chromedome

As I sat down to dinner one night my (now-) late wife, eyes all a-sparkle, greeted me eagerly with the words "I just read the most fascinating article about fecal coliforms...," secure in the knowledge that a) I would not find this untoward as dinner-table conversation, and that b) I would be equally fascinated.

No, it's still plate tectonics...just on a different plate.

Clearly I haven't had enough caffeine yet, because my first thought was to wonder what you might say to a thrift store to push its buttons and get it riled up.

I think of that as "Mock-eroni." Some blogger had dubbed it that, and I tripped across the recipe while researching something or other.

My GF was horrified recently to learn that I'd never seen it. Alas, it came along after kids and before grandkids. I'm sure we'll manage to find it somewhere on our TV package or online.

Benjamin Bridge is located in Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley. Best known for its sparkling wines, which are on the wine lists of a few Michelin-starred restaurants. Unfortunately they're one of the very few wineries here on the East Coast without a tasting room or scheduled tours.

I have no personal knowledge of the place, but Portland's reputed to have a rockin' restaurant scene.

...always a last resort, of course...

Okay, now you're just trolling us.

Two months would suffice for Atlantic Canada. The rest doesn't really matter. (ducks, runs...)

Truthfully, I can't recall the last time I actually used a recipe from a cookbook. Mostly I just read them for pleasure.

I acquired the same book in much the same way, except in my case I believe it was a thrift store find. Don't recall if I've ever opened it. I suppose I should, at some point...

As with anything else health/nutrition related, there are lots of studies with results that are all over the map. Fasting *does* appear to have some benefits re weight maintenance/loss and general healthfulness, though there's a lot of additional research to be done. Time of day is more variable...some studies suggested that skipping breakfast might be counter-productive, but more recent work indicates that eating/not eating breakfast is negligible as a factor in and of itself. Another line of research has looked at eating in the context of the body's circadian rhythms, and there's some grounds to believe that eating past early evening is broadly unhealthy and conduces to weight gain. None of this is really solid enough yet to justify a substantial rearrangement of one's personal life and eating pattern, to my mind, though if the 14-15 hour fasting rotation is a fit for the way you already live/eat then by all means have at it. (disclosure: I dislike late meals/heavy foods, but do snack on fruit, veg, cheese, etc. My GF, otoh, will pick listlessly all day and then eat three times her bodyweight just before bed)

Yeah, that's about right. At my home it would have been bacon instead of sausage (my dad wasn't keen on sausage) and homemade bread instead of toutons (because you can make a week's worth of bread at once, but toutons need to be fresh) and there would be maybe three fishcakes per plate and a lot more beans. Also a big pot of tea. This was at 4AM, mind you, before going down to the boat and going out to pull nets.

LOL That's what I grew up with, too. But the corned beef has to be the pasty, fatty canned kind.

Grabbed a couple of bulbs of new garlic for immediate needs...this was one I'd missed last year, so it was a clump of a half-dozen smaller bulbs. The rest I'll mostly leave in the ground to mature and get full-sized. Also took a handful of bunching onions, some fresh dill, plenty of broccoli raab and radish tops, pulled a couple of watermelon radishes (a longtime favorite, my first time growing them), enough leaf lettuce and random "mesclun mix" from another bed for a couple of salads, and the usual handful of dandelions and wild sorrel. I'll have the first regular broccoli by next weekend. Tomatoes, beet greens, cukes, cauliflower, brussels sprouts etc are still at least a month off. On a pleasing note, companion planting (alliums and/or marigolds around the beds of brassicas) seems to have averted a repeat of last year's cabbage worm infestation. Hopefully I don't jinx myself by uttering the words publicly.

I haven't heard anyone give voice to a "leave the scales on to protect the fillet while grilling" theory, but I would have none of it regardless of the justification. If it means I can't eat the skin, I'm not doing it. It absolutely infuriates me when I buy a skin-on fillet and find that they haven't scaled it (it's even worse with individual portions). Most of the time I'll painstakingly scale them anyway, but it's a time suck and not always a practical option. A few supermarket seafood managers have gotten an earful from me as a result. One actually looked me in the eye in stupefaction and said, "...but...you're not supposed to eat the skin..." (facepalm)

LOL The hazards of posting while under-caffeinated...

A fun one. At least once a month, I'll spend an hour or so on Brian Pickings. You never know what you'll find there...

We're a bilingual country, so one might encounter the Gendarmerie Royale du Canada (the Mounties in their francophone guise) anywhere at all.

Gonna take a wild guess that those might include "Old Black Rum" by Great Big Sea?

Yup. A perennial challenge to pub-crawling students. Ever walk up Water St. and Duckworth St, counting the pubs? Only a student, and a very young one at that, could even dream of drinking a beer in each one in a single marathon session (even three or four nights would be seriously pushing it).

At least in my family and where I lived, it's pronounced like "totem." But with an 'n' instead of an 'm'.