chromedome

Here in my neck of the woods, the not-on-sale price for a whole, uncooked chicken at the supermarket is typically $12-$14 (CDN). On sale, it drops down to maybe $7 or $8. Cost of a rotisserie chicken at the same supermarket would be comparable. The rotisserie bird at Costco sells for $7.99 up here, rather than $4.99 (as in the US), but it's a similar bargain in local terms. To my taste it's over-salted, but cooked properly (so it's tender and juicy) while the supermarket rotisserie birds are almost invariably dry. So when I buy one it's a combination of the low price, the convenience and the fact that it's properly cooked. The over-seasoning isn't as obvious after the bird cools, and it's relatively straightforward to correct for in any case. It's not something I buy a lot, but I appreciate it for what it is. Now that we're in the country, and getting home from a shopping trip takes most of an hour, it's nice to bring home something that makes for a quick meal.

When I was in residence, (cough) years ago, the rumor was that one of my fellow students had succeeded in concealing a microwave in his room for two years by putting a doily and a pair of rabbit ears on top. I never saw this with my own eyes, but it was plausible enough to gain wide credence among us (both microwaves and TVs tended to be large brown boxes in the late 70s).

Apparently I owe the slugs in my garden a (partial) apology. Looked out my window earlier today and found stepdaughter's mastiff grazing on my bean plants. The electric fence goes back up tomorrow (it rained too much today...again...).

Harvested my scapes today, too. May get a pic later. I actually took photos of my garden with the intention of posting them here before I went to NS, but ran out of time and now they're sadly out of date. I'll try to find a few dry hours to get some new photos. I can't currently hill my potatoes or create any new beds because the soil is so sodden, but at least the weeks of wet have been good for weeding. Pulling the little buggers while the soil is wet improves the likelihood of getting them up by the root. It's also been a good few days on "slug patrol." They like the wet, so I've been able to wreak death and destruction on an Old Testament scale within the local gastropod population. They savaged my broccoli beds while I was away, so I was very much in the mood for retribution.

First meaningful harvest for me, yesterday. From L to R: Radish greens, Black Magic kale (a Tuscan/"dinosaur"/lacinato variety), mixed salad greens, chard, and Prism kale (a curly variety). Not pictured, the first dozen or so snap peas which disappeared quickly as a snack. The chard and Black Magic went into my GF's dinner, the radish greens went into mine, the salad greens went into the fridge for the next few days' lunches, and the Prism kale was blanched and frozen. The first of many, many bags of greens that will go into my freezer over the next few months.

This post combines a couple of my favorites. One of my favorite (lighter weight) CBC radio shows is called Under the Influence, hosted by longtime ad exec Terry O'Reilly, and covers (of course) advertising. Many years ago he ran a campaign for the NB-based Moosehead brewery, and to his surprise Alan Arkin - one of my longtime favorites - stepped up and wanted to do the series of commercials. Turns out he kept a vacation cottage in Cape Breton and drank Moosehead regularly, and was perfectly happy to give them his time for the non-"celebrity spokesperson" budget they'd allocated. Here's a link to O'Reilly's explanation of how it all came about (offered in Arkin's memory), and one of the ads in question. Disclaimer: O'Reilly's "fun story" isn't all that funny, but the ad captures Arkin's dry delivery pretty well (the campaign won industry awards that year in Canada).

I would also recommend Craig "Meathead" Goldwyn's site, Amazing Ribs. Underneath the "good ol' boy schtick" he's a serious food writer who delves into the science of barbecue, and has lots of excellent information on technique etc. https://amazingribs.com/

Those are very different from the candy sold here under the same name, mainly by NB-based Ganong but also by NS-based Robertson's. The local version is cinnamon candy with a chocolate center (ie the "marrow"). This kind date from 1885. https://ganongchocolatier.shop/products/chicken-bone

When I lived in Newfoundland we had a handful of favorite berry patches. The tastiest blackberries were the ones we dubbed the "saber-toothed berries" for their thorns. We wore long-sleeved heavy coats (in the muggy late-summer heat!) to pick them. ...after doing a quick "bear check," of course, to ensure that we were the only ones harvesting at the moment. Bears know a good berry when they find it, too.

