Smithy

How did you get those fritters to be so spherical? They look lovely, but not easy to do.

Woe is me, I've tried to make them last as long as possible, but this is the last pear from a Christmas gift of Harry & David Royal Riviera pears. Juicy, sweet, delicious. The pinnacle of pearness. It nearly melts in my mouth, but it hasn't gone mealy yet. I wish I could have these all the time, but I suppose the ephemeral nature of this wonderful fruit makes it all the more precious.

Face it: if you're the cook in the family and you're having surgery, or if you're the cook in the family and you'l be overseeing someone else's recovery, you'd better have the food prepared in advance. It had better be easy to reheat, serve and eat. It needs to be appetizing. It needs to be easy. Of course it has to meet dietary guidelines for recovery, and that's a wild card for purposes of this discussion. We don't seem to have a dedicated topic for this purpose, although we have a couple of topics that are relevant: Batch Cooking: One large batch, many small meals. Share your ideas! ...and this old one, which takes into account feeding the entire family but got to be rather specific about the surgery in question: Food ideas for friends after major surgery? What are some of your ideas for meal prep and serving when there simply won't be time or energy for cooking? Got any favorite recipes? If you've been through this, what worked and what wouldn't you recommend? Packaging ideas are also welcome.

I respectfully think that statement is too broad. It may be that the variety matters (waxy, starchy or in between) or how much they've already been cooked. My DH and I used to freeze dinners from the leftovers of a meat-and-potatoes dish (ham, pork roast, beef chuck roast for instance, with potatoes) and had no trouble with the reheated dish. It may also be that they need to be thoroughly cooked first. I'm working my way through a 5-gallon bucket of Russet potatoes given me last fall. They've been in the garage, frozen. I bring some in, cut and cook, and haven't had bad luck with them that way -- but those that I bring in and thaw before cooking have gone off in a hurry.

@JAZ, while we wait for @TdeV' answer I'll ask about another of your recipes. I'm looking at the Pimento Cheese Quiche from your Super-Easy Instant Pot Cookbook. I have oodles of eggs and this quiche looks like it might lend itself to road trip food soon. Can you think of a reason not to make it and freeze it?

That means I'll get double bang from the book bucks: how to make the condiments, but also what to do with the condiments already in my refrigerator! (See: "Condiment Creep" 😀 )

Sugar cane was (and I presume still is) common in parts of Egypt as well. Vendors had street stalls where they'd squeeze the canes to fill cups with juice. Local kids, and my pals and I, would occasionally snatch a stray stalk from a donkey cart as it was being pulled down the road after harvest. One stalk provided a lot of short pieces to share around! In the absence of pocket knives, we'd just brush off the cane and chew the stalk to get the juice. Very sweet indeed. I remember the stalk as being green, rather than the purple in your photo. Are there different varieties of sugar cane? (Short answer: yes! I had no idea until I went looking! Here's one writeup, from juicedfresh.com.)

Thanks for that writeup. I haven't had time yet to dive into the book, but from what you write here and what I've seen so far this book seems to be akin to Vivian Howard's This Will Make It Taste Good as far as its approach and likely uses go. Would you agree with that?

I just acquired a copy of Samin Nosrat's Salt Fat Acid Heat, thanks to @blue_dolphin's recommendation above. It looks like it might be a good book to fit your needs. Another book to consider, which I haven't read but which received a lot of discussion here, is J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science. You can read more about the book in this topic:

Tamales are such a crap shoot. When I find good ones, I like them a lot. The last time I was at a Trader Joe's I looked for the pork and red sauce tamales that I'd liked so much. No dice. So I tried these: Meh. Bland. Even the masa seemed to lack the flavor of really good masa. The green chile had some heat but none of the green flavor I expect from green chiles. Here's an attempt to show the melty cheese and chiles inside. After shooting the photos I gussied these up with salsa and sour cream, to give them a bit of oomph, but I won't buy them again.

The Ambriola cheese company has recalled cheeses sold under these names: Ambriola, Locatelli, Member’s Mark, Pinna, and Boar’s Head due to listeria contamination discovered during routine testing. For more information, see here.

I still haven't tried any of his recipes for using these eggplant preserves, but I want to update with this note: chopped into smallish bits and mixed into my green salad, the eggplant makes a nice addition. The acid kick fits well with my vinaigrette, and compliments the rather bland ripe olives I'm using up.

I blame @blue_dolphin. I really just went in looking for Good Things, but look at that promo price! So then I had to get her earlier book too, although it wasn't discounted. I'll have fun with these.

I've read and reread the recipe, and the 6 comments, and I agree: it seems to suggest baking from frozen crust. I guess I'd go ahead and try it, unless the crust package's instructions say to thaw it first.

I won this as a door prize at a holiday party last night. Looks interesting, doesn't it? I don't think I've ever had nitrogenated coffee before. I'll report on it later, somewhere, when I get around to trying it. It's a bit cool right now for me to get excited about deliberately chilled coffee. (I confess: my 3rd cuppa of the morning often gets cold before I finish it. 😀 )

If you do, please let us know what you eventually find out. I'm mystified too.

Would it perhaps dry the surface of the butter as air (and moisture) are pulled out during the sealing? One way to find out!

Further to this point: I'm a bit surprised that the peel is so green, and I wonder if that means the fruit is unripe -- which would contribute to its acidity. The photos of the fruit I'm finding show them as orange, along the lines of a mandarin. Am I getting a bum steer on the color, or do they favor the unripe fruit?

You may not need to, unless you simply want the pride of growing it yourself. I grew up (in California) knowing them as calamondin, so remember to use that search term at home if you come up dry on calamansi.

I love the look of the food (and the scenery) but the thing that continually astonishes me is the dragonfruit. Its color is so vivid! The time or two I tried it here, it had vivid color but not enough flavor to make those seeds worthwhile. Now I wonder if it's simply too unripe here to be any good...rather like quince. Northern Minnesota stores simply may not have access to the good stuff. Does that sound possible?

This totally broke me up: gave me a much-needed belly laugh! Thank you! (And it sounds delicious!) And in case I haven't said so before, I wholeheartedly lust after your bowls. Something about That Pattern and That Color make them look perfect, no matter what you have in them. I have some with a similar pattern, in white (I had more, but most have broken) but that green takes them from "pretty" to "enchanting".

Yes, thank you for all the detailed information, and your beautiful posts. I have a few questions (selected carefully from many I could ask!): Way back here: The tomato slices look rather like what we'd see in the northern US states at this time of year (i.e. not very ripe or flavorful), and I don't think I'm seeing much by way of tomatoes in your other pictures although I may have spotted some in a market photo. Was that mostly window-dressing for tourists, or have you encountered tomatoes in the cookery elsewhere there? How were those tomatoes, if you remember? The leaf cones that rice comes served in are pretty and seem ubiquitous. Do you know if they're considered reusable? Does anyone reuse them, or are they a one-and-done sort of thing? What do you mean by "non-cake bread"? Finally, for now: what is the seaweed butter like that went with a non-cake bread above? Is it like a compound butter? Salty? Small chunks of seaweed -- and soft, or hard? I'm eyeing some of my seaweed packets and thinking...hmmm!

I may take you up on that! And yes, please write a review of the book. This part really strikes home for me, where you said: This is the thing I keep telling myself I have to do. If I don't have prep work done by, oh, midafternoon then I'm going to be eating one of my planned-overs (tonight it was chili) or a grilled sandwich. I can't be messing around with washing, chopping, roasting, mixing and so on when it's almost dinner time already. I do need to work on that advance prep business, and her creative ideas might be good inspirations.

Dammit, @blue_dolphin, I do not need another cookbook. Mind if I move in with you for a while? (Seriously, those all look delicious. I may have to buy that book.)

Very nice, @Steve Irby! I love the seasonings you describe. The mystery seasoning (and its analog) sound especially tantalizing. One question: why the transglutamase dusting on the tenderloins? To make the bacon stick better?