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We are back on St. John. This trip is a rescheduled visit from last November--we had to cancel then because my husband was sick. The property management company, airline, and jeep rental all let us push our dates to now without any penalty, so it's kind of like a free trip. Except for all of the money we are about to spend on food haha. We arrived Saturday, and are staying in the same house as the past two times. We had to get up at 3:30 AM to make our flight, so we were both exhausted on arrival. We had some time to kill before being able to head to the villa for check in, so went up to the Windmill Bar to take in some views All that haze you see is Sahara dust. I don't think I have seen it in May before, it's usually more of a summer thing. The bad news with the dust is that it makes it hotter than normal (and it is indeed hot!), and it's also bad for allergies. The good news is that the dust suppresses development of tropical weather. If it's this hot and dusty now, I cannot imagine what it is going to be like when we come back in July. Menu cover. I was so tired I forgot to take a picture of the rest of it. Sorry, @rotuts! It's a small menu--just a few kinds of tacos, taco bowls, and burgers/hot dogs. The bar. It was around 2PM when we got there, and it doesn't start filling up until happy hour and live music starts at 3. We just ordered a plate of shrimp tacos to split. Pretty basic but did the job. After getting unpacked at the house, we headed out to find something for dinner. We were just really tired and neither of us felt like eating much. We ended up at Rum Hut. Menu Husband's cocktail. I believe it was a ginger martini. And our selections to share: the Cruz Bay roll and tuna tartare tacos And dessert. Irie Pops of course! Yesterday we spent the day at Cinnamon Bay. I did not take one picture of the beach! It was lovely. We went over to the food truck to get some cold water. They basically sell sandwiches, nachos, and ice cream For dinner, we decided to try a new place, The Refinery. Menu Cocktails. I ordered a no-jito and my husband ordered a Singapore Sling. The bartender came over to deliver the drinks and to confirm that he had made mine without alcohol. I thought that was nice. We ordered a couple of appetizers: the peppered shrimp--this was spicy! I could have gone even hotter but my husband said it was at the upper level of what he enjoys for spice. And the crab and corn fritters with pineapple salsa. The fritters were essentially a jumbo shrimp wrapped in crab fritter batter. They were delicious but I could only eat one. I just ordered a salad with more shrimp on the side for dinner And husband had the coconut poached wahoo with cassava cake. I really wanted to get the Caribbean ice cream sandwich for dessert, but the heat is slaying my appetite and I could not even finish my dinner food. We brought home most of my dinner shrimp and half of the fritters to eat today. And yes, we are eating lots of shrimp since we normally cannot have it at home because of my nephew's allergy. He's coming with us in July so we have to get all the crustaceans we want to eat into this visit. 🙂 Not sure where we are eating today, but our plan is to find as many new to us places as we can.

@liamsaunt I know I need glasses , for sure sorry for being a pest having visuals issues w this : looks Alien or possibly Infectious ?

The dish was whipped tahini sauce, the tuna, a slaw, and the last thing on the plate is an orange slice.

Which assertions are crazy? Obviously you know more than the World Health Organisation. I am ignoring nothing. Everything I said is in the public record from reliable sources. This topic is about wild food. Everything I said is relevant to that.

@liuzhou You make too many crazy assertions to deal with and most are beyond the scope of eG. I will say that if COVID didn't start in bats at a wet market it started in a lab in China. Take your choice on which facts you ignore.

Maybe to this group...https://www.lyonsgroup.com/about/

@weinoo taht is weird. I think he sold the SS a few years ago. he understood a lot about cooking , esp. fish // seafood.

Weirdly, when we were at the Mohegan Sun last month to see the Springsteen show there, we had dinner at Summer Shack. And Jasper (no doubt there to see the Springsteen show) walked through the kitchen saying hi to the staff.

Egg, lobster and arugula on toasted croissants with mixed fruit and a shot of V8. It pays to pick all those little crannies clean.

I thought I had posted here after I went to an event with the film maker and Marcella's son, Giuliano Hazan. It was last June, and held at the National Arts Club, here in NYC.

Interesting that you zoom straight into China. Have you ever seen a wet market in China? Extremely few sell wild meats. Almost none. Very few people are looking for it. Apart from in one market I visited in 1999, the only wild meat I’ve seen in thirty years of visiting wet markets on an almost daily basis was wild rabbit and even that is rare. That one I saw was closed down by the authorities twenty-one years ago. I’ve certainly never seen wild meats in supermarkets except for seafood, but that’s somehow OK. Most ‘wild animals’ sold in China are actually farmed, meaning they aren’t wild, at all. That includes the alligators the article mentions but incorrectly links them to the wild alligators, which are protected. The farms are licensed and regularly checked by veterinarians and other health officials. The list of wild animals which are protected or whose sale is banned for other reasons in China is a long one and the penalty for breaking those laws is severe to the point of the death penalty being applied in some cases, not only for the vendors, but also the buyers. Sure, it sometimes happens that people eat animals they perhaps shouldn’t but then that happens everywhere except Antarctica. More scientific attention is paid by professionals and those who know what they are talking about, to the bush meat trade in Africa, not China. I will point out that no link between wild meat markets and Covid have ever been proven. Yes, viruses and other diseases often arise first in China, but if you think about it, that is hardly surprising. With the largest population in the world, five times that of the USA in 2019 in an area less than one third the size, that is to be expected. Although China is larger (just) than the USA*, most of it is uninhabitable mountains and deserts. 94% of the population live on or near the east coast. Few on top of the Himalayas or in the Gobi desert. If you moved everyone in the USA to California you wouldn’t even come close to understanding. Population distribution - China There’s nothing new about linking epidemics to countries where they didn’t originate. The Spanish flu epidemic which broke out in 1918 and killed between 25 and 50 million worldwide, is now believed by many scientists to have originated in the USA. It certainly didn’t originate in Spain. Spain were just the first to report it as the other countries involved in the war censored negative news. Spain was neutral in that conflict. *In the view of the United Nations and every other authority except the CIA.

Pro tip: high-conductivity pans like the Falk Copper Coeur or Demeyere Atlantis pans are going to heat up really quickly if you use the fast or extra-fast (2400W) intensity setting. With clad pans like the Falk Copper Coeur, that means you're going to see more overshoot while the temperature at the center pan catches up to the rapidly-rising temperature over the induction coil itself. And if you're doing a sugar test, you almost certainly want to use the "slow" heating intensity of the Control Freak for that. The theory with the slow/mid/high/max settings is that the heating intensity should match the food you're using. And that goes for the pan you're coupling it with too. If you're just boiling water or searing foods, high/max intensity is fine. But if you're cooking eggs or doing a sugar test, etc. I'd highly recommend using the slow intensity setting. Note that max intensity is only available on the 2400W (UK/EU/ANZ) models. And again, if you're looking for a pan with a really tight band of temperature consistency across the bottom, you're probably going to want to find a pan in the 14-26cm range that has a highly-conductive disc bottom style of construction. That's what I use my Demeyere Atlantis pans for. I actually thought I'd use them most of the time because of the temperature consistency--but in real-world applications I've found that I usually pick up the Falk Copper Coeur instead. While the temperature uniformity isn't actually inversely proportional to the cost of the pan, I can see how you'd get that feeling when testing a higher-cost clad pan against a lower-cost thick disc-bottom-style pan. It's the construction style of the pan and the material properties (including the thickness and conductivity of the heat-conducting material) that largely determines the tightness of the temperature across any given surface, the temperature ramping and spreading speed, etc. I have zero issues using highly-responsive pans with the Control Freak. But please remember that the intensity function (slow/medium/high/max) is basically the Control Freak's analog to turning another induction stove to a low, medium, high, or excessively high setting. So if you're warming up your pan on high or max, it's basically behaving like if you put it on a powerful induction burner and set it to high--except that the Control Freak stops heating the pan once its sensor hits the temperature setpoint. So please, be kind to your food and use the slow or medium intensity for more delicate items (or if you're wanting a tighter temperature gradient on clad pans). You may also find out that you want a few disc-style pans and a few clad-style pans in your collection, each tool optimized for its application.

