Kim Shook

Ann - LOVE open faced with gravy sandwiches! They are the top reason that I bother to roast chicken or beef! Oops! Posted lunch here instead of breakfast - editing to correct! Mr. Kim’s breakfast last Saturday: Cheese and jalapeno omelet. I went straight bacon. Breakfast on Sunday started with fruit: And then what I woke up thinking about: Sausage biscuits with sausage gravy and scrambled eggs. Except the biscuits were those Sister Schubert yeast rolls because they were already thawed in the fridge.

Jeanne – loved your mention of Quisp. Especially since this was my dessert the other day: Proof that, at age 56, I am still not as grown up as a Millennial! This thread reminds me of one of my favorite quotations by Michael Ruhlman: “Many argue that breakfast is their favorite meal and of course it's "the most important meal of the day" (who came up with this slogan?—I do fine on coffee and Crest)…”

I have yet to find a granola bar that tastes as good as a bowl of Frosted Flakes at midnight! (I am 56.)

Jessica works nearby now and came over for lunch today – Jessica’s: Egg salad. Mine: Cheese and tomato. Another childhood favorite of mine.

Sorry, Anna! Try this one: http://www.amazon.com/cuisinart-cvr-1000-vertical-countertop-rotisserie/dp/b001rng422

Anna – it was one of these: http://uniqsource.com/household/cuisinart-vertical-rotisserie/ That was a 4 1/2 lb. roast and was as big as I’d go. It works beautifully for roast beef. Marlene, who used to post here, told me to up the temp to 425 and baste with butter, and since she’s the queen of roasts, that’s what I do. I especially love using it for this meal because it frees up the oven. Between the roast, the potatoes, the sprouts and the Yorkies, I used the rotisserie, the oven and a large toaster oven! sartoric – thank you! I love that you use pineapple with your pork stir fry. They go perfectly together and you don’t see folks doing it very often. I served a similar thing to some friends and they were very suspicious and ended up asking for the recipe! Last night’s dinner doesn’t look much different than the one before it: Yorkies (heated up perfectly in the toaster oven), broccoli and gravy smothered beef and potatoes. The beef was a little tough last night and I remembered that I had bought two of these and the last one was also tough. The flavor was great, though. So simmered in gravy was the perfect way to go. Tender and delicious. I’m turning it into beef stew tomorrow. I am sick of beef!

Ann - if I had bread like that, I think I'd just eat toast and butter for every meal. Breakfast this morning: Had some nice Camparis and couldn’t resist. This was about the only breakfast that my mother could talk me into eating when I was a little girl and it is still a favorite when I have good tomatoes!

I am another canned corned beef appreciator. I don’t ever confuse it, or even compare it, with real corned beef. But I like it for what it is. The other night was one of those busy day dinners – mostly prepared foods: Canned Brunswick stew, canned corned beef hash with eggs. Tuesday night was a special program for the women of the church. I contributed Orange-Ginger muffins: These are so good – really tender and full of ginger flavor. I also did some sandwiches: These are called “Ham Triangles w/ Poppy and Sesame Seed”. It’s an old Gourmet magazine recipe. The filling is a ham salad with whole grain mustard and chutney. You butter the edges of the sandwiches and dip them in the seeds. I came home with no leftovers, so everything was good! Last night was my typical English dinner: Roast done in the rotisserie. That little fat cap was incredibly crisp – cooks treat! Sliced with roasted potatoes: Brussels sprouts which look good, but were bitter: I haven’t had a decent sprout all winter. This is especially disappointing considering they are one of the few cooked green vegetables that I like. My Yorkies turned out especially well: Plate without gravy: And with: We had this meal weekly when I was growing up with my English step family. Sometimes it would be a chicken instead of beef, but the roast potatoes, veg, Yorkies and gravy never changed. One thing that I’ve changed is that I make my gravy from scratch. Ted’s family always used Bisto. Not to dis Bisto. I have a canister in my cabinet at all times. Sometimes it is exactly what a gravy or a soup needs to get it perfect. But pure Bisto over my beautiful roasted potatoes and Yorkies? I think NOT!

