chromedome

On a similar note, I'll add that the elderly SaladMaster pots I got from my uncle (purchased by his wife when she was in med school, 50 years ago, and still immaculate) work just fine on induction.

Both of my parents disliked turkey as well, so we never had it at the holidays. It's still not my very favorite thing, and frankly I consider the traditional roasted bird to be about the least interesting thing one can do with a turkey. When my kids were young and I was always broke, I'd often take advantage of holiday-season pricing to pick up a dirt-cheap bird and break it down for several meals. The tenders would be frozen together as one meal, then I'd break down the breasts and hammer them out for cutlets and "not-chicken nuggets" for the kids. Each thigh was a meal in its own right, and so were the two drums. The wings would get frozen together, and they'd be a meal as well. Then the carcass would become a few meals' worth of broth and soup. In those days the turkeys would go on sale for 69 or 79 cents/pound, which even then was far and away the cheapest thing in the meat case. I'd get 12-20 meals from a normal-sized (ie, 13-15 lb) bird, depending how much frugality our budget dictated at the time. Not too shabby at all.

That's one advantage of my portable, I suppose. If it isn't sitting in front of my sink, blocking half the kitchen, then they're dirty.

Further updates: E. coli in beef and veal http://inspection.gc.ca/about-the-cfia/newsroom/food-recall-warnings/complete-listing/2019-10-04/eng/1570225366902/1570225373067 http://www-bcp.agr.gc.ca/eng/1570253185991/1570253191836 https://inspection.gc.ca/about-the-cfia/newsroom/food-recall-warnings/complete-listing/2019-10-04/eng/1570244216607/1570244223211 listeria in chicken https://inspection.gc.ca/about-the-cfia/newsroom/food-recall-warnings/complete-listing/2019-10-04/eng/1570248252441/1570248258168

So...the medical equivalent of Kitchen Confidential, kinda sorta?

Something similar (ie, plain potato sticks) has been sporadically available off and on since I was a kid. A version with hickory smoke flavoring has been infinitely more popular, and is available everywhere. They're my GF's kryptonite when she's trying to keto, and usually one of the first things she goes for when she takes a break from the diet.

Some updates to the foregoing: http://www.inspection.gc.ca/about-the-cfia/newsroom/food-recall-warnings/complete-listing/2019-10-02/eng/1570070035095/1570070041177 http://www.inspection.gc.ca/about-the-cfia/newsroom/food-recall-warnings/complete-listing/2019-10-02/eng/1570067289214/1570067295706 This one is Ontario-only and not yet explicitly linked to the broader chicken recall, but what are the odds, right? http://www.inspection.gc.ca/about-the-cfia/newsroom/food-recall-warnings/complete-listing/2019-10-02/eng/1570074786410/1570074792414

The term "brut" is also used for high-grade cocoa, which opens the door to some dessert possibilities.

In this instance, the recalls all stem from the original producer of the chicken product (which is then re-sold under various names by various wholesalers, and made into end products by various establishments). The cause of the issue, at the original producer, is quite certainly under investigation right now and doubtless there will be news stories and an exculpatory damage-mitigating press release from the offending producer (remember a few years ago when Maple Leaf had its problems? That was a masterful press response by the company). We've seen similar scenarios in the past, where a problem at a bulk producer (a flour mill, for instance) ends up affecting dozens of products at the consumer level, and hundreds of foodservice establishments.

