Kim Shook

I searched all over the place for this and couldn't find the information anywhere (I probably didn't search within the right parameters). If I want 3 lbs. of cooked chicken, what size whole chicken do I need? Thanks!!

Shelby - I think that the tomato paste adds some depth of flavor that I don't get when I don't use it. I roast my bones and vegetables before I simmer them (actually I stick them in a crock pot overnight rather than simmer on the stove) and the tomato paste gets made into a sort of slurry with a little olive oil. Then I toss the bones and veg with the slurry. It also makes the color of my stock as pretty as yours!

rotuts – these are Jamaican patties: http://www.prestofreshgrocery.com/frozen/global-delights-jamaican-style-spicy-beef-turnover-5oz.html I can only eat the mild ones and the only place that ever has them is 7-11 (already heated, next to the hot dogs) and this little overly expensive inner city grocery store near my daughter. They are truly a guilty pleasure – utter crap, but somehow delicious. Smithy – the food processor is easy to clean with thick, pasty things. It has a blade that lifts out which you can scrape off with a silicone spoon and then you have this wonderful BIG area that you can scoop out. I know that some vitamixes have removable blades, but if mine comes out, I can’t figure out how. The little notches that you are supposed to put a wooden spoon into to maneuver it is covered with a plastic shield that is built into the body of the container. So I spent forever scooping out the hummus a tablespoonful at a time. Plus, when doing the actual blending of hummus, you need to test the consistency and add a little of this and a little of that and having to remove the lid and reach down with a spoon every time was awkward. Plus, as scubadoo mentioned, it turned out a little too pasty. Shelby – your chicken soup looks very much like mine! Do you use tomato paste when you cook your chicken carcass? Still doing softer food for Mr. Kim. He’s much, much better (and heard good news from the dentist – tumor was benign!!!), but still a little sore. Chicken and dumplings and Southern green beans:

Can't chime in on the curry itself, since I don't care for curry in any form, but this struck me: "watching a wedge of dripping coat the base of my pan felt inherently wrong". This woman is supposed to be a food writer? I know that on a daily basis most of us use more healthy fats - olive oil, canola, etc. - but the aversion she expresses is a bit odd. I don't use my bacon drippings as much as I used to, but I still do use them. And what the heck are beef roast drippings for but to make gravy and roast potatoes?

Well, exactly. In VA we're disappointed when a club doesn't include ham.

Okanagancook – that is one gorgeous crust on your pizza! More soft food tonight: Hummus and toasted pita. Served with something I’m embarrassed to show: a frozen Jamaican meat patty (a guilty pleasure) . Making this proved that, at least for me, the Vitamix is NOT the machine for hummus. Giant PITA - both the making of and the cleaning out of! Going back to the good processor for this job.

I dunno, maybe it's regional. But I've almost never had a club without ham and cheese included. So, a Yankee club is basically a BLT with poultry? I'm sure it's delicious (especially with freshly roasted chicken), but I miss the ham when they leave it out and I've never, ever had one without cheese.

Cold sandwiches are what all good meatloaf aspire to!

BKEats – congratulations on your wonderful acquisition! What fun! I am in awe of the food that you are producing! Kay – nice to see you back! You’ve been missed. CP – nice save! Shelby – that ‘spaghetti red’ looks like Cincinnati chili with olives added. Nice! Explanation? Mr. Kim is still recovering from oral surgery, so breakfast for dinner seemed appropriate. Started with a salad: Spinach with feta, olive and bacon and a paprika/red wine vinaigrette. Sausage gravy and biscuits and scrambled eggs.

To me, a club is pointless without chicken/turkey (don't care which), bacon AND ham. Gotta have the ham.

I almost always use egg roll wrappers in place of fresh pasta sheets - in lasagna, manicotti, etc. I like the no-boil noodles just fine, but I can get the thickness that I want by layering the wrappers. I just love the texture which, to me, is more like fresh pasta.

Ashen – thank you for the spezzatino explanation. Google did say stew, but your description is much more vivid. Also thanks for the polenta directions. I love that it is your Nona’s recipe! I always envy folks with real Italian grandmas. My grandmother was 3/4 Italian and her ‘marinara’ was tomato paste thinned out with water. Her father was 100% (his mother was pregnant with him when they left Genoa) and his favorite sauce was Chef Boyardee! CP – thank you for the sauce directions. That sounds really good – and pretty easy. Shelby – your oyster stew sounds perfect. Norm – that looks like the perfect lasagna pan! I despise making lasagna in a too-shallow pan. Post oral surgery meal for Mr. Kim tonight: Split pea soup. He had the surgery on Friday. This and a whey, spinach & blueberry smoothie are the first things he’s had besides protein shakes and Jello since then!

