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Some random dinners over the past week or so: Big old salad, Spanish tuna, feta, olives, etc. Did some salmon in the donabe, served with above cucumber salad, potato salad, cole slaw. Eel Bar is celebrating its first birthday, so we dropped in. Only other picture I took was dessert: The caneles with strawberries. And finally, last night to Cafe Katja. Where I had the Wiener schnitzel, with buttered parsley potatoes, lingonberries and a side salad. A glass or two of Riesling went well.

All this talk made me go to my local Xi'an place... Wife got a rougiamo with cumin lamb

@Katie Meadow Specifically, it was a 1.5x version of this one (partly using crème fraîche, and minus the oil and lemon), which itself is not dissimilar to this one. But when I looked around most recipes seemed to broadly follow these ratios. Yup, it was good. I'm not sure the subtle 'burnt' flavour is a game changer, but it certainly looks nice. The outside also baked up a little firmer, so the transition from smooth and creamy to rich and dense was most appealing.

It looks really good. Was it? What recipe did you use?

Thought I'd update this, because Heather Rankin (one of the two surviving sisters) has just been named an officer of the Order of Canada. https://www.thecanadianpressnews.ca/national/reynolds-rankin-among-canada-day-order-of-canada-appointees/article_2f4d8466-b368-5762-b61f-bc4bba131f28.html

I made Moe very happy last night with my Caesar salad. Homemade dressing with a coddled egg, homemade croutons, with blue cheese and served with a grilled chicken breast. It isn't often he gets a salad for dinner. Those that know me, know that I could care less about salads. I can make them, I just don't care about them. The recipe is our favourite Caesar salad is one that I have been making for 46 years. Original recipe calls for Roquefort, but when I can't find Roquefort, almost any blue cheese will do.

Today, Muhammara and Pita Bread

Go to youtube and do a search on "hostas recipes" dcarch

Frozen Grapes in Pernod

We always have grapes in the freezer in summertime for the grandkids, and we try to keep frozen blueberries on hand as well just for all-around use (but eating out of hand is one of those uses). Nova Scotia and New Brunswick (where I live) are both big producers of wild blueberries, so I can usually find a good deal on a 5- or 10-lb box of the frozen ones and then just divide it up into serving-sized or recipe-sized portions.

I spent most of my supper time throwing together a pasta salad to take to the new house because I've had a bad habit of going there to work and not eating all day. I'm running on empty. So, taking the salad over to have something to rely on when I'm there. (No pix) So, I had cooked some RG mayocobas day before. Supper was some rice topped with mayocobas and a little cheese with some Campari (Costco) tomatoes.

My sister and I looked into this, and with the information gleaned from the AHDB Horticulture and Potatoes website have concluded that it's probably Powdery scab (Spongospora subterranea) or most likely Black dot (Colletotrichum coccodes), a fungus. While Black Dot is a mild disease it is also one of the most problematic blemish diseases of washed, pre-packed potatoes.

Basque cheesecake 2.0... This time I cooked it in a regular oven. The last one was only a two-thirds mix and somewhat protected from the heat. This time I filled to the brim so the surface was more exposed... I wasn't quite sure when to pull it, but stuck with 57C/135F figuring the greater depth might give me a few more degrees of carryover, and it seemed to work fine.

I've been a fan of frozen berries since I was little, my grandparents (who grew them - strawberries, raspberries, black and redcurrants) would put them in ice cream cones for me and my siblings to snack on while we hurtled around the garden in the summer. They froze satsuma segments and grapes and added those as well.

I’m not talking about frozen fruit intended to be defrosted and used in pie fillings etc. Just freezing fruits and then eating them still frozen. I’ve been using frozen grapes as ice cubes for decades but just recently spotted something that grabbed my interest. Frozen Chinese bayberries. I’ve long liked bayberries but frozen was new. You just pop in in your mouth straight from the freezer. Since then I’ve been experimenting. Strawberries are great too, but the recent local glut of litchis / lychees led me down another avenue. First I had to decide whether to peel them first or not. I tried a couple unpeeled and never looked back. When they come from the freezer, they need sitting for a minute or two, but then peel easily – another new favourite. Freezing them seems to intensify the flavour. Ideal summertime snack. Frozen Litchi - Straight from the Freezer A couple of minutes later Do you ever eat frozen fruit? If so which? I’m waiting for the new mangosteen crop to arrive. I know they don't defrost well, but I wonder what they're like still frozen.

My search for 'hosta scapes' was just a bunch of gardening shops saying it was out of stock. 'Cooking hosta' worked after gf's clarification

I'm sure that's the best place for them. There was an ongoing fifty year study on this, but of course it was recently axed.

I store potatoes in the bedroom.

When we moved into our house, one of the deep kitchen drawers (the bottom of three drawers) had a sliding cover on it and my mother wanted to know what it was for - storing potatoes and onions. We'd always kept them in the basement growing up so she was unfamiliar with it. I thought the drawer was foolishly placed next to the oven! We bought the house after the builder made the countertops/cabinet/trim/door choices so we weren't able to pick our own.

It's called skin. You keep potatoes in the fridge? Why?

Yes, definitely peel them. If you don't, you'll wind up looking like this:

Ooops. There was plenty in the sauce but I forgot to type it in. Just imagine it’s parsley or spinach!

er Google returned this. Hosta - Wikipedia also known as plantain lily, although technically that is just one specific cultivar of hosta.

Bonus points for no coriander!

Charred squid with pan-roasted fennel, ginger, and lime from Sunlight and Breadcrumbs by Renee Erickson A little fussy (my judgement perhaps colored by the tedious first step of cleaning a bunch of small squid - some of those rings wouldn’t fit on my pinky!) but quite good. The fennel is sliced, steamed to tenderness, then browned. The squid are quickly seared, then tossed with a sauce of ginger, garlic, (Edited to add cilantro) lime zest & juice, diced Serrano chile, fish sauce and a pinch of sugar and chile flakes. Served over Massa Organics brown rice with more sauce on the side.