Kim Shook

Breakfast this morning was fried eggs on a buttered and toasted milk bread roll: I got the egg slightly overdone, but it was still good: It would have been especially good with a slice of country ham and a little béarnaise! 😁

😄😄😄 Many of my pantry items are less reliable it seems.

When you pick a steamed blue crab, there are some parts that you eat and some you don't (at least I don't). You don't eat the "devil's fingers" or gills. There is a long, white, wormy looking thing that no one I know eats - I'm not at all sure what it is. Something that IS edible is that "mustard" - called that because it actually does look like mustard. There is some disagreement about whether it should be eaten or not because it is a filtering part of the digestive system. I know, but it's really delicious. Analogous to sucking a crawfish head, I guess - gross, but good. 😁 When you pick crabs, it's there and you can eat it or not. But when you eat a soft shell, it's been cleaned inside and some places just snip off the eye area and then clean out all the innards, including the mustard. A place that really respects crabs (and crab lovers) will be more careful and leave the mustard behind. There. I hope that helped and that anyone who has better information than me will step in!

It's funny, but what I see in many American sections in other countries are what I would consider "craving" foods. I.E. - food you know is not great cuisine, but stuff that you just want every so often. The stuff that most Americans I know (and I ARE one 😉) eat on a regular basis are probably available in the other sections of the stores - fresh meats, produce, bread, crackers, cheese, etc. I know that the food in the "international" sections of American grocery stores don't truly represent the foods of those nations.

Thank you all so much for the good wishes. I’m definitely improving. Trying hard to get back to cooking after being sick/recovering since basically the beginning of the year. I’ve managed to make myself a few lunches, but we’ve also eaten out a LOT! A fried bologna and cheese grilled sandwich and clam chowder: The sandwich was great, but not so the soup. It was a brand that was highly rated by a website I usually like, but I think that they were impressed by the down east design of the can: The soup was bereft of clam flavor and the texture was grainy and gelatinous. One morning, I woke up thinking of egg salad. I’d been wanting to try a new-to-me method of hard cooking eggs – the hot start method. You bring enough water to cover your eggs to a low boil and quickly and gently slip the eggs in. Bring to a boil, then lower to a slow boil, cover and cook 12-14 minutes. Supposedly easy peel, no green, and perfectly cooked eggs. Worked great for me – I’ve now peeled the entire batch and they were all fine: With pepper, mustard, relish, and Dukes: Lunch: Jessica and I went down to Petersburg VA (about 45 minutes away) last month to pick up something and had dinner at a locally owned restaurant that has a wonderful buffet – a meat and threes kind of place. Nearly everything is housemade. Mr. Kim is NOT a big buffet fan, but I got him down there recently to wander in the historic section of the city and do a little antique browsing. AND talked him into that place, Nanny’s, for lunch. I think he liked it. Hard to tell because he tends towards prejudice 😁. My plate: Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, collards, pulled pork, hamburger steak, and fried fat back. Also hush puppies and chicken & dumplings: Post doctor’s appointment lunch at an OLD favorite, Joe’s Inn. Their in-town location was one of our college hang outs – great pizza, huge sandwiches, and cheap beer. This was their suburb location, but it’s just as good. I had a meatball sub and onion rings: Mr. Kim had baked spaghetti and their wonderful house made bread: On Mother’s Day the three of us plus Mr. Kim’s mom did a little road trip to tiny Topping VA (about an hour away) on the Rappahannock river for lunch at a place called Merroir. We’d been once before and were impressed with their location, food, and service. This visit was the same. We ordered a ton of food and shared and took some home! We had the bread service: Oyster stew: which had gorgeous, sweet whole oysters in it, as well as the entire thing tasting beautifully of oyster. Jessica started with raw oysters: We shared the burrata toast – baguette, burrata, roasted tomatoes, pesto, and balsamic glaze: We also shared the Stuffin’ Muffin: Oyster stuffing with a bacon and peppercorn cream sauce. Mr. Kim had the shrimp cocktail: and grilled halibut with blistered green beans: My MIL had the crabcake with slaw and remoulade: My main was scallops with smoked corn, cotija cheese, paprika, and cilantro lemon sauce: Jessica’s was the oyster po’ boy: with slaw and house made pickles. For dessert, my MIL had the Key Lime Pie: and we all had a bit of this dessert: Caramelized bananas with some custard and candied pecans. Everything was delicious and perfectly prepared. We brought a lot home. A friend was having surgery. I thought I’d kill two birds: take them some food and have something on hand for lunches for the week. So, I made a batch of my mother’s vegetable soup and a couple loaves of No-Knead Peasant Bread to take to them. My mise: I attempted to make one pot of soup – enough for them and us to have a couple of meals. Instead… 🙄😄 The bread: Another morning I woke up craving hot dogs. So, lunch: It is soft shell season now, so after church this Sunday we went to a place called Halterman’s in Manquin VA (about 30 minutes from us). We’d been a couple of years ago for Mr. Kim’s birthday and loved it. When you sit down, they bring a basket of house made chips and creamy sauce: We shared a wonderfully ooey, gooey crab dip: The dip was fantastic, and the pita chips were exceptional, too. Instead of just being served as is or baked to crispy, they were deep fried. They ended up being crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. I’d never had them done like that and they were perfect with the hot, creamy dip. Mr. Kim had fish and chips: All of this was SO good. The hush puppies were crisp and tender and full of corn flavor. The chips were really like chunky British chips. I think the fish was cod – firm, moist, and sweet. It was breaded rather than battered, but it was excellent. I had the soft shells with fries and deviled eggs: The crabs were exactly what I wanted – simply made with a light batter and such great quality: They were full of moist, sweet crab meat: And they left the mustard in – so many places don’t, and it drives me crazy. Today: A bologna sandwich with excessive amounts of mustard and baked BBQ chips (an odd recent craving of mine).

