chromedome

My GF's now-deceased former mother-in-law belonged to an obscure, cult-ish religious sect. During a visit to her house after her conversion, she explained that my now-GF and her then-husband that while her sect discouraged drinking, they understood that this could be an issue for those who had until recently been denizens of "the secular world." So she was allowed one glass of wine per day. Context: She had already filled the glass. It was one of the novelty kind that holds an entire 750ml bottle. ...and she was completely, deadpan, unironically serious.

Sadly, those are not especially reliable. It's especially problematic when writing about hands-on topics (like cooking, or DIY, or what have you) because there are only so many ways to say "add the wet ingredients to the dry," "tighten the bolts," etc. The AI-checkers are even worse (ie, the tools intended to identify blocks of text that may have been created by generative AI), and several of them were pulled from the market after their makers were forced to concede that they were about as effective as a Magic 8-ball.

I learned last year that our little Wembley also has a taste for the tomatoes. Fortunately he's a small dog, and could only get the literal low-hanging fruit. Everything is late in my garden this year (or more accurately, I was late with everything in my garden this year) but the greens are coming, and the garlic is almost ready, and I just picked 250g of shelled peas (a little over a half-pound) from the first row I'd planted (and our rabbits loved the pods). A couple more rows are just beginning to form pods, and I've bought additional seed for a few late rows that should begin to mature as the summer heat starts to fade. I'm still breaking new ground in my garden patch; at the beginning of this year I only had about 60% of the available space bedded up and planted. The lower area (ie, the unused space) seems to have a somewhat more favorable ratio of stones:soil, so I'm digging down instead of framing beds in scrap lumber. I'm going to try a late July/early August planting of cauliflower, since spring plantings never seem to amount to anything for me here (our springs just don't seem to last long enough for cauliflower or spinach to flourish before the hot weather). Still struggling with basil, which doesn't seem to be a problem for most gardeners (and wasn't for me either, out west) but which has been a delicate prima donna in my current garden. It's irritating. It's not that Costco's pesto isn't perfectly acceptable for day-to-day use, but... that's not the point.

Yeah, notably Eliza Acton. I downloaded Acton's cookbook from Project Gutenberg at one point, for an article I was writing. It was an interesting read, though it must be said that I'm a soft touch where vintage cookbooks are concerned.

Okay, this one applies to everybody from Quebec to BC. Salami and cacciatore sold under a number of small brand names are being recalled for salmonella; list at the link. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/various-brands-salami-and-cacciatore-recalled-due-salmonella?utm_source=gc-notify&utm_medium=email&utm_content=en&utm_campaign=hc-sc-rsa-22-23#tablefield-node-77735-field_affected_products-0

Not one of my garden plants, but this was probably the most appropriate spot for it (I think?). Spotted alongside one of my compost piles, this is... red clover. I've never noticed it before, but having scrutinized several other plants apparently the leaves take this shape immediately beneath the blossom (so...bracts, I guess?). Anyway, it's amazing the beautiful things you see when you take a moment to actually look.

A quick late-day update: Ivy gave us a litter of 10 kits, and Hester popped out 13. So far we're at 6 quail and counting, so we'll see what the morning brings (it typically takes a solid 24 hours or so after the first one hatches before we know how many will make it).

