This was a few days ago. Hot smoked salmon, sausage, three cheese puntanesca.

Artichoke hearts, olives, fennel, garlic, shallot...

Another nice soup. Potato, leek, mushroom. Miropoix, white wine, then leeks, minced mushrooms, then pint of master stock. Just a five second stick blend to add some thickening. Finished with a bit of cream that i never have but this time of year for oyster dressing and oyster stew.

prep

Love all the soups Sleeve… so colourful.

Dumpling stir fry

Cinnamon rolls

ETA

I used to be able to decide how big my photos would be but since downloading the updated apple IOS 17.1.1 version that feature is no longer available or I am yet to find it.. Are photo sizes OK not too big or not too small. ?

Pics are perfect. Once clicked they enlage to about a half page.

Trying some new things this week. Moroccan red lentil soup. Really nice. Basically a tomato/vegetable soup but with added spices...coriander, cumin, paprika, sumac, etc. And any vegetables on hand. Any beans and/or rice.

With roasted chick pea 'croutons' and grilled cheese.

Looks delicious Sleeve

Simple tomato sauce fettucini

Yum. Keep it simple. We seem to be on a similar rotation. But our hot water heater exploded last week and flooded the basement. Oy, One step forward, two steps back in home ownership. Wet vac stopped working, good grief, lol.

Fortunately we have many quick easy meal options. Thawed and heated a thanksgiving turkey pot pie. Way too big. Meant to take to my family for an easy meal a couple days before x-mas. Easily would have served 6-8. With a tray of roasted vegetables and a salad.

Dinner options, ---pasta, beef stew, chili, dumplings, spring rolls, pizza....,flipping a coin.

Should have hot water by tuesday. Washing dishes by hand, bummer.

Oh, i thought i took a plated pic. It was stuck in the 'clouds'. It was good but too soon from the thanksgiving meal. I added some leftover gravy to a half pint of turkey stock. Not a true 'pot pie' vibe but good. Moist with some nice turkey slices.

Turkey pot pie looks delicious… love the swirl pastry must try to do something like that.

Steak, veg and salad… mushroom sauce.

Ginger broth with bok choy and dumplings hit the spot tonight.

Just added bok choy, miso, and fresh ginger to my shopping list. Lacinato kale and celery works as an ok trade for the bok choy.

Houseful of contractors went swimmingly. The two teams worked well together. Professional, polite, all solved.

Prepped some rice early before the chaos to make our favorite comfort meal.

Shrimp, Cashew, Egg fried rice. With fennel, celery, kale

Baby grain pot...perfect every time. Wild rice, brown rice and sushi rice.

Made mini burger sliders. Always a treat. But the big hit besides the baked chips...red bean and red lentil hummus. With chipotle and smoked paprika. The one next to it in the pic has roasted acorn squash. I made one over Thanksgiving with white beans and cauliflower rice.

I have about ten varieties now. On the x-mas day menu. Probably make 4-5 with other apps. All are vegan and will please everyone. With lots of quick pickle 'chips'. Endive on the shopping list.

More recipes here, howsweeteats

Thanks for the howsweeteats link about making the hummus platter… 3 delicious sounding dips I can’t wait to try. Also the cous cous salad sounds bright and flavourful just the right suggestions to get me going on lunches for DH and I.

Little sizzle pork slices with mustard sauce… plain sweet potato and salad

I have a small pork loin and two small packs of boneless, skinless, chicken thighs thawing for sous vide tomorrow.

Tonight is a miso dumpling bowl.

Yes, the cous-cous salad had me drooling. (DH had the red bean hummus for a late night snack with quick pickled vegetables).

Hummus is a good healthy lunch or fridge snack.

I have every ingredient for the cous-cous. Odd that the cook thought it was a bit of an ugly platter. I think it looks festive and Fall/Winter festive.

Going through our rotation of easy favorites.

Wonton/Miso Soup

Pizza party

We snacked on the second pizza for lunch/brunch. So just made a big hearty salad for dinner with the rest of the hummus and Peruvian green sauce.

Chili. Nice to see two more pints in the freezer. That last batch of chili was very thick so i started a pint of master stock and added a cubed Japanese sweet potato and a 1/4 cup of lentils, then the chili.

The chilli looks and sounds great, can I ask what is the pink decoration?

I made pork adobo then stir fried it with some vegetables.

Oh boy, I've been slacking off. We've been eating, but I haven't taken pictures or even thought about it. I"ve been stashing cookie dough in the freezer for Christmas cookies and making fudge. I always send fudge to Elery's grandsons in California, but this year two of his grandkids are at college and he wanted to send them cookies and fudge, and if I send a box to his son then his daughter in Ohio has to have a box, it just keeps getting to be a bigger thing, LOL.

