Priscilla

Last evening, the End of the Ham was transmogrified into excellent hash. Good balance of potato cubes, diced onion, ham, butter, s & p and the essential whiff of cayenne, slowly fried to browny-brown crustiness. Topped with the Consort's Perfect Poached Eggs. Alongside were heart-shaped English muffins made by me, with salty butter, and, for those who like such things, strawberry preserves. Rosemont Grenache/Shiraz, cheap & cheerful and downright delicious.

See's uses Guittard chocolate. Decades before the very fine Sharffen Berger was even a nascent twinkle in Sharffen OR Berger's eye.

OK, the Consort the other day brought me some of the in-store-only dark-chocolate-covered crystalized ginger: Really really good. We're very lucky such a thing exists in the world. I reiterate: I don't even like candy much. But there's something about See's, it's almost a savory experience. So much flavor, so many layers of flavor. Also he brought something else really really really good, which a See's aficianado friend had suggested, I think it's called Chocolate Butterscotch but I could be wrong. It's like compressed golden brown sugar, all the way through, not as grainy as C&H out of the box but with a grainy element that is entirely wonderful. And, something ELSE I'd not had before, not in all these years -- maybe I just wasn't ready -- and whose name I don't know, neither, but which was really really good: Marshmallow, all soft and home-made like, with soft caramel around it. This was wrapped in waxed paper twisted at each end, looking appealingly homely. What a flavor blast! Of COURSE I've had the chocolate with the caramel and the marshmallow layer, and that is very very good too, but this is something else again in the world of See's Goodness. Maybe I am adding "Try more See's" to my New Year's Resolutions, along with "Conquer choux paste". Earlier on up there, I thank Ludja for the pointer to the See's store on Polk in SF, and the idea of pairing it with a visit to Swan Oyster Depot ... I usually combine my Swan visits with a stroll to Naomi's Antique to Go to test my Hall China resolve, but See's would not affect this exercise and indeed, would only add to it.

Lessee, New Year's Day, black-eyed peas, cooked with the usual suspects, ham & friends, plus a judicious hit of Tony Chachere's Creole Seasoning, which I was reminded of a few days ago on these very pages by Varmint. Nice white Mahatma rice. Nice cornbread. Salad with Bob's Bleu Cheese dressing. Friday, burgers ground from an excellent chunk o' chuck, (Vintage Natural Beef; continuing its reign) the unground portion of the chuck destined to make the broth which forms the base for borscht. Best at-home burger ever ever evereverever. Saturday, late-night croque monsieurs, with the ham which did not find its way into the black-eyed peas, and Tillamook Swiss-type cheese, on French-type bread made by the Consort. Pickles, olives, et al. Last evening, Sunday, at long last borscht, with lovely veg from the farmer's market and lovely shreddy pieces of the aforementioned chuck, not stinting on the lovely sour cream dollop, neither. Rye bread with salty butter.

Varmint, must be Tony Chachere's? Course I am in no way sure I'VE spelled it correctly, either, but I am at least pretty sure about the Ch at the front end. Anyways this was recommended to me, no, recommended is too pale a word -- STRONGLY SUGGESTED, let's say, by a Cajun piano tuner whose brain I picked for recipes whilst he worked. I never thought of it as seasoned salt, but it IS its adamant, take-the-top-of-your-head-off saltiness that is what I like best about it. It's the only blended seasoning type thing I keep around. And I DO keep it around. However, deviled eggs! Never used it in deviled eggs although I'm going to, right quick-like here, aren't I.

Boneless rib roasts in the zeitgeist. Boneless rib roast on Christmas day for us, too, from Costco. Unaccountably, among the very best pieces of beef ever ever cooked at home. Just really really good. Cooked outside in the old Weber over hardwood charcoal, at a low temp that at first wanted to creep up and up but which the Consort bent to his will. Like Tommy we're trying to eat beef until the Mad Cow thing abates, if it's going to, or even if it's not. Not pre-packaged ground beef, of course, but I've never used that anyway, even BEfore reading Fast Food Nation. So last evening it was beef Stroganoff, using portobellos for the first time. Vintage Natural beef top sirloin with a lot a lot of marbling, cut and pounded to a fare-thee-well. The cute-lookingness of regular-sized mushroom slices was of course absent, but the musky mushroomy flavor of the big old honkin' portobellos was very good. Souffle potatoes, all puffed up in the cutest way, not unlike Jackal's garden squirrels.

