Kim Shook
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Posts posted by Kim Shook
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I've only ever had the little steamed burgers - Little Tavern, White Castle, White Tower, etc. - never tried a regular sized one. I love the little ones. so I'm guessing I'd like the bigger ones, too.
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Repurposed my breakfast from yesterday:
Still good!
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@liamsaunt – those scallop rolls you do always give me intense cravings. Jessica had a friend visiting from the Boston area (she lives on Nahant) and when I showed them to her, she flipped out. She’s not a lobster fan, so she was thrilled to find out she could do a scallop one when the rest of her family did lobster rolls. It had never occurred to her before! She’s the picky one I talk about below.
@Ann_T – I would absolutely call that pizza ‘pretty’. I’d give an awful lot to have access to a pizza like that.
@MaryIsobel – I’m so sorry! I’ve been in food slumps like that for weeks, even months at a time. Just stay with us at eG and you’ll eventually get inspired. @Shelby and I have found that looking back a few years or so at the topics that you post in helps, too.
@Shelby – everything looks so good, but I especially want to know about the pork and vegetables. Was that done in a slow cooker? And was that a extra thick chop or actually a roast?
Had to go out to the airport a few days ago to drop Jessica off to pick up a rental car and indulged in one of my no-so-secret guilty pleasures:
I have loved Long John Silvers since college when my roommate and I would indulge in a once-a-month grease-fest. I like the fish and chicken with chips and slaw. Plenty of vinegar and an occasional squeeze of truly terrible tartar sauce (I think it is just Miracle Whip). This particular location has only recently reopened for inside dining and everything was surprisingly good. Hot and cooked to order and not overly greasy.
Jessica has a friend visiting from Boston and she requested Mr. Kim’s BBQ one meal while she was here. She and Jessica ate out mostly, so this was our only time to feed her. She’s extremely picky. My planned menu was:
BBQ Buns Slaw Sauces
Baked Beans Jessica’s Mac & Cheese Chips and Dip
Ice cream Sundae bar for dessert
Well, it turned out when Jessica did a little digging that the only thing that she would be eating was the BBQ sandwich and ice cream. And the BBQ was iffy – she thought it SOUNDED good but wasn’t sure she’d like it. I suggested fries, which she said yes to and when I asked about vegetables, she said asparagus and broccoli. So, I added fries and asparagus to the table. Further turns out that when she said she liked asparagus and broccoli, she meant RAW. I roasted it. Sigh. She did eat a couple of spears, though. She ate a half a sandwich. I truly don’t know if she walked away from my dinner table unsatisfied or if she just has a small appetite. I have a horror of the first thing happening.
Mr. Kim had a Vestry meeting Tuesday, and so Jessica and I scratched a very specific itch. Dinner at our favorite Thai place. We shared the calamari and crab Rangoon (with actual crabmeat):
I had my favorite shrimp and pineapple fried rice:
I’ve tried over and over to make this at home, and it always ends up a bit bland and too sweet.
Jessica had the Tom Kha soup:
Incredible broth. I just avoid the mushrooms.
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Treated myself to my (not so) guilty pleasure of Long John Silver’s fish and chips the other day and had to share my pile of crispies/spaetzle/tenkasu:
They were very generous. 😁
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Yesterday:
Sweet potato roll with sage sausage, boiled egg, and a Mineola.
We have yet another situation of two few vehicles for our needs today. Jessica is starting a ‘can’t leave the dog for 4 days’ pet sitting job, Mr. Kim is working downtown, her friend from Boston is not flying out until later tonight. So, guess who is doing the car shuffle? I dropped Mr. Kim off at work, so that I could have the car. Jessica took the other car to pick up her friend and go to the pet sitting job – they’ll hang out there until later when I arrive to take her to the airport. I have no memory of signing up for all of this when I was informed this person was coming. Instead, I distinctly remember hearing, “It won’t be any trouble for you since she’s going to stay at a hotel” 🤐😄. ANYWAY, after I dropped Mr. Kim off at work this morning I treated myself to breakfast from an old favorite cafe, McLeans. Bacon, egg, and cheese on toast with their wonderful skillet potatoes:
For some reason – hours, location, whatever – we forget about this place and go rarely, and we need to change that.
