chromedome

I was in one of the local supermarkets yesterday, and passed a mountainous display of mooncakes. After following this thread, I was curious enough to take a closer look. Turned out they were all basically the same two varieties: white lotus paste, with or without egg yolks. I would buy a single one just to find out what white lotus paste tastes like, but not a big ol' tin of them.

I haven't posted much about my garden this year, partly because of time constraints and partly because it's been underwhelming; in part because of the drought and in part because of (again) time constraints. Dealing with the chickens and quail and their supporting infrastructure took up much of the time I'd have otherwise put into my garden during the crucial weeks of late spring/early summer. So ordinarily, for example, I'd have many pounds of blanched and frozen greens tucked away for winter, while this year I've only been able to harvest sparingly for a couple of meals. Consider this bed, for example. See those itty-bitty chard plants in between the established ones? That was my second planting, from late June/early July (I don't quite remember which). We did get a half-inch or so of rain a few weeks ago, and promptly got a nice flush from our bucket of chestnut mushrooms (Pholiota adiposa). ...and of course, there were the usual joys of growing in stony soil... On the upside, we now have a vine of wild grapes growing along our fence line, probably because a helpful bird perched there at a crucial moment and provided us with viable seeds. This pic was taken a couple of months ago, before they ripened, but we did get a solid cup or so of tiny, tasty mature grapes. Lots of them were lost to a fungus before they ripened, but I discovered the vine in the course of clearing away the undergrowth from our fence line so hopefully the improved air circulation will help with that, next year. Of course, being situated right at my fence means I"ll also be able to conveniently train it along that established bit of structure. Gotta read up on vine pruning! Had my first, eagerly-awaited Black Krim a couple of weeks ago, too, this "conjoined twin" (photographed about 7 days before it was actually harvested). That on toast was two days' lunches. My other tomatoes are coming on nicely as well. Ironically the Scotians (an early variety that's popular locally) were slower to ripen than my Black Krim or the Romas, which are coming on nicely now. Also getting some from the yellow heirloom variety (its name escapes me just now) and my yellow and red cherry tomatoes. The "Plourde" (a regional heirloom variety) is getting close as well. Daytime highs are supposed to stay pretty decent (mid-teens C, so low-mid 60s F) through October, so barring a hard frost there's still some time for ripening. Got my fingers crossed (and my row covers ready). ETA: I've been stinting somewhat on irrigation, because we're on a well and nobody knows where the damned thing is! My father-in-law thought that info was in the pre-sale inspection report, but it wasn't. Neighbours have been here since before it was built, but they don't know either, and previous owner couldn't tell her/original owner is now deceased). So I"ll have to check with the county to see if they have that info, and if not I'll have to phone the well-drilling companies to see who did the job back in the day. Also, by spring I'll have a rainwater catchment system in place and that will take up the slack quite a bit.

One of our supermarkets had half-bushel (25lb) boxes of Roma tomatoes for cheap a couple of weeks ago, so I bought two. Peeled and seeded them, cooked down half as plain tomato puree and half as basic tomato sauce (very neutral, so it can be taken in different directions as desired). Froze everything in those flat Rubbermaid "Take away" reusable containers, then popped out the resulting bricks of tomato and vacuum-bagged them. Had intended to can some, but time constraints didn't allow for it. Gonna wind up with another freezer soon, at this rate.

The person who posted this on FB looked up the shop, and apparently it sells minerals and suchlike, nothing at all to do with food. Which makes it even better.

I do have some quail and chicken pics to post, btw. It's just been a time issue. Maybe this evening, we'll see.

One of the two vendors we've been speaking to plans to use the rabbit in a 50/50 mix with chicken thighs. The other (less experienced, I suspect) did some Googling and thought that duck fat might be the optimal option. We're due to cull some juvenile roosters in the next week or two, so I plan to start saving the pockets of fat from their body cavities for this exact purpose, and we'll see how that goes. Of course, our spoiled and pampered bunnies have rather high levels of fat, by rabbit standards, but it's mostly concentrated in two strips cushioning the kidneys, running along the surface of the tenderloins. When I deboned all of that rabbit meat for grinding, I did make sure to keep it all and get it into the packages. Rabbit fat isn't the tastiest of stuff, I have to say, but it doesn't taste bad either. As long as it brings the lipid content I'm sure the sausage's seasonings will easily mask it.

Neither an article nor a link, but you can find it easily enough.

We have a friend here for a few weeks before he heads out to Alberta, and he's helping us with some projects. A ramshackle shed on the driveway has been revamped with a new floor, vapour barrier, and insulation, and today the doors are going on. That's going to become the new year-round home of our quail, which will get them out of the chickens' enclosure where they currently live. We've also repositioned last year's chicken coop, and added a three-nest nest box to one side of it. We commissioned that from a local carpenter. We've also added a new chicken door in what used to be the back of the coop. Soon we'll be moving the chickens' enclosed run downhill by about 15 feet and turning it at right angles, so it runs away from that side of the house rather than parallel to it. The side of the run will be pressed right up against the coop, and we're going to cut a hole in the wire so they can use the chicken door (the wire will be secured to the coop, so there's no way for chickens to get out or predators to get in). The old, full-width door opening remains in place, and I'll be able to use that to clean out the coop without having to actually go in and work around the chickens underfoot. That old coop has also gotten insulation and a vapour barrier. Last year I McGyvered it by simply putting silverboard insulation (1/2-inch foam inside a protective/reflective foil coating) over the outside walls and roof, and holding it in place with screwed-down straps. Now it's properly insulated on the inside, and we've put in a simple "ceiling" consisting of a couple of wooden slats, a tarp stapled firmly to the slats and the coop's walls, and more silverboard sitting on top of that. Last year, the only heating the coop got was from the chickens' body temperature and a heated water bucket, and its interior temperature hovered around freezing even when the temperatures dipped to -20 and -25 (call it roughly 0F). This year, with the insulated ceiling and fewer gaps in the insulation, it should be even better. We've also moved/removed a few remaining pieces of the old pool deck, the pool house, and the little shed and oil furnace my father-in-law had put there for warming the pool's water. The pool house and shed were screwed together, and had been laying on their side for the past year and a half, since the pool deck had mostly been dismantled. It turns out some rats had been nesting there, attracted inevitably by the chickens' (and quails') food. The chickens had been watching us idly, in their typically gormless, pop-eyed manner, until the rats began to emerge. Then, like a switch had been flipped, they went into full "raptor" mode. Three of them darted after one of the rats and surrounded it, pecking at it viciously as it shrieked in pain and terror, until it made a desperate panic-dash (past Wembley, who'd been noisily waiting his turn) and found cover in the pile of scrap lumber left from the pool deck, where its nest-mates had already found refuge. Wembley and the chickens patrolled that pile of lumber for a solid hour afterwards, trying desperately to get at the rats, all but one of whom survived. I don't know if it was the one the chickens had drawn blood from, or perhaps another that had gotten injured in the course of us moving the structure; it's hard to say. Though it did rather forcibly remind me of a discussion we'd had here recently about whether chickens could be considered a predator.

Gonna throw a few random, haphazard updates in here at odd moments through the day, just to catch up a bit. Belatedly dealt last night with a cohort of rabbits that had been ready for processing 4-6 weeks ago, but life has been too busy to circle around to them. Ordinarily, when I get them done at the ideal 16-week age, they average about 7 lbs live weight and 3.5 dressed weight. I didn't get a live weight on these ones, but the dressed weight averaged around 5 lbs so I'm guessing they'd have been 10 lbs or thereabouts. We've been negotiating with a couple of local vendors to get sausage made from our rabbits, just to give my poor sweetheart (who, remember, can't eat most red meats and especially pork) something that she can eat in breakfast wraps, on pizzas, etc. It's not that I can't do this myself, or haven't in the past, but the meat grinder and sausage-stuffer attachments on my KitchenAid are just not up to the task of doing anything like that in bulk. Also, there's the time issue (which never goes away). So I may or may not splurge on an upgraded meat grinder and/or sausage stuffer, depending how much it costs us to get this batch processed. This batch of rabbits seemed ideal candidates for the purpose, given that they're oversized and also likely to be tougher than those harvested at 16 weeks (their legs were perceptively more sinewy than usual). So after I cleaned them and broke them down, I deboned everything except the forelegs (we jokingly call those "wings," and treat them like chicken wings; they're a bit fattier and richer than rabbit meat in general). We're also going to have several pounds simply ground up for us, because ground meat is a really useful/handy thing to have for all kinds of purposes. So, of the nearly 50 lbs/20+kg of dressed rabbit, I got a total of 12.4kg deboned meat (27-odd pounds), 3.2kg of forelegs (7+ lbs), and the rest went to bones/carcasses which I roasted off for later processing into rabbit broth. It was a big project, we started at around 3 and I wasn't finished until after 10. Ordinarily, when I'm not deboning the bunnies, I'd have been done 1.5-2 hours earlier.

A real estate office in a nearby township, which positions itself as a vendor of upscale properties, has the perhaps-incongruous habit of putting silly "dad jokes" on its sign. When I drove by yesterday, it read: "Nothing tops a plain pizza."

One of them is my son-in-law's mother. She has fairly severe Crohn's and just had a second resection earlier this year, and has a raft of other chronic conditions and/or allergies that further restrict her dietary options (and her life in general). Despite that she raised three kids, mostly by herself; two boys on the autism spectrum and a daughter who was the stereotypical rebellious hellion teenager. ...and paid off her shitheel ex's massive gambling debts as well, while working at not-especially-lucrative jobs. I admire her greatly.

This one's got some layers to it. For the benefit of anyone who doesn't know, there's a hugely popular animated film right now called "K-Pop Demon Hunters." The plot, drawn from a few Korean cultural touchstones, revolves around a Korean girl-group pop band who are (passing over lots of back-story here) battling demons, per their destiny, and a rival boy-band who are... demons. Anyway, that provided the context for someone to pull this together, which we'll all recognize from previous discussions here at eG:

I don't. Often these warnings from the CFIA include a list of known retailers, but there doesn't appear to be one in this case (I'm sure you'd already looked). To trot out the old "stone thrown into a pond" metaphor, the ripples of the pistachio recall keep spreading (this first update revolves around a single restaurant/sweets shop in Nepean, the second is in London). https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/various-pistachio-containing-products-recalled-due-salmonella-3 https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/various-baklava-type-products-recalled-due-salmonella There's also another recall of halva in BC. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/shaikh-al-kar-brand-plain-halva-recalled-due-salmonella-0

Found on FB by my daughter, who definitely does this.

...and another (Dubai chocolate). https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/dubai-brand-pistachio-knafeh-milk-chocolate-recalled-due-salmonella-0