Thanks for the Crepes

Hi @karenlucas, and welcome to the forum! I thought I was pretty knowledgeable about food until I found this place and joined up as a member about ten years later. Now I realize, I have only scratched the surface, and if I lived to be 100, I would never be able to learn everything about the cuisines, food cultures of the world, and the customs that surround food. There is so much to learn here. I too would be very interested to hear more about your restaurant. What is the name; where is it; what kind of food do you serve; how long have you been in that business? I think many of us who love food fantasize about owning or running a restaurant, but it is a daunting business and not for those who do not like to work very hard and bring a passion for excellence. I'm sure there are many others besides me who would like to hear your stories about your life of owning a restaurant. You will also find many experienced folks here who are always willing to advise and help in any way they can. Glad to see you here. TftC

@robirdstx, You always cause me to look up your restaurant posts and wish I was there! So much good food right up my alley on the menu and in the Yelp photos.

I would like a commute like yours @Duvel. I found this translation of HKD to USD so $5.12 US, and certainly not more than one would pay here to insure and maintain a car and fuel it on an average commute. Plus no traffic to deal with and beautiful views as you arrive to and from work. Not so sure about the typhoons, though. That would certainly be rough.

I just buy them at Food Lion, where they are fresh cut at the store and shrink wrapped on shallow styrofoam trays, not the kind that are deeper and usually infused with carbon monoxide with expiry dates way out from what fresh meat lasts. Walmart carries a lot of meat like that, with the carbon monoxide poison gas. Does anyone know, why not nitrogen, which is the majority of what we breath every day and not poisonous? That would push out the oxygen too, which is the problem with appearance of fresh meat. I went on a grocery shop once, because my husband's friends had talked up Walmart groceries. I showed him the expiration dates on these packages of meat a week or more out, though and he agreed we needed to leave with the whole produce items we had picked up. Food Lion may be our low end, low cost grocer, but they have an in-house butcher operation with fresh cut and ground meats, unlike WalMart. And you know what? when the local TV station does market basket comparisons, Food Lion beats WalMart on prices for a typical shop by a small margin. I think a lot of the FL products are better, too. I pan grilled a chuck eye steak indoors the other day. It looked well-marbled in the package, and tasted good, but not as good as ribeye. I am sure mine would have benefited from sou vide treatment, as it had a chaw to it, but thankfully, I still have good teeth, and that's part of the fun of eating to me. There's another one in the freezer for later on. I can sometimes get ribeye on sale though for a dollar or so more per pound than chuck eye, so ribeye is still the favorite in my book. Chuck eye seems to not go on sale here. I paid $5.49 a pound and I can get my preferred ribeye for $5.99 or $6.99 on a good sale. It is normally ten bucks a pound or more.

Very nice-looking breakfast, blue_dolphin. That polenta looks exactly like the white corn grits I cook up. I like them creamy and loose like that too. If you cook an extra serving and put it on a salad plate in in the fridge overnight, you can fry it in a little oil the next day for something even more delicious. It will thicken up and solidify overnight. Fried grits/polenta pop oil like crazy, though, so if you decide to do it and have a spatter or fine pizza screen, it will be called for. They sure do taste good, though. You want them golden brown on both sides, but no need to use a lot of oil and if you blot them on paper, very little grease. So good. The last time I fried leftover grits, I realized my stainless splatter screen could be used as a pizza screen. It has a handle, but that is stainless too, so could go in the oven with no problem. So it was elevated from unitasker and is now stored with the pizza pans and perforated pizza pans in a much more accessible place. It's probably 13" diameter, designed to cover a 12" skillet.

Surprised to hear that the grounds maintenance crew responsible for taking care of destroying my landlord's property here in Cary gets out to LA to. Sorry for your frustration, and I share it. I won't get started, because if I did, I'm afraid I might manage to get myself banned from the site.

Yeah, you would not have been pleased to be present and a victim of my first attempt at stir fry. In my defense, this was 42 years ago and with Betty Crocker as my guide. Don't get me wrong, Betty was way ahead of her time for international cuisine, but between her failure to stress the importance of pre-prep and my inexperience ... well, you know. Lesson learned.

I always prep ahead for stir fry. Everything! The chopping/slicing of meats and vegetables, assembly of all ingredients ready to go into the hot pan, including mixing sauces. I do this when I'm ready to cook the dish, though, so I'm not cold storing the prep. Stir fries are enough stress to get everything the right texture and doneness with everything prepped already. I do like to cook a one pot soup sometimes, where you render the broth from meat and bones first, then leisurely chop your veggies to add starting with the longer cooking ones first and ending with the delicate ones. This is a very relaxing, no stress meal to cook for me as I enjoy chopping, but not so much time pressure. I like to wash lettuce at least an hour before using it, especially in summer when our cold water out of the tap is not very cold at all. I shake off excess water, put it into a clean produce bag and put it back in the fridge to chill and absorb the water to become crispy, cold and delicious. I leave the leaves whole and tear into bite sized pieces at the last minute. I don't wash it too far ahead, though because lettuce keeps better on an intact head with the leaves carefully pulled from the outer layer. I do not understand bagged salads at all. Exception: spring mix, but that needs to be used pretty quickly. Some things, like green split pea soup actually improve if you think to make them the day before. The texture thickens and the flavor improves. I don't chop veggies or tear lettuce for future meals, I think the quality degrades quickly, but I have the luxury of time. I will marinate some meat preps overnight in the fridge occasionally. My favorite onion rings call for mixing up flour, salt and baking powder, dredging your rings, then mixing the flour mixture up with an egg and buttermilk or milk. Then you dip the pre-dredged rings into the batter and let them drain and semi-dry on a rack over a baking sheet. The recipe calls for further dredging in bread crumbs, but since I don't like a lot of breading on rings, it perfect for me to skip this step. They are like tempura rings and so good. I need to make some soon, as very few restaurants can make an onion ring I like. Most of my prep ahead involves making a batch of something that's more than I can eat, eating a serving that day and freezing the rest for later dinners. That has to be something that freezes well like chicken cacciatore. Even then, I add freshly prepped green peppers for the reheat, because I don't think they fare too well in the freezer. Of course I cook only for myself and have time. In restaurants or other institutions where a lot of people need to be fed and where time is money, I realize the prep ahead is the only way. They have a lot of turnover of ingredients too, and the good ones probably only prep ahead for that day's service, I would think. When I entertained, I would do everything ahead that I could think of as close as possible to the time of the event and doing the items I judged would suffer least by storage first. Nothing wrong with prepping ahead as long as you can still serve a fresh quality end product. This is from a person who mixes salad dressings in batches for the salad with no leftovers, though. I am so spoiled.

I also freeze rice and pilafs. I think your recipe would work fine for the freezer, but you might want to add the almonds after thawing/reheating, as I'm afraid they would lose their crunch during storage with the moister ingredients.

I had a large salad again with green leaf lettuce and strawberries with the same dressing as last time, but a bit less of it and with a little toasted sesame oil. I fried up a serving of leftover grits and drained and blotted them very well on paper, and they were very nice. I love fried grits, but thanks to the gods for my splatter screen. I did not get burned by splattering grease this time. When I was preparing two servings for my husband and me, I spread the leftovers on a dinner plate, and this time I used a salad/dessert plate and it was much easier to deal with, especially in the flipping.Then I pan grilled a chuck eye steak and this was good as well. I had a couple of Krispy Kreme glazed donuts hours later as dessert after each was nuked separately in sequence for about 9 seconds.

I know, but I was just trying to tell you a way to salvage your polenta. This four pound bag of white Quaker grits I bought was a bear until I started using Sylvia's cold water method. It has more finely ground content than any grits I've ever dealt with before, and I've been buying the same brand for decades. The fine starch floats up in surface tension bubbles in the water even in cold, but can then be stirred into the cold water, where it will set up due to the cooking in boiling water and create lumps that are very difficult to smash into submission. Just trying to help, but I'm very sorry if I offended again.

