chromedome

It's almost that time of year again...

Huh. I don't know if it qualifies as "fun stuff," but one of our two national grocery chains (Sobeys) is now carrying a range of products from its UK counterpart, Sainsbury's. It seems to mostly be incidental stuff, like marmalade, candy, canned beans, cookies (sorry, biscuits) and lemon curd. UK peeps, are any of their products especially notable?

Yeah, that's a head-scratcher. I wonder whatever possessed them to make the cooking vessel square (-ish) rather than round? It's a pretty fundamental design flaw; you'd think a beta-tester might have mentioned this?

I mentioned a few days ago that I'm trying to form the habit of taking pics of my food occasionally, just to develop some familiarity with the camera on my new (-to me) S22, a significant upgrade from my older phone (an S7). That resolve happened to coincide with me making a "grown-up meal" for just the two of us last night, instead of the usual routine of grinding out something acceptable to all three generations living under our roof. The plating isn't exactly elegant (it was late and I was hungry), but it's a stew of rabbit and dried wild mushrooms (the Costco mix), served over soft polenta with steamed cauli and Brussels sprouts. It was tasty.

Via my daughter...

AFAIK they're all coturnix quail in different colorations. They can be harvested for meat at around 7 weeks (less than half the time for bobwhite quail, for example) and start laying at around 8 weeks old IIRC. So that makes them pretty great as homestead birds. Not everyone has the patience for fiddling with their itty-bitty eggs, but it's not really *that* big a deal once you get used to it. Here's an article that gives the basics of quail-rearing, if you're interested (even vicariously). https://rurallivingtoday.com/backyard-chickens-roosters/coturnix-quail/

Yesterday was a "quail day." I've mentioned that my father-in-law was incubating a batch of them for us, and they began to hatch out in the early hours of Friday. We were there yesterday afternoon, and got to watch a couple of them hatch while we were there. Here's a shot of the view through the side of the incubator, with new hatchlings scurrying around on top of their siblings: Again, for context, they're about the size of my thumb at this point (a quail's egg is roughly a teaspoon, or 5 ml, in volume). Note the new arrival at bottom right. And this little guy is the one we watched hatch out, with occasional supportive pecks at the shell from the already-hatched siblings. He's pretty gassed, at this point. They bounce back quickly, though, once they have a chance to recuperate and dry off. Remember the itty-bitty quail in the box, from the pic a few posts upthread? Well, this is them now (roughly 1 month old). They're all fledged out, now, and just this morning I heard one of the males crow for the first time (in response/challenge to an adult in the main cage), so it's just about time to sex and separate them. They're perhaps 2/3 adult size, at this point. The females will start laying in another few weeks.

I made a point of taking pictures today, since it's been a while between bunny pics and I know some of you could do with a bit of fuzzy cuteness in your lives right now. I was out adding a panel of finer mesh to Hazel's cage, because her kits' eyes are open now and they'll be out exploring within the next few days. We've had unfortunate incidents of babies falling through the wider, heavier-gauge mesh that makes up the cages, but small-mesh "hardware cloth" (1/4-inch square mesh) is large enough to let rabbit droppings drop without allowing the babies to drop as well. Adding the mesh took longer than I'd expected, because Hazel - after being skittish and "hand-shy" since the day we'd gotten her - has suddenly discovered that she actually likes being petted, so while I was trying to wire the new panels in place she was bonking her head into my hand, just as a cat does. As it turns out, I may not have needed to worry about that. Her kits are freakin' HUGE! Check this out: I know it's hard to judge scale, when looking at photos like this, so here's a shot of one of Ivy's babies (a couple of days younger) for comparison purposes: Hazel's little one is at least 50 percent larger. So, while it's a shame that we lost so many kits, the survivors in her litter are reaping the benefit by having all the milk they can handle. In other news we're within a few days of our baby chicks hatching (here), and our next batch of quail hatching (at my father-in-law's place). We're not sure how we'll do with the silver-laced Wyandottes, because the eggs were held up in Ontario for two extra days by a late-season snowstorm. The silkies, at least, were local so we know their provenance and what temperature they were held at. I guess we'll see how things shake out over the next several days.