Many feel that the gold standard, going forward, will be dry-land recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS), which hold the salmon in enclosed tanks until they're market-ready. There are a few small-scale producers now, some of whom I've met in the course of my freelance writing. Unfortunately RAS operations are much more capital-intensive as a startup, which forces producers into a small and unstable premium-product niche. So far the two Canadian operations I know, one in BC and one in NS, are close to becoming self-sustaining, but are still soliciting additional financing so they can increase capacity enough to get over that hump. The head of Virginia's Freshwater Institute, the keynote speaker at a conference I attended, pointed to that - a profitable, commercial-scale operation - as the tipping point that would begin to push RAS into the mainstream. That was five years ago, and we're still not quite there yet. In the interim, it certainly helps if you're in a position (as I was, with my restaurant) to meet and evaluate the potential providers. In my neck of the woods, we have two very different open-pen salmon farming operations. One is Cooke Aquaculture, a local success story I suppose you could say, as they're now one of the global giants in aquaculture. They're also the company cited in the record escape of Atlantic salmon into the Pacific, in that first link Heidi posted. Their record in the matter of following the laws and guidelines of the countries where they operate has not been great (here in NB there was a furor a few years ago when a banned pesticide was used at one of their farms, killing lobsters - and presumably other aquatic life - for a wide radius around the affected area). I've toured one of their local fish farms. Open-pen installations don't look like much, from the surface, as most of you will know. They're ring-shaped pens with mesh over the top, which serves the dual purpose of making escapes harder and preventing predatory birds from treating the pens as an all-you-can-eat buffet (one of the first things the industry would have learned, I guess). Inside the pens, Cooke stocks salmon at a rate of 10,000 per pen. They're not large pens, as you will know. The other is a smaller company called Northern Harvest. NH hews to a "best practices" philosophy from top to bottom, so it makes for an interesting compare-and-contrast with Cooke. The articles above point out the environmental hazards of scraping the oceans for small, non-commercial "bait fish" species to use in salmon feed. NH doesn't use those, instead using a land-based RAS to grow its feedstock fish. Other producers actually consume more protein than they generate in marketable salmon, but NH does not. They stock their pens at a density of 3,000 salmon per, less than a third of Cooke's numbers, and situate them in areas where the tides (the highest in the world, here in the Bay of Fundy) create an unusually good flushing action to carry away and disperse waste, instead of having it build up in one area. The lower population densities, and excellent water movement, mean the fish are healthier and less stressed, attract fewer parasites, and experience less disease. This in turn means a sharply reduced need for chemical pesticides or antibiotics. There are a number of certification bodies out there (and it's well worth learning their criteria and how they're applied). The industry's own certification is Best Aquaculture Practices, or BAP, and producers can earn up to 3 stars in a given category. Northern Harvest was the first to earn 3 BAP stars across the board for its feed mill, the farms proper, and the processing plants. So yeah, that's the one I chose to buy from (and still do, for my own use). Is it a perfect scenario? Well no...I don't think those exist in the real world (RAS systems have a larger carbon footprint, for one thing). Also, critics and cynics consider BAP suspect, as it *is* the industry-sponsored certification body (its oversight committee is 1/3 industry, 1/3 academia, 1/3 conservationists). This is a topic I've been thinking about and occasionally writing about for several years now, because aquaculture will inevitably continue to grow and there's work to be done to get it right. I've had more than a few "devil's advocate" conversations on the subject over the years, which typically follow this broad path: "I don't buy farmed fish, only wild-caught." "So...you're in favor of depleting the last remaining healthy stocks of wild fish?" "No, of course not! The fisheries have to be managed so they're sustainable!" "Oh. So...you're in favor of only the affluent being able to afford fish?" "I didn't say that!" "Well you did, kind of. If you limit harvests while demand is growing, that means the prices will skyrocket. It's basic economics." "But...That isn't necessarily how it would have to work." "No, in practice unethical players would continue over-fishing and just circumvent any monitoring process international regulators put into place." * "But...but..." Lather, rinse, repeat. After a while the arguments get kind of circular. The bottom line, though, is that wild harvesting won't continue to meet the modern-day demand for fish, any more than hunting in upstate New York could keep NYC furnished with meat. Also, from the environmental perspective, producing fish on farms has a significantly lower carbon footprint than producing meat on farms, which means it's a "greener" protein option for the non-vegetarians (healthier, too). So as I said above, getting it right is important. At the consumer end of the chain, that means knowing the certifications and asking for them when you shop. Some are now monitoring the entire supply chain, providing traceability right back to a specific boat (or farm, and pen) on a specific day. That's pretty impressive (predictably, some are built on blockchain technology and are pitching VCs on that basis because it's the tech "flavor of the month"...). Most shoppers, to be blunt, will *always* buy the cheapest product that looks passable. Getting a big enough "critical mass" of activist consumers to push the pendulum in the direction of certified seafoods (whether wild-caught or farmed) is the quickest way to get the attention of producers and regulators alike. Ultimately, that's what will force better baseline regulatory standards. * Here on the East Coast, we had that issue for a few years with the Spanish and to a lesser extent, the Portuguese. There's a portion of the Grand Banks that extends past our territorial waters, and the Ibernian fleets would simply loiter there (at a time when our stocks were reaching critical levels, and the government was frantically trying to prevent them reaching the point of no return) and hoover up everything that swam. "Accidentally" crossing into Canadian waters was a frequent occurrence, as well. It got to the point that the Canadian and Spanish navies were eyeballing each other across the jurisdictional line, the Canadians to apprehend fishing vessels crossing the marine boundary and the Spanish to try and prevent them. The crisis was eventually solved diplomatically, with the Spanish grudgingly conceding that fishing cod into extinction on this side of the Atlantic may have been a bad idea after all.

A busy night at the CFIA, with multiple recalls. A few are related to the ongoing chicken/listeria issue, but one is not. Deli Chef branded sandwiches, Maritimes and Quebec so far but possibly national: http://www.inspection.gc.ca/about-the-cfia/newsroom/food-recall-warnings/complete-listing/2019-10-01/eng/1569995106821/1569995112960 GFS' privately-branded chicken products, affecting the Prairies and North so far (for those who don't know, Gordon Food Services is second only to Sysco among wholesalers up here): https://inspection.gc.ca/about-the-cfia/newsroom/food-recall-warnings/complete-listing/2019-10-01/eng/1569966827257/1569966833147 ...and another chicken sandwich recall, Ontario only: https://inspection.gc.ca/about-the-cfia/newsroom/food-recall-warnings/complete-listing/2019-10-01/eng/1569967476860/1569967484093 And finally, just to change things up, there's a national recall of beef and veal products from Ryding-Regency Meat Packers due to E. coli: http://www.inspection.gc.ca/about-the-cfia/newsroom/food-recall-warnings/complete-listing/2019-10-01/eng/1569981499839/1569981506348 The latter is a long, LONG list. All in all, it's been a good week to buy from the farmer's market and cook your meals at home.