I've tried and failed to grow it both indoors and outdoors, which irritated me greatly. It's a bloody weed, why would it not grow! Grrr. DIdn't get any seeds this year, but plan to try again next spring.

I just Googled it. It's been a few years, I have no idea which recipe I used.

So would Chromedome. I make that kind of salad a lot, especially in winter when the salad greens at the supermarket are poor. I've had minimal success growing collards here, but I harvest chard, beet greens, turnip greens, radish greens, and usually 2-4 kinds of kale in any given gardening season. I eat a LOT of greens, as you may guess. Two years ago I did very well at my community garden and had over 30 lbs blanched and frozen for the winter. Last year was unsettled because of our move, and all of the family turmoil with my mother-in-law passing, my GF being crippled with arthritis, and of course being treated for cancer myself (it was quite a year!) so I didn't manage nearly that much. I'm optimistic that this year will be much better on that front. I like a lot of 'em just blanched briefly and then sauteed for a minute or two with garlic and onions. I like pungent greens with sesame seeds, kale in soups and bean dishes, and baby kale just in salads. I've used my garden greens in lieu of grape leaves to make quasi-dolmas. I've even made the Provençal tart with apples, chard and raisins (it was better than you might imagine). That's just off the top of my head. It's been a busy day of visiting (currently at my mom's nursing home, waiting to video-chat with my nephew and his family out in BC).

Ditto, in Firefox.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/27/pompeii-fresco-find-possibly-depicts-2000-year-old-form-of-pizza

I'm in the "roll out of bed and eat immediately" camp, but my usual breakfast is already-prepared steel-cut oats so prep is 1 minute and 40 seconds in the microwave. Boring and not photogenic, which is why I seldom participate in the breakfast thread. My GF is a late sleeper by inclination and work schedule, so she's up at noon and ready to contemplate food by 8PM or thereabouts. So any kind of elaborate breakfast is a very occasional thing done with the grandkids. Waffles and suchlike.

Weirdly, here in Atlantic Canada, a significant minority insist that it's "just not chili" without olives in it. Usually the most generic, pimento-stuffed kind. I don't get it.

Inevitably, it's been memed.

Well, "hen in the yard" is as low as it can get, though it comes up a bit if you're feeding it store-bought feed and/or scraps from your kitchen. But that's not the point, or the target, because the cumulative number of hens in yards across the continent is less than a rounding error relative to the total number of chickens. If the lab-grown version can get its costs and carbon footprint below those of battery-raised, factory-farmed meat chickens, it'll be a net positive. (ETA: ...and of course chickens have a far lower carbon footprint than pork, lamb, beef, etc) That didn't work out with vertical farming (as Tamar Haspel put it, "Lettuce is cheap and power is expensive, why did anyone think this would work?") but potentially the questions of scale could be resolved for lab-grown meat. And yes, "potentially" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. I actually posed that question somewhere here on the board a number of years ago, because I was genuinely interested to hear some differing viewpoints on the subject, but it seems vegans are in short supply on eG. I suppose it would weaken the ethical argument somewhat ("No animals were harmed in the preparation of this dish!") though not the health-related arguments. To be clear, I'm personally an omnivore so I have no skin in the game, I was just curious. Major players like Perdue are throwing significant funding into this research, on the basis that if it becomes "the next thing" they want to profit from it (just as, in an unrelated field, a Shell Oil subsidiary is the world's leading vendor of grid-scale battery storage for renewables). I'm just turning 60 this year, and have lots of nonagenarians on both sides of my family, so barring accidents I expect these products to come to market during my lifetime. As/if/when they do, I don't anticipate treating them any differently than I do "real" meats. I tend to shop opportunistically - looking for bargains and planning my meals accordingly, rather than planning a meal and then shopping for it - so, as always, I'll follow the deals. For anyone who's interested in a nuts-and-bolts look at the technology from the industry's perspective, here's a link I'd posted elsewhere a few days ago. https://www.crbgroup.com/insights/food-beverage/cultured-meat#:~:text=Cultured meat—also known as,a variety of meat products.

