chromedome

"Shakeable bowl" = 1) Open bowl. 2) Open dressing, add to bowl. 3) Re-seal bowl. 4) Shake that thang! (lid stays on) 5) Open bowl, eat salad.

No worries. You accidentally pressed one of the hottest of my hot buttons, as you probably gathered. I was somewhat concerned I might have overdone it, in fact. When I was a kid, the farmers my family rented from (our closest neighbours) had a small dairy farm, and I used to watch in fascination as my friends' mom would pour the milk into the electric separator (a big freestanding centrifuge, in the corner of the kitchen) to separate the milk and cream. She always brought hers up to a near-boil, though, before using it.

Raw milk has a handful of purported benefits that are poorly supported by research, vs an extremely well-documented history of causing significant illness and death. Pasteurization was/is one of the cornerstone public-health interventions (along with vaccines and improved sanitation) that brought down child mortality in particular from 100 per 1000 live births at the turn of the 20th century, to 0.77/1000 live births at the turn of the 21st (those are US numbers, because they're easier to find, but Canada's tracked pretty closely to the same percentages). I don't have any particular objection to a billionaire and his former-dancer wife setting up shop as salt-of-the-earth homesteaders, and selling their homegrown meats etc to their Instagram followers. It's a grift, but (shrug) if someone wants to order meat from them at a premium, vs the farmer down the road, that's their prerogative. Nothing to do with me. But I do get het up over the notion of deliberately promoting something that's known to be unsafe, whether as a money-maker (again, the dude could live very comfortably on his trust fund without needing to do this), or from ego, or whatever. The "schadenfreude" comes from knowing this guy could definitely have budgeted to hire a consultant and gotten it right the first time, but couldn't be bothered. I guess you could say that "putting lives in danger for fun and profit" rubs me the wrong way (anti-vaccine grifters also set me off badly, which probably will not be a shock to you given the foregoing). As it happens I'd just finished reading this article from Ars Technica when I came across a link to that People Magazine piece on social media, so the timing was especially apt. https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/02/newborns-death-spurs-raw-milk-warning-in-new-mexico/ I've written a number of articles about outbreaks of foodborne illness during the time I've been freelancing, and there's been a pretty big body of research to pull from where raw milk is concerned. I'll drop a couple here, just 'cause, but this is one of my big hobby-horses so I'll exercise a bit of restraint. https://marlerclark.com/pdfs/raw-milk-jeh.pdf (The farm mentioned in this piece is especially influential, and has largely driven the rise in visibility for raw-milk consumption) https://www.livescience.com/health/viruses-infections-disease/new-report-details-one-of-the-biggest-raw-milk-related-outbreaks-in-recent-us-history ...and while this one isn't about people knowingly consuming raw milk, a mechanical failure allowed raw milk to mix with pasteurized milk, causing at least 12 known deaths, over 16,000 lab-diagnosed infections, and (after tracing the milk's distribution pattern) estimates of over 160,000 probable illnesses overall. https://theconversation.com/contaminated-milk-from-one-plant-in-illinois-sickened-thousands-with-salmonella-in-1985-as-outbreaks-rise-in-the-us-lessons-from-this-one-remain-true-254036 Please understand I'm not dunking on you, here. A lot of people are promoting the stuff, whether for mercenary reasons, or rote contrarianism, or because they've become True Believers; and obviously I don't know your daughter or her beliefs/influences on the matter. If you're interested, you can reach out in a private message and I can find some more links for you that either emphasize the science or actively debunk the main handful of bad-faith arguments that favor raw milk.

Food recalls, "grifter schadenfreude" edition: https://people.com/ballerina-farm-halts-sale-of-raw-milk-after-failed-health-test-report-11897521

Another enoki recall, for listeria. So far the only "for sure" market affected is BC, but they've kept the door open to other locations as well. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/mushmoshi-brand-enoki-mushroom-recalled-due-listeria-monocytogenes-0

They still make those big commercial units that attach to a workbench, for sure. Not so certain about the wall-mount domestic kind, like my grandmother had. This one is just a simple hand-held unit, like any other except (in my experience) better made than most.

Macadamia lovers in BC and Alberta, beware... some Dan-D Pak macadamias are being recalled for salmonella. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/dan-pak-brand-raw-macadamia-nuts-recalled-due-salmonella-0

The upstairs (ie, rest-of-house) can opener broke a couple of months ago, so I took my OXO up there to be the main can opener in the house. A few weeks back I bought a very ordinary Swing-Away, which I've had before and considered solidly workmanlike. I got mine at Canadian Tire, though I believe it's the same model Walmart sells. While I was away, my GF used it to open the cans of soft food for our kittens. Much to my surprise, it works both as a conventional and as a side-cut opener. I never would have thought to try it that way - I loathe side-cutters - but I know many of you like them, so I'm throwing this out there as a potentially useful data point for someone.

annnnd, Arrowroot biscuits are being recalled for foreign matter (paper, soft plastic). https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/gerber-brand-arrowroot-biscuits-recalled-due-possible-presence-pieces-soft-plastic-and

