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Every time I see this pic my mouth and stomach go crazy. What a platter. 😍

Thai green curry, with rice and spinach. I realise spinach like this is not traditional but we have it as an”eat your green vegetables” side.

I think it was the wombo-combo of too much garlic for one roll, and gobbling it down on an empty tum. It was totally worth it anyway 😄

Lunch at the Owl Cafe, Cloverdale, CA I've been stopping at the Owl Cafe in Cloverdale for 59 years. Whenever coming or going on Highway 101, the Owl has been a stop. Here I had carnitas, rice and beans, a little guac', flour tortillas, and a Diet Coke.

And there's my dilema, such as it is. I appreciate the Victorinox - and have several of their knives - but I'm also a tactile person and the way something feels is also important.

You might try de-germing the garlic. Flavor is milder, ergo, you can use more if that's your inclination, and the upset that some people experience from garlic, is reduced or eliminated.

The chef who taught me knife skills didn't blink at spending $500 on a gyuto or a Japanese single-bevel knife. But he made fun of me for spending $50 on a pairing knife. He believed the best pairing knife was the cheap Victorinox you're using. It has a very thin blade that slips through everything. He never found a high-end knife with such thin geometry. Victorinox steel is pretty good and is relatively easy to sharpen. But my friend didn't bother sharpening the pairing knives. When they got dull they'd go into a junk drawer and he'd get a new one. Hard to beat for $8.

Needed a midnight snack so I made a buttered and toasted roll with pesto, melted cheddar, tomato and some lightly fried smoked garlic. It was delicious. DO NOT DO THIS. I have had garlic burps for almost 3 hours now and there is no sign of them relenting. I probably should have used half a clove but the other half would have been forgotten in the fridge and then binned next week.

A couple of salmonella recalls. The first is national (a specific brand of halvah); the other is Ontario-only and covers various pistachio-based products. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/shaikh-al-kar-brand-plain-halva-recalled-due-salmonella?utm_source=gc-notify&utm_medium=email&utm_content=en&utm_campaign=hc-sc-rsa-22-23 https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/various-pistachio-containing-products-recalled-due-salmonella-0?utm_source=gc-notify&utm_medium=email&utm_content=en&utm_campaign=hc-sc-rsa-22-23

Yes, it was. Flat shoes, no noticeable makeup… I think it was probably your niece 😀 My sister and niece are coming to join us tomorrow, so we have been trying to go to the places my brother likes and my niece hates before they arrive. Yesterday that meant the Pearl My husband ordered raw oysters topped with tuna. I am not sure why. I refused to try them. I am a raw oyster purist. Plain, thank you. He shared them with his brother. Drinks. Blueberry sour mocktail, cranberry margarita, watermelon margarita Fried shrimp tacos Fish and chips Grilled swordfish It was low tide when we left. These fisherman had to use a ladder to get into their boat Today my husband and I got up early and went for a six mile walk while our respective brothers snoozed the morning away. We stopped in to a new breakfast spot called Cape to Cape. We both had lattes and my husband got an egg sandwich. He said it was very good. I had already eaten before he woke up, so did not try anything from the food menu. We visited a pond in town (the water was too cold to swim, but it was pretty) and then went to Indian Neck for another walk Later we walked down to Mac’s Shack for some (plain!) oysters and an order of jalepeno yellowtail sashimi We then walked into town to check out Hatch’s fish market. They had bluefin tuna, so we bought some of that and grilled at home tonight.

I mentioned Sosa Flaxfiber as a potential stabilizer/emulsifier earlier in the thread, and now I've finally had a chance to play around with it in a couple of small Elderflower sorbet trials. In addition, I had a chat with the pastry chef at a restaurant l visited this summer, and he recommended Gellan gum as a sorbet stabilizer, so I decided to wing it and combine the two: Both trials spun once in the Pacojet, and both batches were surprisingly successful. Absolutely mazing flavour release, especially trial 1 (I didn't taste them back to back however, so the comparison was done by memory one week apart), and the texture/mouth feel was really good too. Definitely something worth further investigation with minor tweaks to the Flaxfiber/Hellan gum ratios. In future trials, I will probably substitute a few grams of dextrose for sucrose in order to reduce the freezing point depression slightly (ca. 1 degree C increased serving temperature). I've already tweaked the sugars for trial 3 in ICC, but I can't remember the exact numbers. A small addition of inulin and lambda carrageenan would also be interesting to try in order to find the perfect compromise between flavour release, mouth feel and melting rate/plated stability... I also can't wait to try this alternative approach with strawberry juice and/or puree for a direct comparison to my version of Paul's strawberry sorbet recipe tweaked for the Pacojet/Ninja Creai.

