Very pretty...GREAT presentation @Sleevendog!

DD’s experiment. Braised Napa cabbage with ham in an Asian style, served over an Asian style risotto.

The cabbage was tasty although the sauce had too much cornstarch, v2 will thicken the sauce via cooking down. The ham was too lean and bland, we decided v2 will use a fattier cut of pork and I think it should be slow cooked then seared and crystallized with sugar.

Or just make a pork belly. I have not made a pork belly for many years, since that dish usually triggered a gallbladder attack. Now that I have no such organ, I’m gingerly stepping back into fatty dishes.

My pork belly is very simple. Cut off the skin, score the fat in squares, coat thickly with half salt half sugar, place fat side up in a close fitting deep pan and cover with foil, roast at 450F so the fat renders and the belly cooks submerged in its own fat, then uncover and roast until the fat is crisped up.

The “Asian risotto” was weird, it was some internet recipe with rice vinegar instead of white wine, the author must have no taste buds. We decided v2 will use sake and mirin, and white miso.

Fish heads and frames make an excellent chowder stock. My market fillets fresh fish 24/7. Every shopping order, every 5-6 weeks, i add a 2# packet and make stock. 2$ a pound. I secured a Sat morning delivery window for 8-10am. A house guest for the weekend, we will have a chowder Sat night...and 5 including us for Easter Sunday...maybe 7 max.

Easter is pretty much planned. All necessary ingredients ordered.

Yoyo weather. 75ºF yesterday, 45ºF today...damp and rainy.

Daffodils are happy.

Easy, healthy, meatless, weeknight meal. Checks all the boxes....

similar Tuesday

scrambled eggs for dinner. Easy and quick.

Happy Easter to all! :-)

dcarch

There haven't been organized meals here for awhile. I half filled the fridge for the holiday with salad and grab and go veg, chicken, beef ribs, cheese and stuff for easy assebly. the iceberg is gone, but there's romainem, some kind of micro lettuce, spinach and a bit of arugula, and plenty of soup. The soup, definitely planned for this evening, is brothier than usual, and I used Pacific beef broth, rather than my stock, which I'm short f with all the freezer ruckus (not kosher for Passover, but I'm not that big a stickler...my stock wouldn't be either).

The soup sounds like a mess but it's really good. Three stalks plus the heart of a celery, chopped, three spring garlics, and three spring onions, sautéed in lite olive oil, 1.5 bunches of chard, one bunch of collards minus the stems, two overripe beefsteak tomatoes and three just rip romas, a modest amount of pre-soaked but not cooked Jacob's cattle beans, I think maybe some other stuff, and a handfull of dried fenugreek leaves, S&P. I remembered the chili peppers after I washed my knife, so left them out. It's easy enough to add some North African seasoning or whatnot while heating. ;) ETA: Oh, yeah, there's a bit of purple cabbage, too.

I’ve been trying to mix things up a bit lately, have cooked a lot more and repeated a lot less. Here are a few that I’ve got pictures of, starting with a chicken that I thought of when I saw the 13 year old panko thread someone bumped. I wonder if some attitudes have changed over the past dozen years? I find myself typically using a mix of panko and regular crumbs when I bread something, as I did here:

Shrimp in a light tomato sauce

A shared plate of NYT gnocchi gratin with some steak tidbits

A dijon-cheese topped pork chop with too much cheese to look pretty, but really good

A cauliflower au poivre that satisfied more than expected

That’s enough for now, gotta shop for tonight’s dinner!

Just looking back at #426 and I had to laugh at JYL’s douchey potatoes. They’ve been on my list. I guess they’ve been all over tiktok for a while now but I’m not so I’m late to the game. They look legit good, are they worth it?

Sleeven’s Thai food looks great. I’ve been eyeing the Hot Thai Kitchen site for a while now, and my Amazon history shows I’ve been wanting to make drunken noodles since February when I bought a steamer similar to what Pailin uses. Then I ordered kachai which I couldn’t find locally, and though it only came from Queens UPS managed to break the jar so I never got it. As I recall other ingredients were also problematic to source, like Thai basil, and I gave up. I need to lighten up and just make it ”close enough.”