Today I made homemade pappardelle and froze it, yesterday I froze the gluten free version, first time I"ve made gluten free pasta from scratch. It had to be rolled out by hand, it wouldn't go through the Atlas, we'll see how it turns out when we eat it at Christmas.

So, what's for dinner? Tonight it was pork carnitas, roasted Delicata squash, some spinach stir fried with leeks. A strange mixture but those were all things that needed to be used. Yesterday it was vegetable soup.

I'll try to be better, I promise.

Annie

Annie great to hear from you again and yum to hearing about your dinner.

Hi Annie. Busy busy time of the year. I've only managed one batch of shortbread logs in the freezer. And Dad's favorite seeded crackers and sprouted brown bread. 4 mini loaves. 4 different hummus varieties, two of each in the freezer---1/2 pints.

Lots of winter squashes, root crops and cabbages. --3 different sweet potatoes, radishes, and beets. Carrots and greens. Lots of soups on the meal plan.

Those are quick pickled fennel and red onions. I've been making pickles at least 15 yrs. Fermentations a dozen or more. But these purple radishes are bleeding more than ever i have seen. I have a half dozen more. I need to keep them separate from now on a bit like how red beets bleed and stain everything.

Very common in our area to be served a tray of fresh, fermented, and chutneys in Asian restaurants, especially Korean.

(That is a great book on the top row.)

This is the culprit. Container on the back counter this morning. That is a slice on top of the lemon and a candy striped beet slice under. In all these years i've not had a radish bleed so quickly. The last miso soup turned an ugly murky pink in the time we sat down to eat.

I do have a dozen various small ramekins but for just the two of us a bit excessive in dirty bowls. I'll make an intentional jar of pink for Christmas day 'chips'. Family likes them as dip chips. But most of the vegetable chips will not be 'pinked'.

This batch of hummus last night was intentional. The deep red is lentil and beet root.

Wow, that did make everything pink. I also wouldn't expect that of a radish. The beet hummus sounds good, I really like beets.

Here we had peanut butter chicken with brown rice and some of that pea and peanut salad, I guess I was in a peanutty kind of mood, LOL. Still no pictures...

Annie

Love beetroot chips, bought… I haven’t made them.

Dinner was just for me as DH is up at country holiday home for a few days.

Fettucini with egg plant, tomatos and parmesan, sprinkled with olive oil. I wouldn’t cook this for DH as he’s not a fan of egg plant.

Been making scratchy meals for myself so with DH’s imminent arrival back home I made a moussaka of sorts… meaning it was beef not lamb and had potatoes as a topping not bechamel sauce and only a little eggplant as DH doesn’t like it but it did have cinnamon which makes everything taste like moussaka imho. hah!

DH has a go-to meal when i'm out of town...pasta with anchovies, parm. Or a quesadilla. I like eggs and avocado toast, salad.

This screenshot reminds me of another pickle i've not made in a while. Shallots, garlic, turmeric, spices.

I'm on trend, ha, Pantone color of the year...Viva Magenta

Made lamb/lentil koftka

'color of the year' shared salad off camera

Made mini koftka with the rest of the mix and had them with a stir fried rice.

Had a friend over for brunch last weekend. She picked up a Vitamix black friday. Wanted a run-through in making a trio of hummus, Peruvian green sauce, a dressing, and vitamin C juice shots. I made crab and shrimp shumai as a trial run for Christmas day. brunch...tomorrow. Eek.

They were made early to set/firm up in the fridge. Nice tight bundles but lost structure when steamed. Too wet. Needs more binder. Glad i did the trial run. Still good though. Might make some sealed into wontons to have with NYEve Cioppino. (I'll freeze them)

They should look like this

I might make some with one of the smoked salmon filets i hot smoked for Thanksgiving.

I've been back in the Misfits game. First in maybe 6 months the monday before Thanksgiving. I hesitated but saw they had the Harbison again and lump crab for 22$. That is a 1970's prices. I stopped buying crab for the holidays. I'm the only one who cooks in my family. And i pay the bill. It was costing me over a hundred to make a crab cake dinner. Starting getting complaints,, "i only get one?". Bah Humbug. Then started making minis as an app with other things Christmas day.

I'll just order every 5-6 weeks through the winter then stop again.

It is from a company in Texas that supplies mostly to restaurants. Lump, not jumbo lump. From the pacific coast of Mexico. On the seafood watch as a 'buy. not 'avoid'.

