chromedome

I've decided that one day I will make doughnut-shaped gnocchi, and serve them with toasted pine nuts. I will call them "Pine gnocchi-O's."

Sliced white mushrooms from the Carleton Mushroom Company are being recalled for listeria. The current recall is for Ontario and Quebec - they were sold through the Metro chain - but there's also a "possibly national" appended to this, which suggests to me that they may have been sold to other grocers as well. https://inspection.canada.ca/food-recall-warnings-and-allergy-alerts/2021-10-25/eng/1635207961753/1635207968501?utm_source=r_listserv

Another perspective on the changeover, and a commentary on some (much) of the critics' response: https://www.aliciakennedy.news/p/on-fine-dining

This is more a farming thing than a gardening thing as such, but I thought some of you would find it interesting. I've seen reporting on other trials for a few years now, and it strikes me as a promising prospect. https://www.wired.com/story/growing-crops-under-solar-panels-now-theres-a-bright-idea/

Yes, the article was otherwise good and informative. That's why I posted it, but also what made the deliberate use of the "rotted fish" trope so jarring to my sensibilities. To me, it's like reading an otherwise lucid and well-written article about Indian food that begins with the assertion that curries were invented to - say it with me now, y'all - conceal the taste of half-spoiled meat. We all have our hot-button issues and pet peeves, and this is one of mine. Evidently it doesn't rankle in the same way for you, and that's fine. We all have our quirks, and as I recall you have one or two of your own. It only occurred to me in retrospect that my comments on the original post might make it seem that I'd posted the article solely for the purpose of dunking on it for that specific bit of tone-deafness. That's not the case, I had intended it as a minor quibble about an otherwise-solid bit of writing.

That big ol' subtitle at the very top of the article... "a sauce made from decaying fish." Also the introductory paragraph, where they speak of "putrefying fish." It's a fine line, I know (fermentation could be described perhaps as "controlled decay") but it's a pet peeve of mine.

*Fermented* fish, Smithsonian. Fermented. Get it right... https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/recoving-the-recipe-for-garum-180978846/

A nice piece about a local hobbyist perpetuating historic apple varieties, both local and international. New Brunswick, like neighbouring Nova Scotia, is a significant apple producer. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/apple-orchard-keswick-ridge-1.6219194 As it happens I know a farmer in Keswick Ridge who's perpetuating a number of heirloom potato varieties that are seldom grown any more. For some of them, she's the only grower in the country and one of just a handful in North America.

It's Safeway that's owned by Sobeys, fwiw.

The onion recall has reached Canada as well, though since they were primarily sold into the commercial market rather than the consumer market it's hard to say where they'll turn up. https://inspection.canada.ca/food-recall-warnings-and-allergy-alerts/2021-10-21/eng/1634854501139/1634854507177?utm_source=r_listserv (my own current bag of onions was Canadian-grown...)

Do you not have a Sobeys near you? (I remember correctly that you're in BC?) They've started stocking veal as a regular thing. Not that I've seen shanks, mind you, but I haven't been explicitly looking for them either.

My mom did that, but with regular bread. And sometimes she'd cut strips of bacon into quarters and put the mostly-cooked bacon pieces onto the bread so that when you cut the slice, each triangle would have its own piece of bacon. Good times. When I lived in Newfoundland as a teen you could get CBC *or* CTV, depending which way your antenna was pointed, but not both. You basically knew which women watched which soap by the direction of the antennas (on Saturday, of course, they would all point to CBC for the hockey game).

Saw this today in my news, and thought I'd bump the thread again. https://www.cbc.ca/news/gopublic/instacart-delivery-pay-policy-1.6208197

A participant in one of the forums I visited during the aforementioned "rabbit hole" excursion quoted his father on that very subject. "Once the police have your number," he observed, "They never stop calling."

...thereby honoring both sides of your parentage. Well played.

