What's cooking?

Just took some caraway rye bread out of the oven. I meant to make it for Father's Day, but we sort of played hooky all day. Can't wait to slice this up and smear it with butter!

I made some macaroni and cheese to try out a new brand of fake cheese (real cheese makes me sick). Unfortunately this new brand is kind of gross and I may have to toss the whole batch if I can't come up with something to mix in or put on top that will disguise the flavor sufficiently.

I made a goat curry last night, but I wasn't happy with it at all. It just didn't come out right. I only call it edible.

Comfort food: ratatouille. Bought a ton of eggplant for something Turkish, got discouraged, went with the golden oldie.

I made rhubarb strawberry crisp yesterday, and for the topping I used some really good ginger snaps and oatmeal cookies that we bought on our trip. The ones we didn't eat right away turned into crumbs so I thought this would be a good way to use them, and I was right. Delicious!

(5) That sounds yummy!

We went to a snazzy salad bar for supper. They have other stuff, but you kinda hafta order a salad first.

Rhubarb pie.
Not much baking/cooking going on at the moment, we're about to leave for the cabin and there's a limit to how much you can eat ;-)

Raspberry gelato - I made it to take to a dinner for some friends who are leaving town, and it was lovely, both to look at and to eat. Just raspberries (I usually use frozen), lemons, sugar and water. Put the raspberries through a sieve to get the seeds out, squeeze the lemons, dissolve the sugar in the water to make a light syrup, and put it all in the ice cream maker.

Delicious lamb chops are cooking (but I'm not cooking them). I'm so hungry, I can barely wait!

Food you didn't have to cook is automatically tastier.

I've not had rhubarb in years...

I've not had rhubarb ever...

I'm not a big rhubarb fan, myself. But I wouldn't mind trying something new!

Triple Layer Lemon Cake for my daughter's Bday today - E. turns 20!

Oh, my, I did not know how much I was missing the food thread! *mouth watering*

Lamb kebabs marinating for dinner... but now I want strawberry-rhubarb pie!

I love rhubarb, both on its own in pie or crisp or cobbler, or mixed with other fruit. With strawberry is my favourite. When I was a kid we ate it raw, dipped in sugar, which I don't do now but remember fondly. It's very tart and high in good fiber.

It grows very well here and most older homes have a rhubarb plant somewhere in the yard. I've even seen it grown as an ornamental.

Rhubarb pie--oh, my! I haven't had it in years, but the last time I did, I enjoyed it alongside a generous helping of French vanilla ice cream. The bright tang and the rich sweetness--what a combination. I can't eat like that any more, but I sure do remember it.

I love rhubarb Betty. Layers of sugared rhubarb and buttered bread baked to golden syrupy goodness. I'm the only one in my family who likes it though, so I don't make it.

Cooked fluffy pancakes tonight, topped with pure maple syrup and blueberries smashed in butter. Bacon on the side so we can have BLATs (Bacon, Lettuce, Avocado & Tomato sandwich) tomorrow.

#18 Rhubarb Betty sounds lovely, MrsLee. I wish we had rhubarb here so I could get a taste... I've only seen it in pictures, it's like a red stalk of celery, right? :)

I remember when I was a teen, I used to make Brown Betty all the time: sliced apples (any would do) tossed with lemon juice and sugar, topped with buttery crumbs of oats and flour, crisped in the oven... My dad LOVED it. He made sure to buy vanilla ice cream all the time just so he'd have an excuse to ask me to make him some betty.

(No, we don't have apples here in Panama either, grown locally, I mean. Just imported. Rhubarb is unknown around these parts, I think...)

My lunch today was a salad of fresh tomatoes and unsalted white cheese dressed with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and salt, with whole-wheat bread to dip in the vinaigrette. Hmmmm!!! And a tall glass of orange-carrot-papaya-ginger juice :D

Oh, that's what we call rhubarb crumble (or apple crumble). Yes, it's delicious!

Yep - thats what we aussies call a crumble - yummmmm!

I havent had rhubarb for years either, used to regularly make an apple & rhubarb crumble (chopped apple & rhubarb topped with crumble made of flour, brown sugar, coconut & margerine) when I was a kid, until one day I decided to chop the rhubarb off the plant myself & chopped the tip of my lil finger nearly off while I was at it! Dont think I've had rhubarb since, but now I want a rhubarb & strawberry crumble...

Red celery. Yes, sort of, not to be confused with chard. It is very sweet-tart.

I made savory crepes yesterday, with leftover chicken for the filling and a white sauce on top. All dairy-free, since I have to avoid dairy, but coconut milk is quite a good substitute.

Re: Brown Better/Crumble - In Minnesota, it's called Apple Crisp.

With it being so hot, I've been looking for ways to use my one-burner induction cooktop (a Christmas gift) to make dinner on the deck. Best result so far has been fitting it with a cast iron grill to make fajitas and Korean barbecue*. I tried (and returned) a few grills, before finding one that sat flush.

Also, I plan to try my flat-bottomed, carbon steel wok for outdoor stir-frying on the induction cooktop.

It's traditional to make paella outdoors over fire (some people use their BBQs), which makes sense in summer, considering all the heat produced in its long simmer. I'm still searching for a large enough paella pan that will work with induction. Paella pans flat-bottomed for use with induction seem to run small, and for all the work paella entails, I want LOTS! Also, the way my guys snarf it down, I need LOTS! (Traditional paella pans are ever so slightly rounded, so not enough contact for induction.)

* NYT's Mark Bittman recipe "Backyard Bulgogi" at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/magazine/mark-bittman-bulgogi-for-the-backyard... . I've been substituting a prepared seaweed side dish (looks like coleslaw) for hijiki, which, in addition to being hard to find here, has some health advisories associated with it. Bittman's recipe for Korean potato salad is very pretty and tasty, BTW. (If you go there, copy recipe on your first visit, as NYT may ask you to register etc. on 2nd visit.)

When I say "pie", as in Rhubarb pie, 7 times out of 10 I'm referring to a "crumble", although when looking at the actual recipes I must say they differ from how we do them in Sweden.

The crumble ("top crust") is made from melted butter mixed with sugar, flour and rolled oats; the fruit or berries are tossed in sugar mixed 10 to 1 with potato flour (starch). Sometimes vanilla is added to the toss.

Almost all sweet pies that I make are "crumbles"; all savoury are "pies" with a bottom crust.

We're emptying the fridge before leaving for vacation so the cooking might be labelled "creative" ;-)

Yesterday I made a yoghurt-lime sauce (need to use up the yoghurt!) to go with cold smoked salmon marinated in lime/elderberries (salmon need to go!) and steamed broccoli (needed to be eaten).

Today is grilled sandwiches - toast, salami, cheese, tomatoes, leek. All of which needs to be either consumed or thrown out.

Busifer, your "creative" meals sound yummy to me :)

I usually make cobblers, which are exactly like crumbles but with a biscuit topping instead of the mix of sugar/butter/rolled oats. This time I had the cookie crumbs that needed using so made crisp instead.

Last night I made gingerbread cake for my son's birthday. I don't put icing on it - it's good by itself, but our favourite way is served warm with vanilla ice cream. Mmmmm.

We seem to have a glut of citrus right now, so Better Half made crepe suzette for dessert. Yum!

Just had some peachy chicken salad w/homemade OO-mayo-based dressing with, fresh OJ, clove and curry. It's so good you could lick the bowl.

Chocolate Amaretto Cheesecake - for the hubby ( it's actually a low fat version - less than 10G of fat per serving)

Chocolate covered pretzels for a birthday gift ( I have a picture of them on my profile, for some reason I can't get the pic to load here...sigh)

All this talk of cooking is making me hungry..hmmm...maybe I'll just wander into the kitchen and see what kind of trouble err.. fun.. I can get into ;-)

Well, my vacation get-away includes a potluck supper so I'm bringing dessert. Sherry wine cake (with a week to age it properly) and ambrosia salad. I'm thinking of throwing together some Harry Potter/Downton Abbey rock cakes as well. The issue is that those require a 400 degree oven! And it's going to be in the upper 80's tomorrow. (Maybe I'll get up super early to make 'em).

I just baked a pre-assembled pastry.  It was all poofy when I took it out of the oven, I set it on the stove to cool, and when I came back, it had lost its poof. *sigh*

#30 - Pretty pretzels! I want.

I'm in a weird mood, probably due to allergies. Will boil some eggs tonight so I can make deviled egg sandwiches with sweet pickled jalapenos for my lunch tomorrow.

Cupcakes. I was given a new recipe book for my birthday and so my sister came over with her icing tools and we made the most lovely tasting and looking raspberry and chocolate cupcakes

*sigh* All this talk of delicious-sounding food... and here I still haven't hooked up my gas stove, so I'm surviving on cold cereal, sandwiches and salads. With the occasional Ramen noodle soup cooked in the coffeemaker.

