That's exactly what I would have done!

Not about politics, but I won't eat at a restaurant (that we enjoyed the one time we ate there) because the chef/owner very obviously cut in line in front of me at a stand at the farmers market. Just rude.

Having been a server at a restaurant that has an extensive cocktail list, I used to get a version of this every once in a while. Goes like this

Customer: Hey, how is Drink X? (made with bourbon - ingredients listed after cocktail name)
Me: On, it's great, subtle barrel flavor, a little fruitiness and bubbles from the cava.
Customer: I normally don't like bourbon, but I'll try it.
Me: What spirits do you like? Let's find one that you will enjoy.
Customer: I don't like liquor. I like wine. But I hear you have great cocktails so I want a cocktail.
Me: Well, you can definately taste the bourbon in that one. We've got some great wines here too.
Customer: Yeah, I'll take Drink X anyway.

10 minutes later Drink X remains unconsumed and customer says "I really don't like this, It tastes like bourbon. Can i just get a glass of Chardonnay?" And then we'd dump and comp a $12 cocktail.

Happened more often than you woud think.

I've got the Williams Sonoma Soup book that they publshed in 2001. The only two recipes that contain cabbage are the Chicken Minestrone with Orzo and the Hearty Beet Borscht with Beef and Cabbage. Neither sounds like the one you are looking for, but if one is, I'd be happy to type out the recipe for you.

The stl Hispanic Festival is downtown this weekend at Keiner Plaza. It's a total blast and they have the best tamales there.( Look for the Lindo Michoacan stand.) They've got dancing, bands, all kinds of foods, and beers and margaritas.
http://www.hispanicfestivalstl.com/gs...

As a server, the problem that I have with incomplete parties is that it's like getting quadruple sat when your party of 8 shows up two at a time. I've got to make 4 trips to the table to take drink orders (and answer questions about our beers/wines/cocktails) in a relatively short window of time. Not necessarily a problem for me or the 8 top, but my other tables aren't gonna get the greatest service while I am tied up in the time consuming process of getting the first round of drinks for the people who keep joining the 8 top.

I follow the recipe instructions (except for the liquor sub) exactly and get delicious little whole cherries without any texture issues. I mean, they are clearly cherries that have been processed, but they are not falling apart or torn up.

Hands down the best thing I can. I can them in half pints and have to stop my husband from dumping a whole jar onto a single bowl of vanilla ice cream.

The Ball recipe for Brandied cherries calls for 10 minutes in a BWB for pint jars. The Ball recipe uses 6 lbs cherries, 1 cup of sugar, 1 cup of water, 1/4 cup lemon juice, and 1 1/4 cup brandy. (I use a mix of brandy and Luxardo.) 6 pounds yields 6 pints.

Cherries are high acid enough on their own that your recipe sounds safe to me. Ball's got a recipe for plain cherries hot packed in water that are processed in pints, so I would imagine a little liquor sub would only help with the preservation.

if you have the Ball Blue Book, there is a recipe for strawberry preserves in it.I made them last year and they were sweet, required lots of sugar. can't find the recipe online but this blog has it exactly the way I made it from the book (Not my blog, btw.)

http://thepotlicker.com/2010/07/11/yo...

Sugar the berries, let them sit, boil and rest over night, heat again and boiling water bath.

Those Pound Plus bars are the greatest thing ever. We keep a stash in the house for baking. Went through a bunch over Christmas. Quality chocolate for cheap.

We also love the nuts, dried fruits and vacuum fried bananas.

I never leave TJ!s without a bunch of those 19¢ bananas either.

The ice creams are all good.

The tubs of cookies are usually good, especialially the chocolate chip oatmeal and the vanilla wafers.

I cannot live without Soyaki marinade. We keep a spare bottle in the basement for emergencies, (Seiouslly.)

Midnight Moo chocolate syrup is delicious in coffee or on ice cream. Fleur de Sel caramel syrup is heavenly on their French vanilla ice cream.

The breakfast bars "this blueberry walks into a bar" are exact replicas of the nutragrain cereal bars. Rolled oats & peanut butter fiberful bars are filling and give you a candy like snack for 135 calories per bar.

I love love love the All Fruit Bars ends & pieces. 100% fruit leather that is sold for cheap because it's not in perfect sized pieces.

If you can find the sea salt and turbinado sugar dark chocolate almonds, get them They've also got caramel squares covered in dark chocolate that are heavenly. (The shaving lotion is awesome too.)

I could go on and on. Love me some TJ's.

I'm a server and I would comp it. I'm just trying to serve food and make people happy, I'm not trying to be right or stop a (rare) person from trying to scam a free app. I'm not the food police. It's not worth a confrontation or possible scene in front of my other tables.

Comp, replace (or both) and move on.

The Italian sausage isn't vegan. They contain egg white powder. (They are great though.)

Since you are gonna be so close it it, I would check out Pi on Delmar. Great pizzas and they have some awesome looking milkshakes (haven't tried on yet, but they look amazing) and a nice selection of beers. Pi is kind of a favorite among locals - but they aren't St. Louis Style pizza.
http://www.restaurantpi.com/delmar-menu/

I'm one of the people who won't eat something past it's expiration date or "best by" date. I hate to think of just chucking the stuff in the dumpster in the alley, so I bag them up (or stack them up) on the retaining wall next to the dumpster with a note that says "take me" . They're usually gone within a couple of hours and if they are still there the next day I'll pitch them in (maybe once this has happened.) We know we have dumpster divers here in the neighborhood, might as well make it less difficult for them.

I think it's strange that so many people are telling you not to do it. My experience working in bars and restaurants is that the employees DO go out with customers. That is, if they are not already dating a coworker.

During my time in the industry, I went on several dates with people who asked me while I was working. Still friends with some.

People ask bar and restaurant workers out all the time. I don't think it's strange. If she's not interested all she has to say is "sorry, I'm seeing someone" and nobody's feeling are hurt. Trust me, she can let you down easy without making you feel akward. I'm sure she's had lots of practice.

I married someone who used to be a customer at my old bar.

He was crafty though. He didn't ask me out on a romantic date, he asked me if I wanted to go to concert - no romantic overtones, just "hey we both like this music, wanna go to this concert."

So I don't think it would be weird to ask her out on a friendly outing involving one of the things you had in common. Just approach it from a frienship kind of place and see where it goes.

edit: (Oh yeah, I would do it on your way out, so that there's no uncomfortableness if she says no.)

Well I'm gonna guess this guy's great aunt Dottie from Carbondale and the wife's cousin Kevin from Paducah* didn't understand the small plate concept. We'd drop off 4 bowls of shrimp for a table of 8 and someone would say "well, he's gonna need one, too" pointing at their husband and we would explain, "they're for sharing" and then after these people ate several rounds of what they perceived were appetizers, they were all sitting there wondering when dinner was gonna come out.

It was uncomfortable to work.

*I made up the names and locations, but it was clear to us that the majority of the guests were not locals.

No one should do tapas for a wedding event. I worked a tapas rehersal dinner and the guest were very confused about the smaller portions and the whole idea of sharing plates. I felt sorry for the host because the party wasn't cheap but it came off that way.

I got married last month at a local restaurant in town. We had about 30 people at our party and offered a choice of 4 options (beef filet, salmon, pork medallions and some kind of chicken breast prep). When we got the itemized bill, it turns out that only 1 person ordered the chicken, 2 ordered the pork and the rest were evenly split between beef and salmon.

I realize this is anecdotal, but it seems to me that people do not want to eat chicken at a wedding.

I agree about the good booze comment. We offered appetizers, a choice of soup or salad and mains and still spent more on booze than we did on the food.

Also, I don't think that 80 people is that many that food will be sitting for a long time. A good caterer shouldn't have a problem with that.

I do the same with a plastic Organic Girl tub. I clean my own and reuse that tub. I put a layer or two of paper towels in there and the lettuce will easily last a week.

We cube up the boneless pork chops and marinate them in TJ's Soyaki. Pork is excellent cubed up on skewers.

I come from a family of people who enjoy wine and cocktails with dinner. Even if I told my family in advance that they would be on the hook for their own drinks at dinner, the minute I saw everyone up from the table and at the bar ordering drinks (which they would do), I would feel like maybe I hadn't made the best arrangements for the party. And that would make me not enjoy the party very much.

So yes, you can make arrangements with the restaurant for a cash bar, and maybe your family wouldn't think it was strange, but if its gonna make you feel like you are hosting a bad party, it might not be worth it to save some money. Better to plan a party where you can afford the entire tab.

(And I think a party with 12 adults and 2 kids is more of a grown up party than a kids party, so I don't think the rules of "no drinking at a kid's party" will apply.)

+1. My understanding is that salt will cause lower fat creams to curdle. Learned that the hard way when I was making a morel cream sauce with half and half. I only use heavy cream for pasta sauces now.

I grew up reading your husband's column and was always a fan. I'm sorry for your loss.

Tart and Sweet has a recipe for Candied Kumquats that looks good - I've never tried it though. Let me see if I can post the recipe without violating copyright laws here:

3 lbs kumquats halved and seeded
2 cups water
2 cups sugar
1 vanilla bean
5 cinnamon sticks
5 star anise pods

Blanch kumquats 3 times using fresh cold water each time. Strain. Rinse.

Make a syrup out of the water and sugar and vanilla beans that have been scraped from the pod. Boil 2 minutes.

Pack kumquats in jars, add cinnamon stick and star anise to each jar.

Use proper canning techniques, like packing hot fruit into hot jars and topping with hot syrup. Leave 1/4 in headspace. Remove air bubbles, wipe the rim, add lid and band then process for 10 minutes .

Makes 5 half-pints.

(Hopefully this makes sense. I changed to wording on the instructions to avoid copywrite violation.)

I bought a Cuisinart ice cream maker too and my experience is that it would take a lot of time to go through a quart of cream. I've made variations of the premium vanilla bean ice cream in the recipe section of the manual, but have found that I have to half the recipes in order to get the ice cream to set up. Full batches overwhelm the freezer. Then you have to factor in the time to refreeze the freezer cannister part.

So you could technically get away with buying a half pint if you wanted to test that thing out. It doesn't make the cream any cheaper, but it might make the sticker shock a little less intense.

I think you would be able to get more air out with a Ziplock freezer bag. I think a plastic container would give you too many air pockets and places for ice crystals to develop. You can kind of squish the air out of a Ziplock before sealing it.

(Also, to clarify, Dave Lieberman puts all the meat in the bbq sauce. I don't like to do that. I prefer the sauce on the side when the meat is served.)

I do the popcorn and wine combo too! My new favorite is popcorn cooked in coconut oil. Really good.

My boyfriend is out of town right now. Yesterday I had a couple packets of Cup o Soup wth a bunch of oyster crackers and today I made myself mashed potatoes with gravy for lunch. Dinner will most likely be some Valentines Day candy before I go to work tonight. Delightful. A far cry from the nice meals I make when he's home.

Boil up some crawdads (crayfish/crawfish)!