really? How about for a restaurant located on a converted icebreaker or buoy tender? Call my people, we'll have lunch. You're beautiful, babe. Really.

Given its numbing qualities, how can anybody tell what the food *tastes* like? And how do you get a whole plateful into that little syringe?

Depends on the type of bread. But in general, I think it's a crying shame that a person can't just buy a bag of crusts from a bakery.

Who do I gotta whack or snuggle up to to get into management?!?

I don't know about all that. I think that the cruise ship crew who don't get taxed, are not getting taxed because they're earning the money outside the U.S., at least "legally speaking" because the vessels are flying flags of conveinience. Because a ship is sovereign territory of the nation of whose flag it flies, any taxes would be levied by that nation. I may be wrong; don't quote me, but that's my understanding of international maritime law pertaining to payment of crew. Hawai'i, last time I checked, hadn't seceded from the Union yet. Every vessel employer I've ever worked for in the past has taxed me, so I don't see why this would be any different. In any event, as this is addressed by the Jones Act of 1928, I believe that even if they keep me in the galley peeling potatoes for 15 hours straight, I get overtime after 8 hours of work. So screw 'em. It can't last forever, and I've never had either a kitchen job or a mariner job where I stayed a galley slave for very long; I get moved up the ladder pretty quick. Everything mom and dad drilled into my head abut work ethic has paid off. Except the daily shaving. Still don't like to do that. BTW, Blueapron has also taken a position with NCL. We shall see what we shall see.

I'm thinking about it. I'd say they're looking for somebody more photogenic but then I think of Mikey and Betty....

Rum and coffee-mate is not an acceptable substitute for eggnog.

Perhaps far too cool for words. How long would some of the shrinking violets have lasted if they had had to kill, gut, de-feather and butcher a turkey for "Thanksgiving?"

Once you've used the industrial Kraft or Sysco wrap, you realize what an insult Saran is. I literally will not use it.

Fat Guy, I don't want you to feel like you're coming under personal attack from all sides on this Internets, but *why* exactly are you inveighing so strongly against what is meant to be something healthy? How in the world can you NOT see "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." as anything more than good common sense and sound advice?

I think you very much can judge a farm by its stink. I live right in the heart of dairy country--drove a milk truck for a few months lo those many years ago, in fact--and let me tell you, the best farmers had the cleanest farms. Yeah, everybody's got rats in the corncrib; fact of life. Cowpoo draws flies; silage ferments and smells funny. I've got to say, though, that by busting ass all day, every day, you can keep pretty far ahead of the worst of it. And for building character, nothing much beats standing in the bars of a manure spreader, chipping frozen cowshit off them in subzero weather. Not to mention getting up at four-thirty on the morning to go pull tit every single day of your life (and then ya gotta go milk the cows!).

Project, There is a HUGE difference between 'waste water' and a manure lagoon. And if you haven't smelled a turkey lot or a feedlot as you've viewed it, all I can say is that either you were standing well upwind or you have no sense of smell. I dunno; it just seems to me that anyplace that smells that bad can't possibly be turning out a superior product. But I'm just simple folk, and the kind people at Hormel have been up to the college school and they got letters they can put after their names and everything. *edit to add* This is coming from a guy who grew up in a rural area of Wisconsin and to whom a waft of cowflop is as heady and aromatic as Coco Chanel (No lie. Smells like home). But there's a world of difference between a day's worth of poo from 20 animals, and the manure lagoon--or runoff catch tank-- of a huge processing facility. Just as in the same way that a whiff of a hayfield in the cool evening is not the same thing as stacking bales in a haymow three degrees cooler than its flash point.

How about a short soak in a really salty vinegar brine? Wouldn't that serve the double purpose of killing surface bacteria, as well as imparting some flavor and helping to draw proteins out to the surface/skin?

Oh man. I remember when PBS was the ONLY source for cooking shows (and military history shows). After a long Sunday dozing on the couch, it all seemed to run together: "It was here, on this spot, that the Crudites met the Canapes. The carnage was horrific."

