Kim Shook

@Miriravan – your baguette and cheese memories are quite like mine from college. Back then, my cheese would have been a couple of Laughing Cow wedges – cheap and filling and not bad tasting at all! @gfweb– I really, really like the idea of an apricot upside down cake! @robirdstx – LOVE that broccoli salad! I just put it on my menu list to go with some meatloaf soon. Cross your fingers for me - Meatloaf and I have a very checkered past. 😁 Pre-dinner snacks for the 4th: I did ribs in the IP for dinner (talk about “Blasphemy Ribs”). I usually do St. Louis ribs but chose baby backs in case the IP wouldn’t hold the larger ribs: The little pile on the upper right is the ENTIRE membrane on the back of the rack which I pulled of IN ONE PIECE. I am inordinately proud of that. I rubbed them with Penzey’s BBQ 3000 rub overnight. Out of the IP: As you can see from all the visible bone, they were slightly overcooked. It was 23 minutes and I think 20 would have been better. They were not mushy, just a little too soft. We do not aim for that “fall off the bone” nonsense. Brushed with BBQ sauce and broiled: Salad: Just an ordinary salad, but with @Norm Matthews China Coast dressing which everyone loved. Plate: IP Ribs, fixed up canned baked beans, fixed up boxed mac and cheese, and Jiffy cornbread. 😂😂😂 Dinner last night was dinner was a mishmash of all the leftovers in our refrigerator plus some beets done in the CSO for Mr. Kim: And the dessert I had planned for the 4th: Stocks pound cake from Philadelphia (the best I’ve ever tasted), strawberry ice cream, and chocolate sauce.

Oh, MY! That is gorgeous. I've done gingerbread waffles before, but not the broiled fruit. Just lovely looking.

So weird. They’d go out and buy them in a store or have them delivered by a complete stranger, but wouldn’t take them from someone they know? People are odd.

Can’t you find someone to give them to?

We lived on the Southside for a little while after we got married and getting Mr. Kim's family to come for dinner was a huge deal. And they would only come on weekends - never on a weeknight. We were no further away from them than other people that they visited often, but crossing that river!

I adore Wallace and Gromit!!!

@Shelby – every time I see your fries, I want some. So I think I’ll be doing that soon. But I want many, many more than you. So, I think I’ll have a meal of JUST FRIES. With some catsup and salt and vinegar for sprinkling. I don’t know what Mr. Kim will say about such a meal. @MetsFan5 – that BGE meal is about the most delicious thing I’ve heard of in forever. One of our traditions when we go to the Outer Banks is to stop on our last meal there at a restaurant that does steamed trays of seafood. Mine is always clams and shrimp. I can only imagine what corn would add to that! Jessica came over last night for dinner and to watch Hamilton. We had cheese and carbs basically, since I forgot the salad I’d made in the fridge🙄. Ruhlman’s Cheese Soufflés from the freezer: Cheese board and crackers: Including the cheeses from Aldi that the Easter Bunny brought Jessica (she’s 36😄😞 Plus, a Wensleydale with blueberries that she brought. We are big Wensleydale and oatcake fans. The Aldi cheeses were actually pretty good. And, because you can never have too many carbs:

@Ann_T - I had a perfectly nice breakfast. But I want Moe's! Breakfast this morning was leftover Toad in the Hole: It heated up very well in the CSO on bake/steam. The bottom layer looks awful in the picture, but was actually fine.

Good for you, @rotuts! I have some friends from church that I chat with on the phone. Some are elderly, some have already compromised health, some are just worried. And when they talk about what precautions they are taking, they sometimes sound apologetic. I always tell them that they shouldn't apologize for trying to stay healthy - nothing to be ashamed of. The people who should be ashamed are the ones that blithely go around endangering the rest of us. I refuse to be joked or shamed out of being careful.