This is the same place that I tortured Mr. Kim with when I was pregnant. I was sick basically 24/7 for the entirety of my pregnancy. Once every couple of weeks (after midnight, usually), I’d feel a little better and get a craving for biscuits and gravy. I’d convince him to get out of bed and take me to McLeans, which was then open 24 hours a day and near our city neighborhood. I’d plead with him to order food, too, even though he wasn’t hungry. I resembled Jabba the Hut and was too embarrassed to be seen eating alone. So, he’d order a cup of coffee and some toast and eggs. We’d wait a few minutes and the fragrant pillows of tender, flakey biscuits covered with creamy, sausage-y gravy would be set in front of me. The server would walk away and I’d look at Mr. Kim, my mouth starting to water (not in a good way), and I’d say, “Oh, God, I can’t eat this. Please make them take it away!” Have I ever mentioned that he’s an angel on earth and that nothing short of jail time would separate me from this man?
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Late lunch a few days ago:
The remaining thick slice of fried bologna from a sandwich that Jessica brought me the other day. On toast with BBQ sauce. I believe there were some Fritos involved, too 😉.
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13 minutes ago, heidih said:
BTW: for Kim on the taco crunch - a beloved Los Angeles food spot Tito's Tacos is famous for its hard shell tacos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2fzboe5BbE
It's funny - because of my age and having been brought up most of my childhood just outside of Washington DC, my first exposure to Mexican food was during the 7 months we lived in the San Fernando Valley in 1970. I remember buying a tray of taquitos from a little stand across from the movie theatre. The place had a couple of booths inside where you sat if your parents brought you, but if you were tooling around on your bike or going into the theatre, you bought them through a little window. They were filled with shredded beef or chicken and topped with a mild, translucent greenish sauce and were very crunchy. I believe that I had those before I had my first taco.
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Thank you all so much for the compliments! Setting a pretty table is always a fun project for me. The new thing that I really enjoyed this year can be seen best in the 3rd photo. That is a decorative paper vase cover. We found them at a little shop when we were on our anniversary trip. They come in a bunch of different designs and sizes (three different sizes come together) and you use them to cover up useful, but not terribly attractive "vases" for flowers. The largest one covered a tall drinking glass, the medium one covered a small canning jar and the little one covered a spice jar. They are very heavy, glossy paper and I'm hoping that they'll last a long time.
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I guess I'm not surprising anyone when I say I love Taco Bell and the Crunchwrap Supreme is my go-to. I don't find anything creepy about food development on a corporate scale. There's lots of creepy stuff in advertising and in corporate structure, but figuring out the science of how food works for different modes of eating doesn't seem at all creepy to me.
I will never understand the sectioning off of different versions of food. If I love an "authentic" soft corn taco with carnitas, I shouldn't like a crunchy corn taco with ground beef and iceberg lettuce. If I love NC pork, do I distain TX beef brisket? If I enjoy "authentic" Chinese food from the tiny little place in the Asian neighborhood in my city, should I stay away from my beloved crab Rangoon and General Tso? My mother insisted that blue crab should only be eaten plain - picked or, at most, in a crab cake. I used to tell her that she was missing a lot by policing her food so stringently.
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On 4/17/2023 at 11:10 AM, Porthos said:
The stouter pitcher reminded me of the animated Koolade pitcher from their ads back when. I'd buy that on in a heartbeat.
You mean like this?:
😁
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I knew that technically fried chicken shouldn’t have been at the Seder, but there are SO many cloudy areas (I found restrictions about matzoh balls and recipes for matzoh ball soup), that I just said the heck with it – no shcllfish, no pork and no leavening. LOL
Funny to find so many rosemary-averse cooks at a food site. I’m one, too. I love the smell and don’t mind a tiny bit in certain foods, but a little goes a VERY long way, I find.
Things got away from me this year (what else is new?) and I was just overwhelmed. I was still cooking and cleaning and decorating at 9am Easter morning and that is NOT me. Didn’t manage church because I still had so much to do – even after 2 almost sleepless nights in a row. But dinner was good and what our guests could see of the house looked fine. I posted the meal HERE on the dinner thread.
The table:
Each place setting had these little treat baskets:
Jessica did really well with her food. She didn’t complain or resist making half recipes to cut down on our normally huge amounts of leftovers. She got the timing fairly well and she worked herself pretty well into my timeline. And we didn’t argue. Mr. Kim predicted we’d bitch at each other and embarrass him in front of his family (I grew up in two very loud ethnic families, so I embarrass him on a regular basis). We secretly agreed to prove him wrong, and we did. It was actually fun not fighting.
Still on an about food note, my MIL gave me these placemats for an Easter hostess gift:
Could not be any more ‘me’!
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I have the one from @Smithy's post. Different name, but same thing. I have terrible arthritis in my knife hand and when it flares up, this device makes it possible for me to cook. Cleaning is harder than a knife, of course, and depending on what I'm cutting, I may have to use a good bit of elbow grease, but it gets the job done.
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On 4/15/2023 at 12:25 PM, Anna N said:
I am of the opinion that eggs are just fickle. Just when you think you have it all figured out they make a fool of you.
My mother used to say that chickens and eggs had minds of their own and cooked how they wanted to at any given time! 😄
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@Norm Matthews – I will have to try that trick with the deviled eggs and the ranch powder. I know we’d love that.
Easter dinner. Predinner snacks were an assortment of pickles/olives and these seasoned mini-saltines:
We found the cracker seasoning mix in a little boutique in Staunton while on our anniversary trip. It’s from a company called Savory Fine Foods. They have a few different flavors. This one was just a tad spicy with a little onion, garlic, and cheese flavor. You mix the dry powder with oil and then add the crackers to the seasoned oil in a large ziplock bag and toss it around for a day or so. Really good. I’m planning to order a bunch for Xmas gifts. Next time, though, I’ll measure it out by weight and make a half batch.
The buffet:
Ham:
Like others I’m not a fan of spiral sliced hams. I do like the ease of carving that a boneless ham offers. We buy Costco’s Master Carve boned out ham. It is nothing like a canned ham or even other boneless hams. To me it is indistinguishable from a regular city ham in taste and texture – just incredibly easy to carve. Done in the slow cooker – patted down with a brown sugar/mustard/pineapple juice crust and cooked on a rack over a puddle of Co’cola. Not pictured was @Tropicalsenior's amazing mustard sauce. I am no longer allowed to serve ham without the sauce 😁!
Jessica’s deviled eggs didn’t get their own picture (though they are in the buffet shot), but they were excellent, as always. She really has a way with them. Mine are good (everyone’s are GOOD) but hers are fantastic.
@Shelby’s cucumbers:
Which Jessica requests with every special meal.
Broccoli salad:
Which I never get quite right – this time I didn’t make enough, and I had WAY too many chopped pecans! It was still delicious and even my BIL requested a second serving (he hates mixed up things).
Jessica’s Watergate salad:
Jessica’s pineapple casserole:
Creamy Dijon Garlic Potatoes Dauphinoise:
Which tasted great, but my old dauphinoise enemy – hard potatoes – showed up. Mostly they were fine, but there were still some that were harder than they should have been. I will make adjustments next time.
Jessica’s A-fricking-mazing mac and cheese:
Not only is it one of the best I’ve ever tasted, but it tasted even better leftover and steamed in the CSO.
Southern green beans:
Earlier this week, I found a chair to replace a broken down one in our family room. One of Jessica’s friends very kindly offered her vehicle and her muscle to help us get it home. Afterwards, to say thank you, all four of us went out for Chinese for dinner. We shared the crab Rangoon (real crab) and an order of their fantastic ribs:
The others got soup which I forgot to take pictures of and I got an egg roll:
Our guest got coconut chicken. I was happy she offered me a bite because I love it but it’s too sweet for me to have an entire portion of:
Jessica got the Beef Chow Fun:
I got the Moo Shu Pork:
It was odd, every part of this dish was good – crisp vegetables, tender and tasty pork, tender pancakes, etc. – when it was all wrapped up and eaten it lacked something. Not enough richness. When I ate it at home the next night, using our bottle of hoisin, it was MUCH better. That had to be the difference, I think.
Mr. Kim was not thrilled with his:
(Sorry for the blurry picture). I think this was the Szechuan beef. It wasn’t spicy enough for him, of course, but he said besides that, it just didn’t taste good to him. I tasted the beef and it seemed ok to me.
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@Elkyfr – I’m loving all of your chocolate critters and those transparent strawberry thingies!
@rotuts – I remember boxes of frosting. I used to use the fluffy white before I realized how easy 7 Minute Frosting was to make from scratch. Apparently, you can still buy the mix, but I don’t remember seeing it lately.