Two favorites: Garlic-black bean pan-fried halibut, from 'Dancing Shrimp'. Fry halibut fillets until partly done and remove. Stir-fry a minced head of garlic, ginger, and cilantro stems, add black soy sauce, sugar, Shaoxing rice wine, minced fermented black beans, roasted chile powder, and a little fish sauce to taste. Remove half of the topping, add halibut fillets, cover with the removed topping. Flip after a minute or so, and done. Served with Mexican green rice, steamed with a blend of roasted Poblano chiles, garlic, white onion, spinach, flat-leaf parsley, cilantro, and chicken stock. This green rice recipe in 'Cocina de la Familia' is my favorite. Also how we used to get extra vegetables into the boys when they were little.

My friends and I were vacationing in Costa Rica we located an outdoor restaurant that served pizza and stopped there for dinner. Unfortunately, while waiting for the pizza to arrive a nearby skunk sprayed.I don't remember the pizza but I do remember the smell.

I’m anxiously awaiting delivery of The Cook's Garden: A Gardener's Guide to Selecting, Growing, and Savoring the Tastiest Vegetables of Each Season (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) by Kevin West, published today. I love Kevin West's earlier book, Saving the Season: A Cook's Guide to Home Canning, Pickling, and Preserving (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) and always recommend it whenever anyone asks about books on the topic. He's a wonderful writer and the book is as much a pleasure to read as it is to cook from so I’m expecting more of the same. From what I’ve read, it’s half gardening, half cookbook. He describes it being pitched to him as something in the spirit of The Victory Garden Cookbook (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) by Marian Morash, another of my favorites. Gardening advice can be very region-specific and it’s not something I’ve ever been into, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy the cooking sections. And who knows? I might be convinced to grow something! I’ve heard about this book for quite some time and was starting to wonder if it was ever coming out. He was doing some travel writing but took his website down and was pretty quiet from what I could tell. I didn’t realize he was also editor at large for Travel & Leisure magazine. This post on his Substack goes into some of the process and is a lovely sample of his writing for those unfamiliar with his work. I’ll post back when I’ve read it but it sounds like a great gift for gardening cooks or cooking gardeners!

Not only the US. Pretty much every pizza place in the UK features their version of a 'supreme'. It's usually just a mix of pretty much all the toppings they happen to carry. The only thing hidden under that pile of cheese seems to be the pizza base.

Yes. Happens here a lot, too. Especially with steak restaurants. I have also encountered the permanently missing ingredients turning out to be something they'd never even seen.

“Supreme” seem to be a common pizza descriptor in the US so it's not surprising they co-opted it though they don’t seemed to have borrowed the usually generous list of toppings, unless, as @KennethT said, they’re under the cheese! From a recipe on the Ooni pizza oven website:

That happens a lot here in Costa Rica. About 20 years back there was a pizza restaurant that opened in a little kiosk across the street. All the ever seem to have was ground beef, sauce and cheese despite showing about 20 items on their menu. Their basic pizza wasn't really all that bad and we would request it with anchovies and they were always out. As we got to know them better we found out that they didn't even know what anchovies were. They had just taken somebody else's menu and copied it verbatim.

Yeah, I’ve had to discard many due to inedible salt levels and hate wasting food so I’m wary.

I can only go by the customer's review which discloses the name they give it. That person described it as a very simple pizza. I strongly suspect that the store just saw the English name somewhere without knowing what it meant and decided to use it. I've seen that happening before in other so-called 'western' restaurants.

I’d say a pretty blue & white porcelain bowl with matching soup spoon and artfully arranged chopsticks might enhance the photo but I’d happily enjoy that as is for my first meal of any day. Today's breakfast was The Shadiest One from A Super Upsetting Cookbook About Sandwiches by Tyler Kord. Sort of a cheese toastie, but extra. Toasted bread with “awesome Cheddar cheese,” a schmear of an avocado ricotta spread, cucumber muchim and fried scallions. Not wild about this on the first pass. I used TJ's English Coastal Cheddar and felt the sharp, tangy cheese and the pickled cucumber completely overwhelmed the avocado ricotta spread. I couldn’t even taste it. I made another with a mix of Cheddar and Gruyère and upped the amount of the avocado ricotta spread well beyond a schmear. The recipe makes a LOT of that avocado ricotta, enough for more than 1/2 cup/sandwich while the book photo shows what looks like a tablespoon. My first pass went with the photo, round two was closer to the recipe. In any case, it was much better with the addition of nutty Gruyère and more of that spread but, unlike the other recipes I’ve made from the book, it’s not a combo I want to play around with further.

Iberico

Like you, I'm not a heavy salt user, and I find that the TJs items that I regularly purchase are not at all salt offensive. The usual YMMV disclaimer applies.

I’ll take a look. It’s usually the salt that puts me off. I’m kind of a lightweight in that department!

As good and.as convenient the TJs item is, if you've got a nearby place to get good "CRs", that would be a better choice, IMO. I