chromedome

I've bought and worn out several of the older 3-pound Black and Decker machines Andie mentioned (the B2300 IIRC) and even more of the smaller version that makes an upright loaf (the B2200). I've also had a couple other brands, all of them from Value Village or other thrift stores. They've all lasted me at least a year (the B2200 B&D machines usually develop a leak around the spindle over time), which was plenty long enough for the minimal $$ I spent. I can't tell you how well they bake, because I never baked in them. My current Zojirushi was a Kijiji find (the Canadian version of eBay Classifieds, and MUCH bigger here than Craigslist). It was well used for the first few years by its previous owners, but then they got interested enough to graduate into handmade, artisanal loaves and the machine gathered dust afterwards. That's how I was able to nab it for under $50. That one I *did* bake in, just to see, and it turned out a perfectly fine loaf of sandwich bread. I still only use it regularly for mixing, though.

LOL "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father..."

It's one of our staples around here. Baby leaves, mature cooking leaves, or even frozen...I go through a lot of it. Right now I'm gearing up to make a batch of savory custards for my GF, who is Atkins-ing in the hope of dropping a few pounds before Christmas. At least a few will contain spinach.

Well, Nunavut is a whole other story to be sure. I have friends up in Whitehorse, and they pay pretty steep prices for groceries. I'm sure Amazon/Whole Foods will expand over the next few years, at least to the other million-person urban areas (Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton). Won't be a factor for the rest of us anytime soon, though I can't complain...we at least have IKEA as close as Halifax now. (I was trying to come up with something funny using the acronym, to the effect that coverage in Canada was currently A/WFul, but it just didn't seem worth the effort)

No, not a surprise. Though it does leave most of the country well outside any reasonable definition of "local delivery area."

Well...they have a presence in Vancouver and Toronto. That's not entirely the same thing.

HC's taste for scrapple in the morning ("Smells like...victory...") has brought equally enthusiastic supporters and detractors out of the woodwork in the past. I haven't had the pleasure myself, scrapple not being readily available in Atlantic Canada, but I'm partial to fried slices of leftover haggis so I suspect I'd enjoy it.

I'd replace my KitchenAid with a countertop Hobart in a heartbeat.

The biggest and best piece of advice I can give you is to invest in a kitchen scale, and to weigh the ingredients in the recipes you already use. Most serious bread-makers think of their breads in terms of a "formula," or each ingredient's percentage by weight. Typically this is expressed as a percentage of the flour, ie the flour is 100% and everything else works from that. It's typically your hydration -- the amount of liquid as a percentage of your flour -- that determines the dough's stiffness, though other ingredients always play a role. I find bread machines don't play very well with wet or "slack" doughs, so I haven't really pushed the envelope in that direction. I would suggest your hydration for a successful bread machine loaf probably falls in the 60s, give or take, and that's probably where your existing recipes will fall once you weigh them and do the math. Personally I use mine just for mixing (which every machine does pretty well) and bake conventionally in my oven. If I'm experimenting with something other than a fairly conventional loaf, I usually mix by hand or make a small batch in my KitchenAid (small because it's useless for anything larger). Edited to add -- the whole point of this pre-caffeine ramble -- that once you know the ratios of your existing recipes, which are proven to work in your machine, you can improvise all you want by observing the same ratios and then tweaking the ingredients from that starting point.

The jelly-ish bit was indeed the fatty belly, which some cherish and some trim away (I'm in the cherish camp). If your salmon has been in the freezer for a while the belly fat is where off-flavors will turn up first, so you may well have had a piece that was nearing the end of its useful storage life. Salmon is rather like turkey, in that it can become dry very quickly once it's cooked past a certain point. When that happens, I generally advise re-purposing the salmon into fish cakes, or some kind of a salad bound with mayonnaise or your preferred equivalent.

