Jinmyo

I hone with a steel before use, once a week use a stone. About every month and a half I have them taken out to a professional sharpener. That's the interesting thing about the Kyocera: You can't sharpen it without a diamond wheel. So you either have to find a professional with one or mail it to Kyocera who'll do it free of charge (บ for shipping). So far so good.

I love the food here in Canada. We have available to us lovely, lovely stuff. But the question was: "Certainly there are many types of game, and a lot of produce, that come from Canada, but have these led to dishes that are uniquely Canadian?" Which I understood to mean a cuisine unique to Canada using uniquely Canadian ingredients. Some native chefs like David Wolfman are using French techniques with caribou and so on and developing "Aboriginal Fusion". I suppose that counts but am not convinced. Yes, it's all immigrant cuisines. Nothing wrong with that.

Here's the problem I have with Global knives: Although the handle is textured, it is metal. If my hands are wet from slicing tomatoes or still have some oil from a marinade, I just don't trust them not to slip.

The "Rotato". http://www.asseenontv.com/prod-pages/rotato.htm Stupid rotating thing. Blade gouges the skin off lemons, limes, potatoes. You could peel around ten potatoes in the time it would take this thing to do one.

In the sense of dishes using ingredients unique to the terroire, no. Mosquitos. Black flies. More than you can bloody well imagine. In the sense of dishes made by Canadians, drawing on the "mosaic" of ethnic immigrant influences, yes. Sure, one can marinate fois gras in maple syrup and tart up a tortierre with truffles. But it's not particularly Canadian by doing so. Eastern seaboard cuisine was: fried baloney (cut thick) and mashed potatoes. Quebec cuisine was: peasant French without the bread, cheese, wine, cured meats, or salads. Cassoulet? Baked beans. And then there was Montreal's Jewish section with bagels and lox. Great, great, great. But Canadian? Sure, in that it was in Canada. Ontario cuisine was middle and lower class English. The praries were cowboy grub and Ukranian grub. We have mushrooms but most of the strains that are edible are imported. Fabulous ceps (porcini) and shitake in B.C. But over the past 40 years or so, there has developed truly great food. But the materials and influences were all imported one way or the other. The game is native (but not unique) but the produce is all from imported seeds. Nothing grew here except wild rice which isn't really rice and is available in the U.S.A. as well. I can readily buy esoteric chiles and even white truffles. But they're not particularly Canadian and not even grown here. (Edited by Jinmyo at 6:50 pm on Nov. 25, 2001) (Edited by Jinmyo at 6:55 pm on Nov. 25, 2001)

I'm nowhere near a coffeenista. I drink gallons of tea daily, some fine Chinese green teas ocassionally. But I'll go for periods where I must have a cup of coffee with cream and a pinch of sugar around 11 a.m. After working my way up to Illy (by being willing to pay that much for the pleasure) I took a step to the side. Same price range as Illy, but Malongo Cafe's Moka D'Ethiopie is absolutely delicious. Just mentioning it as I didn't see it come up in this discussion.