Food Schill

How is that restaurant food so often doesn't taste anything like what it is supposed to be? How can a kitchen with trained chefs, sous chefs, specialized equipment as well as ingredients I can shop for in my local grocery store, produce coffee, tea and meals that have no taste? What happens to create this? Is it me? Do my taste buds refuse to cooperate once I'm eating some selection from a restaurant menu? I don't have high expectations, just possibly unreasonable ones. I want the food to taste like what it is supposed to be. If you purport to offer me French onion soup that has nothing approaching the flavour of said dish--how do you achieve that and consider it reasonable to charge me $6 for it? And in a dish so shallow that one cannot fill a soup spoon with the liquid? Are you, the chef, betting that I will happily dine on three drops of swill and be satisfied with my memory of what French onion soup ought to taste like? The menu claimed the soup was created out of broth, but for all the flavour in the broth it might as well have been the leftovers from the breakfast 'coffee' carafes. Do you as a chef (forgive my use of the term when it clearly doesn't apply) ever eat the food you and your staff make? Are you then all receiving medical treatment for digestive problems? Or for an overload of interesting unpronounceable chemicals in your bloodstreams?

And the coffee. Whoever decided that 'coffee' was merely a brownish liquid created from caramel and a toxic sludge of 'flavours' which have never even been in the same warehouse as a coffee bean; and then has the nerve to sell this as coffee?

No wonder North Americans are obese, we are forced to eat fried potatoes in some form or other merely to get something approaching flavour in an average restaurant. And I'm not talking here about my experiences in some greasy spoon off the main drag where surprisingly the food is often better and much cheaper. Oh no, my complaint stems from several days of eating in major chain hotel restaurants when compelled to do this while travelling for work.

To give credit where credit is due, I can say that even a hotel restaurant can do eggs over easy, but if I have to look at eggs any time in the next week, I'll probably cluck. End of rant!

The Ides of February

With official spring five weeks away, there's not a bit of relief from winter in sight yet. Okay so maybe getting more rain than snow counts but there's still snow with every precipitation event so I'm not sure if that counts toward springness.

The 'marmalade' sweater being done I had a look at how much handspun I had left. Is there enough to make a vest from this. My usual rough and ready guestimation process complete I believe I'm blessed with enough of the yarn.

Then I hear about the progress of my qiviut blend from the mill in NB where it has been sent for processing and I am now so twitchy and excited in anticipation that I'm even prepared to do some house cleaning (for which this is the perfect energy) while I wait. Don't faint dear reader, but hey I live in comfort knowing that you have no idea what that entails in my household. The qiviut will be a 60/40 blend with an oatmeal coloured merino. Alyson at the mill said it blends in so well that there's no noticeable colour change from the original qiviut down. There was 23.6 ounces of down when it was cleaned and de-haired. There will be 2 pounds of roving for me to spin.

I'm now considering what else I can afford to send to the mill this winter since I don't have time to pick and card my acquired fleeces due to work commitments and the weariness that ensues. So I'm dreaming of pretty fluffy roving from say a couple of Shetland fleeces and perhaps even the Cotswold.  Dare we dream?

Off to Sydney to do a two day workshop on The Age Advantage Program which I'm looking forward to, though much as I enjoy Cape Breton, it is not my destination of choice in February. Somewhere warmer might nice, but that's just about any place except my house, though the area right near the wood stove is toasty enough.  So I suppose I should consider myself fortunate to spend 3 nights in a hotel?

It's nearly time to prepare some chicken curry for supper.  I had my first ever taste of white truffle (or as close as I'm likely to get to that) when I put several drops of truffle infused olive oil on my scrambled eggs.  Not sure what to make of this very potent flavour, less than an eight of a tsp went into flavouring my eggs.  My early comment on the experience--haunting....