I thought the problem with undercooked pork was trichinosis, a parasitic foodborne disease spread by eating infected animals who have the larvae in their muscles. Now there are far more cases from eating wild meat, like bear or walrus, than there are from eating pork. The US is averaging about a dozen cases a year. CDC says that 90% of the cases have minor or no symptoms and no complications.

Now that most of the pork is raised in big confined operations and fed mainly grain products, I guess today's pigs are far less likely to pick up the trichinosis larvae, which come from eating the infected flesh. Pigs don't forage and have the chance to eat the raw meat of other animals any more, which is why more wild animals cause illness than commercial pork does.

Annie

So weird, Annie. I also posted that the issue with pork isn’t botulism, it’s trichinosis. Botulism is still with us (and usually found in poorly preserved vegetables as the botulinus organism is found in the soil). For some reason my post didn’t go through. 🤷‍♀️

Apologies for being OT!

Is anyone else having a hard time with GW? I wrote a post a few weeks ago but couldn’t find/access the this forum to post. I had forgotten about it and wrote another post this morning. Same problem. Even though I access GW via the cooking forum it isn’t on the list of choices. I had a somewhat similar issue years ago and after a frustrating experience with support who informed me this forum didn’t exist. Frustrated this morning.

I knew if I shared that info from the Iron chef that I would learn something more here. I just blindly trusted him, much like I would blindly trust a few of you folks on some topics here. Thanks for the additional pork info. I think I will stick with medium or maybe live on the edge with the mid-rare when I am feeling strong and obstinate. As always, the quality of the meat is important.

Well, Michael Symon usually knows his meat, so maybe it's both problems. As Colleen mentioned, botulism does exist in the soil, as well as in improperly preserved or stored vegetable products. I remember a botulism outbreak from some improperly refrigerated carrot juice from various grocery stores and botulism from baked potatoes which were baked and left sitting on the counter wrapped in foil at a restaurant. Botulism needs specific conditions to grow, usually, but it's also the reason that doctors say not to give honey to children under a certain age.

Surprisingly I have not been having problems with GardenWeb/Houzz lately, but I sure have in the past!

Annie

I pick pork tenderloins up every time they are on sale and usually have one or more in the freezer. I don't eat under 145, but take out of oven around 140 and let sit till it reaches 145 before serving. It's always pink and not dry. Periodically I get bone-in pork chops that are between 3/4 and one inch thick. I cook those in the pressure cooker, so I'm sure they are well past the 145, but are so tender and delicious.

I did an online search and it looks like there are several things you can get from undercooked pork besides trichinosis, but that's the one I always think of with undercooked pork.

I find chops more forgiving of overcooking, shoulder/butt even more, and ribs and belly almost can’t be over cooked. Its the super lean meat with little or no bone, fat, connective tissue, etc that is a ”problem” for me.

John, I agree that it's the super lean meat, like pork loin or tenderloin that I have a problem with. I"ve never managed to make a pork chop that isn't dry and tough, but I do have some luck with shoulder/butt and pork steaks and have made some passable carnitas.

No pork, but I did make a nice four bean chili with every ingredient coming from my pantry or freezer and some foccacia with pickled jalapenos and cheese:

Annie

Delicious Annie so good you grow nearly all your own food. Must be amazing browsing in your pantry or freezer. I mean that is mostly what I do when planning WFD but all mine has been bought/ brought ? in. Sometimes I do have tomatoes or like, at the moment lots of bok choy but it pales in comparison.

Sunday roast time again. This time it was roast duck breast fillet. This fillet, peculiarly had it’s wing left on. It was cooked over a bed of orange and red onions which kind of formed a sauce. We had also a couple of roast potatoes, white asparagus and baby carrots

All looks great. John, yes, lpork loin can be trick to not have dry. I generally love pork, however.

I make Thai pork with Thai basil, and it is best when I pound the pieces of pork loin, tenderize them a bit.

I did not go very far or very often over the summer, so felt a bit entitled to treat myself to lobster 🦞 over the summer and fall. DH thinks lobster is too rich, but will eat lobster rolls. I added a bit too much mayo to these, but buttered the rolls before grilling.

Looks absolutely delicious petalique, lots of lobster….Yum. Our lobster prices have gone through the roof. They became reasonable for a while but now exports are up again so we the home market, miss out or pay outrageous orices.

I is a treat. These were not all the same year ;)

I shell out every edible morsel and it takes a bit of time.

Here is our lunch and dinner from yesterday and a couple of days ago.

Lunch was an asian style soup with bought in prawn dumplings . Served with a little chilli crisp.

Dinner was two different sorts of pork just fried in the pan till done. Both were tender. With salad, which included yellow beetroot and radishes and a nuked potato.

