chromedome

I've said on many occasions that if anyone is left to pronounce an elegy over our current culture/civilization, that will be it.

"Long Pig Longings" was my hypothetical title for an anthropophagical tome.

Thanks, I'll take a look at those.

I'll follow up on the seafood. I don't think I can plausibly put the cheeses forward as a health-food option, at least not in a way that would be accepted by the archetypal fad-driven health-conscious shopper.

Oddly, though we're a backwater in so many other ways, we have a number of very good cheeses here in southern New Brunswick. Armadale Dairy (a Dutch family) makes raw-milk gouda, edam, havarti, and other items such as butter, quark and yogurt. Au Fond des Bois does goat cheeses; no longer raw-milk (alas!) under the new owners but still very good. La Faim du Loup/Bergerie aux Quatre Vents makes raw-milk cheeses from sheep's milk and cow's milk, and Jolly Farmer does a dozen fairly mainstream (cheddar, mozza) but good raw-milk cheeses. Bergerie aux Quatre Vents is especially good, and you can find a few of theirs in specialty shops across the country.

How about groan-worthy company names or advertising slogans? One of my personal favourites comes from Bernardin, a Canadian manufacturer of Mason jars and related accessories. Their slogan? "Because you can."

I'm a big fan of marrow, but I prefer it on toast. The textural contrast moderates the richness nicely. FWIW, marrow fat is -- surprisingly -- largely unsaturated.

"Compound" chips, like the "chocolatey" coating on candy bars, often replace the cocoa butter with cheaper fats; some of those can help the chips hold their shape. As it happens, @Kerry Beal talks a bit about compound chocolate on her site.

You can always use chowder as a filling for bouchees, if you want to stick to finger foods but keep the New England theme.

Some of you know that I've been a full-time freelance writer since I closed my restaurants in early 2011. I currently have an interesting assignment on my plate, and I'd like to get a bit of feedback from those of you who frequent Whole Foods. I'd originally intended to ask a few of you through private messaging, but site staff opined that a forum thread would be appropriate. My assignment is to pick seven or more healthy foods (however I choose to define the term) that are cheaper at Whole Foods than at mainstream supermarkets (this should probably include Walmart and Costco, as well as Kroger, Safeway, Albertsons and their regional counterparts such as Publix and HEB). It's not as far-fetched as it sounds; the company has made a deliberate push to lower many prices since the crash of 2008-2009. The difficulty for me is that I live in Atlantic Canada, far from Whole Foods and its competitors, so I have to do my research at arm's length. I've Googled some similar articles, and could complete the assignment by cherry-picking individual items from those and then price-checking them at a handful of representative stores, but I have two quibbles with that approach: 1) It doesn't "add value" for readers; and 2) Where's the fun in that? I felt that soliciting the collective wisdom of my peers here at eG was a happier alternative, and that it might make an ongoingly useful "reference thread" for those with a WF in their vicinity. So how about it, Whole Foods aficionados? What surprising bargains do you find there?

For me they're always an "ideas" thing. Some stuff appeals and some doesn't, but analyzing the reasons why I like or dislike something is the important part of the exercise. ...and of course, some are just plain fun to read. I defy anyone -- especially a gardener -- not to snicker at the rabbit recipe in Edna Staebler's "Food That Really Schmecks."

I find that unless a sauce is drastically over-seasoned, unsalted pasta just sucks the life out of it. On the other hand, the "make it really briny" approach feels over-seasoned to my palate. I always just eyeball mine, but I'll say it's about a tablespoon for 4 litres.

Oooooohhh...if that was my establishment, I'd have to start a home-delivery service just so I could call it "Chequit At the Door."

The change was unquestionably a brilliant marketing ploy. Alas, it coincided with a sharp increase in their price (at least in my neck of the woods).

I'm sure. I've mentioned before that my father's been hand-selecting his for size for over 20 years, and now grows seriously huge garlic (it's a hard-neck variety called "Music," for those of you who are gardeners). Aside from its size, one of the things I appreciate about his garlic is its very stiff skins...not reminiscent of tissue paper, like you'd find on most garlic, but more like the pasteboard used for business cards. When I whack it with the flat of my knife, the skin usually pulls right off in one or two pieces. Very convenient.

A friend of mine threatened to call his punk band The Kosher Cheeseburgers, but he didn't think enough people would get it.

I hear you. Packing and unpacking was the worst part of my farmer's market gig, especially when I was cramming it all into a Mazda Protege (the four-door, not the hatch). Life got a lot simpler when I picked up a used minivan.

I would also point out that the creation of a YouTube video does, to some extent, add value. My ex-wife, to name just one, was a very visual learner...watching a recipe prepared on YouTube would do much, much, more for her than just reading the recipe. For those who are less experienced cooks or bakers, it also neatly answers the question "Is it supposed to look like that?", which is one I remember well from my younger days. I don't know if that makes it a "derivative work" under the accepted norms applying to intellectual property (we lament the absence of The Fat Guy even more during this kind of discussion) but I believe that's what it is.

So you're not a chowder fan, I gather? Actually, here on the East Coast baking fillets in milk is one of the standard old-school cooking methods. I guess it's what you grow up with.

Well, I once absent-mindedly licked the spoon after scooping freshly caramelized sugar out of a pot, so I'm not one to throw the first stone.

My classmates and I at culinary school constructed an entire lexicon of euphemisms for such occasions (or "alternate facts," if you will). Anything that turned out butt-ugly was, of course, "rustic," burnt translated to "deeply caramelized," and so on. As students, of course, we had ample opportunity to work on this vocabulary.

That. In my younger days I was a retail store manager. District office shared space with the Western regional office, which meant that the Regional Manager was there as well as the District Manager. Once a month, we trooped in for a DM's meeting. These ordinarily lasted two hours, and during the entire two hours we dreaded the sound of the door opening. If we were lucky, it was just the district secretary calling a manager to the phone. If we were unlucky, it was the Regional Manager poking his nose in to say "When you're done, Don, if I could just have a word with the troops for a moment?" The Regional Manager was a nice enough guy, but that meant you weren't going to be home for dinner. This was a man who could take 20 minutes just to tell you what time it was, so when he actually had a point or policy he wanted to convey it was excruciating. Typically his "few minutes" translated to anything from 90 minutes to 2 hours on top of the scheduled 2 hour meeting. Ugh.

I have to say I'm in much the same boat, even after following the thread from start to finish.

I got two confirmations...one immediately, and one about a week ago. Whatevs. I'll get it when I get it.

Almost every recipe on every food blog says it is "adapted from" or "inspired by" a recipe from a book or another blogger. Most of those that don't, should. It's how the principle of fair use works out with recipes: As long as you re-cast the instructional portion into your own words, it's not considered plagiarism.