chromedome

No pics, but last night's roast duck was accompanied by (among other things) a casserole made with some of my last pattypan squash (harvested a few weeks ago, but still sound), and both kale and broccoli picked from the garden immediately before dinner. It's been an up-and-down year in the garden, but I'm happy to still have fresh things coming from a few beds at this time of year. Last year I managed to keep a few things going with just rudimentary covers over them, and picked my last few greens as part of Christmas dinner. Hopefully I can do the same this year as well.

Various major-brand breads and rolls, including Great Value, Wonder, No Name, President's Choice and Country Harvest, are being recalled for pieces of metal. Affects NL, ON and QC (so far). https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/various-brands-bread-and-buns-recalled-due-pieces-metal

We had 100 or so chickens at one point when I was a kid, and I currently have a small flock. I can affirm that if it's slow enough to catch and small enough to swallow, they'll give it a try. As I write this, hens Flossie and Yolko Ono (I don't pick the names) are outside the window of my basement office, trying to decide how they might get at the spiders nesting in the windowframe. I uncovered an ant's nest under a piece of wood this summer, while they were hovering in the vicinity ("Whatcha doing? ...and why doesn't it involve feeding us?") and they were in there like a marauding army, inhaling eggs, larvae and worker ants like there was no tomorrow. So no, they're not bursting from ambush in pursuit of a snail or anything, but they certainly fit the definition of a predator.

My son is not yet a dad, but he seems to have inherited my proclivity for dad jokes. On FB a couple of days ago he posed the question: "If I have shawarma for lunch, does that make it Halal-oween?"

The waffle recall has been extended to include several new brands and varieties, and also several varieties of pancakes. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/various-brands-frozen-waffles-and-pancakes-recalled-due-listeria-monocytogenes

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/meet-italian-fruit-detective-who-investigates-centuries-old-paintings-clues-produce-180985227/

I'm with you on that one. I do use heavy cream fairly often (my GF considers it all but a food group in its own right), but don't care for cream in my coffee and especially not in my chowder. That last draws me a lot of flak, but I stand by it.

The waffle recall affects Canada as well; several varieties of Walmart's Great Value and Sobeys' Compliments brand waffles are being recalled nationally for listeria. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/various-brands-frozen-waffles-recalled-due-listeria-monocytogenes?utm_source=gc-notify&utm_medium=email&utm_content=en&utm_campaign=hc-sc-rsa-22-23 For those of you in Ontario, several small brands of ham in jelly, head cheese and suchlike are being recalled as well for listeria. It seems related to the early-October recall of jellied beef tongue, because I see the same packaging and logo on a couple of the products. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/various-brands-ham-jelly-jelly-pork-recalled-due-listeria-monocytogenes?utm_source=gc-notify&utm_medium=email&utm_content=en&utm_campaign=hc-sc-rsa-22-23

Did you use natural release, or quick release? Because I never blanch my chicken/turkey/rabbit beforehand, but the stock comes out nice and clear if I do the natural release. If I do a quick release, the sudden pressure change makes it boil furiously for the first couple of minutes and then you get a murky stock. I do that typically when I'll be using it immediately to make gravy, and speed is a consideration (or when I'll be doing a pureed soup, and clarity won't matter).

Yup. Brisket, too. When we still ate beef occasionally (before it became a medical issue for my GF), it was always the braising cuts I shopped for most aggressively. It was a constant frustration to me the so-called "cheap" cuts were so difficult to find at a good price. Grilling steaks went on sale regularly, but if I wanted flank steak or oxtail or shank or short ribs I had to hope for a near-its-date markdown. Perhaps that's why the sous vide selling point of "make a cheap cut just as tender as a premium steak" never really landed for me; why bother when I could usually buy a grilling steak on sale for the same or lower price? Also, to be blunt, I prefer braises to steaks anyway. Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike steak (we're not talking Liuzhou and corn here, or our dear departed Anna N and beans), I just don't find it compelling. I know I've cooked them occasionally for my current GF before her medical problems, so it's been sometime in the past decade, but otherwise couldn't tell you when I last cooked one. One of my cooking classes, maybe.

Superstore and Sobeys have them occasionally, though it's been a while since I've bought any because I'm a cheapskate. The meat-counter manager will usually be happy to bring some in for you, if you ask. That's what I did the last time I had an insuperable craving for oxtail soup. Like many others here I used to buy oxtail when it was inexpensive, but then at some point in the 80s it got "discovered" or something, I don't know. The price went from budget-friendly to stratospheric almost overnight, around the same time flank steak skyrocketed (another of my low-cost staples at the time).

I do it with bone-in frozen rabbit and chicken. I just use the "Meat" preset and walk away, couldn't even tell you without checking how long that is. My GF has chewing problems and likes things cooked to a pot roast consistency, and occasionally I need to let it go a few extra minutes to arrive at that. If you're looking for a less-cooked texture I can't help you with the timing, but I'm sure other sources can. Bottom line, there's no particular reason not to.

I can second the rolled-oats option. When I was growing up, that was my mom's go-to for meatballs and meatloaf and she even used it sometimes in burger patties (I suspect that latter was when money was tight and she needed to stretch the ol' grocery budget). The beta-glucans in the oats (the soluble fiber that can make cooked oatmeal seem gummy) makes them a good binding ingredient. Just be aware that while oats are naturally gluten-free, most brands are processed in mills that also process gluten-containing grains and are therefore susceptible to cross-contamination. You'd need to look for a brand that's certified gluten-free.

...and not even baby vegetables, at that.

Here in Canada they only stock one decaf coffee in whole-bean form. There are others online, but I hadn't thought to check until reading your post. This is the one: I bought a bag, on the reasoning that a) I could return it if I didn't like it; and b) it was far and away my low-cost option. My preferred choice is the Swiss water decaf from Halifax-based Java Blend (20-ish years ago I lived a block from the store, and smelled their coffee roasting when I woke up), but that's $13.99 in my local supermarkets for a 340g bag (12 ounces, for the non-metric folks). The Kirkland gets me 1.13 kg (40 ounces/2.5 lbs) for $22.99, and I bought a bag on sale at $19.99. At over 3x the coffee for 1.5x the price, that's pretty compelling math. The coffee itself is... fine. I've had better, and I've had much worse. I don't detect the burnt undertones and chemical aftertaste that usually mar Starbucks' coffees for me, so either 'Bucks is in fact no longer roasting the Kirkland stuff (at least for the Canadian market), or they've gotten better at it, or maybe my palate just isn't as sensitive as it used to be. I dunno, but it doesn't really matter I suppose. It's good enough and the price is right, so I'll continue with it.

My summer squash (a pattypan, rather than zucchini) was still producing well but I pulled it up because it was smitten with downy mildew during one of my visits to NS, and I didn't want it to spread to my buttercup and spaghetti squashes. I have plenty in the freezer, shredded, and still a dozen or so on my counter. I'll probably use several of them in a casserole to go with Thanksgiving dinner later on today. Gotta pot my rosemary and bring it indoors, as well. Going to cover my bell pepper and "basket of fire" hot pepper and see how long I can coax them into surviving. Also need to find my soldering iron and fix up the second of my T-50 tubes, which has been hors de combat for a couple of years. I suspect it's just a bad solder connection somewhere in the fixture, and they're easily enough fixed. We have several of those inexpensive 1000-watt equivalent LED lights that we use for our indoor plants in winter, but that's not a pleasant light to share a room with. The Sunblaster T-50s give a naturally warm full-spectrum light, and I plan to mount this second one vertically on a wall in our bedroom for a small tropical tree we have there. As a bonus, the light will also help with my GF's SAD. It's unrelated to the current discussion, but once I find that bloody soldering iron I'll also be able to fix my matched pair of 24" monitors. That generation of LG monitors got a batch of defective capacitors on the power board, and both of mine blew within weeks of each other a year or so ago. I picked up a used 24" to replace the first one, and recently added a bought-new second monitor so I can finally have my two-monitor setup back, because I haven't been able to carve out time for the repair (and still have no idea which box contains the soldering iron, 2 years after we moved, but the number of remaining boxes has dwindled sharply). My current monitors aren't a matched set, and I have to say it was nice having identical monitors on both sides, but so be it. Once they're repaired I can probably sell the older LGs as a pair and make back most of what I spent on the new monitor.