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Some years back I had a grass-fed beef burger at some upscale country club and it was wonderful. It's hard now to remember whether it was strictly due to the flavor of the meat, or there was something special about the bun and condiments as well. I haven't had as much luck myself with grass-fed beef burgers, but that was because my husband always wanted more fat in his, and strongly preferred hot Italian sausage and chopped onions mixed in with it. Someday I'll finish my stock of those burger patties we made, and then I'll be in a position to try the grass-fed beef burger again. I would have asked for some stew meat rather than having all the trimmings ground into burger. Other than that I'm not sure what else I'd suggest from your list. Echoing an earlier question: did you get the tail? What about a cheek?

Safeway has Foothills Creamery Moon Mist ice cream now, which I understand is a Nova Scotia...specialty. Bubblegum, grape, banana, cherry flavour. I've not had it yet, but am equal parts horrified and intrigued. Is it good? Or does it taste as bizarre as it looks?? I've had the Breyers Nanaimo Bar ice cream. It was ok. Pleasant, a bit overly sweet for ice cream, nothing exciting. Part of the appeal of Nanaimo bars is the distinct textures of the three layers when you bite into it, which is missing when it's all mixed up in an ice cream.

I got a lot more ground beef than I expected. That makes me wonder what I missed out on! I do like GB though. It is very versatile and easy to cook. Greg

Baguettes baked last night were still warm so covered them with a tea towel overnight, and sliced this morning. Made Moe a pot of cream of mushroom soup this morning and he had some for breakfast with toasted baguette. The best reason to bake bread is for the toast.

I was attempting to enable you. I ended up enabling myself.

Delivery from local chef who cooks out of his home. A giant chamorro with tortillas, refritos, rice and pico de gallo. Chamorro is a slow-roasted pork shank in an adobo sauce. We shared half of it for dinner; enough leftovers for pulled pork sandwiches for today's lunch. Cost of meal including tax and delivery was 190 pesos (just over 10 bucks USD).

Thank you, Jo!

羊肉粉 (yáng ròu fěn), Lamb Rice Noodles

Thank you for the detailed information. I'm using high-quality fats for cooking and eating now. No more seed oils for me. Tallow certainly fits into that, however, given the time it will take to make it and then keeping it stored and easily accessible to use, I think I'd rather just use olive oil or avocado oil. Thoughts? Is there higher omega-3 in Tallow? I'll have to check. That would make me more interested in processing it. Greg

I did a bit of research about how I wanted the half cow processed and this is the cut sheet that I came up with: Cut Sheet Notes: · Grind all usable meat trimmings and less-used cuts into ground beef. Do not include organ meat in the grind. Use only enough fat to achieve an 80/20 or 85/15 blend – target thirty lbs. · Roasts: ~3–4 lbs each or larger, standard trim o Chuck roast boneless – target six to eight roasts o Cut a rib roast off the chuck end of the ribeye o One Rump o Bottom Round – target two to three roasts · Steaks: 1.5” thick, 1–2 per pack, standard trim (~¼" fat) o T-bone with bone-in – partial filet (front part) – reserve the remaining tenderloin for filet mignon steaks – target ten to twelve T-bone and four to six filet mignon o Sirloin – target six to eight o Boneless Ribeye – target four o One Skirt o One Flank o One Chuck eye · Cut brisket into two portions, each containing part of the flat and point muscles · Include soup bones suitable for making broth (e.g., marrow bones, knuckles, neck bones); portion in ~2–4 lb bags so that I can make bone broth in batches · Please include 5–10 lbs of clean, external fat trimmings (e.g., suet or back fat), avoiding internal organ fat or gristle. Package in 1–2 lb portions for rendering or broth use · No organs I like to cook roasts, especially slow-roast with veggies, and I also like to use ground beef a lot. I eat about two ounces of GB each morning mixed in with two or three eggs and a bit of cheese. An 'Egg Bowl'. Quick and easy in the microwave and very nutritious and filling. I love to make comfort chili, which takes about four pounds of GB per pot. I would love to have input from the group on changes to make to the cut sheet notes for a future order. Greg

@BaxterBaker Thank you for those pics. I do recall that ' inspection ' can get expensive. Nice packaging on that burger .

