chromedome

Thought we'd get through a month without another enoki mushroom recall? Not so! Affects Ontario and Quebec. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/lian-teng-brand-enoki-mushroom-recalled-due-listeria-monocytogenes?utm_source=gc-notify&utm_medium=email&utm_content=en&utm_campaign=hc-sc-rsa-22-23

You may also know them as "walking" onions. They're a bunching cultivar, but unlike most bunching onions (ie scallions) they have a strong onion flavor. They're called walking onions because they grow long green tops, which late in the season grow a thick crown of bulbils. The greens bend over, the bulbils put down roots in the soil over the winter, and then the next year you get a ring of new onions all bunched together. If you give them a nudge, so the tops all fall in one direction, they'll literally "walk" across your garden in the course of several growing seasons. Alliums in general are considered a useful companion planting for keeping many insect pests at bay, and I use Egyptian onions for that purpose because they're self-replenishing and I never need to buy sets or collect seed. Also, of course, they're good in soups, salads etc. Everything I'd covered seems to have survived last night's hard frost, pending a closer look this afternoon after things have warmed up. I'll probably call time on the beans this week anyway, just because I doubt there are many pollinators left and I've already got 50-odd pounds of them in the freezer. There are still enough immature beans on the plants to be worth waiting for one more "pick," though. I have a few days before the next risk-of-frost night to assess how everything else is looking.

Getting our first properly cold night of the fall tonight, with temperatures dropping down below freezing and a bit of a wind chill as well. There's still a lot going on in the garden, despite the lateness of the season. Today I harvested a couple more ripe bell peppers, lots of salad greens, a handful of tomatoes, my sole surviving pumpkin (Godiva, a cultivar that's grown for its less seeds), a goodly handful of broccolini, and yet more bush beans. I'm almost as shocked about the beans as I am the peppers and tomatoes. I've never had them run this late in the season before, but I'm still getting a few meals' worth (for just the two of us) every week. We'll typically eat portion while they're fresh-picked, and then blanch and freeze the rest. The kale, chard and beet tops of course are still cruising along quite happily as the days grow shorter. I expect to pull the plug on my jalapenos and tomatoes soon (we'll see how they do under their covers tonight) and when I do I'll transfer those row covers to my beds of greens. I already have the baby kale and baby spinach under covers, because while they'll tolerate some cold they certainly don't thrive. I'm hoping, with those covers, to keep them going until the snow arrives in earnest (typically around year-end). We'll see, but I think it's a worthy ambition. In any case, with spring being so erratic and unproductive, I'm inclined to stretch autumn to the max just on principle. Still going: Several herbs, curly and lacinato kale, chard, spinach, Early Wonder beets (for the tops, but I'll get the beetroots as a bonus), roma tomatoes, Black Krim tomatoes, cocktail tomatoes, Egyptian onions, carrots, bell peppers, jalapenos, and one more bed of potatoes that are finished for the year but still need to be harvested. If the tomatoes look like goners after tonight I'll harvest them tomorrow and do... something with them. Probably finish ripening the half-ripe ones, make a batch of fried green tomatoes (and coat and freeze several more for another day, hat-tip to whoever let us know that this actually works) and probably do a batch of green tomato salsa as well. I like green tomato chow, but we probably won't eat enough of it to justify making a batch.

A friend of mine explained it this way: "Prepared one way, they're a fine edible. Prepared another way, they'll make you see God. Eat 'em raw, and they'll introduce you in person!"

I was pretty confident it'd been Photoshopped that way as a joke.

The sausage place near me in Vancouver, years ago, told me it's more or less a (North-) Americanized debrecziner, if that helps.

Thanks to a shout-out from Tamar Haspel on social media, I've just discovered the writing of a UK-based chef, food writer and food product developer named Anthony Warner (aka "The Angry Chef). I haven't explored much of his blog yet, but I've just finished reading through a really fascinating six-parter (and counting) on the role of dietary fibre (or "fiber," for the Americans). Money quote is early in Part 5: "...food is complicated, and anyone telling you otherwise is trying to sell you something." I'd have appreciated some explicit links to sources (because I'm "That Guy") but this is his everyday work and area of expertise, and I've read enough of the basic research to be confident in the broad accuracy of what he's passing along. Here's a link to the first part: https://www.the-angry-chef.com/blog/7qmkvuzn0i90vq4xei5t4crinjxy3q You can just keep clicking through at the bottom to get the rest.

