JEL

just be amazed with the apparent ease and grace........... she's proof that angels are among us........ simplicity on the near side of complexity.........

lucy's blogs............ seriously..........

sliced sweet potatoes and apples baked with, well you know....... when it starts to bubble real good sprinkle honey roasted cashews on the top and cook until it's nice and brown on top........ great at christmas with ham too.........

make some cured sausage........ a hard salami, or a summer sausage would be killer.....

what about all the diffrent ways it can be served....... almost limitless options.... cornbread, tortillas of all kinds, pasta, potatos, atop salads, pizza, eggs, dogs, burgers, chops, chicken, shrimp....... all kinds of appetizers and dips......... it's a pretty amazing little concoction if you think about it.......

has anyone ever had green chilli................ i lived in northeast CO for a while, and it was a staple there.......... in most small towns you could get anything on a menu "smothered"..... usually it was cubed pork steak with all the bling one would put in chilli, but everything was green, instead of red...... a few crushed red tomatoes at the very end......... it was pretty damn good. i've never seen it anywhere else........

peanut butter on saltine crackers..... eat from the jar with a spoon, pop whole crackers in mouth as needed..........milk chaser....... cold pizza. and the last beer from previous night's revelry...........had to get up to pee anyway............. any sort of ice cream sundae........homememade cookies, pie or cake..... i'm a shadow of my former self though.......thinking about the stuff i used to eat after a night of bar hopping.............

fill one coat pocket with crispy, cold apples, fresh from the tree. fill the other pocket with salted in the shell peanuts........... go for a walk .........

how much improvement have you seen in the gym....... are you using freeweights.......... what are you moving for reps on squats, deads and flat bench..........

i've got a question or two for ya Soba........ if your wanting to bulk, why do the cardio, looks like your burning a lot of calories that could be used for growth...... also, why not eat the egg yolks, you need the calories, and the fat in the yolks is a good source...... how much money are you spending every month on supps......... and what does your weight training split consist of, is it more of a power lifting/ strength split or a body builder split........... i've done a bunch of this stuff, but for different reasons than yours...... thanks, john

i got this recipe from my great great aunt carrie volkening as she was nearing her 100th year. we were at a family function and she grabbed my arm asking me to fill her beer cup from the pitcher full i was carrying....... it goes like this...... ac (aunt carrie): hey john, how bout a little bit of that keg beer you got there, just a little now, ( i filled the glass and she drank it)... john: ya know, i've been meaning to ask you about your saurkraut recipe and what i need to make it.... ac: ya, well there's really not much of a trick to it, ya chop up your cabbage, add a little salt and vinegar, cover your crock with a towel, put a board, and a big rock on top of it. when the rock gets moldy, the kraut is done....... john: really, how much cabbage, salt and vinegar, and at what temperature, and for how long..... ac: ya, well that's the trick right there........... i laughed. refilled her beer cup gave her a hug and walked away........

i've grown to become a big fan of the tossed spinich salad, wilted and not........ the quality of the baby spinich i can buy, combined with it's ability to keep fresh, beats the hell out of any lettuce i've seen........ plus, you can always cook with it........and it's better nutritionally...... somehow, a salad like this with grilled meat or fish makes a perfect meal for me....... simple, fast, healthy, and relatively cheap........

you could grind it up with some bacon ends, and smoke a pretty nice meatloaf....... while it's smoking you could go buy a good brisket, and find out who put that skinny little thing in your fridge......... maybe even have time to kick them in the butt a time or two......(just for the grief)....

it's just the breed of the duck.............. a muscovy is said to be a little leaner than other ducks, but hey, you can never tell how these things were fed or anything, they might be plenty chubby..... what did you think, it was like a peking duck, and had a recipe......... cause that would be pretty cute.......

there are a number of ways to make a fresh cheese like this, the trick is to get the optimun pH in the set curd, before you put it in the drain bags. this affects moisture content of the curd, and therefore affects the flavor profile, and the physical properties of the finished product. shoot for a 4.7 going into the bag.......adjust your culture times and ammounts to give the desired result..... what you have is a low fat cream cheese, so use it in cooking applications the same way........

it sounds to me like your making quark......... make sure you get the cheese dry before you do anything with it........ you can flavor the cheese anyway you like after the fact, sweet, or savory....... i like to leave it plain, you can use it to stuff pasta, of any kind, make cheesecake, limitless uses.......

