chromedome

An industry-facing view of the challenges facing the "cell-cultured meat" industry, for anyone who's interested in seeing how it's perceived from that side of the counter. https://www.crbgroup.com/insights/food-beverage/cultured-meat#:~:text=Cultured meat—also known as,a variety of meat products.

I share a house with three grandkids. Most recent incident was a tall bottle of apple juice, with the lid cross-threaded, and then replaced on its side on a shelf because the pockets on the door were full. Sigh. I also check the kitchen frequently to make sure the French-door fridge has been properly closed.

There's an interesting new study been published in Nature Communications. The authors have done something that's unusual and difficult in dietary research; they've constructed a controlled experiment comparing and contrasting two very specific diets. One was a version of the much-maligned "standard Western diet," the other was a diet high in fiber and resistant starches. The result, after analysis, was that the high-fiber diet resulted in fewer calories being consumed by the host (ie, the human) and more being consumed by the gut's microbiota. Here are links to the study itself, and to a layperson-friendly explanation on WaPO: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38778-x https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/06/13/weight-loss-calories-fiber-microbiome/ A number of caveats apply, including the small number of test subjects (17 total) and the short duration of the study (22 days), but given the inherent difficulty in getting volunteers to live in confinement and eat a measured diet, those are probably unavoidable. Given the constraints, the researchers did a pretty remarkable job of identifying and coping with potentially confounding factors (the research equivalent of HACCP, if you will). It's at most a foundation for future research to build on, but it's a good foundation methodologically.

I can't answer for anyone else's experience, but I have personally seen a teen eat 2 packages of instant noodles (not Momofuku, mind you) before dinner "just to hold me over." And then polish off a fair-sized meal afterwards.

I must have missed that one amid the flood of non-food recalls this past couple of days. There's also an update to the recall on Saladitos lupini that I'd posted earlier, they're now known to have been sold in Ontario and Nova Scotia as well.

I've read a few of her books, and found them excellent and well-written. Used a couple of her recipes in cooking classes, and they turned out as they were supposed to. IMO, that's the desired combination in a cookbook writer.

Apparently Netflix is opening a limited-time popup with chefs from some of its cooking shows. That's...interesting. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/13/netflix-is-opening-its-first-restaurant.html

When making eggs for the grandkids, I'll often follow the same basic procedure but add a food coloring of their choice to the whites. The original point of departure for this was, unsurprisingly, Green Eggs and Ham. It's a fun little thing to do.

What they really needed was for one of their other products to be a hit. By all accounts their heated blender was a perfectly decent product, and they had their own sous vide circulator, etc, but nothing else they'd come up with really filled a gap the way the IP did. Adding an air fryer lid to the IP was at most an evolutionary step, but otherwise it was all "me too-ism."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/instant-brands-bankruptcy-1.6874487

It wasn't, for me. Maybe they have a limit on free articles/month? Obviously I don't trip across Pennsylvanian publications very often.

Found this article about three tweets deep in a discussion somewhere or other, and found it quite fascinating (having been basically a one-man show at my own rather less-exalted place). https://www.phillymag.com/foobooz/2023/05/13/alexandra-holt-roxanne/

Having said that, mind you, if you care to post (or DM me) links to her papers, GF and I would be keen to have a look at 'em. I don't know how much is applicable to rabbits, but it would still be interesting.

Oy. Yeah, I don't plan on gaining that level of expertise. I just feed 'em.

There is a saying that "the dosage makes the poison;" meaning that some things can be ingested safely, or even have beneficial results, in a given quantity. That last phrase is key: "...in a given quantity." As Pastrygirl said upthread, an excess of perfectly good potable water can kill you (this is not a hypothetical, it's happened). Most of the world's medicines, herbs, etc are toxic at levels in excess of their recommended dosage, even familiar ones like Tylenol (and in fact, Canada recently lowered its maximum allowable dosage for Tylenol). In the case of botulinum toxin - which is what you're dicing with in this particular instance - a lethal dose for humans is considered to be in the range of 2 billionths of a gram per kilo of body weight. It's considered to be the most potent toxin yet identified by science. It is, to be blunt, not something to fuck around with. https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/there-s-toxicity-and-there-s-toxicity

Oh, we've already learned that breeding for color is an exercise in randomness. We bred our grey doe to our white buck, for example, and got 2 grey, 1 black and 5 white kits. I haven't looked into the genetics of it myself but my GF has. If I understand the scenario correctly, it takes a few generations of selecting for color-dominance before you consistently get uniform litters. In our case, for example, white doe Sugar consistently gives us all-white litters when bred with white buck Snowball, but her littermate Salt did not. So make of that what you will.