Oh, unquestionably. I suppose this application of technology could be construed as the reductio ad absurdam of the aphorism that "we eat with our eyes first". But I feel the same about many of the showier aspects of molecular gastronomy, which nonetheless have been taken seriously by critics and diners alike. I suppose it's my blue-collar upbringing showing through (..."maybe so, but I eat with my mouth most!").

I'm not sure how I feel about this as a physical reality on the table, but the technology is certainly interesting. https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/10/go-ahead-and-play-with-your-food-with-this-electrode-enhanced-3d-printed-plate/

Reportedly it does indeed taste something like chicken, though you should probably consider all the other things that have been described that way and take it with a grain of salt. Sadly I haven't had the opportunity yet to try that one for myself, but I can tell you confidently that lobster mushrooms (a plain ol' bland russula or lactarius mushroom that's been parasitized by another fungus called hypomyces lactifluorum) does indeed have a whiff of lobster-like flavor about it, and its red exterior and white interior even recall the appearance of cooked lobster meat. That ability to form flavor interesting flavor compounds is part of the reason why several faux-meat startups are focused on fungi (usually mycelium, as opposed to the actual mushroom itself). Another, of course, is that the filaments of mycelium can be tweaked to mimic the muscle fibers in whole-cut meats, which is frequently described as the "holy grail" of faux-meatery.

Yes, I probably should have phrased it as "difficult to cultivate at commercial scale in a controlled environment." We actually tried COTW this year, as part of our mushroom experiment. The ganoderma and trametes versicolor (reishi and turkey tail) produced moderately, the winecaps went gangbusters, but the shiitake, oysters and chicken did not give us anything past a few false starts. Those we'll try again next year in slightly different conditions.

Well, they're a bugger to cultivate for one. Also their preferred substrate is oak trees, and those have LOTS of other commercial uses. Somebody will crack the code one of these days, I suppose, but some mushrooms are just not well suited to cultivation and they may prove to be one of them (a discussion of the difficulties here... https://chickenmushrooms.wordpress.com/about/). The do turn up from time to time at farmer's markets and such. I thought I'd finally spotted one on our little acreage here, but it turned out that our mastiff (or perhaps one of the grandkids) had left her rubber chicken chew toy on a rotting stump. Which you could almost kinda-sorta call similarly themed, I suppose, but it wasn't at all the same thing.

I read his earlier book on cod; I rather suspect the research for that one inspired the salt book as well.

I stand corrected, her pots are also Cuisinart. Her exact ones don't appear to be currently on the site (may have been a Canadian variation, I suppose) but this one is pretty close to what we have here, and also to what you currently have. I expect they would perform similarly. https://www.cuisinart.com/shopping/cookware/saucepans/719-18/

That's Kurlansky's book, is it? A great read.

My first four thoughts were the exact three suggestions you'd floated in the original post, plus the obvious "too much thyme on my hands" Dad joke. (Sorry... but I restrained myself for three hours...) As Christmas gifts go, perhaps put the thyme together with other dried herbs in a suitable mixture, and put them into attractively decorated and labeled jars? Or perhaps a herb jelly that straddles the sweet/savory line?

Ugh. Probably what inspired The Onion piece.

My stepdaughter has a closely equivalent set from KitchenAid, except the drain/strain holes in the lid are only on one side. Hers work on induction. I'll take a look when I'm next upstairs in the kitchen and see if they have any kind of identifying mark so I can look them up, but I suspect you'd be able to find them on Amazon or KitchenAid's website.

I know, I know... but "morbidly funny" is appropriate in October. https://www.theonion.com/green-giant-introduces-new-frozen-death-cap-mushrooms-f-1850907505

At least one of the big old-school wineries in BC (Andres, maybe?) did that when I lived there in the 1980s. In fact, that was the wine we had at my wedding. Wine in single-serving cans is a big thing now in the liquor stores up here, but those aren't counted in liters.

I'm late seeing this. It's not entirely surprising - I had an inkling from her last handful of posts, and from the "radio silence" since - but it's deeply saddening nonetheless. In one of his Flashman novels George MacDonald Fraser had his anti-hero paraphrase Donne, to the effect that if indeed every death diminishes us, some diminish us a damned sight more than others. This is one of those.