Blog H4

What do you know about hygiene? A fair few years ago I ran a small and entertaining pub in a ski region, and had a funky little restaurant that specialised in cool jazz on the soundsystem, backgammon evenings with fondue, and some pretty crazy nights prompted by beer tanker driver strikes, plumbing explosions and other hazards of the funky pub trade. I also had a crazy local Swiss guy who brought me his backdoor special sausage which graced my pizzas, and I'm sure contained at least 50% donkey meat which, as anyone knows, makes the BEST sausage, along with a load of other secret ingredients. No one ever got sick from the food at my place; and anyone drinking up to and over a reasonable limit got supplied a free meal to keep things in perspective. So when the health inspectors came and impounded my collection of knives, all nice handmade stuff I'd gathered over a few years of kitchening, all with rosewood handles, as WOOD  was capable of harbouring GERMS, and took my superb fine grained beech chopping boards, as they were the same health hazard, and insisted I replace them all with plastic/Polyshitelene products, I got out of the trade; they even closed up the Swiss guy; Horror! Donkey meat?  I have never cooked in a commercial kitchen since. I've been a maitre d', waiter and bartender, and I did a lot of restaurant and bar fitouts, BUT ONLY AFTER THEY ANNOUNCED THAT PLASTIC WAS A HEALTH HAZARD IN COMMERCIAL RESTAURANTS. I've been a wood person all my life; sure I like a bit of hitech here and there, but if I can resurrect an old piece of wood, or age a new piece, or reuse some plank or other, I'll go for it, as I see all of that melamine/PVC/plastic imitation stuff costing way more than the real stuff every time. My partner has just complained of the stench emanating from her plastic chopping boards, but will not use the wood ones I made for her as they're too beautiful. I'll go out tomorrow and find the oldest hunk of cast aside spruce or beech I can, and trim it down to a board she will use. Expensive? Hygiene? You do the math. Nuff said.

Blog H3

Reality check; here in Europe, where there is no sense of environmental awareness AT ALL, we've had our thermostat not control the central heating for the last four weeks. The result; we've been forced to open windows to keep the temperature down to bearable, while warming the poor old universe again; now, do we pay for the two hundred litres of fuel we've used in one month? Figure another four months of winter.... we've asked, as the technician said on his second visit, 'it's all fixed', for the system to be shut down. That happened tonight. The building is cold in a matter of minutes. This apartment is owned by an electrician; there is one power plug in any room max; one in the kitchen, behind the fridge, one in the bedroom, behind the wardrobe, and our floors are criss-crossed by power boxes and leads trying to get electricity to where we need it. We also have a thousand bucks worth of perishable building materials which need storage at 19.5 - 20°C, and there is, so help me, no insulation anywhere in the structure. Welcome to YOUR reality; ours too. Forget the idea of care/education/values for the environment; you can be camped out where you like; we're on the same planet. Do you think it is worth going to the local council and asking who sets the standards for heating? Duh? Nuff said.