So i ordered two more pounds of crab just delivered Friday.

Both orders were perfect and fresh. They even included 4 sweet potatoes instead of the listed '2 count' because they were small. And shipping will be free over 90$ starting in January.. That is easy with the cold pack and only ordering every 5-6 weeks.

Funny, speaking of crab, my dad and I went to a small local Asian seafood place and he bought us ten Dungeness crabs for our traditional Christmas Eve dinner, which is cracked crab and a side or two, with newspapers covering the dining table. The crabs were live, $4.99/lb, about 4 lb each.

It’s a spendy dinner but we only do it once or twice a year. My dad lives with us now, and he likes seafood so he wanted to pay, which was nice. We have eight people - our family and three friends. Should be plenty of crab!

I like this place, they are small but friendly and have tanks of all sorts of live seafood. Crabs both dungeness and king, lobster, clams, many kinds of fish - it’s like visiting an aquarium, sort of.

Here are the troops!

SWMBO requires that I extract the crab hearts, which are a delicacy and look like a Pokemon character. When you remove the body, the heart is under the brown membrane.

Carefully separate the heart, which you recognize as a smiley star.

And collect them in a little bowl for Her Highness.

The crab gets piled in a big bowl, which your friend is carefully watching over

When everyone is seated at their newspaper-laid place setting, with bibs on those who bib, and SWMBO’s homemade, booze-forward eggnog in cups, you dive in.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

I like this place, they are small but friendly and have tanks of all sorts of live seafood. Crabs both dungeness and king, lobster, clams, many kinds of fish - it’s like visiting an aquarium, sort of.

One of our Asian markets is like that. We typically buy seafood from another place, but I always find it fun to browse there.

https://www.google.com/maps/uv?pb=!1s0x8626a334d7a39b7f%3A0x7854699a3f8adc68!3m1!7e131!4s!5sAsian%20Supermarket!15sCgIgAQ&hl=en&imagekey=!1e10!2sAF1QipNpo6B4lTiuAwSGOc1Ii-Tekdulw2vAglnNnoFs

John your crab feast looks fantastic but I am sorry but the little crab hearts give me the shudders.

In all the excitement of DIL’s Braxton Hicks moment, I forgot to take photos of our Christmas dinner. I have a photo of the Yule Log I made which somehow doesn’t look very good… tasted OK

Hope every one had a very good Christmas.

Braxton i'm guessing was a nail biter.

YuleLog, haha, i have no patience for decorating.

What a crab feast. We have Jonah crab in the NorthEast but for some reason not much market for it. Similar to Florida stone crab where just the claws have meat. I binge watched a lobster fisherman recently and they catch more Jonah's than lobster but toss them back. Sometimes keep a dozen crab for a family meal. They can be purchased but maybe larger boats with more hands-on-deck will keep lobster and the crabs.

Can't imagine what a crab heart tastes like.

My favorite oddity is cod tongues and cheeks. Found for sale in most Newfoundland gas stations in a small freezer with the ice cream. A delicasy in Norway and Spain as well.

Breaded and shallow fried they taste like fried oysters. Cheeks are like the two oysters found in poultry.

Since we canceled all travel plans, we had our favorite meal, rack of lamb.

Both our families have let their guards down and getting sick and passing it around.

Mostly nasty colds. Still miserable.

Our friends on the other hand are careful and masking indoors so we can get together NewYears.

We were not looking forward to so much road travel... happy to stay put at home.

Rack of lamb, red miso glaze. Mashed potatoes, garlic chips. Green apple, fennel, celery salad...roasted beet, red cabbage, fennel, lightly pickled slaw. Gorgeous lamb. Medium rare on the rare side.

Made a couple seafood salad rolls. Christmas brunch we had a mediterranian style seafood salad on a fennel/celery salad. Lots of lemon/olive oil. Made way too much so tossed the rest in a creole NewOrleans remoulade. Like a Po'Boy but without that great bread. Split top brioche i have.

Made a couple dozen mini crab cakes for NewYears now in the freezer. Easier than shumai.

Fennel, celery, green apple, pea shoots. Fennel is so nice with seafood.

Neighbor stopped by with a treat. So good. Such a good baker and chocolatier.

I'm trying to clean up my refrigerator and pantry, for a clean start at the new year. I had the gluten-free pasta from my earlier health issue (until I figured out it didn't have anything to do with my diet), and shrimp left from shrimp and grits for my sister's birthday on Christmas morning. Et viola! Pasta Alfredo with shrimp.

The brand I bought, and I found out, you have to cook it in a certain way.

