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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 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.

Aside from a few classics - carbonara, cacio e pepe, ragu bolognese, etc - or when served as a primi piatti, I consider pasta a vector for vegetables and love adding them at every opportunity. It wasn’t at all ruined for me. Different strokes!

gallon ( or two ) => Potato Salad => ' Church Lunch ' , etc.

That would make a LOT of Key Lime pies!! Or my mother's favorite dark-chocolate microwaved fudge!

Yesterday, I went to Smart & Final (west coast grocery/restaurant supply hybrid) and spotted Duke’s on the shelf. First time seeing it in these parts. It was $6.99. Best Foods was $5.98 but they had a $2 off coupon. They also offer Best Foods in 48oz, 64oz and gallon size jars. I have a backup jar of Aldi mayo so I didn’t buy any. They also had sweetened condensed milk in a 140 oz can - equivalent to 10 normal grocery store cans. That amazed me more than the gallon jar of mayo!

@Smithy Excellent . a sort of Dollar-Cost averaging . Commodities Desk version . https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dollarcostaveraging.asp

A discussion about eggs in @patti's blog about Cooking for a Community Fridge got me to hankering for one, and wondering how well one would cook if I loaded it atop a hot potato casserole. This Fully Loaded Baked Potato Casserole, from 5 days ago, has been a wonderful dinner element and I'm almost done with it. I decided to see how it is with egg. I microwaved the potato dish until quite hot, broke an egg over it, slapped the lid on it and watched. Nope. Not enough residual heat to cook it as much as I wanted. (I like some runniness in the yolk, but not so that it's flowing everywhere. Firm white, please.) With just a gentle microwaving -- about a minute on 40% power -- I cooked the egg without a yolk explosion. Okay, the whole thing looks messy. But trust me, it was good. I'm now fortified for more pre-snowstorm work.

I'm stocked up pretty well for Duke's, now. A few days ago I was in Superior, WI (adjacent city to Duluth, MN) and in a grocery store. Same chain as where I spotted the $1 difference between Hellman's and Duke's. This time, the Duke's was $1 cheaper than in Duluth. I didn't bother pricing the Hellman's. I just said, "huh!" and bought another jar of Duke's. So now I have 2 unopened jars. Should do me for a while.

I also Googled “hard fried egg” as I’d never heard that description. In truth, it’s not all that different from how McD’s cooks the eggs for an Egg McMuffin. Of course, they use a ring to better fit on an English muffin and I prefer them with the yolks less than hard cooked (hence my preference for making them at home) but McD’s seem to cook them through pretty often. To @Smithy’s microwave explosion concern, the hard fried methods I found and the McD’s eggs get the yolk broken before getting flipped so should be safe from that drama. It's not something I’d choose but I know plenty of folks would be totally skeeved out by my beloved runny or jammy yolks and it sounds like it might just be comfort food in your area.

I can't believe I only today learned of Ferran Adria's "La tortilla de patatas chips"... I thought it might be a bit gimmicky, but was pleasantly surprised. Obviously it doesn't compare to the real deal, but as a quick 'hack' I thought it delivered. (The late, great Anna N, however, was not impressed).

@japanesegeek that's the place. Their chorizo is quite good. lucky you , no shipping charges , which were significant.

I just googled 'hard cooked fried egg'. To be honest, I was not really clear about what the "hard cooked" part meant. Well,duh... Of course, it's what in East Central Ontario at least, we would call 'over hard'. And something I would never ever order. Ruins the entire egg experience for me. So therein lies the complete answer for me. I'm officially disqualified from having an opinion on your fried egg question.

We set our menu. It's a warm November here in Central Mexico and my non-insulated stove isn't a great idea for an hours long roasted big bird. We get excellent seafood daily from the Pacific and Jalisco chickens are a delight, so paella mixta will be our main course. Mi esposo is making a pumpkin panna cotta. It took trips to 4 stores before we scored the needed heavy cream. I use my edited version of Pierre Franey's 60 Minute recipe for paella (I double up on shrimp, and skip the clams). The recipe which I first made in the late 1970s, doesn't mention developing a socarrat which to me is vital. I'm not always successful; I manage to get it right 75% of the time.

I don't think these are speakers - they look like microwave antennas. You can use them to send power or signal to a more remote location that's within line of sight but not necessarily close by. Thank you for this!

Frozen Momo with the runny but good chutney that comes with it. I discovered a cuke in the back of the crisper so threw together a last minute raita to cool it down a bit. Leftovers for another meal.

Oh, and one more, just to add a touch of romance:

I don't know how many here (if any) are on Bluesky, but author Claire Willett solicited readers' best/funniest stories of Thanksgiving meals gone wrong. The whole thing is worth a read, if you're on the platform (here's the link: https://bsky.app/profile/clairewillett.bsky.social/post/3m6fypqlkes2p), but I've picked a couple of fun examples to give you all the idea. Some are just basic mistakes: Others have that "family stories that live forever" energy: ...and some are especially inspired examples of Cookery Gone Wrong (MRK, for those who don't know, is a popular/successful science fiction writer). And finally, a moment that somehow turns The Dish We All Dread into something surprising and uplifting:

Asparagus Frittata with Ricotta and Chives from “Dinner” by Melissa Clark - started on the stove and finished in the oven. Made with cut up green asparagus and eggs until bottom lightly set and added some ricotta and chives before putting it in the oven. Afterwards, finished with olive oil, lemon juice and parmesan

Chongqing, 重庆 (chóng qìng) is a major city in south-west China. It is the world’ s largest city by population. Until 1997, it was part of Sichuan province, but was separated by the central government and taken under direct control. Several well known Sichuan dishes originated there. One of their signature street food dishes is 重庆小面 (chóng qìng xiǎo miàn) Chongqing Small Noodles. A simple dish of boiled wheat noodles with some vegetables, pickles, peanuts and seasonings. You can usually then customise this by adding other ingredients of your choice. These consist of meats and beans/peas. Now, inspired by the success of Liuzhou luosifen’s industrialisation, they have begun producing packaged xiao mian to finish at home. Details here. I’m not sure it will reach the level of success they are seeking. I have two reasons. a) the amount of variations are heading for the infinite means they would have to choose just one for mass production. Which one? b) the success of luosifen relied on the dish being impractical and much more expensive to make at home. Its broth alone takes 16 hours simmering. Even more is that authentic luosifen can only really be made here in Liuzhou as it depends on local ingredients, otherwise not available. Xiao mian, on the other hand is easy to make with no unusual ingredients. There are recipes on the internet and Fuchsia Dunlop’s The Food of Sichuan (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) has a good recipe. .

Outside our hotel every night, the baked sweet potato man turned up. We were usually coming home after dinner and didn’t get to try one. He had a wood fired oven on the back of that truck. This is our hotel from the TMGB Here’s a view of Fujisan from the observation deck. Not a bad view given it’s 100 kms away. Tokyo stretches on forever. There are huge speakers up high on the building, we think they are earthquake warning systems. One cool thing we did in Tokyo is take a class in kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending something with gold to make it beautiful. The principal of wabi sabi is appreciation of beauty that is imperfect is at play here. Also, fun fact, I chose this pattern which is one of the classic Japanese styles. It was originally made to represent the waves on the Sea of Japan, but is now more famously known as the wifi symbol. Every time we passed this tiny sashimi restaurant, there was a queue. One day we joined the line and had delicious sashimi in this 7 seat restaurant with two chefs.