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Awesome, thanks.👍

I saw this article on CBC a few days ago, talking about how a lot of people get into homesteading (to whatever degree, and by whoever's definition) without really understanding what they're signing up for. It's definitely true that this kind of lifestyle provides endless "learning opportunities." This morning, for example, I learned that if I wipe a smear of quail droppings from my hand to my clothing, it's best not to do so on the part of my winter coat's sleeve where I will unthinkingly wipe my dribbling nose a few minutes later. Overall, looking at articles and videos about homesteading (and I believe I've mentioned, upthread, that I find this a rather grandiose term for 2 acres with a garden and a few critters), I find that the whole question of feces is remarkably understated, on the whole. I spend a whole lot of time cleaning out rabbit pens, shoveling out the bedding and droppings from their enclosure, shoveling the chicken run, rinsing the muck from our fresh eggs, and scraping the cleanout trays from the quail into my wheelbarrow. Some days it does indeed feel like a lot. Not that I'm complaining, you understand, we had chickens, an occasional pig and even a couple of rabbits when I was a kid. I had no illusions. But it does seem conspicuously under-represented in "influencer" videos, given its prevalence when you have livestock, even small livestock. (I haven't touched on litterboxes and puppy pads, because pets are a whole other thing, but those figure into the equation as well.)

This is the same website that I found the method for just using the scrapings from the bottom of the jar for the next batch of dough.

Wonderful, thanks Ann, I'll give it a shot. I wasn't aware of the site, so thanks for that too!

She says thank you 😊 She's 6. I can't believe she's already 6. We got her in Jan of 2020 right before the pandemic. LOL yeah.....same. She got in the duck pond and it's now a dirty pink. I love balsamic vinegar with duck.

Paul, it wasn't something I was familiar with until 2 years ago. I've made it a couple of times since. I adjust the recipe slightly depending on whether I have a starter ready to use. You can find the link to where I found it here: https://www.culinaryexploration.eu/blog/British-Bloomer-Recipe

Confit duck legs work well in a salad.

I gave Red Dog a pink collar when she was 1-yo because everyone called her "he". Within a week the collar was mud brown. She's just not a pink collar kinda gal. Hope the pink collar works better on Scoutie. One of my favorite things I ever ate was a duck salad at a long-defunct local restaurant. Wish I had paid more attention to how they made it, but I think it was a warm salad with a balsamic vinegar dressing and some mushy but flavorful cheese. 🤷🏼‍♂️

This sounds perfect! Scout is such a good-looking girl, how old is she now? I love her pink collar, very chic. 🙂

Beautiful Ann. Never heard of this bread before - any info on it?

Early morning bake. Crusty English Bloomer Bread. Started the dough yesterday around 5:00 PM using a small "sourdough mini starter" with the addition of 3g of yeast. 900g of flour added to the 132g mini starter at 60%hydration. Dough was blowing the top off of the container at 3:00 AM this morning.

That looks delicious Patti! I also have saved the salad recipe. I don't have the cranberries or I'd make it tonight to go with duck....I do have fresh cranberries but I don't think I'd like that as well......... edited to say I don't think I have enough slaw mix either. But I WILL be making this soon.

@Smithy, as I was typing this, I got an email from Goûter saying shipping to my address would be $55 for one Pannetone, $65 for two and asking if I wanted a payment link.

Our hunter friend requested ducks so I've been hoarding these in the freezer. And I think that was the smart thing to do because this cold weather seems to have sent them further south. A few weeks ago Ronnie and Scout were getting tons of them though. (I got Scoutie a new collar. It's pink much to Ronnie's dismay but she and I love it 😁) So I have 3 teal, 2 mallards and a pintail to roast tonight. I may also do some guts....... Side dishes are always a challenge it seems like. My two steam boys will be in use for the ducks and I really don't want to unload all the pans stored in my normal sized oven so that leaves the stove top as the only option. I might do stewed tomatoes. Maybe I could do scalloped potatoes and then while the ducks are resting I could throw them in the steam boy to brown on the top? The guys got up about 4:30 this morning and are out at the shooting house. It's really cold but the wind has layed down so they might see something.

I've never taken much interest in my medlar tree... The French name for the fruit is cul de chien (dog's arse), hopefully for their appearance rather than flavour... My reticence was mainly down to the 'bletting' process being a bit Ye Olde England, and processing the flesh looked like too much effort. But this year I decided to harvest them and give it a go... I gathered about 6 kg (13 lbs) in total and, after a lot of hard work, ended up with 3 kg of pulp... I can see how this was a welcome treat for our medieval ancestors at the beginning of winter, but I was underwhelmed. I didn't mind eating the odd one out of hand (seed disposal is a little, errrrr, inelegant), especially when they had a bit of tang, but a big bowl of pulp was nothing to write home about. I had some quince poaching syrup leftover from a few weeks back, so sweetened a portion with that, along with some spices (cinnamon, clove)... It was fine. Once the novelty wore off I froze most of it, maybe to be used as a side-blob for a tart or slice of cake in the future. Whilst looking around for things to do with the rest of the pulp, a medlar tart popped up in my feed (with lots more info about medlars if you're curious). I didn't end up making that one, but decided that a tart would definitely make a dent in my medlar mountain. Given that the medlar mush was a bit like pumpkin purée, I went in that direction, ultimately settling on a sweet potato pie by Claire Saffitz (YouTube) as the template, but mostly winging it in terms of sweeteners (a mix of dark brown sugar, cassonade, golden syrup, black treacle). Despite all of that and the spices, the filling was still lacking, so I threw in some Grand Marnier and lemon juice/zest hoping they would give it a lift. I'm not usually this experimental, tending to stick to a recipe, but mediocre medlar calls for desperate measures. I cooked it gently for a relatively soft set, and bruléed a slice to distract from the unrelenting brownness of it all. It was... fine. Think of it as a 'Meh'-dlar Tart. I will not be submitting it for inclusion in the next edition of Larousse Gastronomique. Going back to the tart I skipped over earlier, there was a link to a recipe for ma'amoul cookies that made use of the medlar flesh... Medlar and walnut on the left; date a orange flower on the right. You will be shocked - shocked! - to learn that I didn't think much to the medlar version, but I did like the dates. I've made ma'amoul a couple of times before, quite a while ago, but forgotten that I was a fan.

