chromedome

Cool links, OC, I'll give 'em a read when I'm done for the day. I also fall into the immediate-breakfast camp. That may be in part because I settle in to do "brain work" ASAP, as the morning is my most-productive writing time. My almost-invariable breakfast, year-round, is steel-cut oats with a splash of milk and a topping of homemade applesauce; and a couple of toasted slices of my usual (100% whole wheat, home-baked) sandwich bread, one of which will have peanut butter on it. As you may gather, low-carbing holds no allure for me at all! I don't find the high-protein egg breakfast appeals to me at all in the mornings. I feel greasy and bloated until mid-morning, and then I'm abruptly ravenous. My oatmeal 'n' toast combo, OTOH, keeps my belly happy until lunchtime. The only time I *don't* eat this in the morning is if I've forgotten to make a batch the evening before: I do a full cup of oats to a litre of water, and then reheat a portion each morning in the microwave.

The corresponding date here is the Victoria Day weekend, which comes a week before your Memorial Day. That would be roughly a week later than where you live, give or take.

Went to my community garden plot last night with the intention of using the communal rototiller, but it's apparently not back from its spring tuneup yet. So I dug a perimeter around my plot(s) - actually three adjoining 8' X 8' plots - since you generally need to do that after tilling anyway. Also, it gave me a chance to take a look at the soil. It seems decent...reasonably rich and friable, even after spring rains and a couple of years' disuse and compaction. Also I took a knife and made my ritual first harvest, of dandelion greens. Brought home a very full shopping bag, about 3 pounds or so, which translated to about 1 1/2 pounds when trimmed and cleaned and rinsed and spun dry. ...and, greens being greens, further translated to about 2 cups when cooked down for the freezer. I'd covered part of the plot with corrugated cardboard last autumn for weed suppression (didn't get the whole area covered, because it snowed) so some of the dandelions were beautifully blanched, with a nice yellow-green color (shading to pale yellow-white), a mild flavor and a lettuce-crisp texture. Those went into last night's salad. If you've never blanched dandelions, and have an unsprayed yard, give it a go. The flavor's much like Belgian endive.

I'm no GF maven, but tapioca flour is a purified starch and cassava flour is the whole root (the same root, mind you) dried and powdered. It's basically the difference between potato starch and instant potatoes. I'm guessing the fiber makes it more absorbent, and is the reason you had a stodgy consistency. Cutting back a bit on the flour probably would have given you a better result, though I'll stress once more that this is not drawn from a lot of hands-on GF baking experience.

I haven't used one, but I *did* have a standard-issue restaurant-type fryer rigged for portable use with a propane tank. My biggest piece of advice is to have a REALLY stable place to use it, and to keep kids, pets, and the chronically clumsy or infirm as far away from it as humanly possible. If that means barricading yourself with tables or other obstructions, so be it. Amusingly, when I got out of the farmer's market gig and sold the fryer to a colleague, he called me in a panic because it wasn't coming up to temperature. I walked the couple of blocks to his house, to see what assistance I could offer. Turned out he was testing it with water rather than oil, because...you know...oil's expensive. He literally facepalmed when I reminded him of the boiling point of water.

A woman here where I live lost her teacup terrier to a gull this past summer. The pup rushed the bird in a territorial frenzy, as they do, and the gull nonchalantly snapped him up in its bill and flew away, to the horror of the dog's watching owner.

I ended up putting my single induction hob (a cheapie Kuraidori unit) alongside my diminutive apartment-sized stove where I can use it as a second full-sized burner. Of course the tradeoff is giving up a part of my (not plentiful) countertop space.

Yes. Without it my now-widowed mother would be in rather straitened circumstances.

Yup. That's why my father left Newfoundland and joined the navy.

Do give 'em the "magnet test" before buying. Not all stainless works on induction, as I learned the hard way.

Sheesh. I'd missed the first bit when you posted it, but after reading lemniscate's post the penny dropped. Keeping your potatoes in the fridge forces the potato to turn its starches back into sugars (ie, antifreeze). This used to be a real PITA for me when I was doing fresh-cut fries at my restaurant, because it takes a couple of weeks before they're fit to use for french fries after they come out of the cooler. If my supplier shipped me recently-refrigerated spuds, my fries would over-brown when I cooked them. I eventually learned how to blanch them at an extra-low temperature for a longer time, to compensate. I don't know whether/to what extent this is a factor, but that's why I never keep potatoes in the fridge (though I'll make an exception for baby potatoes, which don't seem to be much affected).