We crossed the river for lunch yesterday (that is a Big Deal in Richmond – people tend to stay on their home side for everything). Went to a Mexican café/market that we’d heard good things about. Fried plantains with cotija cheese and crema: Mr. Kim had the Quesadilla Rellena Especiales – with carne asada: I had 2 appetizers – a pupusa with pork filling and a sope with…um…pork😊: Everything was very good – definitely worth such a long journey😁. Stopped at Panera for bread for dinner on the way home and got a Cheese Brittany: It was much better than I expected – the pastry was lovely.

Nevertheless, it is wonderful to look down the list of posts and see you and the kitty! You are missed, ma'am!

@Ann_T – your cheese pizza is just screaming at me: “Learn how to make pizza crust, you idiot!!!” Dinner was a BBC recipe for Toad in the Hole that I used to make for @Ted Fairhead. Started with some “Irish-Style Bangers” that we found at Costco: I have no idea if these are at all authentic, but we’ve had them before and like them a lot. The brand name is Amylu. Roasted with caramelized onions: Onion gravy beginnings and my own beef stock (love having a store of this in the freezer – thanks to my IP): Tasted good, but it was a little pale and needed degreasing: A little skimming and a good glug of Gravy Master later: Batter poured around the sausages: Out of the oven: It’s odd how the batter just floated the sausages instead of rising up around them like they normally do. I also made a mess of beans and one of my sisters-in-law sent over some of her home grown cucumbers: Plated without and with the gravy: We also had some mashed potatoes. Double carbs. Very British. When we were in England, Mr. Kim ordered Shepherd’s Pie and it was served with fried potatoes on the side.

@robirdstx– I’ve had meat loaf on the menu list for weeks now. I believe that sandwich just pushed it up front! @rotuts – I agree with your Triumvirate of Sandwiches, though I would add ham to the club (just isn’t a club down here in the south without TWO kinds of pig). And if you are going to make it four, that roast beef has gotta have horseradish! 😁 Lunch: Fried egg on frozen hash brown patties. That egg was gorgeous coming out of the pan. It was @Ashen's method of doing what looks like a sunny side up egg, but without the snot. You separate the egg, cook and flip the white and then set the yolk on top of the white and cover for a minute. The white is completely done and the yolk warm, but very runny (as you can see). But my yolk didn’t adhere to the white properly and slid right off and broke when I tried to set the egg on top of the patty. 😠

This morning was a ham omelet on a Hawaiian roll. Buttered and toasted roll turned out well: This monster was 5-inches across. And I finished it. And then I needed a nap!

Finding out about cleaning up uncooked dough with cold water was a life changing thing for me! (Egg, too!)

I had to look it up, too. Gorgeous loaves and the descriptions I read sounded delicious.

@KennethT – I really like the look of your duck. It looks more like medium than rare, which I cannot bear. @robirdstx– I always like the look of your fried rice! @liamsaunt – the clams look so good. One of my favorite meals! @Norm Matthews– lovely looking lasagna! I’ve been craving it for a few weeks now (of COURSE I have – it’s almost 90F outside😁). @Shelby – your pizza looks and sounds delicious. But I’m afraid there is some fungal infection and perhaps even GANGRENE! 😝 Mr. Kim found a description for copycat Chick-Fil-A sandwiches using Aldi frozen fried boneless chicken breasts: Served with slaw and frozen fries. It was a good sandwich – we couldn’t find any brioche rolls, so we ended up with Hawaiian rolls – good, but too big. This chicken is actually very good – real pieces of chicken breast, crisp and thin breading, and not at all greasy. And then Mr. Kim read my mind. I almost never crave ice cream. I like it just fine, but if I want dessert, it is usually candy or baked goods of some sort. But after dinner I kept thinking about a hot fudge sundae. I didn’t say ANYTHING, but about an hour after dinner Mr. Kim says, “let’s go”. I asked where. He says, “ice cream”. Wow. So, a hot fudge sundae with chocolate chocolate chunk and nutty coconut ice creams:

Mr. Kim was working from home yesterday. His lunch: Tuna salad on honey wheat. Mine was olive and cream cheese on pumpernickel and baked beans:

Benton’s bacon and Wegman’s Cheddar bread w/ more butter than I should have!