Slowly getting back into cooking. I’ve been missing it! A few recent breakfasts: A toasted croissant with strawberry jam. Ham and egg on a croissant: Greek yogurt, granola, and honey: Mr. Kim stopped by a wonderful bakery near his office yesterday and brought home these Japanese milk bread rolls: I had a couple for breakfast this morning done in the CSO at 300F on bake/steam and slathered with butter. Also eggs 😁.

A couple of recent purchases. I found the first two at an antique store and Mr. Kim surprised me with the Duncan Hines "Bake Shop in a Book" off my wish list.

@Pete Fred – My daughter and I really want a piece of that final lardy cake. It looks perfectly perfect! @RWood – toasted coconut is one of my favorite flavors. Your Mama is a lucky woman! I made a Kentucky Brown Sugar Pound cake for the birthday of one of Mr. Kim’s staffers: He managed to bring pieces home for Jessica and me. It was really good – nice crumb and a delicate brown sugar flavor.

We luckily have a small "college fridge" in our family room, so that will be the home for the giant jar. So, do you agree with @Senior Sea Kayaker that she can back off the spices a little? My thinking was that in all that brine a smaller amount would flavor the pickle just as much as a large amount would. Does that compute?

Yes, she just does raw vegetables - she doesn't process them in any way. She's found that between what we eat and what she shares with others a lot get used up fairly quickly. It helps that she uses hard vegetables - carrots, cauliflower, garlic cloves, green beans, etc. - no soft stuff like cucumbers. I suspected that she could cut back on the spices. Thank you!

Jessica has been doing pickled vegetables for awhile now, with great success. She's been putting them in different sized Mason jars, but has gotten ahold of a giant 128 oz. pickle jar and is thinking of doing one large batch instead of multiple jars. She has two questions: 1. Is this a good idea at all? Or should she just stick with the smaller individual jars? 2. If this is a good idea, she wonders if, as she is multiplying the amounts of her ingredients, should she equally multiply the spices. I.E. - if a recipe calls for 3 cups of vinegar, 2 1/2 T. kosher salt, 3 tablespoons coriander seeds, mustard seeds, and whole peppercorns, and she's going to multiply it by three; should she multiply the vinegar, salt, and spices TOO? Or multiply only the vinegar and hold back a bit on the other stuff? Thanks in advance for your help!

The butters are from all over Europe and the US. I noticed Irish, Scandanavian, French, and goat's milk butter from somewhere. Also local Amish butter. I have no idea about this, but I honestly don't remember EVER hearing a complaint about any freshness issues when we lived out there and can't find any online complaints on that score.

