Kim Shook

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.

VIcatko – your struvor are absolutely lovely. I get why you want thicker ones, but those are truly ethereal! Cleaned out and cataloged the freezer yesterday. That effort resulted in (among other things) bananas, whole wheat flour and pecans. So – Brooke’s Banana Bread: I added chocolate chips: I got this recipe from an online friend years ago. I probably have almost a dozen banana bread/muffin recipes and this is still my favorite.

Breakfast this morning: Slightly over done soft boiled eggs (these were from Mike’s co-worker and were probably closer to medium than large) and sausage rolls from the freezer. Also hash browns:

Blizzard breakfast, day II. Thanks to Mr. Kim’s chicken keeping friend at work we started with these: Scrambled eggs and leftovers from yesterday: I did fry a little bacon because it was in the meat drawer and to augment the sausage. The French toast heated up just fine in the toaster. Hope I don’t get used to this breakfast thing. I’ve lost 25 pounds in the last couple of months and part of my plan is staying too busy to eat breakfast. Breakfast tends to start my engines in the morning. If I eat breakfast, I want to eat non-stop for the rest of the day. The longer I put off eating, the flatter my appetite.

rotuts – Mr. Cat is GORGEOUS! cakewalk – too bad about the bread because it sure is pretty! We’ve needed breakfast these past two days. Neither of us are big morning eaters, but it seemed necessary. Not that we are outside shoveling, sledding or even walking, but whatever. I haven’t seen this much concentrated snow in years! I didn’t do much ahead of time shopping – water, some just in case canned goods, etc. But today we cataloged the inside freezer and the urge kicked in. I’ve got a loaf of white in the bread machine torturing me with its fragrance. And as soon as I get the machine off the counter, I’m starting a loaf of banana bread. Dinner tonight will be some of Mr. Kim’s BBQ that we unearthed from the freezer. I’ve got buns, but sadly no slaw.

Welcome! I'm very much looking forward to your contributions. I love Greek food!

Sounds wonderful! Did you hear about the horrible Edwards fire? Might be the last Edwards sausage you'll see too, unfortunately.

Ann T - I would love a ham tutorial sometime. Not only how you prepare it, but what exact cut of ham you use because that looks so moist and delicious! Blizzard breakfast this morning – raisin bread French toast, fried apples and sausage:

Not wild about all of the special flavors. I like classic Oreos. Can't stand double stufs. But I loved the Oreo Thins. Perfect proportion for me.

I don’t usually eat lunch on weekdays, but got a craving today – fried bologna and cheese sandwich and hash browns: The hash browns were just made in a frying pan. I preferred them to the waffle iron experiment of a few days ago. Not ALL crunch like the iron and only a frying pan to wash. Easy!

dcarch – How do you prepare your canned oysters? They look interesting and I’d buy them if I thought I could do something good with them. Never ever tried anything except canned smoked oysters. Last night was Mike’s split pea soup Served with some gorgeous bread from a local bakery (they make nothing but this bread) and Cheddar: Perfect frigid night meal.

Welcome, Martin! As a lurker, you already know that we have lots of very accomplished chocolate makers here and that I am NOT one of them. But I did want to welcome you and wish you great luck on your endeavor!

We have 3 freezers - two in the shed and the one attached to the fridge and this method saves my sanity. We have to redo the list occasionally because we get lazy about adding and subtracting from it, but it is MUCH better than it was before The List!

nakji – Thank you! Yes, frosting and sprinkles have save me many times! Love the look of that waffle. I believe strongly that no lily should go ungilded. Cookies that a lady at church ordered: They were incredibly easy. She wanted cookies and then decided on sugar cookies. I wasn’t about to cut out a bunch of cookies this soon after Christmas, so I looked for a recipe for drop sugar cookies and found this one. They didn’t even require the use of a hand mixer. The bowl, a spoon and a couple of measuring cups/spoons were the only tools needed. Tasted pretty good, too!

Yesterday’s football snacks – shrimp cocktail: I used Alton Brown’s method of broiling shrimp, without the brining and even without the brine they were so moist. I’ve liked Ina Garten’s method of roasting,too. I don’t think I’ll ever go back to boiling shrimp. Pickle-y stuff: Went very casual with this stuff! Wings just out of the frying pan: Sauced: With bleu cheese dressing and celery and carrots. Mr. Kim’s are on the left with just Buffalo sauce. Mine on the right have very little Buffalo sauce and lots of honey. Cheddar-stuffed pretzels and mustard sauce:

ElainaA – those orange pecan scones look and sound wonderful. Do you share the recipe? pjm – lovely smooth cut on your brownies. I’m all admiration! Franci – your chiacchiere are lovely. I had to look the word up, but was fairly confident that it was some kind of fried pastry. Chocomom – so glad you are enjoying your new toy! I grew up eating naked angel food cake, too. Maybe an occasional glaze, but not frosting. Mr. Kim’s family tradition is drizzling it with warm caramel. I quickly became a convert. Mr. Kim needed chocolate/chocolate cupcakes for his office. I didn’t want to go shopping or wait for butter to soften, so I did a search for cocoa and oil cupcakes. Found a Hershey’s recipe that I’m going to name “Last Minute Cupcakes”. The cake requires cocoa and vegetable oil and the icing cocoa and melted butter. I almost always have everything in the ingredients on hand and start to finish they only took about an hour (including cooling time). They tasted pretty good, too. I’m not going to blame this unsightly sinking on the recipe since it happens to me with other recipes lots of times: The crappy, faded out look of the cupcake liners pisses me off, though. Why bother to even sell liners with designs on them if they aren’t grease-proof? Icing covers a lot of sins: