Darienne

Spring is late this year in East Central Ontario. We had a terrible ice storm a few weeks ago and there was a lot of damage to the trees on our farm. The Fiddleheads are past eating of course...will we ever eat them? ...and now I am on the lookout for the morels. Last year's crop was amazing. I found two in 2016 and then in 2017, we were inundated with them. Strangely enough we had not one puffball which survived. We are usually overrun by them. Last year we had elderberries like crazy. Again, they were the first I had seen on the trail. Contrary...we had no apples after several years of bushels. Oh well. And in the vein of confession...last year's butternuts, all 90-something of them, picked up mold one day and were tossed the next. To my shame.

The wonderful little fishies...what are they made of?

Reading about eating canned bean and creamed soups reminds me of my childhood when my Mother utilized these things regularly. Constantly. Endlessly. When I wasn't eating a tough as shoe leather steak...I was eating canned soup. I have to admit that I hate just about all canned soups, Habitant Pea Soup being the one exception that comes to mind. And then we alter the soup so much that it leaves its original nature far behind. Any dish which calls for using a can of creamed chicken or celery soup is not ever going to be served in our house. I'm not a cooking snob...I just hate the taste of canned soups. ps. Add cream of mushroom to the forbidden list.

Sneaking this one in because David Ross opened it up. Last year we had such a crop of wild morels on the farm we could not believe it. I've marked a lot of the spots and am checking them daily.

I never tasted fresh asparagus until long after I was married. My Mother ate only canned asparagus and if you've ever tasted it, you'll know that it is about as much like asparagus as Cheese Whiz is like aged Canadian cheddar. We moved out onto the farm 23 years ago and for reasons unknown, had a good patch of asparagus growing on the lower dirt driveway. Yum. Our own private patch. How old it was or who planted it we'll never know. One year it rained like crazy in the spring and we ended up with so much asparagus that we actually got sick of eating it. I didn't know that could happen. Then the year we did the major renovations which included a new septic tank, an added living room at the back with basement room, and repointed, reparged the entire foundation (including discovering that there was basically no exterior foundation at the back of the house...a common practice back when), etc, etc, the large trucks in and out destroyed our asparagus patch and we have been forced to buy it ever since. So sad. I mourn its loss. No, I am not a gardener. (We also have an ancient patch of rhubarb but I try to give that away. Rhubarb just takes too much sugar.)

But did it taste good...or did they use the grocery special icing which seems to be made from vegetable shortening...and tastes like it.

My read out thermometer is not meant for cooking and came from Canadian Tire (thanks to Kerry Beal). I have several caulking scrapers and spatulas on hand always. Thank that's it. Not exciting and not unusual.

I'm so tired after reading your post that I have to have a little lie down....

We cook just about everything from scratch - both retired. However, there are some things I either don't make well, like pastry, or am too lazy to make most of the time like canned beans and those I buy. There's probably more, but I can't think of it right now.

Sounds and looks so good that I am going to make this one. Always looking for new salad recipes to feed the Dog Weekend crowd.

Does this take me back. Got the recipe from CaliPoutine many years ago and she got it from her ex-M-i-L. Serve it each year at our annual Dog Weekend. You can make it days or even weeks ahead of serving.

I'm with Elsie on this one.

And I read about Buddha Bowls...the same thing I think...and have yet to make one. We eat a very light and simple supper and they sound ideal. I have to pull myself together and figure this one out.

I've spoken on this one before...my Mother hated cooking. And so she did as little as possible. I recall the early TV dinners with distaste. My poor Father never got to leave them behind. My grandmothers were early gone. But I do remember lighting the candles at my Mother's Mother's home once, although I had no idea what it was about. One of my first cooking memories when married (far too young, alas): I knew only Bisquik biscuits. How would I know otherwise? I had run out of Bisquik and it occurred to me that maybe you could just 'make' them. I found a recipe in my one cookbook and was astonished at how wonderful my biscuits were (compared to my Mother's pucks). I still love to whip up fresh biscuits and remember that day more than 58 years ago. My husband taught me how to cook. (Which, of course, means that he still interferes in my culinary processes. Mixed blessing.)

That is what Grandmothers are for I guess.

Oh yes. Shiprock, New Mexico. A roadside Fry Bread stand. Two please. Oh my. Love it.

Many years ago, in another lifetime, and indeed, in another food time slot, I sat on a number of hospital and other mental health boards and also was a vegetarian. I swore I would never, ever, ever, in my entire lifetime eat Fettucine Alfredo. Times have changed....but I still haven't eaten it.

I think we are pretty boring in this category. Ed makes a generic tomato sauce in great quantity which is then frozen. Thawed, we add to it to render it more towards the Italian, Greek, Mexican, whatever. I know, I know. I make a really simple pesto and (alas) use walnuts instead of pine nuts because pine nuts dwell outside our snack bracket. We do use Costco's parmesan and he shreds it for me. My hands left that scene a good number of years ago. And lastly, Ed makes his Mother's recipe for Macaroni and Cheese. It's incredibly North American...maybe even Canadian only...and we love it. Elbow macaroni, canned tomatoes, fried onions, grated cheddar (Canadian cheddar husbandly grated). Can't remember what else. No meat though. (I know...we do not eat high on the hog, as it were, and I do not cook high on the sophisticated scale, but I have finally gotten old enough and tired enough that I no longer will hide it from you, my incredible cooking eG chums.)

No ideas from me. Sorry Hope you can rid yourself of them permanently.

I just got into the site without any troubles. Wednesday 8:00am

Add me to the list of people whose opinions are " so cliché that to me it is deeply boring and predictable." I don't like white chocolate. But then I don't like milk chocolate either.

I am the perennial student always...thus my sign-off signature. I guess I've been cooking now with pleasure for about ten years and have learned bits and bobs from a lot of different 'non-North American' sources. But I've quit buying cookbooks, cut off most of my followed blogs, ceased to borrow cooking books and periodicals from the library, and stopped experimenting in the various cuisines I dabbled in...and so I'm mostly a repeater now with maybe one new dish a month from discoveries. I'm quite happy making and eating the same things over and over. And so is my DH.

Salad, salad, and more salad. All kinds of salads.

We have a Rubbermaid drainer and tray and a dedicated place for them in a shallow shelf in a cupboard directly across from the dishwasher. It's a galley type kitchen so everything is quite handy. I never use it, but when we have company, particularly the annual Dog Weekend, it gets used constantly. Ugly things. One of our sons had a wonderful two storey stainless steel dish-drainer setup which I coveted...but we gave it to one of his friends when he died. I still think about it every now and then. But then I think of our son every day.

My mouth is watering just looking at your photo. Will look up the recipe.