I can totally do without flour, if this is how it always tastes. Just thought I'd give you the two tips I figured out today 😉

DD made dinner for friends tonight, and I sous-chef’d. She made rack of lamb with chimmichurri and pomegranate, crab cakes, a farro salad, a green salad, and roast potatoes that were soaked in alkaline water. Served on paper plates because she has to drive to Eugene tonight and Berkeley tomorrow; I am driving to Berkeley tomorrow as well.

The rats and our cat will be cared for by our young neighbor. She’s been advised not to let the rats out of their cage, so said rats will be very mad, but I think daily lamb bones will be recompense enough.

Simple but tasty dinner tonight

Tasty indeed!

We have been having light meals. Snacking all week on the pickles/chutneys/ferments/hummus i made x-mas eve.

One of the salads. I did sous vide a chunk of sirloin and a couple small packages of chicken thighs we used as salad toppers.

Emptied most of the jars on a plate, (needed to wash for another batch), and had with an Indian tadori style chicken. The spice blend i made last month is just labeled 'India'. Red miso glaze.

Made a couple recent favorites in the rotation. Easy, no recipes needed.

Miso Noodle Bowl...

Egg Fried Rice...

Last night was breakfast for dinner. Eggs, roasted potatoes, scrapple, avocado toast, cherry tomato salad

NewYearsEve Fish Chowder

Is it time for a new thread? This is getting to be quite a stretch for "Late Fall"! 😉

Thanks to Sleeve for showing us What’s for Dinner over the last few days and Rob’s pasta. I keep forgetting to take a photo but I assure you we have been eating. I’ve had my two little grandsons here 2 & 4 so as you can imagine I’ve been very busy. Their favourite meal was sausage and fries dipped in ketchup. We’ve consumed masses of fruit and had lots of salads. New Years Day meal was a repeat of Christmas Day which was a repeat of Thanksgiving so DH and I have had our fill of turkey for quite sometime.

Totally agree about starting a new thread. Someone?

Happy New Year to all.

Not ready to move on to the winter 'what's for dinner'. We are still finishing up the holiday season. In a few days we will be onto our Jan-Feb light brothy soups, dumplings, fresh salads, seafood, plant based forward. Meatless meals, etc. And like every year this time we try new things/ new recipes.

NewYearsDay,.. traditional ham, black-eyed-peas, collard greens. The last of the holiday meals. Rarely have a 'heavy' plate of food but so good. Best ham ever. Not salty at all!

Should have made the second bunch of collards. DH loves them but we had 4 instead of 6-8. The worst leftovers being second day stinky. And not pup food with the onions being toxic for them.

I ordered WildFork heritage ham. Where i also ordered the Christmas day excellent rack of lamb.

Delicious looking platefull of food. Back to basics for us. Fried rice

No interesting cooking for people over here, but I’ve been cooking tasty food for dogs :-)

We’re in Berkeley taking care of our friends’ very elderly and reportedly on his last legs little dog. I am, of course, determined that he will not expire on my watch, and when he eats enthusiastically I feel better. So, what to feed him?

The base is a tasty homemade chicken stock, made from a roasted chicken, carrots, celery, onion - just like you’d make a chicken stock for yourself.

We cook a batch of rice with that stock. Other chicken is browned then simmered, and minced up. His kibble is soaked in more stock. Then some more cooked chicken and carrots get pureed with stock into a sort of gravy-paste. Rice, kibble, and gravy are mixed, then briefly warmed in the microwave. Finally, crisp bacon is crumbled on top.

I am pleased to say that Elderly Dog positively gobbles his food, cleaning his bowl reliably enough that I can give him his pills crushed in the food.

I’d happily eat it myself, actually, except that there’s no salt or spice. Well, I don’t really like kibble.

All the fixings are in stored in Tupperware so feeding doesn’t take long.

(onions are a bit toxic for pups)

I make our pups supper. A mixed grain congee with lots of vegetables minced and raw ofal. And any fruit scraps saved. Make a big batch once a week.

Breakfast is kibble with fish oil.

Getting closer to winter soup season, 😁

Local farm share sent a bag of Row7 BagerFlameBeets. Row 7 link

I almost bought these seeds a few years ago.

Made some quick pickle chips

Made some fresh white bean avocado and white bean cashew/seed hummus for snacking

A couple Cubano sliders using some of the NYDay ham

Late fall? More like mid-winter. And it's now 2024.

I've been on a chicken noodle soup kick the past month or so. Instead of roasting a whole bird, I now roast a couple thighs, then make broth with the bones and skin. It's enough for a couple meals for the 2 of us. Carrots, celery, onion, fresh thyme, and Amish noodles.