@RWood – your cookies are exquisite. There is just no other word.
@Pete Fred – all of those fritters look fantastic. I’d be diving right in!
Our church has a champagne reception after the Saturday night Easter Vigil. Jessica did the chocolate dipped goodies again this year. She handled it very well and with very little help from me. The table:
Strawberries and marshmallows:
Matzoh with sprinkles and with nuts:
Marshmallows and pretzel rods:
Easter dessert was Jessica’s idea, but I simplified it. She came up with this elaborate lemon-blueberry cake with lemon icing recipe. Scratch cake, filling, and icing. I did a cake mix fix-up with a white cake mix, Dream Whip, and lemon zest 😁. I filled it with a jar of @Tropicalsenior's lemon curd that I had in the freezer and topped it with canned icing infused with lemon zest:
It tasted great. But, as always, my berries sank:
This always happens to me, no matter what maneuvers I take 😡.
One of Jessica’s friends helped us pick up a new chair in her large vehicle (all we have are two little sedans – a Hyundai and a 1998 Mazda). As a “thank you” we took her to dinner and I baked her this loaf:
I didn’t have much time, so I tried to do a poundcake mix fix-up with mashed bananas and chocolate chips – something I’ve done with banana bread with great success. But, for some reason, it wasn’t a great success. The recipe made two loaves and I kept one so I could see if it was good. It was just a bit solid, which you can see. Kind of gummy and the banana flavor is lacking. Ah, well. That’ll learn me!
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On Monday, freed from my Lent promise of giving up restaurant food and having the car (I dropped Jessica off at work), I treated myself to a steak and cheese and fries from Mr. Submarine. The enormous sub:
That is much wider than my very large dinner plate. It was so good. Needed a couple of adjustments – more cheese and more condiments, but it was really good. The fries were a real indulgence, but I didn’t eat them all and I was careful the rest of the day. They were hot and crisp – thin like McD’s:
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@blue_dolphin – I have to say that I love the looks of the poached egg that you deemed “overcooked”. For me, the perfect poached or soft boiled egg is one where the yolk is the consistency of poorly cooked jam – gooey and slow flowing. I like a sexy, slow motion yolk 😄!
Yesterday’s breakfast was all Easter leftovers. Sweet potato roll:
Ham:
Easter egg:
Some of @Tropicalsenior's delicious mustard sauce:
So good:
Inspired by @Shelby's gorgeous looking egg on her Spam and egg sandwich, I made an egg and ham English muffin. I sat down to look at eG, saw that drippy yolky goodness and got right back up again to make my breakfast! Slightly overcooked the egg, but it was still good:
Thanks for the inspiration, @Shelby!
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18 hours ago, Shelby said:
Have you done that many at the same time before?
I only did a dozen at a time - just like always. I have one of the stackable racks.
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Ok, here's another egg mystery. I did 3 dozen eggs for various things last week - devilled eggs, dyeing, and just having around. About half of them were nearly raw. And they were mixed - same batch and some were done and some were almost raw. I know they were in the same batch because I did a dozen at a time and put them back in the carton when each batch was done. I did them on LOW pressure for 5 minutes, left naturally release for another 5 minutes and then released the pressure. What in the WORLD????
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This conversation is reminding me so much of my daughter talking about the MLM scams and pyramid schemes like LuLaRoe going on right now. At least with Tupperware you got a really good (if expensive) product that seemed to last forever.
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23 hours ago, lindag said:
Giant enabler alert!
I have one of these in my cart.
I know! My first thought was, "Dammit, Mark"! 😄
@Raamo – I’ve always wanted to try bastela and never had the opportunity. Looks really good.
Happy birthday to Madam @TicTac!
@NadyaDuke – I love using sturdy spinach for cooking. My favorite is savoy, but that is impossible to find in any grocery store in my area. I’m determined to make an effort to find a farmer that grows it this year.
@Shelby – I’m making that broccoli salad for dinner tomorrow. And your creamy cucumbers – special request from Jessica.
Found a great price on boneless short ribs and did a quick IP cook with hoisin. Served on ramen noodles w/ blistered sugar snaps:
It was so satisfying and it felt good to serve a balanced REAL meal.
Mr. Kim was out playing poker one night, so Jessica and I had cheese fondue with all the dippers. A not very interesting photo of the fondue:
This is a Lidl product. It is shelf stable and tastes great to us. Various dippers, crudité, and pickly things:
Ham, tiny roasted potatoes, cornichon, cocktail onions, dill pickles, bread, radishes, and cukes.
