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The best laid plans… Yesterday, starting with most of the ingredients for baked ziti. There were cheeses, as well, not pictured. And stock, red wine, and a bay leaf or two, and minced garlic. Ziti. I figure I’ve posted enough pics of big pots with meat or sauce of some kind simmering on the stove, so I skipped to the chase, meat sauce mixed with ziti. Didn’t take pics of the ricotta, egg, parm & mozzarella mixture that was layered after a layer of ziti and sauce, but here are the pans with the top layer of ziti and sauce, before topping with cheese. Topped with cheese before putting in the ovens. Ugh! I was careless, and burned the cheese on BOTH pans of ziti. Double ovens, double carelessness. And I was out of cheese. My husband and I debated whether or not I needed to scrape off the charred bits. I thought I should, he thought it was unnecessary. I’m betting y’all will agree with me. Pan #1 Pan #2 After new cheese and a trip to the store today, only one pan pictured: For the salad today I decided to jazz up the cucumber, tomato, and red onion salad with some marinated mozzarella. I had a sixth English cucumber, didn’t use it, and regretted it. I barely had enough. I prefer to have too much! I used a three cheese vinaigrette from Aldi for the dressing, and lots of salt and freshly ground black pepper. Realized I needed some fresh herbs for the salad, but my husband didn’t see (or chose not to see) that I’d texted him while at the store. How dare he! 😉 Waiting for the toast to come out of the oven. Plated meal: I didn’t notice that my husband edited my ingredient list until after the fact. He said I didn’t need to list every little glug of Worcestershire or Tabasco or balsamic. Grrr. If this post seems a little discombobulated, so am I! But a food delivery was made, so that’s something. ETA: Earlier in the post I said I was out of cheese. Let me amend that, because I’m NEVER actually out of cheese. I was just out of the kind of cheese I wanted for this meal.

Yet another “things in a bowl” dish. This is turkey mince sautéed with Thai red curry paste, some fish sauce, lime juice and makrut leaves. Leftover rice and a few fresh salad things made for a tasty bowl with almost no dishes to do.

Hate when that happens, it sure looks delicious.

Recipe says 'pour' into pan but mixture is very thick. I place in pan and even out the top. If using frozen berries add 5 minutes to bake time. I toast the pecas before adding. And I beat eggs and sugar 5 minutes because our MXN white sugar isn't ground very fine. I don’t think you can overbake this, so no harm in erring on the longer side of baking.

They look delicious, @gulfporter. Could you please give the recipe? (I have fresh cranberries!)

Cranberry Squares. I make them most every Xmas season. It wasn't easy finding fresh cranberries here in Central Mexico in mid-December. One of the 'gringo' markets imports them in October for CDN Thanksgiving, estimating what they'll be able to sell thru US Thanksgiving and Christmas. I got one of the last 2 bagsj crammed in the back of his freezer! We were in US thru mid-November and buying cranberries didn't cross my mind until a few days ago. Baking in my un-insulated and thermostat-less Mexican oven is a challenge. It managed to mostly hold the 350 degrees (it's recipes above that temperature that often fail). I added an extra 10 minutes to the 1 hour bake time as the last 2 attempts at this recipe had a dip in the center with some underbaking. We just took a taste and these are spot on!

@scubadoo97, does your family know that you call them big asses? 😁 Great photo!!

Cod in a spicy tomato olive sauce with spaghetti. The cod was from our fishmonger but did not taste as sweet and fresh as usual, which was disappointing.

@scubadoo97 Wow ! Congratulations Did you have turkey ? How many ?

I’ve made the Autumn Chicory Salad from Samin Nosrat’s Good Things a couple of times lately. It’s very easy and perfectly suited to this time of year. The dressing is Samin’s take on the Via Carota vinaigrette and the recipe is available online here The first time, I used persimmons, pecans and Gorgonzola: The second time, I used pears, walnuts and aged Gouda:

Amazing and great to see. I have been wondering about you.

Another big ass family Thanksgiving

Moe's breakfast. He put in a request last night for scrambled eggs with my Chile sauce. I think he was dreaming about it. I make it to serve with our Christmas Eve Tourtiere, but he will eat it year around on eggs, ham, hot dogs, etc.

And it all comes around, doesn't it? Our parents' belonging that we discarded along the way...and now we wish we had kept them.

It's been quite a while since I've had a mince pie... Obviously they're unknown in France, so I had to convince my neighbour that there was no actual mince/ground beef in there before he would try one. But he was a fan. Recipe here. (Just don't tell the neighbour that I used beef suet as the fat.)

I wish I still had a bunch of doilies (and/or old hankies), but I got rid of most many years ago. I'd like to use them to stitch together to use as curtains or a table runner.

Thank you ! So the chutney was in the fridge, it keeps really well and I make a big batch whenever I run out. The dough for flatbread was also made last week. I started the dal about 3pm, just kinda pottering around. He who must be fed joined me at 4 pm and is my sous chef, so he did the chopping etc thereafter. I reckon a total of 45 minutes of actual prep would do it. Of course there was waiting/cooking time (aka wine sipping time).

Leberkaese-Gulasch - leberkaese (translation is liver cheese but no liver or cheese was harmed in the making) is a German speciality (kind of a meatloaf) and we have luckily and “old fashioned” German butcher (Dittmer’s www.dittmers.com ) who makes it (and many, many other things) in-house. Here you make a quickly gulasch by sautéing diced leberkaese, red and yellow bell peppers and onions and then cook it with tomato passata, vegetable broth and Italian seasoning. Finished with some parsley and served over rice.

Me, I like. And these gems you've got don't seem like the more challenging Marimekko, you know? These seem like they will be downright subtle under a set table. And @Shelby, your Grammy's stuff is beautiful! I *love* the flower prints, and I confess that I would probably steal the plaid one if you ever let me in your house. Are they cotton or linen?? I've got a bunch of doily-thingies, and rectangular textiles in similar knit/crochet; I literally just put them in the donate pile because, while I wasn't prepared to discard them when my mom passed; I'm now prepared to own the fact that I can't even imagine putting out anything like that, anywhere.

This is my second night of garlic freedom so I chose butter chicken with extra garlic. It was delicious but the naan was a dismal failure. It tasted good but it was heavy enough to sink a battleship. Well, at least a small row boat. Carlos will be back tomorrow night so it's back to being without garlic and onions and peppers but I will be glad to see him because he does the dishes every night.

No idea, sorry! When the can showed up I wished I had observed. Last night on the road, bourbon shrimp appetizer with a crab cake-topped salad with nice greens and plenty of walnuts. I’m in Delaware so it seemed safe to order a crab cake lol. No pics, sadly.

I'm always in awe of your Indian meals. How much time would you say it takes to prep/make all of the components? I assume the masala/ground ginger/garlic/etc is different for the chicken, dal and chutney, plus the flatbreads!

The weather has been perfect, 25°C yesterday, so I felt the need to bust out a curry. Here is black pepper chicken wings, served with rice and 5 dal dal. A blob of tomato chutney, yogurt flatbread and token salad complete the meal.

We tried these too, in part because they seemed like an easy alternative to the beef chop recipe in the New York Times a few days prior. We were disappointed in them. As Smithy noted, the filling wasn't much write home about, and we thought that the potato layer was too thick compared to the filling. We tried them with a couple of different salsas, but in end suspected that they might be best if cut in quarters and put on a platter with queso for dipping, as an hors d'oeuvre. On the same TJs trip we bought a box of these: Not recommended. Filling was a mushy mess, and the tortilla shells, while crispy on their perimeters, were disappointingly soft.