Kim Shook

Elaina – Mr. Kim would adore those evil mushrooms (not me though – in my opinion ALL mushrooms are evil! ). Thanks for ID’ing them. I’ll be making them for him the next time we have steak! Chris Taylor – I’ve never had lamb ribs, but I know I’d love them. I remember my mom roasting lamb shanks. Poor Southern US lady had married a Brit and never cooked lamb in her life! So when he asked for lamb shanks, she did what came naturally – dust with flour, S&P and roasted until medium-well. They were fairly tough – I usually braise mine, as I did this week – but I still remember that pure lamb flavor and the just-short-of-burned fat. We’d pick them up and gnaw them feeling like Fred Flintstone! I imagine lamb ribs having that same pure taste. Everyone is making me want shrimp! I honestly don’t know how much cooking is going to get done over the next week or so. With the possibility of the hurricane arriving, I went out and bought a ton of canned stuff and things that don’t require electricity. We could conceivably have my mother, our daughter and their 3 cats added to our household if there is flooding and/or power loss. So, one way or another, we’ll be eating a LOT of crappy food over the week and it wouldn’t be worth showing here. Unless I can talk Mike into donating what we don’t use ! A few recent meals - Jessica made pancakes for dinner one night: They were perfect – light and fluffy and buttery! Another meal started with an apple-walnut butter lettuce salad with cranberry vinaigrette: Nice change from my usual tossed salad! And I actually COOKED! Braised lamb shanks with caramelized onions, rice and roasted sprouts with pancetta: Last night was ‘comfort food night’ beginning with crunchy stuff with hummus: Pickly stuff: And creamed chipped beef:

Love threads like this! I make a vegetable soup that goes back at least to the 1930's. My mother remembers her grandmother making it. Everyone in the family makes it. Nothing special - carrots, potatoes, corn, peas, green beans, tomatoes, etc. Everyone has their own spin - some use vegetable broth, others chicken stock. But it ALWAYS has chopped cabbage and broken spaghetti noodles. The family origin is Italian - great-greats came to the US as adults - and one day when I was adding my own little fillip - Parmesan cheese - it occurred to me that it is perhaps some race memory of minestrone. Completely bastardized, of course.

We had a water main leak last week and didn’t have water for a few days, so not much cooking here. I DID, at least, serve a meal this weekend - pre-dinner snack: Hummus and Gouda and garlic crispbread chips. Dinner was Mike’s mom’s beef vegetable soup and some Cheddar rolls from Fresh Market: The rolls were especially cheesy and good: As you can see, I made absolutely nothing for that meal. Other than my MIL’s contribution, it was all purchased food. I could make the excuse of the water main break. But it was fixed on Friday and I had water all weekend. So no excuse but laziness!

Breakfast this morning: Sausage and fried eggs on toast. The little blue bowl contains some fig syrup from making candied figs. Delicious with the sausage. The sausage is Jimmy Dean’s Fully Cooked refrigerated breakfast sausage. It won a taste test on Cook’s Illustrated awhile back and I have to agree that it is better than any national brand I’ve ever tasted. I heat it up in a pan to get a bit of a crust, but I prefer it to all the raw stuff I’ve bought. Nice surprise to find out that something convenient is also good!

gfweb – you have my sympathies. We came home from vacation once to find that the freezer plug had come out of the wall and we lost tons of meat. Summer vacation, at that. The only good thing was that the freezer was in our shed and not in the house! hummingbirdkiss – sending all good vibes for a spectacular and uneventful kitchen redo! The crust on that chicken looks perfect! Like Shelby, I’d love to see the progress on the kitchen. And, I don’t think that you need to ‘sneak’ pictures in. Lots of people have documented kitchen upgrades. Not sure of which section would be best to put them in though. Maybe someone else could make a suggestion? Shelby – somewhere you mentioned the issues you have with black flakey salt. I have the same issues and on the breakfast thread Thanks for the Crepes made a great suggestion for dealing with it. You should take a look. Last night was leftover fries from a dinner out topped with leftover roast beef and gravy: This roast beef has turned into the never ending meal. There is still enough for dinner for both of us tonight! Thank goodness it is still delicious!

Thanks for the Crepes – that is an awfully good idea! Shelby apparently has the same issues with her flakey black salt – hope she sees this, too! Thank you!

