Hey good lookin', what's cookin'?

Wed, 2017-05-03 18:21

Mr. Magoo

The other day I was feeling lazy and had proposed "melts" -- cheese on bread with stuff -- but then I got even lazier and didn't want to have to stop off somewhere for bread, so I had an idea: what if I made up, say, a half batch of pizza dough, and then made little individual deep-dish pizzas in a muffin pan? Worked like a charm! Some rolled out dough in each cup (not that different from making tarts) then some pizza sauce, some topping stuff (mushrooms, onions, green pepper, bacon, all pre-fried) and then grated cheese. Fifteen minutes in the oven, and the result: a dozen wee pizzas!

There's probably a hundred photos of this on Pinterest, but I swear on a stack of pancakes that I thought of it independently. :)

Thu, 2017-05-04 09:17

#453

lagatta4

Yes, you could also make mini-quiches in those. There are also pans for very small muffins, which make cute snacks for a party.

Thu, 2017-05-04 16:00

#454

lagatta4

Simple fishcakes, revisited. I tend to make them smaller, but that's just me.

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/03/print/simple-fish-cakes-sunda...

Does anyone think a bit of chopped ham would be a good idea, or not?

Thu, 2017-05-04 16:24

#455

Mr. Magoo

I don't think it would harm the taste any, but how small you dice the ham might affect whether it makes a discordant texture or not. But 'nothing ventured, nothing gained', and it's just a meal, after all. Doing it a little different is where new recipes come from.

Thu, 2017-05-04 19:28

#456

lagatta4

I'd dice it very fine "shaved" Italian cooked ham $1 for the little package) and think it will try it. Pollock is high in protein etc but has practically no taste. At the same time I don't want to pile on ingredients. Friends liked them.

Thu, 2017-05-04 19:51

#457

Mr. Magoo

Ah! If it's already been shaved in one direction then you can't quite hardly fail in the other.

Thu, 2017-05-04 20:37

(Reply to #459) #458

cco

Mr. Magoo wrote:

what if I made up, say, a half batch of pizza dough, and then made little individual deep-dish pizzas in a muffin pan? Worked like a charm! Some rolled out dough in each cup (not that different from making tarts) then some pizza sauce, some topping stuff (mushrooms, onions, green pepper, bacon, all pre-fried) and then grated cheese. Fifteen minutes in the oven, and the result: a dozen wee pizzas!

If you like meat on your mini-pizzas on occasion, the Armenians have a version of this topped with ground beef that you might enjoy. I know it by the Lebanese name, lahm bi ajeen. Same concept, different topping and spices. There's a similar dish called sfiha, which apparently also has a bit of a fan base in South America.

Fri, 2017-05-05 05:38

#459

lagatta4

There is a longstanding place near me where the very elderly owners (with more help from others now) have made lamadjoune (as they call it, must be a Gallicised name) very tasty and also very cheap. They also make something more similar to an Italian pizza, with spinach and some kind of cheese - feta or something similar. The lamadjoune are wonderfully garlicky!

The name is something like Lamadjoune Beyrouth-Yeravan (the owners are Lebanese Armenians) but most people in the area call it Chez Apo. Truly an institution! http://www.katerinerollet.com/boutiques-cafes/institution-dans-villeray-... Even if you don't read French, open the article for the photo.

This has me longing for some of those - too bad it is raining hard.

Fri, 2017-05-05 19:03

#460

lagatta4

Well, I made the fishcake mixture (with lots of dill), rested it, formed the and shallow-fried them in olive oil. I tend to do meatballs in the oven (also brushed with olive oil) but that makes the fishcakes too dry. They didn't have a noticeable "ham" flavour but I think the little flecks of ham enriched the bland pollock. There was also green onion, normal onion and garlic, the latter two slightly sautéed (blondi). Mine are little; I like them nestled alongside a green salad.

Fri, 2017-05-05 19:36

#461

Mr. Magoo

Quote:
If you like meat on your mini-pizzas on occasion, the Armenians have a version of this topped with ground beef that you might enjoy.

I expect I probably would! There's an interesting looking ME place on Dundas that advertises their pide with some glorious photos and I've always been curious. Plus, as I understand it, common toppings include egg and zaatar. I love egg on things that aren't breakfast, and I love zaatar. I don't really eat out much these days, but some day.

Quote:
Mine are little; I like them nestled alongside a green salad.

Have you ever made fish balls? Basically they're just par-boiled fish dumplings. Nice if you don't want something fried, and just as good a way to make fun use of bland whitefish. You can put them in fish ball soup, if you have some fish stock (or just some dried fish from an Asian market, or some unwanted shrimp shells, to make some) but you can also stir fry them -- carefully -- with the usual vegetable suspects.

Fri, 2017-05-05 20:16

#462

lagatta4

No, I havn't - they are so cheap at my local Sino-Vietnamese grocery, though it is true that making them would give me more control over the ingredients.

Sat, 2017-05-06 18:00

#463

Mr. Magoo

Well, you could leave out the gills and fins, for a start. :)

But if you ever try them, they're probably not going to be quite like the firm little fish balls you buy, in the same way that making your own gnocchi isn't like buying some from the supermarket. And maybe you'll like one better than the other. I'm kind of that way with Vietnamese beef balls (such as you get in a bowl of pho). I've tried so hard to replicate that dense, rubbery, chewy texture, but mine still come out closer to meatballs.

Sun, 2017-05-07 18:52

#464

6079_Smith_W

Hey TB, I know it is a bit late, but I just found out that Spice world on Marion has filé powder.

Mon, 2017-05-08 12:27

#465

Timebandit Timebandit's picture

Never too late! Gumbo is something I come back to over and over. I will check them out! Thank you!!!

I was away for a week, and now home again, so I did roast beef and yorkshire pudding last night. Something about the tried and true to settle you back into at home mode!

While I was gone, the switch on the fridge that turns out the light and starts the cooling again broke. The wild girls and Uncle Bunny managed to get a repair man out right away - he figured out that it was the switch right away, which is great, but left the switch in, leaving the cooling off and the light on. This caused it to heat enough to shut down the freezer side, which had been working fine to that point. By the time they figured that out, it was a compost heap. By the time I got home, they'd cleaned out the frozen leftovers, veg stuff and threw out all my jams and sauces, curry pastes, miso, mustards, everything. It took the blond guy under 10 minutes to figure out how to remove the switch and get the machine working again, sans light.

I'm starting with an empty fridge (except for the duplicates in the downstairs pantry) for the first time in decades.

The repair guy charged us $150 for coming out and quoted a second $150 to come back with the $5 switch. The blond guy left a polite but intense message on their voice mail that the repair tech was never to darken our door.

I'm going to have to make a list of essentials to pick up and will assemble the rest as I need them. Going to cost me... Not so bad a little at a time, but buying all at once adds up.

Tue, 2017-05-09 17:57

#466

Mr. Magoo

That's a huge loss. It's the downside of our convenient modern life -- when one little thing goes wrong, suddenly our ability to keep healthy food available borks too.

I'm wondering, though: why toss miso, or jams, or mustard? Any of those should survive a few days of cool room temps. Certainly miso wasn't invented AFTER refrigeration.

Definitely toss the shrimp, though!

Tue, 2017-05-09 18:38

#467

6079_Smith_W

Yeah, didn't notice that. Our miso lives in the cupboard. Red will eventually turn, but it takes a long time.

Wed, 2017-05-10 12:24

#468

Timebandit Timebandit's picture

It was gone before I got home, or I'd have tried to salvage more... But with the cooling off and the light on, the fridge became a hot box. According to the temperature guage (it's a fancy fridge, don't judge me! It has a water and ice dispenser, too!) it was 87 degrees farenheit in there, which caused the fridge to freak out and shut down the freezer side as well - it's a side-by-side model. So if there was anything bacterial going on, it would have had a nice incubator to grow in.

