chromedome

Also Sweet Cream brand of mini pastries, because of salmonella (affects most provinces, 17 hospitalized). No email from the CFIA for this one, either. Gonna have to check my settings. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/mini-pastries-salmonella-outbreak-1.7435691

There's a big recall of eggs in various provinces, for salmonella. Oddly I haven't gotten the CFIA email about it yet, so here's the CBC link. https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/eggs-recall-salmonella-1.7435418

On a completely different note, here's a CT scan of a croissant baking from frozen. Kinda cool.

I hadn't intended to continue with this thread, having said more or less everything I'd intended to during the year or so it was active. But things changed just before Christmas, when (as some of you will already know) aggressive free-running dogs from a feckless neighbour on a road running parallel to ours came into the yard while I was away, and killed all but one of our rabbits. We'd kept out our eight breeders for the upcoming season, two bucks and three does per buck. Sadly we'd already lost one doe to a sudden illness, and now we were down to just one (rather skittish and traumatized) survivor of our two bloodlines, the accumulated result of three years' selective breeding. Recently I'd been in the habit of leaving the door to our rabbits' enclosure open during the day, because the sliding bolt we use to latch it is difficult to use during cold weather (the ground heaves a little bit, and you need to hoick up the door with a toe while sliding the bolt). I wasn't concerned about it, because our bunnies' cages are suspended waist-high and made of sturdy 14-gauge wire. Also (first and foremost) we'd been thinking in terms of wild predators at night, not others' pets during the daytime. To compound matters we've begun keeping our mastiff indoors during the day, because she's not entirely trustworthy herself around our chickens, who currently roam free. When spring rolls around we'll construct an enclosed run for them, but for now with the ground frozen (and a few large obstacles frozen to the ground) that's not an option. Thankfully the dogs missed the henhouse entirely, or the whole scenario could have been worse. Here's an example of the damage: As you can see, the dogs tore at the doors until their spring latches overextended, and the doors themselves were wrenched and bent out of shape. If rabbits were smarter they'd have known to cower in the back corner of their cages behind their wooden shelters (called "hides"), but that's not how they're wired. They're wired to run from attacks, and in a cage that means running in circles. So the dog just had to time their frantic sprints past the door, and... well, that's all she wrote. Our one survivor was in a corner cage, and I think the reason her cage held out is that the other cage at right angles to hers prevented the larger and more aggressive dog from getting a clean jump at the door. So now we're at the rebuilding phase. The owners of the dogs paid us for the loss of our bunnies, and an unexpectedly generous offer of help from a fellow eG'er defrayed a bunch of associated costs (gas to pick up the new bunnies, and such materials as I'll need to enhance the cages and enclosure). So we're back in the saddle now, with two replacement bucks and three replacement does to complement our survivor. One of the families who adopted a bunny of ours as a pet (he's now known as Samwise) has agreed to let us use him as a stud with one of our does, so we'll get back that bloodline. We also still have two more cages available, should we manage to connect with any of our previous buyers and secure a doe from our other main bloodline. So, here's the new crew. These two, in their amusingly mirrored poses, are littermates my GF has named Hester and Hazel. They'd shared a cage in their old home, so I put them side-by-side in the same cages shown above (doors now returned to serviceable condition). The third new doe, slightly younger than the others, is Hilda. She's very cuddly already, while Hazel and Hester remain a bit skittish and hand-shy. ...and this is Ivy, our survivor. She's still a bit traumatized by her experience, and is only just now beginning to let me get close to her again while I'm feeding and watering the critters. Our black buck from last year, poor Jett, always gave us a few of these pretty brindled babies in each litter regardless of whether we bred him with a white or a black doe (his own parents were both brown, so go figure). She mostly looks brown in this picture, but in person the pattern of grey on her face and body is quite fetching. My GF likes to give the critters' names a theme, as I've mentioned before. Our lost does were named Eve, Ava and Opal, and you'll have noted that the new ones all have names starting with H. As for our bucks, she named them after two important characters from Terry Pratchett's Discworld books. The black one is named Vimes, after the commander of the Watch, and the brown one is named Carrot after another watchman, a strapping 2 meter/6'6" redheaded dwarf named Carrot Ironfoundersson (he's adopted). True to the nature of the characters themselves, Vimes proves to be gravely suspicious of everyone while Carrot is everybody's friend. As mentioned upthread we sell rabbits to defray our costs, and we've learned over the past couple of seasons that 90% of our sales will happen in early spring. People who want bunnies as pets tend to buy them at around Eastertime, and people who want them as breeders like to start breeding in spring. So we'll be breeding our does in early February, so the kits will be at the right age when Easter rolls around. I'll probably hop back onto this thread and post some baby pics for everyone when the time comes, because they are awfully cute.

Might be of interest to some, here. Researchers took 500 samples from 28 restaurants, evaluating the apparent cleanliness of various surfaces (and kitchen staffs' hands) vs actual cleanliness when subjected to laboratory testing. Unsurprisingly, they concluded that old-school visual restaurant inspections were wildly inaccurate relative to actual testing. This goes both ways, as some visual scores were actually worse than the lab-tested scores. Nothing earth-shaking (and few jurisdictions are going to put any serious money into restaurant inspections), but there are a few interesting nuggets if anyone wants to dig through the details. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-86017-8#Sec11

I did take a look yesterday while I was out, and a dozen large eggs run $4.69 in my neck of the woods. That's in CAD, so at today's exchange rate you could call it roughly $3.25 USD.

Not gonna lie, our grandson would be all over the stuff. He's a fiend for bacon (notwithstanding his current "healthy food" fixation), and CTC is his favorite dessert breakfast cereal. It doesn't work for me, but then I never really got the fad for "cereal milk" flavors either. Perhaps because those sugar-bomb cereals were a very occasional treat in my childhood home, rather than an everyday staple.

Just gonna leave this here...

Yes, for sure. They do get their share of screen time (it's 2025, after all) but they both have lots of imaginative playtime indoors and out.

I need to remember to check the price of eggs in my area when I'm in town (I'll post here, just for comparison's sake). I won't be buying any, because we have chickens and quail, but one of my goals for the year is to (finally) get a firm grip on the cost and ROI of our rabbits and poultry. Our little flock of hens only lay erratically now because it's winter, but the quail churn out an egg each like clockwork (at 3-ish quail eggs to one large hen's egg, we're getting the equivalent of 24-25 hen's eggs/week from the quail to go with our 5-8 actual hen's eggs from the chickens). That's a lot of eggs, so we're pretty much swimming in the things right now even with our hens being in "winter mode." I gave away a lot of quail eggs over the holidays, and will probably pickle a few jars soon if I can find the time.

I have a collapsing silicone funnel like that one, but have used it maybe three times in as many years... because the grandkids are fascinated with it, and the damned thing is never in the drawer when I want it! (I love sharing a home with them, don't get me wrong, but of course there are frustrations and this is one of 'em. At least once/week I'll go around the yard and collect up cups, silverware and especially bowls that have somehow migrated outside and never come back.)

I always joke that those lightning grabs (in my case) are the upside to a lifetime of clumsiness. Having dropped/tipped/knocked things over so frequently, I have plenty of "muscle memory" for those split-second saves. One of my classmates in culinary was a drummer in a band. He knocked his knife off of the counter while repositioning a cutting board, and snatched it (by the handle) even as it was plummeting to the floor. Our instructor said, "Okay, that was absolutely amazing. And I NEVER want to see any of you do that, ever again!" ("A falling knife has no handle," is the official take on that subject...trying to grab one as it falls is a recipe for a trip to the ER)