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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 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: