Susan in FL

Thanks, Suzi. I probably will give it another try, cooking it like that. Please do!

I think this was the first time for the Australian products from iGourmet.com. I had been wanting to try both Roaring 40's and Verjuice for quite a while, and this particular Verjuice appealed to me the most from its description on that site. It might be my new current favorite ingredient. Thanks, sounds good! I'll check.It was interesting when I was first searching for Roaring 40's Blue. It is listed in iCheeses.com. When you click to purchase it there, it takes you to Amazon.com, and then when you click to purchase it there, you end up purchasing it from iGourmet.com. I would love to see you do another foodblog from Australia! I hope you decide to volunteer.

Good Morning. Even though there was not a lot of sunshine this morning, the blue blossoms were out, looking for it. At least it's not raining so far today. As it unfortunately gets worse elsewhere, the weather seems to be improving here. On the agenda today is a manicure and pedicure -- Woo Hoo! -- and happy hour food & drink for dinner.

Yes, it is! The only place I've seen it so far is iGourmet. It is soooo good. Thanks for the kind words.

Thanks for the good wishes. Interesting that you mentioned that, Suzi... I saw in the Dinner! thread that Wendy and you roasted them with the prosciutto. I was going to do that, but I cringed at the thought of cooking/roasting this good prosciutto. (I think I recall correctly that the figs were Black Mission.) Comments, anyone?

Thanks, and nice to hear from you... I have forgotten where your family is in Florida, and did you make it for the 2005 Daytona 500? And thanks for reminding me of stone crab season! When does it start? Good luck with your dinner party tomorrow night. Please let us know how it goes. I think the recipe for the dough was from Cooking.com. It had equal parts all-purpose flour and semolina flour -- first time to use semolina flour in pizza dough. We will probably use it again, but play around with the proportions. About the sauce, what Danielle said. We use olive oil on the dough, as well. The only time I use sauce on homemade pizza is when I make the traditional Americanized version with sauce, mozzarella, pepperoni, etc. It's always good to hear from someone who knows this area. The Flea Market is something, isn't it?! It's huge. What a trip. (Click here for a more vivid description.) I've never heard of the restaurant, so I'm thinking it must be out of business. I have a friend who knows restaurant history of the Daytona Beach area, and I'll ask her. I think you probably do need a good non-stick pan for the shrimp. Mushrooms, as discussed in that thread, no... they release so much liquid, it's not a concern. The shrimp on this pizza did remain tender, and moist too. It they had been smaller or chopped up, perhaps I would not have cooked them ahead. I'm happy to say the taste was as good as it looked.

Percy? Does Percy live in PA?? I have thought about duck confit, and all this time I wondered how long it would take to save up so much duck fat. It never occured to me that it would be store bought. Duh! Thanks so much for the link to the confit topic. What a great thread! And the link to the Cassoulet Cook-off, I hadn't read that one. Thank you, I will look for it.

Rita poured rain on us all day and I started whining to myself about it, but then I immediately reminded myself that I should only count my blessings and be glad that all we have gotten from this hurricane is wind and rain, and not loss of life or destruction. So tonight, instead of letting our picnic be rained out, we brought it inside! We thought about waiting another day for good weather, but there are other dinner plans for the next two nights. Tomorrow night will be our usual Friday night happy hours, and Saturday night is part of the Daytona Beach Wine Festival. I did some preparation ahead late last night, roasting potatoes and some chopping, and did the rest after work tonight while sipping on a beer. I've gotten some good ideas for picnics from this book by Pamela Sheldon Johns and Jennifer Barry, and made the recipe for Roasted New Potato Salad with Pancetta-Rosemary dressing. Beautiful pancetta... I got Russ in a picture last night, so he got me back tonight. I had planned to include a photo of one of our huge rosemary plants in this blog, but he took care of getting the picture while I was getting the rosemary for the potato salad dressing. This one is now taller than I am. The potato salad went with chicken salad, and here, the chicken is cooking. Using the pan drippings and brown bits in the chicken salad dressing made it really good. I used boneless chicken, breast and thighs. I'm not as fond of chicken breasts, but surprisingly, I prefer breast meat in chicken salad. Still, it was tasty. So... this looks rather odd, but what we did was put beach towels on the rug in front of the TV and ate on the floor, sitting propped against our couch. Not the first time we've done such a thing, but it's the first time we've admitted it publicly. We had some blue cheese, Roquefort and Roaring 40's. We drank one of the bottles of Cabernet that came from our wine club Tuesday, the Morenzy Cellars.

After my meeting in Port Orange this morning, I headed to the west part of the county, which is about 20 miles inland. I didn't get to steal much time for signing on, as I had hoped. In between visits today, I stopped at the Orange City location of Boston Gourmet Coffeehouse. That is where I found wireless access, as mentioned above. I took a lunch break and ate lunch, which is highly unusual for me (blame it on foodblogging ), and I bravely opened up my laptop and anxiously awaited what would happen and wondered how I would know if it was a "hot spot." A box popped up and told me I had BostonWiFi. I acted like I knew all about such things, and proceeded to eat my wrap and sip my coffee drink, and sign on to eGullet briefly. I felt so proud of myself, like I was technologically advanced or something; but I confess, I would have been too embarrassed to pull out my camera and photograph my food on top of all that. The Cafe Mocha (espresso, chocolate syrup, steamed milk, and whipped cream) was wonderful, and the smoked turkey and ham wrap was good, too.

First I must say to everybody, your comments and encouragement are great. They provide quite an impetus to keep at this! I hope you enjoy reading it half as much as I enjoy photographing the food, posting, and reading your feedback. This morning my work day started with a meeting at the main "headquarters" of Hospice of Volusia Flagler, my part time day job. No food was provided for an 8 AM meeting. What kind of meeting is that? There was not a big turn-out and I told the manager that if she wanted people to show up, she better announce that at the least, coffee and donuts would be served. This is not very exciting, but it's part of logging in the food of the day. This is the little cafe that we have at work. It is for employees, and the families of the patients in our in-patient unit. It was slim pickins by the time I got there. I bought a banana. The chef actually does a great job. He's professionally trained and cooks all his dishes, and bakes, from scratch. Lunches are really good, and it's all reasonably priced.

Another brief greeting... I am posting from a coffeehouse where I had a smoked turkey wrap and a Cafe Mocha. Most noteworthy is that this is the first time I've ever gone into an eating place and found wireless internet access!! But now I have to get back to work, so more this evening.....

Quickly, good morning to All. I'm ready to leave for work, I've got my coffee and water and camera. I'll try to steal some time for some posting today, so that I can continue with some of the discussions that have been started.

I was crazy over the looks of those cucumbers, and kept taking pictures! I included them in dinner, in a cucumber and onion salad. I used EVOO, the new Reims Champagne vinegar from iGourmet, salt & pepper, and that's all. It was delicious. Wendy and others on the Dinner! thread got me wanting to do something with figs, so I roasted some, and stuffed them with gorgonzola -- half with mountain gorgonzola and half with gorgonzola dolce -- and wrapped them in prosciutto. There was not a dramatic difference in the flavor of the two. They were good, but I'm not so crazy over figs, so I probably won't fix this often. We made pizza. I have been wanting to make it since I had a similar pizza in a restaurant during happy hour Friday night. It was caramelized onions left from the weekend, tomatoes, shrimp, fontina cheese, and basil. Russ made the dough; I made the top. We usually buy pre-made dough or crust. This turned out really well. Here we are making the most of our small amount of counter space. I was at one end making the stuffed figs and he at the other working on the pizza dough. I cooked the shrimp ahead, using the "dry-fry" method we talked about in the Pasta Cook-off thread. Here is the pizza making in progress. Added some camembert to taste on the side... and Peroni beer and/or Rioja wine to drink, and dinner on the porch was served.

I failed to mention about the Strega that it tastes licoricey, and normally I don't like licorice. But it is smoooooth... I've never tasted Lillet. What is it like, Wendy? This afternoon I went to the produce market where I usually buy tomatoes. This place has the best in town. It is one of two produce markets where I usually go for produce that I don't want to buy in the supermarket. We decided that we were rained out of the picnic. I went out to buy tomatoes and when Russ called at the end of his work day ("the bread and milk call"), I asked him to get shrimp, beer, and wine. Can you stand the suspense of what was for dinner???! T's Produce always carries pickling cucumbers, which are what I prefer for everything. Today they were small, and the littler the better, so I also bought some of those and some baby red potatoes.

