Smithy

Here's what Serious Eats has to say about Hasselbacks, and why he's underwhelmed: Kenji's modification is to make it a gratin instead. I've done that a few times and needed to tweak the recipe to suit myself, but been pleased with the final result...and @FauxPas did her own version here. Getting back to your original point, we didn't need a special gadget for it.

I love crumpets. They aren't difficult to make, but as with so many "easy" things they still take time. That one makes me hungry, and I just finished breakfast!

In fairness to this In fairness to this grocery store, there wasn't a fish odor at all. I've been in some places (especially along the Gulf Coast) where it smelled truly fishy, and not in a good way. I generally walk right back out of those stores. This place is clean and bright and well-controlled...except for their prices. 😁

Oh, I think that was a GREAT price! I was referring to the extra pints, not the original purchase.

Me too. After having argued with them about it, I decided to wait until there was a sale elsewhere. Of course, Ninja still gets it money but any extra proceeds will have gone to Amazon or Walmart or wherever I bought them.

@rotuts, that's a very good question. I wonder how much they sell too, and what they do with the unsold. The market in question was remodeled a couple of years ago and expanded its meat / seafood counter accordingly, but this still isn't a ritzy part of town. Snow crab legs have always looked to me more like a party / finger food than a serious dinner. I keep remembering the fun group we saw in Mississippi, snarfing down the "all you can eat" snow crab legs for $25/person. That was almost 6 years ago, and no doubt times have changed there too. At the time it looked like that group got a great deal. My husband and I haven't tried dealing with all that shell!

We've noticed a slight rise in grocery prices in our area, but it hasn't been huge except for beef (which we skip) and dairy (which we buy anyway). However, the seafood counter 2 days ago was a real eye-opener.

Tonight I cooked an impulse buy from our local grocery store: stuffed scallops and stuffed clams. They were in the same case as the Maryland-style crab cakes, and looked like a fun novelty that might be delicious. I bought two of each for us, for a grand total of about $10. (This was quite an attractive price, given that the snow crab was $49.99/lb!) The store clerk was good enough to include cooking instructions for each on the labels, and the two were compatible on time and temperature. Here they are, unwrapped but not yet grilled: And here they are on our plates. I guess the extensive ingredient list on the packages should have been a clue. Neither of us could taste seafood as such; there's a great deal of bread, some spices, a few other additives. Nothing like the briny delicious seafood I'd been hoping for. The cross-section at the bottom of this next collage tell the tale. Welp. You win some, you lose some. At least it was only $10 for that experiment, and the asparagus was good! 😄

It's gotten hot in northern Minnesota too, by our standards, but nothing like what's happening farther south. And there's been rain, rain and more rain. I'm not complaining, but the upshot is that what passes for our garden is later than usual. I do container gardening, basically. I dislike weeding, so there are 6 pots of assorted tomato plants and one of Italian salad greens from a seed packet I found earlier this year. Three of the tomatoes, and the greens, are in this photo. Behind it is our pond, with tall weeds awaiting our weed whip. Or a scythe! If you look carefully you can see a few tomatoes in the bottom row of closeup pictures. So far we've collected one paste tomato - quite good - but we're still waiting for the rest. The salad greens are very productive, with a good strong flavor. Oh, I have herbs planted in pots too: dill, parsley, basil, cilantro. The mint has taken over the flower bed, and I've let it.