Last evening, cheeseburgers ground from a nice not-lean piece of chuck, Vintage Natural beef, a brand of which we have heretofore only had steaks. Cooking indoors, on the beauteous 12-inch Griswold, outtake fans set on Warp 6. All the usual-suspect toppings, excepting Kraft Deli Deluxe American Cheese slices, decidedly UNusual, but a Special Request from the out-of-school 12-year-old. Excellent lengthwise dill pickle slices from the Middle Eastern market, a great place to find all kinds of pickles, including Middle Eastern varieties, of course, but also those that fulfill other pickle needs. Such as dill slices for burgers. Thickish-cut frites run twice through the old deep fryer. All to accompany Mail Call -- another request of the 12-year-old's -- the special A Very Ermey Christmas. I think R. Lee Ermey would be a good name for a cat.

Just a wonderful chronicle, Jackal! Absolutely transporting. Serious home cookery is very exciting. I look out on a puff of mistletoe on a big old sycamore tree, sycamores struggling a bit after years of accumulated Southern California drought. The mistletoe is not as lush as usual, either ... perhaps it's a sort of parasite sensitive to the health of its host. (And, your mention sent me to The Golden Bough to read up.) Eagerly anticipating more!

Friday night, Christmas carolers afoot, some of those widowed by same at our table enjoying steak sandwiches. Nice fresh baguettes from the Vietnamese French baker split open lengthwise, lime-juice mayonnaise, thinly sliced tomato, thin slices of grilled so-called London broil piled on, plenty of s & p, lid back on, cut in segments. Johnny Walker Black apparently the bottle of choice of Christmas-carol widowers. When the carolers reached our house the 12-year-old circulated with a platter of chutney-cheese canapes and the Consort and I doled out mulled wine to interested adults. Mulled wine is not something I ever imagined preparing, never ever ever, but Penzey's had sent me as my free sample, you know how they do that, a little jar of their mulling spices some time ago, and well, not unlike nuclear weapons, sometimes having something means it's going to get used. And so the mixture was simmered into inexpensive Shiraz and gladly consumed by the earnest carolers. Saturday night friends in for latish Greek-style shrimp with tomato and feta cheese, first time trying the Italian feta from the international choices at the Middle Eastern market -- excellent! Turmeric rice with a bay leaf, a big seedy flatbread made by me, beautiful Romaine salad with olive oil and white wine vinegar.

Our pomegranate sorbet Saturday, I am somewhat chastened to admit, especially so in season as we are, was made with bottled juice. 100% pomegranate, bottled in Russia, bought that day in the Middle Eastern store as a hedge along with fresh poms. Time would dictate, and did, which one got used Saturday. However, plenty else to do with the unused fresh fruit, who in the interim provide something beautiful to look upon. Haven't yet used the juicer for them, but that was the plan.

Carolyn, excellent work. Reading along, one is buoyed by your enthusiasm and that of the participating presenters and chefs. Very cool!

MM sending every good thought to you and your wife. Now, about turnips, I like 'em. In my experience if they're bitter they are bitter, and there's no ameliorating it. Too-old turnips will be bitter, but even some that are not too old are. But most fresh turnips are sweet and crisp and delicious. I grew up with raw turnips hiding in plain sight, nicely cut on the crudite tray, because my Dad was from Oklahoma and like raw turnips and my Mom cannily saw this as a way to present them nicely. Little turnips, blanched & glazed. Bigger turnips cut up in vegetable soup or as a component of root-veg mash. Diced to size, blanched, entirely welcome as one of the veg in a Salade Olivier. There's lots to do with turnips.