Whole Foods' 365 Organic frozen blackberries are being recalled for possible listeria contamination. The recall affects BC and Ontario. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/365-whole-foods-market-brand-organic-blackberries-frozen-recalled-due-possible?utm_source=gc-notify&utm_medium=email&utm_content=en&utm_campaign=hc-sc-rsa-22-23

Realized the other day that a year from now will be 45 for me. I doubt anyone will organize a reunion, though. There were only 12 in my graduating class, and I doubt any two of us live within 1000 km of each other these days.

I'm with Dave the Cook, the question lends itself to empirical verification. Two pieces of meat, identical cooking conditions, one with the additions and one without. Why get bogged down in theory, when you can resolve it in practice? I'd be curious to know the outcome, even if I never actually make use of the information.

Shades of the famous "stone soup" of yore.

Stealing a few minutes during my lunch for an update. One of our does has been a bit of an escape artist (her name is Aster, nicknamed "pain in my"), and what with one thing and another we'd never managed to get a litter out of her. Either she was AWL at the crucial moment, or her breeding didn't "take," or what have you (breeders can and do manually assist, but we're not that hard-core). Recently she did give us a small litter, but when we checked on them after 24 hours one had died and the remaining three were clearly hungry and weak. Whether she was rejecting them or just plain clueless is uncertain, but we transferred them to the next cage where the super-reliable Posey had just had her own litter. All of them are now fat and flourishing, so there was no issue with her accepting them. That's probably not universally true, but it worked for us in this instance. We'd also ordered up a quantity of watering containers for the cages. Last year, as I'd mentioned earlier, we had a gravity-fed system of hoses running to nipples attached to the cages. This wasn't ideal, and we thought individual waterers were probably a better solution than open dishes which can easily be fouled or spilled. So we brought in a bunch and put them on the outdoor cages (the youngsters) and a few of the indoor cages. We need to order more when cash flow permits, because the plan for winter is to have two sets and simply swap them out twice/day so there's a non-frozen source of water. A few days later we randomly had a dead adolescent, followed by a couple more on the ensuing days. After some panic, and a few sad morning burials, I eventually deduced that while most of the bunnies had successfully adapted to their new drinkers, a couple hadn't and were dying of dehydration. I've gone back to having an open dish in that one cage as a backup, and there were no more deaths after that. The two younger litters behind that one adapted with no issues, so it seems as long as they're exposed early in life they'll figure it out. Lesson learned. We're now at the point of actively advertising our current bucks for rehoming as pets or breeders, and Aster as a pet (though someone took on our other problematic doe to see if a change of scenery would help, so who knows?). The older adolescents hit harvest age last week but we didn't have time to do the deed, so that will have to happen this weekend before I go to NS for my monthly visit (my sister will be here from Vancouver, so it's this year's Really Big Deal visit). That in turn will free up a cage for the now-departed Silverbell's fast-growing litter to come outside and live on the grass in one of the larger cages. Our next-gen bucks are California/Rex and California/New Zealand crosses, so they'll be smaller when full-grown than our current Flemish Giants but they grow more quickly to harvest weight and have a better meat-to-bone ratio. We'll be breeding them into our current Flemish bloodlines, with the ultimate goal of having bunnies that grow somewhat larger than the California crosses but somewhat faster than the Flemish Giants. We'll see how that plays out.

I'm mildly surprised the allium flavors/aromas don't penetrate the corks. Though I suppose the bottles in your wine fridge are probably the ones earmarked for near-term consumption, so it probably doesn't much matter.