chromedome

I have a vague recollection of someone here doing risotto-style "avenotto" with oats maybe...15, 16 years ago? Working at the moment so don't have the time to look it up, but...

This one's Quebec only, so I don't believe it affects anyone who's currently active here, but there's a recall for E. coli on sweetened dried cranberries from Les Aliments Johnvince: https://www.inspection.gc.ca/food-recall-warnings-and-allergy-alerts/2020-06-19/eng/1592586431958/1592586437935?utm_source=r_listserv

Yes, but...

I did that at one of my workplaces when we were accidentally double-shipped on romaine. When the standing order is already two skids, that's a LOT of romaine to use up. I made romaine soup with a whiff of rosemary in it (because alliteration seems to work really well on menus) and also added a lot to stir-fries. We got through it all within our rather narrow window.

I harvested a lot of raab that way last year, just because I only got out to my remote plot once a week or so and harvesting them before they blossomed was hit-or-miss. I liked them just fine.

You may (finally) be able to get that dealt with as a no-charge repair. The "butterfly" keyswitch mechanism they've used in recent years is notoriously failure-prone, and Apple has followed its usual problem-resolution process (deny there's a problem, refuse to cover the problem, issue a fix, refuse to cover the original problem or the problem with the "fix," eventually change the technology and grudgingly agree to cover the cost of the fix for those who know to ask...) but last I heard they'd arrived at the stage of replacing the damned things.

One of my uncles married a Filipina, so that was my first "authentic" ethnic food (as opposed to Chinese-Canadian).

If you haven't discovered it yet, David Leite gave a class in food writing here back in the day. Having done it myself at 40, I don't recommend going the culinary arts route unless you have specific reasons to believe it will aid your chosen career path. It ain't cheap, and probably won't open any doors that your existing experience won't.

LOL He has young children...I'm pretty sure when they're not filming the show, his pantry looks a lot more "lived in." He's a good egg, very generous with his time. I split my culinary training between schools in my native NS and my ex's native Alberta, and he came to both schools to speak to the students and participate in judging student competitions and/or fundraisers held at the schools for various community organizations.

We fried our corn tortillas to make a semi-hard shell, which I understand is very much now a niche thing. There's a story, there...my late wife was a few years older than me and she was born when her mom was already 40, so her mom and my grandmother were both born in the same year (1914). Her mom's family left Tennessee around 1920 and moved to Phoenix area in search of work (stealing a march on the next decade's Dust Bowl refugees). Since they were poor farm workers, they lived in the same places as their mostly-Mexican peers. So although her mom grew up to be a trained chef in the European tradition, she learned her Mexican cookery from the neighborhood grandmas and great-grandmas of the Phoenix area in the 1920s, who presumably would have learned from their grandmothers in the middle of the previous century. So it might be just a regional thing (I don't know what part of Mexico might have furnished Phoenix' field workers back in the day) or maybe it's just super old-school, but that's how she was taught, and my late wife was taught, and how she in turn taught me.

LOL If you put the halves of the loaf back-to-back they form a hyperbola, so I guess hyperbole is entirely appropriate in the context...

Just to follow up on my original post...there's a logic to the "slice in half, then cut crosswise" technique - for crusty artisan breads - that I hadn't explained adequately. When you leave the loaf flat, and slice through it vertically, you're compressing the bread in the direction that it's most "squishable." When you halve it first, then stand the half-loaf on its cut side, the crust makes a structural arch. As you slice, from start to finish, the pressure of your blade (however great or little) is transferred to your work surface by the relatively rigid crust. The only compression that's applied to the crumb of the bread itself comes from the blade's lateral motion, and is relatively minor. With soft loaves that doesn't apply, but of course with soft loaves any decent slicer works just fine and you don't need to play around with it.

FWIW, I have a couple of wire taco-holder racks that are supposed to be used to hold the tortillas while stuffing them. I found they were more of a hindrance than a help, so really the only thing they've ever been used for was holding the damned tacos upright so we could get pretty photos for our farmer's market website. A few years afterward, when fish tacos had become more common all the way over here (I'm told they originated somewhere along the California/Mexico border, and Atlantic Canada's about as far away as you can get without leaving the continent) I started seeing photos of them still laying flat with all the ingredients mounded artistically on top. Duh. ...not that the "flat technique" would work with your hard shells, of course.

Brandt brand mini farmer sausages, affects Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Quebec. Listeria, in this case. https://www.inspection.gc.ca/food-recall-warnings-and-allergy-alerts/2020-06-15/eng/1592274864237/1592274870603?utm_source=r_listserv

Sadly mine lives in a box somewhere my storage locker, or I'd try it for you. I've been carrying it around unused for years, simply because it's such a "vintage" artifact...the knife handle itself and its base/wall mounting bracket are an impartial blend of avocado green and harvest gold, in order to fit with *any* kitchen decor. For my own bread I use a plain-jane serrated Victorinox. For a boule (not that I've made one recently) I generally slice it down the middle, then lay a half on its cut side and slice vertically to make individual slices at a right angle to the original cut.

Yeah, the inevitable segue from "kids and berries" is "kids and soapy water." Amusingly, our little Scuttle just loves berries (and watermelon). One of my cherished memories is watching the same granddaughter (then 3) and Scuttle (then just a puppy) both face-down and butt-up in the patch of wild strawberries under our deck, racing to see who could get the most. It was adorable.

LOL Our granddaughter did that a year or two ago. She's also incapable of eating raspberries without first putting them on her fingertips like little red hats.

Cool. Just harvested some yesterday, and this looks like a perfect use-case for the larger stems.

Sooooo....thin-sliced lengthwise on a mandoline? I might have to try that. Did you blanch in syrup or par-roast or anything to make it flexible?

You may also want to sub baking soda for part of the baking powder. You'll have some acidity there from the yogurt, and acidity inhibits browning. The soda will correct for that.

For the benefit of any Canadian peeps, when I was in Sobeys last night they'd clearly gone outside their normal channels to fill up the flour section....most of it was packed with bags of 00 flour (sorry, I don't remember the brand). If anyone's been meaning to grab some, it might be a good time to do so.

I don't find a whole lot of change, though admittedly I've mostly used it dried. I don't rehydrate. If I'm using it in something liquid - as you say, soups, stews, pasta dishes - I'll just throw it in as-is. Sometimes I pulverize it a bit in my mortar & pestle or spice grinder, depending what I'm doing with it. I treat it mainly as a celery alternative, so I use it ground-up in things like marinades and dry rubs where I'd like a bit of celery flavor. More or less the way people use celery seed, I suppose. I haven't grown it myself (because reasons) and therefore have never really had enough to use freely and experiment widely with, hence my excitement to take full advantage now. I'll certainly be using the fresh as well, but we were on the topic of dehydrating so that's what I led with. A dehydrator is something I'd often thought of getting, but somehow it had never gotten to the top of the "things to buy for my kitchen" list. This one was a gift from the in-laws: It's a Salton, and I can pretty much guarantee it's about the cheapest and lowest-end model available in my neck of the woods, but it's perfectly adequate for my (modest) needs. I've made several batches of jerky in it, dried two autumns' worth of apples, and put up a fair quantity of herbs (some I don't dry, of course...for things like cilantro I'll puree with a smidge of oil and freeze). It's a handy tool, and mine makes a low-profile stack about the size of a Dutch oven when it's in use, so it doesn't take up a lot of space (the trays can stack "tight" or "tall" depending on usage..."tight" keeps your herbs from blowing around but it's also good for storage purposes).

To clarify, I'd forgotten that it was someone's hot button. It was pretty predictable that I'd miss one or two, regardless.

LOL One day I'm going to make something with eggplant, green bell papers, raisins, celery, corn and cilantro...just to push everybody's buttons.