chromedome

A friend of mine messaged me during the game to say "Sean McVay looks like the kind of guy who calls his mom 'Bro'," and now I can't un-think that.

I hear you. I have a dozen aprons neatly folded in a drawer, and while my shirts have an "elapsed time before getting food stained" of about two wears.

(Shrug) We can agree to disagree. There have certainly been more-recent games that were equally lacking; the Pats' suffocation of the Rams a few years ago and Peyton Manning's dour swan-song against Carolina spring to mind. I was still relatively new to the NFL game at the time, so the contrast with freewheeling CFL football was much sharper. As you may gather from the foregoing, I find the modern game more entertaining. Hockey has gone through a similar evolution, with the high-scoring 80s giving way to the stifling, close-checking 90s. While some loved geeking out on the intricacies of the left-side lock and the neutral-zone trap, and it certainly helped mediocre teams remain competitive with their more-talented rivals, most viewers found that the game had lost its spark. So the rules have been tweaked, and scoring and excitement have returned to the game. You had "crushing the quarterback and receivers," we had "guy who will pound the hell out of you if you take liberties with our players." Both have largely been removed from the game, which many fans lament but which will mean a lot more former players will get to remain functional human beings after their retirement. CTE is a terrible thing.

For me the game is "best remembered" as two teams trying very desperately to let the other win, with Cincinnati eventually prevailing. Opinions, as always, are subjective.

As a neutral, this shapes up to be a feel-good story no matter who wins. The Bengals have been pretty useless for the best part of four decades now, so it's hard to root against them. On the other hand it's hard not to feel that the football gods owe Matt Stafford some karmic even-up for twelve dreadful but largely-uncomplaining years in Detroit. The last time the Bengals made it to the Super Bowl was a genuine snoozer, but I doubt this game will lack for entertainment value. That being said, I'll probably just catch the highlights after the fact. The whole broadcast is just more time than I'm willing to invest, and I haven't watched a halftime show in years.

When I make the long-threatened suit of bubble wrap for my mom, I'll cheerfully do up a second one for you. Send measurements.

If you grew up on rolled oats for your porridge, as I did, that's not the texture (there's a reason I switched a an adult to steel-cut). It's probably closer in mouthfeel to Cream of Wheat. Or if you've had soft polenta at an Italian meal, that's basically the same thing.

I had to go looking for them, but they turned out to be available in the Health/Natural section at Sobeys so they're not too hard to find (they're not a "thang" on my coast, either). My sweetie had seen shrimp and grits many times on cooking shows, and wanted to try the combo for herself. It was a hit, so now I keep them on hand (Bob's Red Mill). Just had them a few nights ago, in fact.

This will mostly be meaningful to the Brits, but I'll put it here anyway. This thread is from a well-known poverty activist in the UK, and follows up on a set of tweets she posted a few weeks ago - about the disappearance of low-priced white-label products from her supermarket - and how it impacted on the poorest in the land. The result...was not at all what she was expecting (in a good way).

It makes a lot of sense, when you think about it. If you're a chain, you want your loyal shoppers to walk into *any* of your stores and know where to find what they're looking for. It gets more complicated for smaller stores which can have multiple layouts, of course. In my time with Radio Shack Canada, we had multiple "Plan-o-grams" to account for different store layouts, and still give a broad sense of consistency and familiarity.

