Kim Shook

That's the one I have and I love it. If I just need a little bit of something diced, I use a knife, but at holiday time when I need large amounts of onions and celery for stuffing, it's great. I have used it for potatoes and carrots - they have to be sliced first, of course, but it does save on all of the little cross cuts needed for dicing. What folks need to keep in mind is that not everyone has full use of their hands. You are blessed if you do. I'd love to be able to be the kind of wiz with a knife that I used to be, but age and arthritis has forced some adjustments. And this tool is one of them. I'm really glad it exists.

As I mentioned in the Breakfast thread, health issues have kept me away from eG lately, but I have been trying to at least read things and, as always, am made ravenous by everyone’s cooking! Mr. Kim has been responsible for a lot of the meal procurement in the last month or so, so we’ve eaten a lot of meals out! Some recent ones - Jessica and I got lunch at a place we’ve been eating at for many years – through different cooks, managers, and even owners. It is still one of our favorite places. Fish sandwich and their incomparable spoonbread: I got the French dip and fries: The jus was so good – like someone had actually made it, rather than just opened a can of beef bouillon like so many places do. I actually made tuna salad: I bought a can of albacore in oil. It was first time in forever that I bought tuna packed in oil and maybe the first time ever buying albacore. Growing up, I remember that my mother’s family always used albacore – knowing them, I would guess it is because it tastes less fishy. I was just curious about both – I remember liking their version of tuna salad and everyone always says how much better oil packed is than water packed. It was good tuna salad, but a little bland. I think I prefer light over albacore. I’m finding it a bit dry. That seems like a weird thing to say with all the pickle brine and the mayonnaise, but the tuna itself feels dry in my mouth. I’m thinking it has to be the albacore. Not sure what being oil packed adds. Another lunch was some of that sad tuna salad on a bun with some really good slaw from a local independent market: (Please excuse the 'bites' - I was starving.) Mr. Kim had to go downtown to his office a couple Saturdays ago and I tagged along. Stopped at our favorite pizza place for lunch: Lovely crust on the bottom: Still my favorite slice in Richmond. And we shared a steak and cheese: One of my culinary embarrassments is that I love Taco Bell. They are doing a “collab” with Cheez-It (another junk food love of mine), so I had to try something: It’s a tostada – regular tostada toppings on a giant Cheez-It. The flavor was great, but the Cheez-it was very crumbly. They should have made it crisp – more like an actual Cheez-It. Weekday lunch with Mr. Kim at our favorite drug store café. He had the club and rings: I had a Sailor (a Richmond VA based sandwich – pastrami, knockwurst, and Swiss grilled on rye bread) and their wonderful fries: Most recent: Combination of leftovers – marinara from a chicken Parm dinner I made the other night and meatballs from a meatballs and brown gravy dinner.

I finally made it to Trader Joe's. It's less than 5 miles from me, but the area is so congested and full of giant SUVs that I avoid it until I have multiple places that I need to shop before going. I picked up my usual Unexpected Cheddar and green onion pancakes. I bypassed the frozen sea scallops until I have some freezer room and resisted the always alluring fresh flowers. I got a couple of new-to-me eG recommended things. One was a great success and the other I haven't completely decided about. @Maison Rustique recommended this peach cream cheese, which I tried on a sesame bagel: This is the thing I'm not sure about. I think that the sesame bagel was the wrong vehicle - it was SO strongly flavored that the peach flavor got lost. I think that the cookies were the right choice, @Maison Rustique! I'll report back when I try that! The other product was this: @OlyveOyl mentioned this awhile ago and I put it on my TJ list and finally picked it up. I used it on some cod. I smeared it on the cod and then pressed panko crumbs into the pesto (the sauce on top is not the pesto, but some broken lemon/butter sauce): I loved the pesto – though I’m not sure if I’m going to be creative enough to figure out how to use the entire jar before it goes bad😁!

