[Mike Nolan]

I remember BigLakeJudy quite well, I've emailed her a couple of times inviting her to join this group, but I never got a response, maybe her email address has changed?

Sara Wirth seems to have disappeared lately, too.

[Mike Nolan]

I have terrible luck growing cucumbers, but I don't eat a lot of dill pickles these days anyway because they tend to be pretty high in salt. I did buy some cucumbers at the farmer's market a couple of years ago, I still have most of those jars of pickles in the basement.

I had tuna salad in a tomato from the garden tonight. My wife was jealous, but tuna sometimes bothers her in the evening even when her stomach isn't being touchy.

[Mike Nolan]

She's still on the BRAT diet for now. I did make rice krispy treats for her today, a slight stretch of BRAT.

[Mike Nolan]

The connection between iodine and goiters has been well known since the early 20th century, iodized salt was first introduced in the 1920's and widely available for most of the 20th century, yet having grown up in NW Illinois I remember several farmers who had goiters during the 60's and 70's.

Many medical schools didn't start requiring nutrition courses until about 15 years ago. My former GP (he recently moved to another town closer to his grandchildren as sort of a lead-in to retirement, he's in his 50's) once told me that the nutrition information he learned in med school was worthless.

[Mike Nolan]

Much of what was taught about nutrition in the 50's and 60's (like the food triangle, which recommended far too many servings of carb-laden grains) was wrong.

Sadly, there are still people who promote those out-of-date ideas.

[Mike Nolan]

My wife has had a really queasy stomach lately, so I haven't done a lot of cooking for a few weeks, just boring stuff like chicken noodle soup (from a can) and macaroni and cheese (from a box or from the deli.)

Tonight she felt up to having cheese souffle.

[Mike Nolan]

Dairy fat and health story:
Washington Post story

Hopefully this story isn't behind WaPo's paywall.

[Mike Nolan]

I remember the story but hadn't made the connection either. Registering one's location isn't required (and not everyone wants that information known, either),

Having come from a small town myself, I know how an incident like this can devastate everyone, my deepest sympathies to you and your neighbors.

[Mike Nolan]

Choice grade meat is not necessarily poor quality meat, it really depends on the specific cut and the cooking method.

It's hard to find prime grade beef in most local supermarkets here. Recently a lot of meat is being advertised as 'Angus', which tells the consumer essentially nothing about its tenderness.

[Mike Nolan]

I've got several whole grains baking books, with a few exceptions I've been somewhat disappointed in the results.

One of the books I have on grinding your own grain spends about a third of the book preaching about heath benefits that aren't supported by research.

[Mike Nolan]

Mostly what I do with smaller eggplant is pair them with similar sized summer squash and zucchini and make ratatouille.

[Mike Nolan]

The u-pick-it orchards here seems to be running a bit behind schedule this year, and the last week's rainy weather won't have sped that up much.

I've still got quite a bit of apple pie filling left over from last year in the freezer, but I may make one trip out to get some Winesap apples when they're available in early October.

When we've driven to Pittsburgh there are some u-pick-it orchards in western Ohio that appear interesting, but we're never going through there during apple season.

[Mike Nolan]

Fresh tomatoes are often too juicy for pizza. If you concasse them (remove the skin and seeds, leaving just the pulp) that helps, but sometimes even then I will drain the tomatoes on a paper towel for a few minutes.

The easiest way to concasse a tomato is to start by dumping it in boiling water for 10-20 seconds then in ice water so the skin peels off easily, then slice it in two along the equator and dig the seeds out with a finger. You can then quarter them if you want smaller pieces, especially if the tomatoes were big ones.

Sometimes I core the tomato before peeling it, I've never decided if that makes things easier or harder.

[Mike Nolan]

The Montreal Smoked Meat dry rub was interesting to make, as several of the spices, including mustard seed and fennel seed, had to be toasted first, and each seed took a different amount of time to toast, and smelled interesting as they toasted.

[Mike Nolan]

I tend to skin bone-in breasts before cooking them, and you have to do something to keep them from getting tough on the outside. Coating them with oil isn't quite enough, coating them with a sauce (often tomato-based) or cheese seems to work better. Adding wine seems to help, too, so I've wondered whether the acid in wine or tomato sauce is what's keeping them from drying out.

I tried covering them with cabbage leaves once, it worked well, but the cabbage leaves weren't very edible. Spinach might work better.

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