fresco

It may be time to put a price tag on your irritation level. Get a few quotes from the pros and you'll soon know how much the cabinets really bother you.

I probably could order via amazon us, but it sounds like a hassle, especially with customs these days. Not sure we can do without one for six weeks (!) but thanks for the offer.

I'll take a look at Kitchenaids. Amazon.ca doesn't, unfortunately, handle much besides books, cds and dvds.

Our cuisinart just bit the dust after about 20 years. I've heard the newer models aren't as well built. True? What's your advice? Should I get another cuisinart or is someone building a better food processor?

Don't strip. Sand and prime.

What about Mrs. Tommy, then?

This is just about exactly my approach. My wife, who is more finicky, insists on scrubbing our various boards down with a bleach solution from time to time. It makes her feel better and doesn't seem to do any harm.

Two things are probably going to make all the difference--your painting skill and the quality of paint you use. If you have a ton of time and can paint without leaving brush strokes, it may be worth your while. You may want to look into melamine paint or some other superhard finish. Invest in a good primer. Changing all the pulls also makes a huge difference. And if you don't have the patience, hire a really good painter to do the job for you. It will still be a lot cheaper than new cabinets and the result should look great for the next three years.

It's controversial, but this study at least seems to support the notion that wood, as far as hygiene is concerned, is better than plastic. That aside, wood just seems more pleasant to work on: http://fp.norex.f9.co.uk/hygiene.htm

The last time I drank Czech beer was in Prague about 10 years ago, and it was pretty good. Much better than most Czech food at the time. Can't remember the last time I had Bud, if at all.

Do you know whether print publications that have web extensions maintain the same ethical standards for both?

It is a dumb expression, isn't it--and until I looked it up, didn't really understand where it came from: http://www.quinion.com/words/qa/qa-bat1.htm

The new crop of potatoes are in, and I'm hungry for salads made with them, including a fall version with mussels, mayo, apple, curry powder and coriander, and a Spanish version, from, as I recall, Penelope Casas's tapas cookbook, with orange and lemon juice, dill, onion and olive oil. Any others since this thread was last active?

Food critics are a whole lot more than a surrogate set of taste buds. For that matter, they're more than their last meal. I guess it's probably important to know whether a critic smokes, but don't you want to know quite a bit about their biases and blind spots, their quirky preferences and rabid animosities, when you are reading a review and deciding whether you should take a chance on a place?

Ethical issues are, by necessity, a lot more muddied when it comes to 'reviews' on ecommerce sites. In the days of yore when I was a 'real' journalist, I would never have written a positive reivew of a product just because its producer was an advertiser, because my readers had the expectation of objectivity. When I crossed over to The Dark Side and entered the realm of e-commerce, I didn't have any qualms about embedding product links in buying guides because, frankly, none of my readers expected that I was giving them unbiased advice. On the other hand, I think Amazon sets themselves up; their 'reviews' feel objective and so their customers are always offended when it turns out the Amazon editors are on the take... but hell, of course they are. They're selling you books. It does them no good to tell you their product sucks, and it's a little naive to expect otherwise. Don't get me wrong: I still feel very strongly that journaistic entities MUST maintain the "separation of church and state." (We editors always got a good laugh out of being 'church,' and I guess I still do.) Publications that produce reviews have nothing to trade on other than their credibility; people sure don't buy them for the perfume ads Editorial credibility is like virginity: Once you've lost it, it's gone and there ain't no getting it back. ~Anita Why "by necessity"? Because there is less money floating around? Because there are fewer bodies to do the jobs that need doing? Because the connection with the reader is less tangible? I don't get this--don't you start with an ethical standard and do whatever it takes to maintain it?

We're within spitting distance of an "r" month, so I got mussels for dinner tonight. It was kind of like having snails--the sauce was great, but the molluscs themselves were tough and stringy and small. They need another month or two to fatten up.

Picked up the last bottle of a 1995 Periquita Classico special reserva today from the local liquor story and it is very good.

I've tasted both--provimi and grass fed. Provimi is worlds better. Grass fed is half way to being beef. Don't know that I have tried every single cut of each, but certainly a loin roast, chops, and liver. Provimi liver is especially good.

Nope, not me.

Think Nixon was the ketchup and cottage cheese culprit: http://www.foodreference.com/html/fketchup.html

I'm wrong--was going by memory. It's over a year but usually well under two years.

"Maturity" is a very relative term--think most steers are slaughtered at one year or under these days.

I'm no veal expert, but isn't the confinement system, where calves are fed milk byproduct or whatever and not allowed to move a muscle, designed to produce something called provimi--ultra-white, ultra-tender and quite expensive?

They don't count for much.

Is it accurate to characterize meat from calves that have been grass fed as veal? I'd be inclined to call it beef, myself. Veal, as we know it, is a byproduct of the dairy industry--the unwanted bull calves were slaughtered young and sold before they were weaned. I don't see anything cruel about this.