chromedome

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.

From a crop scientist I follow on Twitter...

I know a lot of people who use them for distilling herbal medicines and suchlike. I have heard, but not confirmed, that the use of stills for "to-drink" spirits was an afterthought to their original use in medicine. Where I live it's legal to distill alcohol for your own use, but not for distribution or sale.

Count me in the anti-panko corner as well. It's difficult to articulate what I dislike about it, the best I can say is that it's not a kind of crunch I appreciate. Like kettle-style potato chips. I'm also not a fan of the current fad for exposing a layer of pasta on top of the lasagna (or other baked dish). I don't dislike crunchy foods in general, just that specific kind of hard crunch.

I've seen articles in the Mother Earth News over the years, so you could try their site. Most blogs/recipe sites I've seen with info on working with dehydrated veg are of the prepper/survivalist variety, so a) their culinary qualities may not be of the best; and b) frequenting them may result in... interesting... alterations to the suggested pages and ads you encounter subsequently.* Dried fruit is easier, you can just Google recipe "[specific dried fruit] recipe ideas" and then winnow the results for sites you've previously used and/or have confidence in. *I'd suggest using your browser's "incognito" mode (though Chrome will still report your searches to Google even with that turned on, according to a recent lawsuit, so it's better to use Firefox or some other alternative browser)

One of my local berry growers started a winery with similar motivations, though in his case it was primarily a hedge against the market (berries are a short season crop, so you don't have much margin for error). His fruit wines proved to be both good and popular, and he's now also got vineyards and is one of the mainstays of our small-but-growing local industry.

My mom and I shared a Cornish pasty and a steak-and-kidney pie from a place called Great British Grub when I visited her in Truro at the end of September (I had leftover beef gravy from the previous night's dinner). Both were good, though not having been to the UK I can't comment on authenticity. The owners are a pair of expat Brits, though, so I'll assume they know what they're doing. A recent post on their FB page mentions that their Staffordshire oatcakes are the wife's grandma's recipe (she's originally from Stoke). They don't have a website, apparently, but the FB page is easy to search if anyone's going to be in NS over the next little while.

Well, then...this brings discussions of "terroir" and growing conditions to a whole other level. https://blogs.nasa.gov/kennedy/2021/10/05/houston-we-have-a-pepper/

I, for one, will always make allowances in the interest of alliteration.

Olivera brand sliced olives, for potential botulism. This one is (currently) Quebec only, and I don't *think* we currently have any active eG'ers there, but...it's botulism. So I'll post it just in case. https://inspection.canada.ca/food-recall-warnings-and-allergy-alerts/2021-10-05/eng/1633474001711/1633474009709?utm_source=r_listserv

...and there'd be no doctor shortage, as a bonus.

Yes, wild-caught fish can be stubbornly unaccountable...

An update on the enoki mushroom recall from a little while ago: https://inspection.canada.ca/food-recall-warnings-and-allergy-alerts/2021-09-29/eng/1632958622644/1632958628078?utm_source=r_listserv

Well, creating and demonstrating the technology is at best a starting point. Figuring a way to make it scale, and then determining a practical use-case, those are the big hurdles. I don't especially expect this to come to fruition, but new technologies *will* inevitably gain a toehold and potentially alter how things are done. We won't know which technologies until after the fact, of course. The market for frozen, heat-and-eat chicken meals is already substantial; it's not at all implausible that this could be merged with another technology - lab-cultured meats - to produce industrial quantities of prepared quasi-chicken for that market. I'm pretty sure it would sell in supermarkets and Walmarts if the price point was competitive enough, and I absolutely guarantee it would appeal in the institutional market (schools, prisons, retirement homes, campus cafeterias, etc). A properly designed and operated factory would almost certainly mean less risk of foodborne illness than the current system. Not advocating one way or another. With any technology, there's potential to execute well or poorly.

Some bars where I live, in Atlantic Canada, do still run "buck a shuck" specials to accompany a beverage purchase as cheap wings used to.

I have seen similar items sold as crap-catchers for the drain of your kitchen sink (ie keep it in the plug-hole when not using the plug), in order to prevent food debris (and presumably the odd piece of jewelry, etc) from getting caught in the pipes. That being said, the sink kind generally have a bigger lip. So the tea infuser guess is probably the correct one.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/engineers-figured-out-how-to-cook-3d-printed-chicken-with-lasers/

Yeah, my late wife and I were only 9 years apart, but her mother and my grandmother were both born in 1914. ...and of course there's the famous example of the 10th POTUS, John Tyler, who still has one living grandson.

LOL There was a much less dire example of similar advertising in my local Yellow Pages a few years ago. For those who don't know Saint John, NB (which I can safely assume to be all of you) there is a paper mill perched alongside the river just north and west of the downtown core (which here is called "uptown"), which lends that distinctive pulp-mill fragrance to a large swath of the surrounding area. A popular gastropub in the uptown area is the Saint John Alehouse, owned and operated by our local celebrity chef Jesse Vergen (Canadian eG'ers may remember him for his deep runs on two seasons of Top Chef Canada, or his judging stint on Wall of Chefs). A decade or so ago, the Alehouse's Yellow Pages ad featured the slogan "Uptown, Upscale, and Mostly Upwind"

Yeah, that part caught my eye as well.

I used to live in St. Andrews. It's a nice place, though it's getting priced out of reach now for many of us. There are two smoked-salmon places nearby, Wolf's Head and Oven Head, and they're both good. At Ozzie's I generally order the clams or the seafood platter, because I'm pretty indifferent to lobster (and therefore lobster rolls). I'm not sure how long lobster rolls have been a "thing" in the Maritimes. I never saw or heard of them until I moved back in 2007 to open my restaurant, and was immediately asked if I'd be making them (I had to Google it). That's not to say they weren't here, of course, just that I didn't encounter them. We were not an eating-out family, in the main, when I was growing up. My extended family is heavily divided between those who favor one or another fast-food chain, and those who pack sandwiches because "why would I pay someone else to make food for me when I can make my own for cheaper?"