Kim Shook

I guess most everyone knows that I was in the hospital for a week back at the end of June. I’ve spent most of the time since recovering and trying to regain my energy and strength. I’ve perused the posts here, but haven’t really commented or done much more than offering “likes” and giving updates in the “How are you doing” thread. I apologize for the plethora of meals, but I’ll do a big drop off and then I’ll be all caught up (wait ‘til you see the dinner post! 😁). Country ham and cheddar omelet: With and English muffin and a pear: A neighbor had a huge load of plums on her tree was sharing: We had plums with almost every breakfast and snack for a couple of weeks! Biscuits (frozen), one with tomato and the other with sage sausage: One morning I microwaved some frozen chicken dumplings we got from Costco: They were great – really flavorful and lovely, tender dough. Toast – one piece with my beloved Little Scarlet strawberry preserves, the other with a fried egg, and strawberries: Different morning, different dumplings. These were soup dumplings we got at Trader Joes: They tasted good and had a decent amount of broth, but the wrappers were unpleasantly tough. Must have been channeling my mother this morning. Scrambled eggs and raisin toast was her regular Waffle House order: Tomatoes on toast was a childhood favorite: A Lidl pain au chocolat and hard cooked eggs: My favorite method of cooking a breakfast sandwich is grilling rather than using toasted bread. I love the crisp, buttery outside and the tender, soft inside. Ham and egg: Just behind is lurking some mandarin orange segments. Food Lion is stocking some of the best of these I’ve had in years. I’m eating at least one a day. Weird timing, but they’re good now. A Lidl croissant and strawberries: The 14th was Mr. Kim’s birthday. Last week, @Smithy mentioned trying some Rhodes frozen cinnamon rolls and said they were surprisingly good. The ones that she got were the quick kind that only needed a 40 minute baking time from frozen. I thought that since it was a work day, these with some good bacon would make the perfect birthday breakfast. Well, all I could find was the regular kind – that needed a few hours of thawing/rising. BUT – the directions indicated that you could do it overnight in the refrigerator. Yay. So, I put them in the pan in the fridge after dinner and let them do their thing. Which they didn’t 😡. When I checked them at 8am, they not only hadn’t risen, but they were also still frozen. Sigh. So, this was breakfast instead: Eggs, produce stand tomatoes, Benton’s bacon, and toast. A few hours later, I finally pulled these out of the oven: I mean, they were wonderful. And I thoroughly enjoyed my alone time with them 😁. But it would have been nice to offer the birthday boy a sweet indulgence. Anyway – we’ve been eating them for breakfast and snacks and he took them to share with a friend today and there are still 4 left (I should have cooked only half a bag – did I mention I’ve been fuzzy headed since I got out of the hospital?). Yesterday: A perfect little apple (I've been finding bags of these tiny, crisp apples at Publix recently), a cream biscuit leftover from Mr. Kim's BD dinner, OM egg, and sage sausage.

UPDATE: ebay has what looks like THE PLATE!!! Not terribly expensive, either. I took a chance after comparing the two pictures and ordered it. Fingers CROSSED!!!

@Smithy - I did do the sweet rolls, though there was a bit of a SNAFU - I'll post about it on the Breakfast thread since that what I used them for (or at least I meant to). The 14th was Mr. Kim’s birthday. His requested dessert was Raisin Pie. ????? Huh? I was perplexed. As far as I knew, he’d never had a raisin pie. I’m not the most gifted pie person, and where in the world did he get the recipe. Turned out that he does an email subscription with a few food sites and this one arrived in his inbox and intrigued him. I was nervous about it because pastry is NOT my forte and I haven’t cooked much at all in the past couple of months. AND on top of it all – I’d be serving this to his mother – the Pastry Queen. This woman literally has blue ribbons from baked goods she’s entered into the VA State Fair over the years. I knew that making my own pie crust was NOT ON, so I got the Pillsbury refrigerated ones. And the recipe was actually very easy. I served the pie with some Tillamook vanilla bean ice cream and everyone liked it (except for Jessica, which I predicted):

Love Replacements. They've ID'd old silver pieces for me and found missing pieces of china and silver. Mr. Kim and I went down there in July to take some silver pieces to be repaired. It was my first in-person visit. It's an incredible place with a HUGE showroom, museum of the history of china/silver/crystal, a Christmas shop, and a clearance section. We could have spent hours wandering around. I took a precious family piece down for them to try to find a replacement for - it's my MIL's childhood plate that she gave me and which I managed to knock off a wall and smash into about 10 pieces. I can't find anyone to fix it, so Replacements has registered it and will let me know if they find it. I just pray that happens before she asks me where I've got it displayed. My shameful deed:

That's what visitors are for.

