a baseline apple and a speciality cider

Seattle Cider dropped a cosmic-crisp single variety cider, so I had a sample this weekend at their booth at the Lake Forest Park Farmer’s Market.

My expectations were pretty low, honestly, because the cosmic crisp is what I think of as an adequate apple, but no better. It functions as an apple, it fulfills the role of apple, the texture is reliable and the flavour is acceptable, but there are many which are better at being what it tries to be. Fuji and honeycrisp both come immediately to mind as similar but better cultivars, but which are not as durable in shipping.

(This isn’t to condemn the cosmic crisp; the last apple to occupy its particular market slot was the loathsome red delicious, a mealy, tasteless apple-shaped object which fulfilled the function of looking like an apple, but not that of being an apple. The cosmic crisp is far superior, something I will eat intentionally and – in the case of a better example – actually enjoy.)

So after saying more or less all the above to the Seattle Cider rep, and adding that making a cider from it seemed fairly unlikely, I gave it a try.

It’s the pilsner of the apple cider world – but it’s a pretty decent pilsner.

I don’t mean to say that it tastes like a pilsner; it doesn’t. I don’t even like beer, and pilsners are not exceptions. But I know some of the roles of different beers, and this cider lands right in the same spot. It’s light, but in defiance of my expectations, it’s not empty. It has a presence. It’s the sort of cider you’d actively enjoy in the shade during a very hot day, probably after you’ve been doing something athletic.

In that way, it reminds me a bit of Growers, made up in BC, which lands in roughly the same weight location.

Like the cosmic crisp isn’t a great apple, this isn’t a great cider. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a pleasant or enjoyable cider. Kind of like – and yet moreso than – the cosmic crisp, I think it’s a cider that has an actual role, one other than doing a good job at surviving shipping.

It’s supposed to be hot this week. If not this week, we’re heading into August.

I bought a bottle. We’ll see.

#cookingAndFood #HomeEc

okay gastrodonians gimmie a hand with this

So I have this skillet.

Obviously, it’s a skillet. And it looks like a cheap skillet – real cheap. But I don’t think it is.

The handle is cast iron or steel of some kind, despite being silver. The handle is also magnetic and heavy. The actual pan part, however, is aluminium, with no hint of magnetism, and also quite heavy – heavier than I feel it should be, like it has a slab of copper sandwiched inside layers of aluminium. There are three big thick bolts holding this thing together.

This is an object I feel like had to have been made with a purpose. I don’t know what that purpose was. And despite being a decent baker, I am no chef, and am merely an adequate cook in the sense of “I can follow directions correctly and produce the intended meal.”

So what the hell is this for?

Am I wrong about it having a special purpose? Is it in fact really cheap? Because it looks cheap. But it doesn’t feel cheap, and I think that’s important here.

Is it some sort of esoteric camping kit? Is that it? Feels way too heavy for that but it is nicely small.

What’m I missing here, Gastrodonians? Is this some sort of special #cooking implement? Or is it just a weird kind of cheap pan I’ve never seen before.

Do you know? ’cause I sure don’t.

#gastrodonians

#cooking #cookingAndFood #gastrodonians

delicious bagels

I made unexpectedly good bagels at home yesterday, and they were good enough to me, who is a bit of a Montréal bagels snob, that I wrote up the recipe from the original youtube directions in text.

I also added a few of my own notes.

Here’s an RTF, here’s a 300dpi PNG formatted to print on one page which also links to a previous thread with a bunch of photos and the original video. Enjoy!

#baking #cookingAndFood #HomeEc