Kim Shook

Y’all are posting some incredible lunches lately. I am especially drawn to the grilled sandwiches and the seafood. @blue_dolphin – no need to downplay egg salad and carrots. Various salads – egg, tuna, ham, etc. are a favorite with us and carrot and celery sticks are, too! Lunch a few days ago was trashy all the way – fried bologna and cheese with yellow mustard on white bread and frozen crinkle cuts: It was delicious. Friday will forever be known as our Pandemic Anniversary 😉. This was our 38th wedding anniversary. The original plans included England – the north this time: York, the Lake District, Durham. (Of course it turns out to be a VERY good thing we didn’t go ahead with those plans and tickets and such). But my mother freaked out at the idea of us going. So, we substituted 4 days in Baltimore. Mr. Kim’s work cancelled his leave except for our actual anniversary day. We decided to just spend the day together and have dinner at Lemaire at the Jefferson hotel, since we’d never been to the restaurant. It is considered Richmond’s finest and most elegant restaurant. They called Wednesday (2 days ago) to say they were closing for the duration. Sigh. But we ended up having a wonderful and pretty much isolated and safe anniversary anyway. We decided on a long drive and dinner at home whenever we got there. We ordered box lunches at Sally Bell’s. Sally Bell’s is a Richmond institution. A sandwich shop that has been open since 1924 and won the James Beard Foundation American Classic award in 2015. They may have added a few cupcake flavors over the years, but I know the menu is basically the same as when the shop was located behind my dorm in the late 1970’s. We ate our lunches in our car in a Williamsburg hospital parking lot. All the shopping centers and parks and historical sites were closed. Mr. Kim got the country ham roll, potato salad, and lemon filled cupcake: I got olive and cream cheese on white, macaroni salad, and a toasted almond cupcake: All the box lunches include a deviled egg and a pecan topped cheese wafer. We even did a reenactment: 😁 Lunch yesterday was lazy person’s egg salad: Spread Duke’s and mustard on both sides of the bread, put 2 IP eggs in the egg slicer, pile them up on the bread and add salt and pepper. Delectable.

Dug out some of the fruited bread I made for Xmas gifts out of the freezer on Saturday: French toast, bacon, sage sausage and fruit salad: With a little cinnamon sugar sprinkled on after soaking, this bread makes excellent French toast. Yesterday was scrambled eggs and sausage links: I was glad to see the last of these Kroger Simple Truth sausages. They are tough no matter how carefully I cook them. Along with some frozen croissant from Trader Joe’s: Today: Freezer bagel, a couple of slices of bacon I forgot I had, an egg cooked in a ring and some deli American cheese. I am set for the day!

We have 3 freezers - the bottom of our French door refrigerator in the house, an upright and a chest - both in the shed. We try to keep an inventory up to date, try being the operative word. I am pretty good about adding new items to the list, Mr. Kim less good and both of us are lousy at marking things off when we take things out of them. Since knowing what we have is especially important now, we updated the lists yesterday (ignore the date - I keep forgetting to change it when I update - and the silly names Mr. Kim gives to the outside freezers): I have lots of stuff I need to use!

That is so amazing that you mention these, Mitch. I was raised on these very sausages and haven't seen them in the stores for years. Just recently I looked for them online and found that they are sold on the other side of the river in a couple of stores. Folks here tend NOT to cross to the other side of the river, so I haven't made the trip yet. I found something that I thought was the same - Simple Choice frozen raw sausage links - but were not. At least I hope they weren't - I haven't eaten Jones in years!

My very favorite ones are @Norm Matthews' Korean-Style Wings.

The freezer dive is worthwhile always! Our 3 freezers (😟) are due. We always start with such good intentions and then a month later we are tossing stuff in, Willy-Nilly. I call BS on those whole lemon recipes. I tried one awhile back from Emeril for a lemon butter sauce. It made the most perfect, velvety sauce I'd ever made. But it was too bitter to eat.

