patti

I’d love to say there were no hitches in this week’s CFM, but I can’t. Just after the labels were made and it was almost time for plating, my husband informed me we only had 7 of the three compartment to go containers left! We had plenty of the single compartment containers, but I didn’t want to use them. Costco is less than a mile away, but neither of us was prepared to go. How lucky that we managed to get an Instacart delivery within 20 minutes of realizing the problem? Had to pay $1 extra for faster delivery, but problem solved almost painlessly. Yay! Cornbread was made (more than pictured), and sourdough was purchased. Both were dried out in the oven Jimmy Dean sausage, browned, along with the trinity, plus extra celery. Combining the meat mixture, cornbread, sourdough, and chicken stock. Seasoned with Tony’s, poultry seasoning, plus a little extra sage and thyme. I added four eggs to each pan of dressing for binding. And after baking. There were two pans. I baked at 350, covered, for 45 min. Removed the foil at 45 min, and decided to moisten with more stock, returning the pans to the oven, uncovered, for 15 more minutes. For the green beans, I started with bacon grease from the crock I keep in the fridge. Softened the veg. Added the canned green beans, a few tablespoons of Better than Bouillon chicken base, and seasoned with Tony’s. Not much to say about the chicken! Seasoned and baked at 400 for 45 minutes. The tray on the bottom rack was moved to the top and cooked about 15 minutes longer to even out the browning. One tray pictured. Dessert The plated meal. I try very hard not to say anything when my husband changes capitalization or punctuation or uses random bolding. But if you bold baked chicken and green beans, why not cornbread dressing? And why not be consistent with spacing between items. AND WHY NOT JUST COPY AND PASTE EXACTLY AS SENT?! (Can you tell which of us is the nice guy and which is a controlling um, person?) Regardless, success!

Maybe I am not as sensitive to taste changes, but I eat vegetable leftovers from the fridge all the time and don’t seem to detect enough of a change in taste to stop me from enjoying. Cheesy broccoli and cauliflower are still great a couple of days later. Air fryer roasted green beans, broccoli, and cauliflower aren’t especially good as leftovers, but I never have that problem because I air fry my serving size and eat them all! Are you worried that green beans won’t hold up well for the CFM? I don’t plan on cooking them two days ahead.

Please thank Ed for his choice! Not sure what you mean in the second statement?

My plan for this week’s CFM (Thursday delivery) is incomplete. Baked chicken thighs and cornbread dressing are the main items I’ve decided on, but haven’t settled on a veggie side. Broccoli? Sweet peas? What about using those giant cans of green beans? I used to dress up canned green beans by sautéing the trinity in bacon fat and adding a can of green beans to that and simmering for a bit to be more like southern (cooked to death) green beans. A part of me wants to damn southern green beans to hell, but the part of me that loves them can’t do it. 🤷‍♀️

Too kind, you are. My husband put a croissant in the freezer for 15-20 minutes and that was enough time to make it firm up for easy slicing! He thanks you.

Thank you! Improvements could’ve been made, but isn’t that always the case? I ordered the containers a long time ago, and while they are a little large for this usage, they have been too small for other things, so this was a good way to use some up, and I would’ve been sad to ruin the salad by having it get soggy. This would’ve been great info to have! Also, it sounds delicious. Thank you. (Do y’all just cringe at my ignorance, sometimes?) 🥴😜

When planning this week’s CFM, I imagined a ladylike chicken salad filled croissant, a side salad, and some dressing, and an undetermined other thing. 🤷‍♀️ Many chicken salad recipes were considered, but I fell back on the kind my southern mama always made. Just like her potato salad and tuna salad, her chicken salad always had hard boiled eggs in it. How many, you ask? However many your heart tells you to use. Chop ‘em all up. This was about 2/3 of the chicken. There was more waiting for shredding and chopping. A lot of chopped celery, diced red onion, sweet pickle relish, mayo, mustard, Tony’s, and an overnight chill later, here is the chicken salad and a few other meal ingredients. Not shown are the bags of pretzels I decided to include. Based on advice from Google, I heated up the Costco croissants in the oven at 325 for five minutes. If I had a giant air fryer, I think they “refresh” better there, but ain’t nobody got time for 8 batches in a regular size air fryer. Google was wrong about slicing the croissants AFTER their trip in the oven. Bread knife didn’t do very well, nor a smaller serrated knife, or other. Who knew this would be where I’d go wrong? My husband ended up using an electric knife. All I’ll say is that sandwiches were made. Salad wise, I went with spinach, feta, toasted pecans, dried cranberries (again?), and honeycrisp apples. The dressing was a vinaigrette made with balsamic vinegar, maple syrup, olive oil, salt & pepper, and a few squeezes of lemon. The dressed salad was SO good! We decided it was best to have the dressing on the side. The plated meal included a snack sized bag of pretzels. The bag was more generous than I’d anticipated, which is nice. The chicken salad croissants were behemoths, not the imagined ladylike ones, and probably hard to eat. I hope they were able to be enjoyed. When we delivered the meals we were happy to see that someone else had filled the freezer, too.

That sounds like hurricane force winds! Whoa! ETA: Glad the damage was something fixable, even if a royal PITA.

I’ve done baked chicken with baked potato, but with sweet peas. Doesn’t mean I won’t do it again, though! I’ve also done chili cheese baked potatoes. Lots to think about, thank you. Speaking of Darienne’s mishmash, I’ve sort of gone out of order by quoting this here and not my previous post, BUT, I’ve only frozen cabbage when it was an ingredient in soup. I wish I kept closer track of my freezer items. Sigh. I am guilty of keeping things for an undue time.

Yes! I would call it smothered cabbage. Do it the same way, but add enough water or stock to lightly simmer, and cover it until everything is tender. No ribs need be removed. Also, if the texture ends up not being to your preference, add it into soup?

I think the texture would change and I don’t think there would be any crisp. But soft cabbage can be good, too.

I’m sorry you struggled, but all of the pictured sausage looks wonderful!

Cheeseburger salad. Could’ve been improved with a little iceberg for more crunch.

Oddly enough, within a couple of days of delivering the CFM, I’m already anticipating what I will make next. Yesterday, I couldn’t think about it; today, I am considering my options. The weather next week is expected to be mild, so maybe chicken salad on a croissant, paired with some kind of salad that includes apples? Too summery? I’d love to try Lebanese vermicelli rice with baked chicken shawarma, salad, pita. I’ve made baked shawarma numerous times, but never made Lebanese rice. Not sure about doing it in a large batch, though. Baked chicken, cornbread dressing, something green. I have a bunch of broccoli stems in the freezer, leftover from the recent broccoli salad, so some kind of broccoli cheddar soup is in the future, but what would go with it? Gumbo is probably expected at some point, and I’ve made many, many pots of gumbo, but rarely larger than one 8 quart pot. Why does scaling up gumbo worry me, when I’ve made plenty of other CFM going in sort of blindly? I’d need to make potato salad, rice, and include some kind of bread. Figuring out the packaging would be a challenge.

Thank you! If you saw me shuffling around the day after, you would be less impressed. 😳😁 Black eyed peas are most commonly eaten in the southern US, the Caribbean, and West Africa. Originally introduced to the Americas by enslaved people. I don’t know how to describe the taste except as earthy and good. Often cooked with smoked pork products. I was naively unaware of their limited use until more recent years!

Thank you! It’s just called fried cabbage, although with the volume I cooked, it pretty much became smothered cabbage. Fried cabbage usually starts with bacon, but with the amount I was doing, I also used sausage since I only had two pounds of bacon. I cooked the sausage in a separate skillet and added in. Cabbage had to be added in batches and after a little chicken stock was added, it needed to be covered, which is more like a smothered dish. Definitely scale downable! 😂 And with a smaller version, less cook time and you can end up with something tender/crisp. I like it with a little heat and a little sweet. An aside. I’ve never made collard greens and didn’t grow up eating them. When I taste them now, sometimes I love them and sometimes not, which shows me it’s not easy to do them right. I wouldn’t want to insult people who know what they’re doing with an attempt. Therefore, I cooked cabbage. I often see big beautiful cabbages around here! Unfortunately, what was available at shopping time were smallish to medium ones, which made it harder for me to decide how many to get.

Happy Birthday @Maison Rustique! Your birthday meal looks fabulous! Looks stellar! Sure you’re not from the south? This is a cheat picture. I cooked and ate this New Year’s Day meal (except for the cornbread, unfortunately), but this is not my plate.

Your version of “making do” is creating a feast! You always have the most beautiful and inventive spreads, and this is no exception. Kudos. This seems like a perfect NYE meal. Presented beautifully. 😍 🔥 Lovely feast. Those bacon wrapped dates are calling my name! Lobster, oysters, apple galette! 😍 Let the celebrations begin!