Curlywurly: That really sounds lovely. Varmint: You remind me that a little bottle of chili-infused oil made according to Mario Batali's instructions is there on the door of the fridge, waiting to enliven this & that. Why o why didn't I drizzle some over my cabbage-potato-cream soup of the other evening? Won't make that mistake again, will I. Mayhaw Man: We had pomegranate sorbet on Saturday evening -- one of the nicest ices ever. And lessee, last evening, Vintage Natural Beef NY strips, cooked using the Alain Ducasse medium-heat method in what may be the Most Beeyootiful Pan in the World, a 12-inch Griswold cast iron skillet. I would like to disclose right up front here that we have no relationship whatsoever with Chef Ducasse beyond having used his medium-heat steak-cooking method, published back when he was The Chef in the NYT series, several times when cooking steak indoors. Smashed red potatoes with caramelized shallots, cream, butter, s & p. Beautiful Romaine salad, a little cold weather really benefits lettuces provided they don't freeze, dressed with grapeseed oil-white wine vinegar vinaigrette. Sometimes salad is so good it just vaults itself right up to the top of heap, on a dinner menu. LBB seedy baguette, salty Plugra.

Fantastic work, Rachel! I love long, detailed interview answers (provided I am interested in the interviewee, of course), and Ted's were just so satisfying. Interesting answers, but sparked by good questions. Truly, you oughta conduct more interviews!

Last evening, cabbage & potato soup with cream. Also croque madame sandwiches, bread from my old pain de mie pan making nice square slices a reality. Oh a person can make a croque madame/monsieurish sandwich on bread with a rounded top or from an oval loaf, of course, done it my own darn self, many a time, but there is something just so right about those square slices. Also a slice of tomato in addition to the fried egg. The tomato variant, whether it be non-egg monsieur or with-egg madame, seems to have no name of its own. However, it's a worthy addition to the flavor profile, if the tomato is sliced meticulously thin and tastes halfway decent, as was/did this December farmer's market tomato.

In Reykjavik down at the port, and the port is not separated, as it is in other cities, from the edge of downtown, (a wonderful thing, to me), there is a building housing an organized flea market which has as part of it a tiny food hall where you can try the famous rotted or fermented shark in various stages of affinage, as well as less challenging good stuff like smoked lamb (just excellent), and dried cod, which is eaten out of hand sort of like potato chips or pork rinds, or with butter on bread. The flea market is interesting too, if you like that sort of thing. As you walk up the main drag there is a small two-story restaurant whose name means Lake-something in Icelandic (sorry I can't remember -- any passerby will know) where it is nice to get coffee or tea and sweets, or something more like lunch, smoked fish and so on. The local liquor is Brennevin, which a lot of people dismiss as rotgut but, straight out of the freezer and in small doses, is not bad, especially with a cube of the aforementioned rotted shark. A classic, really -- just like the Russian odiferous dried fish always paired with vodka. Vegetables are largely greenhouse-grown and few and far between, but there are red fruit, rhubarb and wild berries of different sorts, which show up a lot, sometimes as preserves on top of skir, an extra-rich yogurt, Skir. Skir is eaten with a bit of extra-rich cream poured over it, as well, and is really good. There is a restaurant called Perla in an outlandishly designed building built outlandishly atop the gigantic geothermal water tanks that serve the city and its suburbs, which is proud to utilize Icelandic ingredients. I had, among other things, some lumpfish caviar there which was just delicious. Red and crispy, like large-scale smelt roe, decidedly NOT the shelf-stable dyed-black tarry stuff sold under the name lumpfish here in the U.S.

Last evening, tostadas. Refried beans made by me, leftover long-cooked pork roast carnitasized, all the usual-suspect toppings, salsa verde made by me, finely chopped cabbage, tomato (farmer's market tomatoes holding out so far!), grated cheese, sour cream. Seemed awfully summery to me, but the Consort and the 12-year-old were enthusastically adamant, adamantly enthusiastic, and so. Fahster's, Mate, to drink.

