chromedome

Forgive me if I'm being dense, but.. ml?

I haven't evaluated this in any large-scale way (I've only had my dehydrator for a couple of years) but so far I've gotten the best results with apples that would also bake well, as opposed to "cooking apples" like Macs or Dudleys or Paula Reds. Among the locally-grown apple varieties I find Cortland works very well for dehydrating, partly because it retains its texture well and partly because its snowy-white flesh stays pale as it dries (some varieties darken). Your local selection will be different from mine, and I can't speak to the main commercial cultivars because I haven't yet tried them (I go with local apples while they're cheap and plentiful) but hopefully that's at least a starting point for you to work from.

It's all about picking which battles, and when. I can knock out a crust readily enough, but some nights I'll just say "screw it" and drop a biscuit dough on top instead. And yeah, I'm not above using canned soup if I'm in that kind of a mood (my GF grew up with the canned-soup version, so for her it's even *more* comforting when it's made that way). Bottom line, if you can put it on the table and enjoy it and not have to think or work too hard, sometimes that's all that's required.

Everyone decides where to draw the line for themselves.

In fairness, the laser was once derided as "a problem in search of a solution." A few years before that, it was thought that the world market for computers might max out at 6 to 12 machines. They could be a mainstream product in a few years, who knows? The pineapple equivalent of a Honeycrisp apple, as opposed to this year's square watermelon.

Followed that batch with another dozen pints a few nights ago. My running tally of greens from the garden is up to 11.6 kg blanched and frozen for winter consumption. Locally grown buttercup squash were on for 25 cents/pound at a local indie grocer this past week, so I bought a LOT of those and have frozen several bags (didn't bother to weigh them) of the cooked squash for later use.

We had two nights in a row of seriously hard frost, and as expected my squashes have reached the end of the road. My improvised cover for the tomatoes seems to have done the job, though, and they still look to be doing fine. Several are on the verge of ripeness, and should be ready to go when I get home from NS on Friday. The peas are also hanging in just fine, and of course all of my sturdy greens (chard, beet tops, broccoli raab, kale) remain green and sturdy.

https://www.foodandwine.com/news/pink-pineapples-buy-online

Sounds about right. I have 6 in the same-sized bed, and that was pretty full. They'd have had more room to expand if I'd gone with 4 or 5 in larger cages. As it was, the two at the rear didn't get as much sun and stayed relatively smaller (next time I'll know to stagger them left-right just a few inches, so they'll have more equal exposure).

We've all been there with one or another piece of equipment. Often more than once.

It's unrelated to the current discussion of eggs, but every time my eye meets the title of this thread the (sizable) smart-alec side of my brain says "Oh, just salt and pepper usually..."

That's a Really Big Deal, 'cause those suckers are not lacking for bones.

I'm not a home-fermenting maven, but it sounds to me like you had incomplete fermentation. It shouldn't be salty-tasting after the bacteria have done their thing.

My late wife encouraged me to adapt to left-mousing, on the same premise of dementia-avoidance. I don't know how much help it'll be on the dementia front, but mousing ambidextrously certainly helps me avoid repetitive stress injuries and is also a great convenience when using multiple computers on the same desktop (as I sometimes do).

...but all the hexane is cooked out, we promise. When vegans ask me "You know what's really in those [chicken nuggets, hot dogs, etc]?" I invariably answer "Why yes, I do...do you know what's in your textured soy protein?" Just to be clear, I eat the stuff myself on occasion and have no (forgive me) beef with it. I just enjoy a good round of devil's advocate on occasion.

I'm with you on the bacon jam and caramelized onions. Never could get my taste buds wrapped around blue cheese on beef, though. To me, it's just a way to replicate the flavor of spoiled beef, without actually making yourself sick. Love all the pieces separately, just can't abide them together. I also have a bacon marmalade I scooped from the markdowns rack at Walmart one day, to the mental accompaniment of "where have you been all my life?" or some such. It's exactly as good as you'd think.

My GF likes to keep Food Network (Canada) on in the background through the day, so if she happens to look up she'll see something appetizing. I happened to be walking through the room when "You Gotta Eat Here" was on, and caught this exchange... Chef: "Okay, so now we put in a bit of our house-cured bacon..." Host: "You put bacon in your slaw?" Chef: "Yeah, just a -..." Host: (hugs him)

I feel for you. My "main" garden out on the Kingston Peninsula was in a similarly decrepit condition this year. Bad spring weather wiped out my early plantings, drought did for most of the rest, plus a combination of COVID-related restrictions and belt-tightening (ie, gas money to drive out to the country) meant I couldn't physically be there much over the first half of the season. This was supposed to be a year of mentoring my stepdaughter in the garden (she and her family live on that property) so we could enlarge it and both have decent gardens there, but that didn't happen for the reasons given above. Also, she's busy with three kids (hers are 2 and 5, his is 14). So, between that and the lack of water...it was pretty grim. Hoping and planning for better in 2021.

I tell myself that after approximately every second or third batch. ADD is the enemy of porridge, for sure. Which reminds me, there's something I'm supposed to be doing this very minute...

Nice. Around where I live I'm seeing LOTS of A. campestris right now, which would be good news if the property managers didn't have a crew come in and spray the grass 3 times every summer (most recently, just last week). I'm hoping to get out into the little patch of mixed forest nearby for an hour or so, and see whether the rain has given me a late flush of boletes or maybe some winter chanterelles.

Yup, me too. It's the very last thing to come out when I put my garden to bed for the winter.

Very cool. I'll have to keep an eye out for that one; one of our favorite walks with the pooches is through the Irving Nature Park at the edge of town (where there are both beach and forest habitats). I've harvested some B. edulis, russulas and a few other Leccinum types from the forested areas, but never would have thought to check the sand for mushrooms.

We're well and truly into apple season here, so I've put up another 15 pints of applesauce while the getting's good. I will probably put up another goodly batch at some point in the near future, and then turn some of it into apple leather for the grandkids. Also the Cortlands (my preferred general-purpose baking apple, of what's locally available) will be available in another week or so. I usually do some of those in the dehydrator as apple rings (again, mostly for the young 'uns) and cut/core/peel the rest and freeze them. Usually I portion them into bags suitable for smaller and larger pies or crisps, tossed already with sugar, spices and a bit of flour for thickening as they bake. I vac-seal those in my Food Saver, and when I feel the urge to make a pie or an apple crisp they're ready to use.