chromedome

I'm picking up a grow kit for pink oysters from a local supplier shortly. Curious to hear what you think of them.

A minor tip, but the jar lifter from your canning set works really well for removing ramekins from their water bath. I made creme brulee for a stepdaughter today (our little tradition) and did just that, and thought I should maybe post it.

Terroir is a glorious thing. One slightly OT tip: Next time you're out harvesting dandelions for your wine, look for the clusters of immature, hazelnut-sized buds clustered in the heart of each "crown" of leaves. It takes a while to harvest enough for a meal, but they're a lovely spring vegetable. Also, if you spot a few nice, big crowns in early spring, blanch them by covering them with a piece of plywood or a few large sheets of cardboard. The blanched greens are crisp like romaine, very mild, and a great salad green.

You're just gonna have to taste a whole bunch of honey. I did that when I was still working in the business, and found a remarkable degree of variation between them. When I was chef-busking at the farmer's market, I even sold a "honey-tasting flight" with a few local honeys in small cups, complete with a card for tasting notes and a small wedge of fresh-baked corn bread as a palate cleanser for in between. It sold well as an occasional novelty, though I wouldn't have done it every week (it was a relatively small market). The best honey I ever had was from a fellow vendor who kept exactly one hive on her little farm, primarily for her own use. She gifted us a jar because she and my (now-deceased) wife were good friends. It had the most remarkable lingering fruity notes, berry-like and wine-like. Which I suppose is a roundabout way of saying that "tasting a bunch of honey is its own reward."

It was a famous BBC prank of bygone years.

"Pink" is a species, and it's generally considered to be the least interesting culinarily. Coho and sockeye are superior, as canned salmon goes.

One of my GF's favorite stories is about her first "dinner date" with her now-ex, when they were teens. He picked her up, collected the pizza along the way, and took her back to the mobile home he shared with his divorced dad. He led her into the living room, ceremoniously cleared a large quantity of parts from the seat of the snowmobile that took up most of the room, and laid out (with a flourish) a towel on the seat so the grease wouldn't get on her pants. Then he washed "the" fork - yes, singular, in a house containing two more-or-less adults - so she could use it, while he ate with his hands. She refers to that as one of her "in retrospect, there were a lot of things I should have inferred" moments.

Well...yes and no. I grew up calling them "Indian pears," but they're mostly known as shadberry or serviceberry in NS. They're native to mainland NS, but maybe not to CB because it's an island? I dunno. The cultivated strains of Saskatoons from out West can bear larger fruit and keep them on the tree for longer (which of course makes for better commercial harvests), so you should be in good shape next year for Saskatoon jam.

I'm sure those people exist. I'm equally sure that they're in private clinics with large price tags, where they'll make much better coin than their counterparts in mainstream hospitals. ETA: I believe that at some point I've related the story of a classmate of mine at culinary school. She was livid - LIVID - to learn that she'd be expected to taste everything she cooked in class. In her life, it seems, she'd never voluntarily consumed anything much other than Campbell's soups and blue-box mac & cheese. This, of course, begged the obvious question ("why culinary school, then?") and the answer, as it turns out, is that she was destined to oversee food services in her family's small chain of for-profit long-term care homes for seniors. Still gives me the shudders just thinking about it.

They look legit. Tear one in half and look inside. The genuine article will be white, and will pull into strips like string cheese.

I prefer mine around 5 or 6, GF usually likes hers between 10 and midnight. We compromise on 8-ish.

When my late wife was in our local hospital, she chose the turkey dinner because "nobody can screw that up" (Me: "?????"). What she got was three slices of deli/sandwich turkey breast roll, instant mashed, gravy from a powder, and three baby-cut carrots, at something just above room temperature. For the rest of her stay, I brought her meals.

Hmmm. Cetaceans are mammals. I wonder if we'll ever see aged white cheddar from whales?

Not my thing personally, but I'm all in favor of anything that makes you money and attracts attention to your business. My first step at one of my jobs, immediately after culinary school, was running the under-performing pizza station. I was utterly shameless in throwing anything we had left over onto a pizza, and finding combinations that made some kind of sense to me. My proudest moment was probably the time we found a bunch of frozen squid while doing inventory. The Athens Olympics were underway at the time, so I stewed the squid, cooled it in its sauce, and then put it on a pizza with black olives, red onion, diced tomatoes and feta. I called it "The Olympian." About half the people who looked at it made faces of disgust, and said "Oh my GOD! Squid? On a PIZZA?" The other half looked at it with faces of delighted incredulity and said "Oh my GOD! Squid... On a PIZZA!" and cleaned us out.

When I worked at Radio Shack, many moons ago, we always had a locked display case filled with various timers, clocks, watches, etc. A common prank to pull on "the new guy," opening the store for the first time, was to set *everything* in the case to start going off one device at a time, beginning about five minutes before opening time and continuing for a solid hour. It was a classic of shock and AWE.* (Applied Workplace Evil)

I switch monthly, or thereabouts. I've been doing it long enough that I can even use a right mouse left-handed, or vice-versa, without really thinking about it much.

I feel for you. A few weeks ago, stepdaughter's massive mastiff cross thought it would be funny to dash between my legs at full tilt while I was in mid-stride (and bear in mind, I'm only 5'7" and relatively short of leg, at that). Fortunately she caught me at just the right part of my stride, and I was able to three-hop my way back into equilibrium without any unscheduled gymnastics. It wouldn't happen that way again in a million years.

That's why I now have a landline again for the first time in years.

I'm in the process of adjusting to one now, having just upgraded the fridge in our new house from a 24-inch, semi-functioning unit to a massive 36-inch, 27 cubic foot behemoth (bought used but well cared for, and in excellent condition). I can definitely see the benefit of things not cascading from a top freezer to my unshod toes, but I'm not (so far) enjoying the stoop-to-get-anything aspect of it. That being said, my upright freezer will soon take its place next to the new fridge and at that point anything in the bottom-freezer section can be Somebody Else's Problem.

Nothing shows in either the Play Store or the App Store. At least, not for searches based in Canada (I don't currently use a VPN, so I didn't try it with any other setting).

I did this pretty much for the entirety of the past three years, living in a rental with a 24-inch range. That gave me three small burners and one large, which was inadequate, so I put a cheapie induction hob alongside the range. In practice, I ended up using that for the vast majority of my cooking.

This. There are times when "don't feel like it" means a piece of bread and peanut butter, or a banana and a handful of walnuts. Other times it's "breakfast for dinner," or something I can throw in the slow cooker or Instant Pot and forget about for a while. I guess the short version is that there's a spectrum.