Kim Shook

Ruth – your bunnies are adorable and the flavors sound wonderful. I especially love the little ones that are ‘cuddling’! The other day I made this silly little cake: I made it for a work birthday, that I had forgotten about until the night before and I needed to get ready for the NOLA trip. It’s a weird, but still pretty good, cake that my mother makes – it’s a cake mix that you put the frosting into. Everyone at work ADORED it. I bring in a homemade, from scratch carrot cake and they say – “that’s so good”, but I bring in a cake mix cake with canned frosting stirred in and they lose their minds . I did tart it up with some really good melted chocolate, dulche de leche and toasted pecans.

kayb and doc - I'm really pulling for it! saturnbar - we do have ideas for Saturday - we might go to an early dinner AND a late dinner. We are kind of leaving it open - so we can decide ala minute! But recommendations are ALWAYS welcome! I'll check back one more time about 5pm before we leave for the airport, if you want to add anything. Thank you!

Thanks for the links, saturnbar! Ok - we leave tomorrow evening and here's the 'final' schedule: Place d'Armes Hotel Saturday French Quarter B'fast places - Stanley Croissant D'Or French Quarter walking tour including: French Market Boutique du Vampyre Maskarade Collectible Antiques Lucullus Antiques Leah's Candy Marie Laveau's Voodoo Authentica Historic NOLA Collection Kitchen Witch (used cookbooks) Lunch @ Galatoire's (open at 11:30) Try Central Grocery for 2nd lunch 8:30 Dinner at Luke Music on Frenchman's Street Cafe du Monde - 24 hours Sunday - Mid City/Esplanade - Day of the Dead Canal St. streetcar to Cypress Grove and Greenwood Cemetaries City Park - Storyland and Train Garden and Sculpture Garden St. Louis Cemetary #3 Lunch at Parkway Pandora's Sno-Ball? Back to the Quarter Acme for dinner (?) Monday - Garden District & Magazine Street Breakfast at Surrey's St. Alphonsus and St. Mary's Churches Garden District walking tour Magazine Street including: Aux Belles Choses Sucre Magazine St. Lunch place recommendations: Mahony's Stein's Gotts Joey K's La Boulangerie Dinner at Cochon Tuesday - airport at 3pm Breakfast at Elizabeth's Cake Cafe Ferry to Algiers Point Mardi Gras World - if time enough Central Groc. if not done before Lunch at Willie Mae's on the way to the airport, if time enough Try to Get To: Dragos Restaurant - Hilton Riverbend Camellia Grill Thank you all so much for all your help and advice. I'll post a report as soon as I get back and get organized!

I am just utterly, utterly speechless and awestruck! What amazingly beautiful cakes. If I ever made something that looked like that, I could just roll over and die - my life goals complete! Bravo!

Isn't this the greatest??!! I love toast made in the press. You can even butter it first . It makes for a great toast for spreads and dips, too. Like really rev-ed up Melba toast.

Pam – that is a beautiful eggs Benedict! Blether – well, you are right – bacon is never ordinary and that WAS Benton’s so, yep very good! And that’s sausage – when Mr. Kim sneaks down and does the sausage before I can get up, he makes these enormous thick sausage patties. I prefer mine thinner, so I slice them through the middle for my biscuits. Jmahl – what a lovely breakfast. It looks and sounds delicous. I haven’t tried agave yet, but mean to. How thick is it? RE: the slow cooker oatmeal. I’ve done it, with mixed results also. It seems like a lot of trouble to me and a mess to clean up (I thought those slow cooker bags would be great, but you lose a lot of the oatmeal because it clings so to the bag). I don’t eat oatmeal, but Mr. Kim loves it and he really likes the overnight method that MelissaH introduced me to. It couldn’t be easier. I do it in a non-stick pot and he adds water to the empty pot and it is no trouble to clean later. percyn – gorgeous eggs! Breakfast this morning: scrambled eggs, Benton’s bacon, sausages and some really good little frozen croissants that I found at Fresh Market. They are really easy to do – you cook them from frozen for about 15 minutes. They were amazingly crisp and flakey and very tender. I used the croissant to do a taste test: As you can see, I have only a dab of my beloved (and outrageously expensive) Little Scarlet strawberry preserves left. I am just stunned by the price every time we buy them and when I saw the Schwartau that I had always liked best before I tasted the Little Scarlet, I decide to try them head to head. A strawberry preserve smackdown, as it were. Well, the Little Scarlet preserves are much better – but 3 times better? I’m not convinced. But the jar lasts me probably 3 months. So I am still up in the air. When the Schwartau are all gone it will probably depend on whether I feel like I deserve a treat or not!