A recent breakfast for dinner (using up those gorgeous eggs) started with salad: Ham and cheese omelets, tots and some lovely tangelos: Valentine’s Day! Dinner was supposed to start with appetizers, but after our huge potluck lunch at church, we knew we’d never eat appetizers AND our meal, so those got punted for the next day. Dinner included a really simple mixed green salad and a sourdough baguette: The main course was a Cook’s Illustrated recipe that I found in a new special publication of theirs called “All-Time Best French Recipes”. It was scallops and mushrooms: This was fantastic. We adore scallops and I was a little apprehensive about not doing the classic ‘sear’. These are actually poached in wine and chicken stock. Then the mushrooms are sautéed and a cream sauce made. All of that is poured over the scallops and the whole thing is broiled. I served this with rice: Dessert was purchased from our favorite cake café. I had the fresh fruit cake with white cake and frosting: Mr. Kim had the salted caramel chocolate cake: Those cakes are on dinner plates. Rather large ones, too! Next night’s dinner was our intended appetizers from Valentine’s Day. Pickly stuff: Smoked salmon spread and pate: Cheddar and vegs: And more cake from the night before (I am still eating this cake)!

Thank you so much for the nice comments! I seem to be on a chocolate theme lately! Shelby – I always add at least half again as many blueberries are a recipe calls for. I also top muffins with a few berries – I think it looks extra pretty. Made a cake mix fix-up chocolate pound cake for our church annual meeting potluck on Sunday: This was the first time I used my pan that Mike got me for Christmas and I was nervous. But I sprayed it with Pam and dust it HEAVILY with cocoa and it came right out! With chocolate glaze:

Recent guilty pleasure breakfast: Orange Danish rolls – made with ‘whomp dough’ left over from Christmas when I forgot to serve them! Snow day breakfast. Mr. Kim suggested French toast to use up the sourdough from the night before and some eggs:

kayb – a favorite snack for my mother and I when we cut up cabbage is to stand over the sink with a salt shaker and the core and munch! Tere – no need to apologize with a picture like that. What a gorgeous piece of pork. Nevermind that you live in my favorite place in the world – Britain. We didn’t get as far up as Shropshire, but hope to some day! Jessica came over for lunch the other day: Gooey grilled cheese – American, Provolone and mozzarella with Dijon. Yesterday’s lunch: Purchased chicken salad on some nice whole wheat flatbread pockets that I found.

Franci – your cakes are gorgeous! I hope your business is very successful. I wish that I was close enough to buy some! Elizabeth – I’m just stunned at the cakes that you are turning out. Amazing! Jessica’s birthday dessert was Coca-Cola chocolate cake with chocolate icing: That is some DARK icing! I used some cocoa that I bought when we were in Indiana last year. It was called black cocoa. I think it must be similar to what they use to make Oreos! I topped it with dulce de leche and toasted hazelnuts. Slice: One of our favorite cakes. I made Tin Roof Brownie bars (minus the nuts) for one of Mr. Kim’s co-workers:

kayb – Taco Bell is one of my guilty pleasures! I like crunchy tacos, but am addicted to their Crunchwrap Supreme! Shelby – I really, really need to give bierocks a try. They look SO good. For Jessica’s BD celebration, I did three different flatbread pizzas by request. The first (and most popular) was this: Honey, bacon, Brie and Walnut (except it was pecans, since I didn’t have walnuts). Really fantastic. We felt that it could have used a good grind of black pepper or perhaps some pepper infused honey. Next was the grape, Brie and arugula: Plus a handful of bleu cheese. This also would have benefitted from some black pepper, but otherwise really good. The last one I wasn’t entirely happy with – Thai Chicken: It was very popular, including with a friend who used to live in Thailand. She said that the flavors of the chicken were quite authentic. I liked the flavor pretty well (it had too much PB in the sauce for me) and the toppings were good – especially the drizzle of coconut crema. But I tried to shortcut the chicken and use a rotisserie and this was a BIG mistake. The chicken layer, which should have been bite-sized pieces of sauced chicken, was mushy shreds. A recent dinner started with a salad made up of leftovers from Jessica’s party: Arugula, grapes, bleu cheese and bean sprouts. Plus other fridge things that needed using. Mr. Kim’s chicken lady at work is being incredibly generous, so I have 3 dozen raw eggs and a half dozen hard boiled! So dinner was scrambled eggs and creamed chipped beef on Texas toast: We will be eating a LOT of eggs in the next week! Super Bowl food – chips and dips: 7-Layer dip and pita chips: Jessica’s deviled eggs: My wings and some frozen Buffalo bites: Jessica’s ‘calzone’: Slices: Served with pizza sauce for dipping.

