Peter the eater

I'd always assumed the stuff was Vietnamese because it's on the tables at the Vietnamese restaurants I go to in Toronto. Now I know better. I didn't know about the many varieties of sriracha: garlic, onion, galangal, lemon grass and ginger. Wow.

That's very impressive, Lisa. Small things like vacuuming the fridge coils make sense, I do it twice a year for hygiene reasons. I run a full dishwasher but I don't run the dry cycle, which is apparently a real energy pig. Nobody here has home air conditioning. I make salad dressing and mayo, but is homemade mustard worth the effort? I think I know the answer. What's a tempgun?

Hiroyuki, thanks again for answering my questions. One other thing about duck eggs is that they are only available in the late spring, around here anyways. I'm sure that could change if they became more popular.

No, I don't think so. They should be popular in Chinese cuisine. How do they differ from chicken eggs? ← Duck eggs are not very common in Atlantic Canadian food, which is a shame. I'm sure there's some economic reason. Compared to chicken eggs they're larger, heavier, and around twice the price so therefore still affordable -- $5 a dozen as opposed to $2.50 a dozen. Duck yolks occupy more of the shell, the whites are more viscous, and the shells are twice as hard to crack. They taste similar but they're richer and more unctuous. So I guess there's not a Japanese word for duck tamago?

What is natural compostable charcoal and what do you use it for, please. ← I had to look that one up. It's a charcoal air filter to keep your compost from stinking unbearably, no? Makes sense if you need one. I take my nasty stuff far away outside. ETA better sentence structure

I'm a fan of tamago and I usually order it at the restaurants, occasionally I try to make it at home. Yesterday I made some using duck eggs and was pleasantly surprised. Are duck eggs a part of typical Japanese home cooking?

That option is unavailable to me. I'd do it if I could, and if it wasn't stupid expensive. Dairy containers are the only non-refundable beverage package in my municipality -- all others come with a 5 or 10 cent deposit. You can get half of the deposit back if you take your empties to a recycling center.

Molson makes Cold Shots in 250 ml (= 8.5 ounce US) cans. It's a pale lager with 6% etOH and tastes like strong Budweiser.

Good point heidih. I'd rather just not bring the packaging home . . . although . . . that empty burlap basmati sack would make a handsome handbag. There's lots of reasons not to buy processed food items -- including the packaging. Some of those waxy thick card boxes for frozen hamburgers, chicken balls, etc. look like fire-rated safes. Farm markets and bulk foods stores are good places to find less packaging.

It's a very nice way to cook. My next kitchen will have induction. Energy consumption in the kitchen is worth looking at. The people at Oster® have created a tv show to showcase their appliances, and they have numbers to suggest energy can be saved by using the small more efficient products. I agree in principle, but going out and buying a dozen new kitchen gizmos cannot be the answer.

While reading about Green Restaurants I wondered what efforts Society members are making at home to address these important issues. It's an enormous question -- every food decision we make has some effect or our environment. What we buy, when we buy it, how we bring it home, how we store it, how we cook, how we eat, what we do with the leftovers, the packaging, etc. Some of these discussions are older than others. What are the good things, large or small, people are doing now?

There's probably a hard-coded genetic message inside us from the caveman days saying "don't eat sand or rocks". Those clams are so tasty and affordable -- next time I'll give them a 48 cornmeal buffet, separate the siphons more carefully, and rinse the meat thoroughly. Most of the delicious clam juice winds up in the steaming broth, so from there it can be recovered by decanting.

Fiddleheads sauteed in butter with garlic and onion . . . combined with steamer clams . . . served on egg noodles: The steamer juice is perfect for finishing the fiddlehead pan sauce, along with flour and vinegar. The clams were filter-feeding on corn meal in the fridge overnight but still a tiny amount of grit remained. It's amazing how a few grains of sand in your food can have such a negative impact.

Fiddleheads are 4 to 6 dollars a pound and they've been available for a week and a half now. We had a bunch for dinner -- hours later I'm still considering why I like them so much. They look unusual, they taste fine, and they represent the start of summer. Same goes for rhubarb.

Exactly right Lisa. The small ones I buy are never bitter: dwarfs, globes, snakes.

I loved reading this account of Dorks in Charge. Lots of people have their own Gino and Julian, I know I did. It just made me leaner and meaner, without losing my religion. My favourite line:

Bump. Where are they? It's mid effing May.

Rob, we know you're a genius . . . but . . . isn't a real pop tart like a real hot dog? It tastes good, it reminds us of reliable food from long ago, but it can't be truthfully reproduced without a giant factory with an assembly line and Quality Assurance team? Your toaster pastries look really, really delicious. Are they pop-tarts?

Stouts and Porters are excellent for mussels, just use less. An oz. of Guinness per lb. of mussels is good, and it leaves you with more to drink.

That may be a little harsh. I never met her, but the Julia Child I know comes from reading many books and watching all ten years of The French Chef (on dvd) and most of Juila and Jacques: Cooking at Home (on PBS). Meryl Streep's portrayal appears faithful to me. The Hulu clip is unavailable outside the US, but YouTube is here. <edit for spellling> ← In what way was it harsh? The character Meryl Streep portrayed, as seen on the preview, is little different from the character Dan Akroyd played on SNL. Granted, we are only seeing snippets of the movie, but from what I saw, Julia Child was no deeper or more complex than a pot of boiling water, and to top it off, from the trailer I got the feeling she was merely a silly woman who wanted to cook. I think there was a lot more to her than that. (And am I to believe she gave a raspberry to some lady who told her she had no talent for cooking?) Poetic license, blah blah. Julia Child was a real person, and if the trailer is an indication of how she is portrayed in the movie, then she deserved a more respectful portrayal than that (but if the movie were true to her life, it never would have been made into a movie--certainly not enough of a hollywood-esque life to entice the masses). ← I watched the clip again, and I still think "moron" may be a little harsh. Child is a woman of unusual talent, personality, size and voice. I haven't seen Silkwood since I was a teenager but I know Streep and Ephron can work well together. If there's a problem it's with the lightweight Ephron, not the best-actor-of-her-generation Streep. I guess the clip wasn't enough to make me wince and get angry -- maybe I'll watch it one more time to be sure. I'm not much of a romantic comedy chick flick kinda guy. I can think of many, many other preferable writer/directors. There's a good A&E bio piece from shortly after her death.

That may be a little harsh. I never met her, but the Julia Child I know comes from reading many books and watching all ten years of The French Chef (on dvd) and most of Juila and Jacques: Cooking at Home (on PBS). Meryl Streep's portrayal appears faithful to me. The Hulu clip is unavailable outside the US, but YouTube is here. <edit for spellling>

My fish guy sells/gives salmon heads/carcasses, depending on his mood and what's available. I make stock, it's awesome. Omega three jelly:

I found this one at my library. It's not very good, there must be something better out there. I suspect it's an almost lost art.

I like farro in a vegetable soup, usually with some beans. I regard farro as a lighter substitute for regular wheat berries. I've been experimenting a lot with grains this past year or so and farro has been a nice discovery.

All this talk of Thai in Toronto has me nostalgic for my first Thai experience in my home town -- is Young Thailand still around? I know they moved to Church Street for a time, and maybe opened other restaurants? I haven't lived in TO for 8 years, they were the first and only option for a while. I still have their cookbook.