Mallet

This has worked well for me.

Thanks for putting it so clearly.

Nothing can be 100% guaranteed safe from potential hazard. "It should be clearly understood by everyone that LL601 is not only safe for human consumption," .... "The principal issue for the EU is that the LL601 long-grain rice does not yet have EU regulatory approval. However, the LL601 protein has already been approved for use in other crops in some EU countries, and in Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Japan, China, Australia, South Africa, South Korea and Russia". I suppose if you spilled this rice on the floor you could slip on it and fall? SB (and it's apparently safer than organic spinach!) ← Just because a protein has been approved for use in one crop, it shouldn't mean blanket approval in every other. I don't know enough about the details of the methods used, but the construct used to ellicit appropriate expression could be different as could the plant's response to the foreign insert, just two reasons why rigorous safety testing should be mandatory. In this case, in appears as though " only environmental effects" are the regulations being sidestepped. I find this especially ironic given that the reason this crop is getting pushed ahead seems to be because of it's unintended invasion, surely an environmental effect! PS: as I already mentionned, no organic products have been linked to the E. coli outbreak at this time.

I suppose I believe that a government's job should be more than just say "this is bad for you" and then do nothing as we kill ourselves. I'm only drawing a comparison to smoking because it's an easy one to make, but people have known that tobacco was dangerous for a while and only recently has real progress been made, in large part because of aggressive policies on the part of all levels of government (in Canada, greatly increased prices, banning of smoking in public places etc.. etc..). Obviously salt is different (seeing as we need it to live and all ), but I think some level of regulation combined with more aggressive public awareness would be helpful. Of course, we have to be sure that whatever regulations get put in place actually adress the core issues rather than just create more problem (e.g: replacing all the salt in processed food with some for of salt substitute which 10 years down the road turns out to be much more dangerous). I haven't examined the issue in depth, but I would guess that some sort of limit of sodium levels in certain processed foods combined with a push to make more food at home (salted bologna notwithstanding) could be effective.

Heck, just watching you guys doing it gives me a feeling of confidence!

Wow, I had no idea the contamination was so widespread (or that it even existed). It's especially disturbing that this strain is experimental, which you would think means strict quarantine protocols at the experimental facilities. The response from the USDA is equally disturbing. PS: the spinach contamination appears to not be from Natural Selection's organic operations.

From CBC this morning: story here

There's an underlying tradeoff here. Salt makes craptastic food taste good. If we persist on eating craptastic food and trying to making taste good, we require lots of salt. The solution is too obvious to mention. Maybe the processed food should move towards products with lots of spices? Maybe these would provide enough taste to allow acceptably low levels of salt...

I see now that my previous statement was a vast understatement: I think you may have found a 'tongue-biter'. From the wikipedia for one such species: google images for confirmation

Although I can't understand Japanese, I thought those pictures were kind of funny (I found the little "Aliens" cartoon particularly amusing). Reminds me of a oft-quoted Darwin saying: (having said that I'm happy I didn't find them ) edit: can't spel

Glad you had fun in Halifax! I would say the Halifax location of Pete's Frootique is just as good as the Bedford one (I would even give it a slight edge), so you definitely didn't miss anything. The Granite Brewery has 2 locations the original one (Henry House) is down Barrington near the VIA rail station and the Superstore, the other one is on Barrington in the downtore core (with Ginger's Tavern above). lexy, I love that cookbook! I actually use it relatively frequently...

I don't see much benefit in forcing those among us who can't affort organic meat to pay as much for their dinner as those of us who can. There is a problem here, but "taxing" poor people is not the way to solve it. [...] ← I see this issue in reverse: it's not so much artificially forcing the price industrial meat up to meet organic prices, but correcting the artificially low price of industrial meat now. Remember that the corn based feed for these animals is being purchased at below production cost and although it's a complicated issue, I think this is a big part of the problem with artificially cheap food. From what I understand, these same economics feed the ethanol industry. I just found this article, which originally appeard in Investor's Daily (not that I want to get into this too much but I can't resist. I don't buy the "those of us who can't afford organic meat" argument in most cases except for very poor families. I can afford to eat organic meat on a grad student salary, I just don't eat it every day. For those families who truly could not afford it, my guess is subsidizing these people directly would be both cheaper and more effective than a subsidy on the entire food chain. All of this keeping in mind that America already spends less of its disposable income on food than any other country in the world.)

In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan expresses a lot of doubt about the use corn for ethanol. I don't have the book in front of me, but some of the points raised were that the corn grown is artificially cheap (i.e: being bought for less than the price of production because of federal subsidies), grown unsustainbly and using fossil fuels (fertilizer, machinery etc..). He also likened the push for corn-based ethanol to the production of corn whiskey (i.e: as a way to get added value to use up and sell the vast excess of corn being produced). If this can help precipitate a shift away from corn as artificially cheap feed for cattle, poultry, swine etc.. so much the better. A 60-70 rise in price would bring the price of "factory" meat in line with those of organic production (I already get grass-fed, dry-aged beef for about the same price as supermarket beef at my farmer's market). I guess this would also make processed foods more expensive (perhaps making whole foods more attractive). This is probably asking a bit much

Bouchon has a fantastic trotter recipe as well (link).

Fascinating stuff! My next roast chicken will definitely be pre-salted. wet-aging vs dry-aging brining vs pre-salting trend?

I guess it would be charcutiers

Lukes! definitely takes on a whole different feel at night. The Charcuterie board was really nice, probably the best duck confit I've had in town (the pork loin, beef tenderloin, and pâté were also great). I was a bit underwhelmed with the sausages and the chicken: although the flavours were interesting, the texture of the sausages was way off (dry and crumbly) and the chicken similarly suffered from lack of moisture. Overall though, everyone was pleased with their food : definitely a fun place to eat dinner (al long as you're not in a rush ).

Check out this article on Lukes! I've only been there for lunch and I've never seen food like this on the menu: Luke is only 15 ! Looks like my dinner plans are set tonight..

This is embarassing, but I thought tomatoes split because they had not enough water. That would explain why watering heavily didn't help.....

If you're looking for a relatively quick casual family meal, I'd recommend taking a walk down Quinpool. There are a number of small restaurants packed into a small space, many of them recent and serving good food (Dodo's, Nail and Kneecap, Ethiopia, China Classic, Ardmoore, Athens, etc...)

We have "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone" by Deborah Madison and have been really happy with the variety and taste of the recipes so far.

As mentioned upthread, a saturated brine also helps keep the humidity at 70%

Depending on the amount of compostable material you create, you could also try vermicomposting. We bought a small indoor composter this year and have been very pleased so far. The worms take care of almost all our kitchen waste, the unit doesn't smell, and it produces a very rich dark compost in almost no time at all.

was the Zagat price in US dollars?

I'm sure you can do it! We have two peach trees in Halifax, Nova Scotia and they're incredibly productive (so much so that we lost a branch one year from the weight of the fruit). The only thing we do is prune, watch for peach curl and remove infected leaves, and spray with sulphur once a year. In our case, we also had to make sure the cultivar was grafted to the proper rootstock so that it could survive the climate. Oddly enough, our pears never seemed to work out...