Ktepi

Eggs, bacon, okra & tomatoes, buttered bread to mop it up. If I can get the okra and tomatoes -- both super-fresh -- to come out this good every time, this may be breakfast every day for as long as they're both still available.

I wonder what would happen if I made an unbreaded Scotch egg and put it in a Savu smoker bag? It's a moist heat, that's why I wouldn't bread it, I just wonder how well the sausage would hold together.

I'm in awe both of Brenda's Scotch eggs and of Penny and Neil's (the Aztec one! wow) -- I don't have any idea how to make them at home without a deep-fryer, so I may just have to go to the one place in town that serves them. I think I go through about three times as many eggs, thanks to this thread.

Weather.com claims it's only "86, feels like 91" here right now, but I'm not sure I believe it -- my air conditioning is already starting to protest. I've already put bottles of liquor in the fridge in preparation for the afternoon. Buttermilk pie's great -- it's just a custard pie, so it's very cooling and uncomplicated. With good fresh buttermilk, "uncomplicated" doesn't have to mean boring -- it's more like the way a fresh-picked tomato is uncomplicated, or a fried egg. Now I want another piece.

I've got eggs! They're scrambled up with sugar and buttermilk, and baked in a pie, but ... Yesterday was one of the hottest days of the year, and my air conditioning conked out. I have cats inside and insects outside and no screens because of work they've been doing on the place, so I couldn't open the windows -- went to sleep hot, woke up hot, so breakfast was something cold: a slice of chilled buttermilk pie, with a drizzle of apple cider syrup. (And a mug of iced yuanyang -- half milky tea, half coffee -- which I'd made the night before in preparation.)

Fresh local stuff is available for such a brief window up here, compared to what I'm used to. I'm trying to take advantage of it. Didn't think to take a picture: Blueberry brownies. I make these every year when the wild blueberries come out. Just take any fudgey brownie recipe, and cook down a bunch of blueberries before melting the chocolate and butter in with them. Last night: Shain's of Maine Red Raspberry Chip ice cream, with fresh raspberries. I give the northeast a lot of grief, especially north-of-Boston New England -- but they do ice cream better than anywhere else I've been. I can pretty much reach into the regional brands freezer and grab something at random, and go home with excellence. It's like those parts of the country where bad barbecue is still good barbecue. Made tonight, but dessert tomorrow (when it's cooled down): I love a good pie, and I'm a big fan of a good fruit pie -- hummingbirdkiss's looks especially delicious (were they wild berries? I associate that great deep color with wild berries) -- but this is the king of pies for me: buttermilk pie (without lemon, and only a tiny bit of vanilla). All the ingredients except the sugar and flour are local -- which thrilled me, being able to find fresh local buttermilk.

Oh sure -- it didn't show up well when I tried at first, because I don't have any white plates, but here are a couple on an index card. Frog and folding knife for ... scale, I guess.

I bought these at Hannaford's, a decent but not exhaustive grocery store; they're imported from Spain by Source Atlantique in Englewood Cliffs, NJ. (And they're very tasty on sandwiches or red beans and rice.)

Kaya sounds a lot like this coconut jam I bought at a Filipino market -- it doesn't have eggs, though, and seems to be just coconut milk and sugar cooked down until thick and caramel-like. It doesn't spread well unless warmed, so I tend to add it to coffee and tea -- it thickens them the same way cream does.

I believe you're thinking of Hangar One, as opposed to Ketel One. ← Shoot, yes! Told you I didn't drink vodka much.

Coconut water is a great mixer, though I guess with coconut you run the risk of setting off Caribbean associations more than Thai ones. Oh, but there's KHangar One's Kaffir Lime vodka -- I'm not usually a fan of flavored vodkas, but this one is very good, a very multi-layered flavor. I've heard good things about their Buddha's Hand vodka, too. ETA: Fixed vodka name

Oh man. Music to my ears.

Thank you on both counts! I just stopped at Lull's a couple hours ago, in fact, and yep, the wild blueberries are in. I'm going to make a pie as soon as the sun sets so I don't mind warming up the kitchen.

The Herald briefly mentions that Lowell is a hub of Cambodian food and culture -- anyone have any recommendations? I don't think I've ever had anything but pizza in Lowell, but my family wasn't very adventurous, so I'm still rediscovering the area.

Fried bread; two slices of corncob-smoked bacon (it's too expensive, but they sell it at the farmstand where I got the corn); fried eggs atop corn salsa verde (fresh corn off the cob, jalapeno, green bell pepper, grated green tomato, Mexican oregano, lime juice, salt, tequila). Other than the tequila, lime juice, and Mexican oregano, these are all locally-produced ingredients.

