chromedome

I can assure you, all of my regulars at the cooking class had a long and hearty laugh. As did I. As I've told my classes regularly in varying ways, "The only place chefs never make mistakes is on TV shows. In real life we make *more* mistakes than regular cooks, because we just plain cook more. The more times you do something, the more chances you get to screw it up. The difference is that professionals get to screw things up enough times over the years to learn some really good ways of recovering from just about any blunder." Not that there's really any way to salvage a blenderized silicone spatula, mind you.

I will never again... Forget to remove the spatula from inside the Vitamix, before dumping in soapy water and turning it to High for cleaning purposes. At a cooking class.

As I can currently attest, moving creates a similar scenario in one's own kitchen (for at least a few weeks, until everything settles out).

This article isn't explicitly intended to be humorous, I suppose, but I can't help finding the very idea of Kool-Aid collectors tremendously funny. My apologies if anyone here adheres to the sect. https://thetakeout.com/inside-black-market-vintage-kool-aid-packet-collectors-1835123510?utm_source=pocket-newtab

You piqued my curiosity, so I had to look it up. Very cool and odd little fruit/vegetable.

I couldn't tell you for sure. I've Googled it and gotten a lot of varied results, which I guess is logical because so much would depend on growing conditions, the grower's skill, etc. The range seems to run from 1/4 oz to 1/2 oz for hobby growers, though I'm sure professionals can coax higher yields. Also, like any other crop, I'm sure some cultivars just naturally have higher yields than others.

Oddly, bergamot - at least the concentrated oil - is one of only about two foods I can recall having an adverse reaction to. It brings my tongue up in blisters, every time, which is why I don't drink Earl Grey. Good Earl Grey uses real bergamot and hurts my tongue, and bad Earl Grey is....well, it's bad Earl Grey and why would anyone drink that?

It's four plants per person in Canada, and the same in most - but not all - of the US states that have legalized (I recently had occasion to look it up for an article I was writing).

Seen on a coffee mug (that makes it food/beverage related, right?) in an otherwise nondescript display of Father's Day merchandise: "Dad puns...because that's how eye roll."

Not to worry. Even if they were available in my neck of the woods, I'd have been at little risk.

Exactly. And given that the kernels are naturally quite variable in their cyanide content, even speaking in terms of "dosage" is a stretch. On an unrelated note, anyone in Ontario or Quebec who bought something called a "choco-raspberry crunchy" (to which I wonder...crunhy what?) made by France-Delices should return it, as the raspberries used in the product may have been contaminated with norovirus. http://inspection.gc.ca/about-the-cfia/newsroom/food-recall-warnings/complete-listing/2019-06-04/eng/1559699123737/1559699125864

Go figure, right? Everyone else: "Dude, your poisonous seeds are full of poison-y poison. Don't eat them." Dude: "But they're supposed to be, like...good for you or something...?"

If you bought "Grounded Peper" from online vendor MyChopChop, don't use it. https://www.inspection.gc.ca/about-the-cfia/newsroom/food-recall-warnings/complete-listing/2019-06-03/eng/1559607340475/1559607342149

That's where I found it.

I always include mustard (Dijon) in my broccoli salad. I like the way they play off each other.

A couple of recent alerts that came in while I was busy packing and moving: Nationally, salmonella in some Compliments brand (ie, Sobey's, Safeway and related stores) chicken strips. http://inspection.gc.ca/about-the-cfia/newsroom/food-recall-warnings/complete-listing/2019-05-24/eng/1558738971471/1558738974286 Quebec only, Pousses et Cie branded spicy microgreens mix might be contaminated with L. monocytogenes. http://inspection.gc.ca/about-the-cfia/newsroom/food-recall-warnings/complete-listing/2019-05-22/eng/1558549526741/1558549527573

I've been seeing those a lot on reno shows, and was curious how they'd work out in practice. I personally don't think I'd want my microwave in a place where I have to bend down to retrieve things from it (I'm having a back pain morning, one of the consequences of moving, so that looms a bit larger than usual at the moment). Also in our case that would put it at grandkid level, and I can foresee many potential issues arising from that. Mind you we're in rentals for at least another few years, so it's all moot at this point.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/new-heinz-condiment-mayochup-has-an-unfortunate-translation-in-cree

The comparable sale in my neck of the woods is when it goes on for $2.99 (dairy products in general cost more in Canada), occasionally at Sobey's but more usually at Shopper's Drug Mart or Superstore as a weekend door-crasher or as a week-long sale at No Frills (all part of Loblaw's). No Frills usually has a limit of 4 or 6, and the others draw the line at 4. My ideal scenario is when they run out and give a rain check, because often they'll have it back in before the sale expires. Then I can get my limit under the sale (typically more than once, since they're all with in easy driving distance) and then go back with my rain check when the sale is over. ETA: For non-Canadians, I should explain that No Frills is the low-price arm of one of our major chains, and is a sort of quasi-Aldi in ways. They stock a pared-down selection that's heavy on Loblaw's store brands (the generic yellow label products and higher-end President's Choice items), and customers box or bag their own. There's also a coin-based cart-return system there, though other retailers have used that system off and on as well.

https://repaircafe.org/en/ https://zerowastecanada.ca/share-the-repair-the-repair-cafe-movement/ ETA: The latter link is Canadian, but provides a good backgrounder. If you look at the main site, you'll see that there are Repair Cafes in over half of the US states (just barely, I'll grant you, at 26 to date, but still...).