Which reminds me, I have to get up and make tons of coffee now. Lots of work to do today.

btw, I'm not really complaining. I haven't gone hungry, there's always food in my pantry and fridge, especially good quality food even if it's just sandwich spreads and cold cuts and salad fixings... and if I haven't gone to the market, there's still Herbalife products for me to make a nutritional shake with... So I'm lucky, very, very lucky. :) Here's to never going hungry, to being creative with food (Busifer, those meals sound delicious!), and to be thankful for our plenty.

Today's special: Various kinds of pickled herring, sour cream, chives, hard boiled eggs, radishes, hard bread, new potatoes. All but the bread and the herring must get either get eaten or thrown away. And I prefer not to throw away ;-)

Thanks everyone for the thumbs-up on creative cooking :)

I keep reading about all the pickled things people in Sweden eat, and such, but I've never experienced it. One of these days, I'm going to get me some real and authentic Swedish food stuffs to taste. Although, I must say, Busifer, your food posts seem to be very international and creative, so maybe "traditional" Swedish food is in the past?

Yes, "traditional" Swedish food was something people ate when I was a kid. Smoked and boiled tongue of ox (with mashed potatoes), diverse innards, marrow, meat loaves and meat balls, sausages made of bland minces, greens cooked until death looked more appetizing (they were very soft and tasted of nothing but perhaps salt). Rich folks ate roasts; up along the north coast they ate salmon; everyone had potatoes.
Down south they had goose, black soup made from goose blood, and cabbage cooked in treacle. Also lots of variants on potato dough buns filled with pork and onion.

Pickled herring IS traditional, but I don't know since when - traditional here often means "since the late 1800's" which where when the national state and the national identity proper were established.

My favourite pickled herring is matjessill - it is mentioned in this Wikipedia article; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soused_herring - but there's lots of others.

I made chicken enchiladas for my daughter who will be leaving soon. :o/ I decided to try making pulled (shredded) chicken first. I found a pulled chicken recipe online that uses a crock-pot, which really appealed to my 'let the gadget do most of the work' mentality. Instead of BBQ sauce I used salsa and I added a packet of chipotle taco seasoning. One of the unexpected bonuses of shredding the chicken was that it seemed like I end up with at least twice if not three times as much of it, which is great as I'm trying to make our meals less meat-centered these days. Anyhoo, the enchiladas turned out very well. Tomorrow night I'll be making linguini and clam sauce for her 'last supper' home.

In case you all are not reading all the threads I'm reading I'll pass a long some, now famous, recipe for "Microwave Fudge". I believe Steven (Ape) is the evil person who suggested it might be good. You take a 16 oz (+/-) jar of peanut butter and put it in the microwave for 1 minute. It turns soupy. You do the same with a 16 oz carton of chocolate frosting. Mix the two soupy things together, and let them cool in the fridge. Yummy.

Oh, Maggie that sounds evilly delicious. I'm not even going to think of trying it or I'll never stop!

Ditto that. Though I make peanut butter and chocolate frosting sandwiches for my kids when they are feeling down.

Oh, Clam, I wish you'd been my Mom. She would say... oh, go to bed, and you'll feel better eventually.

BTW, it is evil. It is tasty. Although at first I thought it was a bit too sweet, and rich. Of the family the Father, and the Middle Child Boy, love it. Eldest does not like P.B. with Choco, can you imagine? Mom is smart and knows its evil so has not tried it. Baby Girl thought it was too sweet and too rich. I changed my mind. Now I love it. In small bits.

Happy Independence Day coming soon all!

>36 Oh, yum on the pickled herring and sour cream! It must be a Polish thing as well, as my 2nd generation mother (her family was from Cracow) gave it to us too.

#38 - Thanks, most of that does not appeal, yet I suppose it might all be great cooked by a good cook. I suppose I'm thinking more on the line of lots of pickled things and lots of fish. I believe Marcus Samuelsson is responsible for this desire, in describing the dishes his grandmother made. They all sounded wonderful. :) Your food always sounds wonderful, too.

In my mind is simmering an idea. I want to create a special drink named the Green Dragon. Today I bought some Jones apple flavored soda. I realize that vodka would probably go well with it, but I don't like vodka, so I want to do something with tequila. I also don't like terribly sweet drinks, so I'm thinking along the lines of adding lemon juice, or possibly lime. I will try lime first, because I have some I need to use. This will not happen until tomorrow. Any suggestions will be taken into consideration. I do feel I should have a tart Granny Smith apple for it, too. Shall I muddle the apple, or leave it in a pristine slice? I could pulverize the ice, but I usually prefer it in cubes. Bitters? Hmmm.

Tonight's dinner was two cobs of sweet locally grown corn, perfectly cooked, eaten plain, with a Negra Modelo on the side. Yum.

ETA: Just looked up Green Dragons on the Drink Mixer site. Um, please, no suggestions of cannabis. I won't do it as I can't even imagine it tasting good. :P Anyway, they did have gin recipes, so this is my other thought: gin, apple soda, 1/2 lemon orange bitters, caraway seed, crushed. The key, I think, will be getting rid of the overwhelming sweet. Also, I hesitate to waste gin in anything but a martini, but I do like gin and tonic. *shrug*

I made a sushi bowl for dinner.  All I had to put in it was tuna.  I tried one of my cucumbers, even though it was still smallish, but a few friends and relatives have asked me why I keep waiting for my cucumbers to get so big.  Now I can tell them EXACTLY why!

40 maggie - Ooo, will have to try that sometime! I love quick-and-easy recipes (especially when I don't have to tweak them to make them dairy free :).

Yes, I fall for the easy peasey type of recipes, too. And this one really is easy, easier than jello!

About to make meatloaf for dinner.... putting applesauce into it, a good new trick I recently learned.

#45 Ohhh that sounded lovely... until you mentioned the gin. :S My only experience with gin was many years ago, at a party I decided to ask a friend to let me try a sip of his drink. It was gin with... I don't remember what the mixer was. But as soon as my nose got near the glass, I could sense an overpowering cologne smell! Seriously, I have no idea if that is what gin is supposed to smell, or even taste, because right then and there I decided I didn't like it and have never had it since. :p

Anyway, lime, green apple, vodka... that would be my twist on it. You keep the gin, I keep the vodka, eh? :D

Oh, I remember I had an appletini once at a martini bar, I only ordered it because of JD in Scrubs (the TV show)... but it was too sweet for my taste.

Well, the first try made a tasty drink, but nothing memorable. My son said he liked it better than a martini. It was gin, caraway seeds (crushed), lemon juice, bitters and the apple soda. Not bad, pretty in the glass, but not worthy of the name "Green Dragon Fire."

Tomorrow I will try tequila, lime, slice of apple, apple soda and a slice of jalepeno. We shall see if that lives up to the name. I am taking pictures, and will share when I'm done.

#50 - that "cologne" smell is probably the juniper berries in the gin. A bit reminiscent of a spicy cologne like "Old Spice." Not that you need to try it, but Hendrick's gin has a wonderful aroma of cucumber and rose!

#45 - ;-) Traditional Swedish food isn't very tasty; it's rather bland, mostly due to the spices used - salt, pepper, dill, bay leaves and a few more. Since the 60's there's been a lot of immigrant kitchens coming to us, though, not to mention that since about then many Swedes have been going abroad on their vacations.

Only 20 years ago we couldn't even get a decent espresso anywhere. I remember going to Berlin regularly in the late 80's, revelling in the existence of milchkaffee (big latte, served in small soup bowl).

#45, 50, 51 Can't help thinking that the recipe ought to start with Creme de Menthe, and the local version would include a shot or more of witblits or mampoer (moonshine now made legally and sold at 50% abv -- one maker wraps the bottle in barbed wire, which may tell you something). Round off with a dash of tabasco, maybe?

#45, 50, 51, 53 - I too thought Creme de Menthe but it is absolutely atrocious.

Can't you just make a nice drink and then add some tasteless food colouring? ;-)

LOL, cheating, Busifer! I will NOT use Creme de Menthe *ptuie* I must admit though, the Jones soda is only green because of food coloring. Still, I'm intrigued by the "apple" flavor.

Hugh, that drink sounds as if it would fit the name, for sure, but then, would I enjoy drinking it? I had a jalapeno martini once, and it had great possibilities, but the bartender added traditional olives and that ruined the flavor.

Lee, after the second sip I doubt if you'd care ;-)

If going for a suite of Green Dragon drinks, homemade watermelon limeade is great for summer. Left me wondering what alcohol might enhance it. Maybe a lime wedge could be the dragon, sipping the drink? :)

ETA: Googled watermelon limeade and found people use vodka. I was thinking tequila and Cointreau or Triple Sec.

That sounds very appetizing! I am sure The Green Dragon would be honored to offer it.

I am toying with using a strip of chipotle pepper for the flame, but I want to try a fresh jalapeno, first.

I want that watermelon drink! I don't think I would need any alcohol at all in it.

