chromedome

It's a stormy night, so I pulled leftover choucroute garnie from the freezer (FCO points!) and boiled up some potatoes to go with. Perfect cold-night comfort food, but not photogenic.

An almond tuile, maybe? Almond florentine? Either one would be relatively easy to cut during the brief interval after it comes out of the oven.

My GF had a hankering for risotto tonight, so I made saffron risotto and breaded chicken thighs with carrots and a bit of kale from my parents' garden that I'd blanched and frozen a few months ago. No pics, because I just didn't think of it. Don't usually do anything "chef-ly," though, so I thought I'd mention it.

I see them pre-packaged here like spring mix, rather than done in-store as the prepared salads and fruit trays are. I'd assumed it was done mechanically, but there may indeed be large squash-processing sweatshops. I honestly don't know. Food-prep staff typically make minimum wage or barely over, in either case, except in areas where living costs are exceptionally high.

There is zero GMO wheat commercially grown at present in the United States or elsewhere. The "wheat belly" argument hangs on some very shaky assumptions, but in any case it refers to normal hybridization and selective breeding rather than genetic modification.

That's a very large category for me, and yes...cookie dough is one of its occupants.

I've asked them to just put it on a side plate for me. The locations here seem open to that.

I've eaten at a few of their locations. If I was still working the line, I'd be somewhat tempted by their breakfast-and-lunch only format. On the upside, lots and lots of fruit on their plates. On the downside -- at least in the locations I've visited -- it's often underripe and poorly prepped.

Yup. The biggest obstacle for a new technique or method is an ingrained conviction that "hey, that just ain't right!" Programmers like to joke that the only reason God was able to create the heavens and the earth in six days was that he didn't have an installed base of users.

It's actually one of the hot culinary trends, right now (the things I learn while working....).

Good one. Guests at my cooking classes are always amazed when I put the damp tea towel under my cutting board to keep it from moving...you can almost hear the cumulative sound of the pennies dropping. Inexpensive plastic cutting boards often have a textured back, in the pious belief that this helps keep them from slipping, but -- as the Gerswhins put it -- it ain't necessarily so.

That kind basically *is* regular pasta, with added fibre (inulin, IIRC). You don't get the various other benefits of true whole grain pasta (B-vitamins, etc) but it's at least a modest improvement nutritionally, and as you say the texture and flavor are unobjectionable. My late wife was a big fan.

I suspect you're in the right place. Coming to terms with the current owners of said freezers would be the issue.

Evidently there's a market for hamburgers that resemble dog turds. It's a wonderful world we live in.

They're in pretty much every Canadian supermarket. I suspect they're probably widespread in the US as well, but they're an easy product to overlook if you aren't specifically aware of them and looking for them.

As always, one's mileage and freezer may vary.

I would venture to guess that the early-adopter, food-geek demographic has some value in itself. Businesses are keen to target "influencers," and Anova has a well-established presence within the -- for lack of better terms -- enthusiast, avant-garde portion of the food loving community. For a stodgy, established brand such as Electrolux that's probably a large part of the equation. Dunno about the rest of you, but when I think of Electrolux I still visualize the Dachshund-shaped canister vacuum cleaner my daughter used to ride on as a toddler.

I would consider that a wash, at best, because they're also going to absorb off-flavors from the freezer. I used to do that with stock and opened bottles of wine, and quickly decided it was best to pop them from the tray to a Ziploc bag once they were frozen.

Do you make your own? If so, you could always introduce a puree or liquid in the dough.

Just FYI barley, even pearled, is quite high in fibre.

Specialty of the house.

Probably, yeah. I think Vancouver was more diverse than most, from the sheer size of its Chinese-origin community, but I'm pretty sure it's predominantly Cantonese. I do remember Hunnan/Yunan places as well as the inevitable Sichuan, and also one Mongolian place before that term was subverted to mean "fried vaguely Asian mall food."

My knives are the Fibrox series, but I adhere to the same logic. A few swipes across the stone and steel, and I'm good to go. In the past I would occasionally sharpen knives for co-workers who lacked the skills, and found that hard-steel knives were an immense PITA.

...and now I know. Thanks for the info. It's been a long time since I lived in Vancouver, where I ate a lot of Chinese. Here in Atlantic Canada it's pretty much just the westernized stuff in sticky sauces, and if you're lucky the local buffet at least does it fairly well (best one in my city is a block away, as it happens). I really must make a point of re-stocking my pantry and revisiting some appropriate cookbooks.

She's in good company. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a recipe on...oh, Epicurious for example, but many other sites are the same...where a commenter recites a laundry-list of changes, then pronounces the recipe a failure and gives it one star.