Even if it were a centennial dinner, you wouldn’t get me to eat liver that frequently. It’s one of those childhood traumas I haven’t gotten past yet.
Once again, I don't know if this more rightly belongs in "Things that annoy me but shouldn't" or "Things that annoy me and should," but here goes: People who use word processing software and don't (or won't) take the trouble to learn even the basics of how to use it. I see this all the time, when I have to edit a document in Word that someone else (or a series of several someone elses) has worked on. Turn on reveal codes, and OH MY GAWD! God forbid, for example, that they'd take the trouble to set a tab stop and the middle of the standard line length if they're going to have text begin there. If it's just one line, I can forgive being lazy and just using a few tabs at the default 1/2-inch spacing, but ... when it's an ENTIRE [BEEP]ING DOCUMENT? And almost every line is filled with multiple tab characters? Give ... me ... a ... break. And then there's using three (or five) spaces (or a tab) to indent the first line of a paragraph. Obviously, they never heard of formatting a paragraph, or (even better) formatting a style to do that automatically. It's bothering me now because our office is in the process of updating a long list of documents we hand out to permit applicants. Every one of them that I have worked on so far has been an absolute disaster with regard to formatting. I could just force fit the necessary revisions and pass them along, but my obsessive/compulsive side won't let me do that. If nothing else, if I can clean the documents up it'll be that much easier for the next person who has to work with them -- which might be me!
Ummm... I finally learned to format a document in the last couple of years... well, I thought I did, but now I think of all the things I might've done wrong that a truly saavy person will pick up on... (slinks off to hide in the bath).
Volume to weight conversions. And weight to volume conversions. And ascertaining which weight measures need to become volume measures and vice versa. And then weighing everything that needs weighing. And then volumizing everything that requires volumization. Some background: I'm making a massive technological investment in my company, including digitized inventory, recipe, and costing software. To do so, every single recipe in all six of my restaurants needs to match the invoiced parameters by which we purchase. So if an ingredient is purchased by weight, every recipe needs to be itemized by weight instead of volume. So a cup of sugar, or a quart of salt, or two cups of minced garlic, or a teaspoon of cumin all needs to be converted into ounces/pounds. Any idea how many recipes are in 6 restaurants? Me either, but it's got to be 300 at least. And every single line item needs to be weighed out to get the conversion. Sometime thrice, like garlic, which is can be utilized whole, chopped, or minced. And a cup of each prep method has vastly different quantities and hence cost. Habanero peppers, brown rice, honey, corriander seeds... on the scale, all of you!
.1 ounces. Or thereabouts. They aren't cheap, though. Roughly a quarter apiece, and every recipe calls for three or four of them, so that's a dollar right there. It seems silly to include a line item for .25 tsp of chili powder until you realize you're spending $30K a year in spices. That all has to be accounted for on the recipe level. Factor is a few million in total food purchases and you end up with 300 recipes with 10 ingredient lines each. Lucky for me there's a 75% overlap in ingredients between the stores, and a cup of minced garlic weighs the same nowhere it is. Unless it's on the moon, but unless they adjust the pack-sizes for lunar weight, the recipe doesn't care.
You'd just use a balance (for mass) instead of a scale (for weight). Bing bam slam bop chop, done. Oh, you're probably referring to all of the other complications now that I think about it...
it just annoys me somewhat, but I still don't get why in so many TV shows and elsewhere integrated ovens are placed right next to refrigerators...I mean why???!! For how well insulated, considerable heat leaks off ovens, so why put it next to the refrigerator? Of course in a small kitchen maybe you don't have space, but in the fictional space of a TV series, kitchens are so large, why? oh my, why am I even noticing that???!!
But the higher you are, the less something weighs, as the force of gravity is reduced by the inverse square law. Are you accounting for the altitude of your restaurants and suppliers?
Actually, the biggest issue would probably be how lower gravity affects the combination of ingredients. Who knows how well a viniagretre blends with less force "pulling" it together? The weights are all relative. A 20# package of ground beef scales at the same ratio as an 8oz patty. As for suppliers? I don't want to think about the fuel costs and delivery minimums to the moon.
It takes forever for stuff to boil here at a mile above sea level. How long will it take on the moon?
No conversion necessary! Scales measure the force of gravity to determine mass. A balance measures mass by comparing it against a known mass. Same answer, except the latter gives you the same reading on the moon or on earth.
I was just guessing. here are some answers from Quora: "Water would boil instantly if exposed to the moon’s surface since there is no atmosphere to pressurize the water and keep it in it’s liquid state. Temperature is only one part of the reason water is liquid over most of the earth. The atmospheric pressure is also perfect to allow water to stay in its liquid form. On the moon, water would flash boil as the liquid state turns into gas. It would be sudden and violent but would be very interesting to see." "There is effectively a vacuum on the moon’s surface. Consequently, placing water on that surface will cause the water to boil at any temperature. When the water cools to below its freezing point then the ice will continue to evaporate via sublimation until none is left and the water molecules will rise and eventually drift about in space because of the low gravity of the moon." So, sounds like it would boil away very rapidly but not get hot. Well, that's no fun! (It would be cool to see though).
Sunday news channels. When I tune into a news channel, I want to hear actual news. I wanna know what's going on in the world. I do not need to know which celebrity is currently bonking which other celebrity, I don't want a program on the 100 greatest places in the world to go to the toilet, or a program on how butchers in Ghana are coming up with ecologically friendly recipes for biscuits. That's what National Geographic is for. 24 hour news channels should be about news, not about trying to be the Discovery Channel for one day a week.
The last time I had CNN that was pretty much all they did. Back twenty years ago we got CNN International out of Singapore, which was a decent channel, but then they announced that they were switching to "CNN-J." "Oh, good, headquartered out of Tokyo, I presume, and maybe a little more Japanese news. This'll be nice." It was not nice. It was not a new channel headquartered out of anywhere in Japan. It was the CNN US main feed, which meant that when I got home from work at night, I ended up watching Soledad O'Brien show off her legs, drink coffee, and giggle at videos of puppies. Well, not the first weekend after the switch. The first weekend a little girl in Kansas (no shit) went missing and there was an AMBER alert, so we got 72 hours of wall-to-wall coverage on her case. I kept my eyes peeled, but she never made it to south Osaka. But then it was on to CNN Morning "News" at night, and sailing shows, and chess shows, and fashion week coverage, and... When my cable company canceled the contract with them I didn't complain one bit. Now I only catch it in airports and hotels, and I don't spend much time in either.
CNN used to have a dedicated airport channel (for the US anyway), but they cancelled that earlier this year. Back during the Gulf War, when I lived out there, we were all glued to CNN to hear the latest proclamations from Stormin' Norman.
