Kim Shook

We Italians will fight over anything.

Here you go! Make sure to read the intro notes - I did some things differently from the original recipe.

Made collards again in the IP for Easter dinner: Seriously, the best collards I've ever made.

Breakfast on Good Friday was my MIL's Hot Cross Buns: She makes dozens of them every year and freezes them to distribute to family and friends. I think they are a Betty Crocker Cookbook recipe, but she's been making them for at least 45 years, so I'm not positive. They are delicious and freeze extremely well. We usually unearth a final bag in July and enjoy them then. I remember one time when my English stepdad @Ted Fairhead was alive, he was reminiscing about Hot Cross Buns that his mum made. It was NOT Easter time or even spring, but she made them for him all the same. It was when he was in treatment for cancer and didn't have much of an appetite, but he loved them and finished the batch in just a few days. This morning was more buns, a stale croissant (I'm making a breakfast casserole for dinner tonight and had one left over) and what will go into as many meals as possible in the next week: That's 18 hard boiled (well, actually steamed, but hard steamed sounds weird) eggs to use up! Breakfast:

Easter dinner at my MIL's was very good. Carrot soup, ham, au gratin potatoes (which were tender - an outcome I sometimes have trouble with), Caprese salad (not sure why she bothered with that - the tomatoes were tasteless), her fantastic yeast rolls, cucumbers with a rice vinegar/sesame oil dressing, roasted asparagus and a gooey, fluffy strawberry/cream cheese pie. Jessica contributed her delicious, classic deviled eggs (no picture) and I did Instant Pot collards which were just crazy good: Breakfast and lunch for the next week will consist of:

Oddly, the only one I've never had any trouble with was one of those super intricate Nordic Ware ones. But they are fairly heavy cast aluminum (which is one of my favorite things to cook in) and recommend brushing with oil, so that might explain it.

@Shelby - here's one at a good price and it looks identical. That happens to me all the time with Bundt cakes. In fact, I tend to do cakes that are supposed to be Bundt in tube pans and line the bottom with a ring of parchment.

I never, ever considered using nuoc cham as a dipping sauce for salmon cakes. What a fantastic idea! Thank you.

I am very lucky that my MIL offered to do Easter dinner this year. Pretty sure she is doing a ham, some kind of potatoes, asparagus and hot yeast rolls. Not sure about dessert. Jessica is bringing deviled eggs and I'm doing Instant Pot collards (I don't like asparagus). I usually love doing Easter dinner, but this year is tough. Too much going on with my mom's health and financial issues and for some reason Holy Week is kicking my butt this year. Church every night - plus we did the midnight to 1am shift sitting in church tonight (meaning last night, I guess), then I am helping Jessica do chocolate dipped strawberries for serving with champagne after the Easter vigil Saturday night. And it happens to coincide this year with my turn at shopping for supplies for 100 lunches that we take once a month to homeless shelters in town. I'll shop tomorrow, help make lunches Saturday morning and then stay at church to do the strawberries! So, collards only works very well for me this year! 😉

Like @David Ross , I made gougères. But I made them last week so they had gotten a little stale by today. Upscale Squirrel loves Jacques Pepin gougères:

Since this was the only thing we ate all day, I'm not sure what to call it, but as it was eaten near lunch time, we'll settle for that. So, Mr. Kim has this week off and yesterday we had one of our “Wild Hair” excursions. “Wild Hair” trips are spur of the moment things that we get a craving for – almost always centered around food. Just before I had my weight loss surgery, we drove up to Philadelphia (a 4 1/2 hour trip) so I could have a cheesesteak (I’d never had one and many people can’t eat that kind of thing after the surgery). Anyway, we were craving something I grew up eating. As a matter of fact, it was my mother’s craving when she was pregnant with me. The place is Mario’s Pizza House in Arlington VA (a good 2-3 hour drive depending on the traffic), home of sublime subs and pizza that I think you have to be a native to love: The aforementioned pizza: I got a coveted corner slice. I’ve never known anyone who didn’t grow up with it to like it, but I love it. I think of it more like pizza bread. The crust is thick and crunchy and chewy, the sauce just a thin swoop and the cheese is smoked provolone. The main event is the ham, steak and cheese sub: There is bread there under that huge pile of shaved rib-eye, ham slices and cheese. My toppings of choice are slaw (really just thinly sliced cabbage), catsup and mayo. Mr. Kim goes with pizza sauce and slaw. I ate maybe 1/3 of mine. It was satisfying and absolutely delicious. Utterly worth 6+ hours on the road. This is one of those places where you hear stories in line about when people started coming. Or that they have moved away and the first thing they do when they get back to town is come to Mario’s. I told a pregnant lady that her baby was getting his first taste of Mario’s the same way I did.

