I agree about the CF for inspiration, Shirl! The very next time I'm having chicken breasts, I'm poaching them in maple syrup and water that Neelydid. And with orzo as well, both she and I love orzo.

Thanks for your kind words about continuing to cook, without Tom. Yes I do, but I honestly don't enjoy it. He was a great guinea pig......up for anything I want to try, and I adored cooking for us.

Since I'm not one to eat out, nor just eat a sandwich and call it a meal, I have to. But instead of cooking because I enjoy it, I just cook to live. Thru the week I eat at the kitchen table amongst the grocery flyers, notes, recipes etc.

On weekends I treat myself to eating in the livingroom (yes, a treat, LOL) on a tv table watching a gripping tv show, with a glass (or 2) of wine. LOL

2MD, nice to have stock on hand. Pulled out of the freezer a 1/4 pint and 1/2 pint of braised thighs in their broth.

Quick Corona Bean and Chicken Veg Soup. Torn sourdough croutons. Artichokes.

Last night Lamb and Roasted Veg.

@shirl Baklava is super easy, just time consuming.

Here is how I make mine:

I keep packages of phylo sheets in my freezer. When I want to make baklava I move the frozen sheets to the refrigerator about two days before so they can defrost.

Preheat the over to 350.

The filling is 1 pound of walnuts with 1 to 2 teaspoons of high quality cinnamon. This goes into a food processor and pulse until you have small crumbs.

Then I melt two sticks of butter in a bowl until they are completely liquid.

Take your phylo dough out of the package and arrange it flat on your workspace and cover with a damp dishtowel to keep it moist.

Assemble in a 9 x 13 baking pan. Put one sheet of phylo in the pan and fold over any excess edges so it is flat in the pan. Using a pastry brush, cover the phylo sheet with melted butter. It should be completely saturated with a thin layer of butter. Add another sheet on top and repeat this process 4 or 5 times, brushing each new phylo sheet with butter. Add a fresh phylo sheet (no butter this time) and cover with 1/3 of the filling spread out thinly. Continue adding phylo sheets, one at a time and saturating them with butter. Melt more butter, if needed. Follow this order using all phylo and filling like this:

4 - 5 phylo sheets w/ brushed butter on top of each sheet

1 filling layer, no butter

3 -4 phylo sheets w brushed butter on top of each sheet

1 filling layer, no butter

3 -4 phylo sheets w brushed butter on top of each sheet

1 filling layer, no butter

Remaining phylo sheets w brushed butter on top of each sheet

Before you put it into the oven, use a pastry cutter or knife to cut into pieces in the pan. I usually make two straight cuts long-wise and then make diagonal cuts. This must be done first before you cook it.

Cook for 40 minutes at 350 until golden brown.

While baklava is cooking, make the syrup by mixing 1 cup water and 1 cup sugar and heating on a high heat until combined. Reduce the heat to medium low and add 1/2 cup honey and 1 - 2 teaspoons real vanilla. Continue cooking for 20 minutes.

When baklava is done, immediately pour the honey syrup over the top of it making sure every piece is saturated. Wait at least 20 minutes before serving to allow the syrup to penetrate all of the layers.

@sleevendog That lamb dish is really impressive and your plating is always so beautiful.

You know, I love walnuts, cinnamon, butter, and phylo, but when they are put together i the form of baklava, I just don't care for the end product. I have tried for many years to like it, but just don't care for it at all. Strange how our tastebuds work.

Thanks LyndaR for posting your Baklava, it is on my ToDo list.

Well I tried to make Pommes Anna for lunch today. Was not a real success for looks, but tasted so good. Must do more research. They did not hold together real well. I know I used to much butter, not enough potatoes, not letting cool long enough coming out of oven before inverting, but how long is to cool? But I will try again, soon.

They look good enough Shirl, that my stomach growled! Everything you make is worthy of a magazine cover, it's unusual that these didn't turn out for you. But they still look great to me!

Anna looks good but if you want a bit more crusts and to hold shape, look at this recipe, HERE. I do about the same but romano and some minced green onion somewhere in the first/second layer. I also use a weight over parchment while still on a burner...medium heat. (that also gets some steam going). Uncover then into the oven, middle rack.

Veggie 2hour pickle Tacos. Mint, basil, cilantro. Ginger/miso/toasted sesame drizzle. Feta. Afternoon snack. Made these for the all-day-dh-birthday feast last week. But added BoSaam pork and kimchi.

BoSaam salad hand rolls for dinner. (BoSaam from the freezer). Misfit box had a giant rainbow chard bunch filling half the box. Did not order it but probably to make up for some other offerings not so pretty, 😂. Nothing rotten, very fresh. Perfect for hand rolls.

I had good intentions of making potatoes, maybe crashed, to go with my slopy joes. But after some errands and other running around, time got away from me before I had to start work. Frozen fries to the rescue! LOLOL. Honest to God, frozen fries have never been in my freezer, until I discovered that the fries at Costco are Cavendish brand (A Canadian brand). McCain's, yuck!

So dinner was sloppy joes and fries. There's a flattened homemade bun under that mess.

An article in this week's paper described how to make the perfect burger. 2 patties cook more evenly and quicker than 1 thick one. My two patties were a bit too thick but I took the challenge!

Softened onions, a condiment sauce (mayonnaise, dijon, touch of ketchup and dill pickle juice).

So here is my cheeseburger with 2 patties, "special sauce" lettuce, onions and a dill pickle slice on the burger. My burgers stayed together vs falling apart, which they usually do. Yay!

I cut it in half to eat, still messy as heck but pretty darned good!!! My potato salad that I like, using olive oil, red wine vinegar, whole seed mustard and chopped lovage.

I'm having a watermelon popsicle now for dessert. Very refreshing, I'll definitely make them again.

Good lookin' potato salad! Might have to make SloppyShortRibs with some leftovers.

Big afternoon salad Friday while braising short ribs for dinner.

Short ribs took longer than expected....needed another hour so went ahead and had the sides as a first course. Grain is wild rice, spelt and summer wheat.

Hot plates with some braising liquid and some grain...forgot plating pic. Nice to have a second course...we usually just make one heaping plate. (less dishes)

So much rib leftover we had it again last night but changed it up. Sauté/steamed some veg with a 1/4 pint of bone broth and made a fresh style stew.

Your grain side dish looks delicious, Sleeve! Are those fresh peas out of your garden?? Nooooo!

Moving over from my other thread, thought I should post my update here.

Dinner last night:

Burrata with basil vinaigrette, tomatoes and balsamic:

Goat Cheese and Herb Farfalle (recipe link on the Burned Out Thread):

The pasta was good - very creamy. The herbs and lemon added great flavor. We liked it but it won't become a regular for us.

Tonight = french onion soup. Have made it before and never been 100% happy with the result. Hopefully this will be my time!

Wow so many good meals shown in great photos. Stand out for me was Lynda’s Greek feast including the baklava, and Jasdip’s bread. Also loved Sleevendog’s beautiful meals and sarahsocal your farfalle plate looks amazing.

Easy dinner for us was spaghetti with Parmesan, olive oil, garlic and chilli. (habanero)

Your pasta looks wonderful Neely.

I bought a bag of lemons and froze the juice into ice cubes. I had one lemon left so I made picatta with orzo tonight.

Looking at the picture, the chicken looks pretty yucky. LOL. But it was browned, and cooked through by simmering in the sauce, and so tender! I didn't bread it, just floured it, perhaps that's why it's not pretty.

First green beans of the season out of our garden. Tasted so very good! And enough left for another meal. (I didn't dish all of them up since I knew we'd never eat all of them tonight.)

Pretty tomato salad. Should have some soon from the garden. Chicken next time we fire up the grill.

After the short ribs we had a favorite meatless meal last night. Eggplant Nasu Dengaku. Bonito flake to the table. Sweet little Misfit peach so good with feta and avocado..

Sleeve, I have some Bonito flakes that I put on the cats' foods when they get fussy. They're strong smelling!

I had today off, so I got to experiment a bit. Dinner tonight was pan fried salmon in a lemon dill cream sauce. On the side we had couscous with garlic, shallots and chard. Dessert was raspberry mousse with whipped cream and blueberries. All new recipes to me. I have had a few fails lately, but all three tonight were keepers.

We used our homegrown chard, dill, lemon blueberries and raspberries.

Lynda your dinner looks delicious. I could scoop up the cous cous from the screen.

Lucky you Ediej, eating home grown beans, looks good.

Love your meatless meal Sleevendog and the eggplant look so yummy.

Jasdip....chicken and orzo can’t be beaten.

Asian flavours meal. Pork meatballs with garlic and ginger. Grains and veg over noodles. OK but I may have splashed in a little too much fish sauce.

@Neely So does yours! I love making Asian dishes. I had a position that required frequent travel to China & Hong Kong and was inspired by so many great meals on my trips.

Recently purchased 10 pounds of ginger and a pound of fresh turmeric,😂. love it. Dill with salmon so good. Bummer my garden dill did not take. But do have lots of dried. One of the dried herbs that is similar to fresh.

Burgers last night. With a watermelon, peach, avocado salad with fresh mint. Feta.

Neely your dinner looks scrumptious! I had pork tonight too, but not quite as healthy as yours :-D

I cooked enough potatoes with their skins on to make German potato salad in the next couple of days.

Oh my, I might never catch up!

Shirl, I'd eat those potatoes without hesitation, yum.

