FauxPas

That's for sure! Have you ever tried the Slam? I did it once a long time ago, but I prefer my biscuits crispy and cold. I keep them in the fridge! 🙂

OOOHHH! Those "Aussie-style" must be just like Tim Tams. I adore Tim Tams (but only the original milk chocolate or the dark chocoate ones). I have known Aussies who do indeed love their Tim Tams, also. https://www.arnotts.com/products/tim-tam Do you remember how much they cost, @rotuts? They are stupidly expensive here most of the time, like $5 for a small box. Ooh, just checked and they are on sale at one of the stores, must make a trip over soon. 🙂

Wow, that's a good amount and so convenient to have something like that on hand. Thanks so much for sharing details of your life, it's always interesting!

I usually use a 6 qt IP, so don't know how much would fit in the 3 qt. I just put a cup or so of apple juice in the bottom, it's in place of water. I do think it adds a little bit of flavour. I do the ribs on high pressure for about 20 to 25 mins and then let them sit for a bit before I do the release. I've sometimes thought some kind of spicy apple BBQ sauce would be pretty awesome for the next step and I looked at some recipes but have never followed through on that part. Edited to add: You can still do a dry rub before the ribs go into the IP. I usually just do salt and pepper and maybe some garlic and onion powder.

Definitely an amazing deal for those ribs! And some lovely meals from them. I adore green beans. Do you ever cook pork ribs in your Instant Pot? That's my standard method for cooking them now, with apple juice instead of water. And since I have two IPs, I can cook a fair amount at once. Then they get brushed with sauce and briefly cooked in the oven or on the grill.

A really bad photo of a pretty decent dinner. My husband offered to cook NY Strip steaks for us and another couple. For a couple of reasons, it turned out to be easier to take things over and do the cook at their house.

Yes! I don't think I can get those particular ones locally (are they pricey where you are?) but I always shop around for my canned tomatoes and avoid anything with calcium chloride. Mine aren't always D.O.P. but I still find some decent ones. It's not easy to find ones that are really good. I wish @Shelby shipped hers. I'd pay a premium for those. 🙂

Having been somewhat snowed in for a few days, we worked with what we had. But it was still pretty good! Ham steak and made some au gratin potatoes to go with, along with frozen peas. Dry mustard in the potato sauce, basic mustard on the side for me, hot mustard for my husband. Mmmmm, mustard - even basic mustard is good. 🙂 Chicken Cacciatore in a tomato-based sauce. Interesting to see @JoNorvelleWalker's version, sans tomatoes. But I love the tomatoes, along with onion, peppers, mushrooms, some really lovely homemade chicken stock (funny how some turns out so much better than others), wine, and the usual seasonings. I made a lot of sauce, but there is a bit of chicken under there. 🙂 Patties from some ground chuck, local bakery buns from the freezer, cheddar cheese, a really good tomato that was luckily still in our basket, red hamburger relish (I don't have to make my own anymore because Strub's) and some CSO-baked fries. Fries were ok, mine rarely look as good as @Ann_T's. 🙂

This sounds so lovely and the resulting meal looks so delicious. Significant Eater is a lucky woman. 🙂 I did want to ask you about the Muir Glen tomatoes though. I hate the use of calcium chloride in tomatoes and I can't find a Muir Glen product without it, not even the whole tomatoes. I know you used an immersion blender for your braising liquid so it probably wasn't a real issue there, but there is something about the texture of tomatoes canned with calcium chloride that I just can't stand. They taste rubbery to me. Is that just me? Do all the Muir Glen tomatoes use calcium chloride? I kinda get it for diced tomatoes as sometimes people may want to have the tomato pieces stay firm even after cooking (not me, usually) but I really don't get the need for it in whole tomatoes. Do other folks feel the same way?

Things may be stored in various locations, but I am always impressed at how much you seem to be able to store overall. 🙂 Your meal looks like a lot of fun and you must feel great about finally making use of that venison gift!

Or if you use a grater on the onion, you get a mix of onion and juice. You can separate the juice out.

Was it the one in the photo below? The Raincoast Crisps? (started in Canada by a Vancouver chef) I adore those, I think @Anna Nonce shared a recipe for making a similar cracker. If it's the right one, you can see more about varieties, some suggested pairings and recipes at Lesley Stowe's website. Edited to add: Actually, there seem to be lots of recipes for copycat Raincoast Crisps. I just did a Google search and found several.

It's been a long time since we've had an update, @Smithy. Hope to hear some details soon and hope all has gone well!

I bet both batches would have been way up at the top of the list! 🙂

Back in October one of the local farms was selling off jalepenos and I bought a few pounds or so, without really thinking about what I wanted to do with them. Not wanting to let them sit around too long, I decided to do a quick pickle with them. So I sliced them and filled a 1-liter (1 qt) jar with them along with a bit of garlic and then topped that with a hot vinegar brine with some pickling salt and a tiny bit of added sugar. Not wanting to process a single jar, I knew they would keep ok in the fridge for at least 2-3 months. But I kept thinking that we still might struggle to use them up, it seemed like an awful lot of jalapenos when I looked at them packed into the jar. But here we are, 4-6 weeks later and our jar is seriously depleted. These were so good and just a nice amount of heat that we were using them on nachos and Mexican dishes but also on sandwiches and with cheese and crackers. And without the processing, they have retained a pleasant bit of crunch. Almost gone! And even fewer in the jar now. Yum.

I've enjoyed cooking from Andrea Chesman's books, including Pickles & Relishes (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). She has quite a few recipes for green tomatoes, including Chow Chow and/or Piccalilli. It's one of those books that you can pick up for just a few dollars if you are ok with a used book. Not sure if you are interested in this, but thought I would mention it. 🙂

Shop Generalist or Shop Multitasker. Maybe kinder versions of 'dogsbody'? 🙂

Unable to face another night of cabbage, I made a quick tourtière. Went really well with some mango chutney that I made for an Indian meal we had a couple of weeks ago. A salad on the side. We'll have the same for dinner tonight and possibly for lunch tomorrow. 🙂

Yes! I was thinking of Marcella Hazan's Rice & Smothered Cabbage Soup. Did@weinoomention it recently? I think someone did. 🙂

We got quite a lot of cabbage, carrots and onions from local CSA farm. I've made coleslaw of course. Also made some cabbage rolls that lasted a couple of days. And Molly Stevens' World's Best Braised Cabbage which lasted us for a few nights. And haluska/haluski, which I'm sure some people here will know, is an Eastern European dish of luscious slowly sautéed onion, cabbage and butter which is then mixed in with cooked egg noodles and sometimes served with sour cream. All very good, but I have to admit to getting a bit tired of cabbage at this point. 🙂 Cabbage rolls. Molly Stevens' cabbage and carrots leftovers on Day 2 or 3. I always use more carrot than she suggests and also more (homemade) chicken stock. We had some pork sausages on the side. Haluska/haluski with some sour cream on the side. Hard to see the cabbage, but there was a fair bit in there. My husband had some leftover striploin with his, I just had this on its own. I have a bit of cabbage left. Maybe make some soup with it?

NY Times has an article about a man who's dedicated to documenting cases of shrinkflation in the US. (Shareable NYT link.)

This one has some food and drink associations. 🙂

Absolutely! I wasn't implying that this was an Amazon thing. The above examples are due to choices in manufacturing and packaging made by the Campbell Soup Company, Barilla Group, etc. In general, I think shipping costs to ship to Canada or even within Canada are very high, some of it valid and some questionable. 🙂 When gas prices went way up, it was a good excuse for raising some shipping costs but even though oil/gas prices have fallen a lot, the fuel surcharges stay on some goods and services.

This is more about shady marketing and pricing than sale prices, but I think it's pretty closely related. It's not new, but it seems to be picking up steam lately - shrinkflation, or reducing the amount of goods or quality in a product yet still charging the same price or near that. Campbell's soup did this recently in a pretty obvious way - their can size shrunk. Barelli Pasta packaging is sneakier - the same size but now only contains 410 g instead of 454 g. I thought it very interesting that Brazil requires manufacturers to show these changes on the packaging. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/marketplace-shrinkflation-1.6654780

Here's another Amazon pricing study. I'm assuming it's based on the US site. I haven't time to go through it in detail today or look for more studies. But: As it turns out, some of those impressive discounts we saw during the hottest sales seasons aren’t that real: some vendors artificially spike the original price quoted, just to show a more staggering discount. And: The biggest sales seasons—Black Friday and Christmas—actually don’t come with significant price drops.