I haven’t cooked since last Sunday. Lots of leftovers or sandwiches for lunch; sandwiches or cereal for dinner during the week.
Still wasn’t in a cook-y mood, but knew I had some red and green cabbage to continue to use up. So back to an old favorite, using a half lb of ground pork this time (lamb is still my favorite, with pork, beef, and turkey following in that order). The spaghetti addition was suggested here on Hungry Onion awhile back, and it’s the way I make it now.
There was wine.
Here is a link to the recipe on their webpage
New England style clam chowder with bacon-and-cheddar biscuits. I used garden leeks, chives, and spuds in the chowder, along with summer corn from the freezer. Clams we dug ourselves. Good stuff.
Clams we dug ourselves . Outstanding
We’re really lucky to live close to clamming digs. In an off year, it will be closed after warm temps, but otherwise, openings have been pretty consistent and not too many folks out there digging for butter clams. We’ll age out of it sooner rather than later, but in the meantime, make hay while the sun shines.
We enjoyed another excellent dinner at Drew’s in Keyport, NJ, including pan seared local yellowfin tuna with Caribbean coconut rice and a citrus, soy, tataki sauce; crawfish pasta with sundried tomatoes in a Cajun Parmesan cream sauce; roast delicata squash bruschetta with herbed goat cheese, spiced pecans, dried cranberries with a balsamic glaze; crispy pork belly and Brussel sprouts with toasted pumpkin seeds in a spicy tabasco gastrique;
crab dip mac n cheese with cheddar and pepper jack cheese, topped with an Old Bay potato chip crust; chicken étouffée. We took home German chocolate bread pudding with coconut caramel pecan icing for dessert. It all went great with a couple of excellent cabernets.
There were a ton of leftovers for dinner tomorrow night and during the week.
3.95% “convenience” fee for all card transaction ?? Is that normal in NJ or the newest crestive “idea” from restaurants to add additional costs for customers?
Apparently all restaurants are adding the credit card fees to the bill, since the credit card companies charge them a fee. There is no fee if you pay in cash. These restaurants have such a small profit margin as it is.
The restaurants in California don’t charge credit card fees?
Anyway, Drew gave us a ton of comps which more than made up for the 3.95% fee.
No.
And the fee charged by the credit card companies is small than 3.95% (between 1.5-3.5%) so it is a way to make some extra money
Stir fry, onion, garlic, orange & yellow baby bells, broccoli, cauliflower, pork tenderloin, gochujang spicy miso and hoisin sauces. Green onion and black sesame seeds. Savoy and red cabbage slaw, carrot, green onion, cilantro, rice vinegar & oo dressing, sprinkled with gochugaru pepper.
Whole wheat spaghetti carbonara, with poached chicken slices and artichoke hearts. The egg came out just right, gently warmed into a smooth cheesy custard. I sprinkled on the bacon bits after serving, so they stayed crisp.
I would have been ALL over this!
One of the restaurants I frequent here in Ottawa, Canada now does this. I’m not sure if/how many other restaurants do this since I don’t eat out that often but they are basically passing the surcharge onto the customer. The restaurant I go to charges in the $2 range so it’s not much for but if you multiply it by the number of diners it could add up. The restaurant industry has always accepted payment by credit card I don’t understand why they start charging a convenience fee now.
I was told by a farmer at my farmers market (who accepts cash, check and Venmo but no credit cards), that credit card fees are the second highest costs for many small businesses.
Margins are extremely tight in the restaurant biz, especially for non-chain restos, so I can’t say that I blame them for passing the buck on to the consumer 
No. Credit card fees are usually the third largest cost behind labor and food costs. This battle has been ongoing for years, outlined here but well documented elsewhere.
And I almost always pay cash. I guess I’m ahead of my time 
I used to always pay cash as well, but I have one credit card that gives me back 3% cash back for dining at restaurants, and another that gives me 5% cash back each month up to $500 spent (which is about 2 1/2 dinners 
). So that offsets some of the 3.95% fee. We dine out twice a week, but about half of the restaurants we regularly frequent often give us comps, which more than offsets the 3.95% fee.
It’s getting pretty frosty here at night, so hot pot was on my mind. I invited a newly single friend of ours to join, as he seemed excited about the prospect when I brought it up a few weeks ago 
We started off the evening with dry AF martinis & Sichuan spicy peanuts.
Assorted delicacies to cook up in our Sichuan fondue: TJ’s shaved lamb, local shaved beef our buddy contributed,
Aldi’s black tiger shrimp,
baby bok choy, and the tender leaves from one head of napa cabbage,
plus quartered shiitake shrooms that had already been bathing in the broth for a while, together with the thick parts of the napa cabbage.
Broth base was the yoozh: a mix of BTB mushroom & roasted garlic, plus our favorite De Zhuang hot pot base.
I made 3 different dipping sauces for us:
— fresh ginger, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil for the shrimp (I find this one
works best with seafood & really well with salmon),
— a peanut sauce with chili crisp, rice wine vinegar, and scallions,
— a spicy kumquat-kewpie sauce with fresh ginger & Maggi sauce
— the 4th was store-brought kewpie roasted sesame sauce nobody was interested in
We ate our weight in meat, shrimp, veg & shrooms, then solved ALLLLL the problems in the world after dinner with digestifs, i.e. MOAR martinis 
Based on the other fees restaurants already pass to the customer I am pretty sure they will also max out the range to make their own (small) profit. If they would really pass of the costs of credit card fees they would have to have a flexible fee depending on the credit card used as each credit card company has a different fee. And 3.95% is really pushing it. Yes, restaurants work on a small margin but they are also pushing more and more how they “suck” money out of the customer