And we have success! 2 T. lime juice, 2 shots tequila, 1 slice jalapeno, one slice Granny Smith apple, ice, Jones green apple soda.
Green Dragon Fire
Rub slice of apple on rim of glass, rub glass in salt (large grained), put apple, jalapeno, lime juice and tequila in glass, add ice nearly to top of glass, fill with apple soda and stir with swizzle.

I used my Green Dragon pub pint glass (will add pictures when possible). Sip gently, those who do not like the fire should remove the jalapeno before too long, the heat builds! Yum!

Wow! The Creativity Queen!

Don't you love your Green Dragon pub glasses. I am so happy with mine. They are a good sold glass, good for drinking of the beers and ales, and make me happy when I reach for water in the middle of the night!

Mrs Lee that sounds delicious, nice and tart and refreshing for a hot summers day

We are in the middle of winter here, we had seven friends over for board games and dinner yesterday, so big roast beef with all the trimmings (yorkshire puddings, roast vege, peas, broccoli and horse radish sauce) followed by fruit mince tart and apple tart. A lovely meal on a cold wet night

Here are the photos:
Green Dragon Fire and Green Envy

That does look very yummy and I don't even drink alcohol, any more. But I do like green drinks. May have to go find the apple stuff Jones is making.

I am impressed with your being willing to tackle inventing a new drink! You go, girl!

Maggie, knowing this world, it's quite possible that someone else has thought of it and named it differently, but in my defense, for the Green Dragon Fire drink, that came out of my head. The other was inspired by something I read on the web and twisted a bit.

I am experimenting with friends coming over for dinner! Oh my, not too smart but here goes. I am making a homemade pizza sauce, and plan on making a Jiffy pizza crust (box of dry ingredients), and then piling on onion, asparagus, Italian chicken sausage, mushrooms, Mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses. Any suggestions? I've got about 4 hours.... until show time!

I think it's a lovely idea! I always wish I could do that, but my friends all live so far away it's not convenient for them to drop by for dinner. Have fun!

Actually, my friends also live quite a ways away but we've decided it is fun, and economical, to get together to eat, and watch TV if there's anything on (Game of Thrones....) They do "car pool" when they can.

They all bring contributions so I don't foot the bill for the whole thing. Reminds me of "rent parties" during the depression where someone would cook a slow cooker kind of a dinner and people would chip in a bit of money for the dinner; then the rent could be made! I think we all need to do more of that kind of thing these days.

I really hope to continue to find ways to build a sense of community in my life. Not always an easy thing, especially since I am not a church going kind of a girl.

#66 What a lovely idea, and that pizza sounds delicious! :) Hope you have fun.

I've been meaning to do that with a few of my friends, having a dinner night once a month or so, because all of us like to cook. So the idea would be each one gets to host a dinner at their place a couple of times a year... (or depending on how many people jump in!)

MrsLee those look delicious! How creative! I don't see the recipe for the Green Envy, though...

Delirium- It was sweeter than I like my drinks, but this is what it was:
Gin, lemon juice, crushed caraway seeds, orange bitters, Jones apple soda. Pretty good. Cooling. I would suggest adding a cucumber stirring stick, and possibly soaking the caraway seeds in the gin for a day.

Tonight's dinner was a salad of: tomatoes, cucumber, avocado, cotija cheese and pinenuts.

experiment for dinner worked just fine. I ended up making two pizzas because the size of the box Pizza crusts were a little on the small size. I did end up with some left overs so all is good. Pizza for lunch, today!

Chicken breasts marinated in Sesame Seed Oil and Balsamic, grilled with sliced new potatoes in olive oil with chopped shallot's and oregano, with braised baby Bok Choy. Oh! ... and I did a prawn cocktail for 'starters' with the Rose-Marie sauce that SWMBO likes. No pudding tonight though.

#72 - That sounds lovely! I want to know what Rose-Marie sauce is.

Mayo with ketchup at its most basic ... but the correct recipe is to add Worcestershire and lemon juice. She Who Must Be Obeyed however does not like it too spicy.

LOL, I would probably add horseradish, then be banned from your home! :)

John_Vaughan Ohhh, that's a lovely name for a sauce. I have heard the mayo+ketchup combination being called "Salsa Rusa" (Russian dressing?) before. And I think in Argentina it's called "Salsa Golf" (have no idea why). Now I have a new name for it. :D The things we learn on the GD, yay!

MrsLee I would totally do that too. Or better, instead of horseradish, I'd add hot sauce. :P

Argh. I just Wikipediaed Russian dressing, Marie Rose sauce, and Salsa golf, and now I'm hungry for fries with sauce! :'(

Me and the “Naked Chef” were taught that it is Rose Marie.
Mayo is usually served with fries in Belgium.

And if you add relish it's called Thousand Island.

I made the best salad dressing last night. I had three little strawberries from the garden so rather than try to split them 4 ways for each of my family to have some, I crushed them, added olive oil and a little red wine vinegar, about 1/2 tsp honey, a tiny pinch of salt and mixed it all up. Served on a salad of mixed store bought and home-grown lettuces.

I'm thinking next time I might try balsamic vinegar instead of wine vinegar, just for comparison. If I ever get more strawberries - I don't have the most productive strawberry patch. I could try with store-bought strawberries, but they have so much less flavour than home grown - it wouldn't be the same.

#80
Ohhhh, fresh strawberries macerated in balsamic vinegar with freshly ground black pepper are divine as a topping for vanilla ice cream or even cottage cheese or plain yogurt. Hmmmmm!!!

This weekend I will spend twelve hours smoking two pork butts, and the Redhead is smoking a brisket. Sauces will entail.

#82 ~~ I misread your post to such a very bad extent, that I got everything mixed up: smoking Redhead's butt, being "sauced," and something else that made so little sense that I went back and read it slowly. Whew! Actually sounds good when you read the words in the right order.

Yeah, I can see how that might get misread. Let's try again. This weekend I am firing up the smoker and slow cooking two pork butts (which in reality is the shoulder, not the ham). The Redhead will be slow cooking a brisket.

Less intriguing perhaps, but better. Except that for the English it would always be the shoulder .. the butt is an entirely different part of the anatomy.

Over here it is the butt. If you include parts of the leg, it is called a picnic cut, but those are harder to find retail. You pretty much have to know a butcher.

Yup, down here in Florida too. Interestingly enough, if you 'show the bone' it is called a picnic cut for pork, but a 'cowboy' cut for beef (rib) - as I found out by asking for two ribs of beef to be "Frenched" in Washington DC's market.

We just finished a very satisfying, though relatively light, dinner. Tomato bisque, from a can but enlivened with dry sherry and home-made croutons. Then we ate Coquille St Jaque but made with flounder instead of scallops. Sweet tonight was old-fashioned Bread-and Butter pudding to which SWMBO had added dried fruit. Yummy grub!

I really want iced tea. Will someone bring me a whole bunch, please? Thanks! (I'd make some but first I'd have to buy tea...)

Here you go, reconditereader, mine is made with Earl Grey and Lady Grey tea, hope that satisfies?
Pooh, you have to imagine it, the right clicker on my mouse seems to be dead, so I don't know how to get the image properties.

Anyone have personal experience cooking steel cut oats in a crock pot? What ratio of water to oats should I use for one serving?

91> 4:1 water to oats for whatever serving size. I never make just one serving so not sure what volume of oats to use fo that. Yum. I like it with raisins, chopped apples, cinnamon and brown sugar. I should get out my crockpot and make some next week - it's a great work day breakfast for me because if I'm short of time I can throw it in a wide-mouth thermos and take it with me.

great idea, I should do the same. I have lots of oats waiting for me to eat them. Nom nom nom

Do you all have a favorite Cook Book? LT'ers must have a great collection if they are "foodies" too I bet.
I'll cook from everything/anything and - I guess like most - have a card collections of my favorites. I do love Elizabeth David's An Omelette and a Glass of Wine and a selection from Julia Child but I guess my true favorite is Anthony Bourdain's "Les Halles" Cookbook: Classic Bistro Cooking (with minimal trendy foul language for a change).

I love these--some of them oldies but still goodies:

Piret's: the George and Piret Munger Cookbook
Madhur Jaffrey's Cookbook: Easy East/West Menus for Family and Friends
Bistro Cooking at Home by Gordon Hammersley
Fast Food my Way by Jacques Pepin

Thanks for the tea, MrsLee!

It's not fancy, but I do like the cookbook Help! My Apartment Has A Kitchen! Even though I don't need the beginner tips about how to boil an egg, the recipes are easy, tasty, and a big hit when I feed them to others.

> 91 Anyone have personal experience cooking steel cut oats in a crock pot?

In winter, I heat the steel-cut oats with milk and dried cherries to boiling, then let sit over night.

>97 We can call your method the "new, green method of cooking oatmeal". No on going electricity used! Woo hoo

Don't you love it when the old fashioned, tried and true, methods show up as new and efficient?