@liuzhou - I'm sorry I missed that you were back in the hospital! I had a back fracture a few years ago and besides wearing an enormous brace and resting, there was really nothing that could be done ACTIVELY. Once I had healed enough, I had PT to strengthen the muscles supporting my back, but nothing really until healing had happened. It's a slow and aggravating process and I'm not a patient person. I hope your healing goes well! I'm glad you are out of the hospital and getting some good food! I was in the hospital from 6/24-6/30 with high BP and kidney issues. I took pictures of the menu to show. The choices were, I thought, really varied. The offerings do fall into the category of middle American, but there are lots of options for all kinds of diets and preferences. I was on a slightly restricted diet – low sodium and low sugar. But I still had a lot of choices. What impressed me was the quality of the food. I was WAY too out of it to take pictures, but over the course of the week I had hard boiled eggs, pancakes, sausage, chicken noodle soup, tossed salad, egg salad, tuna salad, pot roast, lemon herb chicken, and fresh fruit. Every single thing was very, very good and it seemed to me that they were made in house – not sourced from some frozen food conglomerate. And I had very little appetite so Mr. Kim finished most of my meals and he was as impressed as I was. A menu:

Georgia's peach crop was almost completely lost this year due to weather. If we continue to ignore climate change, we are going to starve ourselves to death.

Jessica brought these home to me from an estate sale she attended: The Cherrios one is pretty predictable, but the molasses one has a surprising number of recipes that I marked "to try". And I adore the cover art.

Thanks for posting these, @Smithy! I just put them on my shopping list to try. I'm thinking these and some bacon might be a good birthday breakfast for Mr. Kim. His birthday is Monday and he has to work, so it can't be too elaborate. Also, I'd totally forgotten about that whomp roll hack! I need to put that in rotation!

What a wonderful family/city story! And the Sandwich sounds fantastic. Thanks for sharing this, @Kerry Beal!

The last time that I did it, I followed the Anova site directions and did it for 2 hours at 155F. I did all legs that time and this time I'm planning on legs, thighs, and breasts (cut in half). I was thinking the same temp, but a bit longer for the legs and thighs. Do you think that the breasts should go in later?

Thanks, @rotuts! That's what I'll do! Another couple of questions. Normally, when I make "my" fried chicken I brine it for 12 hours before seasoning and coating the chicken. Would you all recommend that I still do the brining? Or is it not needed with SV? I'm planning on doing my seasoning (Sazon coriander & annatto blend, MSG, lemonade Kool-aid, and pepper - I know it sounds weird, but it's fantastic) before I put the chicken in to SV. Sound good?

Question for folks who have done the SV then fried chicken (I know that @Shelby has, but probably others, too). I am FINALLY going to be cooking a real meal for Mr. Kim's birthday and we are even going to have a guest (his mom). I'm not sure that I have any cooking mojo still, so I'm looking for do-aheads and shortcuts that will still honor his requests. For example he wants biscuits and mashed potatoes - so, I'm going to do those two ingredient cream biscuits that you scoop up with an ice cream scoop and some slow cooker mashed potatoes. He's also asked for raisin pie for dessert. This is a whole other issue as I am NOT a pie lady (and his mother IS) and I've never made raisin pie, but I digress. My question is about how much ahead I can SV the chicken and then fry it. I have a real aversion to chicken that is cooked, refrigerated and then reheated - I think it gets a distinct and unpleasant flavor. I don't know if this would happen to SV chicken, but don't want to take that chance. Can I do this so that it comes out of the bath a couple of hours before I fry it and NOT refrigerate it? Just let it sit at room temp for an hour or so before I start coating it? Thanks so much. I am SO out of practice and really need the advice!

My MIL does something really sweet - when she makes spaghetti sauce she makes to the point of putting in the bell peppers and puts some aside for me before proceeding with the rest of the cooking. I love her version of sauce and can't seem to replicate it, so it's really a nice thing for her to do. She also does it with her gazpacho (also leaving out the hot peppers in mine). ❤️

I call them "polluters". They flavor everything they are cooked with. With a lot of ingredients (like white button mushrooms) you can eat around them and the dish is fine. You can't eat around a bell pepper - they pollute the entire dish.

Hers was one of the voices that made eG eG for me.

