Peter the eater

There's nothing quite like the thrill of the purchase - when you get that "right time at the right place" feeling. I love grocery shopping. My store uses a hot pink 50%OFF sticker on items that need to sell and my retina has become highly sensitive to that hue. Not so much the baked goods or produce, more the marginal meats like giant beef tongues or goat shanks that need to be cooked or frozen within the next 48 hours. The beef in particular is woefully underaged and just gets better in my fridge with that sticker on it. (Edit: my participle was dangling)

Two and a half years later energy conservation in the home kitchen is more of a hot topic. A series of Powerwise TV adds featuring David Suzuki illustrate ways to cut back at home. The most recent one (sorry, can't find a link) has Dr. Suzuki explaining to a guy that his old beer fridge in the basement consumes $150 per year of electricity - I think he said 1225 kW over 12 months.

Those kitchens most likely have gas stoves - either pre-piped from the gas company or using portable gas tanks. I think by and large the big ovens roomy enough to bake a turkey are probably not common in China. Both because of spatial constraints and impracticality (how often do we bake?). ← I suppose I was thinking of a goose not turkey, but all the same I'm not surprised big ovens are rare. Seeing Hiroyuki's new kitchen was very informative. I've got a counter top electric convection oven that's a lot smaller and cheaper to operate than the 220V beast on the floor.

This topic is very inspiring. Everyone needs some authentic Chinese home cooking in their lives. I love serving a whole fish with greens and other ingredients common to Chinese cooking. I also like using duck eggs but I can only get them in early summer - is this a common problem? Scrolling through this topic made me wonder about contemporary Chinese kitchens. Seeing all those new residential buildings in Beijing and the other Olympic cities - Qinhuangdao, Shanghai, Shenyang, and Tianjin - made wonder what I might find in a new well-equipped home kitchen. For example, would there typically be an oven big enough to roast a big bird?

Sixteen beans? That's a lot of beans. So you've got a bag of mixed dry beans that tells you to cook all 16 together and it doesn't work to your liking - have you tried to contact the maker? Surely they've done some tests. The colander trick is clever but I don't think size is the only determinant of cooking time. 16 jars with 16 different beans would look impressive in the pantry.

The oysters came from Yarmouth County's Eel Lake Oyster Farm. Nice veggie pie - looks like a perfect golden crust.

I've never met an Acadian meat pie I didn't like. I've not had the moose one yet - I hear it's hard to beat - but I've had the wild rabbit kind. Lapin des bois or la lievre is a classic that's been delighting and sustaining for centuries. This past weekend we went to a food festival that was part of a same-day province-wide picnic to showcase innovative food growers and sellers. Apparently only 10% of our diet is locally produced - activists here say that number could be well over 50% with a little knowledge and preparation. One highlight for me was this chicken and pork pie: It was a sunny day and the place was packed: and music was playing as the hungry people showed up: There were good cooks showing off, such as the Hali-famous Chef Ray Bear: There was also a petting zoo, or maybe it was more of a holding tank for future samples: Hands-down best free sample was this local oyster: Wow, I forget how great these molluscs can be. Timing is the key - shuck and slurp in one continuous motion.

It's that time of year - I talked with a local large scale corn grower today about storing fresh cobs. Her advice was to cook what you got then refrigerate. Scrape the cobs when they're cool and then bag/refrigerate for the next day.

I'm not at all surprised there may be calcium receptors on my tongue. It took science a whole century to dispose of the bogus tongue map and its taste zones. I suspect the tongue-brain relationship is way more complex than we realize.

It's worth getting hungover just to see well they work - I'm a little surprised it wasn't mentioned here.

This is really interesting and useful stuff. I've been visiting the Bovine Myology site for a year or two and there's always so much more to learn. While browsing through some of the graphs I had a (possibly stupid) idea: Instead of shoving limbs and carcass through the band saw the traditional butcher way, why not excise individual muscles from the cow's body. Cut through the origin and insertion points and remove for consumption. I realize some muscles are too small or irregular in shape but there must be some culinary advantage in having an entire intact muscle to work with. Aren't some muscles - like tenderloin or backstrap - cut out this way? Would it be practical to treat a shoulder this way?

Score! Now that you've got five heads why not try it every which way - with notes and photos to post. In Nova Scotia there's soused pork and soused mackerel. The latter is pickled fish but the former is, I believe, a kind of head cheese made from a pig. I'll check out my local cookbooks. I'll have a pig's head this fall so I'll be looking on with interest. Surely you'll work in chocolate somehow?

That combo sounds irresistible - lucky you! Fricot is so versatile. In the Chaleur Bay area of New Brunswick it's an art form with dozens of variations incorporating meat, game, poultry or seafood. In Cape Breton a fricot is usually made with red meat - if it's got fish it's a tchaude or chowder.

This is a replica of an early Acadian home: La Maison Acadienne is an early French settler's dwelling as it would’ve looked in the late 1600’s. This one is located at The Historical Gardens in Annapolis Royal. It’s framed with heavy timbers with wattle-and-daub walls and the roof is thatched much like you’d find in Normandy back in the day. The oven is made with clay and sits on a wood platform projecting outside the shell of the home: The building is flanked by a herb and vegetable garden that was vital to the Acadian diet. When the colonists first settled in the area they built a series of dykes and sluices to drain parts of the valley and create arable land. It was easier than clearing higher land and they did such a good job some of the dykes are still around today virtually unchanged:

L'Acadie It’s impossible to talk about traditional Nova Scotia food without a major discussion of Acadian food. There are dozens of communities throughout the province that embrace their French ancestry with great pride. They speak the language, fly the flag and cook the food. Characterizing a culture’s cuisine other than your own is difficult. I sometimes wish I had an authentic Acadian grandmother to answer my food questions, but I don’t. I’ve got some good friends that are steeped in the traditions and can help me translate the words and expressions that are beyond me. Acadian cookery is all about the home kitchen, growing your own and getting through the winter. If there are fine restaurants serving the classic dishes I don’t know where they’re located. I consider the food to be hearty, practical and delicious. Breakfast is often the biggest meal and is called déjeuner, which in France and Quebec refers to lunch. For Acadians lunch is diner and dinner is souper. This confusion has translated to English speaking Nova Scotia where the noon meal is called dinner and the evening meal is called supper. Oh, and breakfast in Quebec is le petit déjeuner. To recap: Canadian English: breakfast, lunch, dinner Nova Scotia English: breakfast, dinner, supper Acadian French: déjeuner, diner, souper Quebec French: petit déjeuner, déjeuner, diner

Oops. I'd try a plum/onion hybrid, especially if God forbids it. Or the boson - a crosss between Boston bib lettuce and onion - great salad, one ingredient. Or the muon . . . .

Cool! I bicycled from Boston to San Diego in 1988 - has it really been 20 years? My lembas bread was flour tortillas filled with peanut butter and honey. Stable, caloric and yummy.

Were you on the squad in Montreal? Any crazy food memories from that time, buckets of poutine, breakfast fondues, anything?

Wait one minute -- those are two of my favourite food words, together at once -- please elaborate.

I almost started a new topic, this one is perfect and should be bumped. I saw, bought and ate my first pluon this week. Wow -- it was beyond delightful. It has flavour, texture and that visual shock you get when you bite into your first blood orange. I haven't tried an aprium or a plumcot but I'd like to know if people can buy them and what they taste like. And what do you do with pluots? Besides suck them back as is.

That's a good point, it's handy to have dedicated devices to avoid flavour and colour transfer. We have an electric burr coffee grinder, an electric blade spice grinder, a golden wood curry spoon, a pinkish wood tomato sauce spoon and the big stone mortar and pestle which is reserved for washable activities like pesto and salad dressing.

I love tetrapak wine for picnics. Lightweight, won't shatter, no cork to pull. We often get decent 1 litre Australian and South American wines this way. The 3 or 4 litre bag-in-a-box wines are popular for Canadian product. I'm not as keen on this packaging - I find the plastic spigot makes the wine a bit frothy. They also tend to dribble.

It's the same with kitchen knives -- you need a big one and a small one. Different materials and sizes are just nice to have. There are several in my kitchen but it's the big stone mortar and pestle that I use most. The wooden ones are rarely used. The small marble one is for kitchen apothecary where a small amount of seeds/spice/nuts/whatever is required. It's white, smooth and deep which helps minimize waste.

Earlier this year I had a fantastic feed of grouper, stone crab and alligator at a place in Florida - I'll say Placida or Englewood - and I asked the server "what the hell are these"? Exposed as a northern tourist I followed up with "they're f***ing perfect"! And they were, for that meal. That was my first and last encounter with hush puppies. So I'll be reading this topic with great interest.

That sounds so romantic, well done. I haven't been to Tremblant in 3 years so I'm sure there's something very fresh and to-die-for that I can't comment on. I can say that I used to take my fiance (now wife) to nearby St-Jovite for the less scary more flat kind of skiing where helmets aren't required. We'd get ripe Oka Classic cheese and France French vin de table. The cheese always outlasted the red wine, which is when we moved on to Laurentide beer.