chromedome

Thanks again to all of you who made suggestions. Not all of them panned out for various reasons (it's a bear, trying to get pricing on non-sale items from most stores' websites) but almost everything there began with a suggestion from someone here or on the group page my freelance colleagues and I share.

If you are petless, a mixture of borax and confectioner's sugar is effective.

If I understand correctly, the "lupini" I've enjoyed with Italian friends are the least toxic of the different varieties. The ones that grow wild here would be challenging...they're smaller, and more toxic (especially in a dry summer, according to one of the articles I've found since the up-thread post). Sure are beautiful when you have 80 solid km of them along the roadside embankments, though.

I'd heard the song years ago on the CBC. Last night, as I was drifting off to sleep, it popped up in my head with a label attached that read "You need to find this on YouTube and put it into the 'bangers' thread..."

My project of transforming my mother's freezer from ingredients to finished meals is slowly making headway. The bit of ham is now portioned ham and scalloped potatoes, there are two kinds of soup portioned out (Mom loves soup) and I have a couple of venison shanks becoming soup in the slow cooker today while we're at the hospital. Deer roam the property all year long and loiter at the apple trees though late summer and autumn, so my father never had to go far once hunting season rolled around. He built a blind in a large tree overlooking one of the apples...usually has a specific one picked out by mid-summer, so he sits in his blind and waits for "his" deer to come for a nibble. Hunting season for him typically lasts just a few hours.

We have them for miles along the roadside here, too. They do produce a bean-esque seed, but I don't know if they're edible. I've often wondered about that...Google it is. ...aaaannnnd, no they're not. Toxicity varies, but they're full of alkaloids and antinutrient enzymes and such. I've been meaning to look that up for a long time, but never thought of it when I was in front of a computer.

Thanks for the reminder! I've been busy with family matters this past two weeks, and hadn't thought to check whether it was "live." Here's the link.

...and a musical interlude, just because I thought of it at 2 AM:

We were all thinking it.

"The sausages are for the ones who know what their sins are, and want to atone for something specific." -Douglas Adams, So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

Onetime eGulleter Farid Zadi is doing North African/Mexican fusion in and around LA, and earning much attention and praise thereby.

Those are hard to get in my neck of the woods, alas.

So they go along with starfruit and dragon fruit in the "pretty but bland" category?

When my restaurant was open, stoneground Red Fife from our local organic mill (Speerville) accounted for about 60% of the flour in my house-baked bread. The end result was pretty tasty, if I do say so myself (I used smaller amounts of spelt, buckwheat and rye flour for a hint of sweetness and depth of flavor, and a smidge of gluten for structure).

Bottom line, you're trading volume for margin. You'll have to calculate the time you'll invest (and the impact on your retail sales) against the money you'll make from the wholesale order. When my parents had their bakery, they dabbled in wholesale for about five months before concluding it was just not worth their time. Admittedly there was one specific customer who was a tremendous PITA and that may have accelerated the decision a bit (my father, who was half the man's size, told him if he didn't leave he was going to be thrown out on his ear).

While you're awaiting a response from a more dedicated brownie baker (I don't care for 'em, and therefore don't make them often)...to my eye that's more egg and less fat than many recipes I've seen. Truthfully, even the photo accompanying the recipe makes them look somewhat dry. If all else fails, underbake them slightly.

I think the issue is cooking time. A potentially bacteria-laden steak spending 20 minutes on the grill has given pathogens little time to grow in the temperature "danger zone." The same steak spending an hour or longer in a sous-vide bath has a higher likelihood of pathogens reaching an infective dose. Longer-cooking cuts are riskier, of course, because if you haven't pasteurized the meat completely at the beginning of your cook time you are essentially creating a pathogen incubator.

"Wax apples" were new to me. Hurray for Google.

We've all been there. In the case of my worst mandoline cut, I was actually using the guard but a carrot stuck and my little finger ended up hitting the blade before the guard. That wasn't a happy night. Fortunately the building owner's niece, an experienced RN, was in the next room and bandaged me up quickly and neatly.

How you approach the mechanics of the cut is less about rules than common sense, and which knife you're using. For example with a sandwich on a crusty roll and deli meats, you might use a chef's knife to chop, point down, with the traditional rocking motion. If the knife is dull, though, you might do better to hold it at an angle and make a drawing stroke. Or you might find yourself cutting a squishy sandwich with a chef's knife rather than a serrated knife, just because that's what is available. Then you'd saw gently with minimal downward pressure, mimicking the way you'd use a serrated blade. In sum, I guess, it's analog rather than binary. There's a continuum rather than an either-or.

A friend of mine who raised Berkshires used to tell customers at the farmer's market, "Television is what people do if they don't have pigs to watch." His hogs played freely in their field and rooted to their heart's content. One would occasionally test the limits and get out, but because of the geography of his farm (on a peninsula, sticking out into the river) there wasn't really anywhere they could go cause mischief. They and the sheep eyeballed each other with mutual mistrust from their respective sides of the dividing fence, and amusing encounters between them often became fodder for next market day's customer chit-chat. I used a lot of his pork. He also sold home-rendered lard, which labeled as "happy fat." He was clear when talking to his customers that it was lard, but he at least got the chance to talk to them and explain its virtues as a culinary fat whereas if the label had said "lard," they'd just have kept walking.

There's a lot of variability depending on the sandwich, and personal preference. My best approximation to a rule of thumb is: Firm breads with firm fillings can be cut with a chef knife or similar, soft breads and squishy fillings require a serrated knife and a light hand.

They look somewhat apricot-ish. Would that be the closest comparison, or are they more plum-like?

Perhaps that's where Garrett picked it up. Apropos of the "ear food" thread, Dury is another favorite of mine.

Michelin-starred UK chef Graham Garrett, a drummer in various bands in back in the 80s, has just released a memoir of his transition from rock 'n' roll also-ran to culinary "rock star." Its title? Sex and Drugs and Sausage Rolls