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Very nice - Schweinenacken at its best. If you want to venture into German cooking, this cut serves as the base for plenty of delicious concoctions. Since you have quite some I’d like to recommend Sächsiches Bierfleisch (or Saxonian beer meat). This short video is in German, but pretty straightforward.

It’s always a bit of an hit & miss situation: some are quite happy with our dinners, and sometimes I get feedback from the parents that they enjoyed a lot (including the occasional “how did you get them to eat that ?”). Yesterday was such a case - he had sashimi, edamame, gyoza for the first time and he liked it so much he had to tell his mom immediately when he got picked up. On the other hand, we have for example a semi-regular house guest who considers any topping on a plain pizza pie an insurmountable challenge, who couldn’t eat his hotdog bun because it was made from brioche dough and once requested spaghetti with tomato sauce, which silly me topped habitually with freshly grated Parmigiano, only to eat it then myself (while he got an unadulterated portion). The things we endure for our kids 😎

Maybe sacrilege, but Aldi frozen chicken, leek, and camembert pies aren't too bad. Good on you for trying to make your own.

The acquisition makes little difference. Smithfield has held the rights to manufacture and distribute Nathan's in North America since 2014. Those rights expire in the 2032 so Smithfield wanted to make it permanent. The Nathan's hotdogs you've been eating for over a decade were Smithfield all that time. I'm no fan of Smithfield products. Their American "bacon" is tasteless. https://www.foodengineeringmag.com/articles/103485-smithfield-foods-to-acquire-nathans-famous-for-450m

Not sure this is helpful, but I have a laboratory hotplate that heats up to 380C. And a laboratory stirrer for stirring viscous things like honey. (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) (eG-friendly Amazon.com link)

Fuchsia Dunlop meal tonight. Chicken with chestnuts . . . . . . and dry-fried green beans. Microwave cilantro rice to go with

Came home after work on Friday to a large, heavy box that had been delivered that afternoon, addressed to my husband and I. The contents were a large gift basket of fruit (from Costco) from our neighbor. Last weekend I had shoveled her driveway and I guess she saw me on her Ring camera. Quite unexpected, and lovely.

I haven't made a complete meal in a long time, between coming back from vacation and recovering from the time change and lack of sleep, to work being crazy. Unfortunately, I pick the weekend of the "storm of the century". I assumed, being in NYC, the land of restaurants and food delivery, that the supermarkets wouldn't be ransacked as they are reported to be in the suburbs, but I was wrong and really wrong. In our new, giant Wegmans, the only thing left in the entire chicken area was 4 family packs of wings. Crazy. Anyway, I was already defrosting some home made roti canai, so no going back.... Chicken wing kapitan curry Roti Cucumber salad (cucumbers left over from last week)

I'd honestly thought that was a pan-Canadian thing, at least among those of, say, early Gen X and up. It was very much universal in the Maritimes when I was growing up.

Still fooling around with variations in a theme: Miso glazed steelhead over sesame ramen with baby spinach

Lovely looking crock! it should work, but your high temps might cause some issues. I've usually been told that vegetables like to ferment at temps around 18C so yours might develop a little too fast? https://www.fermentedfoodlab.com/tips-for-fermenting-in-hot-weather/

Oh my, that could be embarassing. That being said, when I moved to Saskatchewan from BC for a job contract, I was in a grocery store looking for what I call napkins - things to wipe your hands and mouth on while eating. The teenage stockboy that I asked for assistance, looked horrified for a minute and then led me to an aisle and pointed - "half-way down." Yes, he had directed me to the feminine hygeine section. Apparently two provinces over, they call the serviettes, not napkins.🤣

"What could be safer than a bowl of noodles?", you might think! Be careful. Noodles 🍜 are 面条 (miàn tiáo) in Mandarin. Falling tone then rising tone. Slip up and use both with rising tones and you'll have ordered 棉条 (mián tiáo), a tampon! These are rice noodles. For some reason I don't have a picture of a bowl of tampons.

Indeed. And have done so for decades. Back in 1970, as a student, I had a lousy summer job in a London candy/chocolate factory. Everything went through a metal detector. If you cut your finger, you had to use a special Bandaid type dressing with metal wires embedded within so that if it fell off into the mix, it would be detected. Put me off chocolate for years. That was almost 60 years ago!

I managed to score a proper crock at a second hand store last week. Yesterday we mandolined half a large cabbage and two fennel bulbs, massaged them with salt and crammed into the crock. Hope it works, cross fingers for me please 🙏

This week we had Friday night with the Carolines for a change. Here is a plate of smoked rainbow trout with a spread of cream cheese, yogurt with capers and garlic chives, some cornichons, lightly pickled red onion and sourdough baguette on which to build one’s tasty bite. Last night I made a salad with mango, fennel, rocket and blue cheese, dressed with a vinaigrette and scattered with toasted walnuts. Served with a lobster tail smothered in garlic butter and some more of the red onions for colour.

I just loved the one cup sakes available everywhere in Japan. Your food all looks fabulous.

@Duvel Aside from personal reasons, your son's friend lucked out when he gets a regular invite to dinner with your family!

Yes, please write an update once you've used them a bit, especially with the control freak.

Life goes in mysterious ways. I was fed up with moving all the stuff around my freezer so I could lay in the containers of freshly prepared meals to freeze, so from BestBuy I bought a small 7.1 cu ft freezer on 30th Dec which was delivered on 2 January. Naturally, it came incomplete which took hours and hours of communicating with an AI interface to talk with a human and get parts shipped, hence so long between my batches. I was in a hurry to abandon my computer so I could attend to the day's batch of Meal Prep for Freezer cooking. I had recently signed up for Windows 10 ESU and so have not been afraid of system messages that I need to upgrade o/s. However what the d### upgrade did was upgrade me to Windows 11! So I didn't touch my computer. Nor it seems did I take any photos beyond these first two. Contents were Bacon, cabbage, RG Super Lucky black eyed pea, lots garlic 2 ways, onion, yukon gold potato, gouda, cheddar. Sauce made with cream cheese, sour cream and bean water. The dish has quite a complicated layering of semi-cooked ingredients. No idea if it will make a difference. If you're interested to know, PM me and I'll send along what I did. Here are the 20 empty containers.

In this post, I erroneously identified the contents of the photos with a partial description of an other batch. That other batch was a lamb casserole done on 2025/12/21. I have 3 separate mentions of what might be in the batch but I believe it has: Lamb shank, stock, barley, Rancho Gordo Good Mother Stollard beans, onion, celery, carrot, fresh corn, slow roasted and fresh cherry tomatoes, and green pepper.

I do it all the time. I freeze the rice separately. Edited to add that I use the recipe from Alon Shaya’s book. This looks to be the one.

I believe so. I'm not sure I've done it, but I can't see why not.

Can I freeze red beans + rice?

This post is wrong. Where I wrote "In case I made the jpg too small to read, this dish has . . ." the photos belong to 2025/12/28 Duck w Stamppot: potato + sweet potato, carrot, crème fraiche, cream cheese, duck fat. Base: Duck, Rancho Gordo Mayocoba bean, was fresh corn, endive, pea, baked garlic baked in duck fat + wine, Penzey's air dried shallot (14). Used Breville Paradice 9 to cut veg, didn't mash garlic; Bamix to mix Stamppot; Instant Pot to soak and cook beans.