Smithy

Well, lookee what I found in my freezer! I have no idea how long this has been lurking in there, or why it went into the freezer in the first place. Frost on this bit of leftover pimento cheese quiche is visible. I can now report on freezing it for later. I put it into a microwaveable pot. You can see how firmly it had molded itself to the container. After flipping it over I gave it a couple of minutes on very low so it could begin thawing. Then I gave it enough time and heat to actually warm up. This was the result: It threw off a fair amount of water (which, incidentally, also happens to the refrigerated leftovers when I microwave them). The texture suffered slightly...there was a bit of chewiness, maybe almost graininess, that hadn't been there before. The flavors were still very good. It may be that preparing the dish but not cooking it at all until the day it's to be eaten, as @JAZ suggested above, would give better results. It may also be that if I'd packaged the leftovers more carefully and/or baked them instead of microwaving they'd have come out better. None of those options is useful for my road trip purposes (frozen, microwaveable meals, or maybe wrapping this quiche in a breakfast burrito for reheating later) but others may find the information useful so they can take different approaches.

That has quite a shine on it! It looks as though it's folder over several times, too. Have I got that right?

Thanks for that writeup. It looks like it's quite compact! Are those measurements right? And yet the bowl is 5.3 quarts?

Some batches of Genova Yellowfin Tuna have been recalled because of inadequate seals that could lead to leakage and/or botulism poisoning. See here for more detail. (I had to check my cupboards on this one, even though the distribution isn't supposed to affect Minnesota. Whew! None of my cans have the codes in question!)

First off: I admire the graphics on the package. Those women look like they really know how to do a pizza dough! Second: are your photos of the pizza itself before or after you added things? I have to say it looks pretty darned good as it is. Third: sorry about your oven, but how nice that you'll be able to leave the problem behind!

@Steve Irby, I've never before heard of luganesa sausage, but the ingredients sound good and I applaud you for making making it. It's been a while since I made sausage of any type, and that makes yours even more fun. You don't mention any curing salts. Do you smoke these, or just bung them into the freezer until you're ready to cook them?

Mashed potatoes, roasted vegetables, and chickpeas; all dressed with Samin Nosrat's "House Dressing" as discussed here. She says in her cookbook Good Things that she wants it to be so delicious one drinks it, and this qualifies: I made a full batch last Saturday, and as of now (3 days later) it's gone. 😀

Yes. Kinda tempts me to buy one of these devices, even though I don't need it!

Well, well, well! I put the pork jus (ozmazome??) into the refrigerator last night. Look at it now! I'm glad I kept it.

What are the cheeses? I'm guessing the medium-gold is Parmesan and the palest might be something like pepper jack? But the deepest gold one is a mystery to me.

I can't find my original post about this, but I found a vacuum-packed bag in the freezer labeled "Boneless Pork Shoulder, 2 lb 1-1/2 oz" with the notation "131F 3.5 hrs". It, er, also is dated April 2022! But it looked good, except that I maybe detected some frost developing in the bag. Out it came, and into the refrigerator. Today I finished thawing it in another sous vide bath at 131F. It probably got about 2 hours' worth but that was just me doing other chores and figuring it would all come up to temperature. I wish I'd taken a picture of the sealed bag after thawing and before opening. There was 1 to 2 cups' worth of juice. I tasted it, saved some, gave the dog a taste. Maybe I'll use it for gravy, maybe not. I took a slice and made it into a grilled dinner sandwich shown here. The rest of it you can see peeking out from the bag before I rewrapped it and put it into the refrigerator. Why exactly I did this particular work is difficult to tell now. My husband was still alive then, and we had different ideas about how pork roast should be cooked (his was good, but he considered it the One and Only Way whereas I liked to experiment.) We liked pork sandwiches. Maybe that's what I had in mind. Tonight's dinner sandwich is good, but this would also lend itself to a quick reheat with gravy from the drippings. At any rate: 131F for 3.5 hours gave me the exact texture and doneness that I wanted. If I can find my notebook, I'll enter it!

Griddled dinner sandwich made from a slice of sous vide pork roast (more information here). The condiments are mayo, mustard, butter on the outside, pepper jack cheese all before griddling. After griddling, I added spinach and sauerkraut. Delicious. Filling. I've eaten about half, and the rest may be tomorrow's lunch. The potato salad comes from a recipe in Samin Nosrat's Good Things (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). I didn't have the dill or celery she specified, so I settled for quick-pickled red onion. More discussion about that recipe here.

Following up on this, I'll note that when the potatoes thawed they became very spongy and released a lot of moisture. The photo below is of the spuds, cut up to be boiled for a potato salad, with the dark bits cut away. I do not recommend the "freeze in the subzero garage" method of preservation although the potatoes still seem to be edible. I'll report on the resulting potato salad elsewhere. Edited to add: the resulting potato salad is good, but I think mainly because of the dressing. I think the potatoes have lost more of their flavor at this point. Still, as a vessel for a good salad dressing they aren't bad!

I went out to the garage just now (-10F) and loosened a few potatoes for cooking today. At this point they're so frozen that they're comical: when they clack against each other, they sound exactly like billiard balls!

Lunch today is a very similar salad to yesterday's: roasted vegetables, cooked chickpeas, and (this is a change) a few bites of Juusto cheese, all gently reheated in the microwave oven, then tossed with spinach and dressed with the above-mentioned Creamy Sesame Ginger Dressing. What's especially interesting is that the dressing is even better now that it's had time to sit in the refrigerator overnight. What a delightful blend of flavors! (The rewarmed Juusto helps, too.)

Do you mean the curing involved the spices you named, or that's what came after the cure? More to the point...how did you cure that salmon? It looks delicious.

@YvetteMT, sometimes, nothing but a good beef chuck roast will do. And yours looks like just the ticket!

I'm certainly seeing what you mean about needing to make stuff in advance and then having it ready to go for...something. Today I made the Creamy Sesame-Ginger Dressing, then realized I didn't quite know what to do with it. By late afternoon, after I'd finished chores, I was hangry. Still didn't know what to do with that dressing! But I had a bunch of roasted vegetables, and put it over them. Quite good. More detail in the Salad topic.

I spent a little time today making a new-to-me salad dressing, and a lot of time shoveling snow and doing other outside chores, and when I came inside I was too hangry to think straight. Dinner was a sandwich with salami, turkey, and 2 kinds of cheese, griddled on my panini press, and a roasted vegetable salad described here. Unfussy. Easy. Appropriate for dinner when the time arrives and I haven't prepared. Interestingly enough, while I was looking for items with which to make a rice dish using those roasted vegetables and some kind of meat, I excavated packages of meat and fish that definitely will be making appearances here before too many more days. But none of them was thawed, and I needed quick and easy tonight.

I didn't get to that today after all, although I tried some of the dressing with mashed potatoes from the refrigerator and found it was a worthy lunch. I did start to pull potatoes from my frozen bucket in the garage, but they are so hard-frozen together that I figure I'll go after them with a chisel tomorrow. 🙂 What I did do today was make her Creamy Sesame Ginger Dressing, with the intent of having more than one dressing available in the refrigerator. After that I worked on outside chores, and when I came back inside (having given up on the potatoes) I was HANGRY. And not sure what to eat, but it needed to be quick. I pulled together a salad of already-roasted vegetables -- handy things to have in the refrigerator -- and chickpeas, heated them in the microwave, tossed in some spinach, and dressed with that sesame-ginger dressing. The dressing is another keeper. I had doubts about it when I was tasting it by itself, but atop those vegetables it's a fine dressing indeed.

Wait, not to be nitpicky but wasn't it only 7 years ago? See here.

I'm sure they add to the production costs, and hardbound books have heavy competition. Still, they're a nice touch and for my tastes they add value, both utilitarian and aesthetic.

Well. I love the look and layout of this book, and one of the small details that I find charming is the ribbon bookmark. Except I wish there were at least 2 of them. (I already have Post-It Notes (TM) sticking out of a bunch of pages. On the other hand, her earlier book Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat doesn't have ANY ribbons. I wish it did.

I thought I'd read this somewhere, but couldn't remember for sure and made a full batch of the House Dressing tonight! I don't think I'll have any trouble using it up, though. 😀 It's a nice dressing, and a nice change from my usual vinaigrette.

Oh, that totally makes sense! And as it happens, I have a glut of potatoes right now. Thanks for mentioning it!