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Hello! What the hell was I thinking up there saying I'd for sure be back on my game by now? 🙄🤣 For reasons I won't go into here Thanksgiving week was..........rough. BUT, time marches on and deer week stops for no woman! And I'm here! For some reason I prodded myself into decorating for Christmas early in November. Which is good because I promise it wouldn't have happened if it wasn't already done lol. I'm glad it's done, though, because I find the twinkle lights comforting . A few pictures of the house to get us in deer season mood lol: My mom and step dad sent me this gorgeous FRESH wreath. It's been years since I've had a real tree or anything so I'm really enjoying the fragrance. It's hanging in the kitchen where I can see it and smell it all the time. It's turned off pretty cold--which is an excellent thing. No worrying about it being too hot to hang a deer. I wrestled with going to the big city to the grocery store and Sam's.....but it snowed a bit on Monday and I just felt like staying home. We have enough food plus I ordered a big Misfits delivery that hopefully will be here Thursday to supplement my fresh veggie stash. Speaking of veggies, before it froze my brother and sister in law gave us about 80 lbs of green tomatoes. I had thoughts of relish etc. but in the end we simply packed them in boxes and let them ripen. It worked a treat! Soooooo...although they aren't exactly as good as just off the vine from the garden, they are miles above grocery store tomatoes. Very grateful to them for sharing (our garden got beaten to a pulp in that hail storm). And yay! Good tomatoes with meals! So, I'm off to finish cleaning a few things. Our hunter friend's flight was delayed from his starting point so fingers crossed he's able to make his connecting flight to get here. In a bit I'm going to start on breakfast burritos and prepping for dinner. I'll be back after a while!

A couple of nights ago I went to a party. One guest had brought smoked salmon from a local company. It was moist, tender, and better than I'd have expected; I have (had) firm opinions that the best smoked salmon in town comes from the Northern Waters Smokehaus. Another guest and I agreed that this was just as good. So I bought some yesterday, and had some of it for dinner. Mmm. Flaky. Oily. Maybe not quite as firm as Northern Waters' work, which is Atlantic salmon. This label suggests this salmon is locally farmed. (I need to call both of those companies and get more information about their sources, in light of this article.) Anyway, it's good stuff. I also finally had the ingredients to try a recipe from The Mediterranean Dish: Sauteed Mushrooms with Garlic. I overcooked the garlic and had to start over, but fortunately I hadn't added the mushrooms yet. This recipe's a winner. It's intended as an appetizer, but was plenty of dinner for me, especially because I'd been sampling the salmon.

He replied this morning: I sent an appreciative reply.

四季豆炒土猪肉 (sì jì dòu chǎo tǔ zhū ròu), Green bean and organic pork with red and green space chillies chillies. Served with rice.

My small city has a lot of refugees, with a sizable Karen population and others. Yesterday my partner was walking to the bank in the suburb we had just moved away from and saw that a rather ordinary cafe had been turned into a Burmese / Thai restaurant. We are unfamiliar with Burmese / Myanmar food so had to give a go for lunch, eating off the Burmese menu. The person behind the counter explained the food patiently and enthusiastically. It was excellent and quite different from anything I have had before. For some reason my photo preview doesn't have the quality to read. Maybe once it is posted. We opted for the noodle salad and the tea leaf rice salad. The noodle salad was very nice but a bit oily for my taste. The tea leaf rice salad had some really interesting bitter notes and came with an egg, cabbage, cucumber and toasted peanuts. He also brought out some bowls of soup. We of course dug in before remembering to take a photo. We had some Thai Iced Tea - one green, one black, basically Boba tea but we passed on the pearls. In the past when I tried Boba I was underwhelmed but this was really good. Will be going back to work my way through the rest of the menu.

I have a research project in Patagonia (in terrestrial agriculture-sheep-pumas) and I have sometimes seen something that if not slavery, was close to... I am not surprise at all that salmon industry is similar. In fact, Norwegians are partially responsible of it when moving their farming operations to Chilean fjords.