Baxter, TN, just outside of Cookeville. Move here from Maine with my wife Laurie and built our home/shop about ten years ago. Actually still building! I don't think there is any grade to this cow. I saw 'USDA' somewhere in regards to this farm but I don't know if my cow was inspected by USDA. I will ask. When I spoke with the hog farmer, he said that the meat that he sells retail is USDA inspected. I don't know if that's a requirement or not. The inspection is optional when he sells a half or whole hog to a customer. The cost is an extra $200 approximately. I decided not to spend that because I'm certain that I'm getting the same hog that he would have inspected to sell retail, and is probably of the same quality. Good idea?? Here's a picture I took this morning - two small NY strips and 2lbs burg. Greg

Creamy polenta and fresh blueberries enhanced with lemon, yogurt, and butter. The yogurt adds some creaminess and a subtle tang, the lemon kicks everything up with a floral, citrussy background note, and the butter is the ribbon that ties the package together. The berries were excellent, perhaps the best this summer.

I know a good deal less about knives than other folks here, Rickbern in particular. I mostly use cheapies like the Victorinox or Kuhn Rikon. I have the Gesshin Rick recommends, and while it’s not my style, it probably checks all the boxes in your request as well as anything around it’s price. Somewhat unrelated comment, but some of the folks at Kitchenknifeforum taught me that the Tojiro Cstapedius recommended is sold in Japan as the Fujitora line. I like Tojiro and Fujitora very much, but I didn’t see a petty on Amazon when I checked.

Okay, I was in Sobeys last night, and their cooler section had an area newly dedicated to Chapmans' "super-premium" ice creams. I took a look, and sure enough the butter tart ice cream was there. As it happens I'd bought some frozen items on this trip, and had come prepared with an insulated carrier and a few frozen gel packs, so I grabbed a pint (I don't buy ice cream unless I have the means to get it all the way home without it melting). GF and I both tasted it last night, and it was pleasant enough. I don't think it quite replicates the flavor profile of a butter tart, but on the other hand it's not as cloying and overwhelmingly sweet as a butter tart either. My "ginger" likened it to a butter-pecan cake, but with raisins instead of the nuts. I thought it was reminiscent of rum & raisin ice cream, but without the rum flavor. It also had bits of graham-crumb crust scattered through it, which took me aback at first (nobody in their right mind would use a sweet graham crust with a real butter tart, because they're sugar bombs already), but upon reflection it made sense. Regular pastry wouldn't hold up very well in an ice cream, whereas most ice cream makers are already adept at using bits of graham-crumb crust in their concoctions. So overall we both liked it (rum & raisin is one of my personal favorites, so the similarity is a positive in my opinion). I don't know how often I'd buy it, because I eat relatively little ice cream and my GF has a lot of other favorites, but it's definitely pleasant. The quality of ingredients and production seems more or less on par with other "supermarket-premium" brands like Hagen-Dazs or Ben & Jerry's, and given the current "buy Canadian" sentiment I think the company has an opportunity to carve out some market share. If nothing else, the timing at least favors their entry into that part of the market.

I asked this question to Dia (AI browser) and it gave me: Estimated yield from 12.44 lb of beef fat Beef suet is roughly 70 – 80 % pure fat; the balance is mostly moisture and a little connective tissue that cooks away or is strained out. Seasoned Advice’s meat‐science contributors put the average fat fraction at about 75 %. ⁠ Redditors who routinely render at home report getting anywhere from 70 % tallow when they chop coarsely and rush the process to 90 % when the fat is finely ground and rendered low-and-slow. ⁠ Applying the mid-range 75 % figure to your 12.44 lb (5.64 kg) of raw beef fat: 12.44lb x 0.75 = 9.33lb So you can expect roughly 9 lb of finished tallow. If your trim is especially clean and you grind or mince it before a long, gentle render you could see close to 10 lb; if there’s a lot of connective tissue or you hurry the cook, yield might dip toward 7½ lb. ⁠ In short, plan on ending up with about 9 lb of shelf-stable, ivory-white tallow from 12.44 lb of beef fat, with a plausible range of 7.5 – 10 lb depending on how meticulously and patiently you render.