I had a mysterious noise today and I think it came from the CSO. Wondering if it is familiar to anyone else. I'm putting up a picture of the area of my kitchen that the CSO is in: So, going left: sink, dishwasher/CSO, pantry with shelves and washer/dryer. I was standing at the sink washing dishes. I had taken something out of the CSO and it was closed and cooling down. The dishwasher/washer/dryer were NOT running. I heard a terrific BANG! It was definitely to my left. It sounded either like something heavy and glass had exploded in the dishwasher or CSO or like that sound that cheap sheet pans make when they suddenly warp in the oven. I looked in everything and found nothing to explain the sound. I even went outside and looked at the wall behind this area. I was convinced when I heard it that it came from the CSO. But nothing in there looks different. Any ideas? Thank you!!!

Yup. We are huge college basketball and UVA fans. Our wedding anniversary is March 20th and March Madness has always figured into our anniversary trips. We had to cancel our Baltimore trip (Mr. Kim’s leave was canceled) this year before they even cancelled the tournament.

I agree. No one ever gets it dark enough for me. @Ann_T – I, too, am a peeler. My grandmother would have been appalled at anything else and considered me shiftless. 😁 I am sitting here facing a fourth night of turkey and all the fixings and I am positively transfixed by these breakfasts. I am especially drawn to @liuzhou's pork cutlet baguette, @Ann_T's back bacon and egg sandwich, and @robirdstx's poached egg on the hash brown patty. Jessica has already requested that one, @robirdstx! On Sunday, when I was prepping our March Christmas dinner (see the dinner thread), Mr. Kim went and got us bagels because while we may be under a national emergency, we aren’t animals😝: BEC on an ET. Yesterday I had fruit salad and a roll leftover from Sunday’s dinner:

@CantCookStillTry – I do remember your post about tacos because I think I agreed with you and even added that I feel the same about entertaining with hamburgers and hot dogs and all the fixings. Just a giant PITA! 😁 Since we don’t do a big, traditional Christmas dinner anymore, I promised Jessica one in March. The promise was made before any idea of the pandemic, but I managed to pull it off and find everything I needed to make the meal. So, Sunday night was Christmas dinner in March. It was just the three of us and my MIL. Table set for dinner: Pre-dinner nibbles: Cream cheese and pepper jelly w/ Triscuits. With advice from @btbyrd and @gfweb on the sous vide thread, I decided to sous vide the turkey: It was the best turkey I’ve ever made. Incredibly moist and tender and flavorful. I got my dressing started the night before: White bread, cornbread, saltines, onion, celery, herbs. Mixed until they smell “right” and left overnight. On Sunday I added all the wet stuff – eggs, chicken stock, and oysters - to the bread mixture for the dressing: Dressing done: Twice baked cheese potatoes: Cranberry-orange sauce: Fruit salad: Sweet Potato Souffle: CSO broccoli done bake/steam mode with lemon juice and zest: Gravy: Rolls from a Greek/Italian place near us: Why do Greek restaurants always make the best bread? Dessert was all the Christmas goodies from out of the freezer – sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies: Chocolate chunk shortbread: PB cookies: Peanut brittle, cinnamon pecans, and toffee: Iced almonds: Plated: Actually, this awful looking plate was Mr. Kim’s leftover plate the next night. We were too piggy to remember to take a picture the night of the meal.

@Anna N - damn. Now I have to worry about floating vegetables. Do you use vacuum bags or ziplock? Also, have you tried putting a heavy plate over it? Well, I owe a huge thank you to @btbyrd and @gfweb! I ended up doing a mash up of the advice I got from both of you. I carved up the raw turkey – took the breasts off with no bone, but skin still attached and took the leg quarters off also with the skin attached. I put salt and pepper on them, placed them in vacuum bags (leg quarters in one bag and breasts in the other), placed some sage leaves on the bottom of each piece and vacuum sealed the bags: The leg quarters went in at 148F at midnight – and came out at 5:30pm the next day. The breasts went in at 1pm, same temp, and came out at the same time. I seared all four pieces in ghee in a large cast iron skillet and they were gorgeous: The breast meat just glistened: Every bite was incredibly moist and tender and delicious. I decided on 148F because I know that we prefer the texture of poultry when it is a little more done. This was not just the best turkey I’ve ever made, but perhaps the best I’ve ever tasted:

LOL! I love how she laughed at herself.

This is a great idea, Anna! Mr. Kim is an associate director of his state agency and only the associate directors and the director of his agency are working in the office - all staff is working from home. He took in some of the strawberry/almond pastries I made on Monday and not one person touched them. I should check with family and see if something would be welcome before making a batch of something.

