TicTac

I think you might lose that bet

Raisins....walnuts.... All welcome to be embraced by that golden sugary gooey deliciousness!

I have been on the look-out for paw-paw trees near streams/rivers but have yet to locate one (Southern Ontario!)

@Darienne - Yes, I learned that the sour puckered face way Do you add a lot of sugar to the jelly or is it a sour jelly? You can thank the birds and their droppings for the sudden wild grape appearance! They can quickly take over (I keep fighting them off my Austrian Pine and Oak tree) and become an issue if left unchecked!

Would love to hear more about your usage for the wild grapes. I see tons of them around and have tried eating them but they are so tiny, with barely any flesh, a huge seed and super sour! Sorry I cannot be much help pertaining to your inquiry, but I would imagine like any stain, the longer you leave it, the harder it will be to remove.

It did sound that way from my post, but I am open to being convinced otherwise! Luckily this is not a hulking beast of a unit so it might be something one could store fairly easily. I do like the idea of the flexibility of the unit (given the nearest electrical outlet). That is certainly an attractive element.

I get the whole precise temperature control concept....but that has very limited applications (least in my world of cooking). Why else would I want one of these - especially if I have a brute of a gas cook-top?

I have only met him a few times, but I can certainly see that....lol. One of his grasshoppers opened up Duo (up in Markham) and it is just as good as Rahier without having to deal with the nonsense that is Bayview and Eglinton.

Dufflet's used to be decent - long before she went mass production/commercialized processing and cut back on quality in order to increase quantity and the bottom line. Now her pastries and desserts are cloyingly sweet and very one dimensional. I will stick to Rahier or Duo

Could be - I don't believe I soaked them at all. Perhaps a similar treatment to clams is in order....

I have tried crawfish a few times (lucky for us we can get them live here - thanks to fantastic Chinese supermarkets) and find them very muddy tasting. Nnagged a live lobster still in the box from NS the other day and had it (from the same store) and it was excellent. I would say crawfish are closer to shrimp with more of a muddy undertone (unless it was just my unfortunate luck over multiple batches).

That's all I remember from his cooking shows circa 1999-2002 Disgusting!

Does he still lick his fingers and keep on cooking!? That was enough to put me off many years ago!

Here is a fun little tidbit to share... My family has (what others always regard with a puzzled expression) a method of eating corn off the cob which I have adopted... So you eat the first 'row' (consider each kernel and its neighbours to the left and right, a row - for the purposes of this description....) as 'normal' This is where things take a turn for the 'odd' - after that, you take your thumb and basically run it below the next line of corn, slightly separating them from their neighbours to the South, and then with your bottom row of teeth, you basically nudge along that row and essentially pulling the entire kernel from the cob. The end result is a cob that is nearly spotless (minus the first row which suffered the preparatory pangs). Contest in my family was always who's cob was cleanest. LoL. Does anyone else do this?!?!

This is a chicken butt! It is delicious - much fantastic fat around that morsel. The oyster, as mentioned previously is a roundish piece of dark meat hidden right against a bone, which is extremely tender.

Treat them like a very fleshy tomato. Same family as the husk (or ground) cherry (or gooseberry). One can buzz them up with cilantro, lime and chili of ones choosing for a quick raw salsa. They are also fantastic sliced thin into salads. My preference is to roast them and create additional flavour profiles. Typically with onion, garlic, some chili and then zipped to make a very creamy salsa (a reaction occurs when these things get cooked and they are able to produce very creamy blends).

As far as bovine go, an aged (8 weeks is preferred) Rib eye wit the largest piece of Deckle I can get (and if I am friends with the butcher, just give me the entire deckle!) is easily my most desired piece of meat. Not far behind are veal sweetbreads. Seared crisp on the outside and still decadently creamy on the inside. A truffle and foie sauce should also accompany it! Nothing else touches those two, but I will also (quite) happily enjoy well executed pork belly, calves liver, beef cheeks, chicken legs (and backs!) and cow tongue.

If he wants his muscles back, he just has to get back into the gym routine! Jokes aside, my folks are headed on a road trip to PEI next week. They are returning to one of their favourite golf courses where at the end, you can head to the club house, for cocktails and unlimited buckets of free PEI mussels (aka muscles 😛 )!

And don't forget the Hellmans, Miracle Whip and any other generic 'mayo's you can find!

You are not far off! Lately I have seen some crazy celery prices. Albeit organic, but $4-5....come on, this stuff is basically just fiber and water!

And yet there is this ridiculous new celery juicing fad! I was at a local organic the other day and some guy bought $70 worth of celery... I just laughed.

Everything looks great. Minus the cream cheese in the sushi. That is plain scary.

A very good article on this silly fad. Talk about highly processed foods. This is it! Double edged sword. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/21/whole-foods-ceo-john-mackey-plant-based-meat-not-good-for-your-health.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Let's be real here - an 'air fryer' is simply a convection oven (and some of them I believe have rotational functions). My Wolf oven has a fan on it, and all this means is flipping the contents a few times. Presto - Air Fryer! It is a VERY big unit for its somewhat limited applications (family members have them).

Interesting line of thought.... When I was younger and a less experienced cook, I would love going out to nice meals (Michelin 1* type of setting). I still do (but I am far pickier where we spend our limited 'kid free time'), but I find as my cooking prowess has grown over the years, my desire to shell out $300-$500 for a dinner which I could (more likely than not) reproduce nearly as good (at times, if not better), lessens. We now gravitate to more ethnically driven finds which I would not typically make at home. For example, in our rotation we have a fantastic Vietnamese, Thai, Japanese, North Chinese and Malaysian place. All of which can feed a family of 5 for under $60 quite nicely (OK, perhaps not the Japanese joint....). That trend will continue, I believe.