fresco

Marcella Hazan can be a little didactic for some tastes, but she does know and love her vegetables--pretty well any of her books, but especially Classic Italian Cooking, treat vegetables reverently and imaginatively.

Jaz, thanks. I'll look for it. As I recall from ABT, Stein and Toklas did have a Vietnamese cook at one point.

That's one way, I guess. I don't see this as yet another way for greedy owners to stiff the staff. Companies try all sorts of compensation schemes to try to link the quality and quantity of contribution to an employee's pay. Hell, there are whole industries out there dedicated to dreaming up new compensation arrangements. Why should kitchen staff necessarily be any different? In fact, I'd want the cooks to be every bit as motivated to do good work as the waiters.

"That tends to attact the bottom quality server since the next door restaurant doesn't require them to tip out heart of the house. " Or not. I'm open on this question--but if the kitchen staff were paid in such a way (tips) that the satisfaction of the customer had a direct bearing on their take, it might make for a very motivated kitchen. It might also attract a better class of kitchen staff, who would gravitate to the money.

Would cooks work for tips if it meant they'd make more?

The Kitchen Sink Tomato Sandwich in Ernest Mickler's White Trash Cooking calls for two slices of bread coated with "one-quarter inch of good mayonnaise" or roughly half the thickness of the tomato filling. It could well qualify as a Kitchen Sink Mayonnaise Sandwich With Tomato.

I don't get book clubs. Part of the charm of reading is that it is one of the few (licit) solitary pleasures.

'Likewise, "I want to be like Emeril" has rapidly taken on a similar kind of brass-ring position. Having so many aspiring owners and Emeril wannabes in the labor pool means that the hypothetical career line-cook has to accept the lower earning standard as well.' So in addition to being Food and Wine's favorite stud muffin, Emeril, by helping to depress kitchen wages and presumably, keep a lid on restaurant tabs, is the consumer's best friend. Tony Bourdain, eat your heart out.

Living in Canada is a lifelong exercise in the good Protestant pastime of pleasure delayed. This is especially true when it comes to tomatoes fresh from the garden. Enjoy yours now, because in a few weeks, I will be feeling both virtuous and sated.

That's the piece describing Stein's adulatory introduction (in 1942!) to the writings of the Vichy politician, isn't it? Think it may have been what prompted me to have another look at Alice B. Edit:Actually, that last bit is from a letter in the current issue--I missed the Janet Malcolm piece and will try to see if we have it around here somewhere.

Rereading (or at least leafing through) The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book. It is odd to encounter a woman who views some of the 20th century's most acclaimed writers and artists completely in terms of their food tastes, but downright spooky to have the French occupation and liberation (and the entire Second World War) reduced to the disappearance and reappearance of choice edibles.

So much for that theory.

"In every city Cheesecake Factory opens a restaurant, we are the #1 and highest grossing food service establishment." First time I've ever heard of Cheesecake Factory. Maybe it hasn't hit Canada--or my part of Canada--yet. But if the above statement is true, other operators have got to be taking a hard look at how these places run. I'm not sure from reading all of the posts and the original insider's description just what the attraction is. Mostly fresh ingredients that aren't actually murdered in the kitchen? Doesn't sound like a killer USP. Three-hour waits? There can't be that many masochists around. Frozen cheesecake? I can get that--and it's not bad, not bad at all--at my local Loblaws supermarket for a helluva lot less. The only thing I can infer is that this is a purely suburban phenomenon, in which case the affluent burbs may be the undiscovered Eldorado of the restaurant world. Why would you possibly fight the competition and pay the high rents downtown when you can make a killing out there in the land of the commuter? The great mystery is why more smart operators aren't following Cheesecake Factory out there. Or is this what the Las Vegas restaurant phenomenon is all about?

Anna, I don't know whether you ever venture into Fortune Housewares on Spadina below College, but they have white cotton aprons for next to nothing. It's a popular spot for George Brown College cooking students.

Kids. My son won't drink wine or eat fish but will drink coolers and eat frozen packaged burgers. Plastic? Bring it on, he says.

Am I the only one who finds it unpleasant to drink water (or anything) from plastic?

I have a perfectly good pasta machine, bought years ago for about $30. It does a fine, if slow job of cranking out all kinds of shapes, but occasionally I find myself musing about shelling out more money for a pasta attachment for the kitchenaid, or even a stand-alone electric pasta maker. Then I think, this is nuts, wasteful and unnecessary and start thinking about something else. What are you most frivolous, extravagant or shameful gadget longings and how often do you give in?

Cormac McCarthy's novel, Suttree, includes a character who goes to jail for "spiking" watermelons: "Suttree has abandoned his wealthy family and his intellectual past to wander the slums of Knoxville like some latterday Leopold Bloom. He encounters spirits domitable and indomitable alike: hermits, drunks, thieves, bullies, prostitutes, transvestites, blind men, grifters, preachers, gravediggers, mussel harvesters, parasites, innkeepers, and a witch, even a youngster with an unnatural attraction to watermelons."

"Edit: Jeez...how could I have forgotten corkscrews? Although I'm faint with lust when I see a Rabbit in the hands of one of my oeno buddies (Guajolote? Awbrig? My cousin Cort) an eight dollar corkscrew can open a bottle of wine. Just fine." My Rabbit corkscrew comes under the category of When Cheaper is Just Fine. My brother, who owns a liquor store in a small Alberta city, thought they'd be a big hit in an oil community with big disposable incomes. But the local tipplers couldn't figure out how to put them to use on a bottle of rye, so his total sales were zero. They became Christmas gifts.

Our preferred water glasses are English beer glasses, which hold an imperial pint. Oddly enough, they seem to disappear when my son and his friends are drinking beer.

J. P. Morgan ranks the heavyweights: http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/07/10/Consu...itysuits_030710

Adam Gopnick's little brother Blake goes on at some length in the Washington Post about his discovery that one of the best things at a recent art exhibit was the sponsor's coffee: http://www.msnbc.com/news/936130.asp

Foam Pants, Don't know that yeasted waffles pack a bigger taste wallop than non yeasted. In fact, the taste is more delicate. Very good with maple syrup.

Agree about yeast based and fermenting overnight. It produces a very light, very crisp waffle.

You do have to hand it to Kerr, though. How many TV personalities have been a huge success completely pissed AND THEN win an entirely new audience with the thin gruel of born-again Christianity and low-fat food?