It's a beautiful day, today, so I took the opportunity to assess what survived and did not survive out in my garden. In the herb bed, the picture is much more positive than last year, probably because we had a normal quantity of snow to protect the plants. My thyme, oregano, sage and parsley all survived, this time, which was not the case last year. The lovage, mint and Egyptian walking onions all did as well, though I had no qualms about any of those. They'll survive just about anything short of nuclear winter. I also found my newly-established strawberry bed in good order, along with a few carrots that were too small to bother with last autumn. I'll let them run to seed, and then save the seed. The curly kale is still doing fine under its cover, but the lacinato kale, after over-wintering successfully, has been eaten to the stumps by some pest or other (grrr). It's too early for insect pests, I think, even at the larval stage, so I suspect rodents. On a happier note, I was surprised and pleased to see that last year's late-season planting of spinach is bouncing back quite happily. In my area we don't traditionally put out transplants or direct-seed most vegetables until mid-May or thereabouts, but I'm encouraged to see all of these things popping back up so readily.

I haven't started any vegetables yet for later transplant, because it's still a bit early for most things, but we did get our mushrooms underway a few days ago. I've spoken about this a couple of times in recent years. You can buy mushroom kits consisting of a suitable substrate (sawdust, for example), which has been inoculated with spores of the desired mushroom, and maintained in conditions that encourage the mycelium to grow. The normal way to use these is simply to poke some holes and mist them, which prompts the mushrooms to fruit through the holes in the package. We've been a bit more ambitious than that. To maximize the value of a kit, you can prepare a larger quantity of substrate on your own account, and then crumble the substrate from your kit and mix the two. Some do this in baskets, some do it in ordinary plastic 5-gallon/20-liter buckets with holes drilled through them, and some do it in open beds in their garden. We've tried all three. So far the best one-season yield we've had was from the open bed of winecap mushrooms, which gave us 25-30 pounds. It didn't do as well as we'd hoped in the second year, giving us only a handful of mushrooms. It's still there, and we'll revamp it this year and hope for better, but we've also gotten another kit. This year we'll be doing all eight varieties using the bucket method, which my GF believes will give us the most controllable/reproducible results. This project is her baby, so I'm just following her lead and providing the muscle as needed. The kits are neither especially cheap nor especially costly, averaging $20-$25 ea (CAD), but with eight varieties it does add up. So establishing them as a self-sustaining presence in our garden is the longer-term goal. For context, we go through a lot of store-bought mushrooms, and ordinary button mushrooms here typically cost $3.99 for a 227g (half-pound) package. So that 25 pounds of winecaps, for example, corresponds to $200 dollars' worth even at button-mushroom pricing. When you allow for the higher price or outright non-availability of specialty mushrooms, their dollar value goes up. Our Superstore chain has "gourmet" mushrooms currently (morels, enoki, etc) at prices ranging from $8.99 and up for the same 227g size. So this year we have five buckets set up with sawdust substrate, and another three where the substrate of choice is chopped straw. We have another kit for winecaps (Stropharia rugosoannulata), as mentioned above, as shiitake, lion's mane (Hericium erinaceous), chestnut mushrooms (Pholiota adiposa) and four different kinds of pleurotus/oyster mushrooms. ...and yes, if you're wondering, we are indeed Blue Oyster Cult-ivators (Pleurotus ostreatus var. columbinus, which varies in color from a steely blue-grey to genuinely blue, depending on the strain).

I'll call this one "food science," on the grounds that it's probably not worth creating a new thread for "food-related medical stories." A man in Florida needed years to finally be diagnosed with a brucellosis infection around his defibrillator implant, and it was eventually traced to eating pork from a feral hog. https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/03/florida-man-eats-feral-pig-meat-contracts-rare-biothreat-bacteria/

I don't usually post recalls from the US, because I only subscribe to the Canadian agency's notifications, but I tripped across this one this morning in my travels. Some Stouffer's and Lean Cuisine frozen meals are being recalled due to the presence of foreign matter, specifically wood (I have questions...). https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls-market-withdrawals-safety-alerts/nestle-usa-announces-voluntary-recall-limited-quantity-lean-cuisiner-and-stouffersr-frozen-meals-due

If it makes you feel any better, I haven't seen it as low as $9/lb for quite a while out here. Pretty sure the last time I bought a few slices they were marked down for clearance, at 30% off the $13.99/lb price. That was a few years ago, already.

Yeah, you just debone the flats. I leave the wingtips on, because they make a convenient handle. Also, I love how crispy they get and I nibble them from their tiny bones at the end of the meal. It's not actually that big a deal. You just circle the "elbow" joint with your knife, scrape the ends of the bones a bit with your knife tip to get any tendons tying the flesh to the bone, and then push everything back to the "wrist" joint. A quick wrench dislocates the two bones (equivalent of the radius and ulna in a human arm), and Robert's your mother's brother. After the first few, I had it down to 20-30 seconds/wing. And I could have gone faster, if suitably motivated.