chromedome

I hadn't made the connection to the lunar New Year, but my plans for the 22nd included harvesting our latest batch of young rabbits (2 or 3 of the current 15 will be kept back as potential breeders). I'll have a (small) chest freezer pretty full of rabbit by spring, so I expect that this will indeed be the Year of the Rabbit chez Chrome.

Four surface-ripened cheeses from Quebec are being recalled for listeria. They were sold in both Quebec and Ontario, and may have made their way to other provinces. Brands are La Vache à Maillotte and Le Fromage au Village. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/surface-ripened-soft-and-semi-soft-cheeses-recalled-due-listeria-monocytogenes?utm_source=gc-notify&utm_medium=email&utm_content=en&utm_campaign=hc-sc-rsa-22-23&

This could have gone in Food Funnies, but it seemed appropriate to this thread as well. From Canada's equivalent of The Onion: https://t.co/8EKBx4u249

That's correct. The darker the roux, the lesser the thickening power. (...or at least, so I was taught in culinary school...)

It's a real mixed bag. Mostly undistinguished generic stuff, or a museum of the last few years' trendy cookbooks ("Keto Vegan Gluten-Free Desserts Your Family Will Love!") but occasionally there'll be a gem or two.

I'd declared a moratorium on cookbook purchases for a while, but yesterday in Dollarama I found Vivian Howard's This Will Make it Taste Good in hardcover for $4. Any of my fellow Canadians who don't have a copy, or would like another for gifting purposes, might want to check out their nearby Dollarama locations.

Apparently this is something that's been going around TikTok for a couple of months. https://www.today.com/food/trends/butter-candles-tiktok-rcna62377

My mom liked it. She put it in deviled eggs, egg salad sandwiches and potato salad. Some families I knew used it as their default condiment on hamburgers. It makes a certain sense, I suppose... it's not entirely unlike the "special sauce" on a Big Mac.

A couple of years ago in my local Costco I passed a booth where a dejected-looking kid was offering samples of pickled pigs' tongues to horrified passers-by. I enjoyed the sample, though I didn't find the opportunity to actually buy a jar while they were available. As someone who'd spent years in sales, I'd like to meet whoever successfully got those into Costco.

I've made David Lebovitz's "faux gras" pate and it was very good, will definitely make it again one of these days. I'm sure if something like this was available at a not-immoderate price I'd buy it occasionally.

According to Maine's Lobster Institute they *can* survive for months in a properly maintained tank, but they're not typically fed in storage (food and feces muck up the water, require added filtration, etc) so it doesn't take long before the quality starts to slide. From what I've been told by suppliers in my area, 2-3 weeks in-tank is the usual limit before quality and mortality rates become problematic.

Yes, in the shell. It's a common practice here where I live, because the lobster season is split to minimize the impact on their breeding cycles. There's one very early in the year (ie, now) and then one in late summer, and pretty much everybody knows a lobsterman (or has a friend who does). So people buy a bunch and cook 'em and freeze whatever doesn't get eaten immediately. Picking the meat and putting vacuum sealing also works but requires more effort, and if you're doing a large quantity - as some do - a sealer would slow things even farther. If you don't stock up in season when the prices are low (sub-$10/lb), then you're stuck paying supermarket price until the next season opens. In-shell lobsters will last a few months if properly bagged or wrapped. You can either steam them whole until reheated, or just thaw them overnight and pick the meat, depending on your plans and degree of advance planning. The local lobster seasons didn't overlap well with tourism season, so when I had my restaurant I'd buy a couple of hundred pounds and freeze them. Then I'd use them all summer in things like lobster omelets or a lobster Caesar salad. If someone wanted a fresh market lobster I'd do that too, but those I'd buy from wholesaler at market price. They'd have been in the tanks for a while, but so be it.

Pretty simple New Year's here, because I'd just gotten home from visiting my mom in NS and was tired and not feeling well. My GF wanted something at least mildly celebratory, so I pulled out a (cooked) lobster we'd frozen a few weeks ago when the local season opened, and reheated it in the steamer. Cooked up some broad noodles, seared some scallops, made a creamy sauce, and combined it all. Steamed a quantity of broccoli and cauliflower to go with it. She was pleased. I didn't bother staying up until midnight, for reasons already mentioned. I understand from comments on social media that Duran Duran headlined the Times Square festivities last night; the joke going around is that "by midnight anybody who knew who they were was in bed."

