jsmith

I use the President's Choice White Chedder variety. It calls for 1/4 cup each of milk and butter, but I replace that with 1/2 cup of whipping cream. Then I add a bunch of grated cheese and more whipping cream.

Another source for food grade plastic buckets is U-brew wine and beer supply stores.

Not sure how available they are south of the border, but the unibroue beers can all be aged. Every time I buy a six pack I put the date on the top of one with a sharpie and drink the other five. The web page lists how long they can be aged for. Somewhere on the web page there was a writeup on aging as well but I can't find it. http://www.unibroue.com/products/bieres.cfm http://www.unibroue.com/our_beers_eng.html The above two links are both from the manufacturer's web page, but sometimes list different times for the aging of the beer. Very confusing!

I'm curious what the restaurants response is to the 22% gratutity they charged when the menu stated 18%.

Interesting responses. Nakji, that is what I meant by fluffing. When I watch people make rice, at least half seem to fluff it, half don't. Prawncrackers, I'm talking about mostly white jasmine, basmati rice, and short grain asian (sorry not sure the type) rice cooked in a rice cooker. I've never fluffed it as it seems to form smaller clumps when I do that, but I'll try in the future.

Is there a general rule of thumb on fluffing rice? Always/never fluff? Fluff the long grained, leave the short grained unfluffed? I generally never fluff rice, I find the texture goes mealy and the rice loses it's moisture earlier and becomes crunchy. My wife always fluffs her rice, she thinks I'm crazy for not fluffing mine. Am I missing out on what could be better rice? A quick search on google seems to indicate most people are like my wife.

They're great for cutting pizza when it's sitting on a hard surface.

I think if you were really serious about this you would only frequent places that include a service charge. If enough people did this it would pressure restaurants to change. Stiffing the service staff doesn't offer any incentive for the restaurant to change their business practices. You're just saving 15-20% on your meals, paid for by the people serving you.

Went to the webpage, they've already given away 1,000,000. They say to check back later. Thanks for the tip though.

Just curious, sorry for taking the thread off track - Is most fish sold in Canada previously frozen? The fish sold as fresh in the summer is much higher quality than the fish sold as previously frozen in the winter. Does the fish degrade while being held at freezing temperature or something? If the fresh fish was actually previously frozen it doesn't make sense to me that the quality would be so much lower in the winter.

I don't have a problem with people not killing their own food, but I do have a problem with people who eat meat disrespecting hunters.

I'm not sure about soda, but for beer I prefer a can to a bottle as the can protects the beer from the light. Drinking out of a can is disgusting though, I always pour into a glass.

If you have to peel a lot of garlic, blanching it first will save a lot of time.

We recently moved into a house with a really smelly fridge. After some internet research I tried the top three results I kept getting: 1) Spray about 500ml of 99% rubbing alcohol into the fridge, making sure to cover all surfaces. Keep the fridge running for about three days with the door closed so the alcohol circulates through the varius hoses killing all bacteria. 2) After that got a bag of charcoal briquettes and put them on varius plates and left them in the closed (still on) fridge for three more days. 3) After that I filled the fridge with crumpled newspaper and again let it run for three more days. I'm not sure what made the smell go away, but the fridge was odorless after that. I think the baking soda might work as well, but I'd spread it around multiple plates to get maximum surface area.

My two big issues I have in other people's kitchens are the lack of a non-stick frying pan, and that whatever method they use for washing their dishes always seems really messed up to me (usually involving mouldy dishcloths).