emmalish – talk about being blown away! Your ‘simple’ grilled cheese and the gorgeous photo blew ME away! meredithla – I am thinking seriously of buying a third memory card to take with us, just in case. How many pictures can I take with a 1.0 GB card, I wonder ? I love the combination of gorgonzola and beef! Bruce – I really like the sound of the carrot rice. I will have to try that method with some orzo! I think that it would work really well. Say thank you to Mrs. C for me. Blether – what a great meal. All my favorite stuff – steak, potatoes, eggs and my beloved Brussels sprouts . You wouldn’t believe how many Americans I’ve converted to Brussels sprouts by cooking them like my English stepdad does! And I’ve stopped being embarrassed by my love for frozen fries . I haven’t ever been able to get the crispness that I want with fresh fries, so I just go with what I like. I will try your method of doing the fries with the low heat, though. That sounds intriguing! Dinner tonight was a lot of leftovers. We had what was left of the Greek salad that Mr. Kim had for lunch: We went to lunch at a new little Greek café that I found. Haven’t heard a thing about it in any of the local papers, but I just happened to notice it when I was at the Sears discount center awhile back. It’s in the middle of a lot of warehouses – I hope they get a lot of weekday lunch and early dinner business, because they were empty today. We had saganaki and a gyro and the salad. We brought home a Greek wedding cooky, baklava and koulourakia. Everything was very, very good. I hope that the place does well, because it’s just exactly the kind of little joint that we love. We also had baked linguini from Mr. Kim’s linguini and sauce that he made when I was in NC: I just layered it with some fresh mozzarella and Locatelli. Plated with garlic breadsticks from leftover hot dog buns from last night:

nickrey – Nice enchilada meal! And that salsa just GLOWS!! Dinner last night was hot dogs and chili cheese fries. Started with a tossed salad with bleu cheese dressing: Deep fried hot dogs: These were really good. Just grocery store (Nathan’s) dogs, but the deep frying mimics natural casings. Mr. Kim had his dogs with japs and slaw: And I had a Carolina dog – mustard, slaw and chili: It was a real white trash special – frozen fries, canned chili and deli slaw. But it hit the spot!

Barbecue on waffles-- what a cool idea! I've done it on fried cornbread, and that's good. Are your cornbread waffles regular cornbread batter? New and hopefully more mobile cast today; hoping I can cook at least something simple this weekend. Tired of snacking and eating out. Yep, it's just regular cornbread batter. I usually just use Jiffy mix.

percyn – oh, boy, I want some of that hash! Blether – OMG! That roll, that egg, that flowy, gushy yolk. You got me! A much, much more ordinary breakfast:

Thanks, Holly! Their website is under construction, so I appreciate the link. I should have thought of your site! We just didn't want the bother of a car, so we know that we'll probably spend nearly as much on taxi fares as we would have on renting a car!

kayb – so sorry about the broken arm! What a thing for a cook to have! Hope you heal FAST! Prawn – the fig tart is just breathtaking! And please tell your wife that I envy her beautiful cupcakes – the one with the petals is especially lovely. emmalish – what absolutely gorgeous pictures! Not much cooking this week – too busy planning my NOLA trip on the 19th!! Mr. Kim finally tried out the smoker he got for Christmas (see my blog for his full and utterly hilarious account of the day – you have to read all three parts to get the real story and all the pictures), so we have had some awesome butt meals! Dinner tonight was leftovers from Mr. Kim’s pork: BBQ and slaw on cornbread waffles – we’ve done the waffles before and they are wonderful with BBQ! and frozen fries .

