JoNorvelleWalker

I don't know how this happened. I am out of grenadine. Normally I would just send an order off to @feste but I seem to have a few months' worth of her orgeat in house and shipping charges on a couple bottles of her stuff is prohibitive. Raspberry syrup -- though wonderful in a Knickerbocker -- is not quite the same thing. In my hydrator there lurks a poor pomegranate I could juice. That is a possibility. Though *sniff* I had other plans for it. There is another option! In googling around I found a brand called TRUE Grenadine. She seems to have set herself up as a competitor of @feste in the high end syrup space. Unlike @feste she sells on amazon with free shipping. This speaks out to me. Has anyone tried TRUE Grenadine? Or have other vendors' grenadines to recommend? Or make their own? But wait! @feste's now is sold on amazon with free shipping! Competition and free enterprise can be a good thing! I bought a bottle from @feste even though TRUE Grenadine was cheaper for the quantity. I'm almost tempted to buy a bottle of TRUE Grenadine to compare. OK, I took one for the team: I ordered a bottle of TRUE Grenadine as well. This could be most exciting.

Wow.

I just finished The Berkeley Bowl Cookbook. Not something I would cook from because the ingredients on the east coast are unobtainium*. The motto of the Japanese American owners of the Berkeley Bowl is "If we can find it, we'll buy it." "Even if they don't know what people do with spongy stalks of bac ha, nopal cactus paddles that brandish sharp spines, or taro leaves the size of elephant ears...more than 112 languages are spoken in Berkeley according to US census data." My only experience with Berkeley is passing through it on a train in the middle of the night. *except for fiddleheads...yes, @Duvel I had fiddleheads again tonight.

What's the red stuff? Edit: never mind.

In other news, marble sized green tomatoes.

Polenta with some of the leftover meat sauce from Bugialli's lasagne forno. I know polenta is cooked in a copper pot but it turns out rather green.

Last prime day I purchased an iLife A6 robot at about half price. Highly recommended. She keeps my Roomba company.

Sounds like Georgian kaklis muraba. https://georgianrecipes.net/2013/09/10/kaklis-muraba-pickled-walnuts/ I don't make them myself, mind you. This is the brand of which I have become quite fond: http://www.georgiangourmet.com/whole-walnut-preserve-from-georgia.html

Thanks...how are you with fugu sashimi?

Baked potato, chicken thighs, and fiddleheads. Yes, fiddleheads. Some say the fiddlehead sickens her devotees by bacterial contamination. Others blame as an yet unidentified fiddlehead toxin. If you never hear from me again you know what got me.

Thanks but I'm still no closer to a clue. Around here, bags near Earthbound produce rip when you try to put the lettuce in them.

Ingenious marketing, hawking instant pots from the back of a roving truck.

@Thanks for the Crepes I think you are being baited.

What is this heavy produce bag you speak of?

Indeed. And if I see a good price on a Braava robot mop my kitchen floor might thank me.

My guess is a circle hook is something that attaches to a fishing line.

I thought dinosaur tastes like chicken?

Further sweet and sour chicken. This time with cranberry sauce, an ingredient most probably unbeknownst to Baptiste Platinede Cremone and fifteenth century Catalonia. Good stuff. I think of this as fusion food.

I note my recent store-bought organic blueberries are from Florida. They are large and beautiful and tasteless. And did I say expensive? On the other hand the last batch of blueberries I bought were from Georgia and quite good. My own bushes look like they have several weeks to go. I can't wait to see if methyl 2 aminobenzoate will work!

Tonight, sweet and sour chicken: This is chicken roasted in butter -- chicken thighs in this case -- then baked in a smooth paste of sugar, butter, roasted Marcona almonds, cinnamon, fresh ginger, toasted bread slices soaked in red wine vinegar, and chicken drippings*. Catalan recipe from Baptiste Platine de Cremone by way of Time-Life The Good Cook Poultry (p125). If only de Cremone had had a CSO. According to Richard Olney, de Cremone declared this the finest meat he had tasted. I'd hesitate to claim entirely the same, but it is up there. Recipe published in 1474, not sure about the copyright. Plated with saffron rice. *drippings, @Duvel not droppings

Even I'd like cauliflower prepared like that.

The Vollrath I wanted was on amazon a few days ago. Now it's "Currently Unavailable". Who here bought them all?

Thanks, I just put a hold on it...may be a while. Not that I am out of things to read.

I have a package of about ten thighs in the refrigerator that need using up. What sorts of things do you have planed for yours? Also, why so long?

Do it! According to 23andme I am 0.1% Yakut, a Siberian minority in China. Beautiful travelogue @liuzhou. Somehow I missed it first time around.