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Food Thread: Oyster? I hardly Know Her!

I am second to none in my disgust with all things Canadian. The people, the country, the crap maple syrup, the ridiculous ersatz French they pretend to speak, the poutine, and on and on. It is an unimportant place with delusions of grandeur!

Except...those oysters are from Canada; B.C. to be precise, and maybe that makes it better. I don't know and I don't care. Because they were spectacular.

And that is maddening! I don't want to like anything from America's hat. They are, by and large, a useless and weak people who are content to be the serfs for their increasingly totalitarian government.

But...damn. They were mighty tasty.

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Biological technology has improved significantly in just the last 20 years. Reporting has improved tremendously, no doubt because of the internet. So forgive me, but the idea that our food supply is getting more dangerous, as every breathless report on it seems to indicate, is a bit low on the list.

Frutas y Hortalizas del Sur S.A. Initiates Recall of Frozen GreenWise Organic IQF Blueberries Due to Potential E. coli O145 Contamination

But...sourcing food from other countries whose food safety programs are sh*t, and whose workers may very well be illiterate and about a half generation from the rain forest, may not be a good idea.

We grow blueberries in America, and we do a damned fine job of it, so maybe stick to those?

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As usual, the Cooking Horde has the answer...

This is from commenter "LC," who also teased me with the name -- but not the recipe -- of a delicious sounding cake!

Leftover egg whites. Always a conundrum. I also cannot bear to throw away food, and I also have more recipes calling for extra yolks than whites.

They freeze beautifully. I keep a small plastic container in my freezer, with a line drawn on the side. Every time I have leftover whites, I just add them on top of the already frozen whites. When I get up to the line, that's 1 1/2 cups of egg whites, and that means it's time for angel food cake. Usually lines up with the first flood of spring berries, and just in time for a brown sugar bourbon cream cake with dark chocolate drizzle in the winter.

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Apparently the Thursday night bar crew at my new (sort 0f) favorite restaurant is not the "A" team.

That's a Hendricks Gin Martini with a twist and a splash of vermouth. My failing was that I did not specify "white," or "dry" vermouth, so the bartender used sweet vermouth (the red stuff).

I have been drinking in bars for a very long time, and that is the first time this particular issue has come up. I was under the mistaken assumption that everyone in the world knew the recipe for a gin martini. Apparently I was mistaken.

On the other hand, I tried it, and it wasn't nearly as awful as I expected. Of course the guy next to me was egging me on, so I was duty-bound to try it, but it was just sort of boring. The red vermouth cut all the flavor of the gin and I was left with a sort of bland, cold drink.

He did not screw up the replacement. Hendricks Gin is excellent!

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I like Garden & Gun, if for nothing else its name. In this day and age, anything with "gun" in its name will attract my attention.

As for their list of Outstanding Bourbons $50 and Under? It's a solid one, but there is nothing earth-shattering on it.

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I went to a corporate event and as is their wont, they gave out parting gifts. Now, I approve of the sentiment, but dislike the expenditure, because they are almost always throwaway things, and I would prefer the tried-and-true method of spending corporate money...putting it into the dividend.

But they gave me a very nice coffee cup filled with hard candies that immediately brought me back to my youth! They were great! Stuff I hadn't tasted in many years, and loads of fun to remember.

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What's the worst kitchen mess you have experienced? No explosions...just normal cooking.

Mine is a Thanksgiving I hosted that grew completely out of control with the number of people we invited. We had to rent extra tables. Not just one!

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The great garlic experiment of 2025-2026 was a resounding...meh. Send all of your excellent home-grown garlic to: cbd dot aoshq at gmail dot com.

About the Bourbon Bubble...I think it has burst, but the category is also suffering from the inflation that affected everything else (Thanks Biden!). I think the sweet spot is still $40-$60 for excellent and interesting bottles, and bumping that to $100 gets you an incremental improvement in quality, but nothing mind-blowing. More than that and I think you are paying for hype and rarity, which may look good in your liquor cabinet, but doesn't translate to more quality in the bottle.

The problem...or the solution...is to buy lots of bourbon, take tasting notes, and eventually arrive at your favorites! It should take forty or fifty years, but it is worth it!