So many gorgeous breakfasts. I would love to sit down to so many of these! As usual lately, health issues are getting in the way of my eG activities – too many doctor’s appointments! But here are a few recent meals. Benton’s bacon, eggs, and cheese on a toasted bun: Raisin toast, Benton’s bacon, and strawberries from the produce stand (that’s a little Splenda, not mold). Another breakfast started with this sad “English Muffin”: Oh, Aldi! But it improved with the addition of some Edwards country ham, fried eggs, a few leftover tots, and some fruit salad: Twice in the past couple of weeks, Jessica has shown up with doughnuts from our favorite local place. Another morning was an old favorite - beans on toast: A slightly over toasted croissant with cheese, egg, sausage, and ham: and an elderly, but tasty peach. Toast and a boiled egg: This is great bread that I’ve been buying lately. It is in the Kroger bakery section (but not baked there). The slices are large and have a great texture and the bread is not sweet. The women of my church do a monthly breakfast potluck and last Saturday was the day for that. I made some no knead bread, honey butter, and some of @Tropicalsenior’s microwave lemon curd: Second rise: Done: A slice: This is good, but not great bread. It’s a little stodgy and slightly moist. It makes great toast. Everyone seemed to like it – there was almost nothing left of 2 one-quart loaves. And the lemon curd and honey butter were very popular. I took a bunch of little jars of the curd to share. Vanilla yogurt with bananas, honey, and granola and toast: Sesame bagel served with bacon, ham, and sausage: Egg and sausage on one of those silly Aldi no-nooks-and-crannies English muffins: Still tasted pretty good.

I found a great BOGO sale on pork and thought I picked up 2 sealed packages of pork tenderloins. Turns out I got one package of tenderloins and one package of a boneless LOIN. I love tenderloin, but am not a big fan of boneless (and fatless) loin. I cleaned it and took off the silverskin, sprinkled it with Penzey's version of lemon pepper seasoning. sealed it and tossed in the freezer. How should I prepare this? I have an IP, a CSO, and a SV as well as all of the equipment that normal people have (😁😉). Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Just added this to my TJ list!

I made a version of the lemon glow chiffon cake from this thread. I couldn't have been more satisfied with the result - it was delicious and tender and beautifully lemony. I served it topped with @Tropicalsenior's lovely microwave lemon curd.

Welcome to eG, @Roshani! As you can see there is a lot of interest in your contributions! I'm looking forward to your posts!

Thank you so much, @OlyveOyl! As I said to you, that is really a HUGE difference.

I do have a question for anyone who has made this cake or just anyone who had a copy of The Cake Bible. I don't have a copy of the book (at least that I can find 😁). So I did a search and found this recipe. This one says it is adapted from the Cake Bible recipe and is the one that I used. And it was fantastic, as I said. So, I just was searching for this again so that I could put it on my webpage and I stumbled across this other recipe. which is supposed to be the same recipe that is in The Cake Bible. My question is about the number of eggs in the recipe. The one that I used called for 7 egg whites and 3 egg yolks, so that I had 4 egg yolks left over. The other one calls for 7 eggs, separated plus 3 additional whites. That means that there is supposedly a total of 7 egg yolks and 10 egg whites in The Cake Bible recipe. Can someone please look and tell me if that is really the number of eggs that The Cake Bible specifies? Or if that poster made a typo? Thanks!

I made this cake to take to church Sunday. I followed @Patrick S's advice. I.E. - doubling the juice and the zest, using a 10-inch tube pan, not putting the pan on top of a sheet pan. I served it topped with @Tropicalsenior's amazing, easy microwave lemon curd. It was positively delectable. Every single person who tasted it loved it and one lady took a chunk of it home. There was almost 2/3 of the cake left because people are weird. The store-bought stuff went fast - cookies, pies, etc. The homemade stuff was just not even sampled for the most part. I will definitely be making this again - the texture was gorgeous and the flavor was perfect. I was lucky enough to have a bunch of lemons from my BIL's lemon tree in Phoenix.

Thanks to everyone for the input. I may put the small IP on my wishlist, but for now I've ordered a 4-cup (cooked) Aroma rice cooker. And it's PINK! 😁

We have two very large and one smaller Asian markets within a couple of miles of us and another 2 or 3 a bit further away (yes, we are very fortunate). I will check with these. Thank you!

These are all amazing and wonderful!

Welcome to eG, @Miss K! I'm looking forward to your contributions!

Bumping this up to get the latest information and opinions. I am rice cooking challenged. In my 45+ years of cooking, I've mastered many things but rice is not one of them. No matter the method, rice cooking is still a hit or miss mystery to me. So, I'm thinking of trying a rice cooker. I'm usually only cooking for 2 or 3 and Jessica doesn't really eat much rice. So, I'm hoping there is a small, decently dependable and not too expensive model out there. Thanks!

I'm used to eating steamed crabs like this. I think I might balk at a tableful of hummus or something saucy.

@Ann_T - those are some gorgeous biscuits. I believe that you've earned honorary Southern Lady status with those! I just had toast this morning: As long as there's raisin bread in the house, I'm going to be having it at least once a day!

@OlyveOyl - your array of sandwiches looks so wonderful! Fresh and delicious. How I'd love to have access to that incredible spread. Now this looks much less yummy 😂. I'm really kidding. It was really good and something we hadn't indulged in in quite some time: Jersey MIke's #13 (the official Shook family Jersey Mike's sub). We were out early trying to beat the holiday weekend grocery shoppers. Mr. Kim is working from home today and took his lunch hour to go with me, so we succumbed to a craving when we drove by!

Breakfast this morning was fried eggs on a buttered and toasted milk bread roll: I got the egg slightly overdone, but it was still good: It would have been especially good with a slice of country ham and a little béarnaise! 😁

😄😄😄 Many of my pantry items are less reliable it seems.

When you pick a steamed blue crab, there are some parts that you eat and some you don't (at least I don't). You don't eat the "devil's fingers" or gills. There is a long, white, wormy looking thing that no one I know eats - I'm not at all sure what it is. Something that IS edible is that "mustard" - called that because it actually does look like mustard. There is some disagreement about whether it should be eaten or not because it is a filtering part of the digestive system. I know, but it's really delicious. Analogous to sucking a crawfish head, I guess - gross, but good. 😁 When you pick crabs, it's there and you can eat it or not. But when you eat a soft shell, it's been cleaned inside and some places just snip off the eye area and then clean out all the innards, including the mustard. A place that really respects crabs (and crab lovers) will be more careful and leave the mustard behind. There. I hope that helped and that anyone who has better information than me will step in!

It's funny, but what I see in many American sections in other countries are what I would consider "craving" foods. I.E. - food you know is not great cuisine, but stuff that you just want every so often. The stuff that most Americans I know (and I ARE one 😉) eat on a regular basis are probably available in the other sections of the stores - fresh meats, produce, bread, crackers, cheese, etc. I know that the food in the "international" sections of American grocery stores don't truly represent the foods of those nations.

