My friend used to work at a shop that sold 9 different kinds of baklava...my favourites were a kind that looked like the twisted tube, but filled with peanuts instead of walnuts...and the ones that were like tiny birds' nests, filled with pistachio. They didn't make any of the kinds in this slideshow though. So many possibilities with phyllo, sugar syrup and nuts!

I make these for Super Bowl partying every year...the batch this recipe makes is huge! I barely finished eating them just this past week. Not that I'm complaining.

As a kid, my brother and I had 'worm cake'. It was boxed devil's food cake mix baked into a 9x13" sheet cake, with cool whip and chocolate pudding as 'icing' between the layers, and cool whip mixed with copious amounts of Oreo crumbs as outer icing. Extra Oreo crumbs on top, gummi worms EVERYWHERE.

I don't remember ever having anything different as a kid. I make different things for myself now because my own birthday is in November, so I'm never at my parent's house for it....but my brother's August birthday usually falls during my summer visit home. We're both adults now, and we still love it.

I come for the dog pictures, but I always leave with the feeling that I want to be one of your interns! Too bad I'm old and Canadian, haha.

It isn't a hard and fast rule, but as a person who's worked kitchens before, I'll choose another place if it's within an hour to closing and nobody is there. If others have been served recently, it's about 30 mins to close, and I plan to quickly eat and move on, sure. I know that the kitchen staff haven't put things away yet. 30 mins in an empty place/one where the other patrons are clearly finishing up....no. They've at least started cleaning in the back, and it always annoyed me to have to do things twice/stay late. It's just a courtesy thing to my BOH brothers-in-arms.

I buy both Hello Panda and Koala's March occasionally as an adult, but they're different snacks. Hello Panda's way more buttery and rich; Koala's March is somehow light, and I like the crispness.

ALSO I heeeard a ruuumour that if you find a Koala with a sling and a bandage on his head, you'll have good luck for [x] time because it's the RAREST. And also ADORABLE. Never found one yet though.

This isn't a dinner hack, but my favourite way to hack a store product is to add 1 tsp cinnamon and 1 tsp vanilla to instant chocolate cake/brownie mix. It makes it much easier to convince yourself that you made a reeeeal treat from scratch and takes 10 seconds extra.

When I'm lazy/desperate for dinner I make egg drop soup: Saute carrots/onions, pour over broth and a can of beans, add tiny pasta, cook til pasta's almost done. Stir in some greens, beat an egg while they're wilting, whisk in the egg, BLAM. Eat with garlic butter on crackers, because obviously there's no fresh bread in the house.

Having been taught at home by an old-school eastern European grandma, and having worked in a commercial kitchen....both a paring knife and a chef's knife are absolutely essential. BF works in kitchens also and doesn't understand why I go so batty when I misplace the paring knife...but it's KEY for quickly doing detail work when prepping fruits and vegetables. You could potentially use the tip of the chef knife...but the control that a paring knife gives you can't be beat.

I dunno. Sometimes, discerning craft brew drinkers find themselves in a shitty pub for a work function, or an old high-school friend's birthday, or whatever takes one out of their generally tasteful enclaves. If these pseudo-craft Buds go out to even half of the market that AB covers, those customers will be there to drink it.

For bagels where it makes a difference, I'm usually more excited to eat the top, but I like the bottom better....so that's the order I eat them in! It all works out wonderful. Montreal bagels are pretty symmetrical though, and those are what I want most often. No real difference between the two.

@Traveller...just do it over a compost bin!

Prep work rarely seems particularly daunting anymore after working in a commercial kitchen for a very detail-oriented boss. Our standard batch of carrot lentil soup used 5 kg of carrots, which arrived in 20 kg sacks with dirt still on them from the organic farm. Lugging the bag upstairs, then rinsing/peeling/chopping that quantity eventually took me about 30 min, after doing it a few times.

Risotto always seems to take longer than it should, though.

Maaaaan, I'm not even hungover, and I'd eat that up. Haven't had a good white country gravy in forever. Hip downtown places don't do it right.

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