Successful “fusion” cuisine combining Indian cuisine with Southern cooking from “My Two Souths” by Asha Gomez - Southern -style pork vindaloo and green bean verakka with cardamom cornbread Pork vindaloo braises cubed pork butt and onions in a pureed mixture of garlic, brown mustard seeds, sugar, tomato paste, paprika, hot paprika and white wine vinegar. The green bean verakka stir-fried with coconut oil, brown mustard seeds, cumin seeds and thyme. And the cornbread is baked with cornmeal, cardamom powder, black pepper, sugar, eggs, buttermilk, butter and baking soda

*bump* I've been making my own kefir from a packet of dry granules (Yogourmet brand Kefir starter) (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) after discovering the product. However, I've become disenchanted with it because of the separation of materials that happens while it's incubating. (That speck on the right side is something on the outside of the carafe.) It doesn't recombine nicely when I simply shake it. I haven't had access to a whisk until recently. Blending it with a banana is a nice way to improve the texture, but I tired of bananas after a month or so - and I didn't have a blender for a short time. I began branching out to other juices, or fruits, and therein lies the problem: I find the texture unpleasant as it is. I recently began purchasing commerical kefir so I could mix it with mango juice or some other lovely sweet juice that balances the tartness of the kefir as a breakfast drink. Still, it's expensive stuff and I know I can make it on my own...if I can overcome these texture issues. Hence, I'm reviving this topic.. I hope @andiesenji drops by to do some explaining. I see, in rereading her tutorial, that she didn't simply do one quart worth of kefir all at once. She started with a small amount and encouraged it to grow by adding milk gradually as the culture developed. It reminds me of the sourdough starter process. My process involves dumping a packet of the dried granules into a quart of milk all at once. 1. What exactly is going on with the separated layers? It looks like I have fluffy materials on the top (the fattier components?) and finer materials settled to the bottom, with only whey in the middle area. I'm curious about the chemistry. 2. Is there a way to keep the stuff from separating like that? It makes a mess of the jar when I shake it, because of the clumps that stick to the sides. I may need a different vessel. I don't remember whether this batch was made from 1% or 2% milk. Proably 2%. I've gotten much the same result with every fat content of milk I've used, although I can't remember whether I've tried it with skim milk.

Bacon with avocado, blueberries and blackberries. . . on toast.

WaPo has a nice piece on an impending Smithsonian display and documentary. https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2024/05/12/marcella-hazan-smithsonian-documentary/

Not sure if it was here or elsewhere, but I decided to try a suggestion to snip the leaves off my volunteer tomatoes at the end of the season to get light into the green ones to start them ripening. Worth a try but probably should have been done earlier. They only get late afternoon sun.

Tri tip, roasted tomatoes and a splash of demiglace, Germanic potato salad.

Mint-cilantro chicken with spinach, garlic-ginger paste, onion, jalapeno, black pepper, turmeric, and lemon juice Okra, broiled from above and then baked at the bottom of a 450°F oven. Mrs. C, who does not like slimy okra, approved of its crunch. 🙂

Yeah, maybe. Shake or sift or whatever. It's much the same as scattering flour for scorchprints--it doesn't need to be perfect to tell you what you want to know.

Taco plates! My Gawd what a great idea!

This was an early taco dinner for me and a late lunch for Charlie.

Thank you. Yes, oysters. I removed the top cover of 1 box to quickly make some photos. I eat them every week. Used to shuck them and have them ready with the rest of the food but no longer do that. They release a lot of water once shucked and it drips everywhere. Got 8 boxes of 6 (in each, like these below) this week! So this week I eat a box a day, usually just 2 at weekends. Some people would rather take zinc pills.

@BonVivant everything looks so interesting and delicious. what is this ? oysters ? you and @Duvel end up w the most plump herring Ive ever seen. congratulations.