@liuzhou - the chocolates and their packaging are the epitome of "exquisite". I'm not a dark chocolate fan, so I was thrilled to see milk chocolate done with such care and artistry. @weinoo - Curlywurlys!!!! Along with Flakes and Crunchies, my all-time favorite candy bars in the world. We used to have the same bar in the US - it was called a Marathon bar.

Here you go. They are incredibly easy. The recipe makes a lot, but I just store the excess in a bag in the freezer and take out what I need. Ten minutes in the CSO and they are toasty!

@Shelby – thank you, ma’am! It is such a great way to do fried chicken. Another big plus is that it doesn’t burn in the skillet the way it does when I cook it from raw. The pieces rest on the bottom and always get a little too-dark spot. Have you ever added some rice flour to the flour mixture? I thought about trying that next time. I tried mixing in some of the egg wash into the flour mixture after the initial dredge and dipping the pieces in to get some “scraggly” pieces, but thought they were a little too bready. I’m wondering if the rice flour might prevent that? All of your meals look so good – I could eat that broccoli salad every week – but what I kept going back to and looking at was that panini!!! @rotuts – your ragu and egg noodles looks so delicious and comfort food-ish! How I’d love to dig into a big bowl of that. I love using egg noodles with marinara or meat sauces – they are so tender and “slippy”. @Ann_T – those are absolutely GORGEOUS pizzas! Margherita pizzas are my favorite, but I think I’d love the one that Matt put together, too! Night before last was salad and take and bake pizza from Aldi: Pizza tasted good – but the crust was a little “crackery”. Last night Mr. Kim did some Hot and Fast Chicken on the smoker: They looked gorgeous and the taste was perfect: The rub flavor is where he wants it, and the smoke level was exactly right. He’s doing some research because we felt like the skin was still a little flabby (a common problem with smoked chicken) and it was a bit undercooked even though the temperature was right (170F for the breast and 185F for the leg quarter). But the flavor was lovely! Served with stir fried snow peas and bean sprouts, Stove Top (with a little Bisto), smashed potatoes, and some leftover asparagus for Mr. Kim: And a salad:

@Senior Sea Kayaker – your eggs are so pretty! More than 10 years ago @Ashen recommended that method of making “sunny side up” eggs, but I’d never thought to incorporate anything into the whites! Great idea. @blue_dolphin - your beans and tots look so good. Mr. Kim was going through the refrigerator last night and tossed some elderly and questionable baked beans. He asked why we always had leftover baked beans lately. It’s because I’m having to eat low potassium and can’t have beans on toast for breakfast anymore. I make the beans for Jessica and Mr. Kim. He doesn’t like beans on toast and Jessica doesn’t eat breakfast! So, I’m enjoying yours vicariously! 😄 Yesterday: Pimento cheese sausage balls, fried egg

I watched one of the videos. Amazing!

I found a small bag of these yesterday at CVS and grabbed them. Friends of ours tried them recently and had mixed feelings. They agreed with you that they most likely wouldn't ever bother to buy them again. We'll have a family tasting soon.

Jessica and I went up to northern VA last week to do a few things we’d missed when we went up in April for her belated birthday celebration trip. We ended up going the day when the air quality was so bad due to the awful fires that the Canadians were experiencing. Since staying inside was our goal for the day, we dropped into every thrift store we could find with close parking. Found some fun things and a mystery. This tea pot and sugar/creamer set (creamer may or may not be missing a lid) caught my eye: I love the design and it has “S” engraved on the side of each piece: The whole set was $24. I love “silver” and with the initial, I had to have it. The mystery is what it is. At first, I assumed hotel silver because it is so heavy and substantial. But it shows no sign of tarnish or having been polished (it has enough rough spots that I can’t believe I wouldn’t find SOME tarnish in a thrift shop piece). It REALLY doesn’t feel like silverplate either. But I think it must be plated silver after all. Here’s the hallmark: …which, if I’m deciphering it correctly says, “Rogers & Bro Triple plate”. Interestingly, something has obviously been obliterated just above that and “C 7634” scratched in by hand. Triple plate is, according to Martha Stewart, “means that three layers of silver plating were applied to a base metal during manufacturing”. So, I’m guessing that someone lovingly (and nearly professionally) polished this set before donating it to the thrift store. It has some lovely little details: I’m very happy with this purchase and I’m actually looking forward to seeing if it begins to tarnish! LOL

No - they worked perfectly for years. I just put the strips on my wish list because the toweling started to ravel. LOL

I have a new set that I haven't used yet (I fashioned some out of cotton toweling that I used for years and finally received a set for Christmas). The next time I make a cake I'll make sure to use them and report back.