Melancthon Mega-Quarry

Water concerns and environmental risk assessments impede plans for a mega-quarry near the GTA

By Ruth VanDyken

Ontario’s densely populated Greater Golden Horseshoe, which hugs the western tip of Lake Ontario from the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) to Niagara and stretches all the way to Georgian Bay and Peterborough, has less than four percent of the province’s land mass but is home to nearly a quarter of all Canadians. The region is one of the country’s biggest economic engines, with industries such as auto and steel manufacturing as well as Toronto’s diverse economy pushing urban development across agricultural and natural land. Such sprawl is often controversial. But the need for raw materials — specifically, the gravel required for road and building construction — is creating another clash between man and nature.

Chef Michael Stadtlander is the driving force behind Foodstock, an Oct. 16 fundraiser in support of the movement to Stop The Mega Quarry. He’s in the potato field of Dave Vanderzaag, who is one of four farmers who didn’t sell to an American-backed company that wants to develop one of Canada’s biggest rock quarries.                                                                                 JASON VAN BRUGGEN PHOTO

>>>Chefs, Farmers Unite for Foodstock – Toronto Star

By Kathy Caprino, M.A.

The analogy of the cocktail party truly fits.  LinkedIn has the following aspects in common with an awesome cocktail party:

You get the chance to connect with like-minded people who you may otherwise never have had the chance to meet

By investing just a bit of time each day, you can learn a great deal that’s of interest and use

It’s a blast to connect to people that you admire from afar, and who can teach you vital things about how to be more of what you want to be

You can determine in an instant if you want to invest any more time and energy in getting to know new folks you see

Socializing beyond your limited sphere helps you build a powerful community that supports and enriches

You can add great diversity to your pool of colleagues and peers by branching out and connecting with new people across the country and globally

Meeting new people who are doing amazing and inspiring things in this world is exhilarating

But after two years of using LinkedIn for several hours each day, and after counseling others on how to build their personal brand on LinkedIn for professional advantage, I’m witnessing some negative effects of the misguided notions people have gleaned about what LinkedIn can do for them.

I’d like to share what I’ve observed to be the Top 8 Myths about LinkedIn as a professional tool, and offer some straight talk about what you can expect it to do for you.

Myth #1: LinkedIn will get me a job

Myth #2: LinkedIn will replace recruiters

There’s a growing fear out there that LinkedIn will replace recruiters as conduits for connecting talented candidates to leading employers.  It’s just not so.  There’s an important personal dimension to recruiting that a tool such as LinkedIn simply can’t provide.  From critically sifting through hundreds of resumes, to understanding the components of true “fit” for the hiring company, to personally interviewing and filtering candidates, and doing the extensive legwork of communicating “fit” to both employer and candidate — recruiting is a labor-intensive job that requires expert, personalized skill and attention.  Again, LI is a powerful tool that certainly has changed the recruiting landscape, but recruiters remain vitally important in the process.

Myth #3: There’s no need to fully flesh out my profile – a brief line or two is fine

Myth #4: Because I have over 100 (or 1000) connections, new opportunities will come easily to me

Myth #5: When folks accept my LI invitation, they want to partner with me or connect more deeply

Myth #6: LinkedIn is the best professional networking tool for all businesses or careers

Myth #7: The more updates I post the better

Myth #8: Being highly connected on LinkedIn is a sign of professional success

>>>LinkedIn: Busting 8 Damaging Myths About What It Can Do For Your Career, Kathy Caprino, Forbes

Click here to read the complete article>>>

2. Work with the best people
To become a great chef you do not need to work with twenty top chefs. You need to experience three or four very good chefs. The best is not necessarily the most popular or most famous, it can just as easily be a chef in a small place who is simply very organized and very good. Focus on a few chefs for your foundation, then for specialties- for example, charcuterie, pastry and so on- you can do internships.

3. Keep Your Station Orderly
From the storage of vegetables to the finishing of mise-en-place, everything needs to be marked, labeled and in the proper containers, taking up the minimum of room. Then, during service, you will be able to fill orders with maximum efficiency. A well-organised station also gets respect from the rest of the kitchen.

4. Purchase Wisely
The profitable restaurant runs on the same principle as the frugal housewife’s kitchen: Use everything, because everything you do not use is potential profit that goes straight into the garbage. Any underutilized food items will affect your food costs. Pay attention to the price of ingredients and keep them in line with what a customer will pay for a dish. The more you utilize everything, the more you will be able to afford the best ingredients. A great chef respects the culinary value of every ingredient- from truffle to turnip.

5. Season with Precision
The taste of every ingredient is elevated by proper seasoning. There is an exact point at which ingredients are seasoned correctly. More is not always better.
Learning the peculiarities of your palate and attuning it to finished results requires precision and endless practice.

6. Master the Heat
From 120*F to 800*F- there is an enormous range for heat to affect ingredients. A truly great cook has such an intimate knowledge of heat that he or she develops a sixth sense of timing for the moment of doneness. Learn the basics of heat in the classical repertoire.

7. Learn the world of Food
Experience different cuisines whenever you can. Do it when you are young, before you are building your career. Learning other cuisines will broaden your foundation as a chef. Even when you have begun to progress through the ranks of the kitchen, use your time off to go places, try new restaurants, buy books. In other words, immerse yourself in the world of food.

8. Know the Classics
No matter what cuisine you concentrate on, the classic dishes will cover the spectrum of techniques and ingredients needed to master a cuisine. The fundamentals of stocks, sauces and seasoning are all there in the classics… whether that classic is clam chowder in Cape Cod or bouillabaisse in Marseilles.

9. Accept Criticism
As a young chef, you spend your days and nights being criticized and analyzed by the chefs for whom you work. It is important to learn from criticism. It is equally important to learn from criticism. It is equally important to learn how to criticize usefully when you become a full fledged chef. And finally, you must learn from the criticism of the public. Recognise that to keep yourself interested you are constantly varying, innovating and reinventing, succeeding at times and needing more work at others. Criticism is the public’s way of telling you how to improve on the results of your creative impulses.

10. Keep a Journal of your Recipes
You cannot remember everything you see cooked, or even have cooked, but with a journal, a computer, a digital camera, you can bring those taste memories to life to guide you for the rest of your professional life.

Dining out will cost more this year as U.S. restaurants take advantage of the nearly two-year long expansion to boost prices on food and drinks.

“The fact that the airline industry was able to pass along cost increases signals that the pricing environment has become somewhat more favorable than it was during the heart of the recession,” Maki said. “It’s more likely restaurants will be able to pass along price increases now relative to the last few years.”

Higher-priced menus reflect growing confidence by eateries that consumers can afford to pay more to eat out. Restaurants are emboldened in part by the success of U.S. airlines, which have raised fares almost 10 percent since a year ago, according to Dean Maki, chief U.S. economist at Barclays Capital in New York.

Click here to read the entire article>>>

For much of its 13-year history, particularly the early years, Google has taken a pretty simple approach to management: Leave people alone. Let the engineers do their stuff. If they become stuck, they’ll ask their bosses, whose deep technical expertise propelled them into management in the first place.

But Mr. Bock’s group found that technical expertise — the ability, say, to write computer code in your sleep — ranked dead last among Google’s big eight. What employees valued most were even-keeled bosses who made time for one-on-one meetings, who helped people puzzle through problems by asking questions, not dictating answers, and who took an interest in employees’ lives and careers.

“In the Google context, we’d always believed that to be a manager, particularly on the engineering side, you need to be as deep or deeper a technical expert than the people who work for you,” Mr. Bock says. “It turns out that that’s absolutely the least important thing. It’s important, but pales in comparison. Much more important is just making that connection and being accessible.”

Click here to read more>>>

No business wants its work force pilfered by the competition, especially when it comes to key performers. And that’s even more so for small and medium-sized businesses than bigger ones, which can ill afford to lose and try to replace important players.

So businesses that want to hang on to top talent need to make moves to retain their staff, experts say.

Employees entertain offers to jump ship for a variety of reasons, usually when their needs aren’t met. And it’s not necessarily about money, says Maureen Neglia, a Toronto-based senior consultant in Towers Watson’s talent and rewards practice.

When someone’s ideas stop getting heard, other employers start to look attractive, says Iain Morris, a Toronto-based partner with Mercer Canada Ltd., a global human resources consulting firm.

Indeed, Ms. Feltham says her director of business development took a pay cut to join her firm because he felt his opinions would count more, she says.

Click here to read more>>

There exists are a myriad of reasons for why organizations counter but to me it boils down to two key factors – power and optics.  Power in that an employer has lost and needs to regain it and optics as it pertains to how the organization may look upon an executive who has lost a key member of their team.  In the luxury hotel world the optics also relate to the ownership group – try explaining the loss of a superstar DOSM to an owner that is reexamining the management contract.  According to data compiled by the National Employment Association, 80% of Executives who accept a counter offer will not be with that organization in 12 months – are you one of the 20%?

In the search I referenced above, the candidate kept me abreast of the counter process and felt that she owed it to her current organization to hear them out – there is a psychological reaction to leaving an employer.

Make no mistake – you owe an employer nothing other than your focus and diligence while employed.  Companies downsize and cut back frequently very often cutting loose loyal and committed employees – the company will often state that it was tough decision made for business reasons.  Should an employee not similarly have the right to make tough decisions for personal reasons.

Your current employer is under tremendous pressure to hold on to talent – if countered remind yourself of these key points:

1. why do I have to leave to be rewarded and effusively told how much I mean to the company?

2. do they value me or do they value my position – they are two different animals.  I am not replaceable, my position is.  Have they downsized people at my level in other parts of the organization?  Can the articulate why I mean so much to the company or are they playing upon my guilt and sense of loyalty?  Are you upset that I am leaving or are you concerned about the personal ramifications my departure might have on you and the company?

3. I considered the new opportunity for many reasons – those reasons have not changed – why does a new organization quantitatively value my services more than my existing company?  Nothing really changes – if in one year I am still not feeling motivated/rewarded/valued do I need to solicit another job offer to correct it?

4. What about the new employer – they have undoubtedly invested a great deal of energy, money and time in you and your candidacy.  They negotiated in good faith, met your demands – do you not ethically feel committed to them?

The purpose of this note is not to influence candidates we represent – we work for our clients and as such must ensure that their best interests are kept top of mind.  However, when you resign, you will be bombarded with platitudes and praise. For 80% of the workforce, those plaudits are fleeting.

Brent Billing (brent@lwjobs.com)

“Tokyo is an unbelievable city for food,” said Oyvind Naesheim, executive chef at Nobu Hong Kong, in an interview. “The passion and perfection at some top Tokyo restaurants show us why this city is so outstanding in fine dining.”

The third edition of Michelin’s Tokyo guide is going on sale as Japan’s economy grew at its fastest pace in more than two years because of increased government and consumer spending. While restaurant spending in September was flat from a year ago, sales at noodle shops and Japanese eateries bucked the trend and rose at least 5 percent, said the Japan Foodservice Association.

Of the 197 restaurants selected in this 2010 Tokyo edition, two-thirds serve Japanese food, including common culinary styles such as fugu, soba, sukiyaki, tempura and sushi, Michelin said. French restaurants, including one by Joel Robuchon, took three of the 11 three-star slots. Tokyo has a total of 261 stars, more than any of the cities Michelin covers in 23 nations. New York has four three-star restaurants.

Hamadaya, bumped to two stars, declined to comment.

‘Very Happy’

Takashi Saito, master chef of Sushi Saito in the shopping and entertainment district of Ginza, said news that the restaurant has won three stars, “hasn’t really sunk in yet” and that he’s “very happy.”

“Tokyo has great quality ingredents, from the sea, from the mountains,” said Jean-Luc Naret, director of Michelin Guides, in an interview. “The quality of the chefs is excellent, passing down techniques from generation to generation.”

Nobu’s Naesheim, 29, said comparing Tokyo and Paris isn’t fair because of their very different culinary traditions. Naret said the 160,000 restaurants in Tokyo, versus about 40,000 in Paris, helps explain why the Japanese capital has so many of the world’s top eateries.

Michelin’s debut Tokyo edition came under fire from local media critics who claimed it showed a foreign bias and a dearth of local knowledge.

‘For Japanese Readers’

The guide is “local, because it is made with Japanese inspectors and Japanese editorial team, and made firstly for the Japanese readers,” said Bernard Delmas, president of Nihon Michelin Tire, in a statement.

Michelin says it rates restaurants for their food and drink based on a set of “unpublished criteria.” One star indicates a very good restaurant, two means excellent cuisine worthy of a detour, while three denotes exceptional cuisine deserving of a “special journey,” Michelin says.

Michelin & Cie., the world’s largest tiremaker, has been publishing its restaurant and hotel guides since 1900, at the start of the automotive era. Distributed for free until 1920, the guide was originally meant for chauffeurs and included tips on using and repairing tires.

The Tokyo guide is in English and Japanese and will feature only starred restaurants. It goes on sale in Japan on Nov. 20.

The restaurants awarded three stars are:
Esaki, Classic Japanese (New)
Ishikawa, Classic Japanese
Joel Robuchon, French
Kanda, Japanese
Koju, Japanese
L’Osier, French
Quintessence, French
Sushi Mizutani, Sushi
Sukiyabashi Jiro Honten, Sushi
Sushi Saito, Sushi (New)
Yukimura, Classic Japanese (New)