chromedome

Ate the last of the beans and kale from last year's garden last night, unless there's an overlooked bag of tomatoes lurking in the freezer somewhere. Getting to mid-April isn't bad at all. We were able to have at least some of our own homegrown vegetables on the table most nights, to complement the store-bought.

Yesterday, deadline-motivated as always, I finished repairing the last two damaged cages so we could wean the baby bunnies and separate them from their mothers. After having their first opportunity in several weeks to enjoy an unhurried meal and a restful night, the mamas seemed pretty pleased this morning. The little ones are growing like weeds, of course, and the first buyer (a repeat customer from last year) is coming this afternoon to pick one up. At last count, IIRC, my GF has 7 or 8 sold. We've also sold a few quail, and several dozen quail eggs, to people wanting to start their own flocks. There's another clutch of quail eggs in the incubator, which have been hatching out since yesterday. There were 18 live hatchlings and two that exhausted themselves fatally while breaking free of the eggs; and as of this morning there seem to be another 4 or 5 (we're still hoping for more before the day's out). I was amused when I got up this morning to see Bixby, our ginger kitty, parked in front of the incubator and watching with great interest as the tiny hatchlings floundered around on the inside. One of the little ones was right there at the wall of the incubator, glaring back at Bixby, hauling itself up to its full height and flapping its stumpy little wings to look more intimidating, and pecking fiercely at the wall dividing them. I watched the little one offering violent defiance to a fanged, clawed predator 100X its size, and thought "Yup, that one's a male..."

I'm putting this here, instead of in the Cocktails thread, because of his approach, but it would fit just as well over there. https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/04/is-there-a-grand-unified-theory-of-cocktails-maybe/

(Purely a joke, I'm basically a non-drinker at this point...)

Seems germane... (Cal-Maine is the largest of the five companies that control the US egg market, and makes a useful proxy for the industry at large) https://fortune.com/2025/04/10/egg-prices-profits-cal-maine-bird-flu/

I've previously shared articles about coffee research from a specific team of scientists. This time, they've turned their attention to improving pour-over coffee (link to the underlying study in the text, for those who want to geek out). https://www.theguardian.com/food/2025/apr/08/secret-to-stronger-pour-over-coffee-with-no-extra-beans-unlocked-by-scientists

Seeing the first new shoots from our host o' hostas... ...and my autumn bulbs... ...not to mention the fall-blooming sedums I picked up late in the season last year, on clearance. The sedums and the hardy hibiscus (another late-season purchase, marked down from $40/ea to $10/ea) are both okay in my zone, but not necessarily in aboveground pots, so I sunk them both into empty spaces in my main garden for the winter while we considered where to put them on a more permanent basis.

Just gonna do a screen-cap here, owing to the NYT paywall, but those of you who may be affected can always check the FDA's site for details and batch numbers.

Scientists in the kitchen:

My GF just sent me this video. I've seen some actual ads that were this off-kilter, so I suspect it's legit, though maybe one of our UK members can confirm? https://www.facebook.com/reel/690876749942364

...after baking a cake for a grandkid's birthday, forget to ask "Are you bringing a knife to slice this with, or am I?" Which resulted in my stepdaughter and I giving each other "Uh-oh" looks, as grandson and his friends and cousins gathered around the table. I ended up cutting the cake with my Swiss Army knife, which was not quite long enough, so today I need to carefully extricate the remainder of the chocolate icing from inside the handle. I'll note that planning an outdoor birthday party in April was a pretty gutsy call on my stepdaughter's part, and it ended up getting moved forward a day because the weather today is expected to be pretty poor.

As many of you will know, I raise rabbits for meat. I've done some back of the envelope math at one point or another and worked out that even a small establishment like mine (4-6 does) can put something on the order of 800 lbs of meat in the freezer in just one summer, depending how hard you want to work them (and a few other factors). That compares favorably to most forms of larger livestock, though of course (as I've often joked) you don't get many steaks or chops out of a rabbit. Having made that joke repeatedly, one day my GF challenged me on it. She really enjoys breaded schnitzel-style cutlets, and wanted to know if I could figure out how to make them from a rabbit. I gave it some thought and decided that hind legs or loin pieces were my best bet, so last night I thawed two saddles of rabbit (ie the two loins, and the piece of spine joining them) and gave it a shot. Here's the end result: Three of the loins I left intact, just removed the silverskin and pounded them out. One loin I cut diagonally in half, to make two smaller portions for the kids. There were also the tiny tenderloins, which I didn't bother to pound because they were already quite thin and (of course) tender. Finally, I had the four vaguely triangular pieces of thin belly meat which I'd left in place when I broke down the rabbits; those I pounded with the studded side of the meat mallet (you'll see two of those at the top of the plate). They were chewy, but not unpleasantly so. I served them with boiled potatoes, steamed cauliflower and broccoli, and gravy. No plated pictures, because I had hungry/impatient mouths to feed. (NB: I also roasted the pieces of backbone, with the bits and pieces of meat that weren't worth trimming off, and those are in the fridge as an agreeable nibble I can reheat and pick clean when the mood strikes.)

Basically the wheat version of pearled barley, I guess. I expect you could use it in recipes calling for wheat berries, but dial back the cooking time somewhat. I'll be curious to see what you think of it.