I'll start with a footnote to the above post. After resetting the breaker, melting the block of ice from the chickens' heated waterer and getting it set back up, the next morning it was again frozen solid. It appeared that the extension itself wasn't working. Now, this particular extension had previously met with misfortune, and I had replaced the female end on it, and taped it well to keep out the elements. So I shrugged, and resigned myself to removing and reinstalling the end, thinking that some moisture had made its way in there after all. ...until I went to use the snowblower, and found a two-foot length from the middle of the extension cord stuck in its teeth. I had very diligently lifted the front end of the thing to cross the cord when I was clearing a path to the chickens' run, but apparently it slipped my mind when I was widening the path on my way back (sigh). Which would also explain blowing the breaker. In my defense, it was early and I can't drink coffee any more! It feels ridiculously early, but we've just bred our does for the first time this year. The kits from this round of litters will all be at "adopting age" when Easter rolls around, because as mentioned in previous years we get a lot of people wanting one as a pet. Fortuitously this also coincides with the new-to-homesteading crew wanting breeders to work with (and, for that matter, established bunny people looking to freshen their bloodlines), so this is when we sell a lot of our rabbits for the year. In a good year, what we make from selling bunnies in early spring will essentially cover their food costs for the next 3-4 months. So, a funny story. Serious commercial breeders, as I've mentioned before, will monitor the bucks' attempts and will, if necessary, manually intervene to ensure a successful breeding. We're not that hardcore, so I just leave the does with the bucks overnight. It's not as certain but we seldom fail to get a litter, and when we do we just breed that doe again on our next cycle. No big deal. So Saturday morning, after leaving the bucks and does together overnight, I was moving the does back to their own cages while I fed and watered them all. In one of the end cages was Hilda, a big black doe, with our new silver-grey buck (Horatio). As I was puttering, Horatio found himself at their shared cage wall at the same time as the (ahem) "doe-eyed beauty" in the next cage. They stopped and each pressed their noses to the wire, sniffing at each other with their whiskers a-quiver, and you could all but hear the "Heyyyy, baby..." from him. Suddenly Hilda, who'd been facing the other way, whirled and began chasing him around the cage and bowling him over (she's much larger than he is). It's hard not to anthropomorphize at moments like that.

This falls squarely in the "you probably know someone" department. (Some) Pillsbury Pizza Pops are being recalled nationally for E. coli. I vaguely remember there being another such recall recently, but this one says it's "New" rather than "Updated," so... (shrug). https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/certain-pillsbury-brand-pizza-pops-recalled-due-e-coli-o26

As a bald person who raises rabbits, I find that rather amusing.

I'd honestly thought that was a pan-Canadian thing, at least among those of, say, early Gen X and up. It was very much universal in the Maritimes when I was growing up.

Turns out (surprise!) that keeping avian predators around is a good way to limit bird/rodent damage to cherry crops. https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/01/tiny-falcons-are-helping-keep-the-food-supply-safe-on-cherry-farms/

The hot dog maker's new owner is Smithfield. https://apnews.com/article/nathans-famous-hot-dogs-smithfield-merger-9927a1f0fde1ff32c2f95dc4949d3dfd

(He's a well-known historian and author...)

Putting this here, because... this is why we don't (shouldn't) put fatty food waste down the drain, folks! https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/jan/17/fatberg-poo-balls-sydney-beaches-malabar-outfall-secret-report

Yup, I saw it with a lasagne when my kids were young. I'd put it down to just the acidity, though I scratched my head a little over the severity of the deterioration. Good to know what was actually happening.

In the middle of an article about an entirely unrelated topic (90s alt-rock, as experienced via the lousy speakers at a workplace), I came across this absolute gem of a sentence: The article itself, by Niko Stratis, is well worth a read for the way it captures the mood of small-town life and those dead-end jobs most of us take on in our teens. https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/alt-rock-dept/alt-rock-toadies-possum-kingdom

Oh, here's a big one. No Name beef burgers are being recalled nationally for E. coli. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/no-name-brand-beef-burgers-recalled-due-e-coli-o157h7 For the non-Canadians present, No Name is a private label of Loblaw's, our biggest supermarket chain.

The FDA's Bad Bug Book is an excellent (fascinating/horrifying) resource. It's free to download. https://www.fda.gov/food/foodborne-pathogens/bad-bug-book-second-edition

Speaking of listeria, here's yet another enoki mushroom recall. This one's (so far) BC-specific. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/mushmoshi-brand-enoki-mushroom-recalled-due-listeria-monocytogenes

I can clarify a couple of points, from personal or work experience. As far as potatoes are concerned, there are a couple of ways to go. "Waxy" potatoes tend to freeze and thaw better than "starchy" potatoes, so if you want something like a soup with potatoes (or just cooked potatoes you can reheat), they're the better option. Starchy potatoes can be used in situations where you're adding a lot of fat or rich ingredients, hence Smithy's twice-baked potatoes. The "freezable, holdable mashed potatoes" at Ellen's Kitchen work on the same basis. The recipe as given (https://www.ellenskitchen.com/bigpots/oamc/mashpota.html) is meant to serve 25, but it's not hard to scale. As for starches, I find that potato starch and arrowroot (both available online, or in the gluten-free section) freeze and thaw well. Roux-thickened sauces and gravies will have an uneven consistency when thawed, unfortunately. If you have someone helping with your post-surgery scenario, whisking them back together will often do the trick, and when they're stubborn a cornstarch slurry will help smooth things out and re-thicken them.