And I see Floral was at it again with mussels. I still want to try the Gin and Tonic mussels. I got so far as to buy Fever Tree tonic, wow what a difference from our domestic brands! But once again, ingredient problems: I bought some mussels for another dish, pictured below, and when I opened them there was next to no meat! I did a little googling and think I know what caused this and how to source better. Soon!

Need bigger pans next time! But it was good.

Ok, no more historical dishes. Here was tonight’s Persian chicken kebobs:

My pot of "chicken" Green Chili. We're smothering nachos, eating bowls of it topped with avocado....

We have a return to normal bread. This has dehydrated onion, citrus pepper, dill pickle juice and a handful of sugar snap peas cut up.

Last night’s vinegar sheet pan chicken.

@plllog - Pickle juice and sugar snap pea bread counts as back to normal? 😂

@chloebud - Your dinner looks great. I wish my wife liked olives. And she’s Greek!

I’ve been largely avoiding GW, taking a break from negativity that I too easily get sucked into. Figured WFD was a relaxed place to post though. But I just happened to come back logged out and see my last post was removed. Why, because I jokingly used a distasteful word to describe John’s potatoes, the same word he himself used in a post that remains? That’s the only objectionable thing I see. And someone liked it so it was up at one point.

Anyway, @John Liu, don’t know if you caught it but those potatoes were on the menu for the WH dinner for the king and queen!

Yep! Back to normal being my kind of improvisational daily bread, well risen and tasty. Interesting shape due to the Staub Artichoke shaped pot. The previous loaf had fallen in baking, though was tasty if dense. Thus back to normal, having sufficient legs to hold its rise. I still don't know if the last one suffered from unstable air (thunder) or crazy baker. ;) I still see your showered potatoes post...

FOAS-your post about John's potatoes is the featured post on my site.

Thanks guys, I can now be less cynical and chalk it up to a Houzz glitch.

Been playing with coloring baby corn. Last time I did it with beet juice and visually it was good for the dish but the beet taste wasn’t 100% fitting. Today I tried pomegranate, not because the dish needed color but because I wanted to see what would happen. Kind of a purple wine, not what I was hoping for but taste much improved. Maybe I’ll just drop it, as it’s really not allthat interesting! 😂

You could always just add some pomegranate arils when you want them. They're a nice size to go with the kernals, but I'd go classic and just use fine diced red peppers.

I’ve got peppers in that dish. Like I said the color wasnt needed last night. But it was in the other dish I was attempting to recreate, which featured corn in multiple ways. It was a partial fail and my plating ended up horrendous, but here’s a corner to show how the baby corn turned out with beet:

I never remember pictures in time. I'm not really a picture person. Never have been. This is the aftermath of what's for lunch. I had defrosted a container of greens soup but it didn't look appealing and was going to be a hard sell. It had also less broth than it should. So I added a bunch of powdered sumac and an alium pepper blend, and a whole lot of packaged tomato soup (it was opened and in the fridge), and heated it up. The resulting broth was an attractive rich brown, translucent but with body, and the larger ribbons of leaves tasted good rather than wilted. There was a little artisinal gouda to go with it. Hearty lunch for a cool, dank day. Very satisfying.

I never remember pictures in time. I'm not really a picture person. Never have been. This is the aftermath of what's for lunch. I had defrosted a container of greens soup but it didn't look appealing and was going to be a hard sell. It had also less broth than it should. So I added a bunch of powdered sumac and an alium pepper blend, and a whole lot of packaged tomato soup (it was opened and in the fridge), and heated it up. The resulting broth was an attractive rich brown, translucent but with body, and the larger ribbons of leaves tasted good rather than wilted. There was a little artisinal gouda to go with it. Hearty lunch for a cool, dank day. Very satisfying.

Pretty bowl, plllog! ”Dank” is a good word for today, but I love the cool temps.

I’ve been loving the cool temps here! At one point it was warm enough that I uncovered the ac units but never needed them. It’s been high 40’s to high 50’s, I’ve got the heat off as much as my wife will allow, with just body heat and heat from tv’s, fridges, and other running appliances keeping the house just above that.

Plllog when I looked at your pictures yesterday - without reading glasses - I thought I was looking at green soup and wondered how it landed in such an even pattern. It’s only now as I’m typing that I scrolled up and see it’s the bowl!

What’s the spoon handle? The bit that I see, it reminds me of a fish set we’ve got from the 1900’s or so that AI is saying is likely ”ivorine,” whatever that may be.

