Food Chat thread - for general convo by food forum regulars (mushroom, pizza)

[HJ99]

If I could avoid going to grocery store at all, I would. Its like going on some perverted scavenger hunt to find unprocessed, unadulterated items in modern super market. No waxes, no injected saline solution, etc.

[evening sun]

Originally Posted by HappyRider

And what exactly do you make with barley? Isn't it cattle feed?

It is wonderful in all kinds of soups, & I also sometimes like it, instead of rice, with my meal.

[silibran]

You can do whatever you want with your tortilla or pizza dough. It is a free country.

[hotzcatz]

I just bought 50# of barley, but that was at the feed store. Guess it could be made into soup, even though it's livestock feed after being boiled it should be clean of anything that it could have touched. That is, supposing livestock feed isn't processed the same as people feed.

[PNW-type-gal]

It's also used by home beer brewers - if you can't find it at the store, you can always look up the closest beer brewing store. Or order online from Bob's Red Mill.

https://www.bobsredmill.com/

[oregonwoodsmoke]

Originally Posted by hotzcatz

I just bought 50# of barley, but that was at the feed store. Guess it could be made into soup, even though it's livestock feed after being boiled it should be clean of anything that it could have touched. That is, supposing livestock feed isn't processed the same as people feed.

Feed barley for livestock still contains the hulls. Generally it is rolled and sometimes it is steamed, but whatever has been done to it, it is not suitable to make human food out of it.


Well,...... if the zombies are cutting you off from civilization, you could eat livestock grain. The hulls wouldn't be very pleasant to eat, but it is food.



Barley for people has the hulls and bran removed and it is polished, very much like rice. It is cooked and used much the same as rice (except it takes longer to cook.) it is used in soups, but it can also be steamed and served with butter or as a base to ladle gravy or stew over, just like rice is used.


I have vague memories that canned soup contains barley in many of the varieties. Many yonks ago, the Campbell's barley beef soup was my favorite, but there was barley in all of their vegetable type soups.

[oregonwoodsmoke]

I just googled. Campbell's vegetable soup still contains barley.

[Nanny Goat]

There are a lot of different grains available now. I like barley in soup. Newer food trends have replaced some of the older ones, but it's like that w/ other trends, too.

[Cida]

The charming food writer Melissa Clark goes through everything you might possibly want to know about chocolate, followed by her take on the very best chocolate bars.


Everything You Don’t Know About Chocolate
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Here are answers to some basic questions you may not even know you had.
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Melissa Clark’s Favorite Bean-to-Bar Chocolates
13 craft-chocolate producers that take extra care with their beans, their growers and the planet.
This is by no means a complete roster of all the excellent, ethically produced chocolates on the market. It’s a short list of the bars that I buy and eat regularly.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/d...sultPosition=2

[bpollen]

Originally Posted by jazzcat22

Today I felt really old at the grocery store when I learned the store (a really big Kroger chain store) no longer carries barley! I know that other grains like quinoa are more popular and newer, but I thought barley might still be bought enough to warrant keeping it on the shelf. I wanted it to make mushroom barley soup---is that really obsolete now? California Pizza Kitchen has a split pea barley soup still on the menu, so surely there is still a little interest in it, even in 2020.


To make me feel even older, I saw in the hummus section that there is now prepackaged avocado toast. A small pack of avocado mash a la guacamole and a few melba toast type crackers. And here I thought making my own avo toast was a ridiculously easy meal---mashing up some avocado, putting toast in the toaster, smearing the avo on the toast and then putting some pumpkin seeds and cut up grape tomatoes on top.

It's official--I'm older than dirt! Anyone else have similar experiences?

I've never seen barley in a grocery store. I know it's used in dog food, but I've never even read a recipe for people that calls for barley. Maybe it's a regional thing? Rice is big in my area. Stores have all sorts of rice, prepackaged & flavored & seasoned, to brown raw short or brown raw long, white long, big bags, small bags, different brands.

So many people these days like pre-packaged food, like that avocado toast. I can't get over the fact that people use chocolate syrup these days to make cocoa, instead of using...cocoa! I pulled out a jar of Hershey's cocoa powder to make hot cocoa, & my brother said, "what's that?" I told him, "cocoa...to make hot cocoa." He said why not use choc syrup like his family does. He'd never heard of using cocoa powder. Go figure.

Or cake mixes. ??? Cake mixes aren't even much of a shortcut to making a cake. I never understood why people used them.