A brief update, because I haven't been keeping up on this as well as I might have. All of the little "princess" bunnies shown above have now been sold. Four of them went to Nova Scotia with me at the end of June, to buyers there, and the fifth was taken home by a local family this past week. One of the princess' brothers has also been spoken for, and will travel to NS with me at the end of this month. Since then we've weaned Hazel's litter, so we have a dozen new 4-week weanlings now in their own cage. They're a cuddly bunch as well, and terribly cute (I think they're at their most engaging at 4-6 weeks). Yesterday both Hester and Ivy gave us new litters, which we'll count this afternoon. Ivy's last litter gave us 7 kits, IIRC, and Hester's ill-fated first litter was 15 kits (of which none survived). This time she seems to have a better grip on how things are supposed to go, and of course in July the risk of the kits becoming hypothermic is much lower than it was in February or March. We've just moved a third batch of young chicks out to the main chicken run, where we have them sequestered inside their own little cage until they're big enough to not need the brooder any more (it's a heating plate that serves mama hen's role of giving them a warm place to sleep). We also have one hen (Miss Prissy, a Leghorn) who's broody and sitting on a clutch of eggs, which we're permitting just 'cause it appeals to my GF to see if she can successfully hatch them for us. There's also a clutch of quail eggs in our incubator, which are due to start hatching out today (we're seeing some of the eggs wiggle, but nobody's poked their little beak out yet to have a look around). On the other side of the whole "circle of life" scenario, our older white hen Flossie just...died one day, of old age as far as we can tell. We'd deliberately taken an older hen (her) to socialize the younger pullets, so this is not entirely a surprise. She'd served her purpose well, and was "boss hen" of our little flock in its early days, and we have a steady progression of ages so the socialization will continue. We've also harvested one of the surplus roosters, just last night. It was originally going to be both of the Wyandotte roosters, but one of them wasn't buying my "nonchalant" act for a second and wouldn't let me get within 10 feet of him. I'll get him in the next day or two with either a hook or a net. The hook is a sort of long, skinny shepherd's-crook arrangement of wire (I've improvised mine from a coat hanger) that slips around the chicken's leg, but which won't let the foot slip through. We're still going back and forth on the fate of our hybrid rooster, Chico. I posted upthread that we'd likely be keeping him, but my GF's been going back and forth on it. My stepdaughter is very fond of him, because he's attached to her and comes to her hand. They'll sit on the back deck sometimes, and she'll chat with him and he'll chuckle and cluck back at her. I rather like him myself (chickens do have personalities, though it takes a while to get a feel for them). Here you can see him following me to the rabbit pen an hour ago, rather like a dog (screencap from our security system): I think stepdaughter and I will probably carry the day. As for the two Wyandotte roosters I won't miss them at all, they're both just jerks. One of them (I think, but don't know for sure, it's the one who's already plucked and in my fridge) attacked my GF pretty regularly. It's probably her red hair, which I suspect made her look like a REALLY BIG WYANDOTTE in his eyes. We also have a cage of surplus male quail to be dealt with in the next few days, and a handful of bunnies from the first couple of litters. So it's going to be a busy week, above and beyond my actual "work, work" (ie, my writing workload). GF found a farm not terribly far from here where they slaughter and clean rabbits, chickens etc for a fairly reasonable $5/ea, which is not worth the drive for small quantities but absolutely will be late this summer/early autumn when we have 60-ish chickens to be dispatched. Still figuring out the logistics of getting 5 dozen chickens into the back of my Subaru, mind you...

You get scapes only from hard-neck garlic varieties, the kind that have that woody stem in the middle. In my part of the world it's planted in the autumn for a mid-summer harvest, usually toward the end of July or beginning of August (it depends on the local microclimate). Garlic scapes are a seed stem put out by the plant about 4-5 weeks before it's due to harvest. So they're always young plants, in that they aren't yet fully mature. I usually try to grab the scapes just as they get large enough to curl properly, when they're less likely to be woody (bear in mind, these grow from the relatively woody stem, so they do have a fairly stiff texture). Cutting off the scape doesn't kill the plant, just prevents it from diverting any energy away from the production of large bulbs. I've seen varying opinions as to how much letting the seedpod mature affects the bulbs' growth, but on the whole Mother Nature is a frugal ol' gal and not big on the whole "belt and suspenders" thing. So I err on the side of caution and harvest my scapes, to maximize bulb size (just in case it matters). But no, it doesn't kill or otherwise damage the plant itself.

I use them stir-fried, in risotto, in frittatas, etc, but the low-effort option is just to puree them with a bit of oil (I blanch mine first, because I find the color and flavor hold up better). I pack mine flat in ziploc bags with the air squeezed out, and then whenever I want the garlic flavor and a bit of color in what I'm cooking, I just break off a piece and return the rest to the freezer. I grow a fair-sized patch of garlic, enough to more or less do us for the full year, so I also get enough scapes to last us from one summer to the next when treated this way.

