Manitoulin — change is in the air.

[Kerry Beal]

 

 

[Smithy]

42 minutes ago, Kerry Beal said:

 Kira has opted for one of these for dessert. 

 

 

How does Kira express food preferences now?

[Kerry Beal]

1 hour ago, Smithy said:

 

How does Kira express food preferences now?

More like I chose for her! If she doesn't like it she spits it out - if she does she wiggles with happiness. 

[Tri2Cook]

1 hour ago, Kerry Beal said:

If she doesn't like it she spits it out - if she does she wiggles with happiness. 

That's pretty much my system too.

[Kim Shook]

11 hours ago, Anna N said:

 So I stared into the refrigerator, as one does, to determine what might be for dinner this evening. I discovered a bag of green beans which are not getting any younger. I am fairly sure I know why Kerry bought them but I’m equally sure that her plans are not coming to fruition while these beans are still viable. 

 

Since if I don’t use them fairly quickly they will be headed for the compost heap, I felt comfortable fooling around with them. (Don’t even go there.)

 

 Half of them I have blanched and I will make a salad.

 

The other half I will stew with some tomatoes even though I really despise the colour of stewed green beans.  It will prevent them from being wasted and they can certainly be eaten tonight or re-heated later.  Also gives me an opportunity to use up some canned tomatoes I froze last year. 

 

 This at least will give me a leg up on dinner.  

 

 

 

@Shelby and @caroled and me would toss those beans into some water that a ham hock had boiled in for about an hour, cook them for about 4 hours and then toss in some tiny little new potatoes that a strip of skin had been peeled off of all the way around and boil some more until the taters were tender and the beans soft, unctuous and uniformly olive green.  And you'd HAAAATE them.  LOL.

[Tri2Cook]

7 hours ago, Kim Shook said:

@Shelby and @caroled and me would toss those beans into some water that a ham hock had boiled in for about an hour, cook them for about 4 hours and then toss in some tiny little new potatoes that a strip of skin had been peeled off of all the way around and boil some more until the taters were tender and the beans soft, unctuous and uniformly olive green.  And you'd HAAAATE them.  LOL.

My grandmother used to do exactly that other than she didn't peel a strip of skin from the potatoes and in the pot with the beans and potatoes was a hunk of meat sold as "cottage ham". I have no idea what that actually was other than tasty. She lived in a heavily German populated area, not sure if that has anything to do with that particular piece of meat or not. I've never found it in a store anywhere I've lived and when I've mentioned it to people in the meat department at any stores I've lived near over the years, they've just looked at me like I had a horn growing out of the middle of my forehead.

[Anna N]

3 minutes ago, Tri2Cook said:

was a hunk of meat sold as "cottage ham".

 Good golly. I don’t think there is a supermarket in southern Ontario that doesn’t carry cottage hams!  

[RobertM]

I don’t have any clue what a “cottage ham” is, but my mother would take the ham bone (and some of the meat) and boil it with a head of cabbage and potatoes.  Called it “boiled dinner”.  (Caveat:  this particular  has never, and will never be prepared in my home)

[Kerry Beal]

Last evening I put together a blueberry summer torte for ER today and played again with the first lesson from the Andrey Dubrovic course. I was kludging together the colours as I don’t have the proper stuff here. Maybe later today we will see how they turned out.

 

 

 

 

[Anna N]

Good morning. It’s a bit brisk this morning and it has rained overnight. 

 

 

Breakfast was a chunk of Valdéon blue and a very ripe pear. Critics will note that the proportion of fruit to cheese is lacking in finesse. I hate to waste a pear!  

 

Kerry is on call until tomorrow morning so not sure what may happen today. 

 

[Kerry Beal]

Grabbing a bit of breakfast before ER. Cheese, kimchi, scallions, mushrooms eggs

 

[Anna N]

So somebody in ER  put a bee in Kerry’s bonnet about something to bake so she had a little time with no patients and slipped over to the grocery store to grab one ingredient. As if – – –

 

 

Unsalted saltine crackers (how can they be saltines if they’re unsalted). She could have a liberated unsalted crackers from from the hospital!   That’s what happens when you only have a short time to do your grocery shopping.  Sirloin steak was on special but all of the offerings were too thin and too trimmed. Further delay as she waited for the meat department to custom cut the steak for her and then for her to persuade them to sell it to her at the avertiser sale price.  Scallions, cucumber and corn make up the rest of the haul. 

 

As soon as the groceries were unpacked she settled in to baking. Of course the phone rang. She left here with dust clouds following.  Hope it doesn’t mean a trip down to Sudbury in an ambulance!  

[Tri2Cook]

8 hours ago, Anna N said:

 Good golly. I don’t think there is a supermarket in southern Ontario that doesn’t carry cottage hams!  

So that's the problem... I have to learn to stop picking small, middle-of-nowhere places to call home. 

[Tri2Cook]

8 hours ago, RobertM said:

I don’t have any clue what a “cottage ham” is

For some reason, it's never occurred to me to research it. It was just something grandma cooked with the beans from her garden and potatoes. But a quick google trip reveals that it's a brine cured and smoked boneless pork shoulder butt. So making my own is now on the agenda.

[Anna N]

 Doesn’t look as if Kerry will be returning to the fold anytime soon. And anyway she won’t be able to drink tonight. I am taking the opportunity to enjoy a little Grouse. 

 

 

I did no cooking today so it will be catch as catch can for both of us as far as dinner goes.

 

I am thinking about corn on the cob done in the microwave x 4 minutes, its base sawn off so it slips out of its shirt cleanly, and slathered in butter and perhaps drizzled with lime juice. 

 

 But first there’s the matter of a little Grouse. 

[Anna N]

2 hours ago, Tri2Cook said:

For some reason, it's never occurred to me to research it. It was just something grandma cooked with the beans from her garden and potatoes. But a quick google trip reveals that it's a brine cured and smoked boneless pork shoulder butt. So making my own is now on the agenda.

The ones I see are called cottage rolls and are not smoked so perhaps we are talking two different things. It could happen.

 

See here.

Edited July 26, 2018 by Anna N
Edited to add “rolls” as in cottage rolls. (log)

[Porthos]

When I looked it up a little while ago there was no one concise definition, and some sources said it or may not be smoked. It seems that brine curing was the main definition. 

[Martin Fisher]

1 hour ago, Tri2Cook said:

For some reason, it's never occurred to me to research it. It was just something grandma cooked with the beans from her garden and potatoes. But a quick google trip reveals that it's a brine cured and smoked boneless pork shoulder butt. So making my own is now on the agenda.

 

 

Yeah, they're also sometimes called daisy hams.

I make them all the time—smoked.

 

[Tri2Cook]

16 minutes ago, Anna N said:

The ones I see are called cottage and are not smoked so perhaps we are talking two different things. It could happen.

 

See here.

I'm pretty sure we're talking about the same thing. I honestly can't remember if the ones she used were smoked or not. I just remember eating green beans, cottage ham and potatoes until I could barely move any time she made it.

[Anna N]

 

 Kerry and I have been discussing the colour of egg yolks. My research suggests it’s feed related.  Kerry thinks it might be also be breed related. Here are three eggs all from the same carton all from Pike Lake Farms and it is amazing the difference in the colour of the yolks. Just saying......

[Kerry Beal]

 

Blade steak - quick sear on the BGE 

[Anna N]

 

First (not great) corn of the season. A bit on the starchy side. But on an Island “fresh” and “local” need to be taken with more than a grain of salt. 

[Shelby]

42 minutes ago, Anna N said:

 

 Kerry and I have been discussing the colour of egg yolks. My research suggests it’s feed related.  Kerry thinks it might be also be breed related. Here are three eggs all from the same carton all from Pike Lake Farms and it is amazing the difference in the colour of the yolks. Just saying......

My wonderful egg person has different varieties of chickens.  They all get fed the same thing, but their shells are different colors as are the yolks.  But all are wonderful as I'm sure yours are! 

 

I now want breakfast.

[Anna N]

 

 A little blade steak for dessert.  Served along with a double helping of Girl in the Kitchen by Stephanie Izard. 

 

[Arey]

1 hour ago, Anna N said:

 Doesn’t look as if Kerry will be returning to the fold anytime soon. And anyway she won’t be able to drink tonight. I am taking the opportunity to enjoy a little Grouse. 

 

 

I did no cooking today so it will be catch as catch can for both of us as far as dinner goes.

 

I am thinking about corn on the cob done in the microwave x 4 minutes, its base sawn off so it slips out of its shirt cleanly, and slathered in butter and perhaps drizzled with lime juice. 

 

 But first there’s the matter of a little Grouse. 

I had corn on the cob done in the microwave for 4 minutes for the second time this summer, but its never slipped out of its shirt for me.  Should I be sawing the base off before microwaving rather than after ?  Lots of butter but no lime juice.  A meagre* sprinkling of salt but only because with  the humidity getting salt out of the salt shakers is next to impossible.  And, I like my corn on the cob glistening with butter and sparkling with salt.  The corn, the tomatoes, and the basil on the tomatoes were all local.

*Spell check doesn't like the way I spell meagre.  It probably wouldn't like that the street in the of town I grew up in was spelled Centre.  Of course while cataloging my close to 800 classical music cds I was never able to convince spell check that when I typed minuet I meant minuet, not minute.