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We had takeout pizza tonight.
I've used chocolate in traps before, mice like it a lot.
Were the freeze dried bricks instant yeast or cake yeast?
I would have expected more of them in Kansas, the heart of the wheat belt.
Not sure what I'd ever use them for, it isn't that hard to compute a golden ratio, a concept which goes back to at least ancient Greece.
My guess is that the big department stores are in big trouble: Macy's, JC Penny, etc. JCP was already on the edge.
Those that also do groceries, like WalMart and Target, are doing fairly well so far, but they're probably living on the grocery sales, I didn't see much of anybody looking at much less buying clothes when we went to WalMart the other day. The parking lot was nearly empty, but we were there a half hour before it was closing.
Not sure about hardware chains like Ace, True Value, Home Depot, Lowes and Menards.
Hotels and especially smaller motels are going to be in big trouble too, many of them are heavily leveraged.
The interesting question will be how the retail sector is changed. Stores were already moving away from being open 24 x 7, I doubt we'll see a rush back to that.
I read an interesting point in the WSJ. When the clothing stores do get reopened, their inventory will all be for the wrong season. This is also the time of year when stores order up for Christmas, and that isn't happening.
The mom-and-pop stores are going to suffer the worst, I expect 2/3 of the non-chain restaurants in Lincoln are going to be hard pressed to reopen. Others may come along and utilize that space at some point, everybody thinks they can run a restaurant, bar or bakery. Most can't, even in good times, and good times are a long ways off.
They'll keep well until opened, but once they're opened you've got maybe 3-4 weeks to use them up. We put them on salads a lot. But they're still a lot better than the ones available at the grocery store.
If it isn't ramps, it could be ramsoms, sometimes called wild garlic or broad leaf garlic. We used to pick this with my grandmother, she'd cook it with stinging nettles and what she called 'mock spinach', which I think was lambs quarters.
IMHO they're a lot milder than garlic cloves, but I'm not sure if my wife would react to them or not, so I'm not eager to find out.
Walmart reported a 20% increase in sales in the last month, but says that panic buying may be slowing down. The week of March 21st they reported a 67% spike over the same week a year ago.
There are some funny stories out on the web about foods that nobody wants even in a panic, like lima beans.
When I was at Sams yesterday they had some almond flour and 25 pound bags of pizza flour (bleached), but no yeast. (They seldom have unbleached flour.)
Fortunately, I still have a 1 pound package of yeast unopened, which at my current rate of baking may last me through the summer. I also have most of a package of SAF Gold in the freezer, which I could use if I run short.
Those wild onions may be ramps. They have a flavor that some have called a cross between onions, leeks and garlic.
Ramps like wet soil and were quite prevalent in the Chicago area before it was urbanized. People still tramp through the Forest Preserves in the spring in search for them.
It is thought that ramps were the plant native Americans called chicagoua, which is where the name of the city Chicago came from.
Another page on salt rising bread:
I did some serious mushroom hunting as a teenager, helped by my grandmother, who was well versed in foraging. Also, NW Illinois and portions of eastern Iowa are an odd geographical area, it was skipped by the last two glaciers so there are a lot of hills and there are things that commonly grow there that are otherwise rare in North America. The botany students from Northern Illinois University in DeKalb would come out on field trips to study those plants.
There are a few types of safe mushrooms that are pretty easy to recognize, morels and inky caps are two of them. Inky caps and shaggy manes (both in the Coprinus genus) are tasty, but about 10% of the population gets a reaction to them, which can become fatal if combined with alcohol. If you've ever seen a fairy ring, it is safe, too. There's a fairy ring in Michigan that is something like a half mile in diameter, it may be one of the oldest living things in North America, they grow outward at a rate of about an inch a year, as I recall.
We get mushrooms in the back yard in the fall, they're probably Amanita phalloides, otherwise know as the Death Cap. They get quite large, sometimes 8 inches tall.
If it is a true salt rising bread recipe (usually starting with potatoes), it doesn't use yeast for leavening, it uses a bacteria, usually clostridium perfringens. You have to be very careful about cross-contamination, because C. perfringens is one of the more common causes of food poisoning.
I remember Anthony Bourdain was serving as a judge on one of the sillier cooking competition shows, where they limited what equipment the chefs had, and someone used the metal storage shelves as a grater. Anthony wasn't thrilled, saying that was a great way to get C. perfringens.
I'm told salt rising bread has a taste reminiscent of cheese. I don't plan to make it to find out.
Looks like King Arthur is out of AP and bread flour again, and they're saying it will ship in 3-4 weeks.
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