chromedome

Absolutely.

Regrettably I don't have access to a chamber sealer, just the regular ol' Food Saver. Also, perhaps I'm being obtuse, but I've read what you wrote five or six times and I'm not getting where the sealer comes in.

Returning this to the subject of the thread, it occurs to me that my cousin in NS has two massive oak trees, which fill her lawn ankle-deep with acorns each autumn (she fills her municipal green bin with them several times over, while exercising the nether reaches of her vocabulary). I'm pretty sure I can bespeak as many as I want to experiment with. No idea of their tannin levels, but when you're just playing it doesn't matter if they need longer processing.

Aside from all those considerations, it's also where I harvest my dandelions and sorrel.

I've seen numerous salads over the years that were built on braised meats (usually beef). I would have to think something like that could be worked into a jellied consomme.

Finally got the opportunity to get back out and tend my garden a bit...had hoped/intended to do that on Monday, but life happens. It ain't much, but my time for digging soil and removing stones is limited. The beds in the middle are from last year, the closest and further ones are from this spring. A different angle: As you can tell, there's plenty of (ahem) natural habitat between the beds. I plan to cover it with corrugated cardboard, held down by the plentiful stones, to keep the weeds in check. Those big ol' garlic plants are getting close to harvest. I took a couple today just to evaluate how much longer they need to stay in the ground. Here are a couple of my itty-bitty okra plants. I didn't get really good germination from them, only about a half-dozen plants, but what the heck. This is my first time growing okra; until this past winter I hadn't realized it could be grown this far north. ...and, my first pickin's. Some baby lettuces, a half-dozen pods of peas, and a mess of mixed greens (mostly turnip, but also radish greens, baby kohlrabi that I was thinning, and plenty of dandelions). My garden as a whole is heavy on the greens: I grow turnips and beets largely for the greens, and also have broccoli raab, collards, chard and lots of kale in there. I've got a few beans (most of my seedlings didn't make it, regrettably), some shell peas, a few kinds of carrots, some potatoes, red and green cabbages, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, tomatoes, cucumbers, and doubtless a few other things that elude my recollection just at the moment.

The unglazed interior of the pig wicks moisture out of the salt continuously. The salt will "set up" slightly, but not cake solid. You'll still be able to pinch it, or just give the sides a tap to loosen it for measuring with a spoon. My own is very simple, and somewhat resembles the ones Nigella flogs. I commissioned it from my former downstairs neighbour, a working potter with a farmer's market business and a standalone studio, so it's custom-sized to my hand. It's a nicely ivory-ish white, and I fill it with pink salt for purely aesthetic reasons.

I'm pretty easy to please, too. Jumped in many a puddle with my own kids, back in the day. That was before Peppa Pig made "muddy puddles" even more of an obsession for tots. She's a sweet kid, cracks us up constantly. A couple of weeks ago I was working in my garden, and chit-chatting with her idly (she wanted to help me weed, so I let her pull daisies and clovers because she could clearly identify those) when she spotted a butterfly. She asked me what butterflies eat, so I explained about nectar and told her that's whey she would usually see butterflies perched on flowers. I even explained about how their tongues curl up when they're not in use, like the noisemakers she'd enjoyed at birthday parties. A few minutes later she ran past the garden, ringlets flailing in the sun, with a bunch of wildflowers clutched in her fist. She was chasing the butterfly, yelling "SNACK TIME!!!!"

Really it's going to come down to the math. If the time, effort and cost involved in making his own couverture are less than the time, effort and cost of sourcing something acceptable from outside, then there's no reason for Jamal not to do so. If there's a difference in cost, but he can charge a premium for his own bean to bar product (or "bean to bon bon," as the case may be) he still comes out ahead. As long as there's profit to be made, it's not so much a question of "worth it" as "is this the most pragmatic option for me in my circumstances?" I once ran an in-store bakery, and - because I could - I experimented with hand-made ham and cheese croissants. They were very good, the customers loved them, and we could charge enough for them to make a buck out of it. Unfortunately my night bakers never got the hang of proofing and baking them correctly, so they were always either under-proofed and tiny, or over-proofed and sadly deflated, or under-baked, or over-baked...with all that waste we lost money, and I dropped them.* The bottom line (and the point of that digression) is that you have to be flexible and adapt to the facts on the ground. *If you're curious, I replaced them with a ham-and-cheese pocket made with the same commercial all-butter puff we were using for other products. They were a lot less work, and went straight from freezer to oven without proofing, so they gave us a lot more profit for a lot less effort. As good a product in the abstract? No. More practical and profitable? You betcha. And the customers liked them just fine...in fact we sold more, perhaps because we seldom actually had a full complement of the ill-fated croissants to put out.

I eventually switched to a salt pig, because I got tired of chiselling bricks of rice and salt out of my shakers. A grinder works well in my humid coastal climate, and I keep those for table use with both salt and pepper, but for cooking I like grabbing as big or little a pinch as I want.

Just for the record, she was mud from top to bottom and proclaimed it "the best day ever." She's three, she's pretty easy to please.

I'm knee deep in it now. Took a day off work (I'm a freelancer, I try to make a point of doing that at least once every couple of months) and plan to read through it in the course of the day. Housework will feature in there too, of course. Also, possibly some jumping in puddles with a grand-kid. Because that's what life is made of.

Late to the party, but my copy arrived yesterday.

Here in Canada, the Loblaw's chain sells ready-to-drink cold-brewed coffee in cartons and in single-serve cans. My GF likes her coffee at room temp (don't ask), so my usual morning routine includes making a cup for her when I first get up so it can cool before she rolls out. I bought a carton of the cold-brew once when I was going away for a few days, so she could get her coffee fix without having to wait. She found it perfectly acceptable, if not as good as our usual brand prepared conventionally and allowed to cool. It was far too weak to my taste, though that was a given.

We have a lot of moose here in NB, as well. My late wife grumbled once about all the "watch for moose" signs..."I've been watching," she said, "and I haven't seen one in almost 18 months of looking." It was a clear case of tempting the universe to respond, because the very next day she came around a sharp bend in the road and nearly ran into a big bull (in my little Protege, yet!). She was still having palpitations when she got home. "People told me 'horse-sized'," she said, "but nobody ever specified 'Clydesdale'..." She reckoned if it hadn't been for the dangly bits, she probably could have driven right underneath him in the little Mazda.

In Canada the corresponding brand is Bernardin, perpetrators of one of my favorite tongue-in-cheek corporate slogans: "Because you can."

I remember some mention of icebergs being a priority for one or the other of you. Kinda have to go early for those, regardless.

Out of Milk! That's the one I spoke of upthread, that made me want to stick a skewer through my own eyeballs. I'm happy it makes you happy, though. ETA: I couldn't think of its name for the life of me, and I can't tell you how happy I am that I won't have to Google it to make that nagging mental itch go away.

Yeah, June's a bit early. I've gotten pretty bad chilblains hitchhiking there in June. Mind you, I've also sweltered at the roadside in February, which was an equally odd feeling. Much-loved Newfoundland humorist Ray Guy (now sadly deceased) joked that mainland bunnies got to wear white in winter and brown in summer, while their island equivalents were forced to stay mottled all year in the interest of camouflage.

I keep a list on paper and add to it through the week, then (cough *usually* cough) take it with me when shopping. A few years back my late wife got a bee in her bonnet about using an app to keep our shopping list, so we could each update the list from our phone in real time, and so on. It was a good idea in theory, and the app had great user ratings, but it "simplified" my existing 5-minute process to about 2 hours/week. And that's not counting the time I lost scrolling through it madly while in the store. Oy.

Send 'em a letter. Tell them they need to do a special run of "Blood Clots" ice cream for Halloween, using Shoprite ultra pasteurized cream.

Nah. That's what happens when people who have no idea about tartar sauce start making it for the tourists. Seriously, when I was a kid I knew NOBODY who ate tartar sauce. Fish 'n' chips came with vinegar or ketchup, and that was pretty much it.

It occurs to me belatedly that a longtime hot-weather favorite in my family is just canned tomatoes, served with toast. On a really hot day, you put the can in the refrigerator first for an hour or two. I haven't had that in years, but now that I've thought of it I probably will.

LOL Well for me, "a better breakfast" would involve dropping the Miracle Whip in favor of real mayo. But I understand the sentiment.

Always happy to have someone on hand who's up to speed on the science.