blue_dolphin

Good food for thought. I buy most of my produce at the farmers market. They aren’t affected by the grocery store regulations and still offer plastic bags. I limit my use of them but still use some occasionally. In particular for collecting food scraps and waste that must be segregated from the regular trash but oddly, in my area, can’t go in a compostable bag. The Wirecutter found the reusable bag best at keeping veg fresh were the towel-like Vejibag that you dampen and re-spritz when they dry out. Just the ticket if you want your veg to have a spa experience. They’re also expensive and bulky but some less expensive draw-string top cotton bags also performed well. Edited to add that a nice feature of those bags for use at a grocery store is that each has a little tag with the tare weight stamped on it. I might rifle through my stash of kitchen towels (or pick up some new ones from TJs) and try stitching up some drawstring bags of appropriate sizes. I know the towels tolerate washing in hot water and bleach as I’d want for something like this. And as others have said, I routinely wash greens and store them wrapped in damp towels. I’ll report back on how this works.

I know lots of people have big Easter parties or other spring gatherings and might want a bunch. They’re pretty inexpensive compared with similar paper bags. They’d make an OK reusable lunch bag but beyond that, I couldn’t come up with a “need” for them. My mom lined up in the wee hours and bought her wedding gown at a Filene's basement event. She was very thrifty but would likely have passed on these little TJs bags!

As @rotuts said, they’re quite small. Appropriate for a little gift bag. Given the pastel colors and timing on this release, I suspect many will be used for lEaster baskets. They showed up at my TJs yesterday, unbeknownst to me. When I arrived, close to 9 AM, I noted more cars in the parking lot than usual. Inside, near the entrance, there were 2 staff members standing in front of a big bin of these bags, enforcing a limit of 4/customer. Everyone in front of me got some. I did not. Most got 4. By the time I'd worked my way through the produce, meat, cheese, and dairy, I heard a big cheer from up front, indicating they had sold out.

I can’t argue with that selection but So many blues, it’s impossible to choose one but there’s always one available. And, as noted

On one of his podcasts, Dave Arnold said that 1 freeze/thaw cycle was ~ equivalent to one day at room temp for bread so I would recommend slicing the whole loaf, reassembling to minimize exposure of cut edges and freezing. Thaw as needed. Then, if plans change, it will still be good.

Strawberries undeniably suffer from shipping and the riper they are, the more they suffer so the longer they need to travel, the firmer and less ripe they need to be when picked. NYC is quite a bit closer to Florida than to California so I’m not surprised by @weinoo's observation. Once you get into the middle of the country that's more equidistant, it also gets more complicated to gauge shipping times, impacts of ambient temps, etc. Local berries will always be best and in many areas, their short season makes them even more precious.

I generally only buy strawberries at my local farmers market. Harry’s is among the vendors and expensive here, too. I see Mexican berries in supermarkets but will have to keep an eye out for Florida. I suspect I’ll be looking for a long time!

Not necessarily. But as @TdeV indicates, if you need access to the full recipe, you do need access to the book or to the online resources where it resides. However, even if you own no books at all, it’s still possible to run useful searches specifically requesting online recipes. On occasions where a search of my EYB bookshelf (my own books, magazines, blogs, etc plus library books I’ve cooked from often and chosen to add to my shelf with a “library” tag) comes up wanting, I can search the entire EYB library. When I do this, I’m not necessarily looking for a full recipe, but may be considering, say, a dessert using saffron and figs and wondering whether people tend to use dairy or citrus or other ingredients so I’m happy to skim the ingredient listings from a number of recipes for ideas. Additionally, since I make good use of my local library and the larger Los Angeles Public Library, I can often borrow ebooks that come up in those searches and have the full recipes in minutes if I want. I did that at least 3 times last week.

It facilitates a fairly fine texture. I only have one recipe that does it and it’s for a meat sauce to go on hot dogs. There aren’t many other applications where I want that texture but I can see it working in Kerridge's lasagna so maybe I should be more open minded.

Could you say a bit more about the curation of the top sites? Strictly online sources? With or without paywalls? Books? Historical manuscripts? No. Eat Your Books is my search tool of choice, but I also search here and a few other places. Again, I use EYB often, along with eGullet and a number of online cooking groups I participate in. Same as the previous question. While I’m pretty happy with EYB, I know of people here who would like to search for parameters they don’t routinely index, like a specific cooking appliance so perhaps your tool would be superior for them?

I agree. I find the broiler to require the most constant attention of any cooking method in my kitchen. My broiler heats up pretty quickly and there would surely be flames if I left any combustible material 8” away for the length of time they did.

They were good. Now I wish I’d headed over there today to get some!

This place is Valley Marketplace, previously Valley Produce. It’s a small, family-owned business with just 3 locations in Reseda, Simi Valley and Valencia. Not really worth the drive from anywhere unless you need a lot of something that happens to be on special. There's a Vallarta (SoCal Mexican grocery chain with 55 locations) right next door to the Simi location but I haven’t seen ox tails there. Maybe ya gotta ask?

I believe that it is indeed possible to measure volumes of salt with sufficient precision to determine whether the two samples differ enough to impact cooking results. If you weigh 10 separate 1T (or 1 tsp or 1 cup, depending on your scale) measurements of the two salts, taking reasonable care, and if there is no difference, I’d contend they are interchangeable. You may prefer one texture to another when used for finishing but that’s a different question.

Yes, they're kind of a pan-ethnic market. Persian and Mexican are most highly represented but they have other cuisines as well. Fun place to wander around.