Darienne

No one has mentioned the LG microwave. It ranked tops on Consumer Reports. Our old Panasonic died suddenly when we had company and Ed bought the new one at Best Buys. I hate it so far. Why can't they ever leave the designs of household items alone?

I've recently signed onto a new Canadian government website: Your latest Recalls and Safety Alerts from the Government of Canada. Every day there is something. This morning its undeclared gluten and wheat from a vegetarian ham product. Every single day there is something. It's almost unreal. And now palo posted about cleaning solution inadvertently put into juice pouches. Sure glad it was 'inadvertent'. You really have to wonder why...

I'm afraid I'm with Tropicalsenior on this one also. Sadly, but truthfully.

After one of the worst months of our lives, an incredible present arrived today...and such a surprise. If you know us, you know that I am constantly making ice cream for Ed and friends. I bought this wonderful little Ice 100 machine, the kind with a bowl you have to freeze, about 14 years ago in Moab, Utah, for $5, second hand. It's had yeoman service all these years. Well today began the Annual (and last ever) Dog Weekend and the guys from New Jersey arrived bearing a commercial quality Ice 100, the kind with the freezing compressor. I am in 7th heaven and tomorrow we make our first gelato. Now that is fun indeed.

I'm going to try it. Just for fun if nothing else.

Ed makes large batches of macaroni and cheese sauce and then I freeze it in suitable meal portions. He's never paid any attention to the niceties of undercooking the pasta or much of anything else, and it's always been perfectly good. But maybe then we aren't connoisseurs where macaroni and cheese are concerned.

Guests arrive this week on Thursday afternoon and the Double Chocolate Mousse Bombe birthday cake is to be served at Saturday lunch for two of the gentlemen. That's two days later. And it was specifically requested and agreed to. This chocolate cake is refrigerated and contains both a milk chocolate and a dark chocolate mousse, and is covered by a chocolate glaze which the instructions suggest you apply only 30 minutes before serving (and which I cannot realistically do.) In fact, the entire cake is now practically speaking beyond my energy level these days...but there you are...don't bother going there, please. I've now already listened to a lecture by my dear Ed ( who never listens to sense himself.) The cookbook says you can refrigerate the cake with the two mousses up to 48 hours before serving. That would mean making the second mousse Thursday morning for lunch on Saturday morning. Could I realistically make the cake on Wednesday? Or is that pushing it just too far? The recipe comes from One Cake, One Hundred Desserts, by Greg Case and Keri Fisher, 2006. Plus I have salads to make and they can't be made far ahead either: potato salad, cucumber salad, pepper salad, tabbouleh, and bean salad. I'm planning on laying them out in a sort of mise en place style ahead of time. Might just skip the potato salad. Yes, I used to be able to do all this...but that was then and this is now. I would say that this is definitely the last time I do this at all. The last three years have not been good ones health wise. Sorry to whine while asking Pastry & Baking questions.

Here's a HUGE one: https://www.consumerreports.org/food-recalls/drink-brands-recalled-due-to-potential-contamination-a8309767530/?EXTKEY=NF28NCP1&utm_source=acxiom&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20220806_nsltr_food&utm_nsltr=food

Good idea. I think that Covid plus encroaching old age with huge changes in my health really changed our lives for the last 3 years. No more dinner parties. No more cooking of certain foods, using certain ingredients. Oh, about the Triple Ginger Ice Cream...I've decided to make Vietnamese Coffee Ice Cream instead. Much easier. Need nothing I don't have on hand. It's not Ed's favorite, but trooper that he is, he'll force himself to eat the leftovers after the weekend is over along with the other 3 batches I've made.

...not check the state of the frozen fresh ginger until I was ready to use it tonight in making Triple Ginger Ice Cream (Dog Weekend next weekend) ? Only to discover that it was totally shrivelled and completely unusable. Well...maybe it has been about four years after all. Probably haven't used it since I last made that ice cream.

Sauce? Noodles? Cooked noodles?

Basically, it's unmaintainable. Sad to say.