With all due respect, ma'am, because I know you have a degree in agriculture or similar, organic free range chicken that I can buy tastes a lot better. It's half the size of the factory farmed 99 cents a pound ones in the mainstream, more expensive, but tastes like chicken perfume to me. Like the ones that my grandfolks raised and I helped butcher in Louisiana. They truly were free range and had a large lot to roam around behind a tall chain link fence to keep predators out, and a chicken house with nesting boxes to go into at night. We ate the eggs and the meat, and also raised pork, which was free range. I went with with Grandpa to a local school to collect the food waste from the cafeteria to slop the hogs with. Best meat I ever had the privilege of eating. Also good luck defending Monsanto and Roundup any longer. I know you are a fan. Have you seen the class action lawsuit commercials for it being a carcinogen? Not to mention the fact that farmers, like my family, have pretty much always known it would kill or severely debilitate you pretty quickly if you got it on your skin as a contact poison. I don't have an agricultural degree, but it doesn't take one, IMO, to know that Monsanto bad, chickens raised confined in their own waste products and ammonia gases bad, and free range good. I will concede that some companies do cheat on the free range thing, and that's because our regulations are so skewed toward big business, but there is still some decently raised and very good, superior-tasting meat and chicken products available. I can taste the difference. They are a specialty item and cost a lot more now, but if more people are aware and exert their influence, the price will come down and be affordable to everyone again, as it was before the big boys got greedy. Dinner will be a lot tastier when this comes to fruition. Sheesh, China, with a much larger population than we have manages to deliver live chickens that have been truly free range to market and they are killed to order. They are also cheaper than we pay. I cannot personally testify, but strongly suspect they are much tastier than Tyson and Perdue's offerings. What is wrong with this picture? I do want to acknowledge that I think you have said in the past that you, yourself raise truly free range chickens. I can't really understand why we have come to be at such odds lately. I always thought you were a very cool lady, but when it comes to Monsanto and them trying to patent the very genes of life, including a "terminator" gene, which even the big business lobby has not been able to push through into law ... yet, I have to speak up. Apparently the idea of that gene escaping and ending all life on the planet is scary enough to stop even the greediest of the Greedy Boys.

That is just a scrumptious looking crostata, David, and I'm so glad to see you back in action in the kitchen!

Yes! after perusing the Tookie's website and Yelp, nothing would do a couple days ago except a cheeseburger. Thanks @robirdstx! And the rest of y'all, when you eat out, please say the name of the restaurant and at least the town or city so I can go look at some delicious food porn. Even those hole in the walls without websites usually have a presence on Yelp. Even before the internet and Yelp, one of my greatest pleasures in life was reading a good menu. Boy, do I dislike pushy, impatient waitstaff when it's my virgin voyage at a restaurant. Now, I always can get familiar with the offerings and even advise anyone with me when I go to a new restaurant.

In forty and more years of cooking, I look at recipes more as guides than prescriptions, and usually do very well with using them just as a guideline. Whole peeled onions keep in the fridge very well for a couple weeks, even. You need to put them in an impervious container so they don't stink up your butter and other stuff. I find recycled and washed dairy containers like sour cream, cottage cheese, or large yogurt containers work well for this purpose. They are very well designed to keep odors out but also work well to keep them in. I never waste onions anymore, and I usually buy huge ones where I can pick the well-cured, non-moldy ones that have a higher yield than the slightly cheaper, but not in the long run, bags of smaller ones. I think I come out ahead. I never waste onions anymore or put too many in a dish for good taste just to keep from wasting them. There's also this adorable dedicated onion saver, but my solution is free if you buy tubbed dairy products. After a while, I've gotten pretty good at chopping or slicing just enough onion in a ratio that I will find pleasing in proportion to other ingredients. Occasionally, I will dice a little too much on the cutting board, but I have no qualms about letting the garbage disposal eat my mistake. This happens more often with salsa, pico de gallo or guacamole than anything else, because onions vary in sharpness and I add to taste without the washing in water trick, because I like a little sharpness.

