Chiu on This

The big dig, part 2

More puttering and cleaning of the apartment on this Labor Day weekend, and more items to add to the blog. Here we go.

Strip House, Manhattan

• Terrific steaks, excellent service; unnecessarily contrived theme.
• Might have been the last time more than 3 of my grad school classmates were able to get together.
• Might have also been the last meeting of the Beefeaters Club. (It's not hard to get NYers together; it's hard to get them to commit when a date is set!)

Mad for Chicken, Manhattan Koreatown

• Fantastic Korean fried chicken. Droool.
• Met my former co-worker Nick there for a long lunch. Loved the food, delayed blogging about it, and then forgot the name of the place. All I could remember was that it was on the second floor and was associated with a music venue / jazz club.
• Went back by chance several years later for one in a series of going away eating outings for my former co-worker Arnold. The original place people wanted to try turned out to be too snooty, so we went to MFC instead. Must go back soon. Now I've got the name written down!

 The PIg and the Lady, Honolulu

• Went to their stall at the KCC Farmer's Market; haven't been to their restaurant.
• Grilled skewers of ground pork wrapped in betel leaves. Why had this awesome deliciousness been denied me for so many years???

 Salumi, Seattle

• Mario Batali's dad's establishment. I'd been trying to go there for several years, but the timing never worked out. Finally made it last year with my college friend Russ.
• Worth the wait. Long line, but it moved fast. We also got there on the early side.
• I'm not a sandwich fan, but this really moved me. So much salumi, so little time.

Kenny and Zuke's Delicatessen, Portland, OR

• Big ol' breakfast. I think this was the pastrami hash. Yum. Gives you lotsa energy to wander the aisles of Powell's.

 More to follow!

The big dig, part 1

I've been cleaning my apartment, slowly. I sure have accumulated a lot of crap, including notes for blog posts that got buried deeper and deeper in piles of other crap. I've got a paper-clipped stack of sheets from an old Moleskine notebook - the annotations are few, the writing sometimes cryptic. But if I wrote down where I was and what I ate, that probably means that I liked the restaurant. Without further commentary, then, here goes.

Proof on Main, Louisville, KY

• Dinner sometime in 2010
• Roast chicken
• Corn and garlic soup
• Braised greens
• Stewed okra and tomatoes
• A Pimms cocktail (Wicker Park?)
• Associated notes: "The battle of what to count"; Finley's BBQ

Incanto, San Francisco

• How in the world did I neglect to write about this place? A paradise for people who prefer pork. Ate there with college classmate Sue and her husband, probably in 2010 as well.

Mystery location, cocktail made of:

• Laird's applejack
• Bols genever
• toasted lager
• lime
• ginger

Town, Honolulu

• Dinner on 2010 with my family. I don't think my parents liked what they had. I was pretty happy with my dish.
• Dinner in 2012 with high school classmates. Feeling jet lagged, I nearly nodded off between courses.

Herbsaint, NOLA

• With my colleague Jon, early 2010
• Smoked Spanish mackeral with apple griddle cakes with walnuts
• Pork tongue salad with local arugula and fried capers
• Our waiter / server discusses the process they used to develop the pork tongue salad; we were among the first customers to try it. Thumbs up!

Cochon, NOLA

• On the same trip as the Herbsaint meal, also dining with Jon; we ate at the counter to avoid a wait - great fun watching the kitchen staff
• Onion and grits casserole
• Cucumbers in vinegars (yeah, plural)
• Oysters and bacon sandwich (my head reels!)
• Spicy ribs w/ watermelon pickle (need more of the wmelon pickle)
• Pate amuse bouche
• Sazerac (a little obvious)
• Champagne, Creole 3 (? illegible), and grapefruit juice
• I have crappy, dim photos somewhere, but can't be bothered to post them now

Hukilau Lanai, Kauai

• New Year's Eve 2010 (i.e., 12/31/09) with my sister and her boyfriend
• Super ono! I was surprised at how tasty it was
• Ahi poke nachos
• Warabi (sp? fiddle head ferns), pickled and sausage
• Portugese bean soup
• Opah with shrimp risotto
• Opakapaka with brussel sprouts and purple potatoes
• Mixed grill: hebi (spear fish), butterfish, and shrimp
• Creme brulee
• Drinks: Lillet blanc; loco lemonade; Keoki dark
• A note that says "see also back," but I don't see anything relevant

Royal Garden @ Ala Moana, Honolulu

• This is the high end dim sum place my family goes to when other relatives or visitors are in town. Quite good stuff.
• On this trip in early 2010, I made special note of the "crispy pork with fermented bean sauce." Ooh.

Really? It's taken me 2 1/2 years to post these scribblings? Wow. I've really got to my act together. At least all these restaurants are still in business. Go. Eat.

Snack-tastic, part 2

The Honolulu edition continues with another find at the Kapiolani Community College Farmer's Market. The first time I went to the KCC Farmer's Market (way back when in December/January), I noticed a long line at the Ono Pops stand (ono, btw, means delicious in Hawaiian and in pidgin). The line didn't seem to get any shorter after I did a circuit of the stalls, and by that time I'd already gotten a lot of food in my hands (or in my belly) and didn't feel compelled to get a popsicle. And truthfully I've never been a big fan of popsicles - if I'm going to have something sweet and frozen in Hawaii, I'd rather just go for some shaved ice.

On my most recent trip (3 weeks ago?), I was back at KCC, and there was no line at the stand. There was one woman ahead of me, and her never ending stream of questions made me realize that you don't need a line for things to be slow: you just need one person who doesn't know when to quit, and another who doesn't know how turn that person away.

Trying to be a little more mellow than my usual self, I turned my attention to the list of Ono Pop flavors. They have LOTS of flavors. Almost too many flavors. On their website they list the following, and even this isn't comprehensive:

• Orange Cinnamon
• Mountain Apple Rose
• Honeydew Mint
• Pineapple Li Hing
• Mango Honey Cream
• Dark Chocolate Chinese Five Spice
• Lilikoi 50-50
• Starfruit Lemongrass
• Kona Latte
• Almond Float
• Haole Haupia
• Gingatanical Green
• Apple Banana Mac Nut
• Coco Ko
• Crackseed Lemon Peel
• Avocado Honey Lime
• Pickled Green Mango
• Gingatanical
• Ginger Longan
• Guava Tamarind
• Kava Coco Water
• Gingatanical Yellow
• Watermelon Gazpacho
• Tropical Smoothie
• Menehune Pie
• Kula Blueberry Lemonade
• Kalamansi Coriander
• Lychee
• Mauka Bar
• Surinam Cherry Clove
• Waiwi Honey
• Chocolate Dipped Strawberry
• Maunakea Green Tea
• Varietal Mango Blend
• Salted Watermelon Cream
• Pineapple Vanilla
• Okinawan Purple Sweet Potato
• Papaya Rangpur Vanilla
• Pink Lemon Cream
• Rambutan Kaffir
• Watermelon Cucumber Cayenne
• MacNut Brittle
• Papaya Starfruit
• Watermelon Hibiscus
• Lilikoi Cheesecake
• Strawberry Lemonade
• Ume-Thai Basil
• Mexican Chocolate
• Mango Habanero Lime
• Guava Chiffon
• Kula Strawberry Maui Goat Cheese
• P to the O to the G (passion, orange, guava)
• Apple Banana Banana Cream Pie
• Papaya Lime Vanilla

Phew! Thank goodness they didn't have all these flavors listed at the farmer's market. Choices, choices! And this is what I love about Hawaii - where else would think of or get these flavors?!? Tropical stuff mashed up with Asian, Hawaiian, and local tastes - all kinds of combos to broke da mouth (sorry, my pidgin usage sucks). Thankfully, the guy at the stand let me know that they sold some flavors at Kale's, a natural foods place in Hawaii Kai near where my parents live. So I had more opportunities to try out some pops.

I bought one pop - the salted watermelon cream - and ate it while I wandered about the market. A very good combo of flavors, not too salty or creamy, good offsets to the watermelon flavor, which was mild (appropriately so, I guess; how do you amp up watermelon if you're totally organic?) and not like a Jolly Rancher candy. Refreshing, too, and not super icy - my fillings didn't hurt from the cold - and with a little give in the texture.

