Kim Shook

I’m surprised to see that I’ve never commented on this thread. Unlike the vast majority of eG’ers (as far as I can see – I’ve scanned, but not read every single post), I really find most wooden spoons to be useless. The ones that are flattened off are good for scraping up things that tend to stick if you can’t use metal utensils. But, for ME, I find the rounded wooden spoons to be truly useless. Many recipes for making a roux call for using a wooden spoon to stir. This, for ME, results in a spirograph-like pattern in the bottom of the pan of metal pan and scorching roux. I know some people use them for serving. I find them useless for that, too. They are generally too thick to be effective for spooning most foods out of a serving dish. I DO like them for doing two-handed salad serving. I have an assortment of wooden spoons – mostly thanks to stocking stuffer elves – but what I really use are silicone utensils of various thickness and stiffness. I must reiterate – this is MY opinion. I’m not trying to convince anyone else of this.

Losing Maggie is so hard. When I first joined eG, I admired her from afar - I was almost overawed by her writing and elegance. Then I got to "know" her and loved her humor and tolerance and generosity. I remember saying once that she and @racheld were who I wanted to be when I grew up. Finally, she became a friend - she was so supportive when I was blogging and made me feel that I really could put words together and mean something. I loved hearing about her family and her Lou and Honor. No one was more thrilled than Maggie to become a grandmother. She seemed to draw people and love to her. I will miss my friend a lot.

Thank you all so much for your ideas and help. For one reason and another I am feeling terribly overwhelmed and a bit paralyzed right now. I am just feeling inadequate to the tasks that I have coming at me in the next month. So, I think that the very best I'm going to be able to manage right now is washing, zesting, and juicing all of the lemons and putting the zest and juice in the freezer for future use. I'm hoping this feeling doesn't last too much longer and then I'll be looking at all of those delightful sounding ideas! Please know how much I appreciate your help!

So, the pan works with any halved angel food cake recipe? I would love that! We don't ever finish a regular sized cake, but probably would a half size one!

My BIL sent us this box of lemons from his tree in AZ: There are 20 of them and they are huge. They are beautiful and I really do appreciate them, but I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do with all of them. He asked how many I wanted and I said 10. He sent a similar amount to us back in 2021. I made Katie Loeb's delicious limoncello with 12 of them and froze the rest. The frozen ones are still in the freezer and there is still a couple of cups of the limoncello in the fridge (we're not big drinkers). I'm sure that I'll be making some of @Tropicalsenior's microwave lemon curd and freezing it. And maybe a half batch of Katie's limoncello.

The easiest way I've found to steam the buns (if you don't have a Cuisinart Steam Oven - CSO) is to dampen a paper towel (enough to wrap around the bun(s)), wrap the buns and microwave for a few seconds - probably 10.

RE: Pancakes. A drive through an old cemetery this weekend:

@Smithy – those shrimp in the Bolivar are gorgeous! @Dave the Cook – your coating is perfect. I’ve saved your directions. We keep lots of frozen vegetables on hand. I love frozen corn and butter beans. I buy the bags of sliced carrots for soup because they get tender so quickly. I haven’t bought frozen broccoli or cauliflower in years, but since I’m not supposed to eat cooked from fresh of either of those, I tried the frozen kind and found that the quality of both have improved so much over the years. I get the microwave bag of broccoli and the seasoned cauliflower that you roast and we like both of them very much. I detest frozen green beans – I’ve never found a brand yet that gets tender. I’m usually a canned or dried legume person, but I’ve also tried frozen black eyed peas and field peas during the pandemic shortages and found them pretty good.

I think there is a huge difference between foods we haven't eaten and foods we won't eat. There are tons of foods I won't eat due to what I consider "moral" reasons (animals that are too people-like - monkeys, for instance - or animals that are endangered). I also perhaps more than the normal portion of prejudices against what I consider "weird" - bugs, snakes, brains, eyeballs. And I have issues with some textures (extremely sticky, gooey, gelatinous). I also don't need to eat spicy stuff to know I don't care for it or enjoy the experience. As far as haven't goes, I just this weekend when I was eating and enjoying a bowl of buttery grits realized I'd most likely never tasted cream of wheat and hadn't tasted oatmeal in my memory. I will gladly do either the next time someone eats them in my presence. I'm convinced I've never tasted good caviar. I'm pretty good about trying new things - as long as they aren't too odd. 😁

Hi, @ColinDunklin! Welcome to eG! I'd also like to hear a bit about you and get to know you. What kinds of foods are you interested in (cooking or/and eating) and where generally are you located? Dive in and enjoy! This is a wonderful place.

Frying is my favorite oyster preparation of all!

To be honest, I often just choose the store brand, but if they are stocked, I also like the Ball Park brand. Personally, I'm not a fan of the split top buns for hot dogs, but the regular Pepperidge Farm buns are good. They should be soft, but not completely squishy. I hope that helps a little.

Welcome, @CeejayB! I'm hoping you'll give us some info about yourself, too. I'm looing forward to your contributions!

Amazingly lovely! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! 🎂

The crust is one of those chocolate cooky crusts. You can make it or buy it (I bought mine). Here's the recipe. I have a hard time tossing the old Taste of Home magazines. I associate them so strongly with my grandmother.

