the latest from the series of tubes

From: “The Hospitality Talent Network”
Date: August 31, 2006 10:37:44 AM PDT
To: substitute
Subject: Sausage Maker positions are available

Dear Colleague,  The HospitalityTalent Network has Sausage Maker positions posted by Hills Foods Ltd on our network of job boards.

If you would like additional information on these career opportunities (at no cost or obligation), please go to the following links…

Please consider the following jokes to have been made:

Sausage making/politics/State Legislature joke
Sausage Party joke
Sausage/SPAM joke

late night toast thoughts due to SSRI withdrawal without any mahler symphonies at all

Shouldn’t toast be instantaneous? There’s no slow simmery magic or magic roasting chemistry going on. The raw material is fully cooked. It’s just dry heat applied to sliced bread.

Why are all toasters not 0.2 sec flash toasters that throw beautiful perfect computer fuzzy logic adjusted toast back you as soon as you hit the button? What’s holding us back?

thank you, drive through

more here

made here

Continuing Education in homph homph homph homph

I’m not a good cook in any complete sense. I’ve never been to a cooking school and there are huge gaps in my skills and knowledge. I’m a dilettante; I learn what interests me and get as good as I can at it. There are some things I wanted to master and I did them over and over and over again and got very good. There are some other really basic things I’m no good at. I check something off when I’m consistently successful at it.

This week I hit the target conclusively on marinara sauce, shellfish cookery, and mesquite-smoked meat cooked on a charcoal grill. Those had all been long journeys of improvement, especially the last one.

I recently hit my groove with omelets so they now come out just about perfect every time. The same is true for stir-fried eggplant. About a year ago I got most fish cookery, at least sautéeing, poaching, and baking, to a routine. I can also roast a chicken and get consistent results.

Two years ago I “arrived” with potato salad, stirfried green beans, cornbread, basic curry sauce, pot roast, ginger/molasses carrots, barbecue type sauces, and a slew of salads mostly with garlic or beets or cabbage or all of those in them.

It’s time to make another list of things to learn.

The new chain restaurant is here! The new chain restaurant is here!

The huge restaurant chain that owns Outback, Fleming’s, and various other Tchotchke’s/Flingers type places has brought their expensive seafood joint here, “”Blue Coral.” Best quote from the Register article is:

That was evident Tuesday night, as diners such as Stafford – clad in khaki shorts, an Oxford shirt and a Crevier BMW cap – admired Blue Coral’s high-back booth seats, iridescent-blue mosaic tiles and teak floors. The Fleming’s regular said he plans to cruise among Roy’s, Fleming’s and Blue Coral on a weekly basis.

“This is what Newport Beach is all about,” Stafford said.

Um. No. Newport beach is all about the Crab Cooker, the Villa Nova, Dad’s Donuts, the Blue Beet, and Original Pizza. Among others. There’s an actual town here and we don’t need any more chain restaurants for the guys in polo shirts and pressed khaki shorts and pressed executive hair.

I bet he has a Duffy electric boat, too. Snark. 😀

The full article is interesting, especially in the detail that America’s shitty chain restaurants are getting their profits ground to bits by high energy costs.

SAUCE from lazy me.

I like smoky barbecue. But I don’t own a smoker. Nor do I always have the wherewithal to drag the hibachi grill out and charcoal cook stuff. So I fake stuff up, to be lazy.

rice vinegar
tomato paste
fresh garlic
chipotle tabasco
molasses

This set of ingredients in vague quantities to taste makes goop to put on stuff before roasting or broiling it in the oven. It is in no way barbecue but it’s dangerously good. A person could eat a whole tri-tip in these circumstances if the person was big enough, which thank Heaven I’m not.

Fish list: what happened?

The Fish List is gone. Or at least its home page is, and points back to the Seafood Choices site. The list itself remains, but I don’t know when it was last updated.

This is weird and sort of disturbing. The Fish List was a project among the various organizations who had been keeping lists of environmentally less stupid fish to buy and eat. The Monterey Bay Aquarium, a couple of environmental groups, and a seafood industry group had managed to cooperate enough to make a good list of which fish were more reasonable to eat and healthier. I can only assume the alliance collapsed for some reason. So now we have competing fish lists. The ones I’d seen recommended as pretty authoritative before have differing objectives.

For now I’d recommend the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch which has lots of good info and also little downloadable cards in .pdf so that you can know what you’re doing when buying and eating.

You keep using that cheese. I do not think it’s cheese like you think it’s cheese.

cheez

100 Years of Innovation: Pasteurized Process Cheese Food.
Attach ripe olive slice, cut in half, to driver’s head, using dab of CHEEZ WHIZ, to form “smile.” Cut remaining half of olive slice crosswise in half for the “eyebrows.” Attach remaining 2 pretzel sticks to both sides of little weiner for the “arms.”
Q: Why is EASY CHEESE called Pasteurized Prepared Cheese Product instead of Pasteurized Cheese Spread?
A: Product differences or what is often referred to as standard of identity are determined by government regulations. Government regulations determine particular guidelines a product must meet in order to give a product its name. In July 2003 we changed the standard of identity , so the name of the product had to be changed from Pasteurized Cheese Spread to Pasteurized Prepared Cheese Product. Although the name has changed, the product still has the same great taste you’ve come to enjoy.

Q: Why was the Real Seal removed from the packaging of EASY CHEESE?
A: You probably already know that the dairy industry uses the Real Seal to differentiate between genuine dairy products and imitations. While we support this effort, we can’t justify the cost of adopting the Real Seal program across all our product lines.
Our Cheezy Military
Triscuit® Cottage:
Preparation:
PLACE 4 RITZ crackers in square on flat surface. Using 4 TRISCUIT Crackers for walls, assemble walls on cracker base, sealing seams with cheese snack.
CUT 1 TRISCUIT Cracker diagonally in half to form 2 triangles. Use 2 TRISCUIT triangles for roof support and 2 remaining TRISCUIT Crackers for roof, sealing seams with cheese snack.
OUTLINE windows and door with cheese snack. Decorate with candies and chocolate chips as desired.
So, what the hell is this crap, anyway? (American Chemical Society)
Easy Cheese: How Much Is Inside? (Cockeyed.com)
The future: bubblegum cheese, an explosion in the tube-snack industry,

joliet prison and 99 years, turn turn to the rain and the wind

I talk back to the car radio a lot, particularly when it’s not making sense. Today I heard a commercial shilling for a local supermarket chain’s loyalty program. The pitch was that you were supporting local schools because they’d give the kids a pencil for every 400,000 cucumbers sold, etc. The ad was pure SPIN selling, starting with “Education is so important. Our schools need new books and new computers all the time so children can progress. And there’s something you can do to help!” At which point I yelled “YEAH, YOU COULD PAY YOUR FUCKING TAXES!” That’s when I noticed that my window was opening and that the motorcyclist next to me was grinning at me.

Dinner: Chilled poached salmon with mayonnaise and dill; toasted pita bread with a dollop of hummus and fresh ground black pepper; caprese salad with fresh tomatoes on vine, fresh ovolini mozzarella, fresh basil, and good olive oil. Time to prepare: 15 minutes.

I was at Kéan for just an hour or so today, to cool off and slurp a cold coffee beverage. Rich unhappy people have such scrunched-up, sour faces even when they’re experiencing pleasures most of the world will never see. Looking dissatisfied when you’re having a dark chocolate mocha milkshake in an air-conditioned cafe in Paradise just after buying an iPod must be difficult, but they manage it.

At Trader Joes a plastic surgery disasters woman in her fifties was dragging her husband around hectoring him about their purchases. She’d perch angrily next to some item and pick it up: “Do you want these? Do you like yellow mustard? I like Dijon mustard. Do you want it? Are we going to get Dijon mustard?” He was a tired Tommy Lee Jones who didn’t say much except “Okay,” or “Go ahead.”

90 degrees and humid means that all the beautiful people were showing flesh today. Including the very genuinely beautiful ones and not just the ones who had purchased the standard of beauty as an aftermarket option. A six-footer surfer boy, all tanned abs and long bones and bleached hair-mp, was looking at frozen food next to a hourglass-figured blonde beach goddess with honey-colored skin and shockingly bright blue eyes. They were unaware that they were a Guess! ad because they were trying to figure out which kind of peas to get.

The flower shop next to Kéan has an appropriately fancy name, but their sign with their url on it looks like they’re selling the flowers eaten by a demon rather than those painted by an Impressionist. It’s not as obvious as “powergenitalia” but they should have realized.

I am currently maintaining crushes on at least three unavailable women. Go me!

In musical news, I’m going to see Steve Wynn this Friday night. It may well be a real Dream Syndicate reunion show of some kind. I have an extra ticket if you’re interested and can go with or meet me at McCabe’s Guitars in Santa Monica.

I have “Percy’s Song” as done by Fairport Convention in my head.

Tag: food