chromedome

...as one does.

I didn't remember to post it at the time, but on Friday I celebrated my birthday (in part) by cutting some fresh baby kale from my garden. Picking stuff in my garden is not something I've gotten to do very often in December, so there was a strong element of "because I can" involved.

Should you have taken a left turn at Albuquerque? (Seriously, if I'm ever in New Mexico I have to take a selfie doing exactly that...)

I've never seen anyone eat tourtiere with maple syrup, molasses, or cranberry preserves. I have seen a grandkid apply a splot of ketchup to one, and presumably she wasn't unique in doing so, but it's not something I've seen an adult do. The Acadian-descended friend who introduced me to tourtiere (to be clear, it's a Quebec thing not an Acadian thing) served hers with extra gravy, and that's usually the only sauce/condiment I use as well. I've had others but hers is the version I mostly adhere to (no specific recipe as such), with pork as the dominant meat, onions as the only veg and allspice as the dominant seasoning. There are as many variations as cooks, as is usually the case with traditional favorites.

I dunno... eggs and sausage is such a left-field combination...

We have a full-sized chest freezer in the kitchen, plus a full-sized upright, plus two smaller "apartment-sized" chest freezers, plus the drawer in our massive French-door refrigerator. All of which are stuffed. Plan is to pack one of the small chest freezers with rabbit, a second one with "overflow" garden veg and supermarket bargains, and the upright with the current "working quantities" of veg, frozen stock, container portions of prepared/made ahead foods, etc. That should free up a portion of the large chest freezer, and a shelf or two of the upright, for Christmas stuff.

Is it a reference to a movie which involves, among other things, a convertible filled with fish?

I expect it comes down to prioritization. I don't know about the US, but up here the coffee creamers and half-and-half vastly outsell heavy cream, to judge by the number of facings in the dairy case and my own observation of other customers coming and going while I await my turn. If there's a packaging shortage, dairies will absolutely give priority to the higher-selling product.

We've ordered our turkey from the local farmer (at a whopping 70-cent/lb premium over a plain old supermarket bird) and that's about it, except I've been to Costco for walnuts and for ground almonds. I need to reorganize the freezers before I start my cookie-making binge, so I'll have a place to put them.

That was a shock to me when I first moved to Alberta, and the egg yolks - even from a lot of farmer's market vendors - seemed weirdly pale. "Surely," I thought, "Eggs in Alberta can't all just be old?" The explanation I was given (if you're going to ask that kind of question, culinary school is a good place for it) was that chickens in Alberta are often fed on barley rather than corn, and that it results in paler yolks.

It may just be a quirk of my brain, but for me it immediately conjured up images of the old Reese's ads. "You got peanut butter on my chocolate!" "You got chocolate on my peanut butter!"

I've been meaning to come back and wrap up this topic for the year, but you know... one thing and another, busy-ness, blah blah blah. I'm taking today off from work, to mark my completion of a 60th orbit around the sun, so I'll rattle off a quick final installment here. I harvested our final batch of youngsters for the year in mid-November, before my last visit to NS. We're now down to next year's 11 breeders, plus Sugar - the last of our three initial bunnies - who is transitioning from "working doe" to "house pet." That involves some give and take around our granddaughter and her ability/willingness to accept and demonstrate responsibility, so for now she lives in a cage in our (fenced) back yard and is let out most days for at least a brief opportunity to hop around, socialize, nibble the dandelions, etc. Our current breeders represent the transition I'd mentioned between all Flemish Giants and mixtures with other meat breeds. In the smaller breeds, we have Pepper 2 and Frankie (black buck, white doe) as well as our three grey breeders. The grey buck is Ash, and the two does are Stormy and Misty. I'd hoped to name them Agnes (a literary reference) and Jane (an historical one) but my GF had already written those names on her breeding sheets so it was a done deal. On the Flemish side we have a white buck with grey nose and ears, named Max, and we have two does (Sugar's daughters) in the same color scheme. I argued that if one has a buck named Max one must therefore have a doe named Min, but was overruled. I'd mentioned upthread that Max was named after the character of that name in the "Max and Ruby" childrens' books and animated show, so she had already settled on calling the does Ann and Ruby (because "Max - Ann - Ruby"). Then we have our two black does that you've already met, Noir and Ebony (also Flemish) and a black Flemish buck named Jett. Most of the bunnies are quite friendly and sweet-natured, though a couple (Noir and Jett in particular) are wary of physical contact. Sugar and her daughters are the most affectionate, with Ann and Ruby coming to the front of their cage at every feeding to solicit pets, offer friendly nose-boops, and just generally enjoy a few minutes' affection. Sugar is very much the same: when I got back from my most recent trip to NS (after 5 days away) she pinballed around her cage in excitement, and burrowed her face into my hand just as the pups and cat do. We'd originally suspended our cages from the rafters inside the rabbitry as an added protection against predators, but now that we have 15 months' experience to work with we're confident that it's not a concern, so we're moving them back out to the walls and mounting them directly. The cage containing Jett, Ebony and Noir is already in its new location, and I've got most of the prep done to move two other cages (the one with Max, Ruby and Ann; and the one with Pepper and Frankie) to the long side wall. That will create enough additional space to move the three greys indoors, which hasn't happened yet. They'll be secured to the barn wall. Over the winter I'll be shortening the height of the larger cages by about 8 inches and then reattaching their roofs, which will give us enough vertical height to allow for a second cage underneath (and a panel of sheet metal in between, to catch droppings from the "upstairs neighbors." That'll give us enough housing to keep next year's adolescents indoors, something we'd been contemplating for the last several months. Having them out on grass was emotionally intuitive, but in practice the benefits weren't there and - as you'll recall - we learned a harsh lesson about parasites. In the spring I'll rearrange the tarps on the outer walls to allow for them opening and closing, and will make the indoor life rather more gracious during the warm months. The scenario will doubtless evolve further, over time. We didn't add chickens this summer, as we'd hoped/intended, but plan to have the infrastructure in place by spring. GF is also obsessed with the notion of having a small flock of quail in an indoor cage, and that may happen sooner. We'll see. I need to reorganize/ defrost our freezers now that the various harvests are done (and to make room for some make-ahead holiday baking), and will weigh our total season's accumulation of rabbit when I do that.

Crab skin is always crispy, and therefore wasn't explicitly called out...

Many years ago I had a friend who wanted to call his punk band the "Kosher Cheeseburgers," but didn't think enough people would get the joke.

For those in BC, another salmonella/cantaloupe recall. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/fresh-cut-cantaloupe-products-recalled-due-salmonella?utm_source=gc-notify&utm_medium=email&utm_content=en&utm_campaign=hc-sc-rsa-22-23

I've often wondered how long it would take an indie ice cream shop called Jen & Barry's to get their first cease-and-desist.

So it's... the CSO of air fryers?

LOL Just a couple of days ago I told my GF that I want that song played at my (hopefully long-deferred) funeral, just to mess with people.

It's on the rinds, but who do you know who scrubs a cantaloupe all over with a brush before slicing it? ...and of course there's the counter you've set it on when you got home from the store, the shelf in your fridge, your hands, etc.

My office is small and lined with bookshelves, so I can pluck from either side by leaning no more than a foot to the corresponding direction. I don't have a specific spot for my seed catalogues (I need more bookshelves, but first I have to get busy inventing a "wall stretcher"), so I just rest them on top of the books. I was deeply amused one day to realize that my seed catalogues live in the "fantasy" section of my shelves...

I called time on my broccoli and broccolini yesterday, after one more harvest (3 or 4 cups of tender young buds and florets). They've been holding up so far but not really growing much either, and with the overnight low forecast to hit -11C (-20 with the wind chill) it seemed like an appropriate moment. I've reallocated their covers to a couple of beds of hardy greens that were inadequately protected until now, and will hope to coax another few weeks (perhaps a month?) out of those. I also harvested the last of my "watermelon" radishes, which had been overlooked until now. That leaves some carrots still in the ground, as well as a couple of beds of kale, chard and/or beets. The actual beetroot is one of the last things I harvest, once I've given up on getting any more greens. Regrettably I didn't take any photos of the broccoli, though the one just a bit upthread gives you the idea. I will say it was unusually tasty after having a few touches of frost. Late-season cabbages and kale are well-known to be sweeter after some cold, so I guess it's not really surprising. On the whole I haven't had a lot of opportunity over the years to experiment with cold frames or simple row covers, and I've been pleasantly surprised at how much of a difference they make. I haven't usually been able to stretch my growing season this late into the year, so definitely I'll try to do more of this in future.

As expected, the recall has been updated to cover most of the other provinces. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/malichita-brand-and-rudy-brand-cantaloupes-recalled-due-salmonella