As we all know, time gets away from me and every year it seems to get worse. Our friend got on his connecting flight--just barely. He like 10 mins between the time the first flight landed to get over to the second one. I think he's decided that it's worth it to pay a bit more for direct flights from now on and I don't blame him. I made breakfast burritos early in the day--I never can seem to make enough scrambled eggs the first time so it took even longer because I had to go back and make more. Ronnie found a breakfast sausage mix that he really likes so he seasoned up some venison burger with it for me. Just eggs, venison breakfast sausage, cheese, a bit of salsa and some jalapeños. I left out the usual tater tots that I love to make it less carby. So that's done. There's enough for every morning so they won't go hungry but I will offer to make breakfast sandwiches if they get sick of these. I decided to make spaghetti and meatballs for dinner (I get a carb pass when our friend is here lol). I've probably talked about these before but I LOVE Hank Shaw's Venison Meatball Recipe. I deviate a bit and use a tablespoon or so of Italian seasoning from Sam's instead of the fennel. And I use Lawry's salt instead of regular. OH and I used Italian bread crumbs to roll them in in place of plain. I neglected to take a picture but after you roll the balls in the bread crumbs you just fry them in a skillet using oil. Easy peasy. They had stopped for lunch and by the time they got home from hunting yesterday it was about 6:30 so I just made a mess of deviled eggs and put out some spicy dill pickle pretzels and every thing bagel cashews from Nuts.com. I have a very bad addiction to that place now. I threw together a salad (you'll probably see a lot of those this time) , boiled the pasta (I had fleeting thoughts of making pasta but that was quickly put out of my mind lol), buttered and wrapped up some of my homemade French bread and warmed it and dinner was done!

Thank you so much! Lol....Santa doesn't scare me but I do feel at times he's a bit judgy......... I LOVE your Christmas decorations, too. I hope you'll show us a bit That Coca Cola Santa was my Grammy's and as long as I can remember he was always out. The life size Santa was a gift from Ronnie's mom. She got my sister in law one too. Her's is more of an old-timey Santa with pinks and mauves. She saw them while on vacation with my in laws in Georgia I believe. I can't remember whether they drove them home or had them shipped but either way I know it was a lot because he's very heavy! Awwww I'm happy that you de-lurked! You should do it more often I love your tree idea! I might just copy you!

I wrote to Goûter last weekend The notice I got said they didn't work Mon + Tuesday. So I would expect to be hearing from them soon. Trump has levied tariffs on many things, so we'll see. Last year there was no added tax.

@blue_dolphin, @TdeV, anyone else in the USA who's trying to order from gouter: have you actually managed to order? I got a price quote, with the caveat that the price covers product and shipping but not any tariffs that I might have to pay. I haven't heard anything since then and they haven't answered my question about how to actually place the order. (Last year they sent me a payment link via Square.) @Alleguede may be able to shed some light on this question, now that I think of it.

Funds for food , a recurrent item might be managed differently than funds for equipment , a ( possibly ) non-recurrent item.

Farm raised Atlantic salmon is pretty good. I have been lucky enough to fish the wild ones in Norway and have them side to side with farmed ones and they stand. For me is always funny to see that people only care on the origin of fish. They will prefer cultivated to wild fruits, greens, seeds and so on. They will regularly eat pork, not wild boar, or chicken, all domestic and human raised. They will choose beef against bison. They will buy "farmed" eggs rather than go to the bush and pick up some eggs, but when it came to fish, it needs to be pure and wild. I have seen a few blind tastes of species like branzino, and the people who is the more against "farmed" is the people that is not able to differentiate. If we talk about crustaceans, then it is funnier.

I couldn't disagree more. PDO classification is more than that. It is a guarantee that what you get is what you expect. A specific product made from specified ingredients in a specified manner in a specified place. Without it, it could be anything. I don't know what Champaigne (sic) is. I prefer Champagne.

I bought this in the James Joyce museum in Dublin which is located in the Martello tower which is the location of the opening of his masterpiece, Ulysses. "Yes" is the final word of the novel.

Beef Chow Fun from “That Noodle Life” - thinly sliced rib-eye steak is marinated for two hours in a mixture of light soy sauce, garlic, Shaoxing wine, toasted sesame oil and cornstarch. Afterwards, you stir-fry the meat mixture, add sliced red onions, add wide rice noodles and finish in the wok by adding a sauce made from light and dark sou sauce, Shaoxing wine, sugar and water. Finished with green onions and plenty of mung beans sprouts and served with toasted sesame seeds and chili crunch and oil

Battery powered devices like this are taking advantage of the device not being used all that much. That means there's plenty of time to charge the battery. That probably wouldn't work for a commercial kitchen. There's a fair amount of larger scale battery buffering being deployed, in many cases where an area has a peak demand greater than what the transmission liine to it can provide, but the energy demand can be met by it (averaged over a day), and it's impracticable to increase transmission capacity. there are also deployments for renewables like wind farms, where peak production can be quite a bit higher than average, and the grid connection isn't big enough for that. I don't think anyone has deployed a system big enough for a solar or wind farm to look like base load plants, but I won't be surprised when it happens.