My only context for Durkee's is that Frank's hot sauce was originally sold here in the Maritimes under that name. Then it was briefly Durkee's/Franks and now just Frank's.

A topic we've discussed desultorily a few times over the years. It's becoming less hypothetical all the time. https://www.wsj.com/articles/synthetic-meat-will-change-the-ethics-of-eating-11671805446?page=1

There are lots, all pretty similar. I misplaced my notebook full o' recipes this year and baked this version instead, and it turned out to be pretty much the same as the one I'd used in previous years. https://natashaskitchen.com/russian-tea-cakes-recipe/

Not to mock - I know technical difficulties are at the root of your frequent typos - but that sounds very much like me in the mornings. Come to think of it, that's also very much what living with hearing loss is like. When my grandson opened his toy light sabre this morning, I thought he was saying "Life Savers" and thought it was cute that he was so excited.

We had ours yesterday. Growing up I never had turkey for holiday meals because nobody in my family especially cares for it, but in my GF's clan it's the inevitable centerpiece of *every* holiday meal. So turkey with roasted sweet potatoes and parsnips, steamed broccoli and broccolini, braised red cabbage, carrots, scalloped potatoes (my GF's special request rather than the usual mashed) and Brussels sprouts cooked low and slow with onion until everything was caramelized. Oh, and dressing and copious quantities of gravy, of course. Dessert was choice of cookies or an apple strudel I'd made of apples from our excursion to the U-pick a few months ago. On impulse I grabbed a raspberry from the fridge, plopped it on one end of the strudel, and told the grandkids "Look! It's 'Strudolph'!" Dad Jokes 'R' Us.

Grandkids let us sleep in until 8, which was an unanticipated luxury. It was all very fun, mind you, especially the evil cackle from 4-yo grandson when he opened his whoopee cushion. A boy never forgets his first, right? Aside from that the funniest thing was the oversized mastiff bouncing and wiggling like a puppy as the oldest granddaughter opened the dog-toys stocking for her. She spent a solid 30 minutes bouncing back and forth between gnawing diligently at the chewy bone and swanking around, proud as could be, with a squeaky toy in her face. She made a very deliberate point of squeaking it, separately and individually, for each of the humans.

I use my FP for pie crust and biscuits, though I incorporate the liquid by hand. I tend to make those by touch and eyeball, so I rely a lot on my fingers to tell me when I've added as much liquid as I should.

I do that routinely, when it's a large gathering. Roast the bird(s) however you normally do, carve it after a suitable rest, then pack it into multiple flat containers (or even bags) and refrigerate it overnight. In my case, I'll generally put it right into the foil pan I"ll use the next day to reheat it (one for white meat, one for dark). I'm a big fan of crisp skin, so I separate that and heat it separately at the last minute to re-crisp. Then of course the carcass goes into the Instant Pot to become broth and, thereafter, gravy.

I own my grandmother's wartime edition of The American Woman's Cookbook (apparently Canadian women liked it too) with a rather large section of rationing-friendly recipes added. A couple of the desserts were popular enough to stay in the family's regular rotation when I was a kid.

Mine is used primarily for crushing ice (not that we drink a lot, my GF just likes cups of unflavored "sno-cone"). Also I make a couple of big batches of applesauce each year, and leaving the skins on the apples saves me a lot of prep time. The V-mix makes them disappear in seconds. Other than that it's a dust collector, but I have shelf space for it and those two uses justify its existence (that, and the $25 thrift store purchase price).

It's just a couple of big batches of each kind of cookie, and heavily weighted to gingerbread and sugar cookies which are relatively easy to handle and bake in quantity. It's not taxing, really. A couple of afternoons and evenings for the baking, and a couple more for the decorating. I have a whole table's worth of of cooling racks, and lots of plastic tubs to store them in between the baking and the decorating stages, and a small-but-adequate collection of seasonal cutters. I give out boxes or baskets of cookies to many of our friends, relatives and neighbours, and I expect I spend less time on this than most of you do on shopping for gifts, so to me it's basically a holiday-season "cheat code."