chromedome

WaPo columnist Tamar Haspel is fond of pointing out that questions of food, agriculture and sustainability are "all compromises, all the time." We've all seen lots of heated (and inconclusive, and often bad-faith) arguments around things like faux meats and the relative environmental impact of different forms of agriculture ("It's not the cow, it's the how"), but few good ways to compare the impacts of foods on a broad basis. The Economist has come up with an intriguingly simple yardstick for evaluating the carbon cost of foods, which it calls The Banana Index. It uses the banana as a baseline, because it's middling in terms of its climate impact and nutrition, and evaluates other foodstuffs against that baseline. It ranks foods on their emissions impact by weight, by calorie, and by protein value (emissions/100g of protein). Reading the article itself (https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/04/11/a-different-way-to-measure-the-climate-impact-of-food) requires registration or a subscription, but this Twitter thread gives you a look at the print version and also a few of the charts.

I think that may be one of the reasons for their current issues. When stuff lasts forever, you soon stop needing to buy any more.

The Atlantic has just published a story about "nutrition academia" and its response to persistent results across two decades of studies, indicating that - wait for it - ice cream, of all things, might be good for diabetics. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/05/ice-cream-bad-for-you-health-study/673487/

Okay, coconut beet puree catches my interest. I've done things with pureed beets, but "coconut" and "pureed" are words I seldom see together. How did you go about it? I've never paired them, but in my head it seems an interesting combination.

The snow has finally melted from (almost all of) my garden. The garlic is up, and I seem to have overwintered some kale without really meaning to. It should be going great guns by the time everything else is ready to plant, six weeks from now.

Rosemary and garlic is my default pairing with lamb (I dislike mint with lamb, so I'm an outlier), but you can absolutely use too much. There's a story that in the days of primitive microphones, Louis Armstrong stood several feet further back from the rest of his band because he played so loudly that he'd drown them out otherwise. That's how I approach rosemary...it needs to stand WAY back of everything else in order for the flavors to balance nicely.

I do it frequently. In my case I usually serve from a Pyrex measuring cup anyway (elegant tableware, I know...) so I just Saran it when I'm done and stick it in the fridge. Then when I want to reheat I'll scoop out the solidified block of Hollandaise, cut it into chunks for faster/easier melting, and put it back in the Pyrex in a gentle water bath. Stir regularly as it melts, then progress to whisking as the lumps become smaller. Lift it out of the water bath as needed, if it seems to be warm enough to threaten the emulsion. If it shows signs of breaking, just rescue it with a few drops of cold water as you would when making it fresh.

There are a LOT of alerts on the list for undeclared allergens. I generally only post the ones that involve food safety in the classic sense (pathogens, foreign matter, etc), but the allergen ones come up a lot more frequently.

On a gardening page I follow on FB, someone commented yesterday that "Buying seeds is a whole other hobby apart from gardening, I swear!"

The sides of the shelter extend out a couple of feet, and the intent is that you bury them under a heavy load of soil or gravel to prevent the wind getting underneath and picking them up. There are also auger-type stakes (the kind you see used for staking out dogs in the yard) at all four corners, with guy ropes. Consensus is that you'll want to have at least double that number, with a sturdy rope crossing your greenhouse's roof from the stake on one side to the stake on the other. This, plus physical/weight-based anchoring of the structure itself, seems to do the job pretty adequately by all accounts.