Tonight I made Brazilian Black Beans and Rice from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian which I am liking very much, so far. I didn't have quite enough black beans (had cooked them for another purpose) so I added a can of pink beans. The recipe also calls for onion, tomatoes, banana or plantain, ginger, chili, and thyme.

It went especially well with the Mango-Tomato-Avocado salsa I made on Friday. I also sauteed some frozen breaded shrimp, but in retrospect the bean casserole was hearty enough by itself. I suppose I will finish the leftovers without any added shrimps.

On Friday I also made a batch of my Roasted Tomatillo-Corn salsa which is rapidly becoming a personal favorite. Don't know why anyone would buy jarred salsa, when it's so easy to make fresh at home.

>98 Don't you love it when the old fashioned, tried and true, methods show up as new and efficient?

AND the oatmeal doesn't burn! {;>

#99 Was that feijoada? Ohhhh all that sounds so yummmmmmm!!! I'm adding that book to my wishlist.

Since I still haven't hooked up my gas stove, I was hankering for some good old beans and rice last weekend. So I went to my mom's, brought along my beans and brown rice plus a few supplies she needed, and proceeded to make my casserole in her kitchen, with her pressure cooker.

Red kidney beans with nothing added but the goodness of olive oil, a bit of bacon (which I usually don't like, but her house, her rules), green bell pepper, garlic (no onion, we didn't have any), bit of balsamic vinegar to cut through the fatty bacon, salt and pepper. Plus brown rice.

I've now officially made mom a brown rice convert. :D It was soooooooo good I had about three helpings!

Argh, now I'm hungry and all I have is bread and cheese. Well, at least I have something to eat!

> 101 I don't think so, at least, not according to what I read on Wikipedia (being otherwise unfamiliar with the dish you named). I pretty much made the dish as described in the cookbook, which called for plantain or banana to be pureed with tomatoes, etc. No meat products were used in the making of the dish, as opposed to the traditional feijoada, apparently. And the rice was cooked in the casserole instead of serving alongside. Bittman doesn't use the Brazilian term, either. OTOH, I suppose a vegan might consider Bittman's recipe to be a fair-enough approximation of the ethnic dish.

And I will attest that it certainly was hearty enough (served with the mango salsa) that the shrimp were completely unnecessary. I definitely expect to make this again.

All this yummy talk of Arroz y Frijoles ... so I made a Tortilla de' Espana with red peppers, par-boiled potato cubes, peas, sliced onion and added shrimp and some prosciutto that was left over from the Carborona I served last night.

Served with a cheapo, rough red Cotes d' Rhone ($4.99) it was a great success with SWMBO!

ETA http://spanishfood.about.com/od/tapas/ss/tortilla.htm

My husband made a rootbeer float for my dinner tonight. He knows how to please me. It's 101° at 7pm.

I've put a pot full of country spare ribs on the stove with Mambo sauce all over them. Cooking them at a low simmer until they are tender and yummy.

ah! I had to google the sauce ... its seems that Mambo or Mumbo is an almost exclusive DC comfort food! Sounds like a typical Southern Bar-B-Q condiment though Mrs Lee - ideal for your ribs.
Bon appetit!

//Or good eatin' y'all ... Guten Appetit...¡Buen provecho! ... or probably, in England ... Eat that before it gets cold! (: D)//

MrsLee (#104) there is absolutely nothing better than a root beer float. I don't even wait for the excuse of triple-digit temperatures. The best lunch I can imagine is a grilled cheese sandwich and a float!

Root beer floats are "da bomb!" And don't put it in one of those teeny glasses either, make it a big glass!

Big heavy thick-glass mug that has been in the freezer.

oh, merrymary, you are killing me!

#108 ~~ Ahhhhhhhh!

Cooking shmooking. I had strawberry shortcake for dinner. Baked the biscuits early this morning.

Making this summer's third batch of baked beans and franks in the crockpot today. Multiple meals and it doesn't heat up the kitchen.

Dinner last night was grilled whole trout, stuffed with almonds and raisins with wilted spinach and Lyonnaise potatoes.
The Debris!

A humble meal, but so good: a baked potato covered with beef brisket, cheese, and chives, with sour cream on the side. No barbeque sauce, no extras. Just simple deliciousness.

Humble? Brisket as a mere topping! Sounds like a real treat to me. I remember baked potatoes cooked in the community bonfire of Guy Fawkes Night, all charred and tasting delicious. Toppings are an added level.

My dear SWMBO left me a breakfast egg this morning!

Now that's very, very cool!

Making minestrone for a church Italian themed dinner tonight. I don't cook well, but I do make a pretty good minestrone.

... and if you make a lot, it becomes a maxi-strone ;-)

119 - *rimshot*

We are living off of the pozole I made a couple of days ago. That and vegetables. Love this time of year. I will be making scalloped potatoes and ham on Sunday, due to a large quantity of potatoes and ham. :)

But I hope Mrs Lee, that your pozolé does not contain the chopped-up remains of sacrificed victims to the Azteca gods? A friend in Monterrey (where they use tripe) said that after the Spanish banned the heart-wrenching on the pyramids the people turned to pork as "it tastes very similar"!

Interestingly enough in the Polynesian islands the cannibals called human meat "long pig" so it seems that we must taste similar! Hope you (still) enjoy your ham!
(; D

Not to further turn anyone's stomach, but:

I audited some meat science classes in grad school, and the Prof had this to say about the matter. Humans and swine are alike in that we are omnivorous and are non-ruminants. Other large livestock species are ruminant (sheep, cattle, goats) as are many game animals (deer, elk, moose). Ruminant diet and biochemistry is distinct, and it imparts distinct characteristics to the meat. But swine eat like we do, and metabolize their food similarly. So, he said, of all the food animals a Westerner is familiar with, we would probably taste most like pork.

Hmmm, I wonder about bear? I've never tasted it, so I don't know if it tastes like pork, but then, I've never tasted human either, and have no immediate intentions of doing so! :)

121 - The only victim was the poor little piggy. I took a shortcut and used a prepared sauce. I was reading ingredients and it had everything I would have used, no extra chemicals and came in a sweet little glass container we now use for drinking out of. It also save me hours of work. I'm learning to depend on prepared sauces more now that I work. I'm just very careful which ones I buy.

I solved one dilemma, regular corn chips have been much too salty for me lately, and I couldn't find any low sodium ones. I love me some chips and salsa. However, I looked at the pre-fried corn tortillas and one of the packages had half the salt per serving of chips. I love them!

An experiment is cooking. In my slow cooker, I have lentils, butter beans, tinned tomato, asparagus and diced sausage, with a bay leaf and oregano. It smells OK. I live alone, so if it makes me fart all night, I only gas myself.

Black Pudding and Camembert Soup, Boiled Bacon Comsommé, Saveloy on a Bed of Lychees, Liver in Lager, Pork Cyst, Clams in Ham with Pan-Fried Cocke-based Sauce, Prune Quiche, King Prawn (just one) in Jam Sauce, Duck in Chocolate Sauce, Tongues in a Rhubarb Hollandaise, Tripe Soufflé, Quails on a Bed of Spinach and Treacle, Kidney Vols-au-vent, Chilled Brains, Prune Quiche, Grilled Trotter with Eggs Over Easy.
Well, it's the weekend. And life is sweet.

It seems to me that M'sieur jbbarret mocks?

Cabbage on lychee (unpeeled perhaps?) and Chilled brain? Shades of Hannibal Lecter and back to "Long Pig"?

126 - Yep, he's playing.

I'm cooking scalloped potatoes and ham tonight, with some cheddar cheese. This is a request from my son, but I'm not sure I will. It's going to be over 100° here today. Hmm, maybe a potato and ham salad with a vinegar based dressing would be more fitting. He doesn't eat cheese anyway.

Whatever I end up doing, cleaning out the refrigerators must come first. Ugh. I'm tired just thinking about it.

>127 "playing"? Perhaps, but not mocking (#126); certainly not of any of the posts on this thread. And certainly no reference to Long Pig. The clue to the origins of the recipes in #125 are contained within the post.
My own humble efforts are often more akin to toast a al Belaqua, but sans mustard, sans gorgonzola, sans everything.
But today, Sunday, and things were different.
Breakfast: An orange, folowed by a Loch Fyne kipper, grilled, with toast, not Belaqua black this time but golden brown. Followed by more toast with ginger marmalade and seven cups of Earl Grey.

jbbarret - I was wondering if they were from the new cookbook for the Game of Thrones series. :)

//#128 ... now that IS a hearty breakfast! We were lucky to find some Finny-Haddy in the British Shop downtown last week and we enjoyed that.//

Mrs Lee a compromise as the lad dislikes cheese could be to use the recipe by Jeffrey Steingarten from his book The man Who Ate Everything. He does not use any cheese but the seperate boiling of the hot milk (and nutmeg) to add to the layered scallop potatoes, dotted with butter, do give it a very nice cheesy taste.