@mgaretz – Mr. Kim mentioned that as soon as he tasted the ribs! @Norm Matthews – your chicken and dumplings look so good. I haven’t made them in ages and am wanting some now. @Shelby – good Lord, girl! Every single thing you made looks fantastic. @Duvel – you have made me crave katsu! Maybe next week. @MaryIsobel – I’m sorry that you and your husband are going through this. Hope the complications are resolved and he’s home with you soon. @&roid - Happy Birthday to Mrs. Droid. Celebrating with scallops and flatfish seems like the best possible celebratory meal! @Dejah – glad to hear you are feeling better. Your fish and chips looks perfect! @SLB – I thought I was conversant in all forms of frying mediums, but what the heck is “fish grease”. 🤪 On Friday I was not feeling well, so this ended up being my dinner: Friday: Fixed up locally made Brunswick stew. KFC slaw, frozen fries and onion rings, and some of Mr. Kim’s BBQ from the freezer. Last night was Mexican at a neighborhood place that’s become “our place”. Jessica’s Maya quesadilla with mushrooms, shrimp, beans, and cheese. With rice and a crema salad: Mr. Kim’s burrito filled with grilled steak, rice, and beans and topped with cheese dip. With a guacamole salad: I went full Taco Bell-style – a beef burrito and a crunchy beef taco with rice: I’d had potatoes with lunch, so I wanted to stay away from a lot of beans and tomatoes. There were beans on the plate, but I didn’t eat them. And I had very little salsa.

Post-church lunch yesterday at our favorite lunch counter. Mr. Kim’s corned beef on rye and their housemade beef vegetable soup: My chicken and rice soup (also housemade): My chicken salad sandwich: We joked that I basically had two servings of chicken and carbs. Lunch today was leftovers from Mexican out last night: One whole beef burrito and about half of the rice. The CSO does such a great job on leftovers.

Made a pie from a 2003 Taste of Home “Quick Cooking” magazine that I brought home from my NC Grandma’s sometime years ago. Cooking from those magazines brings back memories of her – she subscribed to all of the different Taste of Home publications and read them so carefully. I honestly don’t know that she ever actually COOKED from them, but she loved talking about the recipes and encouraging me to make things that she’d noticed. David Ross was also a fan of the magazine and I remember his excitement and pride when he had a recipe published. The pie was Peanut Butter Cup Pie: Just a toss together in 5 minutes, instant pudding, Cool Whip, freezer pie, but it was creamy and chocolatey. It needed more of a peanut butter punch so next time I’ll double the Reeses cups and add either a PB ribbon or some PB powder.

On Friday, I dropped Jessica off at work at her (temp 😔) job and ran errands for almost 5 hours without eating. Noticed a first at the Kroger bakery - a blackberry/lemon muffin. I thought it sounded like a wonderful combination. Well: Sigh. Today: Ham, egg, and cheese on a Lidl croissant. (More cheese and pig, @&roid!)

For me a burrito dog is good, but doesn't scratch the same hot dog itch that a dog on a bun satisfies. And I'm a bit of a purist when it comes to hot dog buns. Like BBQ, I like a fairly light, fluffy bun that is simple and doesn't impart a lot of its own flavor to the experience. I don't really want a pretzel bun or a sourdough bun or even a Chicago poppyseed bun. A potato bun is as far as I'll generally go. Keep in mind that I'm talking ONLY about hot dogs - a sausage on a bun is a whole other animal and all different buns are welcome.

Welcome, @RitchelD! Looking forward to your contributions and hearing about your experiences!

Thank you for posting this. Someone on FB posted it, but somehow left the "Caesar Salad" line off and I was completely confused.

@Katie Meadow and @Tropicalsenior have influenced me. This arrived today: 😄

In my quest to find my childhood eggrolls, I've sworn off the grocery store ones, (if I eat an egg rolls it's going to be from my list of restaurants) but I discovered in college that pan frying improves the grocery store ones quite a lot. Dinner last night was unusual. I was warming up some leftover sausage and Cheddar quiche when Jessica came in having had dinner at a Chinese place. She had some ribs she wanted me to try. I’ve had plenty of Chinese restaurant ribs before – they tend to be dry and not very meaty. These were amazing: Meaty, sticky, sweet, and tangy all at the same time. Tender, but not mushy. Honestly, if I ordered ribs and these came, I’d be thrilled. So, I ate two ribs standing at the sink and a couple of bites of quiche sitting down at the table. A few bites of slaw made my vegetable!

@Katie Meadow – You’ve definitely got my number😄! @Ann_T’s bread is always lovely, but toasted? I’m gone. @Anna N – I’m so sorry circumstances are forcing you to eat soft foods, But I must say that your eggs look absolutely perfect – not like invalid food at all! This morning: A grilled ham, egg, and cheese sandwich, an apple, and because I was having a little chocolate craving, a little German lebkuchen. I can’t remember if I’ve said this before, but the little BBQ place in my grandparents town was also a café – serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner (small town). My grandfather would get up at some ungodly hour to deal with the cows and my grandmother would fix him a full breakfast including scratch biscuits. By the time she went to work (she was a full time office manager) and I got up, he was ready for a little something: a couple of sausage biscuits, an egg sandwich, etc. If I got up by 9 or 10, he’d take me somewhere for breakfast. Sometimes it was the beer joint (a secret from my Presbyterian grandmother) which was awful – 7-11 level sausage biscuits that had been wrapped in wax paper all morning. The only eggs in the place were in brine in a giant jar on the bar! On the really good days, it was the BBQ/café. Everything made to order – local sausage, country ham. I grew up with toasted breakfast sandwiches – meaning eggs, pork, and cheese piled between two pieces of buttered toast. Good, but brittle. The breakfast sandwiches at this place were different and it took me until adulthood to figure out why. Instead of being on toast, they were grilled – like a grilled cheese with buttered bread and the fillings already inside the sandwich. It was revelatory and I’ve mostly done my breakfast sandwiches that way ever since my dense brain figured it out!