Subj : Weekend food roundup
To   : ALL
From : JIM WELLER
Date : Sat Sep 24 2022 21:49:00

In family news, Lexi now has a part time job as an assistant
waitress at a restaurant and bar in Fort McMurray called the Smokin'
Butcher. The menu looks interesting and so does the list of local
craft beers.  https://thesmokinbutcher.ca/

The tips are pretty good especially on payday Friday and Saturday
nights when you're young and cute and she is learning how to handle
the pervs. Plus she is the youngest one of the crew and both the
dining room hostess and the bar's bouncer are VERY protective of
her.

It's fall so I was really hoping to find Concord grapes at the store
for a seasonal treat but all I could find were the more popular
modern hybrid Coronation grapes that are thinner skinned, sweeter
and seedless. The taste just isn't the same but I bought a basket of
them anyway.

Speaking of fall, we haven't had a frost here yet, just one night
that touched +1 C, with another forecast for the same this Sunday.
What's weird is that there is also a frost warning in effect for the
gardeners in Shawn's neck of the woods concurrently even though he
is 2000 km south of me.

This weekend's big dish: moose stew. I cooked the meat yesterday in
a crockpot for 8 hours, unseasoned,  with a little beef stock and it
became VERY tender with an amazing rich stock. This evening I made
a cooking liquid with more beef stock, vegetable stock, the crockpot
juice, some water, Worcestershire sauce. soy sauce and Kitchen
Bouquet browning sauce. I chopped up all the cauliflower stems and
leaves I had picked previously and boiled then for 20 minutes. I
also started frying some onions, celery and half a leek (green
leaves, pale yellow-green stems and and white bulbs) with a little
lard at the same time. The already cooked meat, seasonings (ground
bay leaves, ground rosemary and black pepper), some chopped carrots
and unpeeled new potatoes went in after 10 minutes. In the last 5
minutes I added a slurry of 2 tablespoons of flour, the onion
mixture and a handful of edamame beans. The result was fantastic and
we are all looking forward to more of it tomorrow; it's probably be
even tastier then.

I have both Rooibos and Honeybush herbal teas on hand and started
reading up on the ingredients. I was surprised to learn that both
these plants are South African bushes in the bean family, although
they taste nothing at all like bean leaves.

Green Rooibos is herbal and vegetal rather like green tea. Fermented
Rooibos makes a bright red tisane and has a malty, nutty, earthy
lightly sweet flavour. It is good with lemon and honey and often
blended with other flavours including Hibiscus. The needle-like
leaves even get ground up and added to South African garam masala.

Honeybush is so named because the flowers smell like honey.
Honeybush leaves are milder and sweeter and wonderful when blended
with dried mandarin orange zest.

Cheers

Jim

.... These days coughing is worse than speaking Arabic at airports.

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