I look at those grotesqueries and wonder to myself "Why even bother having a patty hiding under there?" My GF went through a stage of watching Guy Fieri's DDD and similar shows, and I got to the point where my eyelid would start to twitch at the phrase "...this OVER THE TOP burger..." ETA: Those of us of a certain age (ie, most of us) may remember a vintage Doonesbury cartoon from the mid-70s, with a small Vietnamese orphan being adopted by an American family. They sit her down to her first American meal, cooing fondly "Look how excited she is!" The little one, for her part, is raging in a thought bubble "This is obscene! You could feed half of Saigon with this!" (paraphrased from memory, and probably not exact) I was bemused, years later, to learn that GBT had revived her character as Mike Doonesbury's whip-smart young programmer GF.

A fun moment when I was feeding the bunnies. Two of 'em got hold of opposite ends of a piece of hay, and unwittingly recreated the iconic "spaghetti kiss" from Lady and The Tramp. Except these were both adolescent males, who reacted by having a tug-of-war with what was left.

I saw this today, and it occurred to me that I hadn't seen this thread updated in a while. Didn't realize it had been two years... has it been y'all powering Amazon's stock price this whole time? (...bunch of enablers...)

Huh. Made a point of reading a few followups, since a) I was reminded; and b) am sitting in front of my computer at this very moment. It seems things were not that straightforward, and that the couple never really accepted Ramsay's "take" on how their business should run. In fairness to them, while reviews of the food and service are mixed, it seems that they're genuinely popular and successful in their current pub.

Probably a good call, cashing out while they had the visibility thanks to Ramsay. I've often wondered how they made out, but never thought about it while I was at a computer to look them up. That episode really stood out for me because of the look in Ramsay's eye as he realized that his show had just acquired life-or-death stakes. I can't help but wonder if he gently encouraged the proprietor to sell while the selling was good. I had to explain to many of my friends here about the Campaign For Real Ale, and why I'd laughed so hard over the Real Gravy thing.

Yeah. ...and let's not even start on the bad blood between Minnesota and South Dakota over who makes Chislic the "right" way.

I remember an early episode of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares (UK edition) in which the proprietor was literally working himself to death: Ramsay: "When did you last take a day off?" Proprietor: (looks questioningly at his GF/business partner) Girlfriend: "Well, you took three days off after your heart attack last year..." Ramsay: (eyes widen in sheer, incredulous panic) So, with a man's life literally hanging on the outcome, he threw away the run-of-the-mill sauces the restaurant had been using, and ginned up a tongue-in-cheek "Campaign For Real Gravy" to promote the restaurant and give it a way to differentiate itself from competitors in the area. I don't know how well that played out in the long term, but they had fun with it and the diners seemed to enjoy the food (for what that's worth).

This is "laugh or cry" territory, so I'm putting it here. Some Redditor decided to have AI generate a map of the most popular regional food in each state, and this is what it came up with. It just gets better (for certain values of the term) the more you look.

This is pretty recent history, but it's interesting. It traces the unexpected connections between Polish and Vietnamese food, and explains why there's such a thriving Vietnamese-food scene in Poland now. https://culture.pl/en/article/the-flavours-we-share-surprising-connections-between-polish-asian-cuisines

I've been reading about this for a while, but it's deeply unsettling to hear that these ticks have been found as far north as Maine now. NB is just across the St. Croix river from Maine, so doubtless they'll show up here over the next few years as the climate changes further. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/29/lone-star-ticks-increase-climate-crisis I have to say, though the article as a whole makes for grim reading, the scientist describing this tick as "a cross between a lentil and a velociraptor" all but earned my computer a coffee shower.

From the "the bit they hope you don't notice" files, food science edition:

Seemed timely, in light of the recent "Culinary ennui" thread...

This affects Ontario and Quebec only, but if you've bought sliced mushrooms from Peeters Mushroom Farms, check those date codes. They're being recalled for listeria. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/peeters-mushroom-farm-brand-sliced-mushrooms-recalled-due-listeria-monocytogenes?utm_source=gc-notify&utm_medium=email&utm_content=en&utm_campaign=hc-sc-rsa-22-23