chromedome

The straw suppresses weeds and helps retain moisture, and then breaks down to provide additional tilth (organic matter) in the soil. You can use your matured compost as top dressing or side dressing around your plants, though the timing depends on what you're growing. You can also add some to the hole when you're putting in transplants.

Given her age, and her relatively recent culinary training, it's quite possible her father was trying to find a viable niche where she could function once her parents passed. I know a family in Alberta who followed a similar course with their daughter, though from a younger age.

I was mystified as well. I was mentally trying to envision some sort of protective cap for the "business end" of the thing. Mind you, this was pre-caffeine...

You say that like it's a bad thing?...

They're also pretty sustainable, relative to most of the alternatives.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/indigenous-forest-gardens-remain-productive-and-diverse-for-over-a-century/

Money quote from Jason's review:

I can't answer for anyone, since I've never succumbed to the temptation, but a) the APO is twice the price; and b) I expect many of the CSO owners are standing pat while their ovens last.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-was-native-american-food-like-before-europeans

In Newfoundland it's common to see them diced and added to potato salad, turning the whole thing shocking pink. Not that I advocate for this, mind you, but it's at least... interesting, the first time. Traditionally you'd see it served with regular "white" potato salad and another one flavored with yellow mustard (which, again, I don't necessarily advocate) as part of a cold plate with the leftovers from a holiday meal or similarly large spread. One of my aunts made her third one green, rather than yellow, so they'd correspond to the old-school Newfoundland flag of pink, white and green (said to represent, respectively, England's rose, Scotland's thistle and Ireland's shamrock). I don't remember for sure what she "greened" it with, but suspect it was cooked-and-mashed peas.

Canadian peeps, if you've bought enoki mushrooms from Metro lately check them against this alert (Listeria). https://inspection.canada.ca/food-recall-warnings-and-allergy-alerts/2021-05-15/eng/1621108438423/1621108444577?utm_source=r_listserv

https://civileats.com/2021/05/07/why-ken-meter-is-on-a-mission-to-build-community-food-webs/

There's a recall for BC and Quebec (so far) on one particular brand of Taleggio, for listeria. https://inspection.canada.ca/food-recall-warnings-and-allergy-alerts/2021-05-12/eng/1620873492820/1620873499288?utm_source=r_listserv

That's generally how I do the autumn batch with the "feral" apples, because prepping them is otherwise a PITA. A few of the trees around here produce apples with a rosy blush to their flesh, and one small crabapple tree yields apples the size of a large cherry with a rich deep-pink hue, so I always include a few of those for color.

When we get our own place, yeah...that's in the plan.

I use a mix of whatever's available from the grower, during the months they're open, but usually try to mix at least 2-3 varieties for broader flavor and sweet-tart balance. In autumn I also gather apples from the "feral" trees growing in my neighbourhood, some of which produce surprisingly good apples at nearly market size. I'll need to make more from supermarket apples before the summer is over, but supermarkets here stock local NB/NS apples most of the year, as well. In fairness, when I *do* need to get apples trucked in from across the continent, I mostly taste the difference when eating them out of hand. In the applesauce it's much less apparent.

My nearly-invariable breakfast is steel-cut oatmeal, and I put a healthy glop of applesauce on it in lieu of other sweeteners. I also sometimes have it on toast as a breakfast (on mornings when I wake up and realize I've forgotten to make oatmeal...) and I like it with yogurt as a snack/dessert at random intervals. That accounts for most of my usage, though I'll also occasionally have it on pancakes or waffles, or incorporated into muffins or a cake. Oh, and I'll also turn a few pints a year into fruit leather for the grandkids.

Also, I was down to the last pint of the applesauce I put up last autumn (27 pints) so I grabbed 20 lbs of apples from the local grower before he closed his storefront for the season. Less a few that I ate out of hand, and a few more that spoiled while waiting for me to get down to business, that still gave me 11 pints. As a bonus, having never done the math before, I now know that I get through 50-60 pints of applesauce a year or roughly a pint a week. That's handy to know for reference purposes (a canner load of 9 pints takes about 13 pounds of apples, so keeping me supplied with applesauce requires roughly 70-80 lbs of apples/year).

Just to follow up on this, since I'd neglected to do so in the fall. The dill pickles were perfectly fine, the bread and butter needed a bit more sugar (to my taste). I'm happy enough with the results to this point, have amended the bread-and-butter recipe in my copy of the book, and will doubtless try a few others in the course of the summer.

Possibly national, Golden Mushroom brand enoki, any date code prior to May 7, for possible listeria. https://inspection.canada.ca/food-recall-warnings-and-allergy-alerts/2021-05-07/eng/1620439193668/1620439199451?utm_source=r_listserv

Mine gives me a slow three-count before shutting off. That's usually plenty long enough, though occasionally annoying.

I have used both V8 and tomato juice to thin/rehydrate the sauce in tomato-sauced pasta dishes that have been in the steam table for a while, but that's a niche use-case that's of little pertinence to most home cooks.

My cheapie B&D rice cooker crapped out yesterday while I was prepping meals for the in-laws. My GF and I each had one when we moved in together, one of which we kept and the other went to one of our daughters. So the casualty was either 8 or 14 years old, depending if it was hers or mine. Either way, it's hard to argue with the TCO on a product that sells for about $20. So I bought another one.

I don't know if anyone here buys this kind of thing, but some "Big Carrot" brand juices are being recalled in Ontario because they potentially contain...glass. https://inspection.canada.ca/food-recall-warnings-and-allergy-alerts/2021-05-06/eng/1620352012624/1620352018407?utm_source=r_listserv

When I was out doing some garden prep at my stepdaughter's place the other day, their mastiff was busily digging in the uncultivated portion of the area where my garden is. To my wonderment, she was digging up and eating the (damaging) white grubs that grow into June bugs. What a good girl!