chromedome

Food recalls have been few and far between of late - a silver lining to the pandemic and the renewed awareness of sanitation, perhaps? - but I have one today. It's for red onions imported from the US by Sysco so it won't directly affect consumers here as such. Mostly likely though we'll see a rash of derivative recalls as restaurants, delis etc. figure out what they've made for retail sale that incorporates the onions. Applies to all provinces from Ontario west. https://www.inspection.gc.ca/food-recall-warnings-and-allergy-alerts/2020-07-31/eng/1596169910818/1596169916854?utm_source=r_listserv

Sheet pan meals were a real "thing" a few years back, I remember being paid to write a few articles about them. Tonight's dinner is almost but not quite that...potatoes, cauli and broccoli roasted in the oven, but the chicken cutlets are pan-fried.

I don't think I want any of those in my kitchen...

I don't know how many of you have been following this story, but people have been randomly receiving seeds in the mail from an unknown source. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/mysterious-packages-gardening-supply-1.5667656

You'd probably like this book. I remember leafing through it for a solid 40 minutes or so when I saw it in a store, many years ago.

My favorite throwaway gag in Disney/Pixar's recent Onward was the fast-food place visible in the background of one scene, with a sign that read "Now serving second breakfast."

A former/sometime colleague mentioned on LinkedIn that she'd made risotto for supper, but her youngster'd had a minor meltdown over the idea and was adamantly opposed to even trying it. When she brought him his bowl, he glared at it suspiciously. "What's this?" he demanded. "You said you didn't want risotto," she told him, "so I just made you some cheesy rice." Said "cheesy rice" was devoured quite happily.

That holds true for beverages as well. I've found that the globules melt and disperse in my coffee after a few moments. As long as you know in advance that this is going to happen, and nobody else is using the cream, no further action is required beyond perhaps a second stir after a suitable interval. Of course, if anyone else uses it they'll toss it immediately and tell you "Oh, I poured it out. It was spoiled."

If you should feel inclined to try pickling a full-sized but immature melon - at the "green" stage where the flavor is still mostly vegetal - I'd be curious to know how that turns out. My growing season is marginal for even short-season melons (I've had a couple of tiny-but-ripe watermelons, but my cantaloupes have all succumbed to pests and/or untimely frosts). I'd think about it a lot harder if I knew they could be pickled successfully.

Got to visit with my mom and daughter in Nova Scotia for the first time since February (the four Atlantic provinces have a total of <10 active cases, so this is not at all irresponsible). Bought a bag of fresh mackerel from a fisherman at $1/ea a block from my mom's place, and am now making escabeche with some of them. The rest are filleted and in the freezer.

Yeah, what he said. I'll often use just leaves in things like a quick salsa or a plate of tacos, but for everything else the stem goes in.

Alternatively, "buzz" a few bunches in your food processor with just enough oil to make a paste. The paste can be frozen and used to provide that fresh-cilantro taste in cooked foods through the cold months. I do this with any herbs that don't dry well. You lose a bit of flavor, but not much.

Mine is similar but made of plastic, and is correspondingly a bit thicker. I suspect the steel one would be easier to clean, afterwards.

I'd be tempted to do Bacon, Lettuce, Olive, Avocado and Tomato just for the acronym. But my sense of humor is a bit odd...

I'm not at all laissez-faire about rodents, however charming, because of a former co-worker who lost a healthy 20-something cousin to hantavirus. That stuff's no joke. I draw the line at glue traps, despite their effectiveness, because that's a miserable way for any creature to die. The next most-effective thing, in my experience, as been the old-fashioned wooden snap traps (YMMV). I use them frequently (or at least, as frequently as one needs to in a household containing three cats) and always with near-immediate results. I've found that I get best results with a tiny schmear of peanut butter or other nut butter on the trigger pad. If they can lick it off without triggering the trap, I know I've used too much and I'll clean the trap and start over. I also use gloved hands when I bait and set the trap, to minimize the telltale human scent. I'm sure I don't need to tell you my feelings when one of the farmer's markets where I was a vendor chose a cartoon mouse (drawn, completely by coincidence, by the market manager's son...) as its mascot. Because nothing symbolizes agriculture in the abstract like a pestilential, crop-defiling rodent, right?

When I was a kid it was always onions, leftover mashed potatoes and canned corned beef. More often a lunch or dinner thing than breakfast.

Pecan is widely used. In North America other nut woods (hickory, oak*) are also common choices. (*We tend not to think of oak in those terms, since acorns are little eaten in the modern era, but it's still a nut...)

I dry mine just to the "leather" stage, then bag and freeze it.

True, if the point of the exercise is to arrive at a standardized comparison of toast-making devices. From my perspective that's meaningless information, since I'm concerned only with how a given device handles my own home-baked bread sliced the way I slice it.

Sounds like a line Charles Grodin might have delivered in an 80s comedy.

Yeah, somewhere upthread someone cited a 20% in-warranty failure rate. You get that in what's already a niche product with a limited market, and it's likely to be not long for this world.

Before buying the toaster mentioned up-thread, I tried one that was marketed on its speed. It did indeed give me browned bread very quickly, but I was unable to think of it as toast because the middle of the slice hadn't heated enough to gelate and still had a "plain bread" texture. There was also the minor matter of the damned thing tossing 70 percent of my toast right onto the counter or floor (I won't name it here, but it has a sylishly diagonal appearance...a few seconds' Googling, and reading of Amazon reviews, will identify the culprit). I don't personally want my toast to be a crouton, though I know some like it that way. I want the sides deeply browned, and the interior soft like bread fresh from the oven. Speed isn't an issue, because frankly I'm not moving super-fast myself in the morning.

It's fun to swat them, and especially so when you swing your "zapper" through a cloud of them and hear the snap-snap-snap like miniature fireworks. That being said, the entertainment value is negated for me by the effort and the fact that it never really seems to make a dent in the population (even when I delegate the rackets to energetic grandkids). I use Truvia traps instead, which requires zero effort on my part and gives me about a 10-log reduction* in a few days. At least among my local population of flies, a natural cider vinegar seems the most effective bait in which to dissolve the Truvia. *SWAG

I used to do a demo in my cooking classes, where I'd set two one-cup measures of flour on the counter. "Same amount of flour, right?" ...everybody nods. ...put them on the scale...up to 40 percent variance.* "If you've ever gotten a recipe from a friend, and theirs is light and fluffy and yours is a brick? This is why. ...and this is why professionals use a scale." *one spooned and swiped, the other scooped directly from the bin with a vigorous stroke of the cup

Can't answer for your side of the country. Here on the other coast it's (NB-based) McCain and (PEI-based) Cavendish, and I don't see a whole lot of difference between 'em. Both seem fine to me, though I seldom eat them (my GF loves them, and when I make "totchos" for her I'll usually nibble a few).