Collard Greens Tacos with Pickled Apples and Walnuts from the “Dos Caminos Tacos” cookbook - for the pickled apples you heat up apple cider vinegar, water, sugar, halved jalapeno and pickling spices until the sugar dissolves and add thinly sliced Gala apples. Let it cool down for an hour and filter off the pickling liquid. Walnuts are getting roasted in olive oil and finely chopped. Sliced collard greens are sautéed in the walnut oil until slightly wilted and mixed with the apples and walnuts. Served on corn tortillas

I never use the things. I don't see the point. They're just another thing to wash later. Anyway, I like the the look of wood.

For chicken I have recently gone of leaving the legs untied and even cutting some of the skin next to the breast so they can flop open more. For both, but especially for turkey, the key imo is to cut the tendons at the end of the drumstick so the meat can contract and the tendons soften

I totally agree with this. Fast heating is nice, but the fine control is really important and often lacking.

I also read this today. I promptly sent a message to our local fish and seafood wholesaler; they supply our major supermarkets: Their marketing manager promptly replied: I then replied with the URL from the Guardian, and asked: That was about 1:30 this afternoon. No response yet.

Having salmon for dinner? You might want to read this first. ‘Those who eat Chilean salmon cannot imagine how much human blood it carries with it’ | Chile | The Guardian

Also check how fine the gradation is in the power settings. My cheap one is like 10% between each notch. My really good one is 1%. Also, look for those with continuously variable output as opposed to using a duty cycle. Duty cycle ones lead to scorching very easily even at 40% power. Continuously variable ones act much more like a gas burner.

Not interested in brands that don't?

Thanks for sharing that photo, @SLB. My mom had one with that vibe. I loved seeing the pattern stand out against the different solid color tablecloths used for each season. Crimson or deep green for Christmas, pink or mint green in spring and gold or brown in the fall. Sweet memories!

I prefer my legs untied. I tend to trip and fall otherwise. Shoelaces tied, though -- but not together.

Almost the same as yesterday, sautéed onion, garlic, wombok and mushrooms with sliced chicken on brothy rice.

Thanks @KennethT that makes sense. My current single burner is a cheap Chinese made one. Soon though, we will be renovating the kitchen and installing a 4 burner. This is something I’ll have to watch out for.

My husbands's mother had a huge tablecloth that her mother had crocheted. It was brought out for special occaisions for my husband's family of 10.(two parents and 8 kids) At about age 5 my husband took scissors to it - little brat that he was. He recalls being sent to his room by his teary-eyed mother. To this day, he remembers the shame he felt. Not for destroying the tablecloth, but for making his mother cry. This was over 60 years ago. I still tease him when I put a tablecloth on our dining room table and say "please don't cut this!'

I'd like some input on which brands do the 'screaming on pan removal issue. interested in free standing units. absolutely not interested in any thing that screams/beeps/howls if I should dare to remove the pot. . .

Potato soup with chipotle, crushed tomato, onion, garlic, chicken stock, cilantro, and a dollop of Greek yogurt Black beans with bacon, garlic, crushed tomato, ancho chile powder, roasted chile Poblano, and cilantro

My guess is machine-made; the pattern of the holes is so consistent and orderly. There's no label; how would I be able to tell??

@SLB, that tablecloth reminds me sharply of the "fancy" tablecloths I grew up with...can't remember now whether it was my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, or all of the above. I think it's beautiful!

@SLB, was the tablecloth handmade or machine made?

This is not a great photo -- it's a gray day, and just plain dark: I don't know how old the tablecloth is, but I am very confident in my presumption that she did not have a tablecloth until well after WWII, when enough of her 20 children had done well enough for themselves to move her into the kind of house that had an indoor bathroom. I don't even know if it's particularly special; it just was the "fancy" tablecloth in my mother's home. In my child's eye and memory, it is very *pretty*. My adult self prefers block printing, geometrics, etc. Other kinds of visual stimulation.