Thanks for sharing your awesome Vietnam vacation with us, @KennethT! I learned so much. If you want to share more non-food related stuff, I for one, would be very interested.

I used to be able to pick up mesh bags of shallots at the Asian grocer for a very reasonable price. Since they went out of business, I make do with onions. The mainstream grocers want too much money for their shallots. I found reasonably priced ginger again at Patel Brothers, the Indian grocer. I should look around for shallots there next time if I can remember amongst all the distractions of never before seen amazing ingredients. Patel Brothers is to me like Disneyland is to a kid. Bonus, lots of stuff is cheaper than the other grocers too.

I made some grits tonight that turned out very creamy and smooth from a 4 pound batch I'm still working through that tend to lump like crazy. This cold water method from Sylvia Lovegren tames the lumps easily at least for the stove top method.

Last night was a freshly store-ground chuck burger on a grilled bun with mayo, mustard, a slice of white onion, green leaf lettuce and a Campari tomato. It hit the spot. No sides, but I tried to eat a peach that got a little smushed on its trip home from the store in my backpack. The reason it got smushed is that is was overripe and mealy. I fear the other three peaches in the fridge are like that too, and that it may be the end of a short, but spectacular local peach season. After unceremoniously pitching the offending peach into the woods for the coons, I consoled myself with a couple of Krispy Kreme donuts microwaved for a few seconds to warm them up. Tonight was an enormous salad of green leaf lettuce, sliced strawberries and blueberries, dressed with about equal parts olive oil, white vinegar, sugar and soy sauce. I love this salad. Then I had a couple of very meaty leftover pork ribs and a bowl of extra creamy grits, thanks to this tip from Sylvia Lovegren. I'm stuffed and satisfied now, but I'm not ruling out more Krispy Kreme deliciousness later tonight.

@JoNorvelleWalker, Here's a link to one that's 12 cm/4.75 in. Still a little smaller than you specified, though. You might have better luck searching in inches here in the States.

If you have ever walked into a commercial factory farm chicken barn, you will wonder why salmonella, woody breast, weak and/or deformed bones, sad looking livers and now white striping are the only problems and how it possibly took this long to start surfacing. Hint: you need respiratory protection for even a brief visit to these barns. It amazes me that any chickens survive this hell. Many don't. Quote from the kitchn link: "Well, How Common Is It? A 2016 study by University of Arkansas and Texas A&M found 96 percent of a sample of 285 birds were affected by white striping. But according to a spokesman for the National Chicken Council, the striping condition only impacts a "small percentage of chicken meat" and is limited to larger birds." HaHaHaHa. Not drinkin' that koolaid. Organic free range chicken had been put on the shopping list.

I love the way you think! I can't afford to pay attention lately, but I have dreamed of having two ovens like I have seen or heard described in others' homes. The dual dishwasher set up idea never occurred to me, but it's an absolute beaut! Another benefit is when you have a big dinner party and are exhausted, you don't have to wait for one load to finish before loading and starting another.

I'd eat 'em! You might be interested in viewing this link from Yelp about Lahmacun from one of the most popular restaurants in Cary, which just happens to be Turkish. If you pop the photos out into another tab, (Right click on image, select Open in another tab in Google Chrome) more detail is visible. Also note that they depict two Turkish pizzas stacked on top of one another. That does seem like a skimpy amount of beef to cover that much dough in your linked recipe.

Last night was ground beef, onion and hot pepper enchiladas topped with shredded cheddar. I had black beans and a lettuce and tomato salad with sour cream along with the enchiladas. Tonight, after Norm mentioning Joe's BBQ and kayb and chileheadmike chiming in with their favorites, of course I had to go check them all out on Yelp and look at all the BBQ porn. So ... ribs tonight with a nuked sweet potato with butter and salt and fried zucchini. The vegetables both came from Cottle Farms in Faison, NC, less than 70 miles from here. Both Food Lion and Harris Teeter are making an effort this year to bring our local produce into the grocery stores for us customers, and I really appreciate it.

Some Waffle House employees in Charlotte got a very nice over tip recently.