chromedome

I used to have a wonderful little oven that was sold by our Superstore grocery chain under its own President's Choice brand. It was (perhaps) slightly smaller than the french-door Oster, but had two racks, convection, a rotisserie, and digital controls. It sold for $89.99 Canadian, which even then was a ridiculously low price for its features. My late wife smashed it with a hammer one day in a fit of rage (not at the oven) and was very unhappy with herself when she learned they were no longer available. I've not seen anything since with the same features for anything under the $150 range.

"Harmonized" sales tax is the (currently) 5% federal sales tax, plus the variable provincial sales tax, added as a single figure at the checkout.

It does for me. It looks pretty cool, and it would/will be interesting to see how it plays out IRL.

FWIW, as a guy who hasn't done anything with his IP yet except the 2-minute test, I always feel that a cookbook consisting entirely of one-pot meals is a bit "niche." Not bad, as such, just limited. I acknowledge the logic of FrogPrincesse's suggestion that beans and grains could be folded into side dishes, but for me KayB's point that these are disproportionately important in the IP world is equally valid and probably trumps it.

It hardly seems fair, right? Getting rat lungworms without eating rat lungs?

I actually did buy the 6-quart IP. Truthfully I'm still ambivalent about it, even after being bombarded for the past two years with my fellow eGers' enthusiasm (two years to arrive at ambivalence is actually qualifies as a snap decision for me, for this sort of thing). It's still in its box in my office with the receipt carefully taped to the top, should I decide to take it back. I probably won't, though. Five or six years ago I was interested enough to seriously consider the cheapo Presto stovetop pressure cooker at Walmart, so I'm sure I'll get my money's worth out of it eventually.

The last bastion of unreconstructed Freudianism...

"Are you going to tell me," said Arthur, "that I shouldn't have a green salad?" "Well," said the animal, "I know many vegetables that are very clear on that point. Which is why it was eventually decided to cut through the whole tangled problem and breed an animal that actually wanted to be eaten and was capable of saying so clearly and distinctly. And here I am." - Douglas Adams, The Restaurant At the End of the Universe

Yeah, not happening. Despite all I've read here, there's no way in the world I could bring myself to plunk down $200+ for an oven that size. Just can't do it. If it was the same dimensions as the Oster French-door oven, I'd have to give it some pretty serious consideration, but not at the current size. Of course, if they did bring out the larger version I'd probably balk at the price.

There's a goodly stand of chokecherries on the way out to my GF's parents' place, where my garden is. So we stopped today on the way home and stripped a few of the bushes, to the tune of 15 pounds of chokecherries. My GF likes to make fruit wines occasionally, but has never attempted this one before. Should be interesting.

Also, I was just at the store and they've got the Instant Pot Duo 60 (v 3, if it matters) for $79.99 and the 8-quart version for $159. ...should there be anyone other than me who's yet to succumb.

For any of my fellow Canucks who might be interested, Canadian Tire's current flyer has the CSO for $229, regular $349. This weekend only, for their anniversary "Big Red Sale."

On yesterday's trip I harvested mostly cabbage worms. Well, I also got my usual large bag of greens, a handful of green beans, that one (1) okra pod that was nearly ready last time (there'll be more by the weekend), a few more cukes, and another spaghetti squash. I also helped myself to 10 or 12 squash/pumpkin blossoms, since the likelihood of seeing any mature fruit from them in the next few weeks was next to nil. Might as well enjoy the blossoms. Also, I'm at the stage now where I just grab a few carrots on each visit to meet our immediate needs and leave the rest to keep growing. I got my first few tomatoes, which are only about plum-sized but welcome nonetheless. Seeded a few now-empty spots with lettuce and kale, which should get the opportunity to produce for a while with the help of late-season row covers.

https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/01/heres-whats-changed-at-whole-foods-one-year-into-the-amazon-relationship/?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits

One of the regulars in my cooking classes had a lightning strike on his house just 30 seconds after leaving it. All of his home electronics were destroyed, his appliances were fried, all of his wiring needed to be replaced, and there was a large hole blown in the wall of his house. The guy from the fire department said that if they'd still been in the house they would likely have been killed.

This has been going around for a while, but it seems apropos (and maybe some of you haven't seen it): Maybe Just Don't Drink Coffee

I mostly see the big jars used for things like pickled eggs and pickled sausages. They'd probably also be a convenient size for fermenting sauerkraut.

GF and I haven't discussed specific plans, but she's back to keto-ing (ugh) after Monday, so I expect it will be "Carbapalooza." I'm sure there will be something grilled as part of the mix, though.

