handmc

This is the best. I went on a trip to Korea took a ton of pictures and then left the camera on the dam plane. Looking at these I am kicking myself all over again. Thanks for bringing us arm chair travelers along. Again this is soo neat. The Dog,although I doubt it would agree is priceless!

jack cheese and jalepeno pierogi.....drool. No one would expect the bang of hot pepper in a nice pierogi browned in the pan with a little onion confit and sour cream

Pennsylvania Dutch Chicken Pot Pie Cook a 3 - 4 lb chicken covered 3/4's of the way by water (add some onion, celery & salt for the broth) when the chicken is done remove celery & onion take out chicken - let it cool, then cut up - set aside cook noodles in the chicken broth with the pan covered - approx. 40 min. (a little potatoe diced is optional - I do, mother doesn't) when noodles are almost done add chicken back in to warm up. add salt and pepper to taste. (keep a can of chicken stock handy in case you need to add some so it isn't too thick - this is especially important if heating up leftovers) NOODLES try to make these several hours ahead so they can dry a bit before cooking. the best is to make noodles in the morning and cook late afternoon. cut 3 T butter flavor crisco into 2 Cups unsifted flour and 1 tsp salt. seperately - beat an egg - add 1/4 - 1/2 cup milk, mix add liquid ingredients to dry. make into a dough ball - don't over work!! on a floured surface - roll out pretty thin - between 1/16 and 1/8 inch cut in square or diamond shapes ( a pizza cutter works well) - set aside on waxed paper until ready to cook Serving suggestions - accompany with garden peas, pepper cabbage or cole slaw, roll and apple sauce.

I think Slkinsey nails it. The list he supplied is like watching a ship slip over the horizon. Ingredients are one thing, but the physical plant I have available to cook on will never compare to a professional kitchen. Keeping things warm while still trying to get everything out on time, ugh, if nothing else it will cause you to scrap menu plans a dozen times at least! Bye, Bye 4 four star meals, Bon Voyage. I am not and never will be a 4 star chef. If had that kind of talent and didn’t use it to its full potential it would be a profound waste. I can say however that looking at some of the food porn on this site there is no question in my mind that there are some very serious amateurs out there. I love to cook, for family, friends and once a year a huge blow out where I take 4 days off searching for ingredients, cooking, decorations, appropriate libations and music. Actually my wife handles the decorating along with the sister in law. The Luau was a real pain in the ass ingredient wise, but I found out I could fly in anything. Low country boil, that was a snap. But 4 star meals? I may have some self esteem issues but I don’t think I would want to undergo the scrutiny the meals at Masa or Per Se come under by this crowd or any crowd for that matter. Good food, I can do that, 4 star meal, I’ll pass thanks. I’ll still rattle my pots and pans and feed those willing to come over. Occasionally, I’ll try to prepare some top quality food with top quality ingredients and have fun doing it. I don’t own a chef’s coat, and I don’t think I’m the sulking type, particularly when I’m cooking. However the thought someone might be silently thinking, “yikes when is this meal going to end” is truly mortifying. This is an interesting topic, but more than a bit humbling and a little depressing when doing a self evaluation of your cooking skills and available equipment and whatever it means to prepare a 4 star meal. I am still not sure what that means.

Franco-American spaghetti and bacon sandwich on Wonder. Oh the shame MMMMMMMM Bacon.

My roasted carrot w/pablano chile soup with honey, lime and crem fraiche that I made for Thanksgiving was as tasty cold as it was warm.

Glomkie, made with chicken and herbs,(low fat, low sodium) rice, green beans. Chocolate Chip Cookie, just 1 for dessert. I'm trying to be good. Thanks for the receipe for the Senegalaise soup!

The meat looked great, but did you see the expression on the Baby's face! That is priceless. Does he eat me yet? It looked like he was impressed as we are with the cut of beef. What a cutie!

So I have read about them. How the heck do you make them?

Smoked Salmon spread with cream cheese, chopped shallots and dill and a dash of worcestershire sauce, a few dabs of chipotle sauce wrapped around a slices of cucumber. Pate with chopped eggs and shallots, crisp bread goat cheese marinated with EVOO, pink peppercorns, black peppercorns, crushed juniper berries, garlic, fresh thyme, fresh bay, fresh tarragon. Tomatoe tower, sliced with coarse salt, pepper, EVOO with fresh basil between the slices. Shrimp w/cocktail sauce spiked with old bay. Roasted carrot soup with honey, lime and seeded pablano chilis blended topped with creme fraiche. Sweet, smokey and a little bite goood stuff! Turkey Stuffing Mashed Potatoes Cranberry Sauce Green Beans Gravy made with dark stock (what a difference) Sweet Potatoes a la brother in law Rolls Pumpkin Pie Apple Pie

Shooting a crane? I used to hunt waterfowl, but there is something just decidedly wrong about shooting a crane. It is like using a u236 Space modulator. Why kill awesome beauty? Its not like it will taste good.