Funny you should mention sumac. That’s a spice that I only familiarized myself with a few weeks ago for some reason, and I’m wondering where it’s been all my life.

LOL re the bowl. I didn't mean it to be a puzzle. The spoon handle is acryllic, I think. The ferule, or whatever it's called, is silver. The bowl of the spoon is stainless, Italian. There are four colors, in five piece settings, in the kitchen, and a bright multicolored set with three pieces (sharp table knife, dinner fork, soup spoon) for a dozen in six colors that go with my also mixed bright colors, casual company dishes. These are from the '90's and are still abailable.

The sumac has been hiding in Middle Eastern stores. :) Welcome to the club. :)

Today, I was supposed to be making a new to me pizza recipe, but the weather has been so unstable, I just want to sleep. And then I had to do an errand that couldn't wait. So I was thinking of ordering in. The local joint makes good pizza. But somewhere earlier, I'd taking some bread out of the freezer and forgotten it. It's a pair of par-baked baguettes. Which I thought might be freezer burned from all the ins and outs getting the ice maker fixed. So, anyway, the oven got good and heated due to telephone and forgetting. :) So I followed the instructions, and they toasted up nicely. Kind of perfect baguette texture. A bit odd tasting. I assume the sweetness is from the malt, but t use malt in baking a lot, and it doesn't make the bread either sweet or odd. I love the malt in bages and similar, though I don't use that much--and they aren't sweet or odd tasting.

Still, the texture was great. Torn up bit sized and schmeared with cultured cream cheese (no gums or anything) and a crisp but fully ripe and very flavorful gtrape tomato was the best! Totally worked as an understudy for the pizza.

I cooked and preped a lot of things yesterday, but nothing for dinner, and it was a dinner knid of day. So I fork tore some chicken sausages (fuully cooked kind) covered them with purple soup from the freezer, and put deli American cheese on top to hold in some steam, add salt, aand general gooiness. And a more aattractive color. It was far more delicious than I could have expected. I think some sausage essence and cheese got into the sauce for the whizbang (plus general salt-ness).

The star waas the afters, which I did make yesterday. I've been accumulating rhubarb, and had made some dough for pie crusts. I'd also been contemplating how to use up the leftover charoset. (It lasts long in the fridge because it's basically pickled in wine, though it does soften some. This kind Is minced fresh apple and pecans, concord grape wine and Vietnamese cinnamon.) So while rolling the dough I figured to make a layer of charoset and put the rhubarb on top. Two well whisked eggs and enough arrowroot starch to stiffen it, then most of the solids from the charoset until it seemed full. I shook a literal spoonful of granulated sugar on the top layer of diced rhubarb to help it look pretty, but that's the only sugar other than the wine and apple. It was a little extra tart at just cool enough to put in the fridge, but today it's just right. A bit of nice tartness, a bit of subtle sweetness, and well married so both layers together with the crumbly crust, make a nice mouthful of texture and quiet flavor.

Dinner tonight - not cooked by me!

Shrimp cocktail, the usual ketchup and horseradish quick dip, but with cherries blended in.

Prosciutto wrapped cantalope

Poached salmon with papaya-butter sauce, avocado salad, cole slaw, rice.

@plllog...that spoon is a "work-of-art"!

I've got a chili relleno casserole in the oven. We need something made ahead of time...too tired doing a rental "refresh" to come home and cook. Got up @ 4am thinking of things I should bring to the rental to "decorate". :0) I'm hemming drapes while I wait for the casserole to cook.

So much better than eating frozen "Tina's Burritos". :0)

That's such a classic! I never think to make a casserole unless I'm wrangling leftovers, but the purpose made ones are so good!

I like the flatware, too, but it's a very popular line, and moderately priced. Glad you like it! But it's mass produced, not really art....

