chromedome

This one is not food, strictly speaking, but I'll post it anyway. A number of Isagenix "wellness" products, mostly shakes and bars, are being recalled for over-fortification with vitamins. That's not one we see every day, but as we all know an excess of fat-soluble vitamins can have rather nasty repercussions. https://www.inspection.gc.ca/food-recall-warnings-and-allergy-alerts/2021-01-29/eng/1611979385715/1611979390681?utm_source=r_listserv

My feeling is that the critters have better senses than we do, so those with "sampling" holes are the ones that have been, so to speak, preapproved by the QA department. After a bit of work with the paring knife, I'll happily eat 'em. BTW, re the golden beets, they're great raw in salads. Sweet, earthy, crunchy, and not nearly as excited to stain your clothes as regular beets. I haven't made a whole lot of use of my spiralizer, but often when I pull it out it's for those beets. I grow a variety called Golden Grex in my own garden.

It hit here in Canada a couple of years ago, when Post stopped distributing the cereal up here (demand, apparently, has been low). As it happens Grape-Nuts are a regionally popular ice cream add-in here in the Maritimes, so ice cream makers have had to import it directly.

Sorry to hear you were ill, happy you're feeling better.

One Ocean brand smoked sockeye, listeria, "possibly national." https://www.inspection.gc.ca/food-recall-warnings-and-allergy-alerts/2021-01-27/eng/1611799951171/1611799956134?utm_source=r_listserv

Any product you've ever used previously to maintain a ceramic range can be used on the new one. The actual surface is the same, it's the underlying mechanism that's different. I occasionally put parchment or paper towel under my pot if I'm cooking something splashy/messy, but not often. I usually just clean up fairly quickly after I'm gone, and on the infrequent occasion something sticks on/cooks on, I just leave my cloth full of hot, soapy dishwater to sit on the offending spot for a while as I attend to putting other stuff away. I have just a small, low-power portable hob in my kitchen: it was intended to be a supplemental "large burner" for my small ring-type apartment range, but in practice it's the induction hob where 90+ percent of my cooking takes place.

I found one in a thrift shop that looked very similar but was of 70s (IIRC) vintage. My daughter was looking for a blender at the time so I bought it for her. Her smoothie habit killed it within a year or so, but she loved it while it worked. YMMV, of course.

Dating myself, of course, but I never hear the word "squab" in any voice except that of Sylvester, salivating over Tweety Bird.

Clearly it's in the zeitgeist...

https://www.foodandwine.com/news/editors-note-why-a-recipe-is-more-than-a-recipe

I'm in no position to prove/debunk the value of barding one way or another. I can attest that larding at the very least creates the perception of juiciness in lean meats, as long as it reaches a high enough temperature to melt, because of the liquefied fat. Many flavor molecules are more soluble in fat than in water, so I expect there's an impact on seasoning as well. As many of us here have said over the years, fat equals flavor.

Very nice. End grain butcher block is one option I'm seriously considering for my countertops, a few years down the road when we (hypothetically) get to build our "forever home."

Because French. Or kitchen French at least, which might not be exactly the same thing.

Nor mine. I typically support the local team and buy Brunswick brand, HQ'd a few km west of here in Black's Harbour. Occasionally I'll buy the NS-based Kersten brand at Costco, though I find those less flavorful (my dogs are less critical). Hmmm. Haven't treated the mutts to sardines for a few months, might have to do that again sometime soon.

Update: News reports this morning say it's C. botulinum.

Several flavors of Clover Leaf brand boneless sardine fillets are being recalled for "dangerous bacteria," ie they haven't narrowed it down yet but they know something's wrong. Possibly (probably!) national. https://www.inspection.gc.ca/food-recall-warnings-and-allergy-alerts/2021-01-22/eng/1611358226922/1611358231893?utm_source=r_listserv

Pleased to bump this thread with a good-news followup: The same Eater writer reports that the Timeline has been taken over by Virginia Tech's Special Collections Archive. https://www.eater.com/22224776/food-timeline-lynne-olver-virginia-tech-university

I'm pretty sure it was at Superstore. Not certain of the brand, because once I'd opened the bag I transferred it to a big Mason jar. It might have been Rooster brand, but I can't vouch for that.

Superstore carries a lot of specialty rices in smaller bags, Sobeys as well but to a lesser extent. You'll pay more on a per-weight basis, but it's still a useful way to try a bunch and see what you like. Also there's Bulk Barn, if you have one near you. I've just finished a bag of red Thai "cargo" rice, which I quite liked. It's basically the same thing as brown rice, except for a slightly different set of phytochemicals giving it its color. I found the flavor quite nice, with a decidedly nutty undertone. I'm also partial to the black "forbidden" rice...I usually use it to make dessert (cooked in coconut milk, you get a rice pudding with a beautiful purple color) but it also works in savory dishes. I'm probably an outlier in the current crowd, in that I favor the whole-grain rices over white for general-purpose eating. I have basmati, arborio and a run-of-the-mill Chinese long-grain white that I use for specific dishes.

I'm no expert, but IIRC birch is one of the harder woods. I seem to recall my father cussing it as he sharpened his chainsaw repeatedly.

Yeah, your first chinook is always a "WTF?" experience.

Somewhere recently online (Twitter, I think?) someone posted "Just had a perfect pear. Caught it in that 30-second window."

I love it...

We had a popular TV cook in Canada in the 80s and 90s named James Barber, a humorous English gent who'd been an engineer by trade. He was raised by his granny, who was - at least in his telling - exactly the kind of stereotypical English cook who gave English food a bad name. He only *really* got interested in food as he traveled the continents in his day job, and began to notice how often a given technique or combination of ingredients would crop up across multiple cultures. He would often make that point in his show, getting to a point in the recipe and then explaining how you could take that basic preparation and spin it into something Italian or Chinese (or whatever) by changing the next few ingredients. One one episode of his show he told the story of a mining camp where he'd worked in the 1970s, where the cook quit or left due to illness or something of that sort. The company flew in a new cook from Vancouver, but the new guy Had Ideas. He only lasted about 10 days, and was literally chased from the camp when he served the miners tofu (In my head he vanishes into the distance, burly miners in hot pursuit, wailing "...but it's GOOOD for youuuuuu!!!!"). Since it would be at least several days until a new cook could be found, Barber volunteered to give it a whirl and found he quite enjoyed himself. That led, eventually, to him becoming a popular TV host and cookbook writer.