(http://www.ochef.com/r254.htm)

Thank you John, actually, my original recipe never had cheese in it. I like them both ways, but no onions! :) I could probably enjoy it with crisped onions on top, though.

I am feeling very much in the mood to not cook at all today. :) I might tell everyone to be satisfied with ham sandwiches and green salad. Ever have one of those days where you wake up all ambitious, do one or two things on your list and then find your reserves are gone and you only want to sit and read? This is that day for me.

I'm making tuna salad, a favorite light meal for a hot day. Later there'll be birthday cake in my favorite flavor. Like the Hobbits' "second breakfast," this is "second birthday" because I was on the road for the real one.

MrsLee, I've come to savor my own lack of ambition. I truly enjoy the pace of slow days after so many years of working in high tech, where everything happens at breakneck speed. Sit still, move to a new spot, and sit still some more, like a cat: a perfect day.

124 - As predicted, the experimental stew I made the other night has been christened Fart Stew. It didn't taste too bad though.

//Choreocrat ... you invented a Phew-Stew?//

MrsLee - the true original (Lyonaise) recipe always had thinly sliced onion in among the spuds.

When SWMBO and I first went to Lyon we met those scallop-potatoes served with a Pâté en Croûte . Mais non, we said, it is cold today we want something hot please ... just to embarrass ourselves!

Phew-Stew! HA! That made me laugh.

Me too.

Today I did the potato and ham salad. Added lightly cooked cauliflower, celery, tomatoes, avocado and made a dressing from garlic, chipotle chili, agave nectar, balsamic vinegar, lime juice and seasonings, olive and vegetable oil. My family will need to add salt, but I'm going to add sweet pickled jalapenos to mine. I poured some whipping cream over it after I mixed in the dressing. It sits in the fridge now, curing. :) Tastes good.

Bubble and Squeak

JB for breakfast? Nice and browned on the bottom? HP sauce?

While I was away, my husband and son made a meal of beef stew and biscuits. It's long been our custom for an easy, quick supper to start with a can of Dinty Moore and add potatoes, carrots, meat, some peas or green beans, and maybe a few other things (I love parsnips). My mother did the same thing, back many decades ago. It's been a reliable family staple all my life.

Both of them, when they tasted it, reacted strongly: "Man, that's salty." Checking the label, they found that there's 990 milligrams of sodium per 236-gram serving--that's nearly a gram of salt for approximately one cup! Even with all the additions (which roughly doubled the volume) and no added seasoning, it was excessive.

They didn't have an older can to compare it with, but the change seemed dramatic to them.

After all these years, this cupboard standby is being crossed off the list. We don't even know if anyone else makes it, but we are all averse to the tomatoey versions we've encountered now and then. Beef stew ought to have beef gravy. I guess we'll be on our own now for beef stew, but without the starter can it won't be the convenient grab it's always been when we needed a default meal on short notice.

This seems to be yet another instance of manufacturers' cheapening a product to the point of ruining it, or at any rate ruining its value, in the current rage of bottom-line fever that in the end can only alienate customers and destroy their confidence in products and brands.

which reminds me. Yonks ago the Parks Board (now SANParks) used to cull a certain number of buffalo each year, and a proportion of the cull found its way into cans as stew -- easily the best meat stew available locally. I'm not sure what happened (foot-and-mouth, conscience, or a study showing that culling wasn't doing anything useful) but the stew vanished one day. The only memories are one can (presumably empty) with a label in the museum at Skukuza, and a large number of cans being used by the nursery for selling tree seeds and planting medium in. Gastronomically, almost as distressing as Meredy's story, but I suspect the buffalo might disagree.

we would probably taste most like pork.

In other words, pork tastes like people.

Now there's something to give one pause.

A line from A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo, that I've never been able to forget: ". . . pigs feasting on roast human."

Amended post that in retrospect probably belonged Outside, as well as being a killjoy. Sorry.

>138:

B&S for breakfast? No, never really fancied that. Though I don't see why not.

Nice and browned on the bottom? Absolutely. Essential.

HP sauce? Well, no. As a traditionalist, perhaps I should. But it's Worcester for me now.

And the the B&S is fried in olive oil now rather than beef dripping. But at least in all other ways it's true to its traditions. But in a local supermarket recently I saw Bubble & Squeak in a packet ! Does that make any sense at all?

A B&S pre-pack!!?? Astounding. Absolutely no sense at all, given the essential basis of the dish! Although I could see the point if it was here in Florida where I saw "made from scratch" scrambled eggs on a menu!

I find HP (or the USA version A1) too sweet nowadays and almost exclusively use the ("new") Worcestershire Thick.

Beef dripping! Ah... and even better (worse?) those horse-fat oil deep fried Belgium fries of long ago!

We did find some probably illegally imported suet in the Brit-shop the other day. Spotted Dick and custard anyone?

The PC brigade prefer that we say Spotted Richard these days.

Poor Richard.

My English friend spent a few days going around butchers back in Canberra looking for one who could get him suet. He found it, too, and was very happy with himself. It was worth it - his Christmas pudding was delicious!

jbbarret ... Complexion-challenged Richard next? Will it taste the same I ask.

Choreocrat ... from what I recall of Canberra if he walked it would take a few days! Suet does enhance any pudding, particularly and especially a steamed one. We will use it most likely for Steak & Kidney (steamed-in-a-cloth) pudding.

Today I backed a lemon cake (from a box) to be made into a decorated Lemon Cake with Raspberry Filling for a Cake Walk on Saturday. It's part of a big fundraiser at my church. I also plan to make German Coleslaw (for the food stand), Picnic Chocolate Applesauce Cake (for the bake sale), and several pies (for the pie-and-ice-cream stand). Pie flavors include blueberry, triple berry, and apple.

I love pies! What, please, constitutes a "triple berry' or is it just any three you have to hand?

Well, the triple berry pie I'm planning will use the frozen blueberry, raspberry, blackberry mixture I bought recently. As far as I know, that's the usual mix. But my research was not exhaustive.

Tonight we (well, me boss really) are cooking using that suet we found - a steamed steak pudding in a bowl with a cloth covering. Using some prime rib beef, onions, carrots and red-wine gravy with Bisto.

That sounds like a good stick-to-the-ribs winter dish! The kind of thing that would be good here, right now ;)

Well it has cooled down here now - only 91° this evening!

But of course you are in winter in Durban right now (?) and I recall FREEZING in Jo'burg a few years ago!

Made this weekend:
1. Chicken salad
2. Minestrone Soup
3. Summer Porridge
4. Rock cakes

If I were to die tomorrow, my husband would be able to eat for at least a week before needing to cook for himself. Of course, he did take me out to lunch today.

I like the perspective you put on that, jillmwo. When I take stock in that way, it's usually to assess cupboards and freezer and estimate how long we could last without going to the grocery store. (I did worry about this at the tail end of 1999.) The answer is usually about three weeks. We'd probably be living on pasta for the last week.

What are rock cakes?

Yesterday I attended a potluck, and someone had brought a curry rice dish that I found delicious--loaded with flavor but not too spicy, and including cherry tomatoes, celery, some kind of beans, corn, and one or more minced green herbs. I thought it was a salad, but my husband thought it was a casserole that had just gone cold. I don't know who brought it or I'd have asked for the recipe. Now I'm wishing I'd persisted in asking around.

It was scrumptious!

I visited a friend over the weekend and we mostly ate at the music festival (which is practically a world food festival too), but we also made kropsua, which is a sort of sweet egg dish that my family always used to have, topped with maple syrup (or cinnamon and sugar, or jam, or whatever, but we had maple syrup yesterday).

We also made potatoes with garlic and rosemary, and had strawberries and blueberries. It was a lovely meal.

Meredy - try Thai curries I find them more flavourful (lots of lemon grass and lime leaves) and less 'hot'.

I made a thai curry/shepherds pie for dinner (chicken massaman curry with peas and kumera (sweet potato) topping. It is one of J's favourite meals and will do us for lunch tomorrow as well.

>156: In England at least, rock cakes are little cakes with currants (small raisins) in, distinctive because you spoon dollops of the mixture straight onto a baking sheet to cook them. Thus they end up looking like small piles of rock, rather than neat cup-shaped cakes. I will be interested to hear if jillmwo has a different explanation!

That's exactly the type of rock cakes I made! These don't require much of anything except butter; they take a full stick of that! Otherwise, it's just a little flour, baking powder, sugar, raisins, a scant 3 tablespoons of milk and maybe brown sugar to sprinkle on them just before they go in the oven.

I do find that using a cookie scoop with the dough works best for maximizing the number of cookies in a batch. I get anywhere from 15-24 using a small cookie scoop. And they do look like small rock piles!

I found the recipe in the wake of the whole Downton Abbey madness earlier this year. The problem is that they're totally addictive. I can eat a whole batch by myself over the course of a week. On the other hand, in terms of summertime hospitality, they go ever so nicely with either hot tea or cold lemonade. Let me know if anyone wants the recipe or just google Downton-Abbey-rock-cakes and it'll pop up.

