chromedome

A year or two ago, I read an article about hemlock water dropworts in the UK, a plant with parsley-like leaves and a white parsnip-like root that's arguably the most toxic thing growing in the northern temperate zone. A quote from the expert cited in the article stuck in my head: "Eating it means you'll be dead by tomorrow, and today will be the worst day of your life."

I don't recall any currently-active members in Atlantic Canada except me, but a couple of Randsland bagged salads are recalled in NS, NB and NF for potential listeria. I don't recognize the brand at all, so goodness knows where they're sold. http://www.inspection.gc.ca/about-the-cfia/newsroom/food-recall-warnings/complete-listing/2019-09-24/eng/1569374963305/1569374970100

I've read several articles about it over the years. Even the young spring greens are quite toxic - though relatively less so - and require careful cooking and processing. Of course the same applies to cassava, which is one of the world's great staples, so it's not necessarily a deal-breaker. You just have to know how to handle it, I guess.

Sometimes I'll try things even if the recipe seems a little screwy, on the assumption that maybe the other person knows something I don't. There's a quick cake recipe in Joy of Cooking that's got a rather wonky method, but I used it for years when my kids were growing up. The first time I figured that for the cost of a couple of bucks in ingredients, it was worth the experiment.

I think I can speak for the majority when I say we didn't really expect to see much of you for a while once the doors opened. Not that we won't greet any crumbs from your oh-so-full plate with glad cries and exultation.

One of my instructors at culinary school made a regular practice of slipping us an occasional recipe with errors in it, specifically to make that point about the hazards of reading and following recipes uncritically.

Well, there was that bit about Felice and Boudleaux Bryant using Felice's Italian cooking to sell songs...

If you don't care for grains in general orzo is a good option, but you'd be better to cook it separately and add it when the soup is done. Like any other pasta it will expand and get mushy as it sits in the leftovers.

Okay, that makes a lot more sense.

I'm sure those aren't mini-marshmallows on top of the Moroccan chicken, but for the life of me I can't think what else it might be...

I hear you. My GF and I watch a lot of reno shows and sometimes what an enthusiastic realtor or designer describes as a "chef's kitchen" makes me cringe.* Glass behind the stove seems like a really bad idea even by that standard, though. *(ETA: Seriously, people, how the hell are you supposed to clean a backsplash made of reclaimed barn wood? How?)

I converted the Emerson's inner dimensions from metric, but didn't write them down. It was something like 13.5" wide, 9.05" deep, and 11.8" high.

Oh, I'm not seriously interested at present. One day *somebody* will make one large enough for a 9x13, in decent quality, at a price point of $150 or lower. That's when I'll start to consider buying one.

Oddly, that link won't open for me. Anyone care to post the un-shortened version? Looking up the user manual for the Emerson, It appears to be large enough inside to accommodate a 9x13 pan. So that's something.

I love the look on the dog's face. "Couldn't cook something with a bone in it, could ya? No, no, no...gotta be all virtuous..."

(shrug) Nothing wrong with the occasional super-premium burger.

When my grandmother died, the keepsake that came to me was her copy of the American Woman's Cookbook. It was one of those classic all-in-one books. like Joy of Cooking or Fanny Farmer, and I'd grown up with my mother's 1950s-era edition (the book has an interesting and unlikely history, which I'll come back and share after I've done work for the day). My grandmother's was the wartime "Victory" binding, with an added section of rationing-friendly recipes. Throughout it I find her little annotations on recipes, sometimes making corrections/improvements to the recipe as written, and sometimes noting "good," "v. good," and occasionally "don't bother." In between the pages were a number of recipes cut from magazines and newspapers, and one in a letter from one of my aunts. Aside from the recipe it's filled with chit-chat about my uncle's job and the doings of her two small children, now - like me - in their mid-50s and parents of grown children themselves. I also have a raft of recipe booklets from different sources, and find them occasionally interesting (or ghastly) to browse through.

Is the rice your usual brand? I recently bought a bag of "whatever," and discovered to my disgust that it needed several minutes' rinsing to get rid of the excess starch. The first time or two I cooked with it, "gooey" would be a polite way to put it.

A couple of recalls that hit my inbox while I was away from home: For Ontario and Quebec, an update of an earlier recall of pates, terrines, rillettes etc sold under a variety of brand names. http://inspection.gc.ca/about-the-cfia/newsroom/food-recall-warnings/complete-listing/2019-09-12/eng/1568345193713/1568345200763 Also Abbott Labs' Calcilo XD calcium supplement for infants, which I suppose is pretty niche. They aren't calling it "national," but every province except NB and PEI is listed. http://inspection.gc.ca/about-the-cfia/newsroom/food-recall-warnings/complete-listing/2019-09-13/eng/1568425849063/1568425849551

Tomatoes here are racing to ripen before the frost, as usual. It's supposed to get down to 1.3 C (34-ish Fahrenheit) on Wednesday night/Thursday early AM. I'll be putting covers over much of my garden tomorrow.

I usually tell people "picture pecan pie without the nuts," but I just googled "chess tart/pie" and there certainly seems to be a family resemblance. No flour in the butter tart filling, though. Butter, eggs and brown sugar are the core ingredients, and old-school recipes generally include some vinegar to invert the sugar (modern recipes, like pecan pie recipes, sometimes call for corn syrup instead). Some add cream, as well. The crust should be pie crust, not the cookie-crumb crust I saw in the chess tart recipes I looked up. In the smaller individual-tart size, the crust balances the sweetness of the filling.

I did a double-take when I read that. I'm still a bit bleary after a few nights of sleeping erratically while camping, and at first I thought you'd said "azaleas." Couldn't quite see how that would work...

You should be fine, as long as the jars sealed properly. The massive quantity of sugar required to set jelly isn't random, it's required in order for the pectin (whether natural or added) to gel. That's because it binds up the available water in the juice, strengthening the bonds the pectin is able to make (a certain amount of acidity is also necessary to make the chemistry work). A side benefit of binding up all that available water is, of course, that it becomes unavailable to pathogens as well.

I can see I'm in the minority, but butter tarts just aren't...right...without raisins. Neither are oatmeal cookies, though I can enjoy them plain or with chopped dates if needs must. Chocolate simply doesn't belong.