🎵 Let’s start at the very beginning. A very good place to start. 🎵 As previously posted, a generous eGullet member donated a variety box of Rancho Gordo beans to be used in community fridge meals. That box included two packages of black eyed peas, which southerners believe symbolize coins and abundance. Usually served with some type of greens (money) and cornbread (gold). Prosperity and good fortune for the coming year! Because my goal is to make 24 meals of generous portion sizes (and my neurotic desire to make sure there is “enough”), I decided to also cook 2 more pounds of peas, using the local favorite brand, Camellia. Also, my husband wanted to be sure there was enough for his own New Year’s Day meal! I found out just last week that you can buy ham bones from the Honey Baked Ham store when they are available. They were available, and I bought two, at $5.99 each. I consider it a bargain because there really was a good amount of ham attached. A ham for each pot of beans. First things first. Rinsing and sorting. There is often debate about whether or not to soak the beans, and if you do, for how long? I decided against soaking for two reasons. First, I wanted the longer cooking time to make sure the ham bone had time to do its job. B, Rancho Gordo black eyed pea package instructions did not include soaking! Who am I to argue (this time)? It’s probably because they are thin skinned, comme moi. So. After the rinsing and sorting, aromatics were sautéed in bacon grease from my bacon grease crock. The RG peas were cooked in an 8 quart stock pot, while the Camellias were cooked in a larger roaster. Instead of choosing pots for their usual function, I have to choose by size. My largest Dutch oven is 7 1/4 quarts, but I have larger roasters and stock pots. Two pounds of beans or peas needs at least an 8 quart pot. After the veg was sautéed, the ham bone, rinsed and sorted black eyes, and a few bay leaves were added to the pot, along with enough water to cover the beans by an inch or so. Pot 1 Pot 2 And eventually: Pot 1 Pot 2 At some point between those pics, smoked sausage, seasoning, and a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste were added. I didn’t add salt early in the cooking, according to package directions. But the ham added salt, so I don’t know if that is theoretically a bad thing or not. Taste wise, it was a good thing! The pot of Rancho Gordo beans had more liquid and it was brothier. I didn’t want to cook the liquid down at the risk of over cooking the peas, and they were done, and tasted delicious! I was very pleased with the result. The Camellias took a little longer to cook, and in the end, were thicker. There were a number of variables at play, but both pots of beans tasted good. While the original plan for the cabbage included tasso, getting the ham changed that. I’d already bought smoked sausage, and decided to use that in both the peas and the cabbage. Here is the beginning of the cabbage prep. I used five heads, and this was one. Fried cabbage usually starts with bacon. This was two pounds. The onions need to fry in the rendered bacon fat. And so did the cabbage. Seasoning included celery seed, salt, black pepper, sugar. A little chicken broth to let it lightly simmer to tenderize some, but I wanted a little bite to it, no mush. For the cornbread, I did my usual 6 packs of Jiffy in a sheet pan, adding some grated cheddar and some pickled jalapeño slices into the mix. The last time I made cornbread for a CFM, the cornbread seemed a little dry. This time I took a stick of butter and rubbed it all over the surface of the cornbread while it was still warm and uncut. I used half a stick of butter over the 24 pieces. It looked purty. No pics of the two rice cookers making rice. I really need to learn how to make rice in the oven in a hotel pan. Note: I usually like to mix the food cooked in separate pots, but I didn’t do that with these. I wanted the flavors of each to show. But about midway, I admit I did start mixing a scoop of the brothier peas with a scoop of the thicker peas. Apologies to the purists. The plated meal: Delivered, about 12:30 pm yesterday. There are only 20 plates in the fridge because a mother and her children took four as we were unloading. Happy New Year!

The bacon looks so good in your broccoli salad! Because I was making a large batch last week, I used bacon crumbles that I microwaved to crisp up. It doesn’t show as well, but it worked out surprisingly as far as taste and texture. Confession: I had a leftover head of broccoli and so made a low carb version for myself, subbing Splenda for sugar in the dressing and omitting the Craisins. I’ve done this before and loved it, but day before yesterday I was weak and added a generous amount of Craisins and I have been grazing and overeating this salad ever since.

Yes ma’am, Rancho Gordo. Hoppin John, most likely.

If that’s not a supportive reaction, I don’t know what is! Thank you.😍 One of the reasons I chose chocolate chip cookies for the fridge meal is that the dough doesn’t require chilling and I don’t have to take out and use the stand mixer, even when I do a double batch, and I needed a simple item on the menu. Oh, and they’re delicious! (I am bothered that I chose such a misshapen cookie for the pic, though.) 🤨 The plan for next week is that the meal will be delivered New Year’s Day, and it will be RG black eyed peas and rice, fried cabbage with tasso, cornbread (with stuff in it), and I haven’t decided if I will be using enough sausage or other pork items in the black eyes to count as a meat item, or if I will also cook something else. (I can’t wait to do a meal without pork, though!)

Shelby, your food speaks to me. (“Eat me!”) Your chocolate crinkle cookies have so much more crinkle than my lemon crinkles, and your broccoli salad looks better than mine, too. It all looks stellar, and damn, that was some work! And @chromedome, the people in your life who receive those beautiful treats are very lucky, indeed. I was going to proudly display my cookie tray, but hahahahahahaha, joke’s on me. 😜 Not that we’re in competition. 😍 So I will humbly display my cookie tray. From left: salted vanilla toffee cookies, dark chocolate cranberry oatmeal with walnuts, dark chocolate dipped peanut butter, chocolate chip with flaky salt, lemon crinkle cookies.

@FauxPas and @Tropicalsenior, I’m so sorry that y’all have been sick and had to rearrange plans. Wishing speedy recoveries to all, and hope y’all managed to enjoy at least some bit of the holiday.

My husband just suggested that the buns weren’t over toasted, the ham was under sauced. He waits till now to tell me?! Damn.