fresco

I've also heard that some people think it tastes like soap because they are allergic to it.

Can't say for sure whether the grinding mechanisms are all the same, but suspect they may be. In any case, they're all guaranteed for 25 years. Here's a link to a Canadian website, which has prices and info: http://www.internetkitchenstore.com/store/...0Pepper%20Mills

Although, if the bathrooms are foul, you do have to wonder about the kitchen.

I once made the mistake of ordering a cup of coffee at London's Victoria Station. When I took a sip, I thought they'd made some horrible mistake and given me something else, but the server assured me it was what they knew as coffee. It tasted like they'd brewed up Postum with Marmite--absolutely unrecognizable as being in the same family with any coffee I'd had anywhere else in the world. Where did you experience truly, memorably terrible coffee?

A creepy disgusting "members only" dive bar?

In the past few weeks, my son has managed to break the bread knife (he thought it was perfect for peeling and cutting a pineapple, ignoring far more suitable knives in the rack alongside it) and pretty well destroyed the blender. He also persists in using omelette pans to fry bacon or whatever else strikes his fancy. Also, I've noticed a couple of times recently unloading the dishwasher than someone has put a couple of my good knives through the cycle. No one will own up to it. As you can tell, I'm getting less and less tolerant of other people in MY kitchen.

The Fodors insert in Pure Canada is somewhat controversial: http://maritimes.indymedia.org/front.php3?...6&group=webcast

When I left Alberta to come here, people warned me that Toronto was the asshole of the world. So when people here insist that it is the centre of the universe, I always just say diplomatically that I'd heard much the same thing about Toronto back in Alberta.

Are President's Choice "The Decadent" chocolate chip cookies available in the US? They're a premium house brand by Loblaws in Canada, but I know this company owns a lot of supermarkets south of the border and think they were rolling out some of these products there. For a packaged cookie, it's pretty good. For the truly curious or homesick, they can be purchased through this website: http://web.ask.com/redir?bpg=http%3a%2f%2f...om%2fabout.html

Here's one: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?act=ST...t=19423&hl=foam

I have wondered about this myself. I have not seen described what the "original" tamale consisted of. (But then, I haven't looked all that hard.) I do wonder about a source for fat, though. The native americans did use game animals for fat. I have been told, and have read, that the true origin of fried turkey is really pre-conquest. When the natives would kill a bear, for example, they would render the fat and fry the wild turkeys, geese, ducks and other fowl. The story goes that the technique was "rediscovered". That makes me wonder what kind of fat sources may have been available. Water fowl? Geese and ducks can have prodigious amounts of fat. Fat can be rendered in pottery vessels by including water. In fact, that is one way to start rendering lard that is used today. The Aztecs, (well, the elite, anyway) were sophisticated enough that they had shrimp and other shell fish delivered to the interior by runners from the coast. That makes me think that they may have developed some source of fat for their tamales and only later substituted the lard. I would love to find a comprehensive study of pre-columbian cooking. This site is by no means comprehensive, but it deals with the African oil palm in Costa Rica, where it has been around for the past 4,000 years or so. Source of fat for tortillas is specifically mentioned: http://jrscience.wcp.muohio.edu/FieldCours...lHistoryof.html

It's worth noting that you read it first on eGullet: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?act=ST...5289&hl=dessert

I've tried Chiado and Adega--first good, second not so good. But have been wanting to try Casa da Ramboia on Dundas near Dovercourt. Can anyone tell me about their experience(s) there? Anyplace else worth trying?

Interesting piece. One question it raises (in my mind, at any rate) and doesn't answer is whether the decision to review the restaurant was precipitated by the restaurant's cancellation of its advertising contract--ie, that someone in authority at the paper thought it was a good way to open negotiations for a renewal. Once the review ran, the whole thing seems to be rather hamfisted. It does seem surprising, in retrospect, that the paper was willing to sacrifice a valued 27-year employee over a $30,000 contract that they seemed to have little prospect, in any case, of reviving.

