chromedome

Score!

Me too. Except for one of my cherry tomatoes, which has given us a few ripe ones already.

My GF went through a period (of a couple of years!) in childhood where she literally ate nothing but cake, and the usual kids' ration of candy and such. Her parents had both grown up hungry, and apparently reasoned that as long as her belly was full they were doing their job; and that sooner or later she'd snap out of it. What happened instead - predictably - is that she got very sick, and testing showed her to be badly anemic. When the doctor asked about her diet they answered truthfully (because, again, they saw no issue with it). Once the doctor realized that they were absolutely serious, and not just jerking his chain, he went off on her parents in incendiary fashion. She herself was so shocked at this (I think she was...9? 10? at the time if I've got the story right) that she meekly started eating rather than have that kind of tirade directed at her on a future visit. We've often speculated that the raft of health issues she deals with now have their roots in this period (and a later backsliding year of brownies and Diet Coke in her teens). It's funny how we all have our mental blind spots: I sent her a link to a study on the long-term health effects of eating disorders, and until that very moment it had never occurred to her that she'd had one as a child.

I dunno. We have 1/10 the population of the US, so 1/10 the number of people cranking such things out. Having had it, Dejah might be able to give you a best-guess combination of ingredients as a starting point. We know the woman's got some serious chops...

Yeah, the Nagano pork is exclusive to Sobeys up here (like the Sterling Silver beef that Ann T uses frequently). Rival chain Superstore "got there the first with the most" as far as premium store brands in our market, but Sobeys is catching up.

I feel that potato blossoms are not appreciated enough. These and several others are now living in a small vase beside my GF's desk.

I doubt it. The whole point of seasoning a pan is to coat it with a layer of polymerized lipids. There just aren't any in salt. It's a great tool for cleaning a pan once seasoned, but... it just makes no sense to push that as a seasoning method. So strange. (Please understand, I'm not dunking on you. Given two methods for a specific task, one of which is messy and smelly and one of which is not, I might also have opted for the cleaner, simpler option.)

I could see it as a way to remove a factory coating before use? Maybe? But yeah, it seemed weird.

It's like that here in Canada, too. I'd read this piece just recently: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/first-person-stephen-douglas-trans-canada-oasis-1.6895820

We had those for a while in the 70s, when I was a kid, but in Canada it was called a WigWag.

Absolutely. The sauce *is* sweet, but not cloyingly so. It's garlic-forward when made properly, and balances nicely with the savoriness of the meat and onions (and provides the sweetness that's generally lacking in foodservice-grade tomatoes). But more fundamentally - and not at all facetiously - that sauce is the sine qua non of a Nova Scotia-style (really, a Halifax-style) donair. Otherwise it's just another take on a gyro or doner kebab. Not that there's anything wrong with those, either, but... you know... without the signature component, it's not the thing. Like coq au vin without wine.

I say this with respect and affection, but that's incorrect. Without the milk-based sauce it's not a Nova Scotia donair, full stop. They are absolutely a gut bomb though, especially in the oversized form that's sold in many a donair place situated strategically near drinking establishments and/or student hangouts.

With lettuce in it? Hell, no!

That's my preferred size for zucchini, tbh. They're tender and sweet, and as a defensive measure it helps avoid the stereotypical glut (you can serve 2-4 as an individual portion!). I grew Golden Nugget last year, but none of this year's starts survived the greenhouse collapse and the torrential rain a few weeks later.

Not the usual sort of thing I post in this thread, but it seemed more appropriate here than elsewhere: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/20/donair-costume-canada-snack-pita-meat-controversy

Congratulations on that first zucchini! Mine are nowhere close (looks like I'm at least close to seeing blossoms). Your garden is the closest parallel to mine, in terms of conditions (and physical proximity, I guess), so I've been eagerly awaiting each post to see how things are progressing down your way. I've had a few harvests of lettuce though less than I'd expected, because my second planting got wiped out by an untimely rain (third planting looks like it'll succeed). Reasonable quantities of snap peas, chard and kale, and as of yesterday my first cherry tomato (which went straight from the vine to my GF's mouth, six feet and a few seconds away). I'll start seeing bush beans within the next week or so, and my shell peas are beginning to blossom so they're close. Garlic is close, too. It's been a couple of weeks since I harvested the scapes, so I'll be keeping a close eye on them for another week or two until I think the moment is right. I'm just now getting blossoms on my Roma and slicing tomatoes, so they're still a month away at least. Potatoes are going gangbusters and need to be hilled again. Broccoli should start heading up soon as well.

I used to live in Chilliwack, and it spoiled me for store-bought corn. I don't know if it's still the case, but back then (beginning of the 90s) farm kids would get their spending money by filling the back of a pickup with corn and selling it dirt cheap and just-picked, from the side of the road. It's something I eat just once a summer or so, but why not have the good stuff for that once? (To forestall the inevitable question, I don't eat enough of it to block out any of my limited garden space and grow it myself)

Thanks for the info, I guess the metaphorical grass is not as much greener as I'd expected. I lived in Vancouver in the 80s and remember how much earlier everything greened up, and how much later it stayed that way.

You may just need to manually pollinate the blossoms (see my pumpkin photos upthread). Take a male blossom, peel off the petals, and poke the pollen-bearing bits into the female blossoms. Alternatively you can transfer the pollen with a paintbrush or Q-tip. As for your second question, I don't garden in Ontario but I'm also zone 5a. The brassicas in general (cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, etc) are good late-season options, because they're pretty cold-tolerant. In fact, in my area, I find this is about the best time to start cauliflower. They don't like the heat, and my springs just aren't long enough for them to fill out.

Oh, that's the longer-term plan. Right now it's still early and I'm leaving the male blossoms in place to attract pollinators. Once I have two fertilized ova per vine, they'll be fair game and I don't intend to waste any. My filling of choice is crab, but I'm sure there'll be lots of cheese-filled ones as well since that's my girfriend's fundamental food group.

My early tomato is Scotia, which does well here in Nova Scotia (hence the name) and NB. I've only got one or two plants this year, which I picked up at the nursery rather than starting myself. It's not my favorite for flavor, but you'll generally get 'em ripe even in years when nothing else wins the race. This year's a bit of an anomaly because I planted them a bit later than my Romas and Black Krims, so their advantage will be relatively smaller. I have lightweight frames and a roll of heavy poly that I intend to put over the tomatoes as the season winds down, which hopefully will buy me a few extra weeks (which is often enough to make a difference). I know conditions on your coast aren't ideal for tomatoes either, but I expect you get an extra couple of months between first and last frost. That counts for a lot.

This morning I learned that those pumpkin blossoms aren't just strikingly large and beautiful, but have a sweet scent as well. I'm very much a "stop and smell the flowers" kind of person, so I'm actually rather surprised I hadn't thought to stick my nose into one previously.

I'm just getting blossoms on mine, which neatly encapsulates the difference in gardening from one coast to the other.

...annnnd, chili garlic confit from the Delusional Sauce Company is being recalled in Ontario for botulism. Which is a shame, because that's a great brand name. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/delusional-sauce-co-brand-chili-garlic-confit-recalled-due-potential-presence?utm_source=gc-notify&utm_medium=email&utm_content=en&utm_campaign=hc-sc-rsa-22-23