haresfur

At first I thought these were for garnishing martinis - a bad idea. Then I realised they were supposed to taste like gin & tonic and tasted one, confirming they are a very bad idea.

Targeted advertising worked to get me to an Australian purveyor of Spanish tinned fish. Beautiful labels just might serve their purpose in getting me to explore the contents, too.

I guess it is part of the software that generates the labels. But there are a lot of biosecurity laws that growers have to watch out for. All cattle and I think now sheep have to have ear tags so they can be traced through to the abattoir. I believe all eggs sold have to be stamped with the producers identification and people have been fined for selling unstamped eggs in their little stand at the end of their drive.

My beef guy took a well deserved break last month so I had to stock up. Here is a steak I didn't buy. Scored some pretty good sweet corn, avocados, heirloom tomatoes, and some other odds & ends.

Recipe? I wing it. My father never shared his method with me except I learned you need decent marsala and a heavy hand with the bottle. Cut chicken breasts into cubes about 2-3 cm diameter. Dredge in flour, salt, and pepper. Brown. Pull chicken out. Turn down heat and saute chopped onions with salt and pepper to taste. Chopped shallots are nice, too but I think using only shallots is too much so a mixture with onions if you go that way. When onions are soft add sliced mushrooms and chopped garlic and cook until soft. glug in, oh, a third to half bottle of marsala per 2 breast halves and deglaze the pan. The flour from the chicken should be enough to thicken the sauce. Adjust salt and pepper. Serve over pasta. Keep it simple.

Note the power-point and rice cooker

I suppose the original could have been plantains given Baltimore is a sea port and had a booming spice trade with the Windies

It has not been a stellar season for gardening. Here is my entire onion harvest and my one lonely fennel.

Porterhouse with mountain pepper sauce, rosemary roasted potatoes, and stir fried, zucchini, capsicum, onion, carrot. The mountain pepper sauce is a basic black pepper sauce substituting Tasmanian mountain pepper. It ended up overly spicy which surprised me because I had been buying ground mountain pepper from a different company for years and didn't find it at all spicy. So I don't know if it is the different supplier or if it loses its spice rapidly when ground. It did turn the sauce a lovely purple colour. Maybe next time a mixture of black pepper and mountain pepper.

Yeah, I reckon 5 kg would be enough to turn a swimming pool to the consistency of maple syrup. I can only think that the company is using a loophole so they don't have to provide a certificate of analysis and that the purchasers are all businesses who assume they won't get caught.

I think it is a great idea. The weights with my crock are a pain to get in and out and do allow some material past. I have heard of some fermenters using a plastic bag filled with water to hold veg down below the brine surface, which doesn't seem like a good solution either. Wonder if you could tie a nylon string to the centre of the mesh to help pull it out.

How long does it take you to go through 5 kg of Xanthan Gum at home?

Used up the rest of the Wasabi in a soba-prawn salad that was great except for the soba which turned to a soggy mess. I put in finely julienned carrot and raw red cabbage. I will continue to pursue the salad with fake wasabi, possibly without the soba I decided that the wasabi grater was too hard to use so I chopped it finely then processed it in the mortar and pestle. I think that worked much better.

That all looks great @FrogPrincesse. I may have to try beer in the red cabbage. A recipe I never got from my father and my siblings hate it so I wing it. Has to have apple and bay leaves. And cider vinegar to keep it red. I have taken to slicing the cabbage thin with a knife because I have too many childhood memories of bleeding into the box grater. And of course it is better reheated. Still working on the end of the batch.

I really tried not to laugh, sorry.

The tale of Trash the Kitchen Imperial Stout. The main things about Imperial Stout is that it uses a huge amount of malt and a huge amount of hops, so it isn't cheap to brew, but it does keep well. I decided I wanted a bit of molasses flavor so added some blackstrap. I used malt syrup and set it to boil on the stove then I'm not sure what happened, but managed to boil it over sending sticky gunk all over the stove and down the front of the oven to the floor. I was not popular with the cohabitant. Anyway I finished the ferment and secondary ferment and bottled it up. Unbenounced to me, the stuff that makes molasses taste the way it does is unfermentable. When I pulled a bottle out of the cupboard in the basement and cracked it open after a few weeks, it was like disgusting watery molasses. Three years later, the rest of the batch was rediscovered in the basement and it was exquisite.

Local News Negotiations With Spatula Enter 3rd Day, Cutlery Drawer Still Inaccessible

I find leather binding adds a lot of mouth-feel but the book takes much longer to stew

Everything I've read says not to freeze it whole because it turns to mush. The instructions and what I read elsewhere said to grate using a circular motion, push into a lump and wait 5 minutes. It came vacuum-sealed and I resealed the remainder in a new bag. Australia has very strict biosecurity rules so I'm not sure it would be allowed in from outside the country. So I'm glad they can grow it in Tassie. I don't know if Japanese wasabi tastes different. Definitely got our entertainment value even though the shipping doubled the cost.

More of a give than a get, although I did benefit. Bought some real wasabi, grown in Tasmania, to try out because someone was wondering how different it was. About a 3 cm piece of stem vacuum packed and shipped express with a cold pack. Along with a grater and threw in some dried mountain pepper berries since I was spending so much on shipping anyway. The grater seemed a bit small and not the easiest to use. The wasabi was spicier than I had imagined so the flavour difference seemed more subtle. It was better than the horse radish stuff but didn't exactly rock my world. There is no really good sushi where I live so we made do on that end. Have plenty left over so need to think of ways to use it up. I read somewhere that it actually freezes ok after grating but of course couldn't find the website again.

Lovely ceramic mermaid sardines by Trina Doerr with bonus okki. She graciously gave me permission to share here. From facebook if anyone wants to look her up.

I didn't recognise Gilbert Shelton's name but he was actually my entry into this obscure corner of the internet and many of you probably know his underground comics "The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers" and "Fat Freddy's Cat" I guess he likes sardines, too.

I think many of you will recognise B. Kliban and his cats

I recently stumbled down quite a rabbit-hole of sardine-can art that I thought I would share. I don't know if it some Jungian thing or what, but it crops up in actual can labels and in art inspired by sardine cans. Maybe it is some fascination with the way the key curls the lid back. Something strangely satisfying about that. I didn't always save links to sources and some might be considered NSFW, depending on your work. Mermaids, you know. I'll start with this overview.

One of my father's favourites, and mine is Port Salud. Scored a piece that was factory-sealed in shrink plastic so it is unlikely to mold before Christmas. There just isn't enough turn-over here for a good cheese selection.