Thank you all so much for the good wishes. I’m definitely improving. Trying hard to get back to cooking after being sick/recovering since basically the beginning of the year. I’ve managed to make myself a few lunches, but we’ve also eaten out a LOT! A fried bologna and cheese grilled sandwich and clam chowder: The sandwich was great, but not so the soup. It was a brand that was highly rated by a website I usually like, but I think that they were impressed by the down east design of the can: The soup was bereft of clam flavor and the texture was grainy and gelatinous. One morning, I woke up thinking of egg salad. I’d been wanting to try a new-to-me method of hard cooking eggs – the hot start method. You bring enough water to cover your eggs to a low boil and quickly and gently slip the eggs in. Bring to a boil, then lower to a slow boil, cover and cook 12-14 minutes. Supposedly easy peel, no green, and perfectly cooked eggs. Worked great for me – I’ve now peeled the entire batch and they were all fine: With pepper, mustard, relish, and Dukes: Lunch: Jessica and I went down to Petersburg VA (about 45 minutes away) last month to pick up something and had dinner at a locally owned restaurant that has a wonderful buffet – a meat and threes kind of place. Nearly everything is housemade. Mr. Kim is NOT a big buffet fan, but I got him down there recently to wander in the historic section of the city and do a little antique browsing. AND talked him into that place, Nanny’s, for lunch. I think he liked it. Hard to tell because he tends towards prejudice 😁. My plate: Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, collards, pulled pork, hamburger steak, and fried fat back. Also hush puppies and chicken & dumplings: Post doctor’s appointment lunch at an OLD favorite, Joe’s Inn. Their in-town location was one of our college hang outs – great pizza, huge sandwiches, and cheap beer. This was their suburb location, but it’s just as good. I had a meatball sub and onion rings: Mr. Kim had baked spaghetti and their wonderful house made bread: On Mother’s Day the three of us plus Mr. Kim’s mom did a little road trip to tiny Topping VA (about an hour away) on the Rappahannock river for lunch at a place called Merroir. We’d been once before and were impressed with their location, food, and service. This visit was the same. We ordered a ton of food and shared and took some home! We had the bread service: Oyster stew: which had gorgeous, sweet whole oysters in it, as well as the entire thing tasting beautifully of oyster. Jessica started with raw oysters: We shared the burrata toast – baguette, burrata, roasted tomatoes, pesto, and balsamic glaze: We also shared the Stuffin’ Muffin: Oyster stuffing with a bacon and peppercorn cream sauce. Mr. Kim had the shrimp cocktail: and grilled halibut with blistered green beans: My MIL had the crabcake with slaw and remoulade: My main was scallops with smoked corn, cotija cheese, paprika, and cilantro lemon sauce: Jessica’s was the oyster po’ boy: with slaw and house made pickles. For dessert, my MIL had the Key Lime Pie: and we all had a bit of this dessert: Caramelized bananas with some custard and candied pecans. Everything was delicious and perfectly prepared. We brought a lot home. A friend was having surgery. I thought I’d kill two birds: take them some food and have something on hand for lunches for the week. So, I made a batch of my mother’s vegetable soup and a couple loaves of No-Knead Peasant Bread to take to them. My mise: I attempted to make one pot of soup – enough for them and us to have a couple of meals. Instead… 🙄😄 The bread: Another morning I woke up craving hot dogs. So, lunch: It is soft shell season now, so after church this Sunday we went to a place called Halterman’s in Manquin VA (about 30 minutes from us). We’d been a couple of years ago for Mr. Kim’s birthday and loved it. When you sit down, they bring a basket of house made chips and creamy sauce: We shared a wonderfully ooey, gooey crab dip: The dip was fantastic, and the pita chips were exceptional, too. Instead of just being served as is or baked to crispy, they were deep fried. They ended up being crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. I’d never had them done like that and they were perfect with the hot, creamy dip. Mr. Kim had fish and chips: All of this was SO good. The hush puppies were crisp and tender and full of corn flavor. The chips were really like chunky British chips. I think the fish was cod – firm, moist, and sweet. It was breaded rather than battered, but it was excellent. I had the soft shells with fries and deviled eggs: The crabs were exactly what I wanted – simply made with a light batter and such great quality: They were full of moist, sweet crab meat: And they left the mustard in – so many places don’t, and it drives me crazy. Today: A bologna sandwich with excessive amounts of mustard and baked BBQ chips (an odd recent craving of mine).

Slowly getting back into cooking. I’ve been missing it! A few recent breakfasts: A toasted croissant with strawberry jam. Ham and egg on a croissant: Greek yogurt, granola, and honey: Mr. Kim stopped by a wonderful bakery near his office yesterday and brought home these Japanese milk bread rolls: I had a couple for breakfast this morning done in the CSO at 300F on bake/steam and slathered with butter. Also eggs 😁.