Sorry. Never really thought about it carefully. I'd say 400° Fahrenheit and up.

Not a faulty myth at all. They took the borosilicate out of the formula some years back which changed the structure and has led to many occasions of dishes exploding and causing terrible wounds and so on. My sister-in-law had one explode on her and luckily she wasn't badly hurt, but the shock and the mess was enough. They neglected to broadcast that change. Consumer Reports did a major article on the subject a few years back. I think we discussed the situation on eGullet also. All the dishes I use are old but undamaged. And I just don't use glass at high temperatures at all. From Wikipedia: Borosilicate glass is a type of glass that contains boron trioxide which allows for a very low coefficient of thermal expansion. This means it will not crack under extreme temperature changes like regular glass. Its durability has made it the glass of choice for high-end restaurants, laboratories and wineries.

Exactly what I use. Thanks.

The article is fascinating. When I got my rice cooker, I immediately measured the volume in the little cup, thinking I'll lose the darn little thing and then won't know how to measure the rice for this unit. Sad to say, I saw the strange measurement as just one more 'screw the customer' ploy on the part of the market. This is not a natural stance for me, naively believing that the vast majority of us are honest (naive, my husband would say), but in the face of so much dishonesty on the part of the market, what else could anyone think after such endless proof of blatant dishonesty on the part of manufacturers, distributors, etc, etc? Except that I was totally wrong and I formally apologize to the rice cooker folks. How interesting to learn about the traditional Japanese measurement system. Why is this not mentioned in the little manual? Oh, I've lost the little cup, of course.

Well, not really sad...but it's almost beyond belief. Almost...but not quite.

I wonder...from what percentage to what percentage??? How many illnesses and deaths are permissible per year?

You? Never!!!

To me, the main problem always with mashed potatoes is that they are mashed. My Mother didn't make them either. Ed loves them. His Mother made them. What else is new?

Oh, the list is not neat and tidy and has cross-outs and re-writings.

It's really quite casual. All incoming paper gets recycled into scrap pieces and I scribble on these in pencil. So each Saturday, after Ed shops for the groceries, something I can no longer do (and is always full of surprise, some good...some not so good), I start a new sheet, simply scribbling down whatever foods he bought which must be paid attention to, while carrying over last weeks remainders. And if stuff gets ignored and starts to go, I roast it and freeze it for making soup. We eat a lot of soup. So the weekly scribble might say: broccoli, cauliflower, avocados (2), asparagus, red potatoes, russet potatoes, sweet potatoes, grn onions, celery, romaine, carrots...etc, etc, etc... I look at this list every day when we have our quick morning meeting. Then I have a long established list over the cellar freezer with the contents therein, updated every few...months?...when I know it's way out of date. Dishes are kept in those big grocery store colored plastic bags or some net or cloth bags and the legend is on the list. For instance we are having frozen enchiladas for lunch with frozen guacamole (yes, this is the way we live now) and they are in the 'romaine bag'. Not ideal...but it really works. I have read that North Americans throw out 30-40% of food purchased. We throw out almost nothing. Of course, I don't work outside the house and don't have growing children. That makes a huge difference. OTOH, I am ancient and increasingly decrepit and we have two full time dogs.

"deliquesce". Wow! New word for me. I keep a running list of the foods that I have on hand which must be eaten or go bad by a certain time, like potatoes and avocados and you name it. I know it sounds like an impossible task to those who don't do it...but it works for us. I worked as a researcher for years..nay decades...and so it's second nature to me to live by my "green grocer" skills. diminished as they now are. (I use the term "green grocer" because once a professor of my acquaintance (whom I didn't like much) once publicly applied this term to another prof whom I admired immensely for his incredible memory and thinking abilities.)

How on earth does undeclared cashew get into this lasagne where it doesn't belong? https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/vicentina-fine-foods-gourmet-brand-meat-lasagna-recalled-due-undeclared-cashew?utm_source=gc-notify&utm_medium=email&utm_content=en&utm_campaign=hc-sc-rsa-22-23&