SLB

The other thing that is bewildering to me, on top of the ravaging of the word "clean", is the perversion of the word "carbohydrate". It took me years of confusion to figure out that what a lot of faddists mean by "carb" is actually "starch".

I recycle happily in accord with the NYC law, although this podcast made me ashamed of my un-diligent rinsing: http://outsideinradio.org/shows/onebintorulethemall With respect to the arguments above, I do use cloth napkins. I genuinely prefer them on function, but the actual reason I use them is because I am cheap. I use about one a week. I still do use more paper towels than I totally understand, though. I need to figure that one out. I do not have a toaster or a microwave; I use the oven or a double boiler for those functions, so I think this means that my energy use is incredibly inefficient. I use a no-rinse dishwasher. My understanding is that not only do most of the new dishwashers not require rinsing, but the theory of the current dishwasher detergent is that there is food-residue on the plates to prompt an enzymatic reaction; the detergent needs something to work against. My dishes are definitely clean, unless I have failed to properly scrape. I recently began segregating food waste for composting, which involves me deploying part of my freezer for collection and part of my time for hauling it to a collection site. It's been startling to see how many vegetable trimmings I toss; my ancestors near and far have all got to be howling in their graves. Honestly it's motivated me to begin to rethink a lot of things -- I don't think I can commit any more time to food prep, which is the commodity that seems required to make use of trimmings other than compost (I don't have animals to feed) -- but it seems to be kind of nuts. I certainly wish I'd committed to composting years ago. And the other thing that has become unavoidably troubling is the fact that my non-recyclable (landfill) garbage is entirely soft-plastic packaging. I don't even buy prepared food and I seem to have all of this packaging all the time! It's stunning.

Very useful feedback. I can't wait for my hocks to get here.

How does the bacon seasoning compare to the hock-jus for seasoning? Has anyone here had both? My tentative operating assumption is that the bacon seasoning is stronger. I use pork stock a lot, smoked-hock-based for mild and smoked-neckbone-based for strong. On that -- I would LOVE a tip for where to find some neckbones of the quality of the hams in these threads. I'm going to call the purveyors on the list to see, but any leads would be appreciated.

Here's what I got back from Anson Mills, cut and pasted: Your Carolina Gold Rice and Sea Island Red Peas are new crop .. meaning they are live (viable) and aerobic when milled. They have associated robust and unique aroma/flavor profiles when cooked. When stored ambient, both will lose that lovely aroma/flavor profile because it will volatilize when you open the bags for cookery. Stored frozen, this will not happen. With regard to your fresh cold milled to order hand pound emulation Carolina Gold Rice... because we choose to emulate how rice was prepared from scratch paddy rice a la minute for cookery before the industrial revolution, we hull/mill so that we just nick the outer bran of each kernel leaving the inner bran layer and germ intact... this form can oxidize and/or spoil stored at room temperature even though we vac pack on CO2 envelope at -10 F. to protect this rice for shipment at ambient temperatures for about 2 weeks only. We mill this way for flavor.. Carolina Gold Rice is suppose to be "non-aromatic" rice.. milled new crop "partial white", which is how we mill to emulate hand pounding.. it is slightly aromatic which we love.

So. Anson Mills came up on the cooking with grains thread, and I realized that I am dying to know -- who really freezes their Anson Mills goods? Every.Single.Item I've ever gotten from them has come with instructions to freeze or use, but . . . . I do tend to freeze the corn products, because my mind can grip the notion that rancidity could be a possibility there. But I just got a box of rice, and I can't understand why I would freeze rice. Or the peas, frankly. But. I want to know: are y'all freezing your rice? Am I going to be grieving???

After reading this thread, I'm going to order some of the Anson Mills rice, which I've never had before. Their polenta is my very favorite on the planet, though, and I can't recommend it enough. The other corn products have a justly-earned rep, but I personally think there are a lot of good cornmeals out there, if we're talking basic cornbread opportunities. That said -- I hate how at Anson Mills you have to either buy a tiny pouch of an item or 10 pounds. I don't get why this works for mail order. By "works" I mean works for the retail consumer. Sigh.

I think beans are good-looking! (ps -- sucking up in order to get a spot in the bean club)

Me too! It's my favorite kind of exercise! Stay tuned.

For me, this is the utility of the fatties: I won't eat as many. They function like a true "side". Cause with [any variety] of French Fries, I'll eat a mountain of them in bliss, and then lick the salt off the plate after. It's not really the taste that gets me all fiended out, it's more like the texture or something. I don't know. But I get so lost in french fries I sometimes can't remember nothing about the protein.

I know plenty of African-Americans who won't even eat watermelon in the company of white people, because they don't want to bring to anyone's mind anything even close to one of those horrible pictures. This is old-school, for sure; but it persists. It's a trope that's left a pretty deeply felt sense of insult.

Here's an article on the history of the derogatory association of watermelon with an irrationally negative view of African-Americans: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/12/how-watermelons-became-a-racist-trope/383529/

I thought line cooks at fine-dining-type restos made good money. Actually, I really thought I'd read that this was the case in "Kitchen Confidential" way backalong. So that's why I was startled.

Woah.

Having done the math, I now think the MA meal tax was not applied to the surcharge here, so that concern is allayed.

But can they collect sales tax on it? I was talking about sales tax. However -- this is going off topic.

I suspect it probably does. Thanks.

I'm back in my office today and reviewed the receipt. You will see, the Kitchen Appreciation Charge is actually subject to sales tax. Taxing a surcharge seems, frankly, questionable. And -- since most customers would tip on either the total or subtotal -- which includes the surcharge -- wouldn't the disparity in compensation be replicated -- bigger basis for tips for the FOH?

I haven't loved cauliflower rice, and one thing this thread has made clear, I'm doing it wrong. I'm overprocessing the cauliflower to a pulp, and then cooking it too long (I was wondering why mine is ALWAYS yuckily mushy unless I've essentially fried it). One question -- do any of you freeze it raw after ricing it? If so, do you blanch it all all (which I do when prepping florets for the freezer). I confess I tried it once and it was a disaster. But in my head, frozen un-blanched cauliflower is not a good idea. This is possibly something I got from my grandma who died thirty years ago, but it stuck. Actually -- I have a second question -- I am stunned at how little rice you get out of a whole cauliflower (and I trim and rice the stem, too). It seems . . . wrong or something. Does this bother anyone else???

I was presented with this at a resto near Boston: Actually, what I was presented was the other side of this card, which said "Kitchen Appreciation Notice" on it, or something like that. I didn't turn it over until I got the bill and saw the surcharge, at which point I walked over to the hostess station and picked the card up (they had collected it from where we were after we got a few dishes into our meal). Given the notice, it's not the slick move that put @donk79 off; but I admit, it hit me a little weird.

Hello folks, long time no bean-posts. I'm looking for ideas of what to do with pigeon peas besides Caribbean-style rice-n-peas. I find pigeon peas to have a distinct (and kind of funky) taste, so I never want to eat them plain as a side. I do like rice-n-peas quite a bit, but I have a pound of the beans in my cupboard, and another half pound cooked up in my freezer; I thought maybe I could branch out. Who eats these? What are you doing with them?

This article may be of interest: https://story.californiasunday.com/resnick-a-kingdom-from-dust

I live in a NYC apartment with windowboxes only, and in any event failed to get winter stuff planted this year. [I think that's supposed to go in the Flower Gardening thread . . . .] But anyway, I spied this on the train the other day, on the back of someone's very large instrument case. I thought of y'all.

I confess I had forgotten all about Pimento cheese until I recently ran across a picture from @Shelby who was having a sandwich of it for breakfast on one of those blogs. Suddenly I wanted a pimento cheese sandwich, bad. And then this thread. And finally, I just came back from Vermont, where the cheddar is EXCELLENT. It's gonna be a weekend of pimento cheese trials, that's for sure.

Thanks for the tip, Shalmanese.