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Food funnies, parenting edition:

I use salt at 2% of cabbage weight in my sauerkraut. I generally make a middlin' batch that half-fills a food-grade plastic bucket, and we already have lids with holes for airlocks because of my GF's sporadic winemaking hobby, so those are the easy option for me. I weight mine with a plate that leaves just a smidge of space around each side (I have a specific plate for that bucket) and set a mason jar full of water on top with a plastic screw-on lid, lest it tip into the brine at some point and a conventional ring/lid get rusted. C02 (or any other gas) would pass through a mesh with a 4mm grid, no?

Just a quick followup to note that talks have, for now, been broken off. As you would expect, there are some differences in how the rupture has been reported in Canada vs the UK. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/26/uk-suspends-trade-talks-canada-no-progress-details-agriculture-markets https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-uk-trade-cheese-1.7094817 The Canadian government's official "take" on the whole hormones-in-beef topic can be found on this page (last updated in 2012): https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/drugs-health-products/veterinary-drugs/factsheets-faq/hormonal-growth-promoters.html

Okay, I looked in both stores today and they are definitely in the "side dishes" aisle in each case, though the rest of the aisle varies from one to the other. You can tell Ed to look for them sandwiched in between the Kraft Dinner, Hamburger Helper, etc. (at around eye height, too!). Here's how it looks at my local Sobeys: The brown bag barely visible at bottom/right/center is the Idahoan brand (clearly BC swings more weight in the bribery "shelf placement subsidy" sweepstakes).

The US Embassy in London tweeted this today. It should be "assure," mind you, but whatever.

I'm not really brand-loyal, so I'll use whatever's cheap on the day, but both Betty Crocker and Idahoan are available at Superstore and Sobeys IIRC. I've probably used both stores' store brands as well, though I can't guarantee it. They should be in the same aisle as other side dishes, but SS and Sobeys lay out their stores differently so I can't narrow it down more closely than that. I'll be in one and possibly both, later this afternoon, so I'll take a look specifically for the spudflakes* and report back. (*Another oddball use I hadn't mentioned is faux snow around Christmas decor, not recommended in humid climates)

I usually keep a box on hand for odd uses. Not typically to make up a portion of mashed per the instructions, though I'll do that occasionally. My hands are growing clumsier due to arthritis and occasionally I splash more milk into my mashed than I'd intended, and the flakes are a good way to restore the correct consistency. Instant mashed plus a cup of chicken or veg broth (or Better Than Bouillon, in a pinch) makes a quick potato soup on cold days. I scatter a light sprinkling of the flakes between the layers of my scalloped potatoes, to help thicken them, and potato flakes make an unusual but effective "breading" for fish (a nice alternative if you're serving/are a celiac sufferer).

I remember a cookbook I read years ago quoting a Nicaraguan as saying wryly that "for breakfast we have rice and beans, for lunch we have beans and rice, and for dinner we have gallo pinto."

This is more "agriculture" than "food science" per se, but we've veered into food production previously on this thread (and mods, I *did* look for a thread on agricultural innovations, because I thought I remembered one existing, but failed to find one). A reasonably rigorous life-cycle analysis of urban farming, with mixed results. More importantly, it sheds some light on how these operations can be refined depending on their individual goals. https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/01/urban-agricultures-carbon-footprint-can-be-worse-than-that-of-large-farms/

I'd suspected you might have crossed paths with him, given some of the other names you've mentioned. ...and also guessed correctly that you hadn't been to the Guardian yet this morning, or you'd have beaten me to the punch.

It's sold here in Canada with peanuts in (I bought a jar each of that and the plain kind, after seeing it talked about here). I would assume it's probably available elsewhere, it'd be odd for them to do a version just for Canada.

An interesting story about a little-known but influential Londoner and his impact on the UK's attitudes toward food. https://www.theguardian.com/food/2024/jan/23/nicholas-saunders-forgotten-genius-changed-british-food

Thanks for the reminder. A little while back, when my GF and I visited our area's first-ever Popeye's to see what the fuss was about, the red beans and rice were her favorite thing. She can't eat pork any more for medical reasons, but the bacon fat in the rb&r thankfully didn't trigger a flare of her rheumatoid arthritis. I told her that I'd make it for her at home one day with RA-friendly ingredients, and promptly forgot. I'll probably run with that recipe as a base, but use Beyond Sausage and a cured rabbit for the meats. It's certainly good weather for it!

I lack your academic grounding in the use of language, but am a heavy reader and prolific writer of informational content (that's how I earn my living). FWIW, since you're canvassing for opinions, I think your suggestion of "spicy hot" is probably the best option here. I've certainly heard and seen it used to make exactly this distinction, verbally here in Canada and in written conversations with/between friends and colleagues in the US. I suppose it may be a slightly inelegant construct, but it's unambiguous and that's the desired outcome.

It's always nice to part with a landlord/landlady on good terms.

I don't see Beyond or Impossible going down this road, but who knows? It might be effective...

After a few days of being pilloried in the press and rage-tagged on social media, Loblaw's has backtracked and will now resume its 50% discounts wherever they had originally been given.

...and today I learned that the Oreo was a knockoff of another company's cookie. Who knew? https://thehustle.co/the-curious-case-of-the-disappearing-hydrox-cookies/

This is food history at a tangent: an impassioned defense of the hard-copy menu as a lasting document, in a world of QR codes. https://thewalrus.ca/qr-code-restaurant-menu/

I don't eat supermarket sushi myself, but was agreeing with BeeZee; it's sound advice. We had sushi at a local restaurant for my birthday celebration but that was the first time I've had it in... I dunno, 15 or 20 years? Probably since I was in culinary school, anyway. Nothing against it, I'll eat it if it's in front of me, but I'm a cheap bast- frugal and even mediocre sushi is pretty expensive in my neck of the woods. That being said, our granddaughter wants to learn how to make it, so I probably have a minor sushi binge in my near-term future. Supermarkets here have just recently begun stocking salmon from a couple of land-based recirculating aquaculture producers based here in the Maritimes, so if we go beyond the various California rolls and variations I may splurge on a piece of that just to show support. I attended a recirculating-aquaculture conference hosted by the Atlantic Salmon Federation back in 2014, and covered it for one of our foodservice magazines, and have been keeping tabs on that nascent industry ever since. They seem to slowly be figuring out how to scale their operations, though like vertical farming the up-front capital requirements are daunting and unlike vertical farming there was no stampede of VC capital to get them over the initial hump. I suspect that may be a good thing in the longer term, but we'll see.

I know about it, but don't use it. That's partly because I avoid installing unnecessary apps on my phone (I write a lot about online safety, don't get me started...) and partly because with marked-down items I'm especially keen to have "eyes on" before I make my purchase. I probably miss out on some deals that way, but I'm okay with it.

Soooo.... it's the waste that you have an issue with? A 250g tub is the equivalent of an 8oz brick, or close enough (it's a little over 8.8 ounces).

Yeah, I seldom enter either of our major supermarkets (nationally it's Sobeys and Loblaw's, plus a few regional chains and legacy brands owned by either Sobeys or Loblaw's) without a quick browse of the store for these "targets of opportunity." Like everyone I have my will/won't list (and I agree on past-its-prime sushi) but those markdowns account for a lot of what I buy. I'm very much a "shop the flyers" guy on a week-by-week basis, so what with one thing and another they probably make relatively less from me than from most others.

Well, then. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/loblaws-will-no-longer-offer-50-discount-on-expiring-food-products-1.7084299