Pay it Forward

In the course of dining out the last couple of days, two things struck me as worth mentioning.

The first surprise came when I received the check at Bombay Spice, a restaurant claiming to "redefine" Indian cuisine by replacing fattening gee and cream with olive oil and fat free yogurt. That's a whole other post but back to the check.

I opened the bill and there was a silver dollar with a note that they recognize gas prices are crazy, it costs more to even drive to dine out now and they were so glad that we came. Interesting concept. I left the silver dollar for the server (on top of her tip, of course). You know, pay it forward?

The second surprise came today on the menu at Lisa G's. The menu announced a partnership between the restaurant and the Southwest Autism Research and Resource Center. The restaurant is allowing young adults to come and train in the restaurant (with their job coach). Interesting concept. And generous and touching, too. Pay it forward by helping others help themselves.

Sink or Swim

It's here! My new baby...my new sink! Oh joy, oh joy.

I finally picked out a sink after debating it for, oh I don't know, 3 years? What kind of sink to get? Stainless steel or one of those new composite sinks by Blanco?

Maybe I should stick with the porcelain coated cast iron sink that came with the house? I finally decided that stainless steel would suit me just fine, but with deep, large bowls big enough for my stockpots.

It was time for my old sink to go. The faucet was leaking, the porcelain finish was long gone, and the sink itself had serious dings from surviving 1,000 recipe testings for my three cookbooks, 500 cooking class preps, and a few meals I made just for us when testing and prepping wasn't in session.

I bought the sink from Loews, because they offered to come and install it, too. That turned out to be problematic. The first guy they sent over, Mr. "No," was not only just plain rude, he said I'd better be prepared to be without a sink until I found someone who could do tile work, if that became necessary. He didn't do tile work. He didn't know if it would need tile work, but if it did, he couldn't do it. He said the problem was that Loews didn't know how to sell sinks. I sent him on his way and called Loews.

They lined me up with another installer who did do tile work, in addition to installing sinks, if in fact, any tile work needed to be done. He didn't show up. I call Loews and they called him. He called me and we rescheduled. He did eventually come and he was charming, polite and quite competent. Turns out he didn't need to cut out any tile out after he removed the old sink but he could have, whereas Mr. No couldn't have.

None of that matters now. I have a new sink. It looks great. There is only one problem. I don't like it. I hope that I'm just suffering from separation anxiety over losing my old sink, and that I'll come to love this sink. But it's different. And I'm not sure I like it. But it doesn't leak and it sure does look good. So maybe I will like it in a few days or a week. I hope so, because it's mine now.

Word Nerds Rejoice!

I managed to escape the bookstore without buying a single cookbook. Yes, I know, a minor miracle. There is a simple explanation, though. I ran out of time before I could peruse the cooking aisle. I did, however, make a contribution to my fellow food professionals by purchasing a reference book on the history of coffee (for an article I'm researching) and Holly Hughes Best Food Writing 2007.

But what's really cool, is the new Bill Bryson book I bought. If you don't know this prolific, bestselling English author, he is best known for A Walk in the Woods about the Appalachian trail and A Short History of Nearly Everything, (the latter which we bought as an audio book and listened to while driving to Crested Butte, to Santa Fe and to Tucson a couple summers ago. It may be a short history of everything, but it's a long, long book...fascinating, but long.)

This new book is Bryson's Dictionary for Writers and Editors. Now, I know not everyone is comfortable curling up with a good dictionary, but I think it's perfectly normal -- and I'm having fun learning the difference between frowsty and frowzy. (The former means stale, the latter means dingy.) I did not know that before I cracked open his book, and am actively plotting my first chance to interject both words in the same sentence.

Word nerds rejoice!