Kay - thank you for that reminder. It does freeze well. I've done it before. I think the potatoes get a little mushier, but I find I don't mind that at all.

CP – your chicken and potato dinner looks delicious. I’d love to hear more about soured mustard sauce – it sounds interesting. I am so sorry about the hoax. What a horrible thing to do to another person. And so inexplicable. Shelby – we are still completely decorated, too. I have put some of the gifts away from under the tree, but that’s all. I’d like to hear about your oyster stew. It looks different and GOOD! Ashen – I had to Google spezzatino. That looks delicious! Can I get some details on the polenta? How thick was it? And grilled how? Pan grilled, oven, grill?? It just looks so toasty and wonderful! Chris – cheated how? It looks too good to be a big cheat! Dinner tonight started with our usual salad: A gorgeous rib eye: Cooked perfectly: Served with leftover collards, corn bread and some cavatappi Amatriciana from our dinner last night at Carrabba’s: As a side note, we probably wouldn’t have ever eaten at Carrabba’s if we hadn’t gotten a gift card for Xmas. We weren’t bowled over by the food, but were pleasantly surprised. It was a very good meal and we agreed that while we probably wouldn’t bother going back by ourselves, if someone else wanted to go, we’d be happy to.

Just kielbasa cut into about 4-inch pieces.

Kate – I adore cinnamon rolls, but only made them from scratch once. They were very good but a LOT of trouble. Also, the recipe I used makes a dozen HUGE rolls. Now when I have a craving, I go buy ONE at a bakery! Every single plate of your food is gorgeous and delicious looking, but I have to ask: what are those flat crouton-y looking things on the pork belly and shrimp plate? Are they part of the belly or some bread thing? They look amazing. Patrick – your hoppin’ john looks wonderful. I didn’t see any bell peppers, the presence of which steers me away from many versions. Like rotuts, we are Benton’s fans. Mr. Kim has introduced it to his co-workers , so every couple of months we get a gloriously stinky package on our front porch. I always wonder if the UPS man orders a BLT that day for lunch without really realizing why! Yesterday’s football dinner: Leftover vegetable soup. Pigs in a blanket and boxed mac n cheese. (PS - that isn't ketchup in the little bowl, it's HP, a sausage roll trick I learned from my dad, Ted Fairhead, who some of you might remember. Today would have been his birthday, so I'll probably have another one today in his honor).

Does Willie's avatar remind anyone else of Dave Hatfield's dog in a field avatar? Miss him and his kindness and contributions so much.

Shelby – back atcha, ma’am! And I adore the good Doctor! Your pork is perfectly lovely, the rolls so nice and crunchy looking…but, OH, that EGG! You’ve achieved perfection, my dear! I would retire on that. Never cook again because I couldn’t be bettered! Brava! gfweb – gorgeous turkey! Is it ‘fiddly’ or could a regular girl do it? Kate - !!! Nice to ‘see’ you! Lovely chicken and those potatoes are a work of art. New Year’s Day meal – pork chops with apples & onions, collards, black eyed peas, scalloped tomatoes and cornbread. The pork chops: From a recipe found online. They were a little meh, to be honest. Don’t know if it was the fault of the recipe or the thin grocery store chops. I brined them, so they were at least moist. The tomatoes: The only stewed tomato-ish thing we like. Plated: Luck all set for 2015! Happy New Year, everyone!

Here you go: http://www.recipecircus.com/recipes/Kimberlyn/CHEESE/Cheddar__Monterey_Jack_Cheese_Toast.html

gfweb – lovely looking turkey salad! We had some friends and my mother in for lunch after church this Sunday. I made my mother’s vegetable soup: And the most amazingly delicious cheese toast I’ve ever tasted: I was looking for a special cheese toast to serve with the fairly ordinary vegetable soup. I wanted something that would elevate the everyday soup and this recipe did it. The recipe itself is very good, but the Cheddar that I used was what really made the difference. I found Montgomery’s Cheddar from Manor Farm in Somerset, UK at Southern Season. This is one of the best cheeses I’ve ever had. Truly remarkable and set this cheese toast apart from any I’ve ever made. I made the cheese mixture the day ahead of time and just let it come to room temperature before spreading on the bread. We had a couple of pieces left over and I toasted one and made a sandwich with some good ham – incredible. I do not know why this always happens to me when I make vegetable soup: See the stock pot on the right? That’s what I started my soup in. Somehow in getting all the vegetables even and getting it liquid enough, that one medium stock pot ended up being one stock pot and two Dutch ovens FULL of soup. We have vegetable soup coming out of our ears. I’ve forced containers of it on everyone who has stopped by the house in the last 3 days! This happens EVERY TIME I make vegetable soup!

gfweb – that confit, risotto and sprouts meal is one of the most perfect meals that I can imagine! Nina – the sauce on your short ribs looks incredible. Thanks for the explanation! Norm – what an absolutely beautiful Christmas Eve dinner. I probably would have overserved myself on bread, shrimp and eggs and not had room for that gorgeous beef! Shelby – oh, my DEAR – that beef. I believe my chin just hit the keyboard. Mmmpomps – love the pink KA! I have a silver one and getting it professionally painted pink is on my wishlist! My first holiday cooking was our annual Christmas Eve celebration. I changed the menu again this year – same goodies and sweets, but the meal was different. I did the CI Modern Beef Burgundy with egg noodles, salad, cheeses, fruits, crackers and bread. Beef Burgundy: Through some experimentation I discovered that I could freeze the basic beef and sauce mixture and then do the mushroom and pearl onion mixture the day before serving. I heated it all up together early in the day and adjusted the seasoning and put it in slow cookers. The noodles were cooked the day before and plunged into boiling water and held in a slow cooker, too. This worked amazingly well – everything tasted lovely and the meat was so tender. Green salad with bleu cheese dressing, my Dad's paprika dressing and pumpernickel croutons: Cheeses: Just Costco Gouda, Brie and Cheddar. Grapes, clementines and Lady apples: Some nice, crusty bread from Whole Foods: I’ve put all the sweets in the Your Daily Sweets thread. For my MIL’s Christmas celebration on the 26th, she requested Texas Caviar: Served with pita chips. Very good. A couple of folks ate so much of this while the rest of the prep was going on that they hardly ate any dinner!

Matthew K – lovely cake and it sounds delicious! Shelby – I’m sitting in a house overflowing with cookies and candies and all kinds of goodies and I’d give them all up for a slice of that peach pie! David – that almond butter crunch is gorgeous! Your friends are very lucky folks. FrogPrincesse - I am making that ginger pie for Mr. Kim as soon as all the sweets in our house are gone. He is crazy for ginger. Thanks for posting a link! This year’s Christmas sweets – not much new. Not sure if I even need to post all of this, since so much is exactly what I posted last year! Darienne’s incredible toffee: Toffee is one of my favorite candies. When I read that Darienne had an Engstrom’s copy-cat recipe that she was happy with, I requested the recipe. She was kind enough to give it to me and it is fantastic. The recipe is extremely easy to make and to manage. Cooky platter: Just my standards - sugar cookies, my peanut butter cookies and Dream cookies (a simple butter cooky). Gluten free sugar cookies for a niece: Sponge candy: Matthew gets a thank you for helping me to perfect my sponge. I have had some trouble in the past few years with burning half my batches and with the lack of consistency in the texture. He gave me a Greweling recipe that he has used and by using that method with my ingredients, I was able to make my sponge properly every time. Thank you, again, Matthew! Happy Accident candy: All the leftover crumbs from breaking up the sponge candy mixed with melted chocolate (hence: Happy Accident – it was one of those ‘aha’ moments years ago). I was VERY happy with my tempering this year. I found an article online called “The Elements of Chocolate” that was very informative. I don’t know that it would work for large chocolate making, but for the small amounts that I needed it was perfect. You melt the chocolate VERY slowly, trying not to get above 94 degrees F, seed it with a little chopped chocolate and use it. I melted in the microwave and set the bowl on a heating pad set at 100 degrees F while stirring. This candy was a week old before I took the picture and it still looks pretty good, I think. Iced almonds with sea salt and those Rolo/pretzel candies: Peanut brittle: Two different fudges: Reeses Cup fudge on the left and my Aunt San’s fudge on the right. Lemon chess tarts: The best I’ve ever made. A British friend said that they were every bit as good as English lemon curd tarts. There were supposed to be mincemeat tarts, too. Momma said she would bring those, but they never appeared!

David – I love the look of that hash brown casserole! Christmas morning breakfast! The menu never changes. My MIL’s candy cane: Pillsbury Orange Danish Tree: Silliest thing ever, but we HAVE to have them. Jessica made mimosas this year: Very popular. A new tradition, I think. Sausage rolls: Baby Quiche Lorraine: I missed getting a picture of the everything bagels !

Poor Mr. Kim – I have hardly cooked at all this past week. Mostly just our standbys – breakfast for dinner, grilled cheese and TAKE OUT! Some gougieres that I made for a Christmas party at church: Lunch/dinner today: A couple of cheeses from Southern Seasons and a friend’s cheese ball. The cheese on the left is Berkswell from Neals Yard Dairy UK and the one on the right is Montgomery’s Cheddar from Manor Farm in Somerset, UK. We loved the Cheddar, but found the Berkswell a bit too stinky for our tastes.

I am enjoying this so much, CatPoet! How wonderful of you to share this busy time with us. Thank you so much.