I have this one: https://www.aosom.ca/item/outsunny-20x10x7ft-heavy-duty-tunnel-walk-in-greenhouse-outdoor-backyard-seed-plant-vegetables-grow-warm-house-white~845-233WT.html?recv=eyJwYWdldHlwZSI6ImN0ZyIsInBhZ2VpZCI6Ik91dGRvb3IgPiBMYXduICYgR2FyZGVuID4gR3JlZW5ob3VzZXMgPiBUdW5uZWwgR3JlZW5ob3VzZXMifQ==&_ac=Category-Tunnel Greenhouses It's still in the box, so I have no direct feedback on it yet, but the consensus online is that it's a fairly typical example of the genre. They need to be well-anchored against wind, so I plan to screw the bottom rail of mine to 2X8 or 2X10 boards and take advantage of my plentiful supply of stone to weigh down the perimeter. If you only plan seasonal use you don't need to worry about snow load, but if you want to leave it up into early winter it's good to reinforce the hoops in one way or another. If you look around YouTube you'll find lots of videos where people show what has and hasn't worked for them. Some go to the extent of putting in a Sonotube full of concrete with rebar set into it, as an anchor point. I probably won't go that far, because the spot I've selected will be sheltered from the worst winds by woods on the north and northwest sides (the direction of my prevailing winds). I don't remember which part of Cape Breton you're in, but if it's a gusty spot you can't go wrong using more/better anchoring options. I'm going to put in probably a meter-wide raised bed along the south side of the greenhouse for heat-loving plants (okra, peppers, maybe some melons. The north side will initially contain three tables' worth of seedlings and some water barrels for passive solar heat, but the tables will come out and be replaced by planters once May rolls around and I plant things out into my main garden. I opted for this because it was cheap and gave me a relatively large enclosure, but it's not really built for long-term use. The poly's generally good for 3-5 years, apparently, before it needs replacing. If you have the budget for something that uses polycarbonate panels instead of a plastic skin, that will certainly last longer. I have the frame of a friend's old shed, and a number of old windows hoarded for the purpose by my stepdaughter and now-deceased son in law, and plan to build a sturdier greenhouse out of those as the summer progresses. We have a "retired" woodstove out in the barn that might conceivably end up in there if I get really ambitious. I also have a couple of smaller collapsible frames, one from a now-defunct tent and one that used to be my father in law's ice-fishing hut, which I'll cover with 6mm poly during the spring and fall for that little bit of extra protection for some plants (probably tomatoes).

First seeds planted in my little indoor greenhouse. This one's reserved for stuff that needs warmth, so currently it contains tomatoes, tomatillos, cucumelons (I first encountered those as "mouse melons," and I still prefer that name), basil and ground cherries. Melons and a few other things will follow as soon as I can get my hands on the seeds. Heading to NS for my monthly visit with my mom and daughter, then when I get home I'll set up my 10' X 20' greenhouse and start my brassicas and other cold-tolerant seeds in that. Less than 2 months until the Victoria Day weekend (traditional planting-out time in my neck of the woods) so I have a lot of prep work to do. On a side note my daughter will be starting the horticulture program at the NS Community College in September, which would have thrilled her grandfather. My dad was a masterful gardener, and his copies of Mother Earth News and Organic Gardening were literally some of my earliest reading.

Seeing it caused me to realize that I have a perfectly good hatchet, which in fact was in my office (long story) at the time I saw that post. Should I need to chop bones at any point, I think I'll probably just give my hatchet a good wash and use that.

Yes, very much so. Mine was second-hand, purchased when the previous one failed, which in turn had been purchased used for my restaurant. My current one is smaller, but it does the job. I'd love to get something like the FreezerMax system for my own chest freezer, but apparently it's not on Amazon Canada. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B9J4W3L1

My massive Samsung (36" wide, and 28 cubic feet IIRC) is just barely big enough for my household, which - in fairness - includes my stepdaughter's family plus us, so 6 in total. Like Darienne I'd be fine with less freezer space and more refrigerator space, though I have a standup freezer, a full-sized chest freezer and a smaller chest freezer so I'm admittedly something of an outlier. Many manufacturers now make models that split the lower compartment to give you a "flex" option: at your discretion you can set either half (sometimes both) to be refrigerator space rather than freezer space. I got mine used in like-new condition for only $150, though, so I'm not complaining (and the look on the guy's face when I showed up to in a minivan to collect it was worth the price of admission, all on its own).

I mostly use tongs, but I drain the pasta first. I'm notably clumsy - see my "I shall never again" post about cutting myself on sugar - and so far, the worst that's happened is a few pieces falling to the counter or floor (and we have dogs, so I don't even need to clean it up).

I have the plastic equivalent. I find it only moderately useful for spaghetti, so it currently lives on my desk (inches away as I type) where it does yeoman duty as a back scratcher.

(Ducks, runs...)

They're always the second greens out of my garden each spring, behind only the dandelions I pick while digging and planting.

It's not like it's a venerable tradition up here, either. I'd never heard of it until the early 90s (when I moved back from BC to NS), and IIRC its invention only dates to the late 1950s in Quebec. I'm not sure how long it took to catch on anywhere else, but presumably it crossed the border first into Ontario. I'd certainly never seen it in BC before moving home, and I think it was still fairly new in NS at the time.

https://newlinesmag.com/essays/medieval-arabic-culinary-literature-offers-lessons-for-the-present/