Sir, you cut me to the quick! Of course there will be second lunches every day and snacks and midnight beignet jaunts! We figure in a place like NOLA, those things we can leave to chance and our noses. We won't have a car, but our hotel is very near Cafe du Monde, I'll be running down there everytime I need to get out of the room and have a cigarette. Maybe I should do my makeup there in the morning . I'm not sure about fitting in the Camellia Grill, but I'll put it on the list. Do you know their days/hours?

saturnbar – Thanks for the great info. What/what/who is ‘Stanley’s’? I couldn’t find it in my books or online. Thanks for the sculpture garden tip – the park really sounds great – I’ve added it to our itinerary. I couldn’t find Mahoney’s either, do you have an address? I appreciate the ideas for along Magazine. I figured that there would be a large amount of choices and it’s nice to have it narrowed down! Rhonda – Felix is scratched. Dragos sounds wonderful, but unfortunately it is closed on Sunday (how bizarre is it that a hotel restaurant is closed ANY day?) and if I try to juggle any more of our days around my tiny little head will explode. But I will keep it on the list of “try to get to” places, so if we find the time, we’ll try it. The charbroiled oysters sound like my kind of food.

That's a given! I didn't even think to write it down since it is near our hotel and open 24 hours a day. Since we won't get to our hotel before midnight, we'll probably run right down for a snack!

Thank you both! I really appreciate the info. We are flexible and I knew that we needed more meal options (we were a little skimpy on breakfast places). I really welcome any and all ideas - we'll just sift through and do/eat/see what we have time for. My original list had 25 places to eat on it!

I've never made pasties and only had them one time - near Sarasota, Florida and I can't get my head around the idea of all that stuff getting DONE in that amount of time. Does it really get tender in 45 minutes? I, being a complete Anglophile, adore the idea of pasties and really want to try to make them sometime, but this is my stumbling block. I just don't believe in them. And if I don't believe in something, it doesn't work !

Looking for a little guidance on our upcoming trip to NOLA. We are arriving very late Thursday night 3/19 (staying at the Place d'Armes), so we've got Saturday, Sunday, Monday and a partial day on Tuesday (we have to be at the airport by 3pm-ish). Below is the itenerary we've put together. We have made reservations for Luke and Cochon, but we're open to suggestions. If you notice that we're going to be in an area and have missed something there, I'd be happy to hear about it. I've never been and Mr. Kim has only been once on business, so he didn't get to do too much. Saturday French Quarter walking tour (from a guidebook)- including: French Market Boutique du Vampyre Maskarade Collectible Antiques Lucullus Antiques Leah's Candy Marie Laveau's Voodoo Authentica Historic NOLA Collection Lunch @ Galatoire's Try Central Grocery for 2nd lunch . 8:30 Dinner at Luke Music on Frenchman's Street Sunday - Mid City/Esplanade - Day of the Dead Canal St. streetcar to Cypress Grove and Greenwood Cemetaries City Park - Storyland and Train Garden St. Louis Cemetary #3 Lunch at Parkway Gelato at Angleo Brocato's Back to the Quarter Acme or Felix's for dinner Monday - Garden District & Magazine Street Breakfast at Surrey's St. Alphonsus and St. Mary's Churches Garden District walking tour Magazine Street including: Aux Belles Choses Sucre Lunch at Casamento's (maybe) La Boulangerie Dinner at Cochon Tuesday - airport at 3pm Breakfast at Elizabeth's Cake Cafe Ferry to Algiers Point Mardi Gras World - if time permits Central Groc. if not done before Lunch at Willie Mae's on the way to the airport, if time permits Thanks so much in advance!