I did the first round of essentials shopping yesterday (salad dressing, mayo, mustard, etc) and replaced the standard veggies, and the rest I'll be replacing on an as-needed basis. It will be weird not to go "Oh, yeah, I have that" when I do my meal planning, though. The fridge is so empty! I'm sure I'll have it up to capacity soon, though.

Fri, 2017-05-19 13:43

#469

lagatta4

The little ceramic knife also does an ace job of slicing chicken liver - the Arab places near me (both Maghrebi and Levantine) are gearing up for Ramadan already. Funny how a month of fasting also involves feasting, special breads (mmm with Nigella seeds) special sweets etc. I bought some very nice chicken livers, and marinated them a bit in that reconstituted lemon juce (not always a good sub for fresh lemons, but useful for that sort of thing. Before the livers I had sautéed a Spanish onion with some garlic and the remains of a red sweet pepper. I sautéed the livers, being careful not to overcook them, and added the vegetables back in. This can be a sort of pasta sauce (a dish from Piemonte in northwestern Italy) or combined with rice as a sort of "dirty rice". I'm out of fresh parsley and coriander, so I'll have to go out and pick up one of those green things.

Fri, 2017-05-19 20:01

#470

Mr. Magoo

Quote:
I did the first round of essentials shopping yesterday (salad dressing, mayo, mustard, etc) and replaced the standard veggies, and the rest I'll be replacing on an as-needed basis. It will be weird not to go "Oh, yeah, I have that" when I do my meal planning, though. The fridge is so empty! I'm sure I'll have it up to capacity soon, though.

Of course I don't envy you, except that I *kind of* do. I'd love to go out shopping for all those staples and odd things and bring them all home in a huge bag. Mustard and ketchup and capers and mayo and tomato paste and hoisin sauce and salad dressing and Ortolina and salad dressing and more mustard and...

Quote:
The little ceramic knife also does an ace job of slicing chicken liver

I'm loving it for just about any raw meat. There's a Chinese grocery that sells a 7" ceramic chef's knife for $15, and I'm really considering it, just to know.

Quote:
I'm out of fresh parsley and coriander

I think my coriander has sprouted! I have a few pots of soil in the back yard, and so a few weeks ago I got a hankering to plant something in them. You can buy an envelope of coriander seeds for only $2, or you can buy a whole big bag of them in the spice aisle for $2! So of course I just went to my jar and planted a tablespoon or so. Also some of my dill seed. I don't usually have a lot of luck with either -- they always bolt early -- but I guess I've got some time to research how to prevent that.

In the past I've also planted fenugreek seed, and it grew! Seriously! Fenugreek seed looks like strange, tiny boulders and you might not think it could germinate, but it will. If you have any place you can plop a pot of dirt, give it a try -- raid your spice drawer for "seeds" and have some free fun.

Fri, 2017-05-19 22:25

#471

lagatta4

Yes, I'll try some of those seeds, though of course I'm impatient and by sets of the main things I grow on my balcony "farm". It is always nice to get seeds to sprout - and better still when it is spontaneous a year after. I'd be interested in that knife. I haven't seen any here at my neighbourhood's knot of Southeast Asian shops; perhaps I'll look at a shop in old Chinatown which is specialized in dishes and cookware.

Fri, 2017-05-19 22:41

#472

Mr. Magoo

As it happens, IKEA sells a set of three ceramic knives for $45, which pretty much works out to $15 per knife.

I tried to buy the set the last time I was at the IKEA in Don Mills, but even though I'd checked their website, when I got there they were all out. I could have been yapping about ceramic knives three years ago!

Sat, 2017-05-20 01:03

#473

Timebandit Timebandit's picture

Oh, I enj the shopping - but it's knocking the grocery budget off kilter. Thanks for reminding me about capers!

Lagatta, your chicken liver dish sounds amazing. I had lunch with a friend last week and we were talking about eating chicken hearts and livers when we were kids. Weird comfort foods!

Sat, 2017-05-20 05:34

#474

lagatta4

Timebandit, I think you will just have to budget that in the "household emergency" category. Often Manitoba gets hit with awful flooding; this year it was southwestern Québec and eastern Ontario - and other places. Yours just happened to be an individual "disaster".

