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Sausages with peppers and onions, quinoa rice mix. Ling cod, lentils and as requested broccoli and cheese.

This tasted much better than the picture implies. I'm posting the photo anyway, to celebrate a winning Trader Joe's product I wrote about here. I had leftover beef birria and rice pilaf from a dinner a few nights ago. I'd been to the farmers' market earlier in the day and come home with rainbow chard, so I chopped one leaf (stem and all) and added it to the food. Microwaved the whole thing until I was warm and the chard slightly wilted, gave it a small drizzle of olive oil, then sat down to dinner. Easy. Delicious. I will definitely buy more of that beef birria next time I'm at Trader Joe's!

Thanks @rotuts. Made Moe a hot turkey sandwich with homemade twice fried fries and as always with a hot sandwich, canned peas. Bread was baked this morning.

When asked, they did not say 'neigh'... (I'll shut the door on my way out)

BTW , you can age at home . I do . Brie to die for , from Tj's . that's not to say a trip to a Cheese Emporium that takes care of their supply isnt well worth it.

They do. Both Saxelby’s and Formaggio age in their own caves as well. (fWIW, Saxelby’s focus is on American cheese producers).

Today, Sunday is your last chance to get your mooncake shopping done till next year. Tomorrow is the Mid-Autumn festival. The street and roads around the 5-star hotel are rammed with cars and last minute shoppers trying to get the city’s most prized mooncakes. These are traditional, regular Cantonese mooncakes but of ‘elevated’ quality. And elevated price. If I may be allowed a slight Sunday Aside. A special friend’s lovely young daughter is a budding equestrian and chose not to go travelling during this 8-day public holiday, but to stay home to look after her horse friends. Then, in anticipation of Mid-Autumn Festival (Mooncake day), October 6th this year, decided it would be a good idea to make mooncakes for her best friends. The horses! With a little help from her 妈妈 (mā ma), she did just that. Filled with horse friendly ingredients. Image pixelated at her mother’s request for privacy. The horses are unpixelated; they gave permission..

Obviously, I meant "hadn't" realised.

This installment of Extremely Labor Intensive Padang Food is one of my favorites - fried chicken. In my opinion, this, with all of the accoutrements, is vastly superior to the vaunted Thai Hat Yai fried chicken. The steps are essentially as follows - grind a spice paste out of fresh ingredients, simmer/braise the chicken in the spice paste with as much water as to partially submerge the chicken, remove the chicken once tender (traditionally, you'd use "kampung" or village chickens which tend to be quite tough) and then separately remove all of the solids from the braising liquid with a very fine mesh strainer, then shallow fry the braised chicken and then fry the solids. Serve with even more labor intensive sambals... The good thing is that it doesn't all have to be done at the same time. The sambals can be done well in advance - some people even store them at room temperature for a few weeks (I portion and freeze them as I'm not THAT confident that they won't go bad and ruin all that work as well as my evening/next day), the chicken can be braised earlier that day or a few days before and fried at the last minute and the spice paste, once fried, will keep forever as long as it is kept dry (I keep it in an airtight plastic container with paper towels above and below to absorb excess oil and I add a couple of desiccant packets between the upper paper towel and the cover). Just to make things a little more complicated, you can make variations of the serundeng (that's the fried spice paste) by varying the ratio of ingredients. Personally, my favorite is the galangal heavy version which is detailed below, but you can easily make it a candlenut heavy version by practically eliminating the galangal (just use a little bit then) and using a metric ton of candlenuts (around the same volume as the galangal would have been). Or you can make a ginger heavy version or an extra shallot-y version... It's all up to your personal preference. Usually, in a Padang restaurant, they serve only one kind which they won't tell you what it is unless you specifically ask so it's a fun surprise. Truth be told, once the frying is all done, all of the serundeng are remarkably similar tasting - the differences are there, but are much more subtle than you'd expect them to be. Yield 4-8 chicken thighs - if only 4, you'll have a LOT of extra serundeng Spice paste (bumbu): Shallots - 3 western size or 8 of the smaller Asian ones (about 150g) Galangal - about the same volume as the shallots or maybe a bit more Garlic - 6 large cloves Fresh turmeric - roughly 4" long, 3/4 - 1" diameter Ginger - about 1/4 of the shallot volume Candlenuts - 3 pieces Ground dried coriander - 1 heaping Tablespoon Ground black peppercorn = 1 teaspoon Water to almost cover the chicken 2 large daun salam (Indonesian bay leaves, very different from Turkish or California bay) 6 kaffir lime leaves 1 stalk lemongrass Seasoning: 1/2t MSG 1/2t chicken powder 1-2t salt (to taste) 1/2t sugar Grated coconut (fresh or frozen) - unsweetened - about the same volume as the shallots Oil for frying - I like peanut oil but you can use canola oil, corn oil or any relatively high temperature oil 1) Grind the spice paste (bumbu) in a blender with some water to help it blend, or if you want to make it even more labor intensive, use a mortar/pestle 2) In a cold wok or pan just large enough to hold the chicken close together, add the blended spice paste, water, leaves/lemongrass, seasoning and chicken, mixing to combine thoroughly and bring to a gentle boil over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally 3) Sprinkle the coconut on top and mix in thoroughly, turn the heat to low, cover and simmer until tender/cooked thoroughly, turning and stirring occasionally, scraping the bottom to make sure nothing settles/burns 4) Remove the chicken and set aside on a rack to drain well (this will minimize spattering later), also remove the lemongrass/leaves and discard 5) Using a fine mesh strainer, remove the solids from the braising liquid, then press to remove as much liquid as possible 6) In a clean wok or pot, add enough oil to shallow fry the chicken and bring to 350degF 7) Fry the chicken in batches until golden brown on both sides, then remove and drain on a rack or paper towels, removing any loose serundeng between batches to avoid burning 8 ) Bring the oil back up to temperature and add the drained solids (slowly so it doesn't explode) and stir constantly to keep from burning 9) Once golden brown, remove the fried solids with a fine mesh strainer and drain well, then spread on a couple layers of paper towel to absorb any excess oil Serve with jasmine rice, sambal ijo and sambal merah, putting a healthy pile of the serundeng on top of the chicken:

Right... but I guess my point was that the Murray's cheese sold in the NYC stores are probably still aged in-house, but who knows about the product they sell through Krogers or elsewhere in their expansion.

Yes - Kroger's was nice enough to buy it all - lock, stock and caves.

I believe the Murrays on Bleecker still does its own affinage - even though they've expanded into the space next door with their cafe.

They're only $3.50 and in stock at the San Clemente TJs. I grabbed a couple more bags today. It's the texture. Left over from one bag on the drive home, combined with their low priced impossible nuggies: 'tis a vegan alternative to McD that hit a craving. Don't judge me.

Possibly. The reason I mentioned xanthan gum is that Flaxfiber supposedly was made to be a xanthan gum replacement used in a 1:2 ratio: https://www.sosa.cat/en/producto/flaxfiber/ Given Flaxfibers fiber content, Inulin, or a mixture of inulin and xanthan gum may be a better substitute for an ice cream/sorbet base however. I guess I'll have to set up a side by side test to see how the alternatives compare to Flaxfiber.

@Duvel - Great looking karage! And your 'little one' is not looking so little anymore....wild how quickly time flies and they creeping closer to eye level!

Relaxing evening with some comfort food: family requested karaage … I made a meal out of it with some (commercial) shrimp gyoza & fries with aonori salt … Plus a variety of rice crackers, seaweed salad, menma and (Korean) yukhoe - marinated beef strips with soy sauce, honey and seamed oil, seeved with nashi pear … All enjoyed with a Bavarian beer from little one school trip location … And a Ghibli classic: Spirited Away … No complaints 🤗

Another fine blog. thank you @Shelby

Awww thanks--and thanks to everyone. I promise--barring any hail...natural disasters etc. lol--that I'll do better for deer season. I think I'll be back on my game by then

It's great that you like what you got - just know that Murray's is owned by Kroger's. Not that there's anything wrong with that. The independent cheese mongers here might need your support even more...Formaggio Kitchen/Essex. And Saxelby's, founded by the late, great Anne Saxelby.

@Ann_T Perfect looking Ham Dinner Ham requires either scalloped or au gratin potatoes ,and your version looks very tasty .

It sounds as if you may have identified the issue - in a scientific manner!

I planned to take a dough out of the fridge last night to bake early this morning, but then I saw the ham I bought the other day and decided instead to make a ham dinner for breakfast. Might as well do something when you get up early. Put the ham in the oven just before 4AM. Served with potato gratin and Southern style simmered green beans. Moe had the ham dinner for breakfast and I'm going to take the same thing to work for lunch.

Thanks so much for giving us what you could, Shelby! I admit I was thinking, isn't it Huntin' Time again??? It's always wonderful to read this thread, and I've come to rely on the regular hits of inspiration. Now all I want is giblets.

Marketing. So far as I can make out they are claiming it's specially formulated to enhance crab. It contains no crab and is just regular rice vinegar.

What is crab vinegar?