Ditto, JEL, from a different tribe out of Western PA.............down to the Byzantine Catholic thing (were your high masses in Slovak?) My mom always through in a can of saurekraut, too. Where the heck did that come from? ← yep, mass was always in slovak, on easter they blessed the baskets, the women all had doilies on their heads, and wore gloves, the men sat on one side of the church, the women the other side......... those old timers are all dead now........ most of them worked in a limestone quarry, in marblehead, ohio........... tough crowd, my grandparents had an outhouse til 1970........ took baths in a #9 wash tub........ ate halupki, and ham at every church function ever......... also ate a lot of perch out of lake erie.......... they were tough........

while we're on the subject, what are your favorite goodies to put in the pie.... mine, i'm all about the meat. lamb, venison, pork, make a nice combo....... also like to throw in some fancy schmancy oyster mushrooms if i can find them...... i use a little barley, rather than potato, and sweet baby peas and carrots are a must for color. biting into those peas and having them burst in your mouth is a real treat for me........ mrs jel likes hers with a dollop of sour cream on top......... she needs to lose a few too......... damn i'm hungry.......

i love a pot pie........ make em in a big cast iron skillet......... there's just something manly and rustic about this, i can't really explain it... anyway, i generally make a simple pie crust with flour, lard, salt and h2o.... extra flaky........ if i wanted to try something different, like a pastry type thing, what would be my best bet......... thanks in advance, john

call me a lazy ass if you want to........... what i've found after twenty years of making these things is that if you chop up your cabbage, throw in the meat and rice, dump in the sauce, and cook it as a casserole.............. you did the same thing in about 1/4 the time and effort,,,,,, guess what, it tastes just as good....... disclaimer.....(i would never say this if my mother or grandmother were around),,,,,,,,,,,,

my mothers crowd were straight off the boat, slovaks/byzantine catholics, so not all of this applies to the jewish kitchen, obviously,,,,,,, a few tips i've gotten from my ancestors concerning "halupki" were........ never use lean meat, a 20-30% fat content in your ground beef, (or ground pork, like uncle andy kopchak used), was a must....... never use minute rice...... never use a crock pot, or the stove top, halupki need to be done in an oven...... don't overstuff the cabbage leaves, it makes the filling rubbery after cooking...... lay the large outside leaves from the cabbage on the bottom of your roasting pan, only use the tenderest cabbage leaves for the rolls.... you can chop up any extra cabbage leaves and use them in the sauce... some of the ancients made a brown sauce instead of the tomato, and they often stuffed them with barley rather than rice. an interesting thought, if you wanted to add mushrooms and sour cream to the mix, a stuffed cabbage/ stroganoff type thingy....... they also touted the 2-3 day halupki which somehow took on mystical powers in terms of their depth of flavor. i don't particularly like them that old because they get too mushy. like baby food..... i guess it's all what you like, just so you take fifty minutes to eat it, and throw 2/3 of it away.........

classic.................

I agree! Actually, during my third trimester of freshman biology, my class took a trip to a buffalo farm in New Hampshire. It was very illuminating, and a good choice. It was a free-range ranch, so the animals seemed content, which was nice (and definitely instilled in me a hearty respect and preference for free-range meats). During the course of the day, we also learned how they were tagged, tracked and slaughtered. This was done at a private prep school, and I don't recall needing my mother's permission - though I'm sure I could have been exempted from the trip if I (or she) had objected to it. I don't remember anyone from the class not coming along, though. ← did they let you kill a few and cut them up..................

my wife's lack of good kitchen habits/skills made me crazy for a number of years, until our two daughters told her she really didn't need to cook any more....... i have always done most of the cooking, but there were times, before the epiphany, that she would jump right in and crank out some of the worst shit in the world.......... her favorite was overcooked pasta........ coupled with the fact that she had no real interest in planning meals, or enjoyment of the preperation process, really made it a bad experience for her........ we found that by shopping together, planning a weeks worth of meals, knowing what's in the pantry, and working as a family about food, has made a big difference in both the quality of the food we eat, as well as, it's cost and convenience......... our daughters are now learning the kitchen skills that i learned from my mother and grandmothers, we can prepare a meal for as few as two of us, or, 20-30 guests with relative ease, and everyone is happy and proud of how things are........ not a bad deal............

i'd be a mushroom too but for different reasons........ namely because people like to keep me in the dark and feed me a lot of horseshit.....