Recreated a gooey, cheesy chicken casserole that my sister used to make about 30 years ago: Just as much of a guilty pleasure as I remembered (actually - the only "bad" ingredient is Cheddar cheese soup). With broccoli, some Carolina Plantation Rice that I brought back from my Charleston SC trip, and yeast rolls from the store :

Both articles were wonderful. I am so thrilled for you, Rob and wish you the very, very best!!! Have a ball!

Coconut cupcakes with lemon filling for Mr. Kim’s co-worker’s BD: These are a cake mix fix up that I've made before. You use a white cake mix. I decided after making these this time that the cake mix was just too tender and soft and that it would work better with pound cake. They tasted very good, though.

Brats on the grill for dinner tonight: With kraut, corn and tomatoes with olive oil and saba: Sandwich was a double brat with one hour caramelized onions.

Doves look fantastic. But your pasta seems to be infected with a fungus of some sort.😉

They look a whole lot better than MINE!!!

@Smithy – there is cream of chicken soup in the recipe, but I’ve used that in other things that I like. That’s really the only processed thing – the recipe includes sour cream, Cheddar, hash browns, Swiss, hot sauce, pepper, onions (which I cooked before adding). The flavor is a little bland ( @heidih is on the right track with it being one-note). Also, the potatoes just don’t get soft enough. I like @kayb’s idea of par-boiling the potatoes. I do that with au gratin potatoes because I’ve never had luck not doing it. Tony Bourdain’s Gratin Dauphinois instructs you to simmer the sliced potatoes in cream and that was the first time I successfully made potatoes cooked in a sauce. Thanks to everyone for the help and questions! @Norm Matthews and @David Ross – gorgeous meals! Two of my favorite comfort foods – roast chicken and Swedish meatballs!

I've got to admit that African food is not my favorite. I always find it too spicy. Our church is home to an Ethiopian congregation that meets on Saturday mornings. To thank us for that, they made a feast for us one Sunday after church. I ended up eating the bread a a couple of non-spicy things. But Mr. Kim was in heaven!

@rotuts - thank you so much! You would have been welcome, wig or no. Our priest came with his wife and so did one of the gentlemen from our vestry. Our small city has an amazing assortment of restaurants for a place this size: all the expected ones plus Ethiopian, Balkan, West African, Colombian, Peruvian, Persian, etc. We are very, very lucky!

Our ladies group at church had an afternoon tea last Sunday. The food was a mix of purchased and homemade. Cucumber sandwiches on pumpernickel: Jessica’s Liptauer cheese on cocktail rye: Fruit & dip: Mini lemon cakes and petit fours (purchased): Chocolate dipped macaroons and American scones (purchased): Another lady’s Cheese Ribbon Sandwiches: No idea what kind of cheese spreads these are, but I do know she made them. Very good. Palmiers (purchased): Mini Jamaican meat patties: These were purchased, but made by a local Jamaican restaurant and really delicious. Chicken salad on mini croissants: Cheese gougères: We had way too much of some things and this time I made copious notes for next time.

Jessica made dinner the other night. Salad: What isn’t shown is the incredibly good salad dressing she made with olive oil, lemon juice and Saba. Also pasta: Olive oil, lemon zest and juice, Parm and basil. Delicious. Another night was breakfast for dinner. I tried one of those goopy, cheesy frozen hashbrown casseroles again: I guess I just don’t like them. But I can’t figure out why. I love goopy, cheesy casseroles. And I adore potatoes. But I’ve never found one of these that I care for. Scrambled eggs, those potatoes, asparagus for Mr. Kim and Father’s bacon, Served with the last of the Callie’s cheese and country ham biscuits from my Charleston SC trip: Hope the Fresh Market has this variety.

You need to get Ronnie to portion out the fries - larger hands=more fries.

Dear God, my all time favorite combination - peanuts and chocolate! ETA - LOL - I went to bookmark the recipe and realized I made these almost 11 years ago! I loved them and saved the recipe on my webpage. But I didn't think to coat them in chocolate. Must try that!

I am perilously close to 60, but grew up spending a LOT of time with my grandparents. Thus, I know more about 30's & 40's music and actors than I do about my own generation's.