chromedome

The roots grow surprisingly large. When we moved my grandmother's plants up the hill from her old house (halfway from lake to road) to her new house (up closer to the road) some of the roots were larger than my leg. Mind you, that patch had been in its previous location for four decades or so, so you won't see that any time soon.

I found them at Pete Luckett's winery in Nova Scotia, where they were set out for sampling. I found them tasty, but a bit "seedy."

I love the cake. I knew someone who'd done a meatloaf cake with mashed potato "icing" for her meat-and-potatoes hubby one year, but this is definitely at a higher level.

I don't usually have par-cooked potatoes on hand. I start the potatoes when I decide on soup, then pull a container or two of the corresponding soup out of the freezer. Nuke it enough for the soup to come out of the container, then drop it in a pot on the stove to finish reheating. If you dice your potatoes to spoon size, they'll cook in about the length of time needed for the soup to reheat. If I'm on the ball I'll start a bit early so I can drain the potatoes and add them to the soup to finish cooking and absorb some of the flavor, but often I just don't bother.

Hmm. I did that when I bought my house in the 90s. By the end of the second summer it had extended to the neighbour's yard, and had colonized most of the lower part of mine. Admittedly, I'd been incautious enough to plant it in a place where the soil stayed damp because of the hillside's natural drainage. If you're in a dry climate (I don't remember your location) you might get away with it.

Ditto. I *do* make and freeze those soups, mind you, but w/o the potatoes. I cook those separately when I take the soup out of the freezer, and combine them at the end.

The place I used to work heated them in the salamander, then spread them with a paste made of sun-dried tomatoes and covered the paste with a slice of Swiss. We'd slide it back under the salamander to melt the cheese, then serve it on grilled sourdough. It was a good sandwich, I remember it very fondly and re-create it at home whenever I make meatloaf.

Son of a gun. I never knew that...looking forward to next spring, now. Plenty of hostas around the house, I could certainly sacrifice a few nice young shoots without making a dent in them.

Agreed. A palpable oxymoron.

I just set out my first plants, a few dozen garlic from the strain my father'd been hand-selecting for size. When plump and freshly harvested, individual cloves in the 20-30 g range (ie, about an ounce) are not unusual.

I have no authoritative answer to offer, but I believe it's just that they're small enough, and have the right texture, to crunch up nicely in your mortar and pestle with the other spices once they're toasted.

I was surprised that my tarragon (which is Mediterranean, after all) over-wintered so well in frigid Alberta. In the spring it was waist-high before even my radishes had come up.

An amazing piece of work, and an even better story.

I "more or less" clean as I go. Things I'll be re-using (ie, favorite knives) get washed right away. Small items I'm done with go to the dishwasher, large items get rinsed and stacked alongside the sink for later hand-washing. I wipe down and sanitize counters, and put away ingredients, as needed. The stack of stuff beside the sink may or may not get washed after the meal, depending on how I'm feeling. If I'm tired, or just plain have better things to do, I'll put off the hand-washing until after lunch the next day (mornings are writing time).

Here in Atlantic Canada, $1.69/ea is a pretty standard in-season price, though they'll sometimes be less (and cheaper again in bags of 3-5). Off-season price can often be $2.99/ea.

If any Canadian bakers are following this thread, you can get whole milk powder at Bulk Barn.

I haven't repaired a Breville but I have replaced thermal fuses in other small appliances. The instructions on that page are pretty clear and straightforward.If you've previously done any electronics work at all, you should have no problem.

Or to summarize: "When life hands you lemons, gild them."

Boil it, steam it, stir-fry it, make slaw...

Cool. You should send that to The Mother Earth News, it's exactly the kind of thing they publish for others to be inspired by.

Good food in retirement complexes is a growing trend...not necessarily in all (especially the low-cost variants) but in many. It's often attributed to the Boomers ageing out, and to their collective unwillingness to accept sub-par food. They've got the clout to change things, and they will. As a massive generation arriving just as the world of commerce discovered demographics, it has literally been "all about them" (all about us, I should say, since technically I'm considered to fall into the last of the Boom) from the beginning, and that's not going to change much at this late date.

Sounds like you got a Friday afternoon unit. Or gremlins.

I've used the "water" from tomatoes and from shredded cucumbers (the tomatoes worked better), so I can see no reason why broth wouldn't work as well. I don't use much liquid other than eggs in mine, so it was more a matter of using something up as opposed to looking for an identifiable flavor.

At the retirement complex where I cooked for a few months in the off-season, FWIW, the busiest night of the week was Friday when we offered steamed mussels. The house dietitian insisted on reduced-sodium recipes for most meals, but we made liberal use of herbs and spices to compensate. I've been encouraging my own mother to try different things, because she's in the early stages of Parkinson's and one of its effects is that it reduces one's ability to taste. My suggestion was that she might find enjoyment in flavors she'd considered too pungent when she was younger, and she's finding that to be the case (blue cheese was one of our first experiments). Just as an aside, some authorities in the field of gerontology advocate for the selective use of MSG in feeding the elderly, because it reaches the brain through a different channel and can help keep them interested in food (often a concern). I would presume that other umami-rich food and condiments with similar glutamates probably have the same effect.

That's a combination I'm fond of as well. It works with hot-smoked, but I've also done it with cold-smoked salmon that was in the fridge just long enough that I didn't fully trust it. You lose the cold-smoked texture, but the flavor is still great. At my restaurant, when it was open, I did an eggs Benny variation with my house-cured gravlax which was pretty good (he says modestly).