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Baked a Ken Forkish overnight white bread yesterday... Which led to: Griddled grilled cheese sandwiches for breakfast today.

The meatballs I recently made: Served over penne, with a good hit of parmigiano.

Now THAT’S frustrating! I’m sorry you went through that trouble and wound up disappointed! I’m only frustrated for all the small businesses, here in the US and world-wide who are just trying to get the best materials and ingredients to make their best products and share them with customers who want to support them. Saying any more would be against guidelines but my minor inconvenience has been nothing compared to theirs! Oh, and my hair is currently a shade of neon green called Electric Lizard! 🙀

I received both of these Ottolenghi books but don’t want to keep both as i am trying to downsize. I don’t want have to buy a bunch of new spices nor search for different vegetables. Which one should i keep?

Oooh, I'm going to revisit this page a few times! Bravo @chromedome ! Many years ago my MIL used to make a cookie extravaganza. It provided DAYS of delicious nibbling. Sorry to not be a member of your family. 😂 Brilliant @Duvel ! What on earth did your inlaws do before you arrived? Come to think of it, FOUR Other Families are going to do this again in the next FOUR days? I would love to have been able to participate in the making of that soup . . . 🙄 Thank you friends for your lovely pictures.

I will use some for the next bread loaf and see. Thanks.

I got an email yesterday puporting to come from FedEx. Not a lot of telltale spam details, so maybe it was legit. I thought perhaps they were going to ask for duty. Turned out to be a piece of spam, but not until DH and I had emailed back and forth trying to determine same!

My mouth just watered looking at that pulled ham. And that wonderful broccoli salad. And chocolate chip cookies? Look out. Here I come!!!!

Ditto on both counts. My mouth just hung open...

@blue_dolphin, you must be so frustrated! I admire how none of it comes through in your posts about this experience; I'd be cursing a streak bluer than your hair!! Meanwhile, I bought a panettone for the first time to take to my brother's girlfriend, who was hosting Christmas this year. I got it from an Italian deli in NYC which, while not upscale, is reputed to carry really good panettone's (I heard this from, among others, a person from Italy who seemed startled at the offerings). The brand I got was called "Bonifante". At the last second I remembered that she does not eat chocolate, so I got the traditional. I carried it on the plane, trying to keep it from getting smashed. Guys. It was . . . not so good. In fairness, it was not the most expensive one, but it was fifty bucks! I really should've done some more research.

I'm 60-something, so I can't crank stuff out like I did in my 40s (see my back-in-the-day foodblog), but you're right... it's hard on the back unless you're really, really careful about matching the height of your work surface to the height of your chair (or your standing height, as the case may be). In this case I was mostly using small parchment cornets, rather than a piping bag. The ones requiring a solid fill I just dipped, rather than piping and then flooding with the royal icing, because although the result isn't as professional-looking it's a whole lot faster. The fun bit is doing the Christmas trees, dotting them with "decorations" in different colors. When I make my cornets for the higher-volume piping (like the blue decorations on the sugar-cookie snowflakes, or the white ones on the gingerbread cookies), there's always a strip of parchment left over at the end. I use those to make smaller cones for the little "detail stuff" like this. I do one color at a time, starting with blue because I make lots of that for the snowflakes, and then finish up with small bits of yellow and red that I mix up on the fly. I just try to mix 'em all up randomly, so each tree is different. Occasionally I see specialized, themed "quins" for decorating cakes and cookies, and maybe one day I'll find some that would work as miniature decorations. I did find some mini candy-cane quins a couple of years ago, and put them on some of the trees with tweezers, but I didn't have time to do it properly with all of them and multiple kinds of decorations. Now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure I remember seeing yellow star-shaped quins at Bulk Barn (for the Americans, that's a wonderful bulk-store chain* we have up here), so I could maybe give each tree its own star next year. That'd be worth the extra effort, maybe. Last year I did one where all the "decorations" were at the bottom, and told my GF "Little kids decorated that one." *Bulk Barn's site: https://www.bulkbarn.ca/en/Products A young American's reaction to encountering BB during a visit went viral in 2022, and it's still fun: https://www.blogto.com/eat_drink/2022/11/american-tourist-bulk-bar/

It's never too early for a glass of wine--for you, not him 🙃

My husband just suggested that the buns weren’t over toasted, the ham was under sauced. He waits till now to tell me?! Damn.

