Jensen

When I was first married, we canned a lot of low acid foods. Generally, we would freeze vegetables (they taste better) but we canned a lot of salmon and what we called "jug meat"...the trim from butchering deer. One year we put up 54 pints of salmon; we gave salmon as Christmas gifts that year! We're still alive.

I have the tomato stuff in a little jar, not cubes. There are some recipes I've tried making with "real" broth and, to be honest, it's just better made with cubes. Number one example for me is semolina dumplings in broth (Grießnockerl Suppe): click

I finished up Barbara Kingsolver's new book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, early this morning. It's a natural sequel to Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, chronicling a year of living as a "locavore" on a small farm in southwest Virginia. The book was co-authored by Ms. Kingsolver's husband, Stephen Hopp, and her eldest daughter, Camille Kingsolver. Hopp provides short essays on the science and the politics of foodways, while the daughter's contribution consists of reminiscences and recipes. I really enjoyed it but, if you're a Monsanto fan, you might want to give it a pass.

Will be? http://tinyurl.com/38v583

Not at all cheesy...passionate? Yes. Cheesy? No. What a wonderful thing for you to do for those children and your community. I bet it's something that they'll remember for the rest of their lives.

Do you recall the reasoning behind the "cover with foil" stage? I love oven fries (when the outside temperatures aren't reaching baking levels) but I've never covered them. Also, how long for each stage and at what temperature? (Ta very much!)

About ten minutes. While the noodles were cooking, I assembled all the other ingredients. Then it was just a matter of tossing it all together.

The latest boullion cube fad in my kitchen is Knorr's Onion Mini-Cubes. When you taste them, they really do taste like minced onion!

Well, this cook-off obviously came at the perfect time for me! It inspired pasta salad last night and cold noodle salad for lunch today. My starting point for today's naengmyun (or reasonable facsimile thereof) was this post: naengmyun The local Raley's doesn't have buckwheat noodles so I opted to go with Japanese udon noodles instead. I really should have re-read SheenaGreena's post before making the sauce because I made mine just out of gochujang (affectionately known in my brain as MCP, or "magic chile paste", due to its "anti-obesitic properties") and soy sauce, combined in equal parts. I also have no Korean-style pickles so I saved some chilled green beans from last night's dinner and added them to the mix. Here are the ingredients for two servings, assembled: Just before serving, I drizzled each bowl with sesame oil and garnished with sesame seeds: Fabulous!

I made up a recipe for Chicken Scallopine with Garlic and Vanilla Veloute for a Spice is Right challenge. It's very good.

My shopping mistakes have nothing to do with language differences; rather, they arose out of cultural differences. The first one occurred in the winter of 1999. It was time to start Christmas baking and that means butter tarts! So, off I went to the local Raley's in search of tart shells. I can actually make good pastry but tart shells try my patience so I use frozen ones instead. They weren't exactly jumping out of the freezer case at me so I asked one of the employees where I might find tart shells. Then I had to explain what exactly tart shells were. Needless to say, my local Raley's doesn't carry them. (I did find out in winter of 2000 that the local Safeway does carry them but the turnover of their stock is questionable.) So, I began the big pep talk about making tart shells from scratch as I headed off to get some lard. I stood in front of the cold case, looking at box after box of butter or margarine or tubs of "non-dairy spread", unable to find the lard for the life of me. I must have looked lost because the dairy employee asked if I needed help. "Oh, thank you! I don't see any lard here..." The fellow looked at me like I was insane and said "No, it's in the Mexican aisle." What?

I made a pasta salad as part of dinner tonight but between the white pasta, the white dressing, and the white plate, the photo was way over-exposed. At any rate, I cooked some penne rigate until a little past al dente. It was drained and rinsed with cold water. For the dressing, I mixed a tablespoon of mayo, 3-4 T. of plain yogurt, 1 T. of dijon mustard, and then some sprinklings of tarragon. S & P, of course. That was all mixed together (as well as some cornichons split lengthwise) and stored in the fridge until dinner. The taste was exactly what I was going for but why, oh why, does the dressing clump up when it's refrigerated? Tomorrow I'll be trying some naengmyun for lunch!

There's a very interesting article in today's Sacbee about the entry form for the gold medal-winning Charles Shaw Chardonnay. Here's a small excerpt: The full article is here. If it's true, then the Two-Buck Chuck winning all those medals isn't the same plonk available at Trader Joe's, that's for sure!

It was interesting that there wasn't much of anything on PubMed about "the dangers of eating sushi" though. I ate a ton of sushi (and other Japanese food) when I was pregnant, as well as a large amount of Greek food. The only result I ever saw from it was that the Spawn loves Japanese and Greek food.

This is probably too late but there is an abstract on PubMed linking consumption of raw fish by pregnant women to perinatal listeriosis. Search using the parameters: pregnant "raw fish"

Sure, but I'd probably go for their lengua tacos...

One more reason why it's probably more expensive: economies of scale (or lack thereof). The level of production of lamb for meat must be dwarfed by the production of beef.

The ratio of the cost of production to yield is probably higher. You don't get the same amount of meat from a lamb as you do from cattle or hogs.

It looks like a prawn to me. Okay, a prawn that took a lot of growth hormones but still a prawn...

Do you think it would work with a chuck roast? I took the last roast of my winter supply out of the freezer this morning, thinking I'd grind it up and make burgers for dinner. Then you came along with this Baltimore pit beef idea... Maybe the chuck wouldn't slice well though. Hmmmm...

According to an AP article, the educational programmes designed to combat childhood obesity don't work. The article I wish they had said what was working!

Well, this Canadian celebrated Dominion Day (remember when it was called that?) with barbecued tri-tip, white and wild rice melange, and a big ass green salad. Oh, did I forget to mention the beer? My American friends were very supportive of the effort (read: they drank lots of beer too). The Germans around the corner will be hosting the fesitivities on the 4th...

I love the flavour of grass-fed beef, preferring it far more than the flavour of grain-fed beef. The Spouse is the opposite. I grew up on an island where there wasn't the land available to grow the large amounts of grain needed to raise grain-fed cattle. He grew up on the edge of the prairies where grain (and the land needed to grow it) was plentiful. Flavours aside, there is one very good argument for not letting the market place speak for all, an argument that was tragically highlighted recently with the pet food contaminations. When the market place speaks, cost becomes a higher priority than safety. The safety of our food supply should not be contingent upon a fiscal bottom line. Unfortunately, when one relies on market forces to drive what we eat, then that is exactly what happens.

Great info on your trip, Therese! I wonder if there were any surprises in the foods? Obviously, fish plays a big role in the diet but were there any ingredients or foods that you weren't expecting to see but did? In your posts, I was surprised to read of "bland cheese". For some reason (unknown even to me!), I thought there'd be a fair amount of goat cheese in Portugal.

I would make that recipe simply because of the translation!