Monday night no one wanted much dinner and they definitely didn’t want it at dinnertime, so we all just wandered into the kitchen at various times and grabbed something. Mine:
That’s a gorgeous Mineola, some Cheddar cubes leftover from my church coffee hour hostessing, an English muffin, and a horrible photo of some soup I made from Mr. Kim’s BBQ judging leftovers, some boxed stock, a bag of Veg All, and some Bisto:
Tasted very good, though.
Thursday night, in what has become a tradition in the last few years, we dyed Easter eggs and ate pizza – take out this year:
Along with some crudité:
Our efforts were fairly perfunctory this year:
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Good Friday breakfast compliments of my MIL:
Her best batch ever, Mr. Kim says. They are fantastic!
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On 4/6/2023 at 7:20 PM, heidih said:
@Kim ShookI meant to ask if the KFC slaw is a knock-off you make a big bath of or from the store. I make great slaws but for pure comfort KFC hits the spot.
It's the real thing. We have a KFC less than a mile from our house. We've lived here for almost 30 years and I think it's the only thing I've ever purchased from there. It is perfectly good (not as good as homemade, but better than any grocery store deli), inexpensive and makes a no work vegetable when I need one. A few spoonsful at lunch along with an apple and I've done my veggie/fruit duty! 😁
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@Dejah – I love “As Time Goes By” and I adore beans on toast. With this current low-potassium diet, I’m missing baked beans, pintos, kidney beans, butter beans, black eyed peas, etc. – all my favorites. And that brand is exactly what I buy! And I must admit, even though I was raised with an English stepdad and 3 English stepsisters, I’m with your husband on the beans – the British ones are just too tomatoey and bland to my palate. I like the punch of molasses and pork.
A food truck that specializes in lobster rolls came to a local food hall and I guess since it is possibly a one time only occurrence, Mr. Kim decided to ignore Lent and surprised Jessica and me by taking us there for lunch. It ended up being a 45 minute wait, so while he was in line, I went to a stand that was selling smashburgers and got a Smashed Chopped Cheese for us all to share:
This was fantastic – smashed burger, American cheese, fried onions, and their special sauce.
He got lobster rolls and also crab fries:
The lobster was very good, but could have used a lot more butter. The crab fries were ok, but kind of pointless, to be honest. I mean, who wants their crab diluted by fried potatoes, bacon, ranch, and cheese? They are also touted as “Boardwalk Fries” which they are absolutely NOT. They are some kind of batter dipped fries.
On Sunday we had lunch at our old favorite Chinese place. We both started with Hot and Sour soup:
It was delicious tasting, as always, but it was so incredibly peppery that I couldn’t eat it without choking and coughing. It was so weird – H & S soup never bothers me. But as soon as a sip slipped down my throat, I would choke. Mr. Kim got to finish it for me.
He got the double fried hot pork:
Really good. I love the way that they fry the cabbage – still crisp and not funky at all.
I had the orange chicken:
Monday:
Tuna salad on a bun and pretzels. What you can’t see are the 4 spoonsful of slaw that made my vegetable!
Yesterday:
Ham, salami, and Swiss on a pita with an apple.
Today:
Last night our church had a Seder Dinner/potluck. Lots of churches do Seder dinners to teach us about our ancestors in faith and to promote understanding and tolerance. The chicken and cholent were leftover from last night and the slaw is the KFC stuff I keep on hand.
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Wasting food is a "sin"
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted
This is good to know about China. I've read a lot in the past about Europeans looking down on Americans for doing this. I found this blog post from 2008 from an American heaping contempt upon her fellow citizens for "doggy bags". I think (hope) things are changing in Europe and that's good. I have to say that I love when a restaurant packs up my leftovers for me and presents me with a neat package. I mean, if we are trusting them to cook our food, can't we trust them to wrap it up? Mr. Kim and I recently had this discussion - I really find it ungracious and unwelcoming when a restaurant hands you a container and a plastic bag and basically says, "go for it". I end up contorting myself trying to get the food into the container with a dirty fork and not getting it on me or the floor. I end the evening feeling ungainly instead of taken care of. My favorite thing is when they whisk it away and bring you a claim ticket and you pick up your bag when you leave.