Hi RJ
Welcome to CookingBites.
The only thing my days working in a restaurant was how to make decent gravy and therefore steak and kidney pie. Decent here is in terms of northern English folk art the pub end of the market! But there are never any left over at the end of the day... Oh the other thing it taught me was that sheep are amazingly sensible and know all the hot spots in the tarmac that slowly release their heat during the course of the night. This is great until you are driving home on unlit single track country lanes at half one in the morning... Still they were always in the same place, I just had to learn to remember where...
Anyhow dig in. The Cafe is for anything that had nothing whatsoever to do with cooking, otherwise everything else had a home. If you're not sure, take a guess then use the report button and just ask us the double check its in the best place. Don't be afraid of the word report, it is simply a way of raising a 'helpdesk' question, nothing more.
You'll find your first few posts will be moderated, it's the same for all newbies, just to help keep the site free of spam and advertising, but once you get going your replies and threads will turn up straight away.
Two of the challenges at the moment are quite challenging! The Spice Challenge was centred around star anise, but had since been extended to include fennel, aniseed and liquorice because it really is challenging members to come up with recipes where the central flavour is star anise! The other one is the recipe challenge. Again it's a challenge as well. That's more a competition (winner gets to choose the next ingredient) and that one had to have celery as it's central ingredient. The other challenge is Tarte Tatin... It's drawing to a close soon I think but it can be a sweet or savoury Tarte Tatin.
Anyhow, welcome and Merry Christmas.
SNSSO
(Site Owner)