Excellent. A couple of days after, I poked my head into the freezer case at Kale's and picked out two items from the much smaller selection of flavors - the Pickled Green Mango and the Butter Mochi. I nearly forgot about them until towards the end of my stay my mom reminded me to finish them off. I went for the mango and even now am not sure how to describe my reaction to it. Pickled, yes, with a touch of li hing powder, one of mankind's greatest inventions. Mango, yes. In fact, there were little bits and pieces of it in the pop, which I didn't expect at all. It felt a little weird to be chewing on ice flecks and pieces of chewy mango, and while I love sour stuff, I wasn't sure if a pickle pop was hitting the right notes. Was this good in concept and poor in execution, or good in concept and execution, but something that I simply did not favor? I ate half and gave the rest to either my mom or dad to try. I think the verdict was "It's okay."

As for the Butter Mochi, I decided to leave it for my sister to try, as she was going to roll into town the next day and is a big fan of butter mochi. I don't remember growing up with butter mochi, so didn't have big cravings for it (although now that I look at the recipe and some pictures, I can imagine this tasting super ono). I did, however, love the packaging for this flavor, as I'm a South Park fan.

I don't know who their designer is, but s/he does a great job with their labels! (Be sure to check out the Dark Chocolate Chinese Five Spice label on the website.) Anyway, my sister said it tasted pretty good but that the consistency was odd - not creamy like ice cream, but not icy like a regular popsicle. Sounds like that's the case across the three flavors I bought and may be a product of their manufacturing process.

Well, this was a fun blog to write, as it's currently 85 degrees Fahrenheit at 8:30pm. Thinking about icy things and writing in an air-conditioned environment is pleasant. But I wish I had some Ono Pops here at my fingertips to try out.

Snack-tastic, part 1

I'm still recovering from my week of overeating with my folks back home in Honolulu. Here are a couple of new-to-me items I got to try.

Poi malasada, foreground; ensaymada, background

After taking me to the culturally significant, awesome, and windy Pali Lookout and then for a drive along the scenic but underutilized H3 freeway, my dad had the brilliant idea of stopping by the Kamehameha Bakery to see if they had any poi malasadas left. The bakery's open from 2am to 4pm and is known for selling out of items fast. Our timing was good - only three people were ahead of us and a half tray of the poi malasadas were still in the glass display. We got a dozen malasadas - half of which we shared with friends of my mom - and two gigantic ensaymadas, which I'd never heard of before.

One outstanding feature of the poi malasadas that my mom had mentioned (apart from poi being an ingredient and making the malasada a lovely purple) was that they keep longer than typical malasadas. And by longer, that means for a day or two. Your normal malasada will lose its crispiness and fluffiness pretty much in the same day, if not in a few hours, and reheating or nuking will only make them tough and not worth eating. Dunking in hot coffee is probably the better way to eat them if they've gotten a bit old.

The poi malasada didn't have that problem because it's actually not much like a malasada anyway. It's very tasty but is more along the lines of a donut or a sweetbread. The outside isn't crunchy, and the interior is denser - while not cake-like, it's not full of air pockets like a Champion or Leonard's malasada. So is this really a malasada or not? I don't think so, but, in the end, I don't really care. If someone handed me a plate with a Champion malasada and a Kam Bakery poi malasada on it and I had to pick one, my choice would depend on my mood and what kind of snack craving I had - e.g., crunchy vs chewy - not on the "authenticity" of the malasada itself.

As for the ensaymada, my dad had a brief conversation with one of the women behind the counter at the Kam Bakery about how delicious this pastry is. How had I not ever heard of it before? Turns out it's a Filipino sweet bread. It looked like a variation of a danish or a cinnamon roll, and we got the ones that were about 4 inches in diameter (maybe I'm exaggerating, but the things were big). The dominant flavor of ensaymada is butter, which explains why my dad likes it; it wasn't as sweet as I suspected it'd be, and there was also a bit of saltiness to it that was pleasing. It was fairly soft in texture, but as I ate it the day after we bought it,  I'm not sure if the texture is different when you have it fresh. I didn't find the ensaymada all that flavorful or interesting, which is probably good because it must be a caloric nightmare, but I'm willing to give it another shot.

A view from the Pali Lookout

The path of the locust, 2011-2012 edition

I spent the last two weeks of December hanging out in Honolulu with my parents, grandma, aunt and uncle from Australia, my sister, and Lani, my parent's adopted 11-year old miniature beagle. Folks ask me if I had a good time; maybe they imagine that I'd be hanging out at the beach or what not. Nope. Mostly what I do is eat with my folks, because that's our M.O., and because food in Hawaii is just so much danged fun. Here's an index to some of the places I went to. But my mom's home cooking is what I'll always crave the most!

