Kim Shook

Mr. Kim just left to go to the store to pick up a jar of sweet relish that I know is somewhere in this damn house. Jessica needs it to make deviled eggs to take to a gathering in a couple of hours. 😜

Happy to! Iced Almonds & Mincemeat Pinwheels. Hope you're feeling better soon!!

@MaryIsobel – I hope you are feeling better by now. Your rum balls are gorgeous – they look quite professional! My pitiful gingerbread men: The dough was just a roll of refrigerated dough. They taste fine, but my icing was not pretty! It was a tube of stuff that gets firm after sitting a while. But it was hard to use – very stringy and drippy. Iced almonds: @Darienne’s Enstrom’s-style toffee: I wasn’t completely satisfied with this batch. A lot of the chocolate fell off and the toffee itself was more crumbly and less shattery than usual: Tried out a new recipe with mincemeat – mincemeat and puff pastry pinwheels: These were delicious – though the bottoms got a little dark because I was trying to get the pastry nice and browned. But they tasted great – Jessica found some jars of Tiptree mincemeat which I’d never tried before and it was lovely. Much better than the other brands I’ve tried. Made two batches of Sponge Candy. Neither was perfect. Both of them were extremely sticky (it’s not a humid day) – a nice crunch when you start chewing a piece but turns sticky very quickly. It would be a menace to someone with dentures. The first batch: This texture was not as tight as I like it to be. The second batch was better texture-wise: but still sticky upon chewing. Happy Accident candy: This is the scraps from Sponge Candy mixed into melted chocolate. I’m pretty pleased with my tempering. I did a similar thing with the scraps from the toffee: The tempering is not nearly as good. When I put the scraps in the melted chocolate they were still very cold from having been frozen and I ended up with a big ball of firm chocolate that I had to put in the microwave. It definitely got over 90F. But it tastes wonderful. I’ll be doing this every year! Sugar cookies: Jessica wanted to learn how to make hard candy. I used to make it every year, but haven’t in ages. So we made batches of peppermint and cinnamon today. I’ll post pictures when we break it up.

@Duvel – Jessica and I were both fascinated with the Feuerzangenbowle! I am a fan of gluhwine, but have only had the Aldi version 😜! So, does your guest room sleep two? Because I think you should expect @Shelby and me in the next day or so. @Robenco15 – your short ribs are absolutely glistening! So delicious looking. @Shelby – that venison roast looks amazing! @Dante – I just told everyone within hearing of me about your Reuben baked potatoes! Looking at the fantastic meals that you all are posting, I'm seriously embarrassed at my paltry offerings. My house is so chaotic and I'm still cooking for Xmas, so regular meals are just not happening. The other night dinner was a ham & Swiss sandwich and good old Campbell’s beef and barley soup: Another night after driving around looking at some Xmas lights: Brunswick stew, a couple of hot dogs with spray cheese, and BBQ Fritos. A couple of nights ago – Chicken “Parm” with brussels sprouts and Mr. Kim had pickled beets: The “parm” was one of those frozen stuffed chicken breasts. It was filled with cheese and sauce and tasted pretty good. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get it crispy enough. I had it with some horrible frozen fettucine Alfredo. It tasted fine, but was definitely freezer burned and the texture was awful: Last night was pizza from a local place and a salad from home:

@BonVivant – love the pictures of your thieving roommates! Jessica’s boys are funny. One isn’t at all interested in people food and the other uses woebegone gazes and what he thinks are gentle pats to beseech you. Because he has claws that he doesn’t always bother to retract, the pats are not as gentle as he believes. @gulfporter – I would love to end every meal with toasted marshmallows! Running errands last Saturday Mr. Kim and I stopped somewhere we haven’t been for years - Capital Ale House. It’s a VA restaurant chain – so not a huge chain. Pretzel w/ cheese sauce and mustard: The mustard was excellent! Mr. Kim’s bacon, black & bleu burger: My French dip Everything was fine. Just that – exactly why we haven’t been for years and probably won’t again for years. We went out without preparing and did that “where do you want to eat?", “I don’t know. Where do you want to eat?” thing. We ended up somewhere close by, but ordinary. On Tuesday, Jessica and I drove to Staunton to pick up some of @Jim D.'s fantastic chocolates. We had lunch at our usual Staunton place, Wright’s Dairy Rite. I had shrimp, slaw, fries, and their fabulous onion rings: It was all good, but those onion rings are the best I’ve had in years: Jessica had the small cheeseburger and a chili dog: The chocolates: ❤️

