Darienne

I am on book five of a series about a French policeman, setting in the fictional town of St. Denis, in the Dordogne region of France. Bruno Courrèges is the character and the author is Martin Walker. There is so much about French food and wines and the making, eating and drinking thereof woven into each book. Quite wonderful.

Add me to that list. Shortbread cookies...now that's my weakness.

It may be early for you Yanks, but it's this weekend for us in Canada. We are not exciting at Thanksgiving and eat the same things every year. Turkey, savory stuffing, gravy, carrots, Brussels Sprouts, mashed potatoes, and for dessert my go-to Lime Cheese pie with a topping of 1/4 dark chocolate ganache and 3/4 milk chocolate. Our traditional guest (with her three... count'em...three Border Collies who seem to hate our two Rotties) from South Africa loves milk chocolate and after Ed and I each have a small piece of pie, she takes home the rest.

Dear PanaCan, just read your entry and my sympathies go out to you, your family and your country. And no, we'd not heard one word of your plight. all best, Darienne

That looks incredible. Any chance of a recipe?

Glad this is over for you @Margaret Pilgrim. But then you have to remember that it might have been something you ate 30 days ago...

It's all getting just a bit repetitious, don't you think? My S-i-L's best friend is just recovering from a dreadful onslaught of e-coli. I mean really scary. She's turned a corner finally. They do eat out a lot. I wonder. I did tell her about all the recent recalls.

And I did continue to prepare them bare-hands. Then a couple of months ago, Ed prepared a bunch for me bare-hands and paid a terrible price for it. And because this topic is all about the dreadful, stupid, careless, etc things we do, I thought I'd take advantage of it just once to say I just prepared a huge batch of Poblanos and Jalapenos and I wore gloves to do it. You see, I can learn.

(No access to the NYT ) Will add that Ed was taking a French course many years ago ...good heavens, about 57 years...in Sherbrooke, Quebec, and his prof gave the class a recipe for Tortière which we have used ever since. And the pastry calls for 7-Up.

My mouth is watering. You, sir, are a genius chef.

You beat me to it, @teonzo

The gianduja I bought was in milk chocolate...Guittard if I remember correctly...but I loved it. And our local dealer (of Belcolade) once gave me a piece of a Barry(?) milk chocolate and it was amazing. My more intense relationship to chocolate and confections in general has somewhat fallen by the way over the last five years...Carpal Tunnel Syndrome amongst the reasons...and so I'm not producing much any more at all. However, I do thank you for the information.

We do have them in Canada...we've just never purchased them. Now that I look up the ingredients I'm not in a hurry to buy them. We don't like milk chocolate and loathe Nutella. Yep, both of us. I did however once purchase a slab of Gianduja while in Utah, which was of course milk chocolate, and loved it...but not the jarred Nutella. I expect it tasted quite different going back a few decades. Still I expect Kerry's would have been quite wonderful.

Truly, I have never had one.

It may well suffice for most, but I have no idea what they are. Can you give me some kind of insight or recipe? They do look delicious.

Not eating any chicken recently...no particular reason why.....

It's the reason behind the reason... I remember the Maple Leaf problem quite well. And the one machine in particular, overseen...overseen?...by an inspector and the machine had not been cleaned...not once...in five years. And one thinks of one's own life, the constant cleaning and concerns for safety and health and so on. The never-ending-ness of it all. And five years not cleaned? Where does that sort of thing leave the mind? Not good stuff. Sorry. It just can't be dealt with easily. But then life is full of that...

It's actually quite staggering. Does any person/institute/etc write about why this is happening?

Great. Hotels, Restaurants, Institutional. Your elderly Mother in some long term care facility. Your brother in the hospital. Travelers on the road. Just what we needed next.

I 'knew' that listeria could take 30 days to manifest...but this article says up to 70 days. It would be pretty difficult to chase back one's eating more than two months to find the source. OTOH, a friend's brother died from mad cow disease some years ago and they were told that the illness could simply live in the body for decades before it showed up. The brother had lived for some years in Brazil and Argentina many years ago and eaten much beef and the medical staff said that would have been the cause. It was a terrible story.

I hope that your 'local farmers' are more honest than some in my area. The city has just been through a horrendous brouhaha over that very thing....farmers misrepresenting the source of their wares.

I would say 'freeze'...but then we freeze just about everything. Ed eats a lot of peanuts and the cellar freezer has a big bag of peanuts in it.

This is not encouraging for American consumers. On the other hand, it's not surprising either. From my current Consumer Reports e-download. https://www.consumerreports.org/food-labels/seals-and-claims?EXTKEY=EE993PMAC&utm_source=acxiom&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20190926_cromc_engagewkly I'd like to know what the current labeling standards are in Canada. Next research project. After dealing with the bumper crop of apples...

No, but I am interested. Been making magic shell for years, but the a 3:2 chocolate to oil mixture. Even grownups love to watch the liquid suddenly harden. Also...have no cognac in the house.

I dried them in a dehydrator this time, but I've also done them in the oven. They are reconstituted by being basically thrown into whatever I am making that calls for chopped onions. With some small consideration given for liquid measurements. In so many recipes it would make no never mind.