• Kapiolani Community College Saturday Farmers Market. You definitely need to go to this market if you're in Honolulu. My next post will go into a bit more detail about what I ate, bought, saw, and sampled there on two visits.

• Bubbies Ice Cream. Multiple locations; I went to the one in Koko Marina. Mochi ice cream makes a perfect little snack. Traditional azuki bean tasted very nice, but the chocolate eggnog was odd. I couldn't get my hands on the li hing mango flavored version, unfortunately. Try the chocolate banana flavored ice cream.

• Ramen-Ya. Multiple locations; I went to Hawaii Kai Towne Center spot. Very good chicken katsu and a hearty curry ramen. Tasty and a good value, which means an assortment of family members wound up eating there three days in a row.

• Uncle Clay's House of Pure Aloha in the Aina Haina Shopping Center. Shave ice with a story and a smile. I'll describe the flavors and the philosophy in a subsequent post.

• Kamehameha Bakery. My mom says the malasadas here are excellent and stay yummy for days, but they were all sold out by the time we got there (around 2 or 3pm). The poi doughnuts are also supposed to be really good. We managed to leave with some interesting (in a good way) haupia filled taro rolls. Need to go back to investigate the other goodies.

• Morning Glass Coffee and Cafe in Manoa. I went with my folks and Lani, as the cafe is just a few blocks away from the vet's office. An open-air eatery, Morning Glass prepares each cuppa joe individually and offers a Hawaiian coffee of the day. On our visit, we had Rusty’s Ka’u Red Cattura (which I found out by asking them via Twitter). They have pastries and heartier fare, including burgers, which smelled super ono! Another place I need to go back to for more "research."

• Harbor Village in the Koko Marina Shopping Center. Good Chinese fare including beef with asparagus in black bean sauce, Peking duck, shrimp with walnuts, and pork with pickled mustard greens. We went twice while I was there, and I think the family went a third time after I left. On our first visit, Danny Kaleikini greeted my parents as if they were neighbors; I guess he's not called the Ambassador of Aloha for nothing.

• Koa Pancake House in the Hawaii Kai Towne Center; multiple locations. Big portions, and I mean big. I got a breakfast special - a Portugese sausage omelette with a "side" of pancakes - that could have fed three people. Whew.

• Gyotaku in the Niu Valley Shopping Center; multiple locations. Good bento options, and even though I'm not a huge sweets person, I really liked the Okinawan sweet potato pie with haupia.

• Kua'aina Sandwich Shop near Ward Center. I referenced this in a previous blog. The fries, which I didn't previously mention as shoe-string style, are still addictive, but their teri-burger, while fine, still can't compete with my memory of the teri-burger from Burger Land. Thumbs up, though, for offering a heaping amount of pepperoncini as a side order.

• Royal Gardens on the third floor of the Ala Moana hotel for yum cha. An unusually upscale Chinese restaurant, I wind up going here at least once a year with my family. We arrived this year on New Year's Day right when the doors opened. The place was swarming with diners within minutes.

And now for something completely different

Lobster noodles from Happy Days in Kaimuki. My family likes to come here for group dinners; typical items we order include shrimp and walnuts, sizzling pork chops, and roast duck. It's not the most elegant place around, but the food's good.

This meal took place in December 2009. Pictured is my uncle Stefan, dad of my cousin Nick. My dad is serving up the noodles, and my mom can be heard asking, in Chinese, for a small portion. I was testing out the video on my [then] new iPhone.

Home cooking

My hometown friend Mark, who resides outside of Denver, is big on food and drink. He brews his own beer, a pasttime he appears to be forgoing with his new obsession for winemaking, and was a coffee connoisseur in the days when Starbucks hadn't ventured outside the Pacific Northwest. He makes fantastic goetta, sauerbraten, and spaghetti and meatballs from family recipes.

Mark recently recounted that his roommate Mike and neighbor Judy have become a culinary trio after being influenced by The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food. They're planning on buying into some locally raised grass fed cattle (i.e., putting dibs on a cow or part of a cow), which sounds both awesome and tasty, and Mark and Judy have also moved into classic cocktail making, perfecting the Sazerac.

Being a cantakerous contrarian, however, I was much more impressed by the trio's production of a classic Hawaiian snack of Portugese origin, the malasadas. Anyone's who lived in Hawaii knows about these little bits of heaven - fried yeasted dough dusted with granulated sugar (think of an ethereal version of zeppole, e.g., malasadas is to zeppole as Krispy Kreme is to Dunkin Donuts)  - and, like Zippy's chili, the thought of a malasadas can produce a deep sense of nostalgia and longing for the islands and "local" culture, akin to a madeleine-inspired reverie. Leonard's used to be the place to get awesome malasadas, but on my last visit home I found their version both different and disappointing; folks have told me that they've changed their basic recipe and have also created malasadas with fillings, which just sounds bizarre. I don't know if some crazy marketing type filled their head with these weird lilikoi-flavored ideas, but I'm pretty unhappy that the "you can't go home again" adage had to play out this way.

Oops, back from my digression...so Mike found the Punahou (howzit, Uncle Barry!) carnival recipe and made the dough, Mark deep fried them, and Judy put them in a paper bag to coat them with sugar. I really wish someone had been around to film or photograph them doing this (because then you'd be seeing pictures of the process here). I wonder if they were drinking homemade Sazeracs, beer, and/or wine while they were on the factory line, or whether the thought of a hot vat of oil within spattering distance kept them sober. I like the family feel of this production - it reminds me of when my parents would make dumplings, a half-day long exercise that produced trays and trays of dumplings and their byproduct, scallion pancakes, and when the only things I could do to "help" were (1) make crazy looking, misshapen, and poorly crimped dumplings and (2) act as "quality control" by sampling as many of the finished goodies as possible.

In any case, I'm looking forward to hearing more from the trio and can probably be of help to them in the quality control/inspection process as well. Why Mark doesn't have his own food/drink blog is beyond me, since he pays attention to both in much greater detail than I do. Apparently Mike has suggested that he start one called "The absinthe-minded professor"; I say "ditto" to that.

Note: I'm still trying to figure out where I can get malasadas in Newark, which has a large Portugese population in the Ironbound neighborhood. The last time I looked for signs of them (admittedly in a very feeble, tapping into Google, way, versus walking around Newark), I couldn't figure out where to go. Any hints would be greatly appreciated.

Puka Dog

"Puka" in Hawaiian means hole, and Puka Dog improves on the pig-in-a-blanket concept by digging a hole almost all the way through the bun to accomodate a Polish sausage while leaving room for sauces and condiments to accumulate.

This makes a Puka Dog nearly perfect for mess-free one-handed eating (hint: hold the dog vertically, as if you were eating a popsicle, rather than perpendicular to your mouth as with a traditional hot dog), not that I tested it out by doing anything extreme like surfing or skateboarding, but I did walk around the International Marketplace in Honolulu with my folks with the Puka Dog in one hand and one of their touted lemonades (only so-so) in another without spilling or leaking any condiments, which would have produced a bright yellow nightmare of stains.  (Wow, gotta love that run-on sentence.)

Apart from the convenience and ingenuity of the Puka Dog, the Polish sausage was tasty and meaty, but the bun and sauces could have used...something.  The bun was sturdy enough not to disintegrate from the generous dose of condiments, and it was nicely toasted, using a special contraption to heat in the inside of the puka, but the flavor and texture were unremarkable.

As for the sauces, I picked their specialty condiments, including the spicy garlic lemon sauce, the mango relish, and the lilikoi (passion fruit) mustard.  I couldn't detect any mango or lemon whatsoever; what I mostly got was spiciness, a lot of garlic, and a sweet honey mustard flavor.  So while I liked the taste of the combined condiments, I didn't quite feel like I was getting a distinctive tropical flavor; and if I'd gone for the traditional mustard-ketchup-pickle relish combo, I would have had little to comment on other than the clever delivery mechanism.  I would certainly like to try some of the other relishes, probably on their own without the other add-ons, although the coconut and banana options strike me offhand as baffling flavor options to go with a grilled sausage.

If you're in the Waikiki area and like hot dogs, I'd say give it a try.  But on a short trip, I would save time and space for plate lunch instead.

