blue_dolphin

I haven't done good side by side comparisons but have been targeting 25 as a low end based on what I read here (see p 71):

I went to TJ's this AM and returned with 2 good finds. The Duc du Normandie calvados is usually a seasonal item available in the Nov, Dec time frame. It's a nice calvados at a good price ($19.99)and I use it in Chuck Taggart's very festive Réveillon cocktail. I never found any this year. They do seem to shelve it in random spots so it could be that I just didn't look carefully enough but today I spied a bottle on the shelf and snagged it so now I'm ready for next winter 🤣 Also @rotuts's $2.99 Malbec finally turned up on the left coast so I picked up a couple of bottles to test out. They were out of regular cream cheese (just had the "lite" stuff) but the tater tots that had been MIA for months were back. Edited to add that the Malbec is surprisingly nice for the price. I'll go back and get more. Click below to see @rotuts's post that has photos of the label:

I got a refractometer but have only used it to get in the mixture into the range for a non-icy mouthfeel, not to test how icy I could go!

Ah, that makes sense as she said "dump the ground beef," which suggests it was in some container that was upended.

Yes, do tell. Do you usually put it on the top shelf of the dishwasher? Or maybe in the utensil rack?

When I asked in the store, I was told the Amarena cherries were a seasonal item though I’m not sure what that season is!

Note that most of these ‘crazy' deals are offered for a limited time. Some for a month, some only a day or so and a few for longer. I don’t believe any of those 3 are still at the prices mentioned 4+ years ago.

I'm absolutely making note of this. Eric Kim's chamomile tea cake had a glaze made with freeze dried strawberries and it was really nice. Would love to try it in a whipped cream.

Talk about leaving us hanging!

So sorry, @Darienne! When I bake multiple oven loads of cookies I almost always burn the last one but it's much more tragic to lose them all! Me? I will never again buy cooking oil with a plastic snap cap. Acceptable screw cap on the left, unacceptable pop-top on the right. I gave it the side-eye in the store and even moved it from the pantry cabinet where I feared it tipping and dripping through the wire shelves on everything below. I put it in a lower cabinet instead and managed to nudge it off the shelf when putting something else away. It only fell about a foot but the jolt popped the top open and it splattered all over. Then it wobbled a bit and tipped over, pouring out all over the floor. Of course, I was putting that other item away in a bit of a hurry because a friend was on her way over so I didn't have time for a proper scrubbing and was afraid that one of us would go flying. Thankfully no injuries ensued, the floor is clean and I will never purchase oil in such a bottle again!

Country ham & egg sandwich on a seedy spinach waffle

Pasta with shrimp, sugar snap peas and preserved lemon butter

A little jam buffet with my 1/2 English muffin

Thanks for taking us along - as always, it was a fun trip!

Canada does import some US beef but I don't know how much, if any, is already ground at the time of import. Hopefully, someone more knowledgable can jump in to help you out. To your second question, US and Canadian agencies work very closely together so I would expect that information to be shared. I can find reports of Canadian ground beef recalls due to possible E. coli contamination that extended to product imported to the US and it was reported in both countries so I would assume the same would be true for a US recall.

Made the recipe for French baked eggs with smoked salmon and tarragon cream from Melissa Clark's Dinner in French and tipped it out onto a toasted English muffin instead of eating it out of the ramekin.

I just bought Kindle version of The Herbfarm Cookbook (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) by Jerry Traunfeld for $1.99. Lots of recipes organized by type of dish followed by sections on growing and buying herbs and about individual herbs. There are beautiful illustrations of the herbs but in this kindle version they are all oddly placed at the end.

Having grown up in northern NY in a house on the shore of Lake Champlain, the local wisdom was that one should never take off for 2 weeks of vacation between June & Sept because the summer might come and you'd have missed it!

Toasted English muffin topped with butter and marmalade mixed with fresh ginger. This was inspired by the Sandwiches of history guy and I must say that adding freshly grated ginger will really give your marmalade a punch!

Bought a packet of frozen gorgonzola, toasted walnut and endive ravioli from Roan Mills the other day. Made a walnut brown butter sauce with tarragon and added asparagus.

I don't think that looks bad at all and I think it would also be fine with a 36" wide fridge of that same depth. That said, I wouldn't want it to stick out any further and I do think it would look a bit nicer if it were more flush. I totally agree that when the fridge is at the end of a run of cabinets, it's barely noticeable if it sticks out but when it's in the middle, it's more obvious. I think it also matters if that side view is one that you often see from other vantage points or just from within the kitchen while cooking. The former is more bothersome to me than the latter. Gorgeous kitchen in any case!

I put my first thoughts on Sally Schmitt's Six California Kitchens over in the 2022 cookbooks topic. I think it's just lovely!

I received Six California Kitchens a couple of weeks ago and just finished reading it. If you enjoy food-related memoirs, it's very much worth a read. I think the recipes sound delicious and look forward to cooking from the book. I've mentioned elsewhere that Sally Schmitt passed away last month which is certainly sad but what a lovely memoir she's left behind in this book. It's full of stories, recipes and photos woven together to take us through a lifetime of cooking - from her mother's 1930's kitchen where she first learned to cook to her restaurant kitchens (The Vintage Cafe, The Chutney Kitchen and The French Laundry) to the Apple Farm where instead of retiring, she continued to cook and teach cooking for years to the Elk Cottage on the Mendocino coast where she and her husband lived for 8 years before returning to the Apple Farm to live closer to family. Such a treat to read. I feel like I just had a cooking lesson from my grandmother....if, you know, my grandmother had started the French Laundry 🙃 Sally advises us to read through a recipe carefully, three times before beginning to cook, to clean as we go and to take a break for a few minutes if the soup seasoning isn't coming together as you'd like. The recipes are written with clear, simple instructions paired with the ingredients as they are used. Measurements are given in both cups and spoons and grams and milliliters. She doesn't use any equipment fancier than a blender or mixer and while she's mostly a "scratch" cook, she doesn't shy away from doctoring up some good old Best Foods Mayo. I haven't started cooking from the book yet but have quite a few recipes marked to try. Amazon's "Look Inside" feature includes the recipe listing and several recipes so you can see what's included and how they are formatted. That Amazon sample is from the Kindle edition so notes that appear in the margins of the hard copy are kind of merged in with the rest of the text although they appear in red for memories or stories or blue for notes that pertain directly to a recipe, the same text color scheme used in the hard copy.

And much like the items you mention, you can always put an egg on it - as I often do!

None needed - I'd start my day with a bowl of pasta over cereal - hot or cold - any day of the week! I've been rather remiss about my breakfasts of late. There was a nice leek quiche with asparagus, mushrooms and red bell peppers. This probably accounted for 3 or 4 breakfasts so the last slice gets a second photo: Then there was the last pumpernickel bagel from my recent batch. This one with the dried apricot and thyme cream cheese schmear from Cathy Barrow's bagel book: Both were good. The schmear was not as appealing to me as much as the others I've made from the book. Perhaps I could have gotten better dried apricots? Perhaps I don't like sweet stuff so much with my bagels? Tuna fish salad on seeded spinach waffle which was one of the last bread-type items in my house on this particular morning: No complaints from me. I always think of @Anna N when I make something like this because I know she very much dislikes tuna, at least in this form. I believe I made this more than once before yesterday's bakery run provided me with more options. Today's breakfast was the same as yesterday's, a roasted mushroom hand pie from a local bakery: