blue_dolphin

I'm not Jo, but I'm going to guess that you are correct and that she is using what I would call a ring stand, basically an upright rod attached to a heavy base. Here's one (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) that comes with with two rings and a clamp. It looks to me like Jo has the bag hanging off the back end of a clamp. My house is sadly lacking in the ring stand department so I tend to hang my nut milk bag from one of the upper cabinet pulls. Sometimes a clothespin is involved.

It doesn't sound like the canned cherry tomatoes would be your jam, and that's just fine. Personally, I find their flavor to be a bit better than most small cans of tomatoes. I have a good selection of brands when it comes to larger cans but when you get down to the 400g/14 or 15 oz size, my stores don't have a ton of choice so I've found it handy to keep the canned cherries around for when I don't need a larger amount. They usually mush themselves up nicely without me needing to do any chopping as I'd likely do with whole canned tomatoes so that's handy as well. I'll add that some canned cherry tomatoes are peeled and some are not. Check the label and if it's important, choose one that makes it clear.

I don't think there was any char. The color is likely from the pan sauce that they were cooked in. Mine sauce came out looking a good bit darker than in the book photo....but then that's the case with much of what I cook 🙃

A late lunch/early dinner. Chicken thigh with olives and green beans from At Home in the Kitchen. Served over Massa Organics brown rice. The recipe calls for a curious 12 green beans to serve 6 people. Perhaps they're intended as a garnish? I dunno but I used more. Stayed fairly true to the ingredients but made quite a few modifications in the cooking procedure. The result was good.

A few good ideas in this older thread: Kitchen gadgets for those with injuries & disabilities

I always say I will not be sucked into buying too much cheese...but I always do! Harbison, Humboldt Fog, Herve Mons Mary Dans Les Etoiles, Rogue Creamery Enraptured Cherries Jubilee and Cowgirl's Mt Tam are all calling my name. They're all on the soft side and won't last forever so if I buy, I need to eat and not save it for "special" 🙃

The meals, nibbles and treats, the stories, the animals - wild, domestic and in between. Love it all. Thanks for taking the time to take us along again!

Ah, the recipe that got away 😢 The shortbread I'm making today also uses rice flour. I'm curious to see how it turns out.

Seared Sweet Potatoes with Kale and Lime Pickle from Carla Lalli Music's That Sounds So Good. The bottom layer is labne (I subbed Greek yogurt) mixed with lime juice and salt. The Tuscan kale is sautéed with lime pickle added at the end. Sweet potatoes are steamed (I used the Instant Pot), peeled and roughly broken up before being seared. Toasted walnuts sprinkled over top. Carla has a video of this recipe on her YouTube with a link to a recipe download in the comments.

Or it's very old timey. My Irish grandmother's measuring devices for baking here in the US were the same ones she used in Ireland: a teacup, a juice glass and a small and large spoon.

@Annie_H, here's a recipe from Kerrygold that calls for a cup of flour and a cup of cornflour.

I think "doubt" is the key word here. Clearly you have some doubts so @Anna N's answer is the right one. Even if the stuff is isn't unsafe, it's probably past the point where quality has started to degrade so if this is the time to say so long, don't feel so bad! Personally, I think they gave you a CYA answer. If the stuff was only supposed to be good in the fridge for a week, surely they would have told you that in the beginning. If it was processed in a pressure canner to be safe for months and assuming there are no issues with losing the seal, I don't get where an "unsafe" cut-off kicks in at six months or a year or where? I do get quality drop-offs and this stuff is surely in the range where that's going on. Sad, but maybe not the biggest loss at this point.

She was quite tidy about removing her selection and didn't seem to touch anything else!

Lost Bread with Apples from At Home in the Kitchen. Pain perdu, French toast, whatever you want to call it. This one has a healthy splash of rum and lots of cinnamon in the egg mix. It's topped with sautéed apples, cider syrup and a dollop of whipped cream. I used TJ's pumpkin brioche loaf for the bread. Made this mostly because it's finished in the oven and I was looking for an excuse to warm things up. 55°F in the house but supposedly warming to mid 70's later so I didn't want to turn on the heat. Also figured the rum might help with the warming business 🙃 This is my second slice, hence the dirty plate and fork 🙈

Yes, indeed! A tip I picked up from Vivian Howard in her book Deep Run Roots was to grind some rice to “clean” your spice grinder and use that seasoned rice flour in a breading mix. Then it would be ready to make shortbread-worthy rice flour.

