Kim Shook

Welcome to eG! I'm sure you'll find what you are looking for here - we're a pretty diverse group and there are lots of knowledgeable folks here. Looking forward to your contributions.

If it is the Cabot one in the black wrap, I know that Costco Cheddar very well. It is pretty much the only Cheddar we buy. Your shrimp and chips look and sound great! And the “spatzle” are very familiar. When I was in college, my roommate and I would designate one day a month a “Greasy Day” and head off to eat family sized portions of fish and chips at Long John Silvers. Those little fried squiggles were a favorite and we always asked for extra. My roommate was an accomplished flirt and they were usually quite generous!

I'm loving everything, but especially the stuff from my favorite place in the world - England. Thanks so much for posting, @Pete Fred and @Elkyfr! I've saved the flapjack recipes, along with your notes, Pete and I wish I could nibble some of those chocolate ears, Elkyfr!

PP (pre-pandemic) the Fresh Market grocery store use to stock a serve yourself bin of them in the produce section. They were moist and tender and as big as my two thumbs put together. They were the perfect size for stuffing with nuts or cheese and wrapping with prosciutto. But when I bought them, I'd have to figure in "shrinkage", i.e. what I'd snack on myself! Here's the recipe. But what I haven't included, but should is that the jar of pickles I use is 24 oz. Kosher Baby Dills.

I've discovered that almost anything that is a batter works as a waffle. I do cornbread waffles and all kinds of muffin waffles. But my favorite is making waffles our of leftover stuffing and topping with gravy!

Here you go!

I somehow missed that. What a great method! We love JD sausage and I'll definitely be doing this.

This morning: A ham, egg, and cheese grilled sandwich. The egg yolk was perfectly jammy!

Can you explain this a little more? Are you referring to the 1 pound tubes of breakfast sausage? And you do them whole, in their packaging? Do you then slice and brown them as needed? I'm intrigued!

It does sound funny, but soy sauce is WIDELY used in the south and has been for years. Some of the old community or church cook books I have seen are from as early as the 1950s and it is the "secret ingredient" in many recipes - especially soups, stews, and sauces. The little NC town that my grandparents lived in has a BBQ place that has the most unique sauce I've ever tasted and it is rumored to contain soy sauce. I cook my beans the way my farm-raised TN/NC grandmother taught me (this is the second time of day she's come up here - she's on my mind for some reason) taught me: brown some fat pork (fatback, country ham, sidemeat, etc.) in a CLUB ALUMINUM pan. Add water and boil the hell out of it for a few minutes. Add beans (fresh or canned - no frozen), pepper, and a good couple of spoons of brown sugar. Boil the hell out of it again - adding water as needed - until they are soft. Taste and adjust seasoning. Turn down the heat and let quietly simmer, letting the water evaporate almost completely until the beans are shriveled and army fatigue green and glistening with pork fat. Good Lord. Now I'm hungry.

Thanks so much, Pete! One more question - does it really only make 12 cookies? If so, I'm thinking it might be a good idea to double the recipe - I usually share.

Always good when you can find a positive, though. Gingered apples sound like something we'd like a lot. Care to share? Those hoecakes remind of my farm-raised Tennessee/NC grandmother who could and did cook almost anything from scratch without a recipe. But the ONE thing she couldn't manage, no matter how many years she tried, was cornmeal dumplings cooked on top of a pot of greens. She said she grew up watching her mother make them at least twice a week, but when she tried they just dissolved into grit when she put them in the pot. I think the best cooks have challenges like your hoecakes and my grandma's dumplings. 😄

Breakfast today was just toast and grapes. What was special was what went on the toast: My beloved old favorite Little Scarlet and my new favorite Wenger grape jam! With some grapes to satisfy that fruit and veg thing 😉.

Last night: KFC slaw, pickly stuff, brisket, and smoked chicken thighs. Mr. Kim did a 3 day BBQ judging this weekend and they are allowed to take home anything they had in their tasting boxes. We have those and ribs and pork butt, as well. So we have a lot of BBQ to consume. Hoping to find the time to turn some of it into soup. The slaw is something I’ve been doing for a couple of weeks now to try to up my vegetable intake. It is low potassium, low fat, and no effort. Especially at lunch or when I’d prepared something for Mr. Kim and Jessica that I shouldn’t eat, I’d find that I wasn’t eating any veg. So, I keep the slaw on hand and grab a few spoonsful and I’m good. It’s working well so far. I’m sure I’ll get tired of it at some point, but since vegetables, by and large, tend to fall into the realm of “eat them because they’re good for you”, I’ll probably just keep doing the same thing – like taking medicine 😁.

They sound excellent. I, too, end up with tahini to use up fairly often and I'd love to try these! Is this the recipe? And does that recipe result in the thicker cookies that you preferred? (Love Benjamina!) When I'm looking to use up tahini, I sometimes make these tahini and almond cookies from David Lebovitz that were recommended to me years ago by @Darienne.

I am 63 years old. I don't have any faith that I will ever become the person who weighs pasta. I am an eyeballer from way back. My mother was an eyeballer. My grandmother was, too. After spaghetti night you could count on finding two things in the fridge: 1). a bowl of pasta and sauce all mixed up in the proper proportions (to be eaten cold for breakfast by the first person lucky enough to get downstairs in the morning) and 2). a bowl of nekkid pasta that the remaining sauce from the night before wouldn't stretch to cover. This would be dunked back in boiling water and buttered and salted for lunch or eaten cold with Kraft Zesty Italian dressing and a cut up tomato. I honesty believe that my family invented pasta salad.

I like all of your solutions and, for once, I actually HAVE all of the various things you recommend 😁! And, with a glass cooktop, the cushioning pads are probably safer for me than a plate. And you are SO right about how much those waffly pads hold water! It's like Niagara Falls getting them out of the dishwasher. LOL

It is surprisingly good.

I said the same thing many years ago to @racheld. I can only imagine what she thought when I informed her the Mr. Kim had given me a trip to see her for Christmas 😄! @Dante – I had to look up an Elena Ruz sandwich and it sounds great. I love that sweet/salty/savoury combination! @MaryIsobel – I’m so sorry to hear that your husband had to have surgery and is back in the hospital. Please know you are both in my prayers! @C. sapidus – I’m like your boys – when nothing else appeals and I need to eat a vegetable, I’ll slice up a cucumber. @Norm Matthews – I don’t think there is much more perfect a meal than fried pork chops with mashed potatoes and gravy! I’ll take green beans in place of the asparagus, though 😁. Also, I’m stealing your method of serving Pots de Créme! Finally, a chance to us my china teacups. Now, if I can just find them! @Shelby – your St. P’s day meal was all gorgeous, but you are killing me with those incredible potatoes! I’m envious of your soup dumplings – I’ve always wanted to try them! Once again, it’s been ages since I’ve posted. We celebrated our 41st wedding anniversary by going out of town from the 18th to the 21st and I’m trying to pull together all of those meals for a little travel/food blog I’m hoping to post tomorrow. Meanwhile, here are some other incidental dinners. A couple of weeks ago I tried a recipe that Shelby recommended for seafood enchiladas and served them with a salad, rice, and some Lidl bread spread with German cook cheese. The enchiladas tasted really good. But I think I must have messed up somehow because I ended up with 6 extra enchiladas and WAY too much sauce. They were unpleasantly gloppy. But the leftovers were dryer and much better. I put the extra enchiladas in the freezer and will make more sauce to serve with them soon. I will be much more careful with saucing them. I am so glad that I got the lobster base (Better Than Bouillon) – it is an excellent product. Thanks so much, @Shelby! Rice, slaw, and some ribs from a Chinese place that Jessica brought home. Mr. Kim’s dinner one night: Spinach, romaine, carrots, celery, ham, Swiss, and hard salami. I’m not sure I ate anything. The following night, I was still not feeling well. It was pick up the cheese share day and Mr. Kim and Jessica put a cheese, bread, and crudité dinner together. This was the only picture they took: 😂It ate a lot better than it photographed. Last night was breakfast for dinner. The tasty eggs we got at a farm near where we spent a few days: Mango, grapes, ham biscuit, sausage biscuit & gravy, and an egg: The ham was Benton’s country ham: This was the second package of Benton’s country ham we have had lately and this one was very different than the last one. This was much thinner – the slices were separated by paper – and MUCH saltier, but not as funky. I said when we had the last slice that I love their bacon, but really prefer Edwards country ham. Still feel the same. It wasn’t bad – just not the best.

