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Kimchi Jjigae from “Umma” - great comfort food with beef franks, pan-seared spam, pork belly slices, cabbage kimchi, fish sauce, beef broth, sugar and kimchi juice. Served over rice

Probably not. I’m afraid that when I was tasting the pasta for doneness, I wasn’t paying any attention to the flavor but it didn’t jump out at me either.

Felt the need for vegetables and noodles = Yaki Udon Noodles. It was a good way to clean out the vegetable crisper. I've learned to soak lots of dried shitaki mushrooms and keep them frozen to save time. Protein were shrimp and char siu from the freezer. Picked up ground turkey and made chili with a can of mixed beans. Eaten with paratha. These frozen paratha are great to have on hand - just toss onto a non-stick pan, a few presses, and they puff up beautifully. We've had balmy +single digit temperatures the last couple of days. Today, the temp dropped with bluster winds and snow. It was COLD! Turned the oven on and cooked a Weight Watchers recipe: Harissa and Yogurt Chicken - one pan meal. It was fragrant with cumin, and warmed the kitchen!

Yes. Here potatoes are not used so much as a starch but as a vegetable in its own right, just like any other. This is a popular way to deal with them. The potatoes retain a crispiness and the vinegar cuts the richness of the soy sauce braising sauce of the meatballs.

The potato dish is intriguing. Did you make it?

红烧狮子头 (hóng shāo shī zi tóu), Red Cooked Lion's Head Meatballs. 70:30 fatty pork, glutinous rice meatballs fried then braised in soy sauce. 醋溜土豆丝 (cù liū tǔ dòu sī), Vinegared Shredded Potato Julienned potato with vinegar and green and red chilli. Served with rice.

Do you think the squid ink pasta brings more than color to the dish?

Genius!

I can see this becoming family lore: When I was a kid, my father breaded my fingertips and fried them for a snack!

Avocado, mango, and fried plantain salad with brisket bacon, Gorgonzola cheese, and pistachios - from the Dinner 2026 thread

Avocado, mango, and fried plantain salad with brisket bacon, Gorgonzola cheese, and pistachios, served over butter lettuce and arugula. Dressing (in the shot glass) was garlic and serrano chiles, sauteed and then blended (plus the oil) with lime juice, honey, and salt. Mangoes were wonderfully sweet

Salmon burger on a brioche bun with arugula and yuzu mayo and a quick slaw of Brussels sprouts, carrot, snap peas and scallions

One of my daughters saw that these are good for storing smaller amount of potatoes and onions. Since both daughters are two person households at the moment, these are big enough to hold a couple of week's worth of potatoes and onions and fit neatly in their pantry cupboards.

Sauscisse is the (nuch) older version from which the English derivation comes. Saucisson is modern French, although both are still used.

Our wine fridge has a cartridge of expanded clay pellets that was soaked in water for a few hours before being installed in the floor when we first initialized it. The way our wine fridge works is that the walls get cold and any humidity condenses on the walls and hangs around there, eventually running down to the floor and into the cartridge of pellets, which then evaporates to re-condense on the walls. It keeps the humidity pretty constant - around 70%. I store all of our "cellar" items in there... potatoes last a really long time, onions, garlic, apples - anything that would have gone into a root cellar back in the old days. We keep them in rattan baskets to help allow air circulation.

Everything looks fantastic (except for the hospital food).... but I hope the little one didn't need to go to the hospital after frying his fingers! hehe....

I was hoping you'd chime in about this. I knew that boudin wasn't a translation for sausage, but meant that it was a type of French sausage. I always thought the French was saucisson - but I don't know how that differs from saucisse...

Made some crispy chicken thighs for lunch today. Made a quick cream pan sauce to go with.

The French Acadians brought the tradition of boudin noir with them to Louisiana, but it evolved with the influences of German settlers/sausage makers, who also industrialized rice farming in south Louisiana. They made rice the binder instead of blood or milk. There were Spanish and Afro-Caribbean influences, as well. Blood boudin was usually made during a traditional boucherie, a hog butchering where every part of the animal is used. One of the best episodes of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations was filmed at a boucherie in south Louisiana. Look for the Cajun Country episode. It’s so good! Not to be confused with another Cajun episode he filmed a few months before his death about Cajun Mardi Gras. It was not good at all.

the miracles of modern chemistry to retard sprouting can be found here: https://www.simplehomecookedrecipes.com/cooking/what-chemical-is-used-to-stop-potatoes-from-sprouting old school storing potatoes (and lots of other root crops . . . ) in a root cellar is a homestead topic of its own.... humidity/moist medium/temperature/freeze protection . . . it gets 'complicated' real fast, homesteaders had it mastered a century ago. curiously, ethylene retards potato sprouting . . . . home available of ethylene is duck soup simple: bananas (and other fruits, but bananas are king of the ethylene heap....)

It's relatively easy to get 100% humidity or very low humidity but harder to control in between. I don't know how wine fridges regulate humidity. For what it's worth, I looked into it once and the main people with containers for in between humidity were using them for cigars or greener smoking material.

I'll throw out my Pasta con Costco as a suggestion. I don't shop there right now but the principle is the same with smaller jars. You know those huge jars of stuff you buy at Costco but then have to figure out how to use? Marinated artichoke hearts, kalamata olives, sun dried tomatoes, marinated feta, pickled veg? 4 bean salad? Why not? Cook up some pasta - fresh if you want fast, then toss in veg from the above jars and top with some grated Parmesan. Dead easy. You could portion out a mixture of Costco stuff into a container in advance so you just dump it in.

I keep potatoes in a basket under the butcher block island in our kitchen. Baby potatoes and small Yukon Golds last about a month before starting to get soft. Russets last as long but do start to sprout from their eyes if they last longer. At that point I just cut the sprouts off and the potatoes seem fine. Is there any solution that retards the sprouting?

The time limit on frozen food is almost entirely a cya, in my opinion. Freezer burn can be a problem. Partner just made some very good gnocchi (fair bit of effort and fair bit of potato & flour glue all over the place) and the instructions for freezing said to freeze them separated flat on a tray and then bag them for storage in the freezer. So I'd look at trying that with potatoes and other stuff that could turn to mush. My parents used to make a turkey in mock hollandaise sauce and freeze it. The sauce is basically a Béchamel sauce with egg yolk added at the end. I'm pretty sure that for freezing they would put everything in but the egg and add it after thawing. Of course that means you would have to have the ability to separate, whisk, and temper in the egg, but at least you are most of the way there.

DW had to spend a few days im the hospital after a small procedure. You might have heard that German hospital food is not for the faint of heart … She was released todat, so I picked her up and asked for her first recovery meal - surprisingly, she opted for “more” German food: SchniPoSa - Schnitzel, pommes frites and salad. I bought some veal and got cracking … (Commercial) Fries from the airfryer, doused with Duvel dust - always a good option … Salad with balsamic reduction … And some mushroom cream sauce for good measure … Little one breaded the Schnitzel and had some breading on the tip of his fingers, which we fried as well 🙄 The whole ensemble … And as usual - plenty of leftovers for tomorrows Schnitzelbrötchen … Finally, from our trip back through France we had some puddings left. Paris-Brest themed: cream, caramel, praline - what can go wrong 🤗 No complaints and we are more than happy she is back 🥳