Yes, I do like hearts and livers. Ideally duck ones, but the Lac Brome duck operation was hit by a fire (the poor duckies...) so they don't have a supply of wee offal as of yet. But these chicken livers are very good - sometimes they look mushy and unappealing.

Nice to have the sun emerging at 5 a.m.! You are north of us, so you must have it even earlier.

Sat, 2017-05-20 14:45

#475

Mr. Magoo

I still miss the good ol' days, when buying a whole chicken meant a free heart, gizzard, and sometimes a liver and the neck.

I was never that big on the liver, but the heart and gizzard were always popular with me and my mom.

Sat, 2017-05-20 23:15

#476

Timebandit Timebandit's picture

My dad used to sauté up some "farts and blizzards" with some onion late at night, and we'd eat them with toast, just the two of us.

Lagatta - we do get some flooding, but we are at a bit of a remove from the river, so we are pretty safe. They've also built some flood ways to prevent some of the city flooding. But yeah, the fridge situation was just a small disaster and easily absorbed, just a bit aggravating. It's the odd thing I don't use especially often that you just think, "of course I have that" and i now need to remember to replace.

Sun, 2017-05-21 16:47

#477

Mr. Magoo

I highly recommend "Odd Bits", a great cookbook by Jennifer McLagen, if you're into... well, the odd bits (like hearts and gizzards).

I have two other cookbooks of hers, "Fat" and "Bones", and if you have enough cookbooks full of chicken breast recipes and crockpot stews, they're all eye openers that'll get you rethinking some dinners.

Sun, 2017-05-21 20:58

#478

Timebandit Timebandit's picture

Interesting. I've heard of her but haven't read her books. :)

found a recipe for tongue in raisin sauce in a 1958 cookbook today. Judging from the expressions of my family, it's not making to short list of cool stuff to try.

Sun, 2017-05-21 21:08

#479

Mr. Magoo

I've never bought a tongue, but I've eaten tongue as a very thinly sliced sandwich meat. If I'm not mistaken, it's a commonplace thing in a Jewish deli.

It really does look like some kind of biology class cross-section, though. And you can see the taste buds.

As a "working muscle", it's a bit tough, but flavourful. :0

Sun, 2017-05-21 23:48

#480

Timebandit Timebandit's picture

It's the idea that tongue needs raisin sauce that I find intriguing!

Mon, 2017-05-22 00:12

#481

6079_Smith_W

If you are into smoking, you really should acquaint yourself with it. It is great. I have only made it a couple of times (corned and smoked) but both turned out delicious.

About the only way it is difficult is having to peel the "skin" (and taste buds and stuff) off before you slice and serve it.

And I did buy a cheaper ceramic knife one time. Neat, while it stayed sharp but as it was a cheaper one that only lasted so long. And even when it was new it couldn't match my sashimi knife. A chef friend pointed out that their real advantage is in cutting stuff that tends to go brown, like lettuce. They don't have the same reaction as metal knives, so that does not happen as quickly.

Mon, 2017-05-22 05:22

#482

lagatta4

Yes, but this is a Dollarama find at $3 or so. It made me think I want a better one, not very big but with more of a tang and heel (like a santuko knife or small chef's knife). However I don't want to spend a fortune on something that remains fragile. Any idea where I could get one that's not over $30 or so?

Mon, 2017-05-22 15:24

#483

Mr. Magoo

Well, there's always Oriental Harvest, on Spadina, where I saw that $15 one, but that could be quite a bike ride. :)

I wonder if any of the pan-Asian (or similar) shops near you might have a similar one in their housewares section? Next time you're there buying a napa, could be worth a look.

Wed, 2017-05-31 17:07

#484

Mr. Magoo

I picked up a couple more plants to plant today; there's an amazing vegetable market in Kensington with an outrageous selection of plants this time of year, and most of them are a buck and a half, all in, so it's easy to get carried away. So far:

- an heirloom tomato, Oxheart. Apparently a tasty and sweet slicer. I put it in last week and it's already getting visibly larger. As an heirloom, it was two bucks. They also had zebra tomatoes, pineapple tomatoes and a handful of other heirlooms whose names I can't recall.