Making and freezing a bunch of pesto helps a lot. If you start the water boiling as soon as you get in the door you can have pasta with pesto and a simple salad in about half an hour. Just about any omelette takes about 10 minutes, and that includes the filling. Fish and shellfish are really fast, if you happen to have them fresh on hand or can pick them up on the way home. Mussels in a simple white wine sauce (or with a chorizo and herbs thrown in) takes probably about 20 minutes to prepare and five minutes to cook and seems like a much more elaborate dish.

This is the ol' mary jane is a stepping stone argument. I always thought of it as the "stepping stoned" argument.

I'd say poison penmanship is preferable to puff pieces.

It sounds like you all have succeeded in introducing Nero to the notion of wine bracket creep. She starts out at $3.66 a bottle, you jump her up to stuff at $8 a bottle and soon she will be unable to contemplate drinking anything selling for less than $75 or $100 a bottle.

I think Ronco and K-Tel were quite different companies. K-Tel was started by the Kives family out of Winnipeg. The Kives started as carnies, I believe, selling things like the veg-o-matic on the fair and carnival circuit. Fresco, I seem to recall that during an interview on Larry King (where Ron rotisseried a chicken during real time to show how fast his product was) that Ron said he was also K-Tel. It is certainly possible that Ron Popeil learned how to sell stuff by working for the K-Tel crowd (a lot of people did, including Garth Drabinsky, the disgraced former Broadway impresario) but the company was founded by Philip Kives, as the link below shows, and was run out of Winnipeg for many years. Just reread the Gladwell piece (read it when it was first published a couple of years ago) and he mentions that Popeil started out selling stuff on the boardwalk at Atlantic City too, and that his family invented the Veg-o-Matic. So it's possible that the Kives crowd got their start with Popeil and not vice versa. Gladwell doesn't mention them. http://www.cpsa.com/Awards/Gui/Html/Philip...ipKives_bio.asp

I sure hope there will be full food reports at some point.

Nor I--but I always thanked the sugar for that.

I think he meant "puffer fish" piece.

With all due respect, that's not reasoning, is it? She's going to have to do better than that. I think meat is submerged in a solution of salt, saltpeter and sugar, then removed from the solution and allowed to dry. In this case, yes, I could easily see sugar helping out, since it's hygroscopic. But that's curing, not brining. I'm not a chemist, and you may be right. I started brining stuff after reading Grigson's book (she was considered authoritative enough that Charcuterie was translated into French and widely followed there, the home of charcuterie.) Pretty well every brining recipe I've seen since mentions sugar, without going into why. It may well be one of those things like pan searing a roast. For years, food writers said this was done "to seal in the juices." More recently, food writers say this is crap, and the reason to do this is to give a better flavor to the roast. But the reason doesn't matter so much as the result.

I'd like to hear the reasoning on this. I've never heard it before. It seems to me that unless it's water soluble, it's not going to be able to infiltrate the meat in the same way as the salt. Even then, the size of the molecules could inhibit osmosis of some ingredients (I'm thinking of polysaccharides). So I don't usually bother with spice and herbs, since much of their flavor is in the form of oils. Aromatics like onions, garlic, celery and so forth seem (to me) to have limited success, unless you want to sweat them first or boil them in the brine and let it cool. More trouble than it's worth, in my book. However, fruit juices and ciders do work, as do vinegars. I often add lemon or lime juice to brines for chicken. On her foodblog, I think fifi mentioned sour orange juice for pork, and I've used sherry vinegar with tenderloins. I'm with Jim on the sugar. I'll add it in small quantities to pork sometimes. In The Art of Charcuterie, Jane Grigson says sugar is added "to counteract the hardening effects on the meat of salt and saltpeter."

I think Ronco and K-Tel were quite different companies. K-Tel was started by the Kives family out of Winnipeg. The Kives started as carnies, I believe, selling things like the veg-o-matic on the fair and carnival circuit.