As I said in another thread, because we’ve been out of town celebrating our wedding anniversary, I haven’t been posting lately. Trying to get caught up and do a small travel/food blog that I hope to finish and post tomorrow. Some recent lunches included two days in a row of leftover seafood enchiladas: PBJ, pretzels, and fried pickle flavored dip: Leftover fried shrimp from our anniversary dinner, with crackers and cheater cocktail sauce (catsup and horseradish cream). Trader Joe’s Lightly Smoked Salmon and an ET bagel. Bagel with smoke salmon cream cheese, onion rings, mandarin orange. I made these to take to church for coffee hour on Sunday: They was made with some purchased gingerbread dough that was set to expire in April. I added some golden raisins and rolled the balls in cinnamon sugar before baking. And since they ended up being the only lunch I ate, they belong here.

@liuzhou – your mushrooms remind me that I haven’t done mushrooms and bacon on toast for Mr. Kim in a long while. Growing up he’s never had anything but canned mushrooms and, being in a large family was limited to one piece of bacon on Sundays. It’s always been a toss up whether he married me for the butter fried fresh mushrooms or the piles of bacon I put on the table the first time I made him breakfast! I love the seeded buns that @Ann_T and @Duvel have served their breakfast sandwiches on. The only seeded ones I ever see are enormous – I wish I could find seeded slider buns. I have not posted in a while. We were out of town celebrating our 41st wedding anniversary the 19th through the 21st and I’m just now starting to get caught up. The breakfasts that we enjoyed on our trip will be in a little mini travel/food blog that I hope to finish and post tomorrow. A few recent breakfasts: Pumpernickel bagel with smoked salmon cream cheese and (frozen) onion rings. Weird, but I’m trying to work down the freezer and it appealed. Toasted baguette and hard cooked eggs. PB and Wenger’s Grape Jam on toast. The jam was something that we tasted at Sunday brunch when we were out of town. We loved it and came home and ordered it. We got a message that if we wanted to pick it up, she had 3 jars we could have (from last season). It was just a nice drive from us and Mr. Kim was still off work, so we drove out to get it and ended up buying some fresh eggs, too. Yesterday: Small ET bagel and sage sausage. This morning: Grapes, sausage biscuit, and a tomato biscuit. I’ll be careful of my potassium today after having the tomato, but it was just a few slices of a small Campari, so I think it’s fine. It was delicious!

I remember those! My mother had a huge coffee table ashtray. Very decorative. She was the cleanest woman I've ever met and we used to joke that she emptied the ashes before you'd even put your cigarette out! But those ashtrays were perfect for cocktail parties. Twenty or thirty people milling about - everyone with a drink and a smoke in one hand and a napkin and nibble in the other. Probably ten people at a time putting their cigarettes out. Even my mom couldn't keep up with that that she would never have stood for an overflowing regular sized ashtray! 😄

Me, too. You've seen my so-called counter space. But I usually have either one burner or at least the area in the middle of the 4 burners available. If I can't fit a dinner plate, I can usually fit a salad plate.

This is me, too. I cook sticky stuff, so the weight of the plate is GOOD. And it won't tip over like some other ones do. And I tend to use more than one utensil while cooking - there's lots of room on a plate.

Mr. Kim always comes home from a BBQ judging event with freebies. This was one of them this weekend: I wouldn't have known it if I hadn't seen it here first, @Smithy!