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I discovered that Effie's now has Gruyere flavor and just ordered some. I think that is the only one I haven't tried yet. They'll be here next week.

Welcome. Did my undergraduate in Chicago. It’s a super food city. Look forward to seeing what you cook.

I’d have to look away.

I will address the hard fried egg posts 😜 a little later, but wanted to update on Sandwich Week. I’m not sure why I complicate things unnecessarily, but yesterday I finally decided to keep it simple. I made 22 peanut butter & jelly sandwiches on honey wheat bread, but only bagged 20 lunches because the “end piece” sandwiches were smaller, and I put two of those in a bag lunch, instead of just one. I’m always concerned about using the end pieces since so many people turn their noses up at them, but the ends are my favorite slices and I refuse to throw them away. One loaf of sandwiches was peanut butter and grape jelly, and the other loaf was with strawberry. Each bag contained a sandwich, cookies, a mandarin orange, and a bag of some kind of chip. My pic of the chips variety, oranges, and cookie varieties will only show up upside down, so I didn’t include. Next, 22 ham & cheese brown bag lunches. The cheese was a Tillamook medium cheddar from Costco, and the ham was Wright smoked honey ham. Bread was whole wheat and there was mayo on each side. No pics. Although the fridge was bare when we arrived at about 2:15 pm, I know it had been filled and emptied several times that day. An hour later, someone posted this donation, and you can see there were still a few of our bagged lunches left, but most gone in an hour. For the week, 22 grilled cheese sandwiches (not packed as a brown bag lunch, just bagged sandwiches placed in the community fridge), 25 breakfast sandwiches (eggs with cheese, sausage patty on biscuit) and 42 brown bag lunches. C’est fini! My plan is to focus on my own Thanksgiving dinner today and tomorrow and maybe not cook, prepare, or think of feeding anyone until mid to late next week!

Oh, I was on an Effie's buying kick for a while. I think I need to order some for the holidays!!

Thanks! I still have her book, so I'll check out the original!

Molly Steven’s recipe from ‘All About Braising’ - something like this: Worlds best braised cabbage recipe (clicky)

It’s a fabulous area, but that station really does turn one around. Ahh yes, I realise now I got the name of the hotel wrong. Thanks for that 🙏

Well, it all sounds splendid except possibly the world's best braised cabbage. In this neck of the woods, "World's Best" is a brand name for chocolate bars sold as fundraisers (school bands, football teams, and so on). I've never seen that brand applied to braised cabbage, so I suspect it isn't a brand name. It may deserve the hyperbole, even so. More info, please. I'm always up for good ways to treat cabbage. 😀

Non-traditional Thanksgiving in an Indiana AirBnb. Looks like the menu will be salmon, mashed potatoes, world’s best braised cabbage, green bean salad, and dairy and non-dairy ice creams with bittersweet hot fudge sauce.

@blue_dolphin, what fun!!

I had the exact same experience staying at Keio Plaze, wrong turn out of the Station, kind expats noticed lost travelers, guided us back to the right place. The Izakaya's around there were so great, and Shinjuku was beautiful chaos. I can still hear the Pachinko sounds if I concentrate.

You’re probably right, I know nothing about microwave antennas. And, you’re welcome. It’s testing my memory, but I do occasionally reread my travel blogs and relive the moment.

Very true!

I enjoyed it too, although I wanted to hear more from McFadden. Dave can be a bit of a steamroller.

Wow! Back in the day, I probably made thousands of Egg McMuffins at McD’s and would have been totally in the weeds if we did it like that! Of course, we were scrambling eggs and making pancakes on the same flattop and cooking sausages over on the side we turned up to a higher temp. So different!

btw, the Community Fridge people need to get more active. no information about "local" on their web site. we have three (?) local food banks . . . none of which have any clue about a "community fridge" being retired, I have the time & ability to contribute to such - but (sigh) not the energy to invent it for them.... that's always a very steep hill to climb.

heehee-hee.... nice brunch place, DW ordered an egg sandwich type dish . . . it came, she bit, egg squirted out all over dish, table, napkin, lap . . . . there's a reason places do hard over eggs. as to McD, this is a continuous real time video for the McMuffin eggs: obviously a corporate/researched/defined temp controlled flat top, plus cute lid&rings . . . about ~5 minutes cook time. note the 'burnt on egg residue' as the eggs are moved to 'production' I do McMuffin with egg&sausage at home - I use rings, I poke-the-yolk . . . not coming out 'runny' - soft, yes.

Love these and variations of it. One of my favorite things.

What does one make for dinner on a 35°C day after listening to duelling power tools for 6 hours ? Ricotta and spinach lasagna is not the most obvious choice.

Yeah, I agree with you on Duke’s being pretty equivalent to Best Foods. I also keep Kewpie on hand. My local Smart & Final carries a lot of niche items that sometimes surprise me. Easiest place for me to get dry ice. I don’t go there often, even though it’s close by, but when I do, I try to go up and down the aisles to see what’s there.

I said I’d report on this and am still waiting on the Coop’s fudge gift pack (edited to add that I just got an email that Coop’s is coming tomorrow) and the frozen gougeres from Bougie Gougies but have received everything else. Each item or set was shipped from that company so it was kind of like the 12 days of Christmas with something arriving every day or so. Everything has been full sized, most packaged like a gift and several included hand-written, personal notes. The olive oils from Portugal via Wildly Virgin arrived first, two 500 ml bottles with a little booklet about the growers. They sent the Forte and Verde (priced at $38 and $40 on the website. I didn’t take photos of everything since they were mostly just as pictured in my previous post but I liked this little card with serving suggestions for the Effie's biscuits. They’re on sale this week at Whole Foods so I might pick up the flavors I didn’t get in this gift package.

Our Smart & Final (south OC, CA) has Duke’s too. I’d been searching for it on and off for years around here. Tried it but not sure it’s all that different from Best Foods. My go-to specialty mayo is Kewpie. As an aside….. the same Smart & Final had a 10-pack of Hoffy natural casing hot dogs and the Silk. Caramel almond creamer I have trouble finding elsewhere.

I listened to the episode last week and enjoyed it. Thanks for the heads up!

Next up, the pasta with kale, spicy sausage, cream, and lemon from Six Seasons of Pasta I thought this was delicious. I used baby kale from the farmers market so it cooked in a flash and I especially liked the crunch from the breadcrumbs. I’m up for trying a version of this with white beans, in addition to or instead of the pasta.