So yeah, I got curious and went down the rabbit hole (also I'm supposed to be working, which means procrastination is *always* close at hand). You're right, the Excise Act does make home distilling illegal in Canada as a whole, though each province has its own liquor control act as well. Formal legalization is considered to be extremely unlikely within the hobbyist community, on the not-unjustified basis that taxes on alcohol constitute a massive revenue stream for the government (and unlike beer and wine, there's enough of a price difference on spirits to make it well worth doing if you're a serious drinker). In terms of on-the-ground enforcement it does indeed seem to be handled on a "don't ask, don't tell" basis. Unless you're selling it, or poison somebody with your homebrew, or give it out on election day to buy votes for your candidate of choice (joking, I think) the odds of being prosecuted are effectively nil. Apparently there hasn't been a prosecution for the past several decades, anywhere in Canada, except for those who violated the fundamental "don't be stupid about it" rule. Some of the more combative hobbyists believe that there are enough grey areas in the liquor laws that the government has zero desire to test them in court, lest it lose and open the floodgates. That may be true, but I note that none of them have tried to become a test case, themselves. Here in NB specifically there appears to be an interesting loophole, in that our provincial Act permits distilling for medicinal purposes, defined as the replication of anything in the British or American pharmacopeia. The British pharmacopeia, apparently, includes a preparation of straight-up alcohol distilled to 84% purity. So there's that. You could also add your "medicinal" herb or two of choice to flavor the resulting product, and justify your hobby that way. It's even possible to apply for a distiller's license if you have a commercial kitchen (as farmer's market vendors often do, for example) in which to prepare the mash. Apparently the small-producer license costs relatively little except in time and paperwork. Hypothetically I suppose we could see a scenario here that parallels the situation with cannabis in the US: illegal federally, but legalized in some fashion in individual states. The situations aren't really comparable, though. Legalizing weed makes it possible for the government to begin taxing it, whereas legalizing home distilling would cost the province money. Somehow I don't see that happening, even in libertarian-leaning Alberta.

That's what they told me at the store where I was eyeballing one, at any rate.

https://www.tasteofhome.com/collection/everything-bagel-seasoning/ https://www.eatingwell.com/article/291465/50-ideas-for-using-trader-joes-everything-but-the-bagel-seasoning/

I just use tongs for manipulating pans, but I can certainly see how those would give a better grip. Fortunately my drawers could not accommodate even one more kitchen gadget, so I'm safe from temptation (even at that modest price).

This is "head-shaking funny" as opposed to "funny, funny" but I'll put it here nevertheless: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-the-thursday-edition-1.6211094/this-u-k-bakery-was-ordered-to-stop-using-illegal-sprinkles-1.6211175

Jongilpoom brand enoki mushrooms, for listeria, "possibly national." https://inspection.canada.ca/food-recall-warnings-and-allergy-alerts/2021-10-14/eng/1634244090902/1634244097062?utm_source=r_listserv

I like Delicata and its pudgier kin, Sweet Dumpling, though they don't keep nearly as well as other winter squashes. There's a lot of buttercup grown around here and it's a particular favorite of mine for its relatively dry, "baked potato" texture after roasting, so I stock up on it while the local crop is in full swing. I've got several pounds already roasted, bagged and frozen, and may yet splurge on a 50-lb bag to split with the in-laws and stepdaughter. A halved and precooked Sweet Dumpling makes a marvelous vessel for shirred eggs, btw.

A phrase I've borrowed from (puts on "curmudgeonly old man" voice) those kids on social media... basically it means "...I have reasons, but don't care to get into them right now." If you were questioning the actual reasons, as opposed to the idiom, I went into that in detail last autumn but the TL;DR version is that I eat it on my oatmeal in the mornings as a sweetener (and steel-cut oats are my near-invariable breakfast), have it on toast or with yogurt as a snack, and bake with it when preparing low-everything treats for my mother-in-law, who is in end-stage liver failure because of her (largely uncontrolled) diabetes.

My autumnal applesauce binge is underway (I'm pretty sure I spoke about it in detail last year at this time, but I eat a LOT of applesauce "because reasons"). This batch was about 8 lbs of heirloom Dudley apples from one local grower (I picked 10 pounds, but ate some), 10 lbs of Macs from another local grower, and about 5 pounds of "feral" apples from the untended trees growing around my neighbourhood. Many of those are excellent eating apples, rivaling the commercial ones in size and flavor despite being untended. Last night's batch was 17 pints plus a bit left over, which just went into my open jar. I hope to do at least two more batches of similar size while the seasonal glut of apples lasts.

It's been a ridiculously bountiful year for mushrooms here in NB as well, the best in 20 years according to local foragers. Sadly, due to family/work issues, I've gotten out exactly once.