This could be a food funny but it was also an unexpected gift so I'll share it here. A 12 oz can of Bob Ross Positive Energy Drink Just the thing to enjoy whilst watching Bob paint 🤣

The daughter of a French friend of mine said that the sign of a good croissant was a lot of crumbs on the plate. I'd say that was a good one! I enjoyed that savory omelet yesterday so I went ahead and made the sweet soufflé omelet from At Home in the Kitchen. It has a filling of crème fraîche and honey, which promptly liquified and ran out onto the plate and is topped with a bit of jam - I used homemade pear & vanilla bean) and powdered sugar. I had some vanilla bean-infused browned butter leftover from another recipe so I sautéed a sliced pear in that and added a few rum-soaked raisins. Toast is the heel of a TJ's pumpkin brioche loaf topped with Bordier yuzu butter. Still not crazy for sweet stuff with eggs but this was OK. I actually preferred the crème fraîche/honey mixture as a sauce on the caramelized pears rather than as an omelet filling so it wasn't necessarily a bad thing that it all leaked out 🙃

Since you're following an Irish recipe, that's probably going to be closest what they are making. That said, you'd probably get a nice shortbread with either one, just different. I've got a number of recipes for cornmeal shortbread and some that call for polenta. They're going to add a bit of a gritty texture which can be nice, depending on your preferences. Do post your thoughts after baking! Today, I'm planning on trying a recipe for salted rosemary shortbread that's flavored with grapefruit zest. It calls for 180g AP flour and 43g rice flour, assuming my pantry coughs it up 🙃

Not a stupid question at all. @kayb's answer holds true in the US but in the UK, Europe, including Ireland, and Australia the finely processed product we call cornstarch is known as cornflour.

Those tomatoes look gorgeous which must make the lack of taste even more disappointing!

Savory omelet soufflé from At Home in the Kitchen Toast buttered with Bordier algues (seaweed) butter. The book has a sweet version of this omelet with filling of crème fraîche and honey and jam on top. Less appealing to me than this savory version but maybe I'll give it a try one of these days.

Lovely day for the farmers market today. Sunny but not hot or windy. Should have taken some photos but it's just a shopping mall parking lot. Here's the haul: From 12 o'clock, we have eggs, an oro blanco grapefruit (yes, still green, very early in the season but I have a recipe that calls for grapefruit zest so I got one), a nice hunk o pork (labeled side slab rather than belly, but similar, I think, some will be ground and mixed with ground pork for chorizo), Meyer lemons, four small blood oranges plus two larger cara cara oranges, holiday wurst from the German sausage peeps (I'm told they are seasoned with nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon and should be excellent cooked with sauerkraut, that's a 1 lb pack of 3 links), three small-ish heirloom tomatoes, two watermelon radishes, a bag of baby kale mix (nice as it can be used in salads or cooked), a massive bunch of flat-leaf parsley, a generous, but more normal-sized bunch of cilantro, sage & thyme and a jar of buckwheat honey.

I have not purchased it but it does sound interesting. I share your wariness with respect to Phaidon books. Often beautiful to look at but awful to cook from. This coming Monday, there's an author event with Virgilio Martínez in conversation with Andrew Zimmern that's accessible online. Jointly hosted by Bold Fork Books, Book Larder, Now Serving LA, Omnivore Books, and Phaidon. Register here.

I think I remember @Shelbymentioning that they'd tried a DIY wine experiment a long time ago. Not sure if it was a kit like this or something different. I do not believe it was a success. I think Nyquil was mentioned to describe the flavor.

I'm heading to TJ's in a bit and have eggnog on my list for exactly this purpose. Last year, I made some of Jeffery Morganthaler's eggnog with añejo tequila and amontillado sherry and liked it a lot. If I get around to making any of that, I'll give some a spin. He's got a non-alcoholic eggnog recipe up on his blog this year for those who choose not to imbibe.