chromedome

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).

I used to serve much the same dish (no Maldon, salmon visibly cooked) at the farmer's market, on a fresh-baked roll. I mostly did grilled salmon and salmon tacos as a lunch thing, but I hit on the notion of using my trim as breakfast portions.

I find that infuriating, especially in places where the range hood is on an outside wall and it would have been easy to do. SMH.

I use it in lemonade, lemon curd, lemon loaf, lemon ice cream, and tisanes. It's a nice accent.

...and/or conching your own bean-to-bar chocolate.

Lemon balm isn't one of the herbs I use most, but my sense of humor dictated that I had to plant some (my landlord's name is Melissa).

My lemon balm, oregano and chives are all up and running. My sage didn't make it, it seldom over-winters well in my neck of the woods. I have a bunch of things started in peat pots...we aren't moving this year as originally planned so I'll be doing a lot of things vertically and in nooks and crannies around the yard, and I'll also have a plot out at the GF's parents' place. It's a few more weeks until we can reasonably plant, here, and unfortunately there's going to be a lot of rain between now and then (pretty much all of the next week, for starters) so it might be a while before I can work the soil properly. I have two dozen cloves of my father's garlic planted. As I've mentioned elsewhere he'd been hand-selecting his garlic (Music, a hardneck cultivar) for size over a period of several years, and now routinely gets individual cloves in the 25-30 g range (about an ounce each) at the time of harvest. He passed away in March, but I'm going to keep the strain going. Mom still has lots in their original bed, too, which will be harvested before she sells up and moves into town.

I quite agree. I ate a salad with chopsticks in front of my mother, years ago, to her bemusement. When she served the ice cream for dessert she said "I suppose you're going to eat that with chopsticks as well?" ...so I did.

Everyone gets a turn. Life is very democratic, that way.

Pretty fair fare at the faire.

That's my son-in-law. My daughter knows how to cook frugal stuff (they're on a limited budget) but he basically only eats about a dozen things, and most of them come out of a microwave. It drives her crazy (personally, I'm rooting for her to outgrow him at her earliest opportunity).

Bourbon is, as a rule. You'll find pockets of aficionados in the big cities, and the rednecks get stupid on Jack (not bourbon, I know, but in the same vernacular) but that's pretty much it.

I have a lot of the thin, flexible plastic sheet-style cutting "boards," which I find ideal for that task. They slide easily between the cake and the cooling rack, and provide enough support (with a careful hand under the middle, of course) to easy shift the cake to a plate or cake board.

Urine from the big cats is prized among discerning growers for its ability to repel deer and raccoons, as well as most other pests. Even a cat from the other side of the world, apparently, smells like trouble.

I got up from my computer and made the biscuits. They're in the oven now (brunch, for us, though).

...and the world is once again safe for those incapable of whizzing chickpeas in a food processor.

...but with the exchange rate and shipping costs, who could afford Irish babies?

One of my favorite anecdotes from the biography was of a trade show she attended with her books. She'd gotten no traction with the conventional book industry so she'd had her books printed inexpensively in spiral-bound editions and sold them from freestanding displays at convenience stores, gas stations...anywhere she could, really. Part of that strategy included attending trade shows where she could make contacts. At one such show an intense, red-faced gent stood for a few moments in front of their display, shaking his head in pained amazement. Then then proceeded to mansplain to them in detail how amateur their setup was, and how they'd never get anywhere like this. "How many have you sold this way?" he eventually demanded. Pare looked at her daughter, shrugged, and said "I don't know...385,000 or so?" He blanched visibly, told her "Keep doing what you're doing," and melted back into the crowd. (NB: anecdote delivered from memory, so the words and numbers might not be exactly as written, but that was the gist of it)

Red rum? (Rredrum redrum redrum redrum....)

Looks good, I may have to try that this summer.

Read it here.

I usually steam them conventionally, unless I stuff them in which case they're baked. Artichokes were something I introduced my GF to last summer. If we succeed in buying a house, I'll try to grow some.

Yeah, that's him. IIRC he was a record producer or something, when he wasn't hauling his toastermobile around the countryside.

The dishwasher salmon came from a show called "The Surreal Gourmet," which ran on Food TV Canada back in the day.

I'm amused to see the Jean Pare cookbook. They're ubiquitous here in Canada, but I wouldn't have expected them to travel so far. I should know better, I suppose, based on their sales numbers. I have her biography around here somewhere. Heck of a story.