Edie, that's how I grew up eating green beans, with potatoes in them. Grandma learned to cook from her stepmother who was from Kentucky and beans got cooked a good long time. Mine are just starting to get blossoms, so maybe a month or so...

sleevendog, I never thought of chicken with beans, I'm going to have to try that. I don't have the Corona beans, but I've got about 10 other kinds! Elery asked that I make a batch of your pickled mustard seeds too, so that's on my list of things to do.

Jasdip, congratulations on your burger success, LOL. I swear we think alike, I had burgers too!

Neely, the meatballs look really good, sorry about the fish sauce. I've gotten a little "heavy handed" with ingredients more than once. (sigh)

Lynda, I do like dill with salmon, or with pretty much any fish, and I have some growing, I've got to use some of that.

Sarah, good luck on that French Onion soup. I love the stuff but mine just is never as good as the stuff I get at restaurants. I keep trying...

Here I'm still eating leaves. Lots and lots of leaves. We had hamburgers on the grill, with leaves:

Broccoli and cheese quiche, with leaves:

Pork chile verde in tortillas, with leaves:

Mother ate the quiche, and the burger, but wouldn't even try the pork and refuses any kind of salad or greens. So tonight, while Elery and I had the pork Mother had a fish sandwich from McDonald's. (shrug) I also made some one AnnT's biscuits and sliced up some exceptional local strawberries and made her strawberry shortcakes:

While we were eating dinner, a "guest" was on the lawn, eating the roses. She was right outside my window, close enough to touch. She seems to want to be a pet, she's not at all afraid of me and doesn't run even if I go outside, she just wanders off. And, of course, she ate every single rose off the rose bush. Not the bush itself, just the flowers. If she wants to be a pet, she's not making brownie points this way!

This would have been a great picture except for the glare on the window glass...

Tomorrow I'm spraying apple trees and weeding peppers and eggplant. I have no idea what's for dinner\ because it's supposed to be 94F with humidity in the high 80s.

Annie

Annie I love your dinner guest!!! Too bad he wasn't a weed eater, instead of your precious roses. A local farmer who posts regularly on Facebook to teach people about farming.....he has Oreos beef cattle (Belted Calloway) and Holsteins. He posted a video of Vanilla, one of his dairy cows (white, obviously) carefully and daintily on the lawn eating just the dandelions! There's an idea for you. :-)

I'm not buying strawberries this year, I'm going to use frozen to make freezer jam. $40 a flat is out of my price range :-(

I bought another tasteless watermelon this week for the sole purpose of making watermelon and quinoa salad, and my popsicles.

Salad is made (watermelon, quinoa, thinly sliced onion, feta, mint, olive oil and balsamic).

My potatoes of choice are Yellow (Yukon specifically doesn't seem to be available, so Yellow is what they're called now.

Tuesday I bought a bag of white, they were on sale for $2.99 vs $6 for yellows. I don't have good luck tbh with whites, they're usually black and just lousy overall.

This bag was true to form. Freshly opened bag and the potatoes are crap. Now having said that, I do know they're still last year's crop, but I'm sticking to yellow sticker price or not.

Jasdip, I don't know what it is with the watermelon this year, they all seem bland and flavorless. Maybe the weather? Or they have a new "variety" that ships and keeps but has no flavor, like they've done to tomatoes?

Annie

I stopped buying any melons a few years ago unless they gave samples. Such a waste of money. Took a chance with my deliveries and they have been most excellent. It is usually a coin flip.

Planned to make baby asian meatballs with the other 1/2 pound of beef, but had another burger. 😂 easier. Gorgeous greens. Lacinato kale and rainbow chard still fresh from a week ago, Misfits.

Last night had some leftover roast beef, so cut it up into bite-size pieces, put BBQ sauce on it and heated slowly in the microwave (next time will use the IP to heat). Baked a large potato, put the BBQ roast beef on top of the baked potato, and added sour cream and cheddar cheese. Very tasty.

Dumplings, white miso, mixed greens/veg, yada-yada. ...spiced/roasted garbanzos...

@sleevendog That looks so good and really healthy.

We harvested carrots today and had some for dinner. We sauteed them in butter and added garlic. Not much to look at (so no pictures) but were so good. Dinner was New York steak, but the carrots really stole the show. Our son doesn't like cooked vegetables, so he ate his raw and also raved how good they were. We started growing vegetables five years ago, when he wouldn't eat anything, and I was desperate to get some nutrients into him. Now he loves most of the fruit and vegetables we grow.

DH made excellent sourdough. Thunderstorm rolling in and LOUD. Battened down the garden hatches. Hail can be destructive. Pups nervous. One of those days just now deciding what to have for dinner....