It is like a two pound oblong chocolate truffle with no coating! It is not as soft as a semifreddo or chocolate mousse, and not quite as solid as most flourless chocolate cakes. I make it in a loaf pan. Last night's was a little too soft because it should be refrigerated overnight. Decadently good... cream, egg yolks, butter, among other ingredients along with the chocolate. I think I might have originally found the recipe in a magazine ad for Baker's Chocolate. If I find it online, I'll link to it. I really like the raspberry sauce, and for other uses. All it is is a 10 ounce box of frozen raspberries thawed, pureed in a blender, strained, and then mixed with 1/2 cup of light corn syrup.

First, what is Strega... It is a liqueur made from herbs and spices, put together in a "secret recipe," and colored with saffron. I just recalled this topic I started some time ago. It may be one of those drinks, you love it or you hate it. Those glasses are actually liqueur glasses that came in a Strega gift pack!

It's a bit late to be saying Good Morning, at least in some time zones. It's been raining almost all day, and since I'm behind in blogging, I had morning coffee in my office at the computer today. Russ went back to work today after the long weekend. Normally I work on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and every other Friday, but yesterday we both took off. I do work tomorrow, so the blogging will start out differently. I don't have a job with internet access. I do own a laptop, though, and I'll take it with me in case there is time to look for wireless access while I'm on the road and make a post or two. We were planning to go somewhere and have a picnic tonight! We have been known to do it anyway when it's raining, and use a pavilion at whatever spot we've chosen, but we're not sure. It would be more fun to have pretty weather... not to mention that the photos would be better. For now, I'll sign off and do some housework and dinner planning. I ate so much last night, I have not yet been hungry today. (Lucy, we each ate a breast half, no leftovers from the plate. )

I knew that moving to Florida would mean changes in regard to food, and for the most part I looked forward to the changes. I left behind some fresh foods (most noteworthy, homegrown or locally grown vegetables), availability of certain ingredients, and good beer selection. I gained different fresh foods. Though it is growing season during most months of the year in Florida, the vegetables aren't as good as during the short growing season up north, and there is more focus on fruits in the produce markets. We think Florida-grown tomatoes suck and anticipated that, from vacationing here for years before we moved. We believe there are no tomatoes as good as those grown in New Jersey. What surprises me is that corn is not nearly as good. Then again, up there corn fields and other vegetables were grown all over. Here, the state is large and we don't live in a farming community, so that explains some of it. Seafood... again the same only different. There is more selection here, but the crabs, clams, and oysters aren't quite as good. Sometimes we think that the cleaner water here doesn't help the flavor as much as the polluted water up north did. We can get just-caught fish more easily here, so we eat more fish. Last but not least, the change we love the most is the shrimp. It's locally caught, fresh, and delicious. I usually see the shrimp boats when I take walks on the beach, and I'll take some pictures if I see any this week. There were none out there yesterday morning; the ocean was too rough and restless from the storms at sea. I miss the availability of good cheese locally -- cheese that is of utmost quality, has been taken care of, and is sold by someone who know, loves, and appreciates good cheese. If you are a cheese lover and have such a source, you probably know what I mean. I could find a good source in Orlando, but I don't like the drive over and the traffic. Besides iGourmet, I order cheese from DiBruno Bros. in Philly and Marky's in Miami. We eat more tropical-style foods now, and use more chilis and Cuban/Mexican/Latino ingredients. We used not to enjoy fruits in dishes, along with meat and the like, but now we do and often have a salsa with fruit as part of the meal. That might be the biggest change in our taste. Maybe the regional cuisine could best be described as "Floribbean." There is much more influence from the Carribbean than the south -- at least that is true for the food we eat at home and in restaurants. I'm sure there are many Floridians who eat southern-style and home-style, so to speak, but for the most part Florida is not thought of as a southern state. Food-wise, I can think of two exceptions to that notion of southern influence, grits (with seafood, especially shrimp) and ribs. There are probably five rib restaurants within a three mile radius of our house! No pardon necessary for any ignorance of anything Floridian... Florida in a lot of ways is in a world of its own, and in some ways pretty weird. My style of cooking..... I'm not sure what it is. Distinctive, thanks, I think that's a compliment. Any feedback to help me learn how to describe it would be greatly appreciated, in fact. Sometimes when people find out I'm so passionate about food and cooking, I'm asked what kind of food I cook. I've never been sure how to answer that. I cook good food! LOL, that just reminded me of a bumper sticker I saw in the bank parking lot yesterday. It said, "My tastes are simple; I love the best." Anyway, my style has developed and expanded gradually over the years by being creative, trying as many new things as possible, and keeping a variety going all the time. There are very few dishes we repeat the same way twice or eat again within a short period of time. I am self-taught. I learned along the way by observing others, including my family when I was a kid. My parents were great cooks and loved food, and just about everything was centered around food, but they did not "teach" us about food or how to cook. I did get some Italian influence from my dad's family. Those beautiful flowers are Mexican Bluebells, I thought. However, I just did a search to find out for sure, and didn't come up with anything that looks like these. I enjoy them so much in the morning, looking at the the blossoms when drinking coffee or eating breakfast or brunch. By dinner time, all of the spectacular blue blossoms have fallen off. I already mentioned a bit about enjoying the view, as a special part of porch dining. It's being outdoors, enjoying the beauty of the environment, breathing the fresh air, hearing the birds sing (and the insects SCREAM during a certain few minutes every night)... Where's Rachel? She can put it in such poetic words. I've heard that, but some folks describe a Florida room as like a porch that has been given glass enclosure. I'm not sure. I do love Publix. Cool that your BIL works for them. Are they a good company to work for? It surely is where shopping is a pleasure, as the slogan goes. As I've mentioned, we do get a lot of great seafood. Hopefully, I'll get a picture of one of our favorite seafood markets, Hull's in Ormond Beach. We do drive on the beach. There are spots where driving is prohibited, to protect the turtles and all, which is good. It's a controversial topic among local politicians and talk radio, but I think it's good the way it is. Having some places to drive and other places to protect and save provides the best of both worlds.

