Kim Shook

If I order grits, I always expect to have to add salt and pepper to my own taste. But GOOD grits (not quick or - horrors - instant), should come with some seasoning already added. Grits need LOTS of salt and pepper and I personally think that a few dashes of hot sauce is necessary. Cheese grits may not need as much salt, but still need a good dose of pepper and hot sauce. I'm making a cheese grits souffle tomorrow morning (ye gods, actually THIS morning) for my parents and the recipe calls for 3/4 t. salt to 1/2 c. uncooked grits, but I'm sure it will need more. If the grits you order taste like "spackling" instead of corn, then I suspect you are getting instant or quick grits. Try making them at home and see what you think.

Yep - and it makes my face flush, too (I have rosecea!)

Soba – going back to your roasted tomato meal – that just looks incredible – I’d love the entire thing! Bruce – how I envy those tomatoes. We are too shady to grow any and I never got any really good ones this year – even the garden fresh ones from the farmers market and my in laws’ garden were pallid. percyn – the hoagie is a thing of beauty and that bread!!!! I have a couple of recent meals – a little dull compared to what y’all are cooking lately! A few days ago I made really quick steak tacos with soft corn tortillas and salad: Last night was fresh kielbasa from John McGinnis in Pittsburgh with caramelized onions, baked potatoes and salad. Wonderful kielbasa:

Jaymes, I think that you are talking about my picks. I intended them as appetizer picks rather than martini picks. But...if you used little mini beads that weren't very heavy, that might be a great idea. I want to find someone who teaches that wire art thing - where the thick wire (that looks like soldering wire) and beads are wrapped around serving items. A couple of martini glasses and a silver cocktail shaker decorated with those and a couple of picks would make a wonderful gift! Hmmmmm.... You should be able to find a Gem & Mineral show in your area - There is one in Harrisonburg Oct 23-25 - or check in the listings of Lapidary Journal http://www.jewelryshowguide.com/event/results.php?letter=&category_id=34&screen=1 Most shows have at least one wire-wrap demo artist and you can get just about any supplies your need. Thank you, so much! This is a craft I really want to learn - I am good at color choice and arranging things, but not terribly artistic, so I think this is the thing for me!

Jaymes, I think that you are talking about my picks. I intended them as appetizer picks rather than martini picks. But...if you used little mini beads that weren't very heavy, that might be a great idea. I want to find someone who teaches that wire art thing - where the thick wire (that looks like soldering wire) and beads are wrapped around serving items. A couple of martini glasses and a silver cocktail shaker decorated with those and a couple of picks would make a wonderful gift! Hmmmmm....

The bacon that I used was pretty lean, so I didn't have a pan-ful of fat when I finished. I didn't want to clean a rack, but I'm sure that would help. I think that you could cook the bacon until it was almost done and then drain the fat and apply the brown sugar - it caramelizes pretty quick. Glad you liked it!

Being the smarty I am, I went straight to your website to look for the brown sugar bacon recipe, and it's not there!! I googled, and found a bunch, but I'd love to know which one you used! Or did you do-it-yourself? (just sprinkle brown sugar and broil?) I just made bacon yesterday, so I'm itching to try it. Definitely NOT a recipe. Like you, I googled, and ended up just sprinkling a good amount of brown sugar on the bacon, pressing it down lightly and baking at 375 degrees for about 25 minutes. A couple of caveats: I used really good thick bacon (since you made bacon, you don't need this advice, but others might) and I put it on Reynolds Non-stick foil. It looks like it's not going to work, because when you first take it off the pan, it's really gooey and a little limp, but when it cools a little it gets perfectly crispy. Mine were done about 20 minutes before we ended up eating, so I just put them back on the pan under the eggs when I cooked the eggs for about 7 minutes and they were perfect. Let me know how you liked it. I can't wait to have it for dinner tonight!

Lovely, lovely desserts everyone! dystopiandreamgirl – your leaf cake is, live EVERYTHING you make, absolutely gorgeous and amazing! And the mini pizzelles with the berries are adorable. The picture is great – I can imagine the taste and POP of those berries! Thank you for sharing your lovely creations with us. Well, I have one pretty ordinary, but delicious offering: These are Elinor Klivan’s Super-Sized Ginger Chewies with Sugar Babies. One of our favorite cookies. The little drippy looking bits on the right are melted out Sugar Babies – these bits get very brittle when they cool. I just break them off and they become a cook’s treat! These are going in the freezer as a gift for a friend we are seeing in PA next weekend. For dinner last night, I did a Ginger Mascarpone Icebox Cake w/ Caramel Apple Sauce: I’ve made this before (and Marlene has, too, I think). It’s from "The 150 Best American Recipes" by Fran McCullough & Molly Stevens. Someone at eG recommended the recipe. It’s just so good and easy – no cooking and you make it the day before you serve it. I had some maple caramel sauce in the fridge and sautéed some apples to make a sauce to serve with the cake.

Lovely meals, all! Soba – everything you cook is so beautiful and fresh looking! Johnny – mmmm, braised lamb! C’mon Fall food!!!! We had a high school friend of mine from DC down for the weekend. Dinner last night was romaine, hearts of palm and radish salad w/ ginger dressing (like Japanese steak house dressing): Scallops With Miso-Mustard Cream Sauce: Pan Roasted Glazed Salmon: Orzo w/ herbs and vegetable broth: Stir Fried Sugar Snaps: Grilled ciabatta slices: Ginger Mascarpone Icebox Cake w/ Caramel Apple Sauce: We had a bottle of Sancerre with dinner – it’s become my new favorite wine.

Ann – I always love your pictures so much! The eggs on a cloud are just gorgeous! As are the sandwiches – what recipe are you using for those rolls? I need to order some back bacon – we a pork freaks and I’m sure we’d be immediately addicted! percyn – I never, ever thought to use pate as a breakfast meat, but it is a wonderful idea, especially a nice, rustic chunky one like you used! Thanks for the inspiration. We had a guest this weekend – a high school friend (32 years ago! ) down from DC. Breakfast this morning was baked eggs w/ goat cheese and herbs, brown sugar bacon, cheese grits soufflé and bread machine brioche w/ assorted preserves: The bacon was amazing! Like bacon brittle. Wow. I wouldn't make it all the time, but I kept thinking about it all day and had to stay very busy to not go in the fridge for a nibble every so often!

RunBe4UFly – gorgeous pictures and wonderful looking food! Bruce – I love the look of that pork/bean sprout dish! Our favorite Chinese restaurant here makes a similar dish that is incredible. Soba – I wish I had a bowl of that oyster stew right now. What makes it ‘New Orleans style’? percyn – and after a bowl of Soba’s stew, I’ll finish with one of the 1st version of the lobster salad! Wow! Quick after work dinner tonight: Pork tenderloin w/ Montgomery Inn bbq sauce, green beans w/ vinaigrette, corn cakes and salad. That pork was just as juicy as it looks. I seared it in a pan on top of the stove and roasted it at 350 degrees to 160 and it was just perfect.

We were thrilled with this cake! It was a Martha Stewart recipe that I tried out on Mother's Day this year for a niece who is newly gluten intolerant. She was so thrilled and said that it was the best gluten free cake that she'd had - including one from a very expensive bakery and begged to take the leftovers home. Here's a picture: (I used one of those giant cupcake pans)

Had some steamed shrimp that needed to be eaten tonight (leftover from our UVA tailgate on Saturday and then MORE from a party we went to last night), so I made Ina Garten’s shrimp salad and served it on split top rolls, also some tomato and red onