FauxPas

@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). 🙂

Oooooh, I like it! Very similar to mine, but yours has a higher tone. Mine has a slightly deeper rumble. I love these types of openers!!!! 🙂

You could save a video to YouTube and then share the link to that. I'd like to see if your can opener is very different from mine! 🙂

My friend brought out some of her nutcracker collection. She has over 200 of them, not sure of exact number. She didn't put them all out, just a few of her favourites, hahahaha And I didn't even photograph the ones on the mantle or on the tables by the Xmas tree. The big ones must be close to 90 cm / 3 feet tall.

Made my first batch of fermented sauerkraut. Cabbage with a good bit of carrot gives it a hint of orange. it's really quite good and it was very easy, not sure why it took me so long to try this! I would like to do fermented hot sauce this Fall.

I'm not @rotutsbut the Instant Pot Duo 3 qt is $49.99 right now on Amazon (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). I think that's a pretty good price, isn't it?

Also, various types of schnitzel. Or something like Chicken Marsala?

Similar to @blue_dolphin's suggestion, I've done cubed steak and potatoes in a skillet before. Here's a recipe, though I don't know if you need one and this one seems a bit fussy. I sometimes just use a bit of Hy's seasoning mix for the meat. But the garlic butter addition might be nice. https://carlsbadcravings.com/steak-and-potatoes/#wprm-recipe-container-33664

Another long-time eGulleter gone. Sad. ☹️

I have been using this style of can opener for years. I'm a southpaw and the usual manual can opener is a real pain for me, so I have used an electric can opener for many years. I used to have one of the countertop ones but I hated looking at it on the counter so tried one of the smaller battery-operated ones and fell in love. 🙂 The current one has listed for at least a few years and the previous one lasted 10 years or so? Maybe I just got lucky? I do find some of them go through batteries faster than you would expect. I can't remember how long I've had the current batteries in, but I'm thinking I probably have to replace them at least once a year. But my memory on that is fuzzy, to be honest. I don't really think about it as we always have extra batteries and I consider an electric can opener a necessity in my life pretty much. I hope yours lasts a long time!

Some local stores used to do this! I just loved it. A chain of stores mostly here on Vancouver Island had this feature. ( @MaryIsobelwill know Thrifty Foods as does @Ann_T and despite its name it tended to have slightly higher prices but it also had a great meat and produce department, a pretty good bakery and quite a bit of specialty or ethnic items). Unfortunately, it's been bought out by a national chain and it's not the same. But it used to allow you to create and save a list from the fairly lengthy online flyer and then you would pick the store and it would arrange your items by aisle and you could print that off or save it and take it to the store. Each store was a different size and arranged differently, so it was pretty cool. When I lived in Victoria I would shop at any one of several of their locations depending on where I was working that day and it was so nice to know which aisle had the different items without having to hunt them down. You could add other (non-flyer) grocery items to your list but I don't think it could sort those by aisle. Anyway, they got bought out and now you can print/save your list but it doesn't allow for shopping by aisle anymore. 😠 And they don't have the same range of products anymore either. 😠 And they don't contribute to local charities or community events the same way at all. 😠 A female friend of mine in Victoria loved those stores so much that when I told her they had been bought out by the big Sobey's chain, she broke down in tears. I'm sure there are other stores that allow for shopping by aisle. Canadian Tire and Home Depot give precise aisle and bin locations for products, but I don't know if they do a shopping list arranged that way. But those are different types of items, too.