haresfur

Pavlova is traditional Christmas dessert in Australia and New Zealand

I was actually thinking of starting a topic on how to break down a chicken because I do it quite differently from what's described in Ad Hoc at Home. I remember seeing an Italian cooking show where a housewife did it entirely with kitchen shears. I'm sure everyone has their own preferred method.

I have been keeping that on hand. Have made some decent soup with it and using Adam Liaw's microwave mushroom method. Microwave sliced mushrooms in a bowl and they release moisture leaving the chitin so it doesn't get slimy. Pour it all into the stock, spice to taste, heat.

I think that food would make up for a Blue Bombers loss, not that I keep track of them these days, so thanks for the update.

My theory is unencumbered by actual data but I think you want to have a small excess of acid over the baking soda. Not because of how it acts as leavening, but because a bit of acid usually tastes good while a bit of soda tastes chalky.

Do let us know what you decide

Harvested my garlic crop except for some elephant garlic that I will give a few days. I think these started as last year's crop but I just left them because they didn't really do anything. Have some more that didn't do anything this year, so I'll leave them and see what happens.

Some fermenting geeks like to make lacto-fermented mustard rather than using vinegar. I haven't tried it.

A quasi-traditional thing we like is stuffed pumpkin. Ideally you have a small American looking pumpkin, clean out the insides, cram in as much bread stuffing as you can and bake until heated through and the pumpkin is cooked. Slice into wedges to serve. You could probably do something creative with another kind of pumpkin/winter squash - might have to remove some of the flesh to make room for stuffing. Some people in Australia do traditional Christmas but a most do a cold lunch with maybe ham, prawns, salads, charcuterie, whatever. Pavlova for dessert. So you could borrow that idea, particularly if it is hot.

I think you wouldn't get proper heat transfer through the air in the container. I suppose you could fill the container with water, but that would be stagnant, not circulating. And I don't know what it would do to the texture because it would be kind of like boiling them but at ~ 60 C

Doesn't usually bother me. Use quality oil, I guess. I generally use better quality canola for this but rice bran oil would probably be better but more expensive. The biggest problem is how hard it is to clean the filter screen in the range hood

Spring rolls and egg rolls are very different beasts. Spring rolls are common here, egg rolls not so much, except for Chico Rolls that are generally sold at fish and chip shops. People seem to have some sort of nostalgia for them. I live in one of the places that claims to have originated Chico Rolls, but I can't imagine why that would be seen as a positive. Basically the nastiest egg rolls you can imagine filled with god knows what. Their only redeeming quality is that the company sponsors the local roller derby team. I was going to suggest this. Easy but time consuming. I have frozen them quite well. In terms of frying, I find shallow frying makes more of a mess than deep frying so yes, do it in a deep pot and use one of those stainless mesh covers to keep the splatter down. Ikea sells them. Deep frying isn't too bad. The oil can be strained and reused. You probably can get a restaurant to take your used oil for disposal when the time comes.

An Australian TV show about rural living and agriculture, Landline, just did a show on combating food waste and one of the segments was about a company that was making dehydrated vegetable and fruit powders. Apparently dehydrated broccoli contains quite a bit of protein.

Roasted cauli with half the cauliflower I posted about in the gardening topic. Just olive oil and salt. Served over brown rice and soy sauce.

Decided it was time to harvest my biggest cauliflower before it got away from me. About 1.6 kg. Had to pick out a few earwigs but such is life.