Kim Shook

I think that the firmer the bananas the less moist and dense the bread. I've made banana bread in the past with seriously overripe bananas and found the results overwhelmingly heavy and almost sour - as if the fruit had actually fermented. I think a lot of sins are committed by cooks eager to use up bananas rather than waste them and they use ones that really should go to the outside critters or as an occasional dog treat. I don't like bananas that are underripe - I get that weird astringent effect - but a perfectly ripe banana mashed up might just give you a banana bread that you like.

Today was a grilled fried bologna and cheese sandwich: With a salad and watermelon:

Used up some bananas in the freezer to make “Easy Banana Bread”: One of the simplest recipes I have for banana bread. You can fix it up with nuts or chocolate chips (or, best of all, peanut butter chips), but whether you do or not, it's delicious.

@NadyaDuke - we had a Saturday morning bagel tasting some time ago. Three different well regarded bagel places in town. The sourdough bagels won hands down. They may not be “traditional”, but they simply tasted the best! One recent morning breakfast was just an ET bagel from the freezer with cream cheese: Banana bread. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted butter or not, so I cut the slice in half and buttered one half. Still can’t decide which is better. Fourth of July b’fast was eggs and this: It was supposed to be Monkey bread, but it fell apart a bit. It was a Pillsbury whomp product. It was fine, but not as good as one I made before with whomp biscuits, cinnamon sugar, and butter. Dropped my sister off early at the train station one morning and coming back, I couldn’t resist: A biscuit and gravy and an egg and sausage biscuit. It took a while but I finished every bite. I’d forgotten how large their biscuits are. 😊

Yes! And that's so weird - because when I do price check, they are usually competitive with Sam's and Amazon.

Where are you located? In central VA, I find it under the Jello brand at almost any grocery store?

I'm in the US and tried to look. I forgot the one thing I really dislike about Costco - their website only gives prices on delivery items. So the only apple cider prices available were supplement gummies. 🙄 I have a Sam's card/membership through my church because I shop for them and the Sam's website gives you the in store pricing and delivery pricing. For me, it's the only advantage Sam's has over Costco.

@blue_dolphin – I love the coating on the fish in your fish taco. It actually looks like what the best restaurants in the south coat their catfish with. I can hear the crunch! I made a batch of pimento cheese sausage balls for a reception at church last Sunday: I found out that you can reheat these from frozen or refrigerated in a slow cooker. It worked really well. Lunch one day was bits and pieces from Mr. Kim’s charcuterie and cheese Father’s Day meal: Last Friday’s lunch was mostly from Publix – their tuna salad on a sandwich and some really good watermelon: Since this is what I ate in the middle of the day a couple of days ago, I guess this counts as lunch: This was a common childhood dessert. Momma wasn’t a baker and neither one of us had much of a sweet tooth, but there was usually some kind of ice cream in the freezer and there was always a can of Hershey’s syrup and salted peanuts. Could have used some dulce de leche, but itt was still delicious. Really cold things make me cough if I eat too much of them and I ate this until I coughed. 😄

Welcome to eG, Katelyn! I think you're going to find lots of kindred spirits here! We have some amazing chocolatiers, bakers, cooks here and really a worldwide reach for any questions or opinions (you'll get plenty of those - whether you ask or not 😉😄)! I can't wait to see your contributions!

Thank you! This used instant pudding - so it thickens in just a few minutes of whisking with milk. I think you usually refrigerate it for a time to firm it up. The creamy layers here is made up of cream cheese, Cool Whip, milk, and pudding mix.

@Ann_T – that peameal bacon that you’ve been making is so lovely! @Miss K – I am fond of box mixes and I love muffins. I like the nice domes you got on those muffins, I need to try that brand! Still struggling to get caught up and loving all of your beautiful meals. Breakfast a few days ago was just toast, but made with some beautiful sourdough that we got at a Mennonite market that we discovered on a trip to pick peaches: Another day my breakfast was a massive fail. It was something I saw on a YouTube channel, “Dollar Tree Dinners”. It sounded and looked easy and tasty. It WAS tasty, but not easy and more trouble than it was worth even if it had worked. The basic idea was to make sausage stuffed pancake muffins. And it was clever. You formed raw sausage links into patties, tucked the rounds into muffin tins and baked them. Then you removed the cooked patties and put pancake batter into the tins. The sausage patties went back in and then were topped with additional batter and baked. The result was something that looked like a muffin, but cut open revealed a sausage patty. You were supposed to use maple flavored sausage links and cheese slices to approximate a McGriddle. We don’t find the idea of cheese and maple syrup appetizing, so I skipped the cheese. I had a problem right from the beginning: These just looked so unfortunate 🤨. She used sausage links that didn’t have casings and it didn’t occur to me to take mine out of the casing. Also, since hers was cheap Dollar Tree sausage, it was much fattier and made more lubrication for the batter (foreshadowing here). I carried on and put them together: Another problem with using better quality sausage than she used was that mine didn’t shrink a lot and was, therefore, the same size as the muffin cups which meant that the batter didn’t encase the patties. Which meant that this was how mine came out: “Came out” is actually what they did NOT do: 🤬This was the mess that I was left to clean up. SO not worth it. These were presented as a “grab and go” breakfast. Something that you could pop in the microwave and take in the car. Mr. Kim and I both thought that they really needed to be dunked in syrup which made THAT idea a non-starter. Luckily, I had some batter leftover and some pecans in the freezer. I made us a couple of regular pancakes: Which were delicious and much less trouble. Breakfast after all that: A few days ago, breakfast Campari tomatoes on that good Mennonite toast: Pancakes and bacon: Pancakes and bacon. I used up the pancake mix that I bought to make those failed pancake and sausage muffins. It’s funny – I’ve never used a mix before to make pancakes. Momma used Bisquick, which is about the same, I guess. I never loved them, so I’ve always made mine from scratch. But I have to admit, there’s not a huge difference between these and mine. Yesterday - 1st breakfast: BEC on an English muffin. Then, because I was hungry about an hour later and this luscious pear was calling to me – 2nd breakfast: Also, I was afraid that the croissant was going to go stale 👀.

@OlyveOyl - as always, your desserts are perfection. A question that I've often wondered about: when eating with currants that are still partially on the stem, do you pick them off before eating/put them your mouth and maneuver the currants off the stem and then discretely spit the stem out (like that bar trick girls used to do in the 1970s 😉)/EAT the stem? Or is it dealt with some other way I haven't thought of. Well, here I am among the Dessert Gods/Goddesses with my silly little offerings 😄. I mean - y'all!!!! You are just doing incredible things. And I'm offering two variations on a icebox dessert made with Jello Pudding, Cool Whip, and graham crackers. This one was for Father's Day: made with cheesecake flavored pudding, chocolate graham crackers and fruit. This one was for a dinner last night: lemon pudding, regular graham crackers, and blackberries.

My rib roast turned out very well. I chose the sear, then SV method, which was a bit undermined by the fact that I scored the fat cap. I don’t have a picture of the pre-seared roast, but this is it post-SV and out of the bag: As you can see, I overdid the sear in some areas and some didn’t get touched at all. But I fixed that up with a torch: Still not sure about the scoring, but I do like the sear, then SV method. I’m a big fan of doing what you can ahead of time and that’s one thing out of the way. I can’t complain about the results: I did it at 135F for 8 hours. It was wall-to-wall medium-rare and tender and juicy. I could call it a little bland, but that is the fact that I bought it at Kroger, I think. Just not the most flavorful meat. If I’d paid $50-$75/pound for it, I’m sure it would have been better. But I didn’t and this was pretty good: Those white marks going through the middle of the meat are bits of sunshine coming through the kitchen window – at certain times of the year dinner photos are difficult!

I do not claim to have the most delicate, discriminating palate, but I think the EVOO is very good. I find it tasty enough to dip crusty bread into. As far as the apple cider vinegar goes, I claim ignorance. I buy the cheapest store brand of that and have always been satisfied with that. My mother was a complete name brand shopper and always used either Heinz or White House and I never could taste the difference between those and my store brands.

They are pretty cheap, so I'm not worried about sharpening. And I'm a BIG girl - I just put my weight on top of it, and it WORKS! 😁