As it happens, my GF's daughter had a grouse volunteer itself a couple of days ago. Flew into their living room window with a resounding smack and fell to the ground, dead of a broken neck. Sadly they were uncertain about cleaning and cooking it (and didn't call me, which says the "eww" factor predominated) so they left it at the edge of the woods for the local critters to enjoy.

LOL A couple of days ago I saw a meme on a friend's timeline that had the cover image of the Very Hungry Caterpillar, but said something along the lines of "The caterpillar wasn't really hungry. He was just bored, and ate to have something to do while he was quarantined." I'd intended to share it here, but couldn't find it again.

Are your canned tomatoes whole, or diced? Diced tomatoes contain calcium chloride to reinforce their cell walls and keep 'em from cooking to mush during the canning process. It's possible that's what keeps the potatoes from softening as expected. In fact, if you sometimes use whole and sometimes use diced, that may explain the inconsistency. ...there's also the acidity, of course. You may just need to hold off on adding the tomatoes until the spuds have cooked, which would eliminate both variables.

I've read partway through it once before, but got interrupted and never got back to it. Some of his conclusions have been hotly refuted by others, of course, but it's been a highly influential book and I really should finish it one day.

Yes, beef in general is a pretty big niche (there's faux pork and chicken too, but that's neither here nor there), and the faux products don't make much of a dent in the overall number. I think they appeal to the same consumer who seeks out pastured, humanely raised and otherwise-premium beef products...not 100% overlap, but surely a significant chunk in the middle of the ol' Venn diagram. In either case, there are both real and assumed benefits to be had in exchange for the premium price, and some are willing to go that route. Not gonna displace mass-market beef anytime soon, but it took a while for automobiles to displace horses as well.

Okay, that's a crucial detail for sure.

Major players like ADM, Cargill and Perdue are significant investors in faux meats and lab-grown meat initiatives, just as oil companies are major investors in renewables. They've all learned from the example of IBM. If you ever have the chance, read Tom Watson Jr's memoir "Father and Son and Company," about his years with IBM. A crucial turning point comes at the beginning of the 50s, when newfangled electronic computers showed signs of perhaps some day challenging IBM's business machine hegemony (then built around punch-card technology). Watson Sr's first instinct was to launch all-out war on the upstarts, including a scorched-earth campaign that would have denied IBM equipment and support to any company that bought an electronic computer. Watson Jr had a different idea..."What if we built our *own* computer?" We all know how that turned out. IBM's existing market leverage, combined with a stellar new product, gave them several additional decades as a top company in their space. Entrenched players getting into the "next-gen meats" space hope to do the same.

Spotted something interesting in my most recent grocery flyer. Maple Leaf Foods, one of Canada's leading meat-packing companies, is also the owner of the LightLife brand of faux-meats (not as well known as Beyond and Impossible, but a very similar product). They're now selling 50/50 blends of real and faux meat (burgers, sausages, etc) for the "I'm an omnivore but want to eat less meat" demographic. https://www.mapleleaf.ca/maple-leaf-50-50/

Commercially prepared mayo itself doesn't require refrigeration, as long as it's uncontaminated by other foods (as an aside, in laboratory testing, it has shown itself to be pretty good at killing pathogens). Over time its flavor or texture may degrade, but I use enough of it that this is not an issue. Homemade mayonnaise of course is a whole other story, and foods containing mayonnaise are susceptible to cross-contamination from the other ingredients.

I don't use kewpie (the notion of sweetened mayo doesn't appeal to me at all) but I keep my regular mayo in a squeeze bottle. That way it dispenses cleanly, and even when kids/grandkids are visiting I don't have to worry about a gunky utensil going back into the mayo (which leads to spoilage, potential food safety issues, etc). When it gets into the last 1/3 to 1/4, I just refill it from a larger jar using a scrupulously clean and sanitized utensil. It's a modest amount of extra work (though no more than cutting and scraping the squeeze bottle, for sure) and it means I don't have to waste fridge space on my mayonnaise. Also, I can enjoy both the convenience of the squeezer and the lower cost/ml of buying in the large jar.

Did you complete the trifecta by listening to the Velvet Underground?

To my taste a slight tang is the sine qua non of a good cheese sauce. I'll use buttermilk or yogurt to get it if the cheese isn't sharp/tangy enough. Of course, as I've said before, it's our differences that keep life interesting.

Lots of potatoes here. Like neighbours Maine and Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick is a major producer. Lots of local cabbage and apples, too. Most other stuff is imported, sadly.