Gotta be quick for tonight. Dressing’s made for coleslaw, too.☺️

I don't usually have my iPad in the kitchen, but did today at first meal, and the plate was pretty enough to think to take a picture. The half small avocado and oh-so-luscious peach are self-explanatory. The others are a standard eggbake (broccolini, red dandelion leaves, eggs and clotted-ish cream, but with SW flavors plus sumac, for change), and roasted red beet and rhubarb bake. The latter was going to be a pie, but the pastry looked funky after it had been abused a bit, so I tossed it, but didn't want to make and chill a new crust with everything else ready and the oven hot. I just put them all in the dish, and whipped up some eggs with pastry flour and a little salt, a couple TBSP sugar and a lot of Ethiopian spice--but I should have used more spice--it doesn't really do much. It all tastes great, and the eggs are just enough to hold it together long enough to plate. I should have added some tapioca to soak up the juice, but the beets were already a little shrivelled from roasting, so I didn't think of it. Texturally, I think it would have been nice, but there isn't enough juice to be a problem.

Second try at posting. GW seems to no longer cooperate with me. DD is turning thirty. We had a small grillout. Shrimp with cherry skewers grilled and served with chimichurri. If you haven’t had grilled or roasted cherries, do try. If a fresh cherry is like a bright, winsome, clearfaced Beaujolais Nouveau, a grilled cherry is like a aged, experienced, weathered Cabernet.

Paired here with a young Tempranillo. ”Paired” means it was the first wine that fell to hand.

Salad and marinated grilled flank steak.

I buy all my beef at US Foods now. It is good meat at low prices, but in large quantity. 11 pounds of flank steak for $110, so the vacuum sealer came out to play. Flank steak is one of my favorite cuts, along with hanger and the hard-to-find bavette. It is meaty and chewy, full flavored. Makes tenderloin taste like meat jello.

Beef will get much more expensive in the coming year. Herds are shrinking. Fortunately I don’t eat steaks much anymore. Actually I don’t eat much anymore, period.

Lovely cake, Annie! Happy birthday!

What's for bread this week? I got downtight silly, and accidentally used a softer flour rather than bread flour for half (the other half was my usual pizza flour). Main difference was a flexy crust and a softer, less sponge crumb-feel. Flavor: A steamed cob of corn kernals, a couple mini red sweet peppers, chopped spicy dill pickles, a few gluggs of salsa picante, and, in honor of the colors matching the flaf of Ethiopia, a few goodly shakes of my favorite Ethiopian spice blend. Tasty!

I started making a big pot of soup with one of the beloved helpers many days ago. I got too tired to finish it and thought to toss the veg and star over today with two of them. It was all perfectly fine. Maybe a little dry at the top of the container, but you'd think they were prepped yesterday. So I put the container of royal corona beans which had been soaked for a full day in water, then in packaged beef broth in the fridge all this time. I forgot about the salt in the broth. The beans are technically cooked now, but didn't soften. Anyway, I started by boiling them in the 4 qt. pot, which was on the stove clean, to start them cooking and making sure that the broth was okay after sitting. By the time I'd chopped up the bits of other veg which had been cleaned only, I was not thinking about the big pot and giant cabbage, but that my 8+ cups of veg would fit in the broth and bean pot. I just dumped them in. A couple fennel with stalks and fronds, three red and three yellow beets, a couple pf leeks, white and green up to the fibrous part, a couple of black radishes and some water. The beef broth had plenty of flavor beyond the salt. I'll add spices while reheating if I feel like it.

Lunch was bi-color sweet corn on the cob, artichoke with a sour pickle sauce, cot-on-candy apricots and gingerbread. And one of the beloveds warmed up a serving of M&C from the freezer. But the picture is the soup. It looks the same now, but cookeder.

We're busy putting on stone veneer. No time to make anything fancy.

Salads...made ahead of time....

Note: My photos won't post...

NiCo, I had some problems adjusting my computer to Houzz photos, but finally beat it into submission. Well, I'm not sure which of the two got beaten into submission, but something did and now my pictures show up.

Plllog, I've never made a small pot of soup, somehow it just seems to keep growing and growing. The bread is very pretty with the flecks of color in it.

A couple of days ago We had a pot of Turkey Craw beans that we grew in 2023 and I just found in the freezer, along with a pan of cornbread and some coleslaw. Elery was very happy and it was good enough for a pot of beans, but definitely not pretty. Tonight I grilled a steak, which we split, and roasted some asparagus from the garden. Also good but not pretty.

Annie

Thanks, Annie! The current loat has cooked spiced carrots that had been frozen, a nice spring shallot, dill pickle bring for the water, and citrus pepper to tie it all together. All the veg melted, so very few pretty specs this time. Very tasty. I'm glad to say that the very lavendar dough baked up brown. :)

I've never heard of turkey craw beans. Pretty doesn't matter if they taste good!