@Ann_T – I would welcome that roast chicken, stuffing, gravy, and sprouts at any meal, any time of the day! Maybe my favorite meal ever. Bacon on Hawaiian rolls and a very dry mandarin orange: A couple of days ago: I know this looks like a commercial, but I am just loving that my doctor relaxed my potassium restrictions. I am seriously a Seinfeld-level cereal lover. And, yes, that’s sweetener over top of an already sweet cereal. I can’t think of a single cereal that I don’t sweeten – including things like Frosted Flakes and Lucky Charms. My mother and I used to joke that if you didn’t put some sugar in, you might taste the <shudder> milk 😁. This morning: Sausage and egg whomp biscuit.

Those are great ideas, @rotuts! Thank you so much. My mind was just not working that way. A big plus to doing it that way is that I will then have bones with which to make a great stock and my gravy ahead of time. Is there any advantage or real reason to cut the meat into two pieces? Or would it be ok to leave it whole?

I found a good deal on rib roasts at Kroger - $5.99/lb. I'd love to SV it, but I'm not sure it's going to fit into my largest Food Saver bag roll. It is about 8 1/2 pounds. I tried it on a test strip I cut off and I could barely get the roast through the circle. So, whether it goes in is questionable. Assuming I can, I have a few questions. I plan on freezing it and cooking in January or February. What is the best way to go about this? Should I apply a rub before I bag and freeze it? The rub I usually use for beef is Montreal Steak Seasoning and a little brown sugar. Ideas/advice, please. Thanks so much!!!

Welcome to eG, @mjm240! I'm looking forward to your contributions. I always love when new people get involved. Keeps things interesting! Is there any specific kind of cuisine that you are interested in or specialize in preparing?

Welcome to eG, @yekasi4! I think a lot of us were lurkers for a good while before jumping in - I know I was. I'm looking forward to seeing more from you! Happy Holidays!

Thanks! Fixed now?

I'm guessing you're not referring to my "slap everything on the counter" meals. 😄😄😄

@Shelby – whenever you post a few days’ worth of meals, I become suddenly dissatisfied with what I’ve got available 😁! I now want meatballs and pizza and RIBS 😍 and, always broccoli salad (which I made last week). @Duvel – thank you so much for posting the Christmas market pictures! I truly cannot get enough of them. Not to mention that gorgeous sauerbraten! @C. sapidus – was the salmon cake bought at a grocery store or a fish shop? I’ve never seen a store made one, but I’d definitely try it if I saw it! @FrogPrincesse – I’ve put those salmon pinwheels on my TJ shopping list! I confess that I’m more like @liamsaunt’s brother and @MaryIsobel’s husband when it comes to vegetables. I like a LOT more than they seem to, but there are so many that I find repugnant – all squash, bell peppers, chard, mushrooms, zucchini, eggplant, etc., etc. Oddly, though, I’ve always liked the ones that most children don’t – broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, and Brussel sprouts. And I like some raw that I don’t care for cooked – carrots and cabbage, for instance. Jessica made a couple of the last few dinners that we’ve had at home. One night we started with a gorgeous salad (she really excels at salads and dressings): Chicken Kiev (frozen), Rice-A-Roni, glazed carrots (no idea why they are so dark), and street corn: Last night she made chicken enchiladas. With Spanish rice and fiesta potatoes: SO good! Both meals were a mixture of leftovers and freezer food, so she’s definitely meeting the December brief! I did it again: My plate: Pepperoni pizza and some sausage gravy on a Hawaiian roll. Jessica’s was more interesting: She had some leftover potatoes that she put a cream sauce she’d made on and she used the French toast, some ham, Swiss cheese, and cranberry sauce to make a sort of Monte Cristo.

Breakfast was the last of the biscuits leftover from the ones we ordered for our Episcopal Church Women Christmas party last Saturday: Still really good.