@chromedome I tried to do the dozens of cookie + decorating thing once and realized how hard it is on my upper back to hold the piping bags steady. Never did it again, you definitely have to have stamina. And I was a much younger person back then and gave up due to the pain of decorated cookies. @Duvel I am in awe of that soup. That reminds me of the old children's story "Stone Soup", at least how I imagined the soup to be at the end of the story. I want to make something like that, just need to find a few dozen or so like minded carnivores to participate. I saw a video of a Calabrian soup, with all the possible pieces of pork on Pasta Grammer youtube channel and have been mildly obsessed with the process and the celebration of these types of soup. I know there's a ton of work and planning but Wow, the payoff looks amazing. Hopefully you enjoyed your own fruits of the labor as much as the guests.

One of Moe's favourite breakfasts whenever we have left over roast beef. In this case it was beef tenderloin leftover from the Chateaubriand served with scrambled eggs and gravy.

We wanted something simple for dinner last night so I made a quick tomato, garlic, basil sauce with Kalamata olives and grilled Italian sausages.

I think it all looks AMAZING. I'd definitely dive into all of that.

@chromedome That is an amazing array of cookies. That's what I call a job well done. Congratulations!

Sorry it has taken me so long to post about this CFM! Christmas week was jam packed and I had a couple of moments of high anxiety, wondering if I’d get it all done. On Tuesday morning, I started with two bone in hams. They were coated in mustard and a homemade rub. I poured a 12 oz bottle of Coke in the bottom of each pan, covered them tightly in foil, and then two hours in the oven at 275. Removed from the oven and covered in a combination of Sweet Baby Ray’s barbecue sauce, apricot preserves, and apple cider vinegar, and back in the oven, with the temp raised to 300 degrees Fahrenheit. After the first two hours, as I was preparing to cover them in sauce. I thought they were done, but I was sadly mistaken (misunderstood the internal temp goal of 200 for pulled ham, vs 165 for “done” ham). So much to learn. Later that evening (hours later) it was pullable. Tasted good, too. The pulled ham sandwiches were accompanied by broccoli salad. (Thanks for the suggestion @Shelby!) My recipe calls for raisins, but I subbed with Craisins. Broccoli, bacon, cheddar, red onion, sunflower seeds, Craisins. My husband was turning his nose up at the broccoli salad from the beginning. (He is now a believer.) I made and dressed the broccoli salad on Tuesday for the Wednesday delivery. Before dressing: The dressing was made of mayo, sugar, red wine vinegar, salt, black pepper. Nothing unusual or edgy. I toasted the buns, and you can see that they are a beautiful color. Unfortunately, they were still a little over toasted and the sandwiches didn’t have any give. It made me sad. Maybe the chocolate chip cookies with flaky salt helped. I hope so. [ There was a family and two single guys waiting for food as we unloaded. I apologized for the over toasted buns and one of the single guys insisted he preferred crunchy bread. 😂 That was nice of him. I feel good that we were able to complete and deliver for 11am on Christmas Eve.

That sounds like an amazing soup stock @Duvel And wow, quite the cookie extravaganza @chromedome

This is an extraordinary amount of talent and work! Anyone who is getting these beautiful cookies is a very lucky person! And, yes, WOW. I would so love to dive into a bowl of that soup. You did amazing!

" . . . in place of . . ." malted powder and diastatic malt powder are not the same thing . . . that said, I use it all the time. so 'in place of' I suppose there maybe a difference - per some 'experts' diastatic malt powder gives the same/similar flavor boost, but also helps the yeast do its thing.

@Duvel Wow, just wow!

No pics of Christmas Eve dinner (gumbo) or Christmas Day lunch, but last night was finally a relaxed meal, and it was meatballs (frozen Costco) and baked ricotta, and air fryer roasted broccoli.