- a tomatillo (the "sour little green tomato in a paper wrapper"). I bought this just for fun, planted it, then googled it. I'm glad I did! The growing instructions were "full sun, evenly moist, good drainage" -- which is to say identical to nearly every other bedding plant -- but the google page did tip me off that tomatillos, unlike tomatoes, will not self-pollinate. The upshot is that if you raise just one you'll get some pretty flowers, but you need a second for fruits. I now have a second.

- a strawberry, for Mrs. Magoo. And the squirrels.

- mint, sage and Greek oregano, for obvious reasons.

- Lavender, again for Mrs. M. because she likes it, and it makes awesome iced tea.

- Thai basil, partly just to have some, and partly because this particular container also had a stow-away in the form of a purple Italian basil, so it's a two-fer.

- Rau ram, or Vietnamese coriander, because why not? I'm not even sure if I like the stuff, but for a buck and a half, I'm willing to see where it goes.

Also, the dill seed that I planted from my spice cupboard is up and running, with some obvious dill fronds forming now. And the coriander seed I planted looks like a chia-pet! I had to thin it some (and I also needed a bit of coriander for a sauce) so I pulled about 15 of them and rinsed them off and they were ideal, tiny roots and all. Makes me want to pick up a big sack of coriander seed at NoFrills and try sprouting them in a mason jar the way I sprout mung beans! Would it work? I aim to find out. Could be awesome in the winter.

My planted pepper seeds have been the only fails so far. I planted some from some dried thai bird chilis I had, but none took, so I tried again with some seeds from the bottom of a bag of generic dried chilis I bought. Fingers crossed.

Anyone else got their foods in?

Wed, 2017-05-31 22:37

#485

Timebandit Timebandit's picture

I have four tomato plants in big ceramic pots - sweet hundreds, german striped, roma and beefsteak. I've also got an eggplant and the blond guy has assorted peppers in some other containers.

My lavendar wintered over and looks very cheerful, and the sage, thyme, oregano (Greek wintered over and the hardier stuff), and I've added Italian parsley, summer savoury and basil to the bed. We are setting aside another corner of the flower beds that gets decent sun for some spinach, chard, runner beans and carrots. I need to pick up some lettuce seed, too, and some rosemary plants. I think I'll put the rosemary in containers this year.

Strawberries are up and trying to produce, and we planted another hardy cherry and a grafted apple that will have four varieties on it. And we dug out a false spirea that was taking over the front bed and replaced it with saskatoon berries. The rhubarb is almost ready to harvest already and the raspberries are starting to get settled enough to spread. This is all mixed up in flower beds with a shitload of aggressive, if pretty, perrennials. We like the mixed use yard!

Thu, 2017-06-01 06:01

#486

lagatta4

I like rau ram, but it is rather invasive. I planted it in a big square pot - actually a former (small) recycling bin - we have different ones now - and it took over from the other herbs there. Not quite as invasive as mint, but... Unlike mint, it won't winter over.

It looks like Ireland here. So much rain. Will be a while before we have local tomatoes and other sun-loving veg.

Mon, 2017-06-26 15:44

#487

lagatta4

I just bought a whole smoked mackerel on sale at Supermarché PA. This is the product: http://www.laboucanerie.ca/fr/produits/filet-maquereau but I have the whole fish, not the fillets. What would you make with it?

Whole fish means bones and skin, as well as the little head; I guess they should go into the fish-broth bag. Just the smoked fish might be a bit much, but it should be a good addition to other bones or fish-heads.

Mon, 2017-06-26 16:02

#488

Mr. Magoo

I'd probably use half for a pasta (I'm thinking cream base, maybe some fresh peas or suchlike), a quarter for potato and beet salad (it sounds strange but it works; Russian or Estonian potato salad features fish, though usually herring) and one quarter just to eat on bread, maybe with some bitter greens, sliced gherkin and a plop of mayo or sour cream.