Another day, another chicken product recalled for listeria. Again, this one's national. http://www.inspection.gc.ca/about-the-cfia/newsroom/food-recall-warnings/complete-listing/2019-10-01/eng/1569965839010/1569965845052

Someone at head office probably conflated it with the sweetened "creamed coconut" used in some cocktails, and lumped 'em all together.

An update to the national recall of cooked, diced chicken, posted upthread. https://inspection.gc.ca/about-the-cfia/newsroom/food-recall-warnings/complete-listing/2019-09-30/eng/1569881043496/1569881049546 Also a new chicken recall, also for listeria, but Ontario only: http://www.inspection.gc.ca/about-the-cfia/newsroom/food-recall-warnings/complete-listing/2019-09-30/eng/1569906160390/1569906166724

I'm guessing this story is related to the recall upthread for diced, cooked chicken: https://www.iheartradio.ca/610cktb/news/toronto-resident-contracts-listeriosis-after-eating-contaminated-sandwich-1.10012896

There are sealable plastic containers in almost every size and shape imaginable. I expect you could find one to suit the size of tomato you're hauling. Plastic is less than ideal from the sustainability perspective, but if you're using the non-disposable kind and use them until they fall apart, it's not so bad.

I'm okay with things performing multiple tasks, but I'm not militant about it. Also, what if you need to do two of those functions at the same time? I own an Instant Pot, for example, and have never made rice in it despite the many eGers who extoll its virtues as a rice cooker. Why? Because my little cheap-ass Black and Decker works just fine, and takes up less space on my counter. One day I'll find a Zojirushi for cheap on the local online classifieds, and I'll buy that because by all accounts nothing makes better rice and I do eat enough grains to make it worthwhile. I realize that gives at least the appearance of inconsistency, but so be it.

LOL Not even close, in my case. I have the brown shoes, this year's black shoes, last year's black shoes, and the non-skid kitchen shoes for when I'm teaching classes. Of course, the whole shoe thing is often different for men. My kitchen stuff fills every cupboard in my apartment, plus the two we've added that live on top of my fridge and matching upright freezer, plus a freestanding pantry, plus a freestanding wardrobe that's been commandeered as another pantry, plus the space along the entire top of my wall of cupboards, plus part of my closet and the closet in the spare room, plus a significant portion of each of the storage lockers downstairs. I'm not so much a sucker for the latest gadgetry, I just like to have the right tool for the job even if it'll only be used once a year.

As a coda to this portion of the discussion, I offer the following: https://nypost.com/2019/09/25/columbia-professors-homemade-flu-remedy-seriously-backfires/

Diced precooked chicken products sold commercially under various brands (including Sysco), recalled for listeria: https://inspection.gc.ca/about-the-cfia/newsroom/food-recall-warnings/complete-listing/2019-09-27/eng/1569645385834/1569645392556 Chances are there'll be some updates on this one, it's the kind of product that's often used in salads and ready-to-eat meals. That one was all but national and probably will be extended nationally. There's a second one for Ontario only, again listeria, affecting deli trays from Metro. https://inspection.gc.ca/about-the-cfia/newsroom/food-recall-warnings/complete-listing/2019-09-27/eng/1569630721077/1569630727804

My daughter shared this on FB earlier. I thought of this thread.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/09/doordash-hack-spills-loads-of-data-for-4-9-million-people/

For those playing along at home, Tim Horton's is pulling back from the Beyond Meat products in all locations outside of Ontario and BC. The burger was admittedly a bit incongruous within their product line, but the "sausage" product I thought worked well in their breakfast sandwiches and wraps. A & W here (independent from, and reportedly much superior to, the US chain) still seems to be going gangbusters with them. The Harvey's hamburger chain has added the rival LightLife burger to its menu, in a recent development. It seems similar to the Beyond product in its ingredients, but is somewhat lower in fat and sodium. I haven't yet tried one, and when I do it will probably be from the supermarket rather than Harvey's (I'm not a fan). I'll report back, when it happens. Edited to add a couple of afterthoughts, and a link: 1) Still no Impossible Burger in Canada 2) Harvey's had offered a conventional veggie burger for the past 20 years, and is *adding* the LightLife product rather than using it to replace the existing one. So yeah, two vegan options at the chain. 3) LightLife apparently is owned by Maple Leaf, one of the major meatpacking corporations up here. http://strategyonline.ca/2019/09/05/harveys-adds-plant-based-lightlife-burger-to-the-menu/

There's also a national recall on Brandt brand extra-lean kielbasa, for possible listeria contamination. https://inspection.gc.ca/about-the-cfia/newsroom/food-recall-warnings/complete-listing/2019-09-26/eng/1569542364126/1569542370074