chromedome

I would venture to guess that, if anything, it might have been the first opportunity for many travelers to actually eat french fries, back in the day. Most people were still rural, remember, and fat was something you carefully conserved. Deep frying would have been a splurge in many households.

LOL I remember him grumbling in an interview when his doctor sharply restricted his use of salt. "Have you ever tasted a fried egg without salt?" he asked the interviewer rhetorically. "Never mind the egg, it tastes like the chicken wasn't getting laid."

No, silly, as the food becomes more seasoned. (Can't pass up a straight line like that...)

The cynic in me says "Those suckers are expensive...wait 6 months until you're eating grains again." (After low-carbing/keto-ing for three years my GF is eating balanced meals again, is beginning to slowly lose weight - which didn't happen on the diets - and she has reversed the frightening spike in her cholesterol levels. YMMV.)

Yup. Those who cooked before the labor-saving devices really appreciated the saving in labor. For Canadians of a given age our homegrown equivalent to Beard or Julia was Mme. Benoit, who popularized cookery that went beyond the stodgy meat-and-two of the day. I have a copy of her vintage 1970s cookbook for microwave ovens, and in the intro she rhapsodizes about its speed and efficiency relative to the wood-fired cookstoves of her youth.

I live in a house with multiple pets, so - while I appreciate rails and open shelving on their merits - I'm a big fan of enclosed storage. I appreciate being able to use things without rinsing away the free-floating fur and pet dander first.

"Lucky bamboo" isn't really a bamboo (it's actually related to asparagus). Its growth indoors is dictated by growing conditions you give it, so it's easy to manage for size.

A couple of the other stories I've looked at have offered up a few theories. One, of course, is the pandemic. Another is the rise of home delivery for basically "every freakin' thing," thanks to Amazon and meal-prep kits and suchlike. It could also just be an example of "everything old is new again" (except my knees, sadly).

I've seen a couple of news stories about this, lately. The startup, Loop, is essentially positioning itself to follow the beverage bottle/can recycling model, but within the grocery and fast-food ecosystem. They're operating in a handful of countries already, but here in Canada their partnership with Loblaw - one of our two national supermarket chains, and owner of our major pharmacy chain as well - gives them an unusually high profile. Thoughts? https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/loop-reusable-packaging-1.5910620

One thing to be aware of is that Canadians don't get a tax deduction for their mortgage interest, as Americans do. It doesn't change the larger picture, but the math is somewhat different for us.

I wasn't familiar with that particular product, but I've seen articles for years about an ingenious farmer in France who used a massive pile of chipped wood (basically an industrial-sized hugelkultur bed) to both heat his water, and generate methane that he captured and used for cooking. I don't think a big-ass anaerobic digester is a good fit for my personal scenario (I don't plan on having livestock, and I *do* plan on composting, and it's just the two of us...), but it's an intriguing option and I'll probably look into it further.

This and the other current thread about kitchen (cupboard) design have been interesting for me to follow, because my GF and I are at the point of starting to think seriously about what we want in our home and why. In our case we're looking to keep the home as energy-efficient as possible, though we haven't yet committed to the notion of being fully off-grid (which complicates many things, including eventual resale - hopefully by our estate, as we intend this to be our forever home). There will decidedly be solar, and I'm leaning to battery storage, but whether it's a complement or our main power is still TBD. I used to be a gas loyalist and had always planned to incorporate gas (for at least the stove) into any home I ever built, but now I don't believe that's going to happen. I do most of my cooking these days on a low-quality single induction hob, and I think I'd be perfectly happy with a full-sized (and higher quality) induction cooktop. Also over the past few years I've seen a lot of research about the impact of gas cookery on indoor air quality, which is a real issue with modern, airtight, high-efficiency homes. A really good vent hood is a must, and even that's not bulletproof. In my case, where I want to keep power consumption to a minimum, skipping the gas stove and the corresponding industrial-strength hood will simplify things a lot. There's also the whole carbon-reduction issue (for me, not necessarily for you). New Brunswick's grid is skewed to low-carbon sources (hydro and the only nuclear plant east of Ontario) and the last couple of coal-burners are going offline in the coming years. Switching to gas would be a retrograde step, in that context. There's a good writeup at Mother Jones on the efforts the oilpatch has put into promoting gas in the kitchen, if you're interested. As an avowedly lefty publication MoJo is jaundiced on the subject of corporate greed, but it's diligent about sources and fact-checking.