We've head a stretch of hot temperatures, and they're expected to stay for the next 2 weeks. 30-34°C. Humidex in the 40's. I'm surprised we haven't had any thunderstorms......very little rain, we need one bad.

Good luck with your pups, Sleeve. Awesome looking bread that your DH made!!

Walnut, your loaded potatoes sound good!

A lot of talk of people getting fried chicken among other things on the local food group, from food trucks, take-out etc. I caved (heck it's Friday) and went to the supermarket deli. (A lot cheaper) Same store as I got my ugly potatoes from. I was sure the flyer said 9pc for $10 but the clerk said $10.99. Taxes made it over $12. I didn't want any sides as I knew what I was going to have with them.

When I got home I looked at the flyer, yep $10 even. Crap I hate that.

I made my recipe for the warm German potatoes, on the other thread, and a salad.

Beautiful bread, sleevendog. I'm wishing for some rain here, it's in the 90s for the past several days and will be for another week at least, with no rain in sight. We cut hay today because it's just burning up, I'm hoping I have enough for the winter, but I may have to buy some, if I can find it to buy. I'm running the sprinklers for the garden all day because the moisture evaporates before it does much good.

Odd weather, it's not supposed to be 90+ in Michigan, geez.

Here supper was home canned sauerkraut with our homemade italian sausages, some anasazi beans that Elery cooked and a stir fry of various greens. Not pretty enough to take pictures.

Annie

I am going to have fried chicken tonight.

New recipe with brown rice. Cracked toasted flax seeds which really added nuttiness. Softened onions, lemon juice and zest and the ever-present lovage! and chopped mint because I have it. Salad and glass of wine.

Basa fillet which I love. Hoping this healthier meal counter-acts yesterday's fried chicken :-) I ate half and froze half of the chicken, so I behaved.

That fish looks delicious, Jasdip!

@jadsip That fish looks really good.

@sleevendog Your husband's bread is inspiring. I need to be more adventurous in bread making. I keep sticking to the same few things I can do consistently.

We are bbqing tri tip tonight with grilled peppers and tomatillo salsa. I made a nectarine plum wine sangria earlier today, that we will have with it. We just harvested our second bunch of bananas for the year....so bananas foster will be dessert. We have two more bunches coming later in the summer. Our fireworks shows have all been cancelled, and our beaches are all closed, so we will have to settle for lighting the bananas foster pan on fire!

Good dinners folks.

We’ve had a hiccup in my city’s virus recovery so DH and I have placed ourselves in voluntary isolation. . Hence I am back to baking.

This is the Orange Almond cake I often bake, only this time it is Blood Oranges from our tree. Need to use them up as we are still eating the marmalade I made last year.

Neely, do you have a blog? I'm just asking because your photos are so phenomenal!!

Thanks Jasdip. I don’t have a blog but I am on Instagram as countryhometownhome where I put on my own photos of my cooking and photos of other bits and pieces of whatever I’m up to.

I come from the era here on Cooking where I couldn’t wait to start the day to see what amazing photos Sol, AnnT and Canarybird had posted mainly on this WFD thread. Without a doubt, all three got me started taking and composing photos of food, which I still really enjoy doing today, hence the cake photo.

Sol also sometimes posts her amazing food/photo compositions on Instagram and I am so proud to say we ‘follow’ each other. AnnT of course has her wonderful cooking/recipe/photo blog.

I don’t mind living half in a virtual world at the moment.

I agree with you Neely!!! You are up there with Sol and Ann!!

Sol has posted recently and it's so nice to see her again.

Had another new recipe today. An absolute keeper.

Orzo (hey Neely) shrimp, artichokes, tomatoes, feta, seasonings. The recipe called for baking it in the oven and I couldn't see why, vs on the stove. The stove worked perfectly with a lid. The orzo cooked, feta melted, it tasted great. My Pino Grigio paired perfectly.

I had 3 bowls of it! It was so good.

Jasdip, that looks fabulous. Could you point me to a recipe?

Nekotish, here it is. It's a Reader's Digest, Magic Foods recipe. It's a cookbook that focuses on healthy foods for blood sugar, etc.

I just cooked it all in the skillet, as you know.

Thanks Jas. I think I'll try that tomorrow. I actually have everything on hand! I make something similar with chicken thighs, but it is served over orzo, not cooked with. It also has kalamata olives and red wine in the sauce. We love it, so I'm sure that this will be equally popular.

Went with tried and true: Carbonara

Dude what is with the sideways pic???

It looks delish and a terrific photo even though sideways

And I just realized that I didn't post on the current string (sigh). . .

That's cool. Sometimes the old one continues a bit if a conversation or recipe is shared....

In the ye olde days they would get too long for some to scroll to the bottom. Now you can just hit 'comment' in the very first post and it will jump to the last post.

I'll move your dish to the next one.