TimmDavis

Also for the sake of argument, cottage cheese is also a bit cheaper than ricotta - so some will go with cottage cheese because it's a cheaper alternative.

Eh that's about par for the course, I mean look at Robert Irvine - he lied and still has a job! Why not continue the trend right?

I absolutely agree! I never ever put my knives in the dishwasher. Not to mention it takes all of a couple of seconds to wash and dry the knives by hand. Why take any kind of risk with your knives?

I can attest to that, seen her booth lined up with lots of people at the Market. I don't see why you can't see chocolates at the market. A lot of people may want produce but there are also meat and fish mongers that make a killing at the PDX Market anyways.

Some usual suspects for me are white balsamic vinegar, apple cider, veal stock, jalapenos and few others. Actually made a sauce the other that with a little bit of scotch.

Sounds like a good grouping, though Falkner drives me up the wall. I can't really stand her at all. Something about her just bugs the ever living crap out of me.

I've got a buddy at school that's going to be serving his internship there. He had his choice between there and Charlie Trotters, but because his wife is going to be having their second child around that time - he wanted to be closer to home so he took TFL internship instead. I for one am jealous, though I'm doing mine at a great place here in Portland. Carlyle's, Chef Jake Martin is one talented Chef for sure.

Not so much the question they ask, it's just that usually when they ask such a question I've got my pie hole stuffed with food - so really all I can do is give hand signals or grunts in reply.

Knives, no question about it.

I loathe doing torne's...but I'm a member of our Culinary Competition team and we're gearing up for regionals in Seattle first weekend of April. And part of the skills salon is Torne veg. I'm school every morning just after 5a with the rest of the team, torneing the crap out of potatoes until it's time for class at 7. When we won state, the worst portion of the competition was in the skills salon. We were fine with processing our proteins, but the knife skills part killed us. The guy who drew the veg, was way nervous and took waaaay to much time to tourne and that squashed the rest of the time (we still had the pastry portion to go).

On The Line is a great book! I got it for Christmas, and read it through in a day or so. It's now one of my prized books in my collection. I think for me, being a culinary student (at the age of 36 no less) I liked how each station was broken down with it's mise list and everything. It's worth the money for this book!

Doing up some wings, jo jo's , jalapeno poppers and chips w/ dip. Simple to the point and best of all easy.

We're just being more thrifty with our shopping, getting the deals and what not. And trying to cut out those impulse buys. I wont budge when it comes to proteins, though I see a lot more chicken on the horizon. Good thing is right now, I'm in Intro To Baking (I attend a Le Cordon Bleu School in Portland) and we start the second week of the cycle on Monday and it's all about yeast breads, which from what I understand we'll be making a crap load of. So I know that we wont have to spend money on bread and the like.

Didn't have enough coffee in my system at that point, and my snark meter was set to high...

Ok, so by your admission of "pretty much anyone one on the food network", your even likes list should be under the worst: Ina Garten, Mario, Chiarello....all of them have or had shows on Food network.

I have a Messiermiester serrated knife, and it works just great. My Chef's knife is sharp, but I have tendency to have to push down depending on the crust. So my serrated works like a champ, not to mention it's reallllyyyy sharp.

I'd have to agree with you. In Skills I & II this is the way were taught. And it works great for me. I used to be a "chopper" but I found that this method also gives you a more uniformed cut when it's all said and done.

Good way to get that first post thing out of the way. I got mostly books so here it goes. "The Complete Art To Modern Cookery" Auguste Escoffier (obviously the translated version, though I would love to have a French version just for collection sake.) "On The Line" Eric Ripert "Alice Waters and Chez Panisse" Thomas McNamee Knife Guards for my knife kit (Most definitely needed, they didn't give us knife guards when we got our kits at school)