Mon, 2017-06-26 17:46

#489

lagatta4

I was also thinking of a salad, this time of year, with potatoes but also green things. I'm not in the mood for beets yet. Yes, I've had such salads and this smokehouse probably has Eastern European Jewish roots. Yes, pasta, but definitely not with a tomato sauce; cream or sour cream.

Fri, 2017-08-18 18:14

#490

Mr. Magoo

So my tomatillo experiment worked, sort of.

I had them in tomato cages and thought they were well supported, but one of them fell over and the stalk half broke. Whoops! And then the other, for some reason, committed suicide. WTF? But I did manage to get a bunch of nice little tomatillos, despite worrying that maybe I was just growing empty husks. And I'll say this for tomatillos: when a tomato falls off the vine you've got about 8 hours before you're just feeding the slugs, but when a tomatillo falls, that wacky husk keeps it safe for days! Anyway, I've still got a few on the vine, but I dehusked and rinsed what I have, and set out to make a little salsa verde.

Couldn't decide between "raw" and "cooked/roasted" (though laziness nudged me toward raw). But I didn't think I could eat three jam jars of it in two weeks, but then I got the idea to water-bath the jars, like jam, so I could store them on the shelf, and that settled it: I'd jar them up raw, then water-bath them and let that be the cooking they get. A reasonable compromise, I figure.

I got to use some fresh oregano from the yard, and some cilantro that's now on its second round of sprouting from seeds (again, just coriander seed from the spice cupboard), so we'll see.

little green tomatoes, sort of!

On the left, the tomatillos. On the right, the salsa.

No other food epiphanies recently, other than that I've had three chicken legs "brining" in pickle juice for a couple of days, ready for the smoker tomorrow. Another "we'll see".

Sat, 2017-08-19 00:00

#491

Timebandit Timebandit's picture

I highly recommend the pork chili verde recipe I shared earlier if you have enough tomatillos!

i had some cooking for a crowd adventures a couple of weeks ago - my nephews were doing the first tour with their band and were in town for several days before heading to a music festival. So we had 2 nephews and a band mate staying here, and an additional couple of band mates around for dinners. It's amazing how much food 5 20-something guys can put away!

i did a fast-roast pork loin with apples the first dinner, the blond guy thought I'd made enough for an army, but they cleaned it right up. The next one was peanut butter chicken - peanut butter and curry sauce with onions and peppers. Did a side peanut sauce for veggie patties for the vegetarian in the bunch. With our family - including Thing 1's boyfriend, who also has a prodigious appetite - there were 10 for dinner. It was a gas!

Sat, 2017-08-19 17:26

#492

Mr. Magoo

Quote:
I highly recommend the pork chili verde recipe I shared earlier if you have enough tomatillos!

Sadly, I think I now have two. The plant that's half alive may bounce back, and even flower, but with the other dead, there will be no more fruits.

Not a great season for a lot of stuff, at least for me. My fancy heirloom "Oxblood" tomato decided to also die. Too much water? Not enough water? Ennui? No idea, but I think we got to eat maybe two tiny tomatoes from it. And my peppers from seed are growing well, but no flowers and no fruits.

Of course given the ridiculously rainy summer here, I probably could have been looking at a bumper crop of rice, had I known. :)

Sun, 2017-08-20 00:38

#493

Timebandit Timebandit's picture

Ha! And a potential crop of mosquitos!

i had romas, beefsteaks, sweet thousands and German striped tomatoes - lost the romas to an ants nest invading the pot, but the rest are starting to produce harvestable fruit. The romas were producing fruit like crazy before the ants wrecked the root system.

We we cultivated a small garden patch, about 8x5 ft, with spinach, lettuce, chard and carrots. It's going bananas right now. We've had the nicest summer in Canada this year - not too dry like the western prairies, not wet like he east, a few really hot days but the rest just perfect tshirt weather.

Sun, 2017-08-20 00:40

#494

Timebandit Timebandit's picture

I've also got a couple of eggplants growing - hoping the squirrels don't get them this year. The little assholes are killing my potted pansies.