Welcome, Willow! Looking forward to your posts!

Anna N – your cauliflower cheese looks gorgeous! I wouldn’t need another thing on the table with that! Vlkatco – those summer rolls look and sound so incredibly good. And I like everything in them (that doesn’t happen too often as I am vegetable and spicy adverse!). A couple of nights ago: Sloppy Joes, tots, green beans and the last of the blah corn.

Yesterday was Jessica’s 32nd birthday. She was going up to Washington for a concert so we met for breakfast at Perly’s a Richmond deli. This place has been open for over 50 years in one guise or another. This was my first visit and I can’t believe that I’ve never been before. It is exactly the kind of place that we would have loved when I was in college and within walking distance of school. My friends and I would have spent every Saturday morning here if we’d known about it. My breakfast: Pumpernickel bagel with olive cream cheese, smoked sausage, latke w/ warm applesauce and chive sour cream and perfectly poached eggs. Mr. Kim’s: Corned beef hash with an egg and Russian hollandaise, a salad w/ pickled cauliflower. Jessica’s: ET bagel w/ herb cream cheese and more of those poached eggs. They brought her two kinds of hollandaise – Russian and dill. Everything was delicious!

We are headed back to Charlottesville this weekend. I can NOT wait for my sandwich!!!

A recent lunch: Tuna fish salad and cheese sandwich, pickles, some of my favorite olives – castelvetranos – and blizzard Funyuns (gotta have those). I just love salad sandwiches - ham, chicken, egg, tuna.

Thanks for the Crepes – I know exactly what you mean about the fried flour tortillas elevating the meal. We used to spend Sundays at a BBQ chain restaurant called Red, Hot and Blue because we could sit at the bar, watch football, eat and smoke (Mr. Kim could even smoke a cigar – ah, the good old days). Their BBQ nachos were special not because of the BBQ (fine, but not exceptional) or toppings (the items you’d expect), but because they used fried FLOUR tortillas instead of corn. Just delicious. They have since closed, but we use the flour tortillas most often nowadays. Dinner last night: Creamed corn, smothered cube steak w/ gravy, roasted sweet potatoes w/ coconut cream, Brussel sprouts and some of my white bread. Looks good, but a fairly blah meal, except for the sweet potatoes and bread. The cube steak never got tender, the gravy was WAY too salty and the spouts were skunky. Sigh.

They are just the Ore Ida frozen ones. I prefer the refrigerated ones, though. I even like them better than fresh.

Dinner Sunday night was potstickers from the freezer: We finally got into this popcorn that we got in Indiana during our trip back in June: It was very good – fluffy, fresh and tasty. But incredibly tiny. The kernels were really, really small and made the tiniest little fluffs. I used the pan I normally cook popcorn in and the bowl I normally serve it in. I covered the bottom of the pan with kernels like I usually do. With Orville Redenbacher, I get a full bowl. This was the result with this popcorn: It was the oddest thing. I can usually get about 3 popcorn pieces in my mouth at a time – I could get about 5 times that amount with this! We were so delirious at getting out that we ended up at Panera for soup and sandwiches for dinner. Not a favorite, but it was nice to be somewhere besides HOME! I could never have been a pioneer!

Patrick – absolutely gorgeous biscuits! We finally got out of the house and to the store this afternoon, but were still snowed in this morning. So breakfast was the order of the day, of course. Mr. Kim’s: Mine: That toast in the back is from the loaf I baked in the breadmaker yesterday: As I thought, it made great toast!

I always freeze coconut and have never had it suffer any deterioration at all!

Ann T – If I could make the bread that you make, the bakeries and grocery stores here wouldn’t make another dime off me! Got inspired by the bad weather – breadmachine bread: Nice crumb and it tastes good – it will make great toast, too: We found some of Mr. Kim’s BBQ in the freezer when we cataloged it yesterday, so dinner last night was BBQ sandwiches, sweet potato fries (TJ’s frozen), the last of the split pea soup and salad: Sadly, the BBQ was sans slaw since I had no cabbage. Still really good, though.