This is very delayed, but I thought it might make fun reading for some folks, so I’ll go ahead. We left Richmond on April 7th to drive to Ohio/Indiana for the solar eclipse on the 8th. Breakfast was at Kathy’s in Staunton VA. Mr. Kim and I ate there last year on our anniversary trip and loved it. I had the biscuits and gravy with fried eggs and their fantastic fried potatoes: The gravy looks so blah, but it is delicious – loaded with sausage flavor even though it doesn’t seem to have a lot of crumbled sausage in it. Mr. Kim had the country ham breakfast with potatoes, grits, biscuits, and eggs: The ham was SO good, though oddly the fat on the edge wasn’t snipped and it curled into a bowl. Unfortunately, Jessica wasn’t happy with her meal: She got the lemon-blueberry pancakes. I’m not sure why, but she expected that the lemon flavor would be IN the pancakes instead of a drizzle of what seemed to be lemon curd. I thought they were fantastic. Determined to hit as many of our favorite restaurants as possible in the OH/IN area, we stopped for dinner at Big Boy in Ohio south of Cincinnati. Big Boy is less “Big” than I remember: I got the Big Boy burger and crinkle cuts: Jessica got a double cheeseburger and onion rings: Mr. Kim got the pork tenderloin and rings: The burgers, fries, and rings were great. The tenderloin tasted good, but it was a little too thick and not quite crisp enough. Eclipse Day!!! We were so fortunate to find a church that was taking donations for parking at their lot to watch the eclipse. We’d seen up to $50 and they said any amount. We gave them $20. It was far enough out in the country that there wasn’t a lot of noise or buildings or busy-ness. They were selling hot dogs, chips, and drinks – so that was lunch. Sun gazing: They were even selling T-shirts! Dinner that night was White Castle: Cheeseburgers, onion chips, and crinkle cuts. The 9th was the drive home with two important stops before we left Cincinnati. The first was the incredible Jungle Jim’s grocery store. It was amazing when we shopped there in the early 1990s when we lived in Batesville, IN. It is truly mind blowing now. Calling it a grocery store is hardly sufficient. There ARE groceries, of course, but SO much more including a section of housewares and kitchen equipment larger than any Williams-Sonoma I’ve ever seen. They also have an entire room devoted to modern culture kitsch – Funko, lunch boxes, action figures, etc. – on TV shows, movie franchises, Anime, etc. And then there’s the food. The cool thing about Jungle Jim’s is that while you can get an incredible assortment of specialty and “gourmet” foods, you can also find everyday items. Some of the deli/charcuterie area: Cheese selection: c The butter bar – which is actually two sided: Gummy candies: The Pez display – half of it. It’s also two sided: Part of the bakery/pastry case: All kinds of meats: They have an incredible seafood section – especially considering that they are in the Midwest: A small part of their hot sauces: Jerky: Their international food is arranged by country and some of them were amazing to see – Sri Lanka, Iceland, Nepal, Togo. My anglophile self was, of course, drawn to the British section. Cadbury selection: Sauces and canned/bottled things: I can get HP and Branston pickle, but they had Daddies which I can never find in my area. My mother would have been so excited to see the Bisto powder. She always preferred it to the granules: Frozen stuff: The oil aisle: Popcorn stunt eating: Our last restaurant stop in Cincinnati was a late lunch at Skyline Chili. This is how our food was delivered: I got a four way with beans (spaghetti, chili, beans, and cheese) and Mr. Kim got a 5-way (all that plus onions): Jessica opted for a new, to us, item – a “Chilito”: Basically, a flour tortilla stuffed with chili and cheese. Kind of underwhelming. All three of us had Coneys – little hot dogs topped with chili, mustard, cheese and onions: Rode all the way home wishing I could have another one for dinner, so I think that means the meal was good! Just a portion of the culinary goodies we came home with: I’m actually embarrassed at the top picture. We love trying interesting and new foods for videos that Jessica posts to FB, but that is ridiculous. In the bottom photo, the mock turtle soup is something that we discovered when we lived in IN. Folks would get together and make gallons of the stuff – the ones that I had were all made with beef, turkey, and vegetables and everything is ground up. It’s quite a production, so I thought I’d see what the canned stuff was like. The next two cans are probably mistakes – I saw the “famous” names and neglected to read the ingredients. They are both mostly beans – one has NO meat at all. The crock, lid, and weight are probably the most interesting purchases. Mr. Kim has decided that he’d like to try making sauerkraut. I’m looking forward to that! One more Jungle Jim purchase: Really good cheese balls. From the left: olive, beef & onion, and white cheddar. We had a really wonderful time and even got to go back to the little town in Indiana that we used to live in. Mr. Kim and I had been back more recently, but Jessica hadn’t been since she was in grade school and it has changed so much. It was fun watching her see what has changed and what hasn’t. We love road trips and weren’t in a special hurry, so this was a really good one. EDITED TO FIX PICTURE ORDER

Welcome to eG, @rukie! I think you'll find a LOT of help here!

Glad you're home! Take care!