Anna N

Never thought about it but I shall certainly put it under serious consideration. Thank you Well I know I am going to buy the Tuesday Night’s book eventually! I always do when I get into this kind of mood. I have zero willpower to resist. I can hold back the urge for only so long. I too enjoy these books for much more than just their recipes. And curiosity is a powerful force.

I am not quite sure how long the corn remained in the sous vide bath but it was certainly much longer than the recommended 30 minutes. It was a little overcooked in my opinion but still quite edible. I enjoy the convenience of sous vide because it involves so little last minute futzing about.

Yet another lovely sunny morning here in Little Current made even sunnier by chocolate dipped ginger! No breakfast photo because I ate the half of the club sandwich which Kerry brought home yesterday evening. I really do need to kill my Puritan child! The thought of wasting it did not occur to me but should have. Some things do not do well as leftovers. Kerry has a 24 hour emergency room shift so depending on how busy it is she may be here much of the day. On the other hand I may not see her for many, many hours. Either way I have decided to take a day off from preparing dinner. There are enough leftovers that we won’t starve and it will free up the kitchen for anything Kerry might want to get involved in. She has had almost no playtime since we arrived. I fancy a day of just leafing through recipe books and perhaps making up shopping lists of ingredients to seek out when we head into Sudbury this coming weekend.

At the moment @Kerry Beal and I are up on Manitoulin Island for about six weeks or so and it is amazing what is available and what isn’t available and how quickly it changes from day to day. Usually we both reside between two major urban centres in southern Ontario, Hamilton and Toronto, and are accustomed to having access to almost everything one might wish for. Each year we come up here we have to once again become used to not being able to find the most basic of ingredients. A bunch of parsley was not to be had anywhere in town a couple of days ago.

While I was thinking that Kerry was working hard in Wiki she was actually grocery shopping again and stopping in at Pike Lake Farm! I broke one of those precious eggs when I was trying to lift the carton out of the shopping bag. I also ate too many of those delicious local strawberries. In the blue wrapper is mint that Kerry picked at the edge of the water in Wiki. Close up of the just-picked strawberries.

@Margaret Pilgrim It is all coming back to me now. I would sing that for you but I can’t carry a tune.

Wow! I must admit this is new to me but I could certainly fall in love with it I am sure.

A light lunch today. Even lighter than I was anticipating. This was some of the soup that I made from the leftover rotisserie chicken that we brought up. It’s been in the freezer until now. When I was dividing up the soup into Ziploc bags I somehow managed to get nothing much besides liquid into this bag. The cherries are beginning to look as though they have just about given up their all.

Do remember that I pretty much have to gum it to death!

I think you probably have a better memory than I have. Thanks. I think I’m going to try it at 83.5 for 30 minutes and see how that goes.

No worries. Apparently other people interpreted my sitting on the fence as a matter of finances and offered me other methods of obtaining this book including using the library. I just thought I would make it clear that cost was not a factor in my indecision (although it frequently is the overriding factor!)

@JoNorvelleWalker If the new pills have not put you into extremis, can you please tell me more about this: “I love sous vide corn on the cob 30 minutes or a bit more at 60 deg C, a la @nathanm” Did you put it in a Ziploc bag or vacuum seal it? Did you add anything to the package? Thank you very much.

That is very kind of you. But I do want to make it clear that cost is not the issue in terms of whether or not I buy this book. I am weighing up my dislike of Christopher Kimball versus my curiosity as to the recipes in this new iteration of his cooking philosophy or whatever it is he motors on!

Another gorgeous morning on Manitoulin Island. Kerry has gone off to Wiki (Wikwemikong), Kira has gone off with her caregiver and I have become a washerwoman for the day! Yes, even on holiday chores must be done. At least laundry is easily accomplished here. A stacked washer and dryer are in the utility room just behind the kitchen. Much nicer for me than having to lug everything up and down stairs as I do at home. Point Reyes cheese, a Bartlett pear (not nearly ripe enough) and some buttered rye toast.

I know that some certainly do.

It is not a matter of wanting to own the books for the sake of owning them but my ability to access the library is very limited. Even more so up here in Manitoulin where they have probably never even heard of Dorie Greenspan. Most of my life I was a library patron but physical handicaps limit my ability to do some of the things that I used to do. But I do thank you for the suggestion. E-books are my friends. Well you are much more optimistic than I am regarding the bison. I don’t know yet if they’ve slaughtered any of them. No idea if the meat is available to us. But I am as anxious as you are to find out.

