chromedome

(Bows in homage)

There's an explanation on the Amazon page linked, if you scroll down. As with organic maple syrup, it seems to be more about the chemicals (etc) used in the production process. I'm not entirely certain I care that much, tbh. If I was making/marketing certified organic baked goods, I probably would.

I enjoyed most of the episodes, though I suggested to my GF that we should play a drinking game...every time there's a slow-mo shot of the chef du jour striding across the countryside in purposeful quest of that extra-local ingredient, we swig a craft brew.

My father's deer-hunting blind overlooked one of the scrubby apple trees at the back end of his property. (His place, and several on either side, occupied the former site of a farm that had been abandoned a century earlier.)

It's much the same in Atlantic Canada. I've met distant relatives many times in random circumstances, and it always starts with the stranger triangulating on the last name and point of origin. In Cape Breton, the heavily Scots-inflected region at the upper (Eastern) end of Nova Scotia, there's a specific formula still used in some places: you'll be introduced (or referred to) as "John Angus' Robbie's Malcolm," neatly providing both your name and two generations of your line in one succinct mouthful. "Your people" is a phrase that's used up here as well, but the same thought is also expressed as "Who are your relations?"

Wonderful! My GF's younger cousin just gave birth to a slightly premature daughter (3 lbs, 10 ounces at birth, now up to 4 lbs 2 oz at a week old). My nephew and his wife are expecting their first on Wednesday (good luck with that!), and GF's foster daughter (due in November) and daughter (due in March) are each about to give us a second grandbaby. It's a good year.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who occasionally finds aesthetic pleasure in such things. My most memorable example was a large pot of saffron rice I'd concealed in the oven as part of a hurried cleanup when company arrived unexpectedly (in my defence, that was in the days when we had a toddler and seldom caught up on the housework). After 8 or 10 days of hot summer weather I wanted that same pot to cook something in, and eventually realized where it was. What I found in the pot was so striking that even my ex (who had mold allergies, but was an artist) had to look at it a dozen times. The pot was finished in white enamel, so that was the "frame," if you will. At the bottom, the yellow rice formed a background for huge,fluffy swaths of mold in vivid green, a bold blue-grey-green that I'd never seen before or since, and -- most unaccountably -- cotton-candy pink. I don't have a very visual memory, but I'll never forget that.

Ours was at the front, and was about the size of an old-school 12" or 13" television screen. I don't remember the rotational speed, but I suspect it was quicker than that. One of my classmates convulsed the rest of us one day when, as she bent over to squint through the window, she called out "Oh, look, my buns are getting puffy!" (It sounded funnier in a room full of sleep-deprived people.)

Personally I use cloths, and sanitize 'em in bleach. I wouldn't feel comfortable using a week-old sponge, but that's just me. A European former co-worker persuaded me of the virtues of a brush for hand dish-washing, so I use one of those as well and also sanitize it in the bleach solution.

Like most of the others who've commented, I found the Visions cookware to be a massive PITA. It retains heat almost as long as cast iron so the likelihood of burning yourself is pretty high, and at least two of mine went bye-bye because my ex burned herself and flinched, causing the pot to shatter into a gazillion nasty, high-speed shards. The heat retention meant that foods inevitably baked on, unless you decant the food immediately into serving dishes and then pour boiling water into them to keep the food from hardening (not tap water, a mistake which accounted for another of the pots). I eventually discarded the survivors, though I did keep the lids for use on other cookware. Just to play devil's advocate, I'll point out that when enamel crazes it's not entirely food-safe either. It *does* take a while, with good enamelware. Life is just filled with compromises.

We had one of those in the bake shop when I was going to school, though I believe it was removed the following summer when the Culinary Arts department got a multi-million dollar facelift. The small view window was a magnet for the handful of my classmates who'd never baked before, especially during the introduction to yeast doughs (you have to admit, watching "oven spring" happen in real time is pretty cool for a novice).

Yeah, Bourdain's version of the same warning was much pithier.

Several years ago, the manager of the store where I worked was listening to his next-door neighbour bewail the effect of an unusually dry summer on his garden. Seeking desperately for a positive, he finally hazarded, "Well, at least your onions are coming good." The confused neighbour followed his pointing finger, then scowled and said "That's my corn."

At 1:40, the speaker says that without the app one uses the buttons and their 10 settings "for the simple stuff." That would seem to imply that manual control is limited to presets.

Here you go. Click

Yeah, much the same boat here. We had an overnight low of 7 the other night, but are (allegedly) in for several days in a row of actual summer-like conditions. I may just give up and get a near-mature patio tomato plant or two from the local garden centre.

I knew somebody would step up and take one for the team.

The FAQ says you can use it manually.

It's further ahead than mine, if that's any consolation.

A grooved cast iron grilling pan works well. The grooves keep the skin above the fat, and you can even pour it out periodically (with great care) if you feel so inclined.

Ouch. That would make it tough to sleep, alright. We've been cold and rainy here, and the overnight low last night was 7°C/45°F.

I remember liking them as a kid, either just plopped into the milk or soaked briefly in boiling water as Kerry describes. We usually had the bigger Nabisco variety, but I seem to recall both Weetabix and Muffets occasionally cropping up in the stores.

It's cardamom. Two green, one black.

Somewhere on one of the USDA's multitudinous pages, you'll find test results for several grades of ground beef. They measured both the amount of fat lost during cooking and the amount of moisture lost during cooking. Reader's Digest version? The lower the fat level, the more moisture you lose from the beef. Eighty percent lean was a reasonably sweet spot on the continuum, with only modest fat left in the finished product but moisture loss also kept to a moderate level.

To me and my fellow "base brats," growing up, they were referred to as the Newfoundland Air Force GU-11. Yesterday as we were coming out of my local No Frills with my GF's wee granddaughter (age 2) in the basket of the cart, she laughed at the birds orbiting the parking lot and began chanting "It's not a eeeeaagull, it's a seeeeagull..."