I second this. I've had the VERY expensive mail-order ones from Wms-Sonoma and these are SO much less expensive and every bit as good.

Another run of the mill breakfast yesterday morning started with these: Just biscuits – I have no idea what would cause the splits that occurred in the top of some of them. With the biscuits we had scrambled eggs, Benton’s bacon, and sausage. I used almost the last of my lovely Little Scarlet strawberry preserves on my biscuit and Mr. Kim had Toast Dope:

meredithla – gorgeous brisket. Mr. Kim got a smoker for Christmas and is assembling it right now (more cussing than tax prep day!). I am urging a brisket as one of the first experiments, but until he does, I think I’ll give that Hazan recipe a try! And that onion, Gruyere and cauliflower tart is beautiful! Blether – I’ve noticed the same thing about the pages on the dinner thread, but didn’t miss any of the posts I remembered. Since sometimes the pictures seem to change sizes, I thought that might be the reason. I would love a wedge of that seafood lasagna and it’s only 9AM. Mark – I know you won’t be here at eG today, but congratulations on the marriage! menuinprogress – lovely looking and SOUNDING clams and sea bass! A recent dinner started with some wonderful minestrone soup that our daughter saved us from a client lunch at her company: I don’t know where it came from, but it was so good! I made a kinda good chicken and cornbread dressing casserole: The recipe came from someone at another website on which I participate. I screwed it up a bit – I halved the chicken part of the recipe, but forgot to halve the topping ingredients. So it was ‘top heavy’ . It needed some work on the spices – maybe some sage and onions. It was also a little too sweet. Basically a good starting point. But the really odd thing was, according to the recipe, it should have taken 45 minutes to cook. At the end of 45 minutes, my chicken was completely raw. It took about twice that long. I can’t figure out how she got fully cooked chicken in 45 minutes . I also served broccoli w/ hollandaise and some tarted up Sister Schubert frozen yeast rolls:

Oh, it sounds so wonderful. I need girlfriends! Before eG's Meredith married eG's zeemanb and moved away, she and I met for lunch a couple of times and had a blast. I'd give anything to have someone to lunch and shop and cook with! You are lucky folks to have eG folks close to you! I hope to hear lots about your gatherings on this thread.

For my birthday party with friends a couple of years ago, I made MY OWN cake. Chocolate cake bombe, filled with two chocolate mousses: milk and dark, covered with 70% ganache, with white chocolate shavings on top. 'Partway through the massacre' ps. Kim, I hope someone is reimbursing you for all the expenses.... Darienne - that is gorgeous and EXACTLY what I'd love for my own birthday. No, they don't reimburse, but that's my choice - it was offered, but I refused. It gets me out of contributing to a gift and I would be cooking and taking stuff in anyway. Mr. Kim and I are always trying to eat better, so 'goodies' go to our offices once we have a taste. I love to cook and experiment and if we ate it all, we'd be rolling around the house like Tweedledee and Tweedledum!

Prawn – do they still say ‘gobsmacked’ in England or is that just in the old novels I love. Anyway, I am always gobsmacked by your cooking. Beautiful, thoughtful, delicious looking and, as always, gorgeously presented and photographed. I really run out of superlatives when I look at your posts. Dinner tonight: Pintos w/ ham, chowchow and onions, collards and corn fritters. A nice meal for a cold night. Close up of the fritters: They really turned out well tonight.

No repeats that I know of, but I started out making them just for the few girls that I work with, but now I am expected to make them for the whole office (about 15 people). They really appreciate it, though, make a big deal of it, and I love to cook, so I don't mind. On my birthday they got me a grocery store cake - dry, tasteless and tooth-achingly sweet. I guess it would be rude to suggest I'd rather just have a Cadbury bar, huh?