I am not exaggerating odd things in the least. These are the first two pizzas on my local delivery app. Pizza Hut? Give me a break. They ship frozen pizzas from hundreds of miles away and reheat them in local stores.

Gazpacho with shrimp and HB eggs made for a very substantial lunch! Walnut torte with a chocolate icing and filling, brushed first with tart cherry molasses.

J knives are perceptually sharp more because of the thinness of the blade behind the edge than any particular sharpening angle. That’s why the wusthoff knives et al don’t cut as well and why the chef’s choice style sharpeners aren’t so hot. You can’t just change the sharpening angle on a German blade and end up with Japanese level performance. Pictures can hint at the thinness behind the edge, that’s why the choil shots are so useful Here’s a pretty exhaustive discussion of this if you’re interested. You can see from the chart that sharpening angles are all over the place https://www.kitchenknifeforums.com/threads/thin-behind-the-edge.69329/ and some illustrations https://www.kitchenknifeforums.com/threads/what-is-thin-behind-the-edge-anyway-and-kujira.42359/

Intermission This „… in China“ installment unfortunately follows the trend of the last posts in various other threads, focusing on the odd and - in my view - unsuited examples that show very little of the overall picture; something I would expect from a general topic title. Maybe to balance it out, some facts: Of course „China“ understands pizza. You can buy a Pizza Hut pepperoni pizza in over 1000 locations and while purists may argue that’s not the best pizza there is, it is a representative of what pizza is supposed to be in the western world. That it adapts to local markets is not a surprise; but showcasing the (for Western audiences) oddest additions to the pizza world as representative for the pizza in an entire country is more counting on the „wow“ effect of the reader not able to travel to China (or Japan, or Korea, or Thailand …) and misrepresents the information promised in the title of the thread. An informative and fact-based assessment on the state of the pizza market in China including some market history can be found here … Adapting a product to the local market, taking the customer preferences into account is not something spectacularly weird - it is common sense. Given that cheese is not a popular food item, many Asian countries add mayonnaise, which - contrary to the pictures in the advertisements - is baked with the pizza and will result in puffy browned strips of egg yolk / fat, that substitute the cheese role / mouthfeel decently. Maybe just „China“ but not the OP gets that … Using fruit on pizza is not something to look down upon. We would celebrate fig, walnut and blue cheese varieties, no ? Or blood sausage & apple on a Flammkuchen. So singling this out as an odd feature of Chinese pizzas is more of a clickbait than a factual information. Almost all pizzas I had in 5 years living and working in China were salty and without fruit. Neither is the use of different bases - including more softer, sweeter versions. Cake is a bit far fetched, but one can peruse Modernist Pizza to understand the scope of what bases, shapes and preparations can encompass before again taking one or two examples as the „… in China“ representations. With that in mind I am looking forward to more informative & less „exaggerating odd things“ posts in this thread …

So the place mentioned above is apparently very popular with the local Chinese community and now using Chinese coffee beans as well as non Chinese beans but from a couple different Chinese coffee roasters including https://www.rabbitholeroasters.com/products/guiben-honey-4 As well as beans from a roaster called Terraform from Shanghai and the interestingly named Gout coffee roasters from Chengdu https://goutandco.com/pages/about

I love this little paring knife from Japanese Knife Imports. Super pointy blade, really sharp, I actually have the 105 but only the 90 is in stock now https://www.japaneseknifeimports.com/products/gesshin-90mm-paring-knife?srsltid=AfmBOorEaWEHT42ChTriHHtbU6kalH4_njLXaZBIBEjtUZ-WURZrk_ir action shot of me degerming garlic:

Chard and Sausage with Crispy Spiced Chickpeas by a Milk Street recipe - always a bit skeptical about crispy chickpeas with corn starch in the dutch oven and prefer more an oven approach and the chickpeas were indeed not as crispy as hoped but still tested good with the coriander spices. Otherwise you cook crumbled Italian pork sausages with chard stems and leaves, garlic, brown sugar and fennel seeds. Finished with some banana peppers and brine and the crispy chickpeas

Goats cheese with warm honey and balsamic vinegar for lunch. I didn’t have any bread to grill or toast but found some parathas in the freezer.