I do remember eating vast quantites of them at a time whenever my mum made them!

... and one of the reasons our (English) Mums loved them is that the following day, when even harder, they can still be delicious treated as a scone - cut in half, spread with (even more) butter and jam, splodge of thick cream if you have it. Now they have become a Devon Cream tea!

Just had the most wonderful flavored cantaloupe. Now my mouth is burning because it does that when I eat most fresh fruit and some vegetables raw, but totally worth it.

#155 Too right! I grew up in Johannesburg and yes it does freeze every night in winter (like now). Our night temperature tonight is said to be going to drop to 11°C, but it was already below that an hour ago when we all got home from work.

I guess it is stretching a point to call Biltong "cooking"? But I recall it fondly. Particularly when served with a brandy "sundowner" in Pretoria or Cape.

Tonight I am baking a French Meat Pie, using leftover crust from the pies I made for our church festival. Tomorrow I am hoping to try a Green Tomato Pie, which I have never tried before. It's a sweet pie from tradition, and I'm guessing it will taste lemony. Or yucky. Really could go either way.

Very interesting ... we love Green Tomatoes Southern' style. What, by the way, is a French Meat pie?

The recipe calls it French; my guess is it's because it's a solid-ish pie with a double crust rather than a saucy potato-topped dish like Shepherd's pie. It also uses allspice, which is not so common in American meat cookery. But I've never really associated allspice with French cuisine, either.

Very interesting that, calling for All Spice. It was only when my wife and I went to Belize that we discovered it is a single berry from one tree - Pimenta dioica- (soft pepper?). In the UK, where we are originally from, a double-crust has to be a pie, a single crust is a tart. Single (bottom) crust "pies" seem to be only Italian (Think Pizza, originally Firenza (or Florence) pie.) So why "French" I wonder? the use of "Frenched"; meaning folded perhaps?

Anyway - be interested to hear how that Green Tom pie worked out!

We went to a BBQ/smoked meat eatery today. Tried their Fried Green tomatoes. Pretty bland, but the rest of the food was delish.

Also stopped on the way home at a stand and purchased tomatoes, nectarines and cucumbers. Yum.

The French meat pie sounds like tourtière, which I always thought was from Quebec, but could be from France. I think the recipe I've used before also has a bit of nutmeg in it.

edited to fix spelling

Mmmhmmm, I have a recipe supposedly from Canada which has minced meat, solidly packed, seasoned with allspice and nutmeg. Those seasonings are used on meat in Italian cooking as well, and in Greece, cinnamon is added. I'm not a huge fan of cinnamon (except in my pumpkin lamb stew), but I frequently use allspice, nutmeg and a smidgeon of cloves in my pot roast or other meat recipes.

The Quebec connection makes sense to me, and the description is very similar. I didn't pack the filling in as tightly as I probably should, to avoid smooshing the rather delicate crust I was working with. But the flavor was good. I cheated and added some peas to the mix, for color and interest.

Didn't get to the Green Tomato pie yet. I watched a movie instead, at a neighbor's house. Maybe this afternoon.

#167 You have to know how to make it -- I think the sainted Hildagonda Duckitt has a recipe :D
More recently, local "arty-farty" chefs have taken to using grated biltong as a flavouring, most successfully in a thick cream soup. (When BekkaJo's kid was teething, i thought of suggesting she find a South African shop in the hopes they might sell her a bit of ostrich biltong, the ideal pacifier for teething kids in my y00t.)

#171 Curiously, the Bot. Garden here in Durban can grow Bay Rum (Pimenta racemosa) but not Allspice. The Tropical Crops institute in Nelspruit can grow Allspice (only just -- it won't breed for them) but not Bay Rum.

Cooking a Tagine tonight (a Moroccan stew) with chicken chunks, garbanzos, onion, red pepper and currants flavored with Cumin, paprika, and saffron. Served over couscous steamed in chicken broth.

No Allspice though!

//I thought Nelspruit had suffered a name change? Something unpronounceable with no vowels? But not the botanical gardens perhaps?//

Nelspruit is now signposted (but not necessarily called in conversation) Mbombela. The Tropical Crops place is next door to the Lowveld (no name change) National Botanical Garden.

Neither of us was particularly inspired tonight and we have a dinner-date with friends tomorrow in one of our favorite restaurants so we chose ....
Dippy-eggs with soldiers.

Awaiting stunned silence.
(;D

Googled it. (I'm from Nebraska. What do I know?) Found 2 recipes. Are your soldiers Vegimited or not?

LOL! I actually DID Marmite (the UK equivalent product) the remaining slice of toast! Served, of course, with PG Tips tea.

!

 

 

 

(read as: stunned silence)

Meredy actually is cooperative and gives you the stunned silence you wanted. Meanwhile, while I *think* I know what dippy eggs with soldiers might translate to in American English, perhaps you would be kind enough to confirm my understanding. Soft boiled eggs with toast strips, right? Not a heavy meal, by any means.

It was 103° yesterday, so dinner consisted of: leftover seasoned bread from a restaurant, slightly cooked broccoli, 3 crisp corn tortillas dipped into salsa and a Negra Modelo. Tonight might be more of the same.

Tomorrow will be grilled meats and veggies though.

I love the Negra Modelo! JUST the right touch.

Quite right MrsLee eggs and toast strips - we call it a "High Tea" when dinner is as light as that. It was 97° here so that was what we wanted too... something light.

I am impressed with Meredy's totally accurate visual representation of a stunned silence!

Locally famous Bread Pudding is baking in the oven, should be done in about 20-25 minutes. This time, I experimented with adding dollops of leftover raspberry pie filling, so we'll see how that turns out. It sure smells good.

The Green Tomato Pie turned out well, and I very well may make it again. OTOH, I sorta got pie-d out last week, with both the GTP and the French Meat Pie. A person only needs so much pie crust (= high in fat) in a week.

For supper, I am craving limburger cheese with scallions on crisp whole-grain crackers. I'll pair this with some kind of veggies (probably canned green beans) and fruit (cherries?).

Oh! The smell of a bread pudding in the oven! Is it YOUR recipe that locally famous perhaps Carla? SWMBO makes a scrumptious, if heavy one, with a touch of whiskey (or rum) lots of currants or ... left over fruit!

Tonight I cooked her a dinner of Chicken Kiev (with brown long-grain and green beans) starting the butter roll mix around ten this morning. It was very well received.

I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek. It's my recipe for bread pudding, and it's "locally famous" in that I won't share it with people. Since it took me 20+ years to replicate my Mom's incredibly good bread pudding, I generally will only share the cookbook recipe that I began with, in my culinary journey.

Likewise, my Mom's rice pudding was the best in the world. It took me just as long to figure that one out, and I didn't have a recipe to start with. I had to make it up on my own, with but vague recollection of how Mom did it. The rice pudding recipe I just don't share. Period.

Aha! Cotched ya, as they say. It is our (collective) Mum's recipes for both SWMBO Bread-Pud and the Rice Pudding I make for her - that she loves- that we use too.

Both call for Nutmeg. I found out from my sisters recently that the secret to the rice-pudding was start with raw rice in pure milk on very slow oven settings - not stove-stop as I was starting - then adding brown or raw sugar. The addition of butter, cream and finally the nutmeg came much later than I was doing.

Great fun isn't it?

Well, yeah. But also frustrating - in the case of the rice pudding. Most of the "failed" bread pudding attempts were still edible and tasty, just not the same as Mom's. But the rice pudding failures were frustrating almost to the point of heartbreak. I so wanted to taste Mom's rice pudding again, and none of the conventional recipes came even close. All that hope and longing put into the effort, only to be dashed.

But that one time, when I finally followed my instincts (despite what all the recipes said) and took a chance on that vague memory . . . Jubilation.

Not to say you ought to do otherwise, walk2work, because you're certainly entitled to your position, but I'm just wondering: why not share a recipe? I've never quite understood that policy since one's own specialties don't seem to me to be diminished by teaching someone else how to reproduce them. Maybe I'd feel differently if I had an enviable original recipe.

I made a beet-carrot-quinoa salad for dinner tonight. It also had pumpkin seeds, sliced almonds, diced apple, green onions, and a really good vinaigrette dressing. It was *yum*.

However, the recipe said it fed 6, and I cut it in half and it was still too much for the four of us (well, 3 as #2 son barely tasted it).

I just made my first-ever made-from-scratch tomato sauce using ingredients from my garden!

Meredy - That's what I was thinking. I don't understand not sharing a recipe like that, especially one that you love so much. I love sharing recipes I love.

Rozax! Congratulations! A really cool achievement.

I made a Deathstar piñata cake for my son Ollie's 6th birthday over the weekend! Here are some pics.

195--Yum...and such a satisfying feeling!!

I'm looking forward to grilled stuffed jalapenos from my garden this weekend...so good! I got a special pepper grilling holder from Williams-Sonoma which was surprisingly not that expensive, and it works a treat.