<<<<HUGS>>>>

ET bagel with cream cheese and a rare treat banana (my potassium is a bit high, so I have to limit them):

@mgaretz - thank you for the tips. I will try the celery next time. I've never done that though I've used celery seed - that's so easy to overdo. Dinner and a movie with Jessica last night (at home). She requested a local BBQ/Seafood place. She had the She Crab Soup: Which had an overload of some flavoring – Mr. Kim thought celery seed. If we had been eating in the restaurant, we’d have sent it back. Also an extremely overpriced and ordinary lobster roll: But the yams were fantastic. Mr. Kim had the Hog Dog and potato salad: Bacon wrapped jumbo hot dog, deep fried with pulled pork, BBQ sauce and slaw. I had the “Wings” – smoked pork shanks that are deep fried and sauced and served with bleu cheese: I always think I’m going to try something else and end up ordering these. They are so good. My sides were corn pudding and scalloped potatoes and we shared an order of hush puppies: All delicious.

Mr. Kim died on that particular hill. 😁 Honestly though, there are tons of things I don't eat. I was that peculiar child who wouldn't eat cooked carrots, but adored Brussels sprouts and snails. I wish I was not as particular as I am, but I especially wish, just for convenience sake, that I liked peppers and mushrooms. It would make life so much easier. And now that it is required by law that everything has hot peppers in it 🙄I wish I was more tolerant of spicy stuff.

@scamhi – Goat cubes!! Wow. I bet I could find those at the Halal stores in my area. That would be the perfect way to find out if we like goat or not. @mgaretz – I like my egg salad just fine, but yours looks really good. Will you share your recipe/method. @liamsaunt – that view, that kitchen, the ability to order pizza that looks like that, and those local desserts. This landlocked southern girl would assume I’d died and gone to heaven. I made some dinners for the In Laws on Friday to take over yesterday. Colleyberry’s Shepherd’s Pie (a recipe I got years ago from @Marlene) - filling: My best friend says I’m not going to hell for using frozen VegAll instead of prepping fresh vegetables. I also made them some extra gravy. One of the finished ones: Unfortunately, no picture of the inside because we decided in the end to take both of the half-size ones to them instead of keeping one ourselves. When we got there, we discovered that they had only eaten about half of what we took last week. Sigh. I don’t know if they’d gotten someone to go get restaurant food for them or ate some of the frozen entrées they’ve got. They live out in the country and so Mr. Kim asked his stepsisters if they would check midweek from now on so I’d know how much food to prepare and take over. Green beans: Just canned ones, but with a big dollop of Benton’s bacon grease and a spoonful of brown sugar in it and cooked a long time. Pork tenderloins (browned in a pan and then bake/steamed in the CSO) with BBQ sauce. I forgot to take a picture until I’d sliced them both: Slaw: Also baked beans (no picture). We stopped on the way home at a Greek/Italian place and picked up dinner. Salads and cheesy garlic bread: Mine – Khristo’s Sampler: Souvlaki, pastichio, gyro, dolmades, spanakopita, and tiropita. The revolting horror of the bell peppers was immediately rectified when we got home and, happily, left no taint behind. Mr. Kim’s – Chef Micheal’s Baked spaghetti with meat sauce, meatballs, hot Italian sausage, pepperoni, & mushrooms topped with mozzarella cheese.

@BonVivant – the breads that you feature are just remarkable. I would love to have access to them. @kayb – those Italian green beans and tiny red skins are a favorite here. What is that at 7 o’clock? On Friday, I made lunch to take to the In Laws yesterday – just purchased cold cuts, chips, fruit, and tuna salad: I don’t know if anyone remembers that we were led to believe that they didn’t like anything but mayo in their tuna and when we got there we found out they were actually normal people and liked eggs and sweet pickles. That’s what they got this time.