I'd never even thought of growing okra, precisely because I thought of it as a hot-weather crop. That being said, I had to concede that it *does* grow in our climate, because the seeds I bought were locally produced (we have a great little seed company here that specializes in open-pollinated cultivars, mostly heirlooms). Part of the reason I'm excited to grow my own is that it's hard to get small and delicate okra pods in the stores here. They're usually 3 to 4 inches long, and I have to dig through the whole bin to find a fistful of smaller ones. Mind you, it's only been available at all for the past 8 or 10 years, so I'm not complaining. As for the lettuce, some years it does bolt by mid-summer even here. In this particular instance I planted late because of our wretched spring, which helped. Also I interplanted that particular bed of lettuce between my garlic plants, which (since they're a fall planting) were already tall and vigorous by the time the lettuce started to leaf out, and gave them some much-needed shade from the direct sun. The second planting is at little risk for bolting, because the hot summer weather has pretty much broken here. We're still getting daytime highs into the 20s (ie, 70s F) but our overnight lows this week will range from the mid-teens (ie, low 60s F) down as low as 7 (mid-40s F), and that really keeps the lettuces from getting too ambitious. I may splurge on some row covers to keep my greens going as long as possible this year, but I haven't decided for sure. I do have an enclosed front porch with lots of windows that get the afternoon light, so I've been toying with the notion of keeping some things out there in boxes over the winter. You know those "ladder" type shelves that lean back against the wall? I was thinking that one of those against the end wall of the porch, with a window box on each shelf, would probably work pretty well for growing some fresh lettuce and greens over the winter. As long as they're established before the cold weather sets in properly, and don't see a hard freeze (which they shouldn't, in the porch) they're surprisingly hardy.

It's the camera angle. That one in the foreground is about 1/4" long.

I finally got a few pictures yesterday while I was at my garden. This bed is chard interplanted with carrots, for space efficiency. I harvest individual leaves from the chard plants, so they keep going right until the frost. Here we have one of my okra plants. I'm guessing I'll have my first actual okra within the week, which I'm pretty excited about (that's a guess, as I'm a first-time okra grower). My lone surviving Mideast Prolific and the handful of Marketmore cucumbers are all just now hitting gear. The one in this photo was inhaled by our 3 year-old granddaughter for breakfast. It's a good thing she had healthy food this morning, as we're headed to the fair this afternoon. It looks like I'll have a few weeks of tomatoes, as they're on the verge right now and it's only just Labour Day weekend. I forgot to take a picture of the day's haul after I got home, but it included a couple pounds of carrots, a large bundle of mixed greens (chard, beet greens, turnip greens) for cooking, a spaghetti squash, some of the last lettuce from the first planting (second planting is almost ready to go), the first spaghetti squash and three good-sized cukes.

A lot of appliances/electronics have specially designated Canadian versions. There are two reasons for that: One is that many products must be approved by the Canadian Standards Association (for others, the American UL certification is adequate). The second is to identify versions sold in Canada - and therefore warrantied by the Canadian mfr/distributor - from versions sold in the US and brought into Canada as "grey market" units. A lot of Canadians border shop, and there's nothing at all wrong with this, but you need to take the unit Stateside to get it serviced. As for the tire company, Canadian Tire is a bit of an anomaly. Yes, it began as a tire and auto-parts/service vendor and is still the biggest in the country. However it's also the leading retailer of outdoor products, hockey gear and a number of other things, and its kitchenwares section is as good as you'll find in most retailers. They move a LOT of Instant Pots, for example. I almost bought one there last year during the Black Friday sale, but didn't pull the trigger (I have a strong suspicion it would just gather dust in my kitchen, like many another device).

You probably don't actually need to add quite that much gluten to your GF flour, because those are typically blended with some gums or other ingredients to provide the same kind of elasticity you'd get with conventional flour. I'd say you can probably treat it like a lower-gluten wheat flour and add a tablespoon per cup, then add more if you find you're not getting the result you want. I'd avoid using the mix for a yeasted bread, ideally, but for anything else it should work fine.

Kerry's right. In this context, it means In Search Of.

I can tell you, it had one *very* pronounced corner for a few hours after that particular incident. I do indeed have a rather magnificent dome (aka a big head) and because my eyes are somewhat deep-set, I have poor peripheral vision to the above/front. I'm forever banging my head on things. Thank goodness I'm only 5'7", or I shudder to think what a band of calluses I'd have across my forehead.