chromedome

(Fruit) pie for breakfast is an honoured and long-standing tradition in my house. I reckoned it was a healthier option that most of the neighbours' kids were getting.

I've used leftover fries in frittata-style breakfast casseroles. When you have a restaurant with a fryer, leftover fries are one of those path-of-least-resistance ingredients at the end of a long day. (Yeah, I ate a lot of "breakfast for dinner")

I had trouble getting my bakers to roll things to the correct thickness, so I bought strips of square dowelling at various thicknesses and had them use those as rolling guides (the dough goes between the sticks, at a spacing that matches your widest rolling pin). It works until they get the hang of it, and then afterwards as a quick self-check.

I'm not a huge fan, mostly because I hate the mouthfeel and cloying flavour of 'em when made with cream cheese. I'm okay with quark, mascarpone or ricotta. Yeah, I do prefer a bit of acidity. Doesn't have to be citrus, necessarily.

Filet o' Fish is just about the only thing at McD's that doesn't lead to unfortunate...consequences...for me, so I eat them when I'm dragged into one. I usually order mine without tartar (I'm not a fan) and usually get it with tartar anyway. Can't be bothered to complain about it, so I just eat the damned thing. I don't adhere to the cheese/fish dogma anyway, but by my reckoning the major use-case for processed cheese slices is melting them onto something fried. The notion of it being (originally) fish doesn't really matter.

Just to clarify (because I'm intrigued) how coarsely or finely would you grind the beans?

In the large centres restaurants definitely can charge more, and there are a number of places where a tasting or prix fixe menu will go north of $100/person. Those are rare, though, and you can almost always order something else to keep the cost down. Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver definitely have amazing ethnic food. Toronto is said to be the most cosmopolitan city on the continent, in terms of the nations represented in its population. In my East Van neighbourhood, back in the early 80s, the options included numerous regional versions of Chinese and Italian, as well as everything from Vietnamese (then rare in Canada) to Portuguese to El Salvadorean to Jamaican. This was just in the relatively small area surrounding Commercial Drive, mind you. In my hometown of Halifax, the Lebanese diaspora of the 70s totally revolutionized the city's food scene. You'll find falafel, shawarma and especially donairs (our distinctive local riff on the doner kebab) being eaten all up and down the downtown area at 2 AM when the bars close, along with the inevitable pizza slices and fish and chips. Montreal bagels are renowned. I've had them, and they're good, but I've never had the New York variety when fresh so I can't offer a straight-up comparison. Poutine is...not my favorite. It's just fries with fresh cheese curds and gravy. If you have access to fresh cheese curds (if they don't squeak on your teeth, they're not fresh enough) and can make good fries and gravy, you're ready to DIY. I like my fries and gravy, but to my taste the cheese doesn't really add anything. Just to clarify, poutine is not some kind of Great Canadian Culinary Tradition. It goes back only to the 1950s, and was a local thing even in Quebec for some time afterward. I never saw it until the 90s, which is when it caught on and "went national." Think of it in that respect as the Canadian equivalent of pulled pork. The French culinary tradition survived here and mutated in its Quebecois and Acadian versions, with a number of dishes coming down to the modern day (tourtiere, tart d'erable, "rappie pie") and still widely made. The core culinary tradition among the rest of us is that of the UK (Scots and Irish have a greater influence here in the Atlantic region, English elsewhere), with native and Eastern European traditions having a significant impact on the Prairies. Like you we have an immigrant culture, so things changed have changed quite a bit since the beginning of the 20th century. Currently chefs all across the country adhere to the "fresh, local, sustainable" ethos as much as their peers Stateside. In Atlantic Canada the Scandinavian-inspired forager ethos has had a significant impact, perhaps because we have so much in common with Scandinavia (speaking in terms of climate and topography, if not necessarily culture). Newfoundland, which allows wild-caught game to be served in restaurants, is especially so. Here in my local area chef Jesse Vergen (mentioned in one or two of those articles) operates an organic farm with his wife in suburban Quispamsis, and supplies his own restaurants with much of their produce. Swiss chef Chris Aerni, near the border-area resort town of Saint Andrews, has his own kitchen garden and forages the wild spaces behind his inn (the Globe and Mail's travel writer once named his Rossmount Inn as "the best kitchen east of Montreal"). Even in tiny St. Andrews there's one restaurant where you'll plunk down $100 or more per head, but it doesn't cater to the locals or even the standard variety of tourist traffic. It's the Kingsbrae Arms, a Relais and Chateaux property owned by, and catering to, the Hamptons crowd. The chef is Provencal, with a background in Michelin-starred establishments, and I'm told the food is very good indeed.

Somehow (I'm guessing caffeine deficiency) I'd missed that the OP spoke specifically about hamine eggs, and only got the part about wondering if they'd work sous vide. My bad.

It's worth a shot. Long-cooked hamine eggs are an Egyptian staple, and I'm told develop a uniquely soft texture over time.

All of those things are part of the ongoing discussion. Aside from parts of Ontario and BC the growing season here is rather short, and "seasonal" therefore has its pitfalls (you get awfully tired of cabbage and rutabagas by spring) but entrepreneurial types are increasingly bringing greenhouse and other extended-season products to the farmer's markets. One Mennonite family in the Annapolis Valley (Nova Scotia) grows enough figs in their greenhouse to offer them in small quantities at the market, and reportedly are working on citrus as well. Some links for you, mostly centered around my own part of the country... https://www.buzzfeed.com/canadatourism/a-visual-guide-to-atlantic-canadas-secret-foodie-capital?utm_term=.tmMd6203e#.hl21Y0wnQ https://uk-keepexploring.canada.travel/things-to-do/5-canadian-chefs-you-should-know http://rustikmagazine.com/local-heroes-atlantic-canadian-chefs-love/#.WOlGJfnyv4Y http://www.pressreader.com/canada/the-globe-and-mail-atlantic-edition/20170329/282226600560417 http://www.britishfoodinamerica.com/O-Canada-A-Number-Devoted-to-North-Atlantic-Foodways/the-lyrical/A-meditation-on-Canadian-foodways/#.WOlHP_nyv4Y

You may find this site helpful...not to plagiarize her recipes, of course, but for guidance and ideas. I've used it as a resource many times while writing freelance articles.

That goes way beyond charitable endeavours, and represents a real issue for the local food movement in general. Here in New Brunswick, where I live, three of the province's major urban centres (Saint John, Fredericton and Moncton) form a triangle, with Fredericton just under an hour and Moncton just over an hour from Saint John. Agriculture is still important here, though much reduced from a generation or two ago. Local-food enthusiasts have been trying to establish some sort of regular run between the three cities, which would enable producers to collectively get their products to restaurateurs, schools and independent grocers in those centres. There's a lot of interest, but so far the idea hasn't hit critical mass. There are only a few producers large enough to circulate trucks between the three cities on a regular basis, and the logistics of arranging numerous pickups and dropoffs have so far been insurmountable. When my restaurant was open, I had to drive all over the place myself to secure my lamb, boar, sturgeon and local produce from their respective growers. I was already working 100+ hours/week, so that was a real impediment.

When I was going to culinary school, Michael Smith was one of the country's most visible "celebrity chefs" and had recently opened a very successful restaurant in my hometown of Halifax. Speaking to my classmates and I, he expressed frustration that, even with his high profile, he absolutely could not crack the $30/entree glass ceiling. Today, reviewing the recent release of the Top 50 Restaurants list, the National Post blames the lack of international recognition for Canadian chefs/restaurants on this same attribute, basically explaining that we're a nation of cheap basta- unnecessarily frugal diners who are more interested in bandwagons than supporting our homegrown culinary traditions.

I'm not personally familiar with the characteristics of buffalo milk, but I'd be inclined to try reducing it as Plan A. I don't know if adding fat would be as effective as reducing water, but it's something to think about while you wait for someone with actual expertise to chime in.

I can't answer for Elsie D's exact sale, but typically in my neck of the woods BSBs go on for $3.99 and once or twice a year for $2.99 (chicken isn't subsidized up here the way it is in the US). Pork is usually the big bargain up here. I just picked up a pair of whole boneless loins (one for home, one for at my mother's place) at $1.99/lb. It's not my favorite cut, but at that price it's a hella lot of chops and stir-fry for a very small dollar.

Does your fence extend underground? I hate to rain on your parade, but rabbits and their ilk (we get a lot of groundhogs up my way) can zip underneath a ground-level fence in the time it takes you to go inside and pour that coffee.

Beans are certainly easier to store, but if they're going to be processed into ready-to-eat food there's still plenty of opportunity to get things wrong. If the food is to be stored and handed out as-is for people to prepare at home, it is (sadly) also true that many people have no idea how to cook dry beans. I've had that conversation many times at my cooking classes. A more important point is that the food bank isn't catering solely to vegetarians, and being herded involuntarily into something because it's "better for you" is the kind of thing that raises hackles, and rightly so. A friend of mine, who'd been in and out of the foster system throughout his childhood, bitterly defined "social worker" as: "The person who tells you to eat the yellow snow because it's got more trace minerals." (Disclaimer: If any social workers happen to read this, please don't be upset. I've known several -- have a few in my family -- and have nothing but respect for the difficult job they do. This particular friend had been through all seven circles of hell with the ones who ran his childhood, and his opinion was, sadly, well earned.)

Personally, I suspect the Easter Bunny.

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/04/04/hamilton-police-ask-public-to-romaine-calm-after-45k-lettuce-heist.html

Ugh, yes. We cleaned the floor-level coils of the fridge in our rental a month or so ago, and they were packed tightly with the felt-like corpses of ancestral dust bunnies. We had to empty the vacuum three times (!!) before it was cleaned out. We plan to do this every 3 to 6 weeks...or at least, will do so once the vacuum is replaced. I don't *think* cleaning the coils was what made it crap out after just a few weeks, but wouldn't care to hazard a firm opinion on the subject.

Freezers run best when chock-a-block. Refrigerators require air circulation, otherwise you get unfortunate warm and cold spots. Thermal mass might be useful if you have young 'uns deliberating over their snacks for extended periods with the door open, but I don't know how you'd do that effectively. In an ideal situation, your most perishable items would be surrounded by the milk cartons (or whatever receptacles you ultimately use to hold the water).

Or as it's known in my house, "Crap! How can we be out of sauerkraut again? I wanted a Reuben, dammit!"

I remember trying this once, the last time it was in fashion.* I wasn't especially enamored of the texture, and went back to doing it the traditional way. Now I cook up several days' steel-cut oats at a time (one cup oats, 4 cups water) and just microwave my morning portion. *The 80s, perhaps? I'm picturing Wilfred Brimley television commercials, so I suspect it was the oat bran ("right thing to do") era. I always thought someone should have made an oat bran whisky, and hired ol' Wilf to promote it. "It's the right thing to do...(slurs) an' a damn' tasty way to do it!"

With respect, that's marketing copy. Freelancers like me write that kind of stuff for hours on end. Favorable reviews from people like yourself and the others here, in actual field use, hold more weight with me.

Good call. I haven't seen pre-tested sprouts anywhere here in Canada, but admittedly I haven't been looking. They don't seem to be much in demand anymore, at least here in New Brunswick.