chromedome

It is axiomatic that it's best for one's landlord to know as little as possible.

For me it was one of the definitive childhood summer memories. When blueberries were in season, we'd pick them from the sunny bank across from my grandmother's house (a subdivision now, for lo these many decades) and then have them for breakfast with milk and a sprinkle of sugar. That's the taste of summer for me, to this day. I'll still have a bowl of them at least once each summer, and last year served it to my grandkids (to their delight).

These specific examples are pretty dubious, but the need for adaptive/accessibility gizmos in the kitchen (and prepared "convenience" ingredients) is pretty significant. My GF isn't yet 50, but because of her rheumatoid arthritis she struggles now with any meal requiring more than a pop into the microwave (and even those can be problematic, if the packaging isn't easy to open). Of course she has a personal chef, so it's not as big an issue as it might be, but I'm not always home and doubtless will not always be healthy (fingers crossed on that front). A Canadian site recently published this article by a Toronto-based writer, which I found pretty compelling. In this instance it's focused on ingredients, but the point holds. We've discussed adaptive cooking options in the past, I know, and have touched on some similar themes. https://thewalrus.ca/garlic-in-a-jar/

One of our mass-market ice cream brands here (Chapman's) is using "shrinkflation" in its ads, by pointing out that its 2 litre size remains 2 litres, while many others are not. It's a bit disingenuous - the reason many brands sell a 1.89 litre size is that it's two American quarts - but I'm sure it has been effective for them. ETA: Not that this is pertinent to restaurants, of course. On the whole I'm in the "restaurant meals are too frikkin' big anyway" camp, but for a lot of eateries that's very much their brand. I can understand why customers would get upset at shinkage, but (shrug) margins have to come from somewhere.

My cousin was out running errands last night, and received this heated text from her daughter: "What kind of sociopath serves lemonade at dinner and then puts an unlabeled pitcher of vegetable stock in the fridge?"

GF cookies from the Enjoy Life brand are being recalled for the presence of pieces of plastic. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/certain-enjoy-life-brand-soft-baked-cookies-chocolate-chip-recalled-due-possible?utm_source=gc-notify

I remember Zig Ziglar mentioning in one of his books that a Gulf Coast wedding-day prank in his day was prying the hubcaps from the groom's car, filling them with shrimp, and replacing them. By the second or third day of the honeymoon, in the Texas heat, things would get a bit fragrant...

Just 'cause...

Is everyone familiar with "the law of unintended consequences"? An interesting discussion of how the move away from hydrogenated oils, and toward plant-based foods, has created some issues around the supply of culinary fats. https://www.the-angry-chef.com/blog/big-fat-problems

The average in the US, per the CDC, is 10-16 cases per year. They're almost invariably from eating undercooked game, though there are occasional cases caused by backyard hogs as well. Getting trichinellosis from commercially-raised pork is vanishingly rare, and has been for decades. That's why the USDA eventually dropped its recommended temperature for pork to 145F, the same as for other meats. The numbers are similarly low in Canada (our regulations for pork-rearing are slightly more stringent than in the US), though our government still clings to the 165F guideline.

I used to use a wok for popcorn when my kids were little. The heat and oil and unpopped kernels stay at the bottom of the wok, where the heat is, and the popped kernels sit above them and are safe(r) from being scorched after a moment's ill-timed inattention (which happened frequently when my kids were little). It sounds odd, but it's actually quite functional.

I've just harvested mine, as well, and have lots to work with for the next couple of days. I generally make pesto with about half of my batch. I like them steamed (which mellows them) as a side vegetable, or in stir fries as well. Whatever I have left over after the first few days I'll usually puree with a bit of oil (just enough to make them come together as a paste) and then pack it into Ziploc bags and freeze it flat. When I want to use some in a sauce, scrambled eggs or whatever, I just pull out the bag, break off a piece and drop it in the pan. I haven't tried pickling them yet, but it's on my "to do" list. Probably won't happen this year, unfortunately, because we're moving and I just don't have the time.