We finally had our Trim the Tree chocolate fondue last night. When we first started doing beef fondue for dinner and chocolate fondue for dessert, we had many fewer ornaments and much more energy! Not to mention larger appetites! We managed to have an early dinner and to stay alert until 8pm for the fondue! The chocolate sauce was just some Smucker’s hot fudge sauce and a chocolate fondue that Santa put in my stocking LAST Christmas (it was still within its OK date). The dippers: Angel food cake, pound cake, Peeps, cinnamon-sugar pretzels, animal crackers, bananas, dried figs/dates/apricots, maraschino cherries, and strawberries (not pictured). We didn’t go all out this year, but it was still TOO much. Most of it got put away to have later. This ONLY way I eat Peeps: I think that @Shelby mentioned discovering this method. We've been doing it every since they started coming out with Christmas Peeps! 😄

I am decidedly NOT ahead of the game. Rather, I'm behind the 8 ball 😜! I have NO presents wrapped. I have multiple rooms that still need decorations set out. I'm going up to my dad's on Thursday to have a little visit and drop off all the gifts for folks up there (northern VA) and I'm not even finished shopping for that yet. I've got SO many things yet to cook ahead of time and I don't have my timeline done yet (doing a day by day and hour by hour timeline helps with my holiday anxiety). So, yeah, I'm freaking out. If I remember to take the picture, you certainly will. It is topped with a sweet pecan topping. Mr. Kim and Jessica are fans of sweet potatoes any way they come. I, on the other hand, only like them if they can be mistaken for dessert 😁.

I made the sweet potato layer of the souffle for Christmas Eve dinner to put in the freezer: and cheese potatoes:

@BonVivant – yes! I got it and it looks fantastic. I got an incredible deal on it at abebooks.com – someone in the US had it and it was $5.48 with free shipping. I love that site – I don’t think I’ve bought a new book in YEARS! And thank you for posting the photo with the robin and the message about Heidi. She would have loved that. For lunch the other day, I let my inner child choose the meal – fish finger sandwich and spaghetti hoops: This was a common lunch that my English step-sisters would give me when I’d go over to their mom’s house visit them. The hoops were from Lidl and tasted NOT like SpaghettiOs, but like canned tomato soup with macaroni in it (a common way to embellish tomato soup when I was a kid). I think this lunch might belong on the guilty pleasures topic! Today: Trader Joe’s Slightly Smoked salmon, crackers, and an apple. Colby Jack was very interested:

What a remarkable man he was.

Jessica makes pickled garlic and uses the brine in all kinds of stuff. I think we use the brine more than we do the garlic.

From Facebook today: Dear friends, it is with a heavy heart that we announce the passing of our beloved mother, sister, daughter and aunt; Heidi Maria Husnak. She passed peacefully on December 2, 2023. There will be a service held to celebrate her life on Wednesday, December 13 at 2pm in the Chapel at Green Hills Cemetary in San Pedro which we welcome her friends to join. Love from her family, Matthew (Son), Chris (Sister) and Heidi (Neice). I am so sad to hear this news. She's been such a good, supportive and helpful friend over the years.

I'm always happy to share! This is the original recipe for the Reese's Cup fudge. I never cared for the chocolate layer in that recipe, so you'll see in my notes that I now use a half recipe of my Aunt San's fudge instead. Also, I now add about a bag of peanut butter chips and probably 1/4 cup of peanut butter powder to the mix in the peanut butter layer. If you can't get ahold of those things, don't worry - I made this for 35+ years without them and there were never any complaints!

Some of the almond Kringle I got at Trader Joe’s and bacon: My bacon looks weird. I think I over-crisped it in the microwave.

Cold chicken sliders, salad, and Rice-A-Roni:

I had two successes and one failure yesterday. I made chocolate fudge and Reeses Cup fudge (chocolate and peanut butter): This is my mother's family recipe and has been made for over 80 years. My mother remembered her aunt making it when she was a little girl. It's made with milk chocolate (my great aunt specified Hershey's in the recipe - I tend to use the Trader Joe's Pound Plus bar, but the times I've used Cadbury were the best) and is very smooth and creamy. The top layer is just a half recipe of the chocolate fudge, but the PB layer is unusual. It isn't cooked - it's just 10X, PB, brown sugar, and melted butter. Over the years, I've added PB chips and PB powder to up the flavor, but that's it. It does have to be refrigerated or it breaks down. But it has a lovely texture - similar to the inside of a Reeses cup. Hence the name, I suppose. My failure were my iced almonds - they are basically a glazed almond cluster. I just overcooked them - they are much too hard and taste burnt. I'll give them another go today. I have to wait until someone is around to sprinkle coarse salt on top of each cluster as I dollop them out.