Saturday from HELL!! (long)

[Silent-Hunter]

That can't possibly be legal!

[wolfie]

Me - You take a stick of butter and mix in honey until it's to your liking.

Her - But what's the recipe?

Clearly she's on the wrong side of the competence line when it comes to cooking.

Definitely the sort of person who, if they try to make ice cubes without the recipe, will burn them.

"What do you mean by this instruction here? It says to blanch the almonds by putting them into a bowl and covering them with boiling water until they're barely covered, letting them sit for a minute (no more, no less) and then rinsing them under cold water. I don't understand. I don't know what blanching is."

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that blanching is a process to heat the food enough to kill off certain enzymes but not cook it. I believe the name came from the fact that some of the enzymes, if left "live", will turn the food brown (root of "blanching" is from the same Latin word as the term for "white").

[sms001]

...correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is ...

I believe the thrust of Mongo's point was that the person framed a precise, step-by-step description of "blanching" with "I don't know what blanching is."

[Grendus]

I was actually told to "work or be fired" when I was actually quarantined by the health department. I had something HIGHLY CONTAGIOUS and the antibiotics weren't working.

No I did not return to work.

Shame you didn't have video chat, you could have put your boss on with one of the Hazmat guys. That'd be a legendary story.

[Sapphire Silk]

I was actually told to "work or be fired" when I was actually quarantined by the health department. I had something HIGHLY CONTAGIOUS and the antibiotics weren't working.

No I did not return to work.

Did you get fired? That would not be a firing for cause if you were under quarantine, and you would be eligible for unemployment.

[BookstoreEscapee]

I'm actually in the ironic position where I DON'T need a sick note if I call in sick O.o

Seirously, my boss actually looked at me funny when I walked in with a sick note the day after I called out

When I had the flu a few years ago, I went to the doctor a total of 4 times. The first was on Day 3 when my temperature got up to almost 104 (it had been rising over the previous day and a half). I got a note just in case, even though I had worked on Monday (it was Wednesday) and my boss noticed right away that I was clearly not feeling well (but I didn't have a fever that morning so I went to work). The following week I ended up back at the doctor with "borderline pneumonia" and got another note, just to be safe. My boss told his boss that he had them if necessary, and his boss said "What do I need that for? Do you believe she's sick?" (His boss is not in our building.) Apparently they don't even really start logging sick days unless you're out for more than a few days in a row. (The other two doctor visits were just to make sure my lungs were OK since I was still coughing a lot; #3 got me a second antibiotic, but it was a Friday so I didn't miss any more work other than the couple hours I left early, and #4 was just a checkup a week later.)

When I was in college I worked in food service (on campus), and I got a really bad cold. I called work and they said I needed to find a sub, but I had never gotten a copy of the phone list, so I had to go in to get it. The manager took one look at me and said "never mind."

[downforit2008]

I once went to a diner for lunch, and the very nice waitress who served me was very awesome and kept giving me the free refills of strawberry lemonade I liked. My total was $9.79 for the lunch.
I gave the waitress a $10 bill.
"I'll be right back with your change!" she said cheerfully.
"No, I'm paying with my debit card." I said. "That's your TIP."
The waitress did a double-take, and her face lit up with complete excitement and joy. She thanked me gratefully. I said, "No, THANK YOU. I think you're an awesome person and the meal was great! I'd tip you more, but this is all the cash I have on me."

I know I really made her day. $10 isn't much, but I'm sure she was expecting no more than $1.25 in tips due to my lunch cost, and she got a 105 percent tip or whatever. That was my example of kindness to a server. I just wish more people would be just as friendly.

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that blanching is a process to heat the food enough to kill off certain enzymes but not cook it. I believe the name came from the fact that some of the enzymes, if left "live", will turn the food brown (root of "blanching" is from the same Latin word as the term for "white").

It is and it isn't. Killing off those enzymes to keep food from going brown is the reason blanching is called blanching, but that's no longer the only function of blanching.

Some foods are slightly softened using blanching methods, others (like the almonds) are blanched to help remove the brown seed coat from the almond.

There's even a way of blanching a potato that leave it still largely uncooked, but allows you to peel it much faster than with a peeler.

But in this case it was neither here nor there. The point was that a recipe called for a technique and then explained the technique. A normal person could be told "Pour the piss out of the boot by grasping the heel and slowly allowing the opening to face the ground until the boot is empty."

This person did the equivalent of saying "But I don't understand. I've never poured piss out of a boot before."

A person could go through life not knowing what blanching was for as long as they knew what to do when the recipe called for it. I knew how to create a foam with egg whites to make angel food cake long before I ever saw Alton Brown's show "Good Eats" which explained the science behind it. While knowing "why" I was doing it and what was happening on the food science side of it...I was still making good cakes just doing what I was taught.

[wolfie]

A normal person could be told "Pour the piss out of the boot by grasping the heel and slowly allowing the opening to face the ground until the boot is empty."

This person did the equivalent of saying "But I don't understand. I've never poured piss out of a boot before."

Sounds like this person, if you handed them a piss-filled boot and told them "Instructions for emptying it are printed on the bottom of the heel", wouldn't be able to pour out the piss.