FauxPas

@Shelby, I have the Anchor Hocking measuring cup set (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) that @rotutsmentioned up above. (Correction: See below. Mine are actually Anchor Hocking Fire-King) I've had them for years and I really like them. They are glass but they nest/stack together really well so they are fairly space-saving. I put them through the dishwasher all the time and the numbers/markings haven't faded at all. Edited to add: Mine are Anchor Hocking Fire-King. Not all say "Fire-King" on them and I think they may be better made than the plain Anchor Hocking ones. Here are the ones I have (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). On the Amazon Canada site, one woman said: "Love these measuring cups! This is my third set of Anchor measuring cups. I only need to replace them every 20 years or so because the measuring lines eventually fade from being washed in the dishwasher." Edited again to add: Not sure why the individual ones are so pricey on Amazon USA. I can buy that set at the local Canadian Tire store for $20. So, if you are interested in them, I would suggest shopping around. Or check out the Amazon site more carefully than I did, ha.

OMG, the seed catalogs are making me crazy! I want everything and I don't even have a real garden. I just have a few small raised beds and an assortment of pots. The garden stores are tempting us in with all kinds of offers and I CAN'T RESIST! Help! 🙂

Yum, love artichokes. Did you start with fresh ones? Or canned or frozen?

I've done a quick pickle with garlic scapes, which might be similar. I think I used a recipe similar to this one. https://www.runningtothekitchen.com/pickled-garlic-scapes/ I didn't really like the end result. I realized that cider vinegar wasn't the flavour I wanted with the scapes. I think when you are pickling, you need to think about what flavours you are going for in that particular batch - how much sweetness, how much heat, how much garlic, salt, other spices, etc. I hated the scapes with all that sweetness from the cider vinegar, even though I love bread and butter pickles with lots of cider vinegar. It's just that the scapes didn't seem to work well with it. I wanted a cleaner brighter taste and a bit of heat/spice. Do you have an idea of how you want the end result to taste? Or how you want to use them? Eaten on their own or on burgers/sandwiches or some other purpose? Because that might help guide your selection of pickling spices, etc.

I'll tell Julie. She'll be pleased, I'm sure. She's also a cheesemaker so there's a bit of crossover there and makes sense she blended things, ha. It's so cool that you were able to make use of the dehydrator screen!!! That was smart. 🙂

Here's a better photo, from the local fermenting group's Facebook page, photo by Julie Matthews, who was our class instructor. You can see how the mesh holds the contents in place and under the brine.

To try and explain more clearly, maybe a photo or two will help. I'm afraid I don't have a freshly done jar which would illustrate it even better. The mesh is cut just slightly larger than the mouth so that it will fit into the jar with a slight bit of bending and will sit on top of the vegetable matter just where the neck widens into the body of the jar, at the shoulder, maybe? Because the mesh is a strong plastic and because it is just that little bit bigger than the neck, it stays in place really nicely. If I was going to cut one out, I'd probably use the canning ring for the jar and cut on the outside edge of that circumference. It's about 9 cm or a scant 4 inches maybe. I'm not saying this is the only way to do things, I'm just saying it's a method used by a woman here who teaches fermenting and I thought it was fairly elegant. After the mesh is put in place, the MasonTop Picklepipe can be used to release gas. Edited to add: The cheese mesh is a durable, food-safe plastic that can be re-used. It can be cleaned in a dishwasher or by hand.

The mesh is cut to fit into the neck of the jar. It stayed in place beautifully and needed nothing else. It is light in weight and thin but it's very strong. But you are free to use whatever you like.

You can! But the cheese mesh works really well and is very thin.

Not to take away from your suggestions, but the cheese mesh I was referring to above is a fairly hard plastic used in cheese making, not the finer and more cloth-like cheesecloth. The coarse version of the mesh has 4mm square openings. It is food safe and holds its shape pretty well but is still bendable, so it can be inserted into the neck of a canning jar and will stay in place, holding the cabbage or whatever under the brine. I think it's also called a cheese mat. Like this (image from Glengarry Cheese):

@Smithy, this is more on salt and fermentation from Kirsten Shockey's book Fiery Ferments: "The first purpose of salt in fermentation is to give the lactic-acid bacteria the advantage they need over the forces that rot. Salt isn’t the preservative — the acid created by fermentation is what keeps everything safe (that’s right, there’s no benefit to tossing in a little extra salt for good measure). However, a correct saline environment, while not inhibiting the lactobacilli, makes it uncomfortable for many other kinds of bacteria to set up housekeeping and reproduce. Salt also affects the cells of vegetables. It hardens the pectins (keeping the veggies crisp) and draws out the vegetable’s water, which becomes the brine." "Salt inhibits the yeasts that break down sugars into alcohol (not the yummy kind) instead of lactic acid. A mere 0.8 percent ratio of salt weight to vegetable weight will prevent the type of decomposition you don’t want. Standard ferments use anywhere from 1.5 to 3 percent, and sometimes more for commercial products. The recipes in this book tend to stay in the 1.5 to 2 percent range." Forgot to add this bit, which applies to hotter climates! "Another purpose of the salt is to keep fermentation moving along at a steady rate by slowing it down a bit. This can be particularly important when fermenting in hot climates, to keep the process and the flavors in check. If you live in a warm environment (and it is warm inside as well as out), you may have to add a bit more salt, bringing the ratio up to 2 to 3 percent by weight."

These quotes are from The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz: "In most ferments, including vegetables, salting can be done to taste, without any need for measuring. In other cases, more specific salt proportions may be required for safety and effective preservation. For instance, with curing meats, adequate salt and curing salts are necessary for safety. And in ferments such as miso and soy sauce, which age for many months or even years, insufficient salt can lead to putrefaction rather than controlled fermentation." "Like chopping, salt is not absolutely necessary for fermentation. Some people believe (I do not) that vegetables fermented without salt contain more beneficial bacteria than those fermented with salt. And some people have been given a medical directive to avoid salt. Vegetables can be fermented without any salt. But with even a modest amount of salt, ferments generally taste better, maintain a more pleasing texture, and have the potential to ferment longer and more slowly."

How many poms did you need for that amount of juice? I'm curious about the amount of juice you get from each pomegranate, is it similar? It's been a while since I've juiced poms but I think it varied quite a bit. Your juicer looks awesome!

Mike likes pepper on his eggs also. But only on fried eggs, not scrambled or omelettes. And I discovered that the pepper MUST be added at exactly the right point, before the whites solidify. Else, as he puts it, "it's not worth adding it at all." Apparently, I destroyed the eggs one time by adding the pepper when the whites had already started to whiten. 😧😮😃

It's for sale at the Amazon Canada site also: https://www.amazon.ca/Milk-Street-Vegetables-Simple-Recipes-ebook/dp/B08W51N7X9/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1705875056&sr=8-1

Maybe I should have asked about where you will keep your soy sauces, cooking wine, flavoured oils, etc?

@liuzhou, how long is your lease on this flat/apartment? Are you restricted from doing any changes to the kitchen or can you do things like add extra storage hooks and small racks to the walls, for example? Your fridge looks interesting to me. I'm not sure if there are 3 separate storage areas and 3 doors? If so, is it two freezer and one fridge or something else? Also, that looks like fabulous storage to the left of the fridge. How will you use it? Will that be for kitchen items or is that for clothing or just flexible space with shelving, etc? Edited to add: One of the most important questions to me about any kitchen is where to store spices, ha. How do you (or how will you) store yours?

Look at all that empty space you have now with the ice gone! Definitely time to restock, I'd say. 😃😄😮 (where is that emoji with the devil's horns???!!!)

Wow, that's a long list of shortfalls for that old kitchen. Dark, no storage, small, no water and a dicey and limited electric supply. No wonder you loathed it! But now you have a much nicer space to work in, it must feel good! One other question - what is the set-up on the narrow counter, there's something there at the back on the left of the first photo. Maybe it should be obvious, but I can't figure it out.

The new kitchen looks pretty serviceable. It looks like there is quite a bit of counter space compared to some places that I have known and loathed. 🙂 It does look like a nice big window, even if the view isn't the best. it's SO nice to have natural light! I always wondered about your kitchen but you never really seemed to talk about it. What was it that you loathed so much about the previous one? Will you make any modifications to the new kitchen?

I don't know for sure, but I know many of the recipes for the Three Kings bread/cake call for orange zest and/or orange blossom water or orange extract. And sometimes dried orange, which I think might represent gold in the "jewels" on the cake and which I think represents power and wealth. Also, it's citrus season, right? 😆 But I'd be interested in knowing if I'm on the right track.

This bit made me laugh out loud! You are a good mother, making any cake they want. I didn't know that much about melting marshmallows, but it seems to make perfect sense, that's what s'mores are basically made from, right? I did find advice to go low and slow when you do melt them.

@Smithy, do you two have any special plans for New Year's Eve? Any special meals?

I cooked a turkey breast roast from Costco on Saturday with stovetop stuffing. If you like white meat and don't want to deal with a huge bird, those roasts aren't bad at all. Made some orange-cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes and gravy. Also made a pumpkin pie for dessert and we ate the same meal last night. Today is turkey sandwiches for lunch and tourtiére for dinner. I made tourtiére a few weeks ago when I was trying to clean out our small upright freezer in prep for a bigger model, so I wasn't thinking of making one for Christmas Eve this year. My husband went to the butcher's shop a few days ago to get something else but they actually had some of their freshly made tourtiére in stock - every other time we have checked there, they were either not ready yet or already sold out. So he bought two and they are in the new freezer now. Then yesterday afternoon a friend stopped by to drop off a little Christmas Eve gift she had made - yes, another tourtiére! But a really lovely one and I'm sure it will be very tasty. Since we were already set up to finish off turkey leftovers last night, we saved her pie for tonight. Here it is, decorated with a lovely little bit of art - our cat, Mijo, watching a bird in the sky. Made me laugh, when I saw that. 🙂

Right, I completely forgot about your bandwidth issues down there! I do love the video though (and your opener). 🙂