dhdav66

Tonight's dinner: "Take-away" Chinese. Pork fried rice, Kung Pao chicken, and egg roll. The rice is my Mom's recipe. The Kung Pao is from Serious Eats. The egg roll is from a little take away around the corner from the house. Mediocre egg rolls but satisfy a craving. Pardon the bite out of the egg roll. I was hungry.

Yeah -- I would like an exterior venting fan. Not just for smells but for smoky cooking. I try to keep the stinky stuff to temperate temps when I can open the back door and the windows. Then again, we love our food, so we'll tolerate a little stinky cooking now and then for something yummy.

@lindag No, unfortunately not. It vents back into the kitchen. We rarely use it because it sounds like a jumbo jet getting ready for take off.

@ElsieD Thank you. We debate about keeping the wood floor, but when it's clean and the sun hits it, it practically glows.

Love all of your kitchen photos. Thanks for sharing. It's so interesting to see everyone's work space. Here's ours. Our condo is in a three-decker in Boston built around 1910. Don't know the dimensions of the kitchen; although on the small side, it works well for us. The island is a John Boos butcher block we've had for about 16 years. Makes a great workspace for baking or pasta making. It also serves as our eat-in table. We have a separate dining room for larger gatherings. I've also added a couple photos of our pantry. We had very little usable space in the pantry area when we moved in (just a few shelves), so we worked with California Closets to design a shelving system. Oh, and those blankets on the floor are a stack of blankets where the dog likes to lie -- right in front of the spice and baking cabinets! I'm constantly sliding him around to get things out of there. He's so used to it now, he hardly moves.

Fajitas with refried beans and Mexican rice.

Sheet pan pizza using Kenji's Sicilian crust recipe and some sandwich pepperoni leftover from a stromboli. Forgot to take a pic before it was cut. Chocolate bundt cake for dessert.

The Kindle is my GOD! Sorry to publishers on the forum (this coming from a writer and editor). I buy all of my leisure reading material on the Kindle. And living in a condo in Boston (not tiny, but not huge), we have been able to curb the number of paper books into the house, thus saving space and not having to buy more bookshelves. I love everything about it. But for cookbooks . . . not for this guy. Nothing is better than curling up on a rainy Saturday in my comfy chair with a tome of recipes in a beautifully bound book -- I am captivated for hours turning pages and dreaming about my next dinner party. The Kindle just doesn't do it for me for cookbooks. More important, cooking from recipes: When I do, I need a paper version in front of me. I don't like the Kindle format for recipes, and the thought of an expensive device sitting next to my stove as I stir a simmering sauce or brown meat with splattering grease -- ACK. No way. The format is great for reading, but working from an e-reader leaves much to be desired. Furthermore, I am not a fan of using my recipe software (Mac Gourmet) when I cook. I always print a recipe so I have it near. I have tried using the Chef's View, which does a nice job of giving me a large screen version of the recipe on my laptop, but I still didn't get the rhythm of cooking when using it (having to scroll down, having to disengage sleep mode, having to turn to my work counter where the laptop sat). As much as I am a fan of e-readers, I just can't use it for cookbooks. I love the convenience of paper (moving the book around, marking notes in the margin). That said, will cookbooks go digital -- maybe someday. But I hope it's not in my lifetime!! Of course, I can always fall back on my collection of 160+ cookbooks (and still growing).

LOL -- I know -- sounds that way, doesn't it. Don't get me wrong about other mustards. I'm a fan of all mustards -- I just think of French as the go to for cheeseburgers and my chip obsession. Let me know when the next club meeting is. I'll bring the French's, you bring the chips. As for the pickles and peanut butter, if I'm expecting, I'm gonna report it to the news and be the first biological man to give birth! I could retire on the proceeds. But, as a man, I don't think I could go through that birthing process. Too much pain for me! Loving this forum.

French's yellow mustard. I LOVE LOVE LOVE French's. A burger with American Cheese and French's = sublime. I shudder when I request mustard for a burger in a restaurant and they bring out Dijon. WTF???? NOT for a burger. One shameful snack, about which only my partner (and now eGullet) is privy, is squeezing French's mustard onto chips (potato or corn chips), one at a time. One chip, a dollop of mustard -- YUM! I've been known to dig through half a bag of chips this way. And thank God for the squeeze containers. My mother used to get so mad when I would just dip them into the mustard jar (does it even come in jars anymore?). Another secret: I love peanut butter with dill pickles. Not just any pickle, mind you, but Vlasic Kosher dills. A bit of peanut butter on a spoon, then a bit of pickle. Always alternating, never mixing. Something about the salty sweet followed by the vinegary pickle really tickles my fancy. My mom used to serve us peanut butter toast as a snack, with a pickle on the side. Guess I come by that one honestly. Then there's the blue box and mixin's. A cheesy box of blue (powdered kind with American cheese for extra oomph) with a can of Hormel chili poured into it and heated -- or maybe some ranch style beans -- or ranch style beans and some Rotel. A feast for a snowy New England Day. And though I haven't had it in years -- I used to drool over Dinty Moore stew. Always with lots of Texas Pete. OMG -- so craving my shameful secrets. May have to go grab a spoon, the peanut butter, and the giant jar of pickles from Costco!!!!

I am also a huge Daisy fan. I have made many of the recipes, all with glowing success (less about my cooking and more about Daisy and her cookbook, I'm sure). I now keep a big batch of Sofrito in my freezer in half-cup increments and use it any time I make a pot of beans or rice. As an aside, not only is she a beautiful woman, she seems geniune. After watching her show a couple of times, I just had to email her (I'm not the fan-mail writing type and can count on two fingers the number of celebrities I've written to -- and the other was in 4th grade). Within a couple of weeks, she responded with a wonderful, personal email. OK -- maybe I was duped by an assistant who responds for her, but somehow I don't think so. She just seems so real. If I could dine with a celebrity chef (or cooking show host), she would be number one on my list. She just seems like she would be so much fun.

I made my first cherry pie yesterday. Fillings have never been an issue, but the crust -- Oi Vay! But I followed a recipe from the current issue of Bon Appetit, and it came out beautifully. The filling from the recipe was great. This recipe used three different types of cherries -- fresh bing, jarred Morrello cherries in syrup, and dried tart cherries. The recipe calls for mixing corn starch with some of the syrup and the Morrellos, then the remainder of the syrup was cooked with spices, dried cherries, then added the fresh bings. Everyone loved it. Here's the link to the recipe: Bon Appetit Lattice-Topped Triple-Cherry Pie

We use a maple salt cellar that we bought from Crate and Barrel. When we're cooking, we just dump some salt into a prep bowl to dip out.

My first post! I feel compelled to chime in on this topic. As a Southerner living north of the Mason-Dixon Line, I'm frequently homesick for some good home cooking. Most of the time I turn to Momma's recipes, but for a Southern Cookbook, my favorite (and my recommendation) is A Gracious Plenty compiled by John T. Edge, Director of the Southern Foodways Symposium at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. Plenty brings back memories of the foods I grew up on. Now I'm not going to rush to make cracklin's anytime soon, but I have made many others in the book. For the book, Edge compiled recipes from community and regional cookbooks. The book also features essays from notable Southern writers and cooks about ways Southern, such as Reynolds Price on "The Pleasures of Pimiento," and Roy Blount, Jr. on "My Mother's Gravies." A delight to read, but even more delightful to cook from. Going through the Preserves, Jellies, Pickles chapter takes me back to childhood when my Mom used to spend summer nights over the stove making chow-chow and watermelon rind pickles. I have the Lee Brother's book, which I also love. But when I want to turn to the cooking I grew up on, I pull down Edge's book.