@annie1992...I had to make the photo smaller to post here, then my phone MMS file hung. I ended up buying a new phone because of the poor camera quality. S26 ultra in violet, just picked it up today. It has a wide angle feature I really wanted.

Im thinking about a yummy braised pork with lots of vegetables

COSTCO chicken with a salad. HOT HOT HOT here! 102* tomorrow, so probably more C chicken!

Today a cold front moves thru to end our 2+ weeks of hellish temperatures and bring us some nice rain. My chickens and I will both welcome the cooler weather.

Dinner will be BLTs with the first harvest of yellow filet beans that I'm really looking forward to.

NiCO, I hope your new phone is doing as it is supposed to. Somehow mine never does, or maybe it does and I just don't know it, LOL.

Jack, it finally cooled off here and we got a little rain. I've been canning and gardening and canning. The cattle are enjoying the respite from the heat and the little bit of green that's coming back from 6 weeks of no appreciable rain. I even cooked because my nephew was here working on fence.

I made a pot roast, fried green tomatoes, some garlic bread and an apple pie. The crust was from SharonCB's recipe, the Nathan's Never Fail Pastry. I make a batch in the food processor, divide it into 6 portions, wrap in plastic wrap and then freeze it. The frozen portions are then put into a zip lock bag and I have pie crust when I need it. The last time I picked up a grocery store pie crust it was nearly $5 for 2 crusts and I just refuse to pay that, so I make my own and freeze it. I like the recipe very much, and use butter as the fat. I always smile and think of Sharon when I pull that chunk of dough out of the freezer.

I didn't think to take pictures, though.

Annie

i love hearing about your frozen pie crusts, Annie. I never seem to get around to trying it. I think I'm too tired after rolling out just two crusts for one pie. Though my pastry holds well for a couple days in the fridge... I should try. But it's more fun admirinig you. :)

But plllog, I don't roll them out and freeze them, I leave them in a lump, or more specifically a square. I make the dough in my food processor and it makes enough for 6 crusts. I dump the dough out, divide into 6 somewhat equal portions and then wrap and freeze. I roll them out after thawing. That pastry is the best stuff to work with, my latest pie was a last minute thought so I thawed that chunk of pastry in the microwave for 30 seconds and it still rolled out perfectly, did not tear and was delicious.

SharonCB would be happy with it, I think.

Annie

That is excellent! For me, the roll out is the issue. I mean, not like in the old days sinc Grainlady taught me to roll in plastic, but my favorite rolling pin broke, and I have to use a wood dowel type. But it would be awesome to have frozen crusts. I even got some plyweed skins to put them on. But haven't gotten any into the freezer yet.... So I sit back and admire you, rolled or not....

I sometimes have an issue rolling pie crust, but not this recipe. It is so easy to handle that I don't even chill it, I just roll it out and it doesn't crack or tear, it's a dream to work with. Everything is done in the food processor and I end up with 6 crusts, so it works great for me.

Meanwhile I haven't really cooked or eaten anything worth bragging about or taking a picture of. Tonight we had baked chicken breast with a baked potato and some steamed broccoli. Last night we had beans with corn bread. Before that we had fish tacos with baked fish on low carb tortillas because it was National Taco day or something. Breakfast most mornings is oatmeal and we don't eat lunch.

I did bake a loaf of double chocolate zucchini bread today, which I sent home with my nephew for his chocoholic daughter. I didn't even think about taking a picture!

Annie

I got a new rolling pin! I have to remember to make pie tomorrow.

Congratulations on the new rolling pin. You wouldn't think such a small thing would make a difference, but it does. Elery prefers the "french" style, basically a wooden dowell that's thicker in the middle than on the ends. I use Grandma's old wooden rolling pin with handles.

I actually took a picture of dinner tonight! I made Petalique's Kung Pao chicken with some homegrown chicken, zucchini and hot peppers from the garden. A side of brown rice and some sauteed swiss chard and it was pretty good, although a bit higher in sodium than the cardiologist would like, I'm sure.

We did pick the last of our garden tomatoes, they are just hanging on in spite of the temps in the 40s at night. They look pretty but don't have the flavor of the earlier tomatoes.

Annie