We had done some prepping ahead, and after eating the risotto, Russ pan-roasted the duck breasts. I finished the sauce, which was a cherry and shiitake mushroom sauce, and blanched some zucchini and dressed it with a splash of grapeseed oil and balsamic vinegar. I used a little verjuice in this reduction sauce. It was part of my iGourmet order, and the first time I have used verjuice. I'm not sure if that was the "secret ingredient" giving it a special touch or what... but the sauce was sooooo delicious, as was the duck. Russ cooked it perfectly done, and full of flavor. Wine was Muirwood Arroyo Seco Pinot Noir. His birthday cake was a surprise for him, and was not actually a cake. It's one of his favorites, chocolate truffle loaf with raspberry sauce. That was our late night dessert, with espresso and Strega. Note our elaborate, state-of-the-art espresso machine.

The birthday man decided that he wanted the risotto and duck to be separate courses. By the way, he appreciated all the kind birthday wishes. Thank you! The choice was duck breasts, and we had none on hand. For them, I would have had to travel at least an hour to find them, so we did what we have begun to do when we haven't got any. Publix (yes, Where Shopping Is A Pleasure ) carries whole ducks, so we buy one and Russ butchers it. We saved the leg-thigh pieces for a dish for another dinner, and we will make stock out of the rest of it. We saved the fat we rendered and are accumulating quite a bit of duck fat. What we have in mind to do is save enough in the freezer until we can deep-fry homemade French fries. Meanwhile, we had the first course of risotto with crabmeat and basil, and a bottle of J. Lohr Chardonnay. By this time it was dark, of course. Often, this time of year, dinner is timed with the setting of the sun. Though we can't see the actual sun because of the trees in our yard, it does make for some nice scenery at dinner, and we enjoy watching the blue transform into pink Florida sky this time of night. I did take some pictures of what would have been our view at dinner if we had eaten about 45 minutes earlier. Michael, this is part of the answer to your question of what makes dining on our porch a special experience for us.

I'll pick up where I left off, at the making and the eating of dinner. We got a late start because I took so long shopping. I'm a slow shopper, and enjoy every minute of it! It did include last-minute birthday shopping. Russ and I usually buy each other food or wine or kitchen related presents on our gift-giving occasions and his birthday this year was no exception. Dinner and the groceries yesterday was part of the gift and I bought him (us) stuff for the porch, which really serves as our dining room most of the year. The colorful thing you see laying over a chair in the pictures above is a rug for the porch, and there is also a clock, placemats, and napkins. I had some plum tomatoes which were looking pretty rough, so the night before last I thought I would try slow-roasting them, for a sauce or something. They were looking pretty much mushy, so I changed my mind and decided to try oven-drying them, and turned the heat down to very low. Then I forgot about them. So yesterday we had "tomato crisps" on hand, and snacked on them while we were cooking. We saved a few. I made a little dish that turned out sort of half way between an amuse and an appetizer, some goat cheese and a couple of olives on a little bed of baby arugula, topped with the roasted-dried-crisp tomatoes and a drizzle of EVOO. The big dinner was my only meal yesterday, but I did get some tasty snacks. During the shopping at Publix I bought some prosciutto, and the ladies in the deli always show the first slice, asking if it is the thickness desired. Then they ask you if you want to taste it, meaning eat the whole slice. That would be yes! It was so good. I imagine saying no, it's too thick... and then having to taste another, and then that one... no, it's just a little too thin... yum, prosciutto for lunch. Other good snacks were the duck innards and the cracklings that were produced from when Russ was rendering duck fat.

Yes, Port Orange is just a few miles south of Daytona Beach. There is a lot of traffic on the interstate and on Port Orange's main roads -- too much for a bicycle, for me anyway -- and so I take the car almost everywhere. Our neighborhood is quiet however, and we live on a cul de sac, so nobody just happens to ride by. It's a nice spot. The temperatures and humidity have gone down only in the last few days. We have been hanging around 90 for highs, and in the 70's at night. We're really looking forward to later in the fall and in the winter, so we can open the windows instead of having to use the air conditioning so much. Today the clouds and wind increased while I was out, and we even had some rain (courtesy of Rita). ...Which brings me to more about the shopping. I didn't take any other photos, mainly due to the weather and also because I got almost everything at Publix, my favorite supermarket. I'll be sure to include more shopping pictures later in the week. Then there was another nice thing about the timing of blogging. I made an order from iGourmet over the weekend, and it arrived today. Mail ordering is one of the ways I shop for items hard to find here. And, two bottles of wine came today, from a club we belong to, A Taste of California. This club is run by a man within Florida who gets the wines and then ships them within the state. Florida is unfortunately one of the states with the wacky laws against mailing alcohol into or out of the state. The two wines we received today are Cabernets, 2003 Morenzy and 2004 Foxborough Estate. It is hard to believe, Wendy. I guess you won't be following me this time, though... I see the next blogger is from Pennsylvania. I think it's fun to guess who's next. Now I am about to fall over on the keyboard asleep, so I'll continue my blogging tomorrow -- or later today, I should say.

I am home, with loads of goodies to put away. It was nice to come back to the welcome notes and questions. Thanks! Good questions! I am looking forward to answering them, but first, about the shopping... My first stop after haircut and banking was the store I call "my Greek guy." He has Cosmos Imports, and I get most of my olive oil and canned & jarred goods there, as well as what dried herbs I use. I haven't found a better source for pine nuts, sundried tomatoes, and already pitted Kalamata olives. He advises me well, and I try one new thing every time I go in. Today's new thing was the "everyday" olive oil. He is a very sweet man, and I don't even know his name. No matter how small my bags are, he always carries them out to the car for me. What would a Florida blog be without a strip mall? His store is located next door to Leanh's Chinese Restaurant, which I have mentioned in other threads. It is very good from-scratch Chinese cooking. Speaking of moving to Florida, we bought our house from Leahn! Here is my guy. He was telling me today that a lot of his business comes from the web site, as well as from local restaurants. This is what I bought there today. Now it's time to spend the evening cooking and eating.

He sure does! Fortunately, yes. For once I can say the words, "I'm glad we're not in Key West." Last year I posted a journal on eG during one of the hurricanes, and I surely don't miss having that opportunity right now for this foodblog! Readers, please do ask me questions. I'll answer anything -- well, almost anything.

I'll follow in the eG foodblogging tradition of describing morning beverage-making and those drinking habits. Our morning beverage of choice is coffee. We've had this coffee maker for a few months and it grinds and brews. Russ sets it up the night before, and each morning the sound of the grinding serves as an alarm clock for us. Eight O'Clock Coffee has been my favorite everyday brand for many years, all the way back to when it was sold only in the A&P store in Delaware and they would grind it at check-out! Does anyone else remember that? I rarely eat breakfast during the week. When I do, it’s at brunch time, or what is lunch time for most people. Sometimes it’s cereal with fruit and sometimes it’s dinner leftovers. So today, black coffee it is, on the porch. I'm getting ready to go out for my hair appointment and other errands including shopping for dinner and groceries. Of course, the birthday person gets to decide on dinner! I offered him the full range of choices... taking him out to dinner, making a picnic for the location of his choosing, or dinner at home with the menu he picks. He decided on dinner at home. So far, he's asked that we have duck and risotto.