Most service is ok. Please don't tell me your first name. I won't remeber it after I read the menu, and no I won't send you flowers the next day. I don't necessarily mind the informality because it is hard to figure out what they are being forced to say or do. For example I don't think waiters like being forced to clip and pin cute things to their outfit becoming ever more garish and absurd but there are a few national chains that evaluate performance based upon a waiter's spirit, a.k.a. the junk pinned to their clothes. Being force to sit through the specials mantra is tedious. A would you like to hear abouts tonights specials would be sufficent. I can read. If you can afford a slip of paper for the table or in the menu describing them or a chalk board I probably don't want to order the special. After AB's book I don't think I would ever order a special again anyway. What I cannot abide is when the waitron returns to the table for the obligatory how's everything just after I have taken a bite. They then hawk over you while you gag and choke down your food so they can make a mental check mark. I will tip extra simply to be afforded the courtesy of being asked a question when I don't have food in my mouth. The pepper thing, another check mark, tip grubbing at its finest. I'll ask for pepper if I need it. I hate people telling me what I need before I know I need it. Until I have a guardian appointed for me I'd like the precious few years, before I'm shipped off to a home and back in diapers, when I get to make a choice, to be free of this presumptuous intrusion. Lastly, I don't want to see pictures of their children, swap yarns with waitron or engage in other unnecessary conversation. I am with either my wife, the tribe or a business associate, so I have people to talk to. I'm not unfriendly, but a night out with any of my companions is a treat for me, hopefully my companions and I'm not looking to strike up new friendships. Hi how are you, fine. Good night guys come back soon, that's fine too. But I don't want to know there is trouble in the kitchen, its unsettling.

Wow that pretty much covers it. Thanks.

Hopefully this wasn't covered recently. I love to cook, but I can't bake. I love bread, I want to learn how to make it. I don't like what I have tasted out of baking machines and truth be told would like to learn to do it myself. Can I learn this art without enrolling in a cooking school? Any books I should start with when it comes to making bread? Important caveat: I must at the same time try to tame the cook in me from improvising. My struggle with baking has always been complusion to deviate from the recipe written. Its not that I'm a know it all - hardly, its just the cook in me.

On the other hand, it is quite easy to take offense at the government stepping in saying something to the effect of "You are apparently too stupid to make your own decisions, so we are going to make them for you: you can no longer have a big-mac or enjoy a smoke at bar". AMEN. I always get a kick out of the legislature when they get into the business of passing laws about morals and what is right for you. Talk about working without tools, ah, but I rant. The laws they pass also tend to fail for the ability to be enforced but more tragically to address the issues for which they we passed in the first place resulting in a waste of time and a sensless increase in paperwork for everyone else. Good topic.

Dinner was Pork tenderloins seasoned with adobo spice, pepper, sea salt and balsamic vinegar, pan seared until there was some nice sear marks and finished in the oven with a few green peppercorns. Sauce of finely diced onions sautéed in butter with a little sea salt and raw sugar, just a pinch, until starting to turn golden then deglazed with balsamic vinegar, beef stock, raisins and green peppercorns until syrupy then strained. Sauce was allowed to rest on a trivet until I added the strained pan drippings from the tenderloins after they rested. Butternut Squash mashed with salt, pepper, butter and fresh grated nutmeg. Mashed potatoes I know way too many starches but the squash just kept calling out to me. Green and Yellow String beans Sweet yeasty rolls.

May I recommend the healing powers of triple antibiotic healing ointment? ← The healing powers of a very old single malt may be called for in this situation, at least 1/2 the bottle - while you sits there and wait for the bleeding to stop.

You should see bleudauvergne's blogs! I drooled for a week last time!

I don't know if Schlosser's book is being dismissed. I would tend to disagree with some the reviewers however; he had a pretty pronounced corporate greed vs. the little guy approach. As for the food horror show message the filth etc., the topic is often a non starter. While folks are quickly appalled at some of the tails associated with a breakdown of food safety practices, most do not want to spend a whole lot of time discussing the issue. Here’s an example: would you eat mussels that were grown 5 miles from a sewerage pumping plant with a history of leaks and spills of up to 40,000 gallons of sewerage and the shell fish area is also targeted for remediation because recreational boaters dump their holding tanks in the area (these are some facts of a case I am handling)? I love mussels! But now I think twice before digging into a bowl of them. It ticks me off in one sense because it is too much information. I still love mussels dam it! White wine garlic, lemon grass, thyme, shallots, bird peppers…..I just have to be sensitive where to get them from. When the Schlosser’s book first came out it was heralded by some “food safers” as something that will start “real change”, the passage of laws, yada, yada. Little if anything has happened. In fact the agencies have pulled back and in many respects are doing less in regards to enforcement issues. While some say the Bush administration is the reason, the major food regulatory agencies where not doing much under Clinton either. I represented a number of people sickened, and some seriously injured in the Cyclospora outbreaks only to learn that many of the importers did not carry insurance and where uncollectible, assuming the countries they were located would let you attempt to collect on a judgment. I think at a least if you are going to bring product into the country you should have to carry insurance if the product you sell makes someone sick or kills someone. That’s right, I handle serious food product liability cases, cases where people, children (in most instances because their immune system are not fully developed) are killed or end up on dialysis or the ICU, because of bad food. I don’t handle belly ache cases, the cases are expensive to prosecute and in many instances you cannot decipher what they were eating vs. what made them sick. In most serious cases the cause of the problem is bad ingredients, contaminated with e-coli, listeria, hepatitis A, etc., and/or the bug is not killed through proper cooking or good food unfortunately is contaminated by cross contamination or unwashed hands. After the above paragraph I anticipate I get a bunch of flaming letters. Hopefully those who may bash me will continue to read before they get all too hostile. I have worked in the industry. I am currently a certified food handler. I have taken the courses and tests. I cook for all the food events at my church where we serve a large number of people usually over a 4-5 hours period so it is like being slammed from the minute you walk in until serving time is over. High Stress, High Volume. I don’t claim to be able to step into a real restaurant and keep up, but then again it is not like I am clueless what it is like to turn out a large volume of decent food under pressure. My experience both cooking at the country club I worked at in my twenties, occasional food service work in college and law school and the church functions over the past ten years, we do about one a month, is that most people are cooking clean and doing it right. I have also run across some real pigs. At the church, I have the luxury of running the less than diligent out of the kitchen immediately, one of the benefits of a volunteer organization. However my experience commercially is that it is more difficulty to get rid of the careless and the piggy. The pigs, the careless ones for the most part, cause the problem everyone else gets stuck dealing with later. Sometimes, however it is the ingredients themselves that are the culprit. You can be the cleanest chef in the world you will never wash Cyclospora, a most pesky parasite, off a raspberry and it will make people very sick, seven to ten days later. What the heck does this have to do with Schlosser's book? His book, apart from the food factoids and corporate greed angle was about this very topic. The topic about food safety abuses is one which people who truly enjoy food [who view it as more that fuel for a carbon based life form] do not necessarily wish to discuss, read or think about. Many of the people who eat at the retail fast food locations may simply not be all that concerned about how their food is made. Many of Schlosser's assertions are true. I have thousands of pages of meat and poultry suppliers (PDR’s) process deficiency records, N.R.’s noncompliance records, and plant management responses which would make the stoutest person want to vomit. However, when (society) shut down the local butcher who kept a spotless shop and took pride in his product and went to production line processing based on volume, we gave up a lot for lower prices. I’m not saying the choice was right or wrong, the choice simply had some very serious consequences. Schlosser's book for people who love to eat is depressing. Particularly if they like stinky runny cheese, oysters, steak tar tare, sushi, medium rare cheeseburgers or all of the other food items and lovely things I could not live without. Sorry for being long winded. Someone tossed a soap box in my path.

For thanksgiving dressing balls, mmmmmmmmmmm Otherwise, rice, eggs and hot chili black bean paste, sweet, hot, fermented, funky with egg yolk! Usually for Breakfast or a midnight snack. yum. Wife just abuses me over this one. Gokujang if I'm out of bean paste. Cheeseburger, mayo, ketchup,pickle,onion toasted bun lettuce and a sunny side up egg on it. I used to get them in college in KY. A hangover prevention kit on a bun! I better stop. My chest hurts.

Mustard is the standard. Has anyone had the ground beef heart topping that they call Cooneys in Flint MI and Deteroit area? It's what you would get when you ordered a chili dog. I don't miss them.

Dave & Wendy's celebrity blog! What a start. I am starving. I knew I should not have read this until after dinner. Wow, what fun! I can't wait to see what is next. Always amazing. Always fun. Thanks for blogging.

Thanks Snowangel. I was making Larb for 24, an older women's church group. I used about 20 brid chilis total, minced fine, which gave it the flavor and mild heat I was looking for. The batch I kept for myself I added 6 more of a nice and tasty blast. I used your receipe by the way, except as modified above, and it is very tasty thank you.