As I've mentioned previously in this thread, my GF has tweaked her diet to exclude red meats (she's on an anti-inflammatory eating plan, on medical advice), and we have accordingly experimented with a number of these faux-meat products in an attempt at scratching that itch. Our most recent experiment was with the Hooray! brand of faux bacon ("facon," if you will). These things have zero protein, being made up primarily of coconut oil, rice flour and tapioca starch. They look vaguely like bacon, if you kind of squint and half-close your eyes, and smell rather like it when cooking. I opted to pan-fry the first few (I'll do the other half of the package in my oven). They didn't release as much fat as I'd expected, but that was fine: they still didn't stick to the pan, and unlike bacon fat I saw no reason to hoard any leftovers. They're soft and slightly gummy once they start to cook (so if your strip folds over onto itself it will never un-stick) but that's not entirely surprising, given the ingredients. If you prepare them as directed, turning for the first time after 90 seconds and thereafter at 30-second intervals, the strips will indeed brown and crisp consistently across their full width. The texture is crisp, but it isn't quite the right kind of crisp because it lacks that hint of fibrous texture you'd get in the lean part of real bacon (you'd think that would be an easy thing to fake with plant-based materials, but I guess it might make for uneven cooking). I honestly struggle to describe the texture of it when eaten alone, out of hand. The closest I can come is that it's halfway between the texture of a thin, crisp cookie and a crunchy candy, perhaps a Skor bar. To come at it from another direction, you could think of it as the textural equivalent of the "uncanny valley" that makes digitally-generated faces sometimes so jarring. As far as the flavor goes, it was...okay. A bit bland, to be honest. The company draws on salt and maple for the obvious flavor notes, and mushroom extracts for umami, but it needed some more oomph. I'll probably brush the rest of the strips with a bit of liquid smoke stirred into a few drops of oil, and then sprinkle it lightly with extra salt once it's nearly cooked. That should help. With those qualifications out of the way, I have to say it got a passing grade from its target audience. I used it to make my GF the BLT she'd been craving, and she was pleased with it. The textures of the toast and lettuce masked the oddity of its crunch, and masked the relative blandness of the slices. We discussed the tweaks I'd mentioned previously, and she's optimistic that the next one will be better. Is it a good bacon imitation? Hell, no. It's at least better than the others we've had so far, including turkey bacon, but I've seen reviews of better products (not yet showing up in my local stores, sadly) that apparently come closer in flavor and texture. It would be nice to think that there will eventually be a genuinely good bacon substitute, for the benefit of those who can't or won't eat the real thing, but this isn't it. Heck, I'd be happy to find one that matches up to the mystery-meat "breakfast strips." For now, we're holding out hope that her new medications will beat the rheumatoid arthritis into submission and let her indulge (cautiously) in the real thing from time to time, without triggering a flare.

These are not earth-shaking tips - nothing you wouldn't puzzle out in short order - but the big hazard with this stuff is adding more than you want. I usually tap my couple of drops into a small bowl and then dilute it with oil or a neutral liquid, then brush it on. If adding it to a sauce, I'll scoop out a bit of the sauce, stir in my drop or two, and then add it back. That way, if I'm heavy-handed and get more than I'd intended, I can simply hold back some of the mixture and not overwhelm the dish.

Ya think? The most recent round of quarterly earnings calls by CEOs certainly puts the whole "inflation" narrative into perspective.

My favorite variation on the theme was by Mike's Hard Lemonade, a Canadian brand. Their ads/billboards at one time said "Please drink responsibly (don't make Mike come over there...)."

Which knife would you recommend? (I'll show myself out...)

Updated: https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/hankook-korean-characters-only-brand-original-kimchi-recalled-due-e-coli-o157h7-0?utm_source=r_listserv

I would make a distinction here, based on what parameters Liuzhou is setting. If we're referring specifically to the preparation shown in the photo - sliced meats stacked on the skewer - then Nova Scotia also knows that as shawarma, and it's plentiful under that name. If we're talking in a broader way of "any ol' meat preferred in your locality, as long as it's cooked on a vertical skewer and served on a flatbread," then yeah..."donair" is the local version and it's beef.

Seen on FB:

Halved chickens are a common thing here. A half-chicken is a good size when cooking for two, so I've always assumed that was the reason.

President's Choice Lemon & Ginger Italian Soda is being recalled nationally due to the possible presence of glass fragments. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/pc-brand-lemon-ginger-sicilian-soda-recalled-due-possible-presence-glass?utm_source=r_listserv

The distinctive trait of our variation is a sweet-ish sauce made with condensed milk, for those who don't know. It's the official food of "well, the pub just closed, what do we do now?"