I've made the sandwich bread from the ATK book for my daughter and my SIL's mother, who both considered it to be the best GF bread they've tried so far. The very nice celiac staffer at my local Bulk Barn also considers it to be one of her two go-to cookbooks. Bear with me a moment while I scroll through my phone to find the other... Ah, here we are. Artisanal Gluten-Free Cooking, by Kelli and Peter Bronski. She speaks very highly of that one, though I haven't seen or tried any recipes from it so YMMV.

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2019/05/business/aldi-walmart-low-food-prices/index.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab

If my Cuisinart ever dies, which it probably won't, I have another of similar vintage that I bought for peanuts off the local buy-sell page. The one I'm using has survived 30-odd years of restaurant and then home use, so I expect I'm probably good for the rest of my natural days.

Yeah, being anosmic makes it even more challenging. It's not impossible to work around that kind of issue, though: a culinary classmate of mine, who was an observant Jew, knocked a number of pork and/or shellfish dishes out of the park despite not being able to taste them. When my kids were young I also had the "you gotta have one bite before you tell me you don't like it" rule, on the basis that until they actually had some in their mouth they had no grounds for claiming to dislike it. Occasionally that meant they'd discover they genuinely liked something, but not often. I also had the complication that I sometimes had to hide what I was doing from my wife as well ("Hey, what did you just put in that sauce? I'm not eating that!"). With one current granddaughter (also 4) we've found a modicum of success by reminding her that every single thing she does like was once something she'd never tried, and that if she doesn't try stuff she'll never know what her next favorite would be (currently beans on toast, of all things). Your younger one is still too little for that to work, unfortunately, but the older one might be susceptible to it. My kids were not too terribly finicky overall, in retrospect (probably because for long stretches were were too damned broke for them to have alternatives). I found that most vegetables would go down if they were paired with enough cheesy sauce, or - even better - given a cheesy sauce *and* wrapped in pastry and baked up. They loved little pies with stuff in 'em...kind of an ad hoc empanada, I suppose. I think most of the advice you'll see falls into two camps. One is the "get some decent nutrition into them by hook or crook" camp, which certainly has some merit. My GF as a child was crazy-picky, and basically lived on sweets for a few years until she became seriously ill. She eventually started eating real food because the alternative was getting iron shots (she'd become seriously anemic) and iron shots just SUCK. Obviously, that's an extreme case. The other camp takes the longer view, and attempts to instill good habits and an attitude of curiosity and experimentation. Ultimately I think that's the ideal for most parents, though of course it's not easy in practice. Anything that can pique their interest in food would certainly work in your favor (if you don't already own a copy of Ratatouille, buy one). I've known a few parents whose kids became more open to trying foods because of cooking shows, and/or YouTube videos of kids doing things with food. Gardening helps, too, if you have the space for it. As one farmer acquaintance explained it to me, "Sending them out back and telling them to decide which color of chard we're having for dinner tonight pretty much put an end to the whole question of *whether* they were going to eat chard." I've seen this at play with the same little granddaughter, who loves going into my garden and choosing things. "It's a thin edge of the wedge" mentality...once you've successfully gotten them to eat one of something, you can leverage that into broader acceptance. The granddaughter decided early on that she liked kale, so we were able to get her to try most other greens by telling her they were like kale. She took to broccoli, so we introduced cauliflower to her as "white broccoli" and then explained, after she'd decided she liked it, that it had its own name. It would work in reverse, too, if a kid like cauliflower you could introduce broccoli as "green cauliflower." For that matter there *is* green cauliflower - well, "broccoflower" - and you could use that as a transition between them. My greatest moment in that area came with another granddaughter. She already liked pasta and loved pickles (of course) so when she saw me putting sauerkraut on a hot dog one day, and asked what it was, I unthinkingly blurted "pickle noodles." She was fascinated by the idea, and ate a startlingly large portion. That was almost 4 years ago now, and her mom mentioned in a recent phone call that she still occasionally asks for sauerkraut with her supper.

McDonald's restaurants here in my neck of the woods are doing fish & chips right now. To judge from the billboards (I'm morbidly curious, but not enough so to darken the door of a McD's) it looks like the battered fish portions you'd get from the supermarket's frozen food section. Or wouldn't, as the case may be.