Well, now. This is a line of research I hadn't stumbled across before, and it's certainly intriguing. If they can figure it out, it will provide a new path to hybridization that could create stable crops with seeds that can be saved for reuse. https://www.science.org/content/article/game-changer-scientists-are-genetically-engineering-crops-clone-themselves

I believe I've mentioned a time or two that our white buck, Snowball, is a big fella even by Flemish Giant standards. Here's the photographic evidence:

I suspect we may be related...

The notion of a Spam-carving contest put me in mind of this comedy about butter-carving competitions from a decade or so ago. Well worth watching, btw, if your sense of humor skews just that little bit dark. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1349451/

My daughter sent me this one (c/o the "Dubious Restaurant Design" office):

Two to be aware of, this weekend: "Alasko" brand IQF raspberries and "Antioxidant blend" are being recalled for potential norovirus contamination. They were mainly sold into the foodservice channel, it appears, though you may also have seen them sold as bulk freezer packs in retail stores. The recall affects everybody from Ontario east. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/alasko-brand-iqf-whole-raspberries-and-iqf-antioxidant-blend-recalled-due-norovirus?utm_source=gc-notify&utm_medium=email&utm_content=en&utm_campaign=hc-sc-rsa-22-23 The other one is Saladito brand lupini beans in a jar, which are being recalled for botulism. They were only sold in Quebec, apparently, but I'm throwing it in here (despite the lack of an ongoing Quebec presence on the boards) because a) sometimes eGers vacation there, and also b) products from Quebec often find their way into Ontario as gifts and such. Though I know that Anna N, for one, can be marked safe from receiving beans as a gift. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/saladitos-brand-lupini-beans-recalled-due-potential-presence-dangerous-bacteria?utm_source=gc-notify&utm_medium=email&utm_content=en&utm_campaign=hc-sc-rsa-22-23

It feels odd to say this, given that we haven't even reached the solstice yet, but we're well into our last breeding cycle for this year. Little grey doe Silverbell's kits have been weaned, we have new babies from the black does, the brown does are due in the next day or two, and our remaining white doe (Sugar) will have hers around month-end. That means her litter will be ready for harvest around the end of October or beginning of November, at which point we'll get everything buttoned down and snugged up for the winter. This also means we'll be rehoming our current generation of breeders in favor of new stock, which will be just a bit melancholy. They all have their own distinct personalities, of course, and we've grown fond of them. The bucks in particular are very sociable and enjoy being petted and handled. But refreshing your breeding stock is always a part of good husbandry, and you do it more often with small animals that have rapid reproductive cycles. We've already rehomed Silverbell into a household where she'll be a pet. Our brown buck was a pet before he came to us, and may go as either a pet or a breeder. We aren't going to be raising any brown bunnies next year, so there's also a possibility that we'll offer all three as a package deal for someone who wants to start raising rabbits. Going forward we're going to have a buck and two does in each of white, black and grey. This is because (as mentioned previously) my GF has plans for the pelts. Originally she'd planned on white and black only (and yes, we'd joked about her Cruella de Vil color scheme) but little Silverbell was so beautiful that she decided there was room in her vision for shades of grey as well. We already have our second-generation breeders in hand, though most of them aren't yet of breeding age. The exception is our two black does, who are sisters and were kept back from one of our earlier litters. They're already second-generation. The grandkids named our new black buck Pepper, which was in fact the same name as our original black buck (the one that had the misfortune to meet the mastiff in person). He never had the opportunity to contribute to the gene pool, so allowing the new guy to become his namesake won't confuse our record-keeping. The grey buck and does don't have names yet, though one of the bucks will probably be "Smokey" because my granddaughter likes that name. Our juvenile white buck is an interesting case. Most white rabbits have pink eyes, but his are a startlingly deep, vivid blue. It struck me there was an obvious association there, so I've dubbed him Frank after "Ol' Blue Eyes." He's quite the little charmer, very affectionate and keen for attention. So are the new greys, but Pepper is a bit stand-offish so far. It'll be fun getting to know them all over the coming months.

There's tobacco farming in southern Ontario as well, but I guess that would probably have been less of an adventure (probably less money, too!).