chromedome

Did you complete the trifecta by listening to the Velvet Underground?

To my taste a slight tang is the sine qua non of a good cheese sauce. I'll use buttermilk or yogurt to get it if the cheese isn't sharp/tangy enough. Of course, as I've said before, it's our differences that keep life interesting.

Lots of potatoes here. Like neighbours Maine and Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick is a major producer. Lots of local cabbage and apples, too. Most other stuff is imported, sadly.

Yeah, that's why I haven't done it yet myself (and of course, the fact that we've gotten off *very* light, virus-wise, contributes as well). I'd certainly have no qualm about ordering dry goods or pantry staples this way, but I really prefer to pick my produce personally (literally, in the garden sense, when possible). Also, a lot of my ordinary shopping consists of browsing the store for markdowns (aka "targets of opportunity"). A discerning eye is extra-important with those.

I guess it's not *that* different from the candied chestnuts that Europeans have eaten since forever. Sugary starch, right? ...which, come to think of it, describes a lot of desserts.

Posted here because there's a beefy section about the restaurant industry. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/how-pandemic-will-change-face-retail/610738

When my kids were little I would sometimes make them "tree dogs": a toasted hot dog bun, smeared on the inside with peanut butter, and with a banana in place of the hot dog. Could be finished with a drizzle of honey or a smear of jam/jelly if they wanted, or - on very special days - a few chocolate chips or a drizzle of chocolate syrup.

https://www.blogto.com/eat_drink/2020/04/toronto-bakery-uber-eats/

As the popular meme says, "Don't attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity*." I think of it as the "Occam's Razor" of human interaction. (Insert less pejorative synonym of your choice, here...)

I read this a few weeks back, but it seems germane to this discussion. He's not a big-name chef, he's a billionaire who owns a major chain, but I think it's transferable. The TL;DR version? Lay everybody off and maybe survive the year, or keep everyone on payroll and be belly-up in a month or two. https://www.texasmonthly.com/news/tilman-fertitta-coronavirus-interview/

https://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/companion-planting-guide-zmaz81mjzraw

On which note... the French-Canadian term for shepherd's pie (or cottage pie, more accurately) is "pâté chinois," which has always mystified me. It's hard to imagine anything less Chinese. Hmm. Wikipedia has an explanation, tenuous (and probably apocryphal) though it may be.

Same here. Just cooked some for the freezer last night, in fact.

I believe (but have not bothered to verify) that the use of it to describe a person, or said individual's frame of mind, is derived from the culinary adjective.

The recent culinary grad who worked for me at my restaurant was from mainland China (I forget the name of the place, but IIRC it's where they'd held the rowing events during the Beijing Olympics). He was truly shocked and appalled at some of the stuff sold as "Chinese food" here. The one that seemed to really rankle, in his instance, was a local buffet staple known as "Chinese chicken balls"... a tiny nugget of chicken, deep-fried in a ball of stodgy batter that's about the size of a Mandarin orange, and served with generically red sweet-and-sour sauce. Roughly a 5:1 ratio of stodge to chicken.

It's available pretty much everywhere in Canada, so I expect you could find it in New Jersey. Years ago I was the only non-Chinese person on my block in Vancouver, and it didn't take long for me to realize that they all used Pearl River Bridge. So I started using it too, and still do. (Note that this was nearly 40 years ago, so there may be premium or artisanal brands available now that weren't then. But still, it's as good as any mass-produced soy sauce I've tried.)

I used to have a vintage Moulinex "Jeannette," which was a sort of bridge between the hand-cranked slicers/shredders and the later food processors. It also doubled as a (sadly underpowered) meat grinder.

The same thought had occurred to me. "Put that in your pipe and smoke it, you young whippersnapper!" It could also say something about their target demographic, I suppose. I can remember many places I've lived where the older men typically drank the same one or two brands while younger drinkers had different ones.

For the benefit of anyone too young to remember such a piece of vintage tech, the thing at lower-left is not a light bulb but a vacuum tube.

Up here many of the stores have wrapped their PIN pads in plastic wrap, and/or set out jars of Q-tips which can be used to press the buttons, and most then wipe down the terminal with sanitizer between customers. At Sobeys, one of the two national grocery chains, the cashier sprays and wipes down the cash counter after every customer. It's a lot, but you do what you gotta.

For a while at my restaurant we offered "millionaire fish and chips" which was one piece salmon, one piece halibut and one lobster tail. It was kind of a joke, but it was popular. We also decided we'd try to do the sandwich equivalent of a trucker/farmer/lumberjack breakfast. It had three eggs, six slices of bacon or two sausage patties, a hash-brown patty, and two slices of cheese. We called it "the Big Eggerooski," as a hat-tip to The Big Lebowski. Amusingly, we had a regular who ordered it several times a week but could not bring himself to use the silly name we'd given it ('...an' one o' them big breakfast sandwiches..."). My late wife immediately, and gleefully, dubbed it "the sandwich that dare not speak its name."

Or as the old joke puts it, "How do you make a small fortune in [insert agricultural pursuit]?" "You start with a large one."

The regulatory regime and most food safety guidance are both built around commercial-volume producers. This is a resource specifically for small-scale artisan producers. https://extension.psu.edu/food-safety-plans-for-small-scale-cheesemakers

At first glance, my eye interpreted the mushrooms as tiny fish...anchovy fillets or something of that nature.