Susan in FL

Oooops! We emptied our glasses into our bellies before I remembered to take a picture of this one, another oatmeal stout we hadn't tasted before. ...At least, not that I recall. In terms of creaminess, I thought this one was between the other two. It is quite dry -- actually, bitter. I don't mean that in a negative way, but some might be put off by the bitterness. It had a fairly good mouthfeel, and a nice balanced finish. Since we were finished eating, I can't comment on how it paired up with food.

Russ returned last night from another trip up north to include shopping for beer. This time he focused on stouts, in addition to IPAs, which are hard to find down here. I love stouts for breakfast, especially oatmeal stouts. So along with three brands of scrapple, he got five kinds of oatmeal stouts. Two we had with breakfast. Anderson Valley's Barney Flats is one of our long time favorites, and the Wolaver's (from Otter Creek) was new to us. Barney Flats tastes so creamy, and goes especially well with scrapple. Its creaminess is a great match to the scrapple when it's cooked crispy on the outside and creamy soft on the inside. Hey, you could almost make a case that an oatmeal stout could sometimes be described as creamy on the inside and crispy on the outside! The Wolaver's was quite crisp through and through. It might even quench your thirst! Less creamy (except for the head), but still hearty and rich, it goes down way too easily. We long finished eating, but we're still sampling these oatmeal stouts. By the way, breakfast was Rapa Brand scrapple, eggs baked on creamed spinach, sliced tomatoes, and cut mango. If you haven't taken the opportunity to taste some oatmeal stouts, please do, and let us know about it. If you have, I hope you'll post about some that you have enjoyed the most.

Russ just got back from up north with three different scrapples and several different beers, so breakfast this morning: Rapa Scrapple, baked eggs on from-scratch creamed spinach with a sprinkling of Parm-Reg, fresh tomatoes and fresh mango. and the obvious.

Wonderful looking and sounding dinners, everyone! I have some catching up to do. And ...Suzi, I wish I had the chance to be single as often as you. I just love being home alone. I have enjoyed the last few days eating what I want when I want while Russ has been gone, although I can't say he would not have liked these. This looks pretty bizarre. They are store-bought gorgonzola and walnut raviolis, with beets and a beet sauce I made. Another night I had potstickers, again store-bought with the sauces I made. At least one night I wasn't on as much of a carb kick, and had steak. Before Russ went out of town, we had quite a bit of company, and these were some of our dinners. For this belated Easter dinner for my in-laws, I used the entire menu from the March 2005 issue of Bon Appetit (except the dessert was a strawberry and kiwi tart instead of a pear tart), suggested wines included: Shrimp, Cucumber, and Mango Salad Wine-braised Leg of Lamb with Garlic White Beans with Tomatoes and Spinach and a Purchased Fruit Tart for Dessert ...very good recipes that I would highly recommend. Salmon Lasagne, for another night of company Part of our Danish-style dinner on one of the nights our Danish son was here Steak & pasta, by request when both sons were here These were the Pork Balls with Guacamole, I can't remember when. and my "Paper Plated Dinner" the night I cooked for seven.

Not speaking for Tony, but what I think is that food looks good on light or medium shades of green. They don't photo as well as white china, but I like the look of plating on green plates... so much I have two sets of green. I also like to use black plates for certain foods, but again it is not usually photogenic.

I'm in. I have never even eaten Moussaka, let alone make it, so this will be a fun experience. I checked out most of the recipes you all so kindly linked or mentioned, and this one from Recipe Zaar that Jason linked looks mighty good to me. I will be one of those who uses zucchini instead of eggplant, and will include potatoes. (I love Shepherd's Pie.) I also have a cookbook called Traditional Greek Cooking, given to me by our Danish family after they vacationed in Greece. Its recipe looks good, as well. It calls for frying the potato slices before layering them in the pan. Obviously this is basically a one dish meal. Do you all serve a (Greek?) salad with it?

Well, upthread I mentioned that I would soon be doing some family-style serving instead of plating, for company... I did, and I was quite pleased with how it looked. This was a braised leg of lamb with garlic, and white beans with tomatoes & spinach. For the family-style presentation, I put it all on a big white plate and Russ sliced the meat at the table. Then we passed it around and everyone helped themselves. (It tasted good, too!)

I am incapable of seeing a recipe request for goose without recommending this recipe, the best I've ever made. I wouldn't want anyone to be deprived of the opportunity to taste this.

Awwwww...... It's one of those nights. My son who has been in Pensacola for the past three years or so is here. This is the icing on the sentimental cake. Thanks, Joiei, for the update.

Sounds good, Susan! This Susan used up leftovers last night, too, and made an Asian-of-some-sort style soup. I had some pork to make a stock with, so I cleaned out the produce bin and threw in lemongrass and galangal and herbs and stuff like that, along with the usual stock stuff. After straining it, I seasoned it with fish sauce and dried shrimp, etc. and at the last minute added in soaked rice noodles, fried tofu, daikon, bean sprouts, scallions.... threw some herbs on top... Great way to use up the leftover Pad Thai ingredients! Those beautiful pot stickers of yours in the dinner thread drove me so nuts as to eat some store-bought ones last night, to satisfy my craving. We snacked on them as an appetizer while we cooked the rest of dinner. We used good soy sauce and a plum sauce I made for summer rolls as the dipping sauces. They were so good, I can hardly imagine how good your homemade must have tasted.

NulloModo, Re: your easy and delicious suggestions for preparing fish........................... Will you marry me!? ← Wonderful.... Not that I took this seriously, but has there ever been a marriage between people who met on eG? It looks like there are already some good suggestions. I have some recipes involving potatoes with the fish, which some guests who are not crazy over fish have enjoyed. One is served with a great sauce, over mashed potatoes, and another is the fairly common potato crusted fish dishes.

Cool! That is good to know, thanks.

Cooking chicken has the greatest puns, doesn't it? Nice legs, large breasts, my thighs are too big, do you have gas? and on & on....

My first thoughts: To echo Suzi's remark, "thank you, thank you, thank you for this cookoff"! This was by far better Pad Thai than I made before. Everyone's discussion helped so much. To start with, a Jason-style photo of the finished product I was not confident that the end result was going to turn out looking as pretty as the condiments and the prepared ingredients sitting at stove-side did, so I took lots of shots of those. This is one of the pictures of the condiments. The Table at Eating Time I will be up for more discussion later, but for now I am trying to give the condensed version of the story. I mostly followed the Hot Sour Salty Sweet recipe for the directions, with the exception that everything took longer stir-fry, pressing, and turning time because our electric stove is not-so-hot (both figurativly and literally speaking) and because my volume of some ingredients was significantly larger. I used about 3 ounces of fresh pork slivers and a pound of fresh local shrimp, in addition to about a tablespoon of the dried shrimp. I used all the ingredients called for in the Hot Sour Salty Sweet recipe, and also some shallots in with the bean sprouts mixture and some extra condiments. I did use the salted radish, and my tamarind was ready-to-use concentrate. The photos make the condiments obvious. To go with it, I made Stir-Fried Napa Cabbage with Garlic and Yellow Bean Sauce from True Thai, and a typical spicy cucumber relish. We ate family-style instead of plating. We enjoyed a Reisling with it. It was a hit with Russ, and also my Danish son who is visiting and said that Thai food is quite popular in Denmark. Any questions about something I failed to mention, please feel free to ask. I am pleasantly full, but tired, and we have yet to clean up!

Very nice, Linda! An aside: This is the first time I have ever heard the term "drumlets"! I've only heard drumettes or party wings. They sure are cute.

Yesss...! That is what I will do with the rest of the celery I have. I had never seen a head of celery like this before. I got it in my favorite Thai market. It is mostly leaves -- beautiful leaves -- with the other part of the stalks very, very skinny, and it even has some little tiny shoots of what looks like a plant going to seed, sort of blossomy. Do you know or does anyone know... is this an Asian variety of celery? I love the sounds of your entire menu!

Wendy, I hope you don't mind my jumping in, but I'm right here with the time to post... If you have a Food & Wine subscription or even a single copy you bought you can sign in on the web site and have access to the recipe. Click here!

Yes, I certainly have thoughts about that! It's beautiful and looks delicious, and I would like to eat it. Did you cook, plate, and photograph that?

NO problem! Beautiful! Great job, looks wonderful. Thanks for sharing your photos, notes and everything.

Nice looking food, everyone! We are cooking for at least three for a while! One of our boys is here now, and another and his girlfriend are coming later this week. ...A bit of a different way to picture dinner tonight. We rotisserie-grilled a roast of beef; oven-roasted potatoes with rosemary, garlic, S&P, olive oil, and duck fat; cooked peas and corn on the stove top; and put together a bowl of salad using some of the little yellow tomatoes from our garden (and yeah those edible flowers that just don't go away). And for the final photo they actually gave me their permissions to post their pictures.

Since I last posted on this thread, I finally made chicken-coconut soup. I am coming along as a coconut convert, and really liked this. I used True Thai's recipe for Tom Kha Kai. The next "new" soup I make might be a hot and sour shrimp soup. On this particular night I also made rolls again, and after reading the discussion here about beef salad , a larb-like beef salad. Now most of my Thai attention has turned to making Pad Thai again, given the cook-off thread. Fun!

Y'all made me hungry for a whole fish! Last night we were out to dinner and on the menu was a "flash fried" (deep-fried) whole red snapper with a hoisin glaze, so I ordered that. It was very good, and got us thinking we'll try deep frying a whole fish. Our biggest deep-fryer is on the side of our grill... wonderful for keeping the greasy mess in the great outdoors!

Yes, that is one of the sites I linked and is where I made my first online order when I began my Thai craze. I got my sticky rice steamer and cone basket from them. It was a helpful site for me in getting started on this Thai kick. So, to add to the radish confusion... I don't think this makes a huge bit of difference, and whatever we all chose to use the Pad Thai won't be altered dramatically. In what I pictured upthread, my "salted turnip" did come chopped, and it contains sugar and salt. The "preserved radish" I have are whole and contain salt and sugar. I'm not sure yet which I'll use when I make the Pad Thai. I bought these since the last time I made it, and that time I improvised by salting and sugaring and draining fresh radishes or daikon. I can't remember which. I'm also not sure about using something "pickled"... don't know if that would lend a desired flavor or not... Snowangel Susan?? Mizducky, I'm pretty certain you've got the right tamarind stuff, or close enough. Mine had some weird translation, too, but I can't remember what because the label came off some time ago and I threw it away. I ordered it from this same site we're discussing.

Cool! But, damn the laws about alcohol being sent in or out of Florida.

That's beautiful! Tonight after happy hours we went to Publix with the plan that we would each buy what looked good for dinner, and take it home and that is what we would each have. (We're pretty weird sometimes.) Russ bought steak, corn on the cob, and a potato. I bought a half of a duck roasted, and nice skinny green beans and yellow ones. True to ourselves, he was more money-conscience than I and bought a cheap bottle of (Sutter Home) Zinfandel, and I bought a nice bottle of Steele Pinot Noir. We ate on the porch. Whew, it's hot here... I love it. Our Publix carries a line of Maple Leaf Duck things, and for five or six dollars, I love to buy one of those already roasted duck halves. It's as cheap and easy as a take out and surely tastes as good or better!