chromedome

She's doing okay, so far. Lots of family have arrived already, my sisters get here on Sunday, and I'm leaving momentarily to collect my son from the airport. The ratio of cloud to silver lining is not especially good, but you embrace whatever positives you can.

I have been quietly playing along in a limited fashion, whittling away at both my fridge freezer and my upright. Now I have a new challenge. My father, who has cooked for my mother for most of their marriage (once he got out of the navy and wasn't away at sea, of course) is now in palliative care. They have two freezers full of produce from their garden, this year's deer, cod from my relatives in Newfoundland, and so on. Over the next few weeks I'll be turning most of that into ready-to-eat meals she can put into the freezer and use up when I'm not here to cook for her.

Bulk Barn often has them, though they may come and go with the seasons. I've seen 'em there but they aren't a particular favorite of mine, so I don't keep track of what time of the year it is.

I can't answer for others, but it's covered at length in McGee. The relatively harsh bleaching process makes the flour granules more porous, and therefore lighter and more absorbent as well as whiter. In the case of White Lily, my understanding is that they simply mill low-protein wheats for their flour. Chlorine bleaching isn't something I personally get exercised about, because chlorine is routinely added to most municipal water systems anyway as an antibacterial agent. If it causes me a health problem, it will certainly be from drinking water as opposed to eating cake flour.

Ah, yes..."mordanting." One of my favorite words, the year I was 10. "Anadromous" was high on the list that year, too (I learned it while the shad and gaspereaux were running). (ETA: I read most of an encyclopedia and most of a dictionary that year, and literally had more words than I knew what to do with. In retrospect, I must have been hilarious to the adults around me as I tried to find casual ways to use them in conversation.)

The word "powder" didn't come into it anywhere...you may have misread "power blender," perhaps? I was referring to the Vitamix/Blendtec kind of machine. I guess it would have been clearer if I'd called out the corresponding part of Ess' post as a quote, but I hadn't yet had much caffeine.

The pit. It's nutritious and high in fibre, so there's been a fad lately for processing and eating it. A few quick links... http://www.livestrong.com/article/31737-eat-avocado-seeds-nutrition/ http://www.californiaavocado.com/blog/march-2016/is-it-safe-to-eat-the-avocado-seed http://www.health.com/food/no-you-shouldnt-start-eating-avocado-seeds

It "can" be eaten, but there's a reason it's not. Even sites/bloggers advocating for its consumption concede that you need to grind it finely and hide it in something, because it tastes dreadful. By all means give it a whirl (yeah, that was a power-blender pun) if you feel in need of the fibre and vitamins, but you probably won't make a habit of it.

LOL I should probably just shut up at this point, but I'll have another go...I'm fairly confident the "microwave burrito/mac & cheese because that's all I know how to do" demographic is under-represented here.

Understood. I'm fairly confident the microwave burrito/mac & cheese demographic is under-represented in this particular community. When I'm insufficiently caffeinated, I can be Captain Obvious.

That's one of the classic, fundamental use-cases for the aforementioned device.

The one on the right came up in my GF's facebook feed the other day, and she swore she'd get it for me. I'm the kid who read his encyclopedia cover to cover because nobody thought it necessary to tell me that wasn't how most people use one.

I make a batch of creme brulee every so often, by popular demand, so I always have extra whites hanging around and often use them to lighten waffles or pancakes.

I would guess it's a 20-oz imperial pint, given the context. IIRC a number of pubs in British Columbia got into trouble a couple of years ago for selling 16-oz American pints, rather than 20 oz pints. We're officially metric here too, but the 20-oz pint remains the standard for beer.

Canadian AP flour runs in the 12% range, give or take.

...$999 for the 325-watt mixer? That's some serious marketing chutzpah, right there...

For any non-Anglophiles reading this, "corn flour" in the UK context is what we call cornstarch in North America.

Chilling and slicing is just a convenient way to handle a soft, high-fat dough. As with spritz cookies, the end result is very delicate.

You have to toast the chickpea flour in a dry skillet until it smells, well...toasty...otherwise you get a distinctly "bean-y" flavor in the finished cookie. The flour will get a little bit browner, but your nose will tell you when it's done. It goes from smelling rather leguminous to aromatic and fragrant, more or less all at once. Stir it constantly though, or it'll scorch.

Salted and unsalted butter seem to be the same price in the US, but they're predictably $1 apart anywhere I've lived in Canada. It seems to be a circular thing: We buy less because it costs more, and it costs more because it's not as popular. I don't think shelf life is necessarily the issue because a lot of stores keep it in the frozen section. As for method, I just cream the sugar and butter and then add the flour. It's kind of a "don't overthink it" recipe. Years ago I was looking for a gluten-free "shortbread," so I tried an Iranian cookie made with rice flour and an Indian cookie made with pan-toasted chickpea flour. I found the Iranian one gritty and the Indian one too earthy, but then had the inspiration of doing half-and-half with the rice flour and chickpea flour. That worked pretty well (I used brown butter, for extra flavor) but it was a long time ago and I have no memory of the exact recipes I used.

I've bought stackable cooling racks with folding legs from places like Walmart over the years. They can lie flat as a conventional rack, or stand 4"-5" high if needed.

I understand that brands of butter vary in their salt content, and that in large-scale recipes it can be the difference between things tasting "right" and tasting salty. For a home-sized recipe using a cup or less, I think it amounts to (as they say in the Canadian military) "picking fly-shit out of the pepper."

The thick, pressed-into-a-pan style of shortbread is usually somewhat crumbly, though recipes vary in their degree of crumbliness. Individual, thinner cookies need to be sturdier so they'll hold their shape and not break into fragments when handled, so the proportions are different. FWIW, I've always used salted butter in mine. Primarily that's because a) I usually only keep salted on hand, which in turn is because b) salted is cheaper by about $1/lb and I'm usually unwilling to spend the difference (we can blame that on my Scots heritage, perhaps). The ratio I use in mine is 1 part butter:2 parts sugar:4 parts flour (by volume, because that's how my grandmother did it), which makes a pretty good cookie. Spoon the flour into your cup and swipe to level it, otherwise you'll get too much flour and the dough will be stiff and dry.

It is sometimes available in the frozen case of Mediterranean or gourmet grocery stores, alongside the phyllo. I've seen it occasionally, but never when it was practical for me to buy some and play with it.

All righty, then. My first take was that it was a bit short for a carving knife, but I suppose that'd be carving as differentiated from slicing...you'd want something a bit nimbler for working around joints and such.