Defining oneself by what one buys is defining oneself by what one buys, whether one is buying organic free-range foodstuffs or super-high-end stereo equipment. (Anyway too there is not a lot, as in hardly any, separation between these two consumer groups.) It's the defining oneself by what one BUYS that is the thing. And it's the same, no matter the purchased item in question. BUYING a SELF.

Last evening, rigatoni with sausage-cream sauce, a Marcella Hazan recipe from her first book, which also made it into the revised-and-combined reissue. Plenty of Parmigiano showered over and stirred in at the end. Really good; hadn't revisited in a long while. Big redleaf salad with some new olive oil from Trader Joe's, a novello, not bad but I mourn the end of the nutty boutiquey Ligurian one my friend brought from, guess where, Liguria, with Balsamic vinegar. Inexpensive Prosperity Red, really surprisingly good, whose surprisingly good-looking label the 12-year-old correctly identified as riffing on propagandistic Socialist Realism.

Last evening, a pork shoulder roasted at 275 for eight hours. (An idea from eGullet's/LA Times's Russ Parsons in a long-ago Food section article.) Lots of garlic slivers introduced into the interior by the Consort, copious salt & pepper overall, before bunging into the oven for the aforementioned eight hours. Excellent cracklingage resulting. Succulent juicy meat, too, even sliceable in parts if one uses the term loosely -- due to the bone in there helping to maintain some structure, I think. Slices of pork and a disc of hot German-style potato salad which had been seasoned with the pork deglazement arrayed atop nice redleaf lettuce which had been dressed with pumpkin-seed oil/white wine vinaigrette. LBB seedy baguette, salty Plugra.

Heather, I love pumpkin seed oil too. This little bottle, resembling a perfume bottle in size & style, was from the same aforementioned market on a months-ago visit. Austrian, like our new CA gov. Must be online sources ... I'm going to research because I'll need a refill right quick here myself. (Adding this link I found, apparently a pumpkin-seed-oil importer -- no experience ordering from them, yet of course, but perhaps I will.)

Friday night, a friend over, catching up to do, and a nice piece of top sirloin to grill. A small roast, really, it was, quite rectangular, from the excellent little market we used to live five minutes from, shopped there daily, and never, not EVEN for a SECOND, took it for granted. I miss it! Anyway, the occasional times I'm nearby I like to stop in to wallow in my sorrow and pick up some good ingredients. This TS turned out very well, slices looked beautiful, charry outside crust (hardwood charcoal), pink-giving-way-to-red interior, rich beefy taste. Whilst grilling other friends, (grilling the meat not the friends), who had not yet eaten, stopped by, and so. We became six at table. Yukon Gold potatoes boiled with garlic, mashed with cream. Reminding everyone yet again how good Yukon Gold, or most any of those Eurostyle yellow-fleshed potatoes, are. Beautiful butter lettuce salad with pumpkin seed oil vinaigrette. Baguette with salty Plugra. Nice Merlot one of the stopped-by friend's clients'd given him, forget the name. Saturday, the Consort cooked, making at my request Bitok, a Russian-style glorified ground-beef patty traditionally served with a cream- and wine-enriched sauce. Among available choices, he used Craig Claiborne's recipe -- Mr. Claiborne shared my taste for ground-meat dishes, plus his sauce had going for it TWO sorts of cream, regular heavy and sour. Really really good. Jaaaymaaay-style oven frites. Roasted Brussels sprouts, so good to see you again. In stampeding for the cauliflower do not neglect the Brussels sprouts, is my advice.

By agreeing to 1., not deep-fry turkeys on the property, and 2., not set up a methamphetamine lab in the barn, I netted a 1.5% discount on my homeowner's insurance premium. But now what to do with the tubs of ephedra?

Better measure ... in no way do I mean to be sexist but IN MY EXPERIENCE men are notoriously bad at visual space estimation.

Is it missing a stopper, this thing on the left? And, does it decant?