Oh, for sure. It wasn't meant as a serious survey of the current literature, and it's also not especially pertinent to the topic of organic vs non-organic (I'd forgotten to check the subject before posting). That being said, I should think that determining the most bioavailable forms of nutrients and supplying them in a closed system should be entirely within the bounds of what's currently possible. I know the Dutch are doing seriously intensive growth within enclosed greenhouse environments, in both soil-based and hydroponic systems, and I'd be surprised if they aren't also looking at atmospheric tweaks and their effect on growth, productivity and nutritive content.

It's at least something. A couple of towns in my native Nova Scotia proudly proclaim that they're exactly halfway between the North Pole and the equator, which is perhaps even sadder.

Very large country, relatively small population. It adds a lot of km for a modest payback. My daughter runs into this all the time, ordering big-girl clothing (when your bra size gets into the second half of the alphabet, you can't just get 'em at Walmart).

I had a friend years ago who wanted to name his band "The Kosher Cheeseburgers," but he didn't think enough people would get the joke (starting, first and foremost, with his bandmates).

I've just put mine in as well. I suspect your climate is not that different from mine, despite your balmy southern location. Maybe tomorrow, if I can get my act together, I'll show you pictures of my fall-planted garlic vs. my spring-planted garlic. It's quite an eye-opener.

Meilleur Ouevriers de France. Master craftsmen, in this case chocolatiers. It's not an easy distinction to earn, in any field.

Given that the nutrient quality of conventionally grown crops is known to be in decline, it's worth taking a decent look at the literature surrounding aquaponics (and hydroponics). A handful of the top results: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0570178316300288 http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/8/10/467/htm http://www.mdpi.com/2311-7524/3/2/32/htm

I'd completely forgotten about those. I used to love them, though I don't really think of them as Halloween candy. MoJos were another favorite of mine as a kid. Five for a penny, when I started school. Last time I remember seeing them, they were a nickel each.

I think they're a pretty niche thing. My father grew them, and I have a small mason jar of pickled mouse melons he put up last year. I also have the leftover seed, and will try to grown them in next year's garden. I can see them being a big hit with the grandkids.

For some reason my brain initially interpreted "sprouts" as a verb, and I had a hard time understanding where you were going with that. Obviously my caffeine consumption today has been inadequate.

I haven't, no. It's just...lower. My daughter's cheapie Walmart branded slow cooker used to do a full rolling boil at Low, now it simmers. In my case it's more complicated because mine has 2-, 4- and 6-quart inserts, and it bumps the heat up a wee bit for each of them. I typically fudge that by using the 4-quart setting for the 6 and the 2-quart setting for the 4, and not using the 2-quart insert much at all. Energy usage? Unwanted heat in the kitchen? Not my question to answer, but those are the two factors for me.

I've "hacked" mine and my daughter's through the simple expedient of cutting a wire coathanger and shaping it to fit the inside of the slow cooker. The "crock" sits on top, and it cools down the cooking temperature to something a bit more reasonable.

The Speerville mill here in New Brunswick does an organic "Whole White," from locally grown wheat, which is quite good. If the Bob's should become unavailable, PM me and I'll find out how much shipping would be to send you some. It's stone-ground, so texturally it'll be slightly different, but it makes good bread. I found it to be a bit soft, so I picked up some gluten from Bulk Barn and added a wee bit of that to each batch.

I feel for you. Condensing my mother's two chest freezers into the smaller 7 cubic-footer was a heck of a challenge, and set me pretty far back in the quest to empty my own.

Alas, wait staff can't treat that as an indicator of "done-ness" any more, because too few diners understand that particular convention. Heck, half of the time we're lucky if they know how to use cutlery at all. I die a little inside every time I watch my (don't get me started) son-in-law using an overhand, trowel grip to fork food into his open-while-chewing face. (...it's not his mother's fault, btw, she raised three kids single-handed after kicking their father out. One boy is full-on autistic, the daughter was every caricature of the teenager from hell, and my SIL is a slug. I respect her greatly, but you only have time in the day for so many battles and table etiquette didn't make the cut.)