I have personal experience with the Newfoundland capelin fishery, as I took the autumn of 1980 off from college and worked on a small boat with my father and my uncle. At that time we got 26 cents a pound for female capelin, and 1 cent a pound for males (for perspective, the landed price for salmon at that time was 26 cents as well, mackerel were 14 cents, and herring were 12). When the season opened we took a seine of 6000 pounds or so to the fish plant. They pulled up three tubs of capelin, separated the males from the females, weighed them both, calculated the percentage of females, made a deduction for the processing costs, and gave us... 8 cents/pound. After that we separated our own, dipping a full seine of 6000-8000 pounds and then spending the rest of the day shuffling the females into tubs and the males back over the side. My fingerprints wore off completely, and I literally saw capelin when I closed my eyes. There's a reason (several of them, actually) why I didn't become a full-time fisherman as most of my family had been. For the benefit of anyone who's wondering how you sex small silver fish accurately (capelin typically range from 4 to 7 inches, though there's variability), well... the females are the pretty ones. That's not a joke. The females are smaller and have smooth skin with iridescent rainbow tones, while the males have a rougher skin, a small ridge running down their sides, and no iridescence.

Unbranded enoki mushrooms sold in BC and Manitoba have been recalled for listeria. This is an odd one because they haven't yet posted what channels it was sold through, so if you've bought any recently maybe just look at the picture. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/enoki-mushroom-recalled-due-listeria-monocytogenes

I found some in the discount cart at my supermarket one day, marked down to half price. I bought two each of the fillets in olive oil and ventresca in olive oil, and regretted not buying more.

I go the opposite direction, and mostly eat mine cooked low-and-slow to concentrate the flavor. That was the input of my California-bred second wife, who was a big fan of zucchini and summer squashes in general. When I told her I found them bland and watery in most preparations, her response was that "they're bland because they're watery," and her answer was to cook them down (like reducing a stock). So I prepared them as instructed, and was pleasantly surprised, and have seldom eaten them any other way since. This doesn't apply to fingerlings and blossoms, of course, but to any normal-sized zuke.

What's that you say, Sonny? In my case it was too many live shows, not enough ear protection. Though oddly I hear mechanical noises exaggeratedly well, compared to say... human voices. If I'm walking in a big store, all I can hear is the HVAC system and trying to talk to me is a waste of breath. I will use my full-sized Cuisinart before my GF's mini-Cuise chopper gizmo, purely because it is so much quieter. And my Vitamix gets used almost exclusively for crushing ice, because I can't stand to listen to the damned thing for more than a few seconds at a time.

There's a lot here to chew on, if you'll forgive the figure of speech. Linking only to Part One, as there are internal links to the second and third articles. https://www.eater.com/22996588/blue-hill-stone-barns-dan-barber-restaurant-work-environment-ingredients

I keep my main jar of mayo in the cupboard, and use clean utensils to refill my squeeze bottle as needed. That way no food residue makes it back into the "working" mayo either, so it can also remain at room temp. I have an apartment-sized refrigerator, so space is at a premium. ...okay, I also have a fair-sized dorm fridge containing condiments, pickles and such, and a standup freezer the same size as my fridge, but the point holds.

King oyster mushrooms from TWA Fungi are being recalled for listeria. They're only known to have been sold in BC at this point, but may have been redistributed elsewhere. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/twa-fungi-brand-king-oyster-mushroom-recalled-due-listeria-monocytogenes?utm_source=gc-notify&utm_medium=email&utm_content=en&utm_campaign=hc-sc-rsa-22-23

For those among us who eat gluten-free or have family members who do, several Enjoy Life cookies, breakfast bars etc have been recalled due to foreign material (plastic) in the food. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/certain-enjoy-life-brand-bakery-products-recalled-due-possible-presence-pieces-plastic?utm_source=gc-notify&utm_medium=email&utm_content=en&utm_campaign=hc-sc-rsa-22-23&

I'm putting this here as the best fit among several candidates. We've spoken at times on various threads about the various efforts being made to produce food in a more environmentally-friendly manner. There tend to be many, many viewpoints on this, and some deeply-entrenched positions, and relatively few voices attempting a non-dogmatic overview of (to steal a phrase from another link I posted recently) an appropriate level of "informed hypocrisy." Journalists Tamar Haspel and Mike Grunwald are attempting to do just that in a new podcast called Climavores, and they were interviewed about it by the Columbia Journalism Review. So, for those who are interested, here's your look at what they're doing and how they're attempting to do it. https://www.cjr.org/covering_climate_now/climavores-food-climate-grunwald-haspel.php Disclaimer: I follow Haspel on Twitter but haven't listened to the podcast yet, because time to just listen to something is extremely hard for me to block out. Sadly, there's no transcript (at least, not yet) attached to each episode.