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Proudly multi-butt over here . . .

Oh, I've never done this at the butcher! This is what I put on the cut sheet when I buy the whole side -- butt cut into smaller roasts.

I now know just how large a gallon jar of Hellman's is. And I'm just as glad it is not glass.

The egg bite idea also reminded me of "breakfast for dinner" possibilities. I wondered how strata/breakfast casseroles might work. I did a recipe for a sort of French toast casserole with breakfast sausage in one of my books, which turned out really well, but just your regular bacon, egg, and cheese would probably also work.

It's taken over a year since his death, but I finally reached the point where I wanted pork steak. Not just pork steak, but pork steak cooked the way my darling preferred it. First, I had to make the breading mix we'd worked out and he'd codified in writing. (You can see why we never played Scrabble together.) Then I unearthed a pork steak I'd vacuum-packed and frozen about a month before he died. The procedure, once the breading is mixed, is: pat the pork steak dry, shake in a bag with about 1/4 cup breading mix. Bake at 425F for 25 minutes. I took the bony half for tonight, still more than I needed, and half of a twice-baked potato courtesy of his daughter. Red wine to accompany it. More than I needed. Delicious.

Pretty sure my Trader Joe's would never hold a case of wine for a customer. I called and asked them about something once a few years back and they said to hurry up and get there because there wasn't much left.

I like Tony Packo's Sweet Hots. Sadly, they seem to be no longer locally available.

Fried basmati rice with chorizo, rotisserie chicken (gift from neighbors), green beans, and zucchini. Also added cherry tomatoes, cilantro, sliced onion, minced garlic, ginger, and jalapeno, and fish sauce.

Back on the egg bites that @Shelby suggested (which might be easier to bake in muffin cups whether you have an IP or not) have you considered any other “breakfast for dinner” meals? Not sure how they’d be received but something like an egg bite (maybe with ham, bacon, sausage, cheese or veg like spinach, mushroom, etc) hash brown patty and fruit would be a decent meal that I’d be happy to eat at room temp. I see a lot of online recipes for breakfast sandwiches made with whomp biscuits that might work …though I never trust them 🙃 A big pan of polenta you could cut up and fry would make a good side or dipper but the frying part would be messy. Little disks in muffin tins might be easier, but they’d still need to be fried or toasted in some way…sorry…thinking while posting!

It's interesting that no one ever suggests salting the cooking water for other starches that way. For instance, you'd never hear a chef say that the water you use to cook potatoes or rice should be seawater.

The last time I bought that much wine from a single producer was when Haven’s Merlot went on clearance. I think I bought 4 cases each of the basic Merlot, boutique, and something else(I forget). Michael Haven had such a gift for Merlot. I found it on many wine lists in restaurants at bargain prices. At one company Christmas party the wines served were so bad I bought a bottle of the haven’s for my table. We ended up buying 4 or 5 bottles.

Definitely not!

Dinner tonight. I took a bite before remembering to took a photo. chicken breast stuffed with fontina and prosciutto served with leftover Lighthouse Inn potatoes. I made a Pinot noir reduction while the chicken was in the oven.

I really have to try uni again. I may have mentioned that it is the only thing that I have ever spat into my napkin at a restaurant. Just the idea of swallowing it brought on my gag reflex full force. I love all kinds of seafood and have eaten many raw oysters and a lot of ceviche, crudo, sashimi... I now suspect that the uni was bad. It was at a very high end steak house in Vegas, on one of those 400.00 seafood towers (trade show - not my money.) What I tasted was decomposed seafood with a side of excrement. I'm sure that is not the taste that everyone raves about!

I'd get myself to a proctologist pretty soon, if I were you!

I agree. many of the things that I like to have with pasta (parmesean, pesto, olives...) are already salty

That's about what we use (though I admit to being lackadaisical regarding exact measurement).

I'm with you on the carrots - the way I like to cook them, my husband has named them hot, raw carrots.

From Six Seasons of Pasta: Basil pesto p 33 Carrots with Basil Pesto p 211 This was fine but I’m not a huge fan of cooked carrots so I’m not in love. We had a mild summer and no big cool down yet (soon to change, no doubt) so lots of “summer” produce like corn, tomatoes and basil still at the farmers market. I picked up a couple of big bunches of basil and used the book recipe for basil pesto. I don’t normally follow a recipe, just use what I have and taste as taste as I go but this worked fine and I have plenty to freeze. On to the pasta dish, we are instructed to cook the carrots until fully tender, not tender-crisp, and certainly not crunchy. This makes them basically the same texture as the al dente pasta. The breadcrumbs help out with a bit of crunch but I would prefer tender-crisp carrots. And I’d add some additional seasonal veg (broccoli, snap peas, bell peppers) for both texture and color but that’s just me! If you love carrots cooked completely tender, this might be perfect as is. In any case, don’t skip the lemon juice, it's a perfect balance to the rich pesto.

Much better to have people salt the water so it tastes like soup or broth. Plenty of people have never even tasted sea water but everyone’s had soup and knows how they like it. And yet, that “tastes like the sea” business continues to be flogged! If that “seawater” were only used for cooking the pasta, it might not be awful but most recipes use the pasta water to emulsify or finish a sauce….or salt bomb! I was pleased to see Josh McFadden recognize this in his recent book, Six Seasons of Pasta. He recommends 1 T Diamond Crystal salt/ quart of water. That’s a little more than I like but much closer than seawater!

yup. sea water has ~about 35 grams of salt(s) per liter so . . . cooking pasta in a 3 quart pot, that'll require ~99 grams of salt the glitchy part comes in at . . . what kinda' salt cho talking 'bout, Lewis? 1 tablespoon of "kosher" salt does not weigh the sames as 1 tablespoon of Morton's table salt . . . I use kosher type salt, so that would require almost 7 tablespoons of kosher salt in a 3 quart pot. or . . . 5.6 tablespoons of the table salt grind size..... nevertheless&all that - not too many cooks use that much salt to boil pasta . . .

Trader Joes Butter Chicken , on a bed of spinach , ring of Campari's dried cherries and dried cranberries w a fist full of toasted pecans window green onions and Tj's chutney @ 8:O'clock. very very tasty .

Novice here. How exactly do you make this request? Does “Please divide this into 3 roasts?” get what you want or are further instructions needed? As mentioned above, my previous request got the meat cutter in trouble for apparently doing it wrong so I’d like to be as specific as possible, given we don’t share fluency in a common language.

To bring this back to the subject of cooking myths, or what I personally call "stupid things food authorities recommend," I'll add "salt your pasta water so it tastes like the sea." When I read something like that, I remember the last time I swam in the ocean, and I want to ask, "Have you ever actually tasted seawater? Because it's unfuckingbelievable how salty it is."

In any other context, of all the surprisingly many meanings of today's word, the one they are using is possibly among the last I would think of.