dcarch and johnliu - you know, you two folks were the first ones I thought of when I decided to post this. I was hoping you both would enjoy the read! dcarch, if I composed food as beautiful as yours, I probably wouldn't be dining out so much - LOL! And of course, I am sooooooooo envious of John's pro-style range :))

Oh, dear! I didn't mean to imply you were really going to poison him! I was just responding to what Mimipadv said about "just don't tell anyone". An anchovy added to flavor a dish might not even give me a reaction, but the worst reaction I've had was to a non-fish dish cooked with fish stock, where all the bad is concentrated. No one told me about the fish. It was just short of life threatening. Though since you know, Bbstx, that it's finickiness, you might be able to hide the prunes. After all, garlic prunes, are vastly superior to garden variety prunes. :) I don't like either prunes or olives, and capers aren't high on my delish list, but I love chicken marbella. :) Littleonefb, have you figured out what you're going to do?

FOAS, perhaps the trick is to do both MIL's and Yia Yia's recipes? Keep everybody's noses on straight? Nice of your MIL to find and send all the recipes. I know how the mandelbroit in Grandma's cookie jar were made, but that bakery closed decades ago.... :D PM and Edie, I just meant too flavorful for the filling. They're really good ! And ripe and lovely. I didn't halve them though, just cut out the stem then scraped out the innards and drained. I packed them almost to splitting, but there was so much tomato flavor, it masked the bacon salad, which is a flavor bomb on its own. Live and learn. The little tomatoes were all oval and teardrops and the plums were sad, so these really were the best choice. And the little tomatoes have even more flavor. So that gave me a few more minutes with the company, only assembling the half dozen. No one fancy there. They were fine spooning the bacon salad out of the plastic storage container. :) Beesneeds, thank-you for the clear explanation! I think on some level I knew most of that but didn't think of it in my frustration. You've made it all clear and organized. The recipe mentioned using frozen, so I'll try that next. Mind were the bagged fresh English peas, so pretty mature. We only ever see petits pois frozen. But they always have them frozen. If I can get myself from eating all of them before they go in the oven (candy!)... Thanks so much for the advice. Re Mr. Bacon: My friends and family don't do social media and don't want others to do it for them, so I don't use names. It can be very inconvenient and I'm beginning to lose patience, so I named a beloved but unconventional eater who I've been trying to feed (mixed success and failure. I'm still learning). I call him Mr. Picky. Then another of our circle, who has a very mixed bag of cooking skills and massive lacks (I try to help, but he's resistant to learning how to think about cooking), has been withholding the secret to the so amazing bacon. It's always the same and extremely perfect to my mind. I started a thread asking for advice and the consensus was flat on a lined sheet pan in a hot oven. It yielded good bacon (ignoring the part that got charred, which was all my fault), but didn't come close to his. I was really tired after three long days of schlepping and cooking food, so I named him Mr. Bacon. I'm still keeping up with the don't post about us rules and it's so much easier to call him that. Edie, I have rainbow baby snack carrots. I may still make the lucky coins with the big ones. Or I could steam them and put them in Sunday's dinner. I've been thinking about tacos adobos casserole, but don't have it all figured out yet. Or I could shave them! The same kind of thing has happened to me as your mop and bucket. Worry not! i've been told that it lends a homey feel. :) No brevity here. I'm still really tired, though I got myself through this morning's meeting. I'll be interested to see the pierogi and kielbasa forthcoming.

I only have a recipe photo file. So looking at this photo, I see a near empty 'everything bagel', a container of the umami powder I call 'steak rub'... and ingredients for the umami 'sauce' for the freezer. If you have ever frozen pesto, you can take it out and scoop a tablespoon or two because of the olive oil content. (never freezes rock solid). The Costco refrigerated pesto is pretty good but once opened it does not last long even in the fridge so I freeze in 1/2 pints. The container is enormous so I freeze it. What I do does not need to be so complicated. I just always have anchovies, olives, sundried tomatoes, parm, whole frozen cherry toms from the garden, garlic....olive oil, vinegars. Just about everything is in your local market. Small can tomato paste, anchovies, olives, parm, garlic, lemon juice, AC or wine vinegar. Amazon or local Asian market has dried mushrooms. Should be in every pantry. You can powder them or soak and strain the liquid for soups. Pulse soaked mushrooms in cuisinart and add to meatballs, meatloaf. Or make the umami. I don't see dates. I like them for the natural sugars but must have used maple. And I see pecans, huh. I like to add a half dozen cashews. (not necessary to add nuts at all). I add miso, just a tbsp or two. This is a DH favorite when I'm out of town. Capallini pasta in a saucepan. (cooks fast). Two Tbsp of this from the freezer. I use it as a flavor boost. Another one. The TJ's umami powder. Salt first ingredient. Don't need that. Cheap filler. I make that for under a buck and twice the size, no salt. It is my steak rub, burger rub, meatball rub.