Below Dinner was sausage and mash with a baby cauliflower, corn and the yellow beetroot and radish. DH made the gravy which I thought was too thick but I didn’t mention it as it is not so bad, and I do appreciate him helping.

Oooo the soup!

Hi guys! GW is really acting up. This thread was repeated at least 2 times, reading through it.

Fabulous meals and photography as always.

I've been keeping busy and semi out of trouble, with exercise classes, working a few hours each evening and going out with friends on weekends.

I bought a spaghetti squash and roasted it, topped with pasta sauce and mozzarella. Wow was it ever good, but they're huge. Lol

So I bought an acorn squash and had it tonight. I completely forgot how sweet they are. Actually too sweet for me.

I marinated the drums in spices, oil, some balsamic and Worcestershire and air-fried them.

I made bran muffins today. It's been a long time

I still make bread, every couple or 3 weeks.

Totally agree about GW Cooking acting weird. I can’t get the current threads only really old topics come up. I only got this one by doing a search. Hopefully it will get better.

Anyway, Jasdip your cooking is spot on as usual.

I don't usually join in, hope you don't mind....but...I tried something "new-to-me"...it was actually pretty good! A sausage & spinach strata.

perfect winter food!

Nicole that looks really good. So nice to see you joined in.

Dinner for us was seafood mornay with penne a sort of seafood Mac and Cheese. ’SeaMac’ ’MacandSea’

Edited to add that I have to change to Latest everytime under that Topics heading in order to be able to see recent posts it really is a pain.

No pic but we had a beetroot tarte tatin and chick pea salad.

That all sounds delicious floral. Did the beetroot tart have some fetta or goats cheese on top… they seem to go together, always looks nice and tastes good too.

No pic but I found my personal limit of underdone-ness for pork chops. Sous vide to 140F for 1.5 hour . . . I liked the tenderness but not the slimeyness. Next time, 3 hrs. I put SWMBO's serving in the microwave. Best not to push her limits.

Neely, feta or goats cheese would be good and do feature in some versions but I seldom have any in the fridge. I tend to cook using what I have rather than shopping for specific meals so mine is just beetroot which we almost always have in. It's still a very tasty meal.

Tonight was fishcakes made using fish from the freezer, parsley sauce and steamed carrots and cabbage. I suppose you could say we eat pretty simple food compared with all the multiple ingredient mixed dishes some posters describe. I don't have the motivation or patience to produce meals with lots of different components.

It’s cold here so I made comfort food the last three nights: Monday was white chicken chili, Tuesday was gf pizza with pepperoni, mushrooms, and hot peppers, and tonight was golumpki.

Long Island duck was on sale yesterday, so duck I bought. I made a Peking Duck rwcipe that I expect is far from authentic, but J'm deeminf it a success. my carving was less successful. So I'll post the before picture:

Oh yum to your Peking duck foas.

John, I’m not a fan of sous vide and when the word ’slimeyness’ comes into it, I must admit it’s not winning me over. (smile)

Your pizza looks good PM, I had to look up golumpki and found they are cabbage rolls… love cabbage rolls. What did you put in them?

Floral, I usually also try to limit the number of ingredients mainly because I like the main ingredients flavour to stand out but also because I cook from my pantry so limited to what’s there. Occasionally, if I make, say a mole or a curry, there will be lots of ingredients.

Friday night and felt like Chinese food. Made sweet and sour chicken, added mini spring rolls because we were hungry. DH said the sweet and sour sauce tasted ’right’ so I guess the Chinese rice wine vinegar really helped with the flavour. Lots of red capsicum.

I’ve never had Peking duck! Yours looks good.

Also meant to say ”hey jasdip”!

Bought a small turkey with no room in the freezer so roasted it today. Cranberry sauce missed being in photo but was definitely there. :)

Oh man, I love duck and seldom have it because it's almost never on sale here and then it's really expensive. I grew some one year but they were...difficult...both to raise and to process. Maybe I'll see one for the holidays and we'll have a treat!

Jasdip, it's good to see you again and to know that you are doing well. Nice dinner too, but the muffins look especially good. I'm one of those people who like bran muffins better than some of the more popular ones (looking at you, blueberry).

So much good food! I like beetroot a lot and the greens nearly as well. Fishcakes are always good and I'd never pass up a turkey dinner or spring rolls or strata or, well, anything else here!

So, let me catch up. We had that white chicken chili, although I used a recipe that called for cream cheese which Elery loved and I didn't like as well. This was Elery's, he had a grilled cheese sandwich with his, made with whole grain bread and some sharp cheddar:

Elery's daughter and Son In Law visited last weekend and I baked some homemade rolls to go with a smoked beef brisket that Elery did. We had roasted potatoes and green beans and salad with that, and some peach cobbler. I had the rolls baked and packaged up before I even thought to take a picture, LOL:

Peach cobbler with some of those peaches from the freezer:

Elery likes the southern type cobbler with the cake topping instead of the biscuit topping, so I make this type for him and the other type when I'm feeding my side of the family.

Another night we had pork chops cooked with sauerkraut and a purple sweet potato on the side that I got from Misfits, along with a dinner roll which was not one of mine, it was a leftover from the freezer. I'm still trying to clean the freezer for this year's beef, so I'm finding all kinds of stuff, LOL.

Of course, there were the obligatory beans, which I've been trying to make at least two times a week, shooting for three times. This soup had Good Mother Stallard beans, lots of veggies, some barley and some of my home canned beef stock, along with a little of Elery's freshly smoked "buckboard bacon" made with a pork shoulder. Kind of a conglomeration, but I cleaned the refrigerator!

We've also had burgers and roasted chicken and tonight was chicken sandwiches on ciabatta rolls along with a bowl of leaves which are still growing in the hoop house.

And that, I think, is that!

Annie

neely, I made my filling with hamburger, basmati rice, onion, garlic, and some tomato sauce.

Annie, have you tried the white chicken chili recipe from Aldi? it uses chicken, stock, cannellini beans, chilis & jalapenos, and white wine, which is key for the distinctive flavor. I serve it with sour cream or yogurt and cheese. White Chicken Chili

Annie, I thought you used to say that beets taste like dirt 😁

Colleen, I've always liked beets, so you must be thinking of someone else. I like the red ones more than the golden ones, because they are more flavorful.

PM, I'll look for that recipe, but I'll leave out the wine so it won't have the "distinctive" flavor. I dislike wine and won't put it in my food. The only thing I dislike more is beer!

Dinner tonight was panfried blue hake, some broccoli and a mix of quinoa, sweet potatoes and beans. That was pretty much a failure, I did not like it at all. Quinoa is kind of like eating bird seed...

Annie

Annie, your peach cobbler looks delicious. I, too, grew up with the biscuit topper for cobblers, but DH has decided he likes the southern cake type better. I haven't had great luck with that type yet. Would you mind sharing your recipe?

Annie, it just won't be the same without the wine. And we were totally simpatico until now. lol!

I also grew up with biscuit-topped cobblers! When I met my BF's father, I had been told his favorite dessert was apricot cobbler. It took me forever to find fresh apricots to make it for dinner for him. I was a little shocked when he asked me what it was, because I had made it with biscuit topping and he only knew cobblers as the southern cake type. lol!

101 ways with leftover turkey: tonight I made turkey enchiladas verdes. It was really good. :)

PM, I'll be doing that 101 ways with leftover turkey in another week or so, I'll have a local turkey and they are never less than 20 or 25 pounds, those are the small ones. With 10 of us for dinner I figure that's leftovers for me and both daughters.

You know, it's funny about the beer/wine. My ex husband and I owned a bar and I don't drink at all, I just don't like the stuff and have never been able to find any that is palatable to me. It's way too expensive to drink something I don't like and I've been known to make a fool of myself without any chemical assistance at all, LOL.

Lizbeth, I use this recipe from Southern Living: Fresh Peach Cobbler Recipe. Just about any fruit can be used in lieu of the peaches, Elery likes blackberries the best but won't turn down peaches, plums, cherries, strawberries, raspberries, well, you get my point.

Tonight for supper we had nachos, we had a busy day and were both tired, so it was good enough.

Annie

101 ways with turkey, continued: tonight was turkey spaghetti. :)

That turkey spaghetti looks delicious. I love turkey … mainly cook a breast twice a year, once for your Thanksgiving and once for Christmas, and what with sandwiches with any left overs there usually isn’t enough left to do something like this spaghetti but I wish there was.

Annie I meant to say I also like the ordinary red beetroots better than the yellow, def more of the ’beetroot‘ flavour.

We had crumbed flattened chicken breast with scalloped potatoes, broccoli, and roast pumpkin...that‘s the pumpkin with the skin facing… didn’t eat the skin this time, sometimes do, sometimes don’t.

I also made an apple and pineapple crumble tart which we had for dessert. Coconut in the crumble.

I was winging it off ingredient notes from BF's family "chicken spaghetti" recipe. It called for mushrooms, celery, green olives, and a voloute sauce, along with a small can of tomato paste. It had a wonderful creamy texture, probably due to the butter in the voloute! :)

Annie, when I go out to the pubs and dances I drink only ginger ale. I'm on the floor all nite, by myself, with the girls, or with the husband of one of them who dances with us singles. I have a fantastic time, sober. I'll even go up to a stranger and ask if he's drunk enough to dance! Lol

Chicken was on sale for $1.99/lb so I roasted one. I know you'll all be having your turkey fix soon.