You are probably right and I am guilty of seeing Dorie through rose coloured glasses. But I am going to keep my illusions rather than surrender to the dark side.

More grocery shopping. As you can see by the Crisco and the sugars Kerry is planning her usual bonanza of baking while we are here. I will take responsibility for some of the things on this table but whole wheat rigatoni? There’s just no accounting for taste.😯 Not sure about all the tortilla chips but I might be a responsible having mentioned that it would be fun to make some loaded nachos at some point. I hear that Kira is in love with the bison. I do hope she doesn’t name them or they’ll be no hope of bison steaks. Now it is time for me to turn my attention to tonight’s dinner although I would much prefer to just sit here and read Dorie Greenspan’s latest cookbook.

Thanks for your insight. I wonder if people like Dorie Greenspan feel compelled to keep churning out cookbooks to keep their names front and center? Somehow this doesn’t jibe with how I think about Dorie. The cover photograph on the book must surely sell many copies. The first recipe that intrigues me is the carrot and mustard rillettes (even though the title is an abominable misrepresentation of the classical meaning of rillettes). And goop surely lost any cachet it might ever have had the minute that Gwyneth Paltrow began using it. Yet I’m enough of a Dorie fan to give her an opportunity to prove she can still turn out some spectacular dishes. I have barely opened the book so it’s going to be a while before I decide to test any recipes.

For some days before I even arrived in Manitoulin I have been hemming and hawing about two recipe books. Dorie Greenspan‘s, Everyday Dorie, is a puzzlement. We, here on eG, are generally huge fans of Dorie but I can find only one recipe from this, her latest book, in the forum—This prepared by @blue_dolphin. Has Dorie lost her appeal? Or is it that Dorie is so well known for her sweets that we don’t trust her with savouries? But that can’t be true either because many of us cooked from Around My French Table. All that is just a long way of saying that I succumbed just now and bought her new book. I am hoping to try a few recipes while we are up here. The other book is even more of a conundrum for me. It is Christopher Kimball‘s Milk Street Tuesday Nights. I am not a fan of Kimball but Kerry did remind me that when I first started to cook seriously, I devoured every issue of Cooks Illustrated that I could get my hands on. I learned a great deal from some of those magazines. But like many others I found over the years the magazines and the recipes became more and more repetitious and Kimball’s business model became more and more annoying. So why am I looking at possibly buying this book? I would have to say because it encompasses recipes that have moved away from the strictly homey American food model. There is nothing wrong with blueberry buckle but I like to see what is happening with food from other cultures. Finally Kimball seems to have acknowledged that there is the world beyond his fantasy farmland. So I’m curious. Anybody? I have yet to lay out the money but the temptation is not going away.

While in Buffalo recently , Kerry picked up these chuck eye steaks at Wegmans. This is my very favourite cut of beef. I have just vacuum sealed each of them and they are happily paddling about in a 56°C sous vide bath for the next 24 hours. There are no plans for them in the immediate future so they will end up in their fridge or freezer for the time being. Speaking of buffalo… Kira’s new caregiver (and the caregiver’s husband) raise bison and are also currently caring for some orphaned baby skunk. More on both these topics I hope as we get to know this caregiver. A little bison burger would not go amiss I think. Even better, a couple of bison steaks might hit the spot especially after being SV’d. Must explore that possibility.

Good morning. Another misty morning in Manitoulin. We are in for a cloudy day with some sunshine according to the forecast. Breakfast was ham on toasted rye with Dijon mustard, a few cherries and of course black coffee. Kerry has gone off to “grand rounds”, a phrase that always amuses me and puts me in mind of the Carry On Doctor series. From Wikipedia: “A British advocate (Frankie Howerd) of mind over matter lands in a hospital where nobody minds and nothing matters.” After rounds she will see patients in the Little Current Clinic until lunchtime when she will go over to the Manor, a long-term care facility. In theory it should be a relatively civilized day after yesterday in the emergency room. The major task I have set myself today is rather boring. I need more real estate! I am accustomed to my very large coffee table and here I am reduced to a small TV table and a side table. I spend a good part of my day picking things up off the floor because I’ve knocked them off one of these two surfaces.

I am green with envy about the ploughman‘s lunch. Not that any ploughman ever had it quite so good.

And I appreciate that but if I can’t remember to take it out and clean it what makes you think I’d remember to put it back in when it’s needed?

And the surprise of having water all over the counter and perhaps the floor would be less distressing than finding science experiments inside it? Just wondering.