I take the head and shell off, but I'm not sure you need to -- I just do it so that I can use the shells for shrimp stock, without getting the seasonings from the shrimp in the process. A Savu smoker bag is an interesting little gadget -- it's this Finnish foil (I think) bag that you put food in and then pop into the oven; the wood chips (shavings? I don't know) in the bag smoke the food without getting it all over your kitchen. It's been a fun thing to play with since the closest place I'm allowed to use a grill or smoker is way too far from my kitchen. Anyway: I just quickly (3-5 minutes or so? depending on how big they are, and mine run about as big as yours by the sound of it) saute them in a hot pan with a little butter. Usually I wind up making a shrimp poboy: after the shrimp are cooked, I toss them in a sauce of Worcestershire sauce, Louisiana hot sauce, shallots or scallions, a little reduced beer, and butter, and then put the whole thing on a section of baguette. (I can't get proper poboy rolls here, but at least a baguette is French.) I'm sure they'd be just fine in stir-fries and things like that too -- I thought I might try some in a spicy Thai basil dish at some point, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

I used to get freshwater shrimp -- claws and all, like you describe -- in Indiana. Up here, I see them pretty often, but with just the head. Anyway, in both cases, they don't take well to boiling -- the texture tends to be a little funny. I saute them, and there's a lot of liquid that cooks off. I've got a pound in the freezer right now that I was thinking of putting in a Savu smoker bag, but we'll see.

I just made an old-fashioned with Fee Bros' Whiskey Barrel-Aged Bitters and Maker's Mark, and though I tossed it together pretty absent-mindedly while waiting for the oven to preheat for dinner, this is probably the best old-fashioned I've had. It's certainly the best-smelling, and somehow reminds me of this scratch-n-sniff Christmas book I had when I was a kid. I haven't had anything by Fee Brothers before -- but this, the Lemon Bitters, the Peach, and I think the Mint (and maybe others I didn't notice) are available on Amazon, if anyone has had the same trouble I've had finding their products offline.

I agree with Russ (the Cherokee Purple tomatoes I got the other day were nothing special compared to the first ones I had in Indiana) -- but from the growers I've bought from in the past, my favorites were a yellow peach tomato (it looked like a little nectarine) and German Green tomatoes, which were amazing when eaten raw. For cooking with, I have to stand by a good Creole tomato.

And now Lull's has corn! It was just Massachusetts corn until this week. The varieties weren't labeled, so I grabbed a couple ears that looked good. Peaches are out, too, and blueberries (don't see any wild blueberries yet, and I'm not crazy about the others except in pancakes).

I remember (and miss) the Cajun Spice chips -- Justin Wilson was in the ads. Ruffles also had their own short-lived Buffalo Wing chips, and a sour cream and onion variant I really liked -- Zesty Sour Cream and Onion or something like that.

I love Zapp's, and Crawtators were my chip of choice when I lived in New Orleans (I get them mail order once a year or so, usually for Christmas) -- but I have to say I'll still pick Grandma Utz's chips for plain salted chips. Two categories, two winners.

The last comment in the box is mine, I have no idea why that happened. ←

Definitely candy them -- they candy wonderfully, and the syrup is great for cocktails (or ice cream, maybe). The fourteen day method here may take a long time, but it takes very little work, especially if you have a kitchen calendar to keep track of which day you're on.

Not at all crazy about the GuS Ginger Ale in a Dark and Stormy -- the dry ginger ale (half as much sugar as most sodas, though still more than Dry Soda) is very tasty on its own, but when you add the rum, it completely overpowers the ginger. I don't know if they used less ginger flavor or if sweetness accents ginger that much -- I added a splash of Flag Hill cranberry liqueur, and it improved the drink, but made it even less like a Dark and Stormy. I really can't taste any ginger at all now. The Flag Hill cranberry liqueur is very nice, though. They're a New Hampshire winery that opened what is evidently NH's first distillery, where they make vodka that they use as the basis for maple and cranberry liqueurs. I tried the cranberry because it was on shelf-clearing sale for $8.75 (that sounds plastic jug cheap, but remember it's NH, and you can often get Maker's Mark for $15) -- it's nice, not too sweet, tart in a way that I think would go well with tequila. Since I don't have tequila, I'm going to try it in something with maraschino later -- maybe sub it for the Cointreau in a Beachcomber.