Thank you for all the good comments and well wishes. We have a basic permanent menu that we take orders for and make extras of the more popular items with different specials every day. Today our specials were hot roast beef and gravy rolls, oven baked potato wedges and porcupine meatballs with tomato gravy and mashed potatoes. Tomorrow is Sloppy Joes (would you believe these are a novelty here?), hot dogs and macaroni cheese. The macaroni cheese was slow to take off until the kids realised it's the same thing as "mac and cheese". These are very culturally impoverished kids in the main and I find it really sad. One student had never heard of or eaten macaroni cheese, one can only despair at what the home diet is...or isn't. Our hamburgers and chicken burgers are all made from fresh meat (I even grind the chicken myself because it's cheaper), as opposed to the previous manager's bought in patties made of Lord knows what part of the animal (well it claims 100% beef but doesn't say which bit). We buy fresh chickens, boil them and strip the meat off for our chicken and salad sandwiches, hot chicken and mayo rolls and chicken quesadillas (still trying to teach them how to say that one :-) ) instead of buying bags of pre-chopped plastic chicken from the frozen food section like most places do- and it's been noticed :-). We make filled and toasted foccacia sandwiches, pulled pork and coleslaw rolls, lasagne, tacos, pizza, shepherd's pie and in summer our own sushi. Fried rice has been a runaway best seller. I'm learning a lot of the kids' names because I introduced a Loyalty Card system where they get a dinosaur stamp every time they pre-order their lunch, and after ten stamps they get a free muffin :-) I write their names on the cards and then remember them when I give out the lunches. I'm kind of amazed because usually I have a terrible time remembering faces and names :-) I really enjoy working with the kids and it's not hard to be a smiley Canteen lady most of the time- we have a few students with behaviour issues and I just let them know that if they want to behave badly they can do it somewhere else. I'm pleased to say it stops right away :-) I even get smiles and waves when I'm at the store after school and whispers of "Hey Mum, it's the Canteen lady" which really gives me a boost. I work hard at promoting the Canteen because we have a really large student body but I'd say maybe only 10% used the Canteen when I started. If we could get more of the students in we could put on more staff and open more serving windows: we have six but only use two (and when I started they only used one and it was so unwelcoming looking). Now we're seeing new faces every day so I'm hoping the word is getting out. Because we're not in the middle of the campus we're easy to overlook and I figured that just sitting back and thinking good thoughts at the kids wasn't going to bring in new customers :-) DH and I brainstorm ideas often. Next week I'm going to run a "Vote for Friday's special" campaign to try to generate some more buzz. This Friday we're having Curry Day with Thai chicken curry and beef curry. While I do look forward to my time off I'm really enjoying my job and get a lot more satisfaction from it than I have in a while.

I think I'm too literal minded. I keep reading your answers and thinking that if I were facing execution I wouldn't have an appetite. I'd be either innocent or the political prisoner of an extremely corrupt regime, and the injustice would make it even worse. Tea and toast? So I came up with an alternate scenario--if I were going to have lifesaving surgery that was likely to destroy my sense of taste, these are the things I'd want to taste one last time: Cheese borekes made with filo and gruyere (among other cheeses). Eggplant in techinah salad with Syrian style scratchy hard pita. Greek style salad with a large variety of vegetables, including peppers and cress, and feta. My mother's arroz con pollo, full of dried fruit, mandarin slices, and guava jelly. A friend's "Flablam!"--mostly cheese with some tomato sauce stuffed into a butter pastry shell. Double cut rib lamb chops with salt and ketchup (childhood favorite). Petits Pois (plain). Sunbursts little yellow tomatoes, chilled. Roasted eggplant spears with pepper and herbs. Sliced cremini mushrooms braised in port with shallots. French vanilla ice cream. 72% dark chocolate. Perfectly ripe cantaloupe, strawberries, peaches, and cherries. Aged gouda and triple cream brie with whole grain and seed bread. Plain buttered white toast. Plus a double double animal style + raw onion and the world's best crunchy street taco. :) That's more than a meal, but it's interesting to think of living but not tasting. There are all kinds of foods that I love that aren't on the list. These are the ones I'd want to remember most. OTOH, I think I already remember them really well, so maybe I should ask for stuff I can't imagine?

Edited to correct typos. Preheat oven to 350F. Grease two 9-inch round cake pans with shortening or coat with cooking spray. Line bottoms with parchment paper and grease again. Measure flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a medium-size bowl. Stir with a fork until well blended and no lumps of cocoa remain. In large mixing bowl, beat butter using an electric mixer on medium-high speed until very creamy. Gradually add 1 cup granulated sugar and 3/4 cup brown sugar, beating until light and fluffy, at least 3 minutes. Beat in eggs, 1 at a time. Add vanilla until blended. Turn mixer to low and beat in 1/3 of flour mixture, then half of buttermilk, beating only until mixed after each addition. Beat in another third of flour mixture, then remaining buttermilk, ending with remaining flour mixture. Beat only until evenly blended. Overbeating at this point will toughen cake. Divide batter evenly between pans, then bang pans on counter several times to remove air bubbles. Bake in center of 350F oven until center of cake springs back when lightly touched and sides of cake start to pull away from pan, from 30 to 35 minutes. Let cakes cool in pans set on a rack for 10 minutes, then turn out. Remove parchment paper, then cool cakes thoroughly on racks. When ready to assemble cake, slice each in half horizontally to make 4 layers. To make filling, combine frozen concentrate, 3/4 cup sugar and gelatin in a small saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until sugar and gelatin are dissolved, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in orange zest and 1/4 cup liqueur. Press a sheet of waxed paper into surface of orange mixture and refrigerate just until it no longer feels warm to the touch, about 20 minutes. Whip cream in a large mixing bowl until soft peaks will form. Gradually beat in icing sugar until combined. Fold in liqueur mixture until evenly blended and no white streaks of whipping cream remain. To assemble, place a layer of cake, cut side up, on a serving plate. Brush with about 1 tbsp liqueur. Spoon a scant fifth of filling onto middle of layer, then gently spread almost to edge. Top with a cake layer, brush with 1 tbsp liqueur, then spread with a fifth of filling. Repeat until all layers have been added. Use remaining filling to frost top and sides of cake. Refrigerate immediately for at least 4 hours, preferably overnight, so flavors blend. For best flavor, bring cake to room temperature before serving. Leftover cake will keep well, loosely covered, in the refrigerator for about 2 days.

Nah, IC, Andrew Zimmern's Killer Potato Latkes are a lot of work. I'm not making them! Regular ol' latkes, of which zucchini is a subset, are dead easy, especially with a good FP. Just messy. But I'm going to make them well ahead and freeze the overs. That's part of why I don't have fridge space for a turkey! The way to keep latkes nice is to put them single high on parchment in a big container box, fridge or freezer. They do very well that way, and then one can just transfer them as is, paper and all, onto the baking sheet. If anything, they're better rewarmed than fresh out of the oil. :) Of course, they're good still frozen, and cold from the fridge and tepid left on the plate and any other temperature you might think of. If it were the mobs, I'd make 10 lbs. potatoes Killer latkes, and about half that of sweet potato and red onion, plus a pound or two's worth of zucchini. I can't imagine anyone eating more than two each, given that this is a sit down dinner, not a roaming latke party, so if I have three per person, it'll be more than plenty, and if there's more in the batch, I'll freeze them. I might put some potato in, especially if I need an extender, but I'm just doing the Cranberry Jezebel, rather than the apple sauce, pear sauce and sour cream. I think it'll go well with the zucchini. For sure I could make a simpler meal, but this is for me, to make me feel happy and like it's an event, rather than just putting dinner on the table. That's why I didn't just dump the uncommunicative ones. Cancelling, wouldn't make me happy. And they're family. One must take a deep breath and get over it. I can't tell y'all how much it helped to hear your supportive opinions on the matter. The sympathy really helped me get to letting it go. Thank-you! So, Annie, that all is why. It'll be fun in the end. Tomorrow will be a better day, and minions will move the pumpkins. Advil is doing a bang-up job on the aches and pains, and it will be fun in the end. I'm thinking sous vide finished under the broiler for the meat. Or maybe vice versa, oven first. Yeah. That's a good idea. I really appreciate all your reinforcement on the menu! I'll stop stressing over that, at least!