Prawn-o-rama

Okay, the title's inaccurate. A few weeks ago, when I was visiting my folks in Hawaii, we drove up to the North Shore to get some shrimp from a truck.  I could have sworn I had written about Giovanni's Shrimp Truck a few years ago, but I guess my intention didn't get much further. Anyhow, my mom and dad had come across a better shrimp truck, Romy's, which also serves prawns on the weekend. Like many shrimp trucks  in the Kahuku area, Romy's sits by the side of the road, although technically I  suppose it's a shack and not a truck.  In any case, it's also adjacent to a pond where folks can fish for their own prawns and have them cooked. My sister and I were trying to figure out how you fish for prawns - I figured the preferred method would be to use a net, but my sister and her boyfriend walked over to the pond while we waited for our order of shrimp to arrive, and they observed people waiting for the prawns to nibble on whatever bait they'd used, so I guess it actually was like fishing. Apparently this is an activity that some tourists from Japan enjoy replicating while vacationing in Hawaii.

The four of us (mom, sis, and sis' boyfriend) shared a plate of shrimp in a garlic butter sauce, served with rice. The only reason we shared a plate is because we were having lunch about two hours after we'd eaten breakfast at Zippy's.  Hey, our time on the islands was limited - we couldn't waste precious hours that could be spent eating by waiting for our stomachs to fully digest our last meal. Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. The shrimp tasted great, and it wasn't just because they were drenched in garlic and butter, although the sauce was indeed very good.  Unlike Giovanni's, the shrimp here were tender and flavorful, and the sauce avoided the bitterness of burnt garlic. There was also an extra sauce, provided on the side, that tasted a bit like soy sauce with vinegar and chilis, that helped to cut the oiliness of the scampi sauce.  I would definitely like an entire order for myself at some point.

As an added treat, Romy's offered pineapple topped with li hing mui powder.  I still don't really know what exactly li hing mui powder is; some definitions I've seen online come across as circular.  Dried salted plums are sometimes called li hing mui, but it's the red powder that goes on top of them plums that make them something different from, say, a prune. Li hing mui's got an intense salty and somewhat tangy flavor that creates a strong puckering sensation and lots of saliva just by thinking about it, and the powder has been added to all sorts of disparate, unlikely foods (like gummi bears and popcorn; I just saw a link to a shortbread recipe that uses it) and drinks as a flavor enhancer or complement.  With pineapple, it highlights and brightness the sweetness of the fruit. I should spend some more time looking into what the heck is in this powder that makes it so danged addictive.

So if you're in Hawaii, don't neglect Oahu.  Drive along the Kamehameha Highway towards the North Shore and get some shrimp.  In the next post, I'll add another recommendation on this road trip.

Can I give you some feedback?

This is a quick post to thank Mike Auzenne and Mark Horstman, the great minds and hearts behind Manager Tools. I was at their training in Chicago last week and learned a huge amount.* I highly recommend their free (yes, free!) podcasts and super-cheap Premium Membership to anyone who wants or needs help with management, or wants to learn about it. The training is also fantastic not only b/c you're forced to practice, practice, practice and not only b/c you get to interact with (or be acted upon by) Mike and Mark but also b/c you get to meet some pretty cool folks.

I received several friendly inquiries into Chiu on This after I referenced it in my introduction, and a couple of people passed on suggestions that I definitely want to follow up on.  John from NYC recommended getting Italian beef sandwiches delivered from Portillos.  Stacey and Randy from Vancouver gave two thumbs up to Mala on Maui, but I'm hoping that I hear from them about where in Chicago I can get the Bucket o' Bacon.  The CEO and his successor who attended the training together highly recommended a Wicker Park restaurant, Schwa, recently featured in the New York Times - the restaurant only serves 32 people a night, so I suppose I better put in a reservation now for 2009.  I was tipped off to RUB BBQ in Chelsea after complaining to the Champaign-Urbana manager who travels frequently to NYC about my city's lack of good Texas BBQ.  And thanks to Sue from Toronto for commenting on my blog and giving me even more reasons to visit Pittsburgh.  Lastly, the food - at the sit-down meals and during the breaks - at the Westin O'Hare was quite good, so I'm now thinking of starting a new category for hotel food (catering and restaurants).

Anyhow, thanks again to Mark and Mike and the MT team for putting together a great training and providing the opportunities for participants to get to know one another.

* And put my training into practice right away - four instances of positive feedback on Thursday; five on Friday. Total elapsed time: 2 minutes! To bring in a food-related aphorism to training, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.