This could have gone into several different topics, but it's been fun for us...so here it is in this topic. The story begins with my husband's passion for hash, and his insatiable desire to perfect it to his tastes. The potatoes must be crisp but not oily. The sausage must be cooked, and slightly browned. The onions must keep their crunch. I could go on, but that tale has dragged on in the Camping, Princess Style topic for years. A year or three ago, his daughter gave us (him) a used pan that met most of his needs. it had a huge base. It had straight sides, so he could run the spatula under the ingredients and turn them. He is not of the "do that pan flippy thing with the contents" persuasion, so rounded edges are contraindicated. Two problems: the interior non-stick became sticky, and -- much more important -- the bottom was no longer flat. When he put oil into it for his beloved hash, he had to deal with an interior island. Think of a reversed wok, and you'll have it about right. I loved this pan. I loved its (original) shape, its very long and strongly angled handle. it was a wonderful traveling companion, and it hung without complaint on the wall of our house when we were home. But its contents stuck, and its warped bottom made an island in the oil. I looked for Vollrath (the parent company) and Ameriware, and various offshoots, to no avail. I looked at World Market, where I'd purchased a smaller but similarly excellent pan. No luck. Enter Amazon, of course. I found several candidates, based on size and shape. I ordered several candidates. For this purpose, GreenPan (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) won.* Our GreenPan skillet made its debut tonight. The sides are right-angled. The bottom is flat. The entire interior is as slick as an Antarctican ice rink in winter. My darling is used to measuring oil with the interior island in mind, and there may need to be adjustments. Still. The potato layer perfectly spread across the bottom of the pan. There was a bit more oil than necessary, but not much. All went well on this maiden voyage. "All went well" is, in truth, an understatement. He's in ecstasy! *The other candidates found homes here too, but they won't be his hash pans.

Yes. You might want to sweeten them more than "to taste" because, according the manual (and things I've read here) the sweetness is damped a bit by cold. At a first guess I'd suggest using the same amount of sweetening you'd use if you were canning in a simple, light syrup. I've only done it with canned mangoes, though, so I'm not speaking from experience.

There are some great ideas listed between when you posted and this response, and given the bagful I bought I'm sure I'll be trying them all! I tend to simply cut and cook them, just enough to soften, in skillet dinners and sauces. But I bought a LOT. I used a handful in this dinner salad on the first night. I sliced them finely and sauteed along with the onions and peppers, just as I'd have done with garlic except that I've have cooked garlic for a much shorter time. These do have some garlic punch to them, and they can be crunchy! You can see them in this picture of the untossed dinner salad, looking like chunks of green onions or giant chives.

I like feta with spinach. Darienne's spanikopita idea goes in that direction, but mixing them together in an omelette or a quiche also works well. We also like the combination of feta, canned tuna and tomatoes - with the snack scoop of choice. (We use pita, or crackers.) Nice that yours isn't too salty!

Interesting: if I'm reading it correctly, McConnell's is in Santa Barbara, CA yet you could get it quickly in New Jersey. I, in Minnesota, don't even see it listed on Amazon!

"Help!" I yelped to a friend who knows much more about cooking game and about sous vide cookery than I do. "How should I cook this? Sous vide time and temperature???" It was still frozen in its package as I typed. I'm trying to work my way down through treasures in the freezer. In this case it involved a smallish roast provided by my DIL. I thought it was labeled "back roast" but today realized it was labeled "buck roast". I thought it looked a looked like a tri-tip roast, but really didn't know the precise cut. I should add, by way of background, that my husband distrusts deer meat in almost any form. That doesn't stop his daughter (to whom I refer as my DIL although that technically isn't correct) from donating some to us. I think she does it mostly because she knows I like it. Perhaps annoying him is a side benefit. While I waited for an answer from my friend, I threw the frozen bag into a 120F bath. It sat there for several hours, thawing and beginning to cook. In the meantime, I heard from my friend, who apologized for not having answered more quickly (she does has a life!) and who pointed me to Hank Shaw. He said, in essence, that sous vide isn't generally a good choice for venison. There are exceptions, but my cut wasn't one. Well, heck. By that time I was committed, both in terms of timing and scheduling. I stuck with the plan, and let that roast bathe for several hours at 120F. Then I emptied its bag of the ozmasome and added a prepackaged marinade. Other dinner preparations involved cleaning and slicing or chopping a red bell pepper, two jalapenos, half an onion, a nice bunch of garlic scapes, and assorted salad greens. When it came time to cook I oiled the peppers and onions and cooked them over a barbecue wok, and seared the deer steak on a high-heat grill to develop a crust. After I pulled the meat from the grill, I sliced and cut it for our salads. Below is the (quite unappetizing, no wonder my friend has a separate life) picture of the still-frozen roast, then what happened after it had been sous-vided, marinated and grilled. The funny thing about this salad was that I got the fisheye from my DH at the very thought of venison, but he liked this. On the other hand I wasn't crazy about the spices in the marinade -- and a decade ago he wouldn't have liked them either! Nonetheless it was an overall success. The times, temperatures and materials are reproducible, but I can freewheel on the meat and marinade without fear of a dud. 120F in the water bath for about 4 hours, then idling as the water cools down, then a sear on the grill when the time comes. The meat is tender, not mealy, not tough. Yes, I know there's some redundancy in these collages. I hope you enjoy the images anyway.

They're here!!! I got a spur-of-the-moment note on the NextDoor app that a local farmer had strawberries available. The local farmers' market had decided to cancel because of storms, but he'd already picked quarts and quarts of strawberries. They are perfuming the house now...and the refrigerator. When I asked, I learned that he also had eggs. I usually buy them elsewhere, but I took the opportunity. While I was waiting for all the, his partner came in with garlic scapes! Yay! The eggs aren't in the photo. Some of those scapes went into tonight's dinner. Some of those strawberries will be tomorrow's breakfast. I'm in heaven.

If you've been hankering for some All-Clad cookware, now is a good time to check out their factory seconds. This sale ends in just over a day. I've gotten all my beloved All-Clad through sales like this. In fact, if I could possibly justify it I'd be all over this set of 3 hard-anodized skillets whose only fault is damaged packaging. Perfect shape to my eyes, not so for my DH...and I already have what I need.

I didn't think about that! I have pasta bowls on order, because most of mine (from Pier One) have broken. Maybe I'll go add Tonino tuna to the order.

Thank you so much for sharing your visit to Rodney Strong's! It sounds fabulous...and Mr. Kim's review is delightful!

I bought several varieties of packaged marinades a couple of years ago at a Middle Eastern market in Tucson. Last night I decided to try the chermoula: Since I hadn't been able to decide between chicken and fish earlier in the day, I decided on both: chicken thighs, and a steelhead trout filet I'd bought on sale. I put cherry smoking chips in a small bowl on the grill and began heating it up. I used about half the pouch's contents as chicken marinade, and saved the rest for basting both the chicken and the fish. The trout I cooked on the upper grate; the chicken started on the lower grate and finished on the upper. Not bad! We both thought the chermoula a bit too salty. The saltiness was tamed where it had cooked and crusted on the meat, but what little uncooked marinade was left over was too salty to be a good dip. We thought another of their marinades had been too salty also, so it may be a characteristic of that brand. I think the moral is that it's better to make our own although the convenience of the package is lovely. The chicken didn't survive the night. The leftover trout is now part of a trout salad: mayo, hard-boiled egg, lemon and pickle juice, and capers. Delicious with cream cheese on toast...but that's today's breakfast, not last night's dinner.

My charger has a different model number: KHB3581CA0, but you can look at the photo and see whether the charging indicator is in the same spot. It's a little circle on the lid release button. When it was charging, the light would travel slowly around the circle, like the "wait" sign we see on so many web browsers as a page loads. When the battery was fully charged, the entire circle would be steadily illuminated.

@liamsaunt, your description of the food at Winslow's Tavern this time around makes it sound as though the food is going downhill as well as the service. That said, it seems as though you've been regular and enthusiastic customers there over the years. Have you considered talking to the manager about your treatment regarding the outside tables? Voting with one's feet, without explaining why, isn't much help to a business.

What @kayb said. But truly, the food looks delicious! What was it about the bruschetta that fell flat for you? It looks appealing in your photo.

Oh, come now! Can you really leave us hanging like this?

The entrance to Azurea set the stage for the dinner splendidly, didn't it? What a delightful dinner! I'm with you and the others that the fried calamari sounds wrong. I wonder whether they intended it to provide crunch / texture contrast, but it didn't come out right? No matter. I'm amazed at the flavor combinations and delighted that you're showing them to us. Your hosts' brunch offering looks pretty darned good too!