Kinda surprised folks aren't baking more. A combination of some really good coupons and some stuff that I needed to use up resulted in these: Just giant whomp crescent rolls, cream cheese, strawberry preserves, 10X glaze, and sliced almonds. Pretty good. We shared one, saved one for Jessica and will send the others to work with Mr. Kim Monday.

Sorry to take so long to pass this along! Mr. Kim was fascinated with your ribs and laughed at the name. He said that he didn't want to comment on your website until he does them himself. So he asked me to pass on this message: Mr. Kim says: Mark, I'm a barbecue guy, and everything about this approach screams WRONG. But I cannot argue with the results. They look awesome! Nice work, I cannot wait to try this.

Bought them. They are just fine egg noodles. Probably Pennsylvania Dutch, Manischewitz or Mueller's brand. I love the tender slippy-ness of them. Plus, they tend to stay on the spoon when lifted out of the soup.

Well, it might all be nonsense, but I can't argue with success: 😁

I adore home-canned green beans! I really need to do some. In spite of our vow to give up eating in restaurants for Lent, we've ended up in them for one reason or another lately. Mr. Kim had a poker night on Thursday, so I opted for Ruhlman's chicken soup and a grilled cheese:

A couple of days ago - IP eggs and Dave’s Killer raisin bread: This morning was a rare breakfast at home on a Saturday for the two of us. Mr. Kim chose fried eggs (cooked too hot, too fast) and bacon: Still ended up with runny yolks and he was satisfied. I chose cinnamon toast with Dave’s Killer raisin bread and bacon: I about burnt the toast, too. 🙄

Not looking forward to grocery shopping today. But I kind of have to go. Since I don't do a traditional Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve anymore, I had promised Jessica the meal this weekend. Already prepped some stuff and started the turkey thawing before realizing how dire the grocery situation would become (we did our emergency stocking a couple of weeks ago). So I need some fresh stuff for fruit salad and veg for Sunday. We'll see what we end up with. I told Jessica that we might end up with what my grandmother (who has set the standard of what is a proper Christmas feast in our family for at least 80 years) served as fruit salad: canned fruit cocktail and Miracle Whip! 😊

@liuzhou - that looks delicious! I am admiring the perfect coating on that chicken and the perfect color of those chips! Made a batch of @Michael Ruhlman's Rotisserie Chicken and Leek soup. Veggies and chicken scraps getting ready to simmer: Leeks sautéing: Lovely 45 minute stock: Leeks and chicken: SOUP: So easy and so good. It has a really deep, rich flavor. I don’t think anyone would suspect that this was a “shortcut” soup. I added some tiny egg noodles and a little parsley. This was one of the recipes that I tested when some of us at @Marlene's website, Cooks Korner, were testing recipes for his cookbook “Twenty”. It has been a favorite since then.

I'm lapping myself. I've gained 35 lbs. since last fall and I'm sure that eating breakfast as often as I do has a lot to do with it. I never used to eat breakfast and was able to pretty much maintain my post gastric bypass weight loss. I wouldn't even think to eat until after lunch time. Now, as soon as I get downstairs, I'm looking for food. 😠 Today's breakfast was Dave's Killer Raisin bread with a PB schmear: It could have used a LOT more raisins and cinnamon, but it is very good bread.

He was so traumatized by them that he went back to the store and bought a bag of dark chocolate ones to heal himself.

I’ve had a curse on my CSO hard cooked eggs lately. After months of success, I haven’t been able to get them to peel cleanly for the last few dozen I’ve done. So I decided to try the IP method again: 1 cup of water in the bottom of the pan, 5 minutes on high pressure, 5 minutes on natural release, then quick release and take the eggs out immediately. I don’t do an ice bath because I suspect that tightens up the membrane (which is probably nonsense). It worked great. Perfectly cooked egg and both the hot one and the cold one I peeled worked perfectly: I realize that my results probably have more to do with the eggs than the method of cooking. But these were lovely.

Threw this together yesterday: Scrambled eggs with off the bone ham and a leftover Popeye’s biscuit. That biscuit was hard and dry! Sliced, heavily buttered, and toasted in the CSO, it was fantastic.