Sun, 2017-08-20 08:06

#495

lagatta4

Squirrel stew: https://honest-food.net/squirrel-stew-recipe-paprika/

Sun, 2017-08-20 11:50

#496

Timebandit Timebandit's picture

I don't think I'm ready to eat them - just wish ppl would stop feeding them!

Sun, 2017-08-20 14:14

#497

Mr. Magoo

That, or just make sure to feed them so well that they stay out of gardens and bird feeders.

The other day the City gifted us with one of the new, larger, lockable (raccoon-proof) green bins. Our old one had been manhandled enough by the truck that it was missing a big chunk on one side and was basically open to the world, but for some reason, it's never been raided by raccoons (or any other animal for that matter). And there's no question that we've got dozens of raccoons in the neighbourhood. Go figure.

Sun, 2017-08-20 17:53

#498

Timebandit Timebandit's picture

They bury the peanuts people put out for them in the lawn, flower beds nd containers. They didnt eat my eggplant last year, just pulled the fruit off the plant, took a bite and abandoned it - with all four of them.

My rhubarb is a bit puny thi summer, so I picked some up at the farmers market yesterday and baked a pie this morning. Trying a pinch of cardamom along with the sugar and egg I mix the fruit with for filling. The blond guy has promised homemade ice cream to go with it!

Sun, 2017-08-20 19:47

#499

Mr. Magoo

Quote:
They didnt eat my eggplant last year, just pulled the fruit off the plant, took a bite and abandoned it - with all four of them.

Hehe. I remember when I was younger, my father trying to grow some strawberries in the garden. Squirrels sampled every one of them -- as though the next one might be an acorn or something -- and of course they all just moulded. He tried an old folk remedy -- a "moat" of mothballs around the strawberries -- but the squirrels just hopped it.

Tourists love photographing our squirrels, but they're kind of like Australia's koalas: cute little assholes.

Mon, 2017-08-21 16:20

#500

Timebandit Timebandit's picture

I'm trying coffee grounds in some of the flower pots and dog hair (just a little bit) in the others. We'll see which works best or if they work at all. :)

I had some cooking for large groups adventures earlier this month - my 20-something nephews went on a short tour with their new band and were in Winnipeg for a few days. Between our place and another aunt's place, we provided room and board while they were here. So for a couple of nights we had 5 extra young men to feed. That meant dinner for 10 (we included Thing 1's boyfriend in the mix)! I did a pork loin on apples and onion one night (not realizing we had a vegetarian in the group) and peanut butter chicken the other. I did an extra vegetarian friendly peanut sauce for the vegetarian's veggie patties that night.

It came off pretty well, I think. There wasn't much left over in any case! Both times the blond guy accused me of making way too much food, but I was vindicated. :D

Mon, 2017-08-21 16:44

#501

Mr. Magoo

I'm a bit jelly. It's been a long time since I've been able to cook for a group. Cooking for two+leftovers is OK, but it kind of explains why I haven't ever smoked a full brisket, or why I never buy a goose.

In other news, the chicken I'd brined in pickle juice turned out pretty nice! Brining is so easy, but it adds a day or so to a recipe, so it's not always convenient when you're only looking at tonight's dinner. Sure, some recipes tell you to brine for an hour, but I'm not convinced that does a hell of a lot. The "recipe" I went with (really just a description of how some particular smokehouse does it) actually called for brining the chicken for seven days. I don't think I'd do that without doing a bit of internet research to see if I need to add some pink salt or whatever. There just aren't that many conditions under which I'm going to be comfortable leaving chicken in the fridge for a whole week.

Tonight we're going to be eating up some leftovers from the smoker. I'm going to make some small leavened flatbreads and we'll just toss the chicken, some smoked chorizo, cheese, fresh veg, and some kind of sauce (TBA) on them and make some impromptu sliders. It's not that hot in TO right now, but it's still too hot to care about a lot of foods. Cold and easy is the plan.

Hey good lookin', what's cookin'?

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