Breakfast this morning: ET bagels, scrambled eggs w/ cheese and sausage. And watermelon:

Shelby – every single thing looks delicious (except the okra ), but I really want some good pizza now! liamsaunt – I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it, but your food always makes me hungry – no matter what time of the day or night I see it. We share many tastes! Chili dogs for dinner last night. Dogs – nicely charred: Corn and pickle-y things: A veritable mess of beans: Plated with slaw and baked beans:

Thanks for the Crepes – thank you! Dessert was a pound cake with an assortment of toppings. Nice to know I’m not the only one who thinks that about making gravy ahead of time. Most of my family was skeptical – until they tasted my turkey gravy! Glad I inspired the popovers! Try these sometime with beef: http://www.recipecircus.com/recipes/Kimberlyn/QuickBreads/Gruyre_and_Black_Pepper_Popovers.html Heidih – thanks for providing the link to Marlene’s potato recipe for Elsie. And for the endorsement! Norm – your turkey is gorgeous! We always use either the Nesco or smoker to do the turkey. The Nesco makes it so incredibly moist and frees up the oven to boot! All the wings got me hankering for some, but Mr. Kim picked chili dogs, so that’s the picture you’ll be seeing tomorrow! Last night was roast beef sandwich with leftovers and marinated cucumbers: Yorkies subbing for bread. The beef was much more tender this time. I braised it for an hour or so in gravy and it was perfect. Served with some still-good corn:

Toliver - those look so good. I'm going to search out some cinnamon chips and make those soon. I haven't made them that way in ages. They really are our family cooky. Not necessarily what we want all the time, but if we were asked to choose, they'd be our favorite! Glad you liked them.

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Dejah – I haven’t cooked corn on the cob any other way since I found that method. My daughter even video-d me and put it on FB! MetsFan – thank you! We were in Jacksonville and Sarasota. Hope you got your grouper. I never tasted any until my parents moved to Florida and now it is one of my favorites! Don’t see it much in VA, though. I tasted black grouper for the first time this trip and it was one of the best things we ate the entire trip. Yesterday was Sunday dinner on Labor Day Monday with my mom and daughter. Our neighbors joined us for dessert. Roast beef cooked in the rotisserie oven: Perfectly cooked, but a little tough. This was a rib eye roast and should have been tender, but we actually needed steak knives (similar to Thanks for the Crepes issues). The flavor was good, though. Marlene’s Cream Roasted Potatoes: Just gorgeous, as always. Balsamic Roasted Brussels Sprouts: With pancetta. New recipe and fantastic. So much easier than my regular method of steaming, cutting in half and then sautéing in butter. But it left the house a lot stinkier. Sliced tomatoes: Marlene’s incomparable Yorkies: Plated: With gravy: I was really happy with my gravy. I hate making gravy last minute and always do my turkey gravy ahead of time, but hadn’t tried it with beef gravy. Yesterday I gave it a go. Made a roux, deglazed with some red wine and then just used a carton of beef broth. I added a little onion, pepper, thyme and Penzey’s Mural of Flavor. I simmered it for a couple of hours and then refrigerated it. Today I heated it back up, added a lot of water and a spoonful of Better than Bouillon and a little Kitchen Bouquet and let it cook down for a hour or so. It was great – really rich and beefy. And it turned out that I only got about one tablespoonful of drippings, so I was glad I’d done it!

Inspired by Kay, lunch today was a BLT with heirloom green tomatoes and steak fries (no Pringles in the pantry – not even any Aldi baked BBQ chips that I’ve become addicted to ): the tomato kind of gets lost with the lettuce, but it’s in there!

John T – thanks for the recipe! I’ll be keeping that and sending it on to my friend. Every time I go there are MANY more green figs than ripe, so we’ll be using the recipe. cyalexa – the recipe is similar, but they are dehydrated (or roasted at a VERY low temp) after three days of simmering: http://www.recipecircus.com/recipes/Kimberlyn/FRUIT/Lenas_Candied_Figs.html I finished the figs yesterday. Out of the oven: Sugared: I sugar them so that they won’t stick together during storage, but usually brush most of it off before I eat them. They are sweet enough! Dessert last night was Cream Cheese Pound Cake with blackberries: This is one of my favorite pound cakes. The flavor was wonderful and I love a dense, tight-crumbed cake, but this time it was slightly too dense for me. Still really good, though.

