chromedome

I need to make some, actually, with the bag of shells I've been accumulating. I'm just waiting for a cool and breezy day, so I can open my windows and not have the whole apartment smell of lobster. I know it's a pleasant aroma for some, but after cooking off a couple of hundred pounds at a time on several occasions, I've had all I want of it for one lifetime.

Not a huge pickle-eater but the grandkids are, and it's that time of the year, so I made up a couple of batches. Three pints of bread-and-butter and eight pints of a quick dill pickle, both from my dad's copy of The Complete Book of Small Batch Preserving (this is my first time trying anything from the book, so no personal feedback, but 87% of the reviews on Amazon are 4- and 5-star). Also I turned 6 lbs of IdaReds into slightly more than three pints of applesauce, one of which is now opened and in the fridge. Not shown, 400g of garlic scape pesto frozen in bags. Since I rarely post photos, I've included a gratuitous second shot to give you a look at the heart of my kitchen. This is my only meaningful prep area, with the sink just out of frame to the right and the stove just barely in frame at the lower left. The induction hob is a Kuraidori (basic cheap crap with a couple of extra features, but serviceable enough), which I use because the (24-inch) stove has three small burners and one medium. I do most of my cooking on the induction, as a consequence. The other side of the stove has a small piece of counter space, with another magnetic knife rack plus two tins holding utensils, a bottle each of vegetable oil and olive oil, my salt pig, pepper grinder and - at the moment - a dehydrator full of herbs from my community garden.

I'll second savory, which is something that's traditionally used a lot here in Atlantic Canada (though increasingly it seems to be an elderly/rural thing). I would have said "peppery thyme with a hint of sage," but that's the key to its versatility...it hints at a lot of different flavors.

Back when I had my restaurant at the seaside hotel, we'd open for the season on Mother's Day. We had a young gent and his mom come out in May of 2009...he was a solid 6' 3" but sturdy enough to not look especially tall from a distance. Had that "tradesman" look about him, with close-cropped hair and a sandy beard and mustache. My (now-) late wife was serving that day, and told me "He's a ringer for my older stepson." As we were chatting with them over dessert and coffee, she told him "I'm sorry if I keep looking at you oddly, but you look SO much like my oldest son...except a foot shorter." His face was a study...

Oh dear, another rabbit hole. I've bookmarked a few sites to look at, sometime when I'm not (ostensibly) working.

I use my microplane zester on it. Generally I don't make pastes so it's fine enough at this point, but it would pound up pretty easily in the ol' M 'n' P afterwards.

You betcha. Sadly, my ground cherries were (ahem) grounded by inclement weather this spring, and I got zero germination. I'll try that again next year. My kids both loved fishing with their grandpa (my dad) and I'm looking forward to taking my grandkids out sometime soon.

Can't do #4, because I'm too easily distracted (yay, ADD!). At the moment when I should be diligently sniffing the air, I'll be in another room attending to something I'd meant to do the day before. I'll smell the smoke around the same time the smoke detector does. #1 is not especially pertinent for mealtimes, because I seldom work from a written recipe, but it's certainly valid when I do. #2 is not an issue for me, because I won't have rugs or carpeting of any kind in my kitchen. Also don't drink while cooking, because it exacerbates the whole "too easily distracted" thing.

A farmer acquaintance of mine joked with me once that when you send your youngster out to the garden to pick which veggies will be for supper, it neatly avoids the whole question of whether they'll eat 'em. I've been finding that with the grandkids, too...the only real issue is to keep them from picking things before they're ready.

(sigh) I'd be picking up a shoulder's worth of cans every time I went through that door.

It's not the cabbage that gets jammed, it's the sliding hopper/hand protector thingie. The frame is bowed just slightly, so I need to sand it a bit.

I have one similar to that, but I need to play with it a bit before I use it again because it tends to jam mid-stroke. Bought it after making the previous year's kraut, then didn't get to make any last autumn, so this year will be the first good test of it.

(shrug) My grandmother skinned her share, but never with an ulu. The old-timers favored flipper pie, but personally I'm fond of seal liver. Haven't had it in years, mind you.

I'd just shrugged off the Krim/Krum thing as a typo (or maybe a sly Harry Potter allusion). It's all good. As for the olives, hey...with climate change, you might yet be able to grow your own.

Cool. I'm growing Black Krim this year for the first time, and haven't yet seen a ripe one with my own eyes. Photos seem to vary, with some looking like yours and others being much darker, almost purple. I guess I'll see in a few more weeks...

My GF substitutes pecans, but the idea is the same. Sadly, she has to pass on the bacon now that her doctor has ordered her to cut processed and red meats (an anti-inflammatory diet to moderate her RA). Personally, I like 'em with a smidge of blue cheese in the middle.

I bring home one of those large reusable Walmart shopping bags filled with greens every few days. I alternate: one day it'll be the chard and beet tops (I grow Early Wonder Tall Top specifically for the greens); the next day it'll be the kale. I have late plantings of spinach, chard, collards, turnips and more kale in their early stages, so we'll see how those play out. Typically that big bag of greens will cook down to 5-8 portions (roughly 1 cup) once blanched, drained, and "squeezed and freezed." The sturdier kale doesn't cook down as much as the chard and beets. I have 35-40 portions in the freezer now, and hope to keep harvesting (albeit probably on a diminished basis) into October.

The first time I saw it at Sobeys they were sampling the brioche. Having tried several other GF breads and baked a few (the ATK sandwich loaf that's been posted here at some time or other is pretty good), I was genuinely astonished and impressed. As you say, cheap it's not. But when you have a hankering for that soft loaf, it'll scratch your itch.

It would go beautifully with my hammered-steel Paderno pots.

LOL Funny you should say that. The signature Canadian cocktail is the Bloody Caesar, made with clamato rather than tomato juice. At my restaurant I did a "Caesar, Caesar" with a heavily reduce clamato base added to the usual anchovies, garlic and such. Non-Canadian visitors needed to have the in-joke explained, but it was a good salad.

Seedless watermelons are always a hybrid, and (like a mule) sterile. Growing for seed is a whole interesting thing in itself, one I've intended to research thoroughly for years but have not yet done so. If you think about it, how many plants are bred/selected for resistance to "bolting"?... which, of course, means seed production. Obviously people did it for centuries, it was what farming *was,* but it's a knowledge base that has eroded sharply over the last few generations.

Aye, well. It was worth a shot. The weird thing is that it looks a LOT like the logo of a Canadian building supplies chain, but AFAIK they don't sell flatware. I guess it's not inconceivable that they'd have made a special purchase at some point, but whether they'd still have a record of who the manufacturer was is a whole other thing.

NP. My daughter is not celiac but she has a nasty (medically diagnosed) sensitivity, which basically means all the same pain but without the side dish of lasting physical damage. I've bought the Promise product for her a few times, and tried it myself, and found it surprisingly decent. They even make a brioche.