I'll try to read the article again when I'm not so ****in exhausted and can actually think. He sure seems to bring up some good points. If nothing else, his opening statement is certainly good common sense. Oh, you can argue against it and pick it apart and digress and rant and rave--but it's still good common sense. Not that "mostly leaves" are as appealing as an elk flank steak with duck-fat-roasted heirloom potatoes; but a meal like that is a shabby imitation of its potential self without a really good crisp salad of garden squeezin's and maybe some fresh-foraged chanterelles and morels I love morels

No I haven't; but I am going to box up my big pressure cooker and have them coat the thing inside and out ASAP!! (I just did a pressure check on it, took it to 25 PSIG and it was fine. I reckon if I never let it get above 15 PSI from now on, I'll be perfectly safe).

← Hell, I didn't know the plan was open-source. Perhaps you should refine that on the webpage. I'm just sayin'. I don't know that morality and technology will necessarily and therefore lead to a reduction in poverty rates. Although I think your goals are laudable, I'm not sure its as productive an avenue as (say) Michel Pollan's book, or the collective impact of Slow Food. Still and all, I'd like to repeat what I said above: If no one had ever said, "Hey, why don't we...." we would all still be working with bearskin knives. See above statement. I will. But I'm also interested in learning new techniques. I don't think technology is out of place in the kitchen. Induction cooktops are one hell of an improvement over coal-gas ranges and wood-fired ovens. (as a sidebar, my brother-in-law does blacksmith work as a hobby. He recently bought an induction forge. He can now take a 2.5X2.5cm bar of steel to welding heat in under two minutes. Induction is fucking cool.) I hope this is a paradigm that becomes predominant; professional cooks are woefully underpaid as craftsmen. Hell, just getting wages up to the level a journeyman plumber makes would be cause for ecstasy. Well, see, I didn't know that. I was operating on incomplete information, man. I respectfully disagree. All cooking is chemistry, albeit most people don't see it that way. Recipe development is applied scientific theory. Although it's more akin to alchemy than it is to molar-fraction research or whatever.

I do think Cantu Designs is being a little shabby in patenting some of these innovations. No, there's nothing wrong with making a little money if you can--nobody goes into business to hemmorage huge sums of cash. But still; it's antithetical to their philosophy, isn't it? The patent locks innovation out, while peer-review can keep innovation alive. Look at "fizzy fruit." Hell, man, I've been serving a composed fruit salad of supremes of citrus; or apple varietals in season; or peach and plum varieties--for years now. I throw the fruit in an old pressure cooker I have that I tapped a NPT adapter to, hook that up to the CO2 tank and pump 15 lbs in and hold it for 15 minutes. Out with the fruit, onto the plate, sprinkle it with Pop-Rocks and out the door it goes. I've used an iSi bottle and air-rifle cartridges before. Easy to use; warm water cleanup. Great as a starter or as a dessert. I do it because it's fun and a little different, and because I can charge at the rate of 8 bucks an apple that way. But patenting it? Horseshit. That shouldn't be why we cook. Fleischmann and Pons were innovators too. They patented their innovation, and innovated themselves right into laughingstocks.

No idea, they haven't set me up for the {airquotes}training class{/airquotes}. I'm in a wedding on May 6th--not my own-- so I'm going to beg and plead and whine and moan and cry like a schoolkid with a skinned knee that it has to be sometime after that. Besides, we're redoing the menu at the restaurant for which I currently work right now to include more game (farmed elk, goose, pheasant; wild-caught bluegill and perch) and Chef could probably use me through the transition. And I could use the money before I head out--if things do go straight to aitch ee double hockey-sticks in a hurry once I get there, I don't want to be stranded. If they don't then I'll use that money to buy a used motorcycle for getting around the island on. Win/win.

Not an episode goes by but I don't want to get marcel into a hammerlock adn shave that Wolverine 'do with a dull Shun santoku. Hot tip, Hair Boy: Don't think you're hot shit on a golden platter when you're only cold poo on a paper plate. I can't imagine what season 3 (if it comes into being at all) is going to be like.

My curent chef allows hair up to 3/4 inch long to go uncovered. I don't get it; follicles still slip and fail; the only difference is that a hair that falls into the food is less likely to be discovered. Of course, when I found that out, I immediately put a #3 guard on my hair clippers and went to town on my scalp. But I still wrap a bandanna around my oversized melon most nights because I don't want sweat running into my eyes (or the food). I'd quit a job before I'd wear a paper toque. They do nothing but look retarded.

Being the big guy with a brown belt in Thai boxing wielding a 10" knife, it's sometimes nice to not be argued with. Unfortunately, bank managers processing a loan request and snotty waiters aren't the same animal. How curious.