Probably just a vagary of regional nomenclature. Where I live a pork "steak" is cut from the shoulder or the leg, while anything else is a "chop." Though shoulder is also sometimes packaged as a chop, so it's not entirely consistent.

Yup. Been contemplating my seed order for the past few days. Making a list and checking it twice, and all that kind of thing. Of course, the anticipation is half the fun.

That's about what I recognize as a "proper" chowder (ie, the way I make it). I don't always have lobster stock on hand, but shrimp shell stock works. I'll also use the racks from white fish for stock, but seldom get them anymore now that I'm cooking for just two. In a pinch I'll just cheat and use clam nectar (prepared fish stock has only *just* become available where I live, and I expect I'll probably use that at some point as well. Whatever works...). I also fall into the "no cream" camp (it adds richness but mutes flavor) and the "brothy" camp (I detest the gluey, over-thickened kind served now at most restaurants). I usually add a pinch of summer savory to mine, but that's a Maritimer thing.

Back when my restaurant was open, my now-GF would come with her now-ex for brunch. She'd always order the eggs Bennie variation with my house-cured gravlax under the eggs. I make it now with store bought cold-smoked salmon instead (because small-batch gravlax is a PITA, and a full filet falls into "a ham and two people" territory), and it's kind of our "thing." So that plus some roasted asparagus is dinner tonight, with an ice cream cake for dessert (she loves those). Sadly she has to work, but gets an extra 15 minutes for her lunch break (45 minutes, instead of 30) so there's time. I just have to have it all ready when her break starts.

So I just got a voice message from my son out in Alberta. He went to the bank on Friday. At his bank each teller's post has been turned into a mini-cubicle with plexi dividers, of course, and there will usually be one or another promotional item on the customer's side...perhaps a tray of chocolate bars, or a stuffed animal...which are for sale to support one or another local charity. On Friday, instead of these typical items, he found a large bottle of (wait for it...) Heinz ketchup. The teller was an older Indo-Canadian lady, someone he knows well, and she was clearly just waiting for him to ask. So he did. "What's up with that?" "Well, you know...that is because it is time to ketchup on your RRSP* contributions!" He's still laughing about it. (* For the benefit of the Americans in the crowd, a Canadian Registered Retirement Savings Plan is more or less equivalent to an American IRA).

I like it when companies have a little bit of fun with that sort of thing. Our local cinema chain (now owned by Cineplex) used to sprinkle things like "No personal grooming" (nail clippers inside the red circle) and "No taxidermy" (a raccoon inside the red circle) in between the usual warnings about cell phone use and talking.

My GF and I have at times discussed tall cabinetry and various ladders, slide-out platforms and such (she's barely 5', and I'm not exactly NBA-ready either at 5'7"). Our still-hypothetical "forever home" is at least 4-5 years out, and we'll be designing and building it with aging-in-place in mind, but I hadn't yet considered the risk of falling from a ladder. That's definitely pertinent.

Speaking as a longtime retailer, I'd be pretty unhappy if a customer grumped to all their friends but didn't bother to mention their issue to me. If they already use insulated packaging bag thingies to keep perishables cold in summer, they can certainly use them to protect things from freezing in winter...if they think of it.

*That* is a pet peeve. I've had those singularly useless cupboards in a couple of rentals, and have no idea why (other than the look) people do that. The only functional purpose for them I've ever thought of was removing the doors and putting in a cat bed.

Truthfully I'm not a fan of the carousel either. I've had things fall off the back and jam up the works, and extricating them required a degree of "personal origami" that did not work well with my physique.

I've had a couple of mine get softball-sized, and they were still tasty. I usually harvest them at 2 inches or so in diameter, just because a) I'm impatient, and b) it's a good size to make a whole, pretty slice for my salad bowl. Treat them like a prettier version of daikon, basically. Raw, cooked, pickled, they're good any which way.