We've just had linguine carbonara and a fennel and orange salad.

Roast chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy… such a yummy meal Jasdip.

Floral your linguine carbonara and a fennel and orange salad sounds delicious and thoroughly Italian. Did you go there this summer or was that last summer? Forgive my aging brain.

I had a craving for mushroom risotto and started preparing the chopped up onion and mushrooms only to find that I didn’t have any Arborio rice in the pantry…blast. However had some Orzo / Ricini, so made mushroom orzo and I thought it was delious. Nice and creamy like a good risotto should be and the orzo. was still a little al dente.

Very quick to make.

I cooked the orzo in some mushroom stock from a box and added it to the sauted in butter

mushrooms and onion. Salt, pepper and parsley. The boxed mushroom stock gave so much mushroom flavour,

Neely, we go to Tuscany every summer and Rome every other Christmas.

This year it's the Romans' turn to come to us. They love coming but do struggle with the weather! They have a different concept of cold.

Your mushroom orzo looks very tasty.

Simple impromptu stir fry of pork, broccoli and mushroom with what was on hand. It turned out to be quite good.

Jasdip, I knew we were alike, LOL, although I'm past the dancing in public stage I think! Oh, the mashed potatoes look delicious too.

Neely, the tart looks very interesting, I would not have thought to mix pineapple and apple but it sounds good

PM, I didn't make turkey spaghetti, but I did make peanut butter chicken:

Also nicely medium burgers one day along with some baked beans:

I roasted a sirloin tip very rare, and had it with white sweet potatoes and some diced golden beets. Sorry Neely, it seems that I ate all the red ones first and all that are left are these.

We made sandwiches a couple of days later with horseradish mayo and some sweet and sour cole slaw:

The two monsters really enjoyed the rare beef too, begging for bites. Elery's cat promptly took a nap on his lap:

Mine took a nap in a spare box. He sleeps in them until they collapse and then we have to find him a new one. THat's not always easy, he weighs 27 pounds!

Last night we had bean soup and tonight we had enchiladas and I didn't remember to take a picture of either one. Maybe tomorrow night, when we have leftovers, LOL.

Annie

Very traditional last night. Lancashire hotpot and bread and butter pudding. Spinach as the veg.

Dessert is rare in our house, so DH was very excited to see a pudding. Back to fruit tonight. Duck legs as the main using up some cranberries I had left from making the sauce for Christmas.

Two delicious meals there floral, I love traditional meals , so comforting.

Annie cooking up a storm as usual- delicious…. too bad about no more red beets… you mean home grown???

We have a lot of those impromptu stir fries petalique and I never had a bad one, yours looks delicious.

I’m hoping someone can start off the new thread as this one has reached 100. I would —however, I am unable to start a thread at the moment… ’Cooking’ as an option to post a new thread into does not exist for me currently.

The duck and cranberry.

Ooooo!!!

Is there such a thing as a bad duck dish? I don’t think so.

We’re lucky we aren’t as tasty as ducks. We’d never have made it as a species, with all the predation and, where cranberries grow, cannibalism.

I wish our cat liked human food treats. She is very particular and only eats cat food. Won’t even touch fish! Still, she is 19 y/o so I can’t argue with her diet. In the past year I have mixed her wet food 1:1 with warm water, to force her to take in more liquid (for kidneys).

Neely, I did mean home grown. I do have some red beets that are home canned and they are always available at the grocery, but when I have the golden ones in storage that I grew, it seems wasteful to buy red ones. I'll try to remember to take a picture of supper tomorrow night and if no one else has started a new thread I'll do it then.

John, Elery's little calico is pretty picky, but she'll never turn down a bit of raw beef, she loves the stuff. My rare roast was close enough for her, LOL. My big orange cat? There's a reason the monster weighs 27 pounds! He loves all kinds of food, from rotisserie chicken to Goldfish crackers. His favorite is cheese popcorn. He wants it all and if he feels he's getting left out he's not above reaching a paw up and giving me a little tap to remind me.

Floral, the duck looks very good and fresh cranberries are on sale here for the holidays. That would probably be good with chicken too.

We were busy cleaning freezers so we had yesterday's enchiladas again today.

Annie

Duck is often served with cherries or orange so I thought cranberries would serve the same purpose. I'd made the sauce for Christmas and had a little left that wouldn't fit in the box for the freezer. Hence a make it up on the fly dish. It also involved a crust of Chinese five spice powder and root veggies roasted under the duck legs. Not bad. But then it's hard to go wrong with duck.

I have just tried to start a new thread. Cooking no longer appears in the list of topics as far as I can see. So I'm stumped.