Vancouver's Best Festival

Dine Out Vancouver - 2008
Although Dine Out Vancouver isn't normally described as a "festival", this annual event is my favourite cultural celebration. For 2008, Dine Out Vancouver has over 180 restaurants in the Greater Vancouver area are offering a selection of 3-course meals for a fixed price of either $15, $25 or $35. The menus are posted online, and have suggested pairings of BC wines.

For most of these restaurants are offering meals at a much lower price point than usual, so you get the chance to go for the eating spots with the best menu or the most buzz. Booking ahead is highly recommended. Dine Out Vancouver 2008 runs from January 16 to February 3.

Bon appetit!

AV Club Interviews Anthony Bourdain

Anthony Bourdain interview
An interview with celebrity "bad boy" author and chef, Anthony Bourdain. They talk travel, tv, food, restaurants, and celebrity chef culture.

Heat - The invisible ingredient

"The Invisible Ingredient in Every Kitchen"
New York Times article by Harold Mcgee about the rarely considered properties of heat when cooking food.

The 15 tools every household should own

The 15 tools every homeowner should own
Christmas time is around the corner, and people are going to start asking me for my Christmas list soon. There's not too much "stuff" out there that jumps to mind, but I remember seeing this list of 15 essential tools that would help me fill-in the holes in my toolkit.
Now I'm not a homeowner yet, but I do get a secret thrill when I'm able to use my tools to build or fix things.

I'm also using this list of essential kitchen tools to build that Christmas list.

$200 for all the essential kitchen tools

A No-Frills Kitchen Still Cooks - New York Times (permalink)

Kitchen tools are expensive, right? In a great article in the Times by Mark Bittman, you find out how to get everything you need for less than $200.
Mark Bittman tells you which utensils, pots and pans are essential for your kitchen at home, and where you can buy them at an inexpensive price. Even though the chefs on TV have flashy, expensive tools, these are not what they use in their restaurants, and you don't need them to do be effective in the kitchen. You can also save by shopping in restaurant supply stores, rather than department stores and "cuisine" shops.

I absolutely love to cook and have plenty of professional cooking experience, but I wish I'd read this article when preparing the gift registry for my wedding.

Today's Link source: Reddit

How to feed free food to 10,000 people a day

Lunch at the Langar: Exploring a Free Kitchen in Delhi

Writing for Worldchanging, Sarah Rich went to New Dehli for a conference and visited the Gurdwara Bangla Sahib kitchen, at a Sikh temple,
which serves meals to around 10,000 people every single day, for free. Although I've never visited one, apparently every Sikh temple has a "free kitchen", called a Langar. This one is funded by wealthier members of the community and through small donations at the temple.

Worldchanging is a leading environmental website, with many great articles and solutions.

As someone who has cooked for hundreds, it boggles my mind to think of an operation cooking for that many people every day. What an amazing ministry!!