My neice is coming for a visit on Friday, and I've got some lovely wafer thin crackers that go perfectly with cheeses (triple creame St. Angel, mild Cheddar, and smoked Gouda). We're also going to have a nice Greek olive mix, roasted garlic (my favorite), strawberries, and wine. I'm splurging a bit, because it's my birthday lunch.

>198: That cake is awesome!

198 - WHOOOOAAAAAA! What a fun cake!

Thanks guys - it was fun to make :D

#193, 196 - I appreciate your perspectives on the issue of sharing original recipes. I think a major part of my reticence to share these two recipes is because they are hard-won recreations of my Mom's recipes. I lost Mom when I was twenty, after being her major care-provider during a disabling illness that left her unable to speak or write. She was only 54. She would have gladly given me the recipes, but she couldn't.

I would gladly share those recreated recipes with anyone in my family who wanted them. No one has ever asked, yet. But my sister was helpful in my project of recreating Mom's baked beans (which were also awesome), has shared others of Mom's recipes she has, and is also willing to help with a couple others of Mom's specialties that neither of us have recipes for.

I live far from home now in a new community, and somehow these recipes are just too special for just anyone to be able to make. I know it's not exactly rational, but then emotions rarely are . . . . Eventually I may give them out. I have said that I will share the rice pudding recipe when I am preparing to leave here. (My vocation is characterized by periodic relocation.) But I gladly share other recipes, that I have adapted from cookbooks, etc. It's just Mom's recipes that are this special.

204 - I get that. All I would suggest is to make sure you have it written down somewhere for your family, to be shared when you are ready, and not before, even if that isn't in your lifetime. I love our family's heritage recipes, it is lovely that our respective grandmothers wrote them down and passed them on. One of my very favorite heirlooms.

But I really do get the not sharing with just everyone in a small community. I always enjoyed that certain people in our church brought certain dishes only they knew how to make. We just made sure to put our order in for them! :)

I also had the sad occasion to once try to make a recipe made by a friend; and, I was completely a dolt! And did not make it well. I think she was disappointed and maybe even a little angry. So I certainly would understand her not wanting to give her recipes to me, again.

Nobody cooking this week? Must be the weather. We just cooked some easy-peasy junk food for dinner. It was a disaster so back to Escoffier!

Well, at my mother's last night, I made some stuffed mushrooms, with sage, breadcrumbs, bacon, garlic and the mushroom stems. Those were lovely. Also some shredded pork with comino, cilantro, chili powder, garlic and oregano. It was loved by all.

Tonight, my husband might grill some steaks, and I will fix some vegetables from my parent's garden. Zucchini, carrots, and onions to be grilled as well. Otherwise, I am not interested in cooking, nor eating much, either. Although, my husband made a custard which I will try. Cool and smooth and creamy. :)

Mmm, I love stuffed mushrooms. I've never added bacon, but it's a great idea. I do include some minced green pepper and think it adds a nice mild tang.

Roast lamb and trimmings for an anniversary dinner.

hfglen have a Happy Anniversary! Even though you made me jealous - SWMBO was nearly tempted recently but when priced a (simple) leg of lamb was nearly $30. So no mint-sauce, roast potatoes and two veg for us this week!

Black-eyed peas and ham hocks, with a little bit of bacon added for flavor. Rice steamed wth butter, and fresh garden tomatoes.

Tomorrow I plan to cook up a mess a' greens - collards and possibly dandelion - but it's too late for that tonight.

>212 a mess 'a greens - ah, yes. Memories of childhood...

Thank you, John! yes, lamb is unreasonably expensive here, too.

Wonder why (in the South at least?) it is always called a "mess a greens"? I love them gently slow-cooked around a hock of ham, sprinkled with sea-salt and malt vinegar.

But I do have to plug in the slow-cooker out on the porch!

pork country ribs in slow cooker with Bar B Q sauce

215: Could that be related to "mess" in the sense of a meal (mess kit, mess tent, officers' mess)? Or perhaps a corruption of "mass"?

The "a" is undoubtedly a loose pronunciation of "of," and it seems to be in informal use among English speakers everywhere.

I remember my Canadian grandmother (of the Maritime provinces) remarking about my grandfather, "There's nothing he likes better than a fine mess o' coots." (They're a kind of waterfowl. My father wrinkled his nose and said coots are stringy and greasy and he didn't care for them at all.)

Many of the settlers of the Appalachians and other Southern U.S. areas had Scottish and Irish roots in common with other parts of the East and Northeast, so these expressions could have common origins.

Yes Meredy, I agree, probably related to the dining MESS of the military background - actually, in turn, from Mess as in a group that agree to form an association for the purposes of procuring and consuming food on a co-operative basis.

I never heard it as in this way in the UK though.

Merriam-Webster's online dictionary says this about "mess":

Origin of MESS
Middle English mes, from Anglo-French, from Late Latin missus course at a meal, from missus, past participle of mittere to put, from Latin, to send — more at smite
First Known Use: 14th century

The greens - messy or otherwise - did not get made today, alas. OTOH, I did purchase some lager and had a go at making some cornmeal beer bread.

I still have five bottles left, so I suspect there will be a fair amount of beer bread experimentation upcoming.

Yum - I'm eating a greek salad made with fresh cucumber from my sister's garden.

Freshly caught Copper River Red Salmon, couscous and green beans.

Winter casserole, but as we haven't done our vege shopping I added some beans instead of mushrooms and/or carrots and tried to add a touch of heat. In the end we concluded I had made chilli rather than casserole. It was nice, just not what was expected.

222 Arctic-Stranger Murray, did you also catch the fish? That river is up somewhere near you. Been many years since I was able to catch n; cook fish, but nothing tastes so good. We recently found a new large bead coucous and I used the last for a rissoto and re-cycled the can. No we are looking for the brand again!

Yes, the redhead and I got 21 of them the last time we went dip netting. There is truly nothing like a fresh red.

I used couscous from the bins; started dry, boiled it, added sundried tomatoes, Italian and ranch dressing, lime, garlic, pepper and a trace of sea salt. It was the smaller bead, but I could have gotten Israeli couscous which is larger.

If I can get myself motivated today, I will be making a salad of new red potatoes, pearl onions and petite peas. I may possibly add some carrots. My parents grew all but the pearl onions. I may save the carrots to combine with cabbage which they also grew, for a slaw. I would have creamed the first dish, but it is very hot and I'm looking for healthy stuff, too.

My family recently went to this upscale, $100-per-plate restaurant in Las Vegas.  Groxx and I didn't go (we have little interest in Las Vegas, and my parents will be swinging by our place on their vacation, anyway), so my dad filled me in on the entire meal.  It sounded really nice, so I suggested, "Wanna just go out for pizza when you get here?"

Made picadillo from the Time-Life series Latin American Cookery (touchstone not working) book last night. yum. Must try it in tacos one day.

I'm making a crockpot full of chili, with added leftovers because there was a bunch of stuff in the fridge that needed to be used up. Smells great, but dinner's not for 3 hours yet. I think I'll have to have a snack!

Tiny lamb cutlets doused in olive oil and smothered with fresh mint, served with spaghetti-squash and crispy roasted potatoes with a gravy of the pan sauces. With a nice rounded $4.95 Cote d' Rhone from Winn Dixie.

All cooked by SWMBO not me, so delicious of course.

We've been eating out too often, lately.  I'm thinking I'm gonna start making large dishes that'll last us a week.

We tried that too. And pre-ordained menus that we put up on a chalk board. The problem we had with the giant dish of rice n' beans (or whatever) is that one got 'full up' on flavour the second day, and could not eat it all on by the third or fourth. Sigh.
We had Fruits de Mer tonight. Sounds grand but was just a cold salad of scallops, shrimp, a piece of cod and three sauces with lots of sliced limes and lemons.

Still sounds grand, John.

232 - Exactly my problem. I live alone, and there's a grand temptation to just not cook half the time and eat bread and cheese for dinner. So people tell me to cook a lot of something and you don't have to worry about cooking for the week. By the time I've eaten the same thing for dinner two days in a row, it really doesn't seem so appetising for a third. (I can't freeze things - I don't have space or desire for a big freezer). I end up with a fridge full of meals that have gone off.

I compromise by cooking two or three portions of something, so that I eat it one night and then the next night and/or lunch at work. It frequently breaks, but it's still better than cooking for myself every night or not eating vegetables for a week.

Lovely J has just made a Shepard's Pie which is cooking in the oven (and filling the house with lovely smells) We will freeze the leftovers for a meal (or two) next week

//# 235 jbbarret Hey! He looks just like me!//

A true Shepard's Pie SpicyCat with Lamb or mutton and not beef I bet! Oh that NZ Lamb we used to get in the UK ... sigh.

>234: I'm onto Day 4 of this week's lunch creation. I feel your pain.

Well... tonight's dinner has been chocolate and honey sandwiches. I justify not feeling guilty because I had salad for lunch.

Not enough Choreocrat - OK for calories but not enough! But, as you say, you live alone so the real problem is that 'but it's still better than cooking for myself every night or not eating vegetables for a week.' Perhaps we can set up a (virtual) visiting cook schedule?

I made a crock pot stew last night. By this morning it smelled so good I had a bowl for breakfast.

I ate greasy fair food for supper last night: deep-fried veggies, a bratwurst, and a cinnamon-sugar elephant ear.

Tonight there's to be a weenie roast in honor of my birthday. Hot dogs, chips, baked beans, marinated cucumbers, and s'mores.

So now, for lunch, I'm going to eat healthy with a canellini bean-tuna salad and sliced fresh tomatoes.

// walk2Work - you must be the "carney" we were looking for in The Person Below Me thread! http://www.librarything.com/topic/140266 //

With that supper of cholesterol and Trans-fat walk2Work it is just as well that you do! (walk to work)

240 - It's not as regular as I make it sound. I do have good (well... healthy) meals regularly. That was more of an "I had a crappy day so I'm comfort eating" night.

Today I'm making a big batch of chili, using beer for the first time. I had some bottles of lager leftover from trying a beer bread recipe.

Right now it tastes really good, but it has another half hour or so to simmer. Since I put two dried chiles in it (anchos and negro), and since heat increases over time, you'd better bring your fire extinguisher of choice.

My son has just signed us up for a biweekly delivery of a box of locally grown organic vegetables. The first delivery came last night. It includes an eggplant that looks like this, three heirloom tomatoes, two yellow onions, 3/4 lb. of green beans, some young-looking skinny carrots like this, and three or four small yellow bell peppers that are paler versions of this.

Any suggestions?

I can easily use the green beans and the rest, but I have no idea what to do with the eggplant, which doesn't look a bit like the ones I occasionally buy, with the smooth, tender purple skin.

I would try slicing the eggplant into 1/2 inch thick pieces, dip them in egg, and bread crumbs, and bake them. Of course adding your favorite herbs. Some garlic probably. Oregano?

Chop up the eggplant and onions into about 1" cubes, add some garlic cloves, sprinkle with a bit of salt and fresh ground pepper, drizzle with olive oil, toss. Put in oven @broil about 4-5" from element, stir every 5 minutes until it is roasted tender with toasty brown spots. You can add tomatoes or summer squash if you want.

I'm on my mobile so I haven't looked at the eggplant pic, but in my experience you can make ratatouille (spelling?) with just about any kind of eggplant.

I'd be inclined to go to my favourite Indian / curry recipe books and start salivating. Failing that, browse the library. Either way, you have the makings of a great vegetarian curry there.

Thanks for the great ideas! Do I peel the eggplant? This seems to have a much thicker (or firmer) skin than the purple kind, which feels so tender and almost delicate to the touch. And do I leave the seeds or scoop them out?

I've never peeled or seeded any eggplant, that kind included, but that doesn't mean I'm correct, it only means I'm lazy. :)

I went online and found the recipe my sister used for beet, carrot, and quinoa salad. Yum. It also has apple, raisins, green onion, almonds, and pumpkin seeds. I used one of her home-grown beets, carrots from the farmers market, and my own crabapples and chives (because I don't have green onions). I only had a bit of it tonight, as I'm taking the rest to share with the friends I'm camping with this weekend.

Meredy, I was inspired this morning to look for eggplant recipes in Indian Delights. I haven't tried this one, but if I had that eggplant here, I would.

Brinjal Rawayya (serves 6)

2 large brinjal (eggplant)
4 tomatoes, cut thinly
2 onions, finely sliced
1 tsp chilli powder (this is pure ground chilli, not the stuff you use in chilli con carne)
1/2 tsp black crushed pepper
1/2 tsp crushed cumin
1/4tsp turmeric
1 1/2 tsp coarse salt
125g (5 oz) cheddar cheese, slice very thinly
juice of 1/2 lemon
1 tblsp oil
1 tblsp crushed dry mint
1 green pepper, cut in rings, then cut each ring in half

Slice eggplant 5 or 6 times lengthwise from tip to stem but do not cut through. Sprinkle with coarse salt and stand for 20 minutes. Drain off liquid.
Between each slit arrange tomato slices, onion rings, cheese and green pepper. Mix spices together in lemon and oil and brush this liberally over brinjal and fillings.
Place in ovenproof dish. Pour 2 tablespoons oil over each and cover with foil or lid.
Bake at 175°C / 350° F for 30 minutes.

Hope this helps.

PS. This looks like both peel and seeds stay attached.

That sounds so interesting, hfglen! Thank you. I imagine you serve this, then, by slicing across the width (i.e., latitudinally), so each serving includes all the things you wedged into the longitudinal cuts? I've never seen anything prepared that way, but I can picture it.

Can't offhand think of any other way of serving it

I suppose if each eggplant were the right size, you would serve a whole one per person. Perhaps you might slice them in half for service, rather like an attractive fillet.

It's my understanding that we're having coffee and cookie hour after church today. I had some leftover buttercream icing from another occasion, so I made a chocolate fudge flavored cake with yellow roses and viney raspberry-colored flowers. (I should take a picture of it. Maybe I can figure out how to upload the picture later.)

#258 Then they'd need to be almost too small to prepare like that. Eggplant is very filling, which is why the recipe says one will feed 3 people.

258 - Want to see picture.

I've also roasted eggplant whole for an hour, with garlic on the side (only roast garlic for 10-20 min), then scooped out the insides of the eggplant and pureed with the garlic, sesame seeds and a little olive oil, add salt and pepper. Makes a great dip/spread. You could add chopped cilantro/parsley if you like, or chives.

Groxx made some ratatouille using the tomatoes from my garden.  Fortunately, it tastes better as leftovers than it does the evening we make it.  Unfortunately, I don't think we'll be getting many more tomatoes this season.

We also used the recipe on page 92 of The Vegetarian Gourmet.

For supper tonight I'm having leftover bratwurst and sauerkraut cooked in Yuengling's Lager, with mashed potatoes. Who knew that beer could be such a versatile cooking liquid? And for sides I have a yellow summer-squash and sweet corn dish that I cooked from a recently-found magazine recipe. It was very yum, too.

I love summer squash. It's my favorite vegetable.

Heh, we've been chopping up any odd combinations of leftovers (mostly meats) and combining them with tomato sauce and a little prepared sauce, then throwing it on spaghetti noodles. It works. The last combination was especially good, leftover hamburger meat seasoned by the man of my life, hot Italian sausages and some chicken from a chicken masala I made.

We've been having fresh local corn on the cob almost every night this week - it is so much better when it is fresh picked so we have to enjoy it while it is available.

Tempting children to eat vegetable: I mixed a frozen broccoli with cheese sauce into some mac 'n cheese and it worked! On one of the kids. Then I showed her how to dip Oreos into milk. That worked, kinda, too. More oreos than milk was consumed.

It would be easier if I were the only source of food, but I am not. Parental units are addicted to prepared foods. Gawk!

I made peach pie this week. My daughter, who loves peaches, said it was the first peach pie she'd ever eaten. Surely not! I hope I've made it before. Truth is, I don't make a lot of pies. Sure was good!

Pizza for dinner last night, for breakfast when I got home this morning, for second breakfast when I woke up four hours later and now for lunch. I'm undecided whether to continue this theme for dinner as well, or perhaps mix it up with spaghetti.

Tomorrow will be better, grilled tri-tip, and Monday I go out with a friend. Oh, I'll eat some veggies in there somewhere, too. :)

I made the discovery that spaghetti noodles tossed with mashed turnip and cheddar cheese is absolutely delicious. Unfortunately, the kids ate most of the noodles (topping-free), so I wasn't able to indulge to my heart's content. So now I'm having some cheese and crackers to fill the gaps.

269: I'm impressed by the weirdness of that combination. How about some details? I might even try it.

>270
I cooked some plain spaghetti to go with the kids' supper, and decided to use up the bit that was left over. The only thing in the fridge that had the texture I was looking for was some turnip that had been mashed with butter and brown sugar, so I added that. Then I threw in some shredded cheddar, because everything is better with cheese. I meant to use parmesan, but I couldn't find it. The turnip coated the spaghetti nicely, without being drippy. I think squash would have much the same effect.

The parmesan showed up later in one of the fridge drawers.

Courgette/Zucchini works very well in Italian recipes as a meat substitute. I found this out when I was cooking for large groups that included vegetarians. While I'm not vegetarian, I sometime prefer the veggie version as it's lighter and the texture works well.

The trick is to peel and cut the courgette into chunks no more than 1/4 inch thick, stir fry in some hot olive oil with garlic and Italian herbs until just starting to soften, then continue recipe as normal.

The sauce used in Lasagna is especially good with this.

Honey-soy chicken and vege stirfry was last night's dinner (and today's lunch!).