Thanks, everyone! Next time, I'll leave out the corn syrup!

Mr. Kim is in love with it, so I couldn't sell it. Keep looking, though - I've seen lots of these in various antique/salvage store.

Well, I’ve missed almost an entire section of this topic! Just a combination of stuff got in the way. Been out of town a LOT and am hoping to start cooking more and contributing here more, too! I couldn’t possibly mention all of the lovely dishes that made me hungry when I read back over the more-than-two-months that I’ve missed. It took me THREE days and one day I actually used up all my allowed ‘likes’ (didn’t know THAT was even possible – another rule to learn ) – so if your gorgeous and delicious meal is missing a ‘like’ from me, it’s not MY fault. We celebrated the 4th of July with friends and my contribution included Caroled’s baked beans (my new favorite method for quick beans): A few meals (prior to our Florida trip on the 15th)- Mr. Kim saw Jamie Deen make a steak salad with molasses marinated London Broil on TV one morning and had to give it a try. Salad and crackers: London Broil: All together with some crumbled Bleu: And some corn: Another night Chicken Parm: Breakfast for dinner: Mushroom and cheese omelet and fried potatoes. We finally got some good tomatoes: (with marinated cukes). Chili dogs, beans and some of those tomatoes with mayo and LOTS of S&P: Another one - salad: Meatballs w/ gravy and rice: Corn: The only thing I’ve cooked since we got home from Florida last week – starting with the usual salad: Sausages, kraut, mac and cheese (packaged – it’s a comfort food, what can I say ), nice crusty sourdough roll and corn: The sausages were great – bratwurst and knockwurst from the meat case at Fresh Market. The kraut was a little dull. I should have known better. It was in a jar and we always like the super sour kind in the can. I won't ever apologize for serving too much summer corn and tomatoes, but maybe I need to find something other than salad to make with every meal.

While we were in Florida, Mr. Kim picked this up at Relics (a salvage place that our friends took us to): 1930’s McGraw toaster. We bought a few things, so he’s not sure, but he thinks he got it for about $40. I shined it up and it looks gorgeous. It gets hot, but I haven’t tried to make toast in it yet. The fact that it belonged to strangers is squicking me out a little bit.

Just apple cider. Not apple cider vinegar. Not sure I'd like that at all.

I went down to visit friends in Chesapeake yesterday and they very kindly let me pick every ripe fig in their garden: I’m making my friend’s candied figs. First day simmer down: Not the most appetizing looking thing now, but they will be delectable in a few days.

Nicholai – I had to Google Knafe bel Jibn. It sounds wonderful and, like scuba, right up my alley! Breakfast this morning – I couldn’t decide which I wanted more, tomatoes on toast or some of my friend’s good fig preserves. So I didn’t decide:

I made some apple fritters awhile back. I decided to glaze them and used a recipe that called for 1 cup apple cider, 2 cups of confectioner’s sugar and 1 tablespoon of light corn syrup. They were delicious – especially fresh and warm, but I wasn’t satisfied with the glaze. It made them a bit soggy – I was hoping for a more glazed doughnut-like glaze – the kind that dries solidly and flakes off when bitten into. This just kind of soaked into the fritters. I’m wondering if the culprit was the corn syrup. What do you all think?

We celebrated the 4th of July with friends and I made this: It’s a crazy Paula Deen recipe – Frozen Banana Split. An ice cream torte made with caramel, hot fudge, cherries, bananas, Cool Whip and ice cream sandwiches. It is ridiculously good. Jessica made me a chocolate/Nutella cake with candied hazelnuts on top for my birthday. Without the dulce drizzle: With: Peach cobbler for one of Mr. Kim’s co-worker’s BD: Coffee snacks for church – apple fritters with an apple cider glaze: They were delicious – especially fresh and warm, but I wasn’t satisfied with the glaze. It made them a bit soggy – I was hoping for a more glazed doughnut-like glaze – the kind that dries solidly. This just kind of soaked into the fritters. The recipe included corn syrup – do you think that that would have caused the problem? Blueberry Breakfast Cake: I made a double batch of both and didn’t bring one thing home!

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