chromedome

(shrug) We are humans, if there's a way to screw things up we'll find it. Here where I live gas stoves are a rarity, and the local utilities circulate frequent reminders that people should double-check their stoves when the power is turned on after an outage, a move-in or a new build.

A friend and colleague of mine lives in Medford and works part time at their call center to supplement her earnings from writing.

Looks like Larry from Veggie Tales. The wrong cucurbit (Larry's a cucumber) but still...

I'm guessing they put it up on a freelance site like Odesk at a fraction of the pay any reasonable freelancer would expect, and someone basically gave them what they paid for.

I think counter space is an issue for many here, especially given that we're collectively prone to gadget accumulation. Also, thanks in part to Alton Brown, Mark Bittman et al, there's a prejudice against mono-tasking kitchen appliances (ie, toasters).

Yup. ETA: Planted a row of them in my garden this year, but got zero germination. It was a difficult spring here, on the garden front, for many reasons.

Update: https://www.inspection.gc.ca/food-recall-warnings-and-allergy-alerts/2020-08-01/eng/1596343331110/1596343336880?utm_source=r_listserv

I grow my beets for the greens. Don't get me wrong, I love (and eat) the beetroots as well, but they're by way of being an end-of-season bonus after my main harvest.

Apparently it's already shaping up to be one of the year's bigger food safety stories... https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/pei-salmonella-outbreak-canada-linked-to-red-onions-1.5670208

It's not necessarily a bad thing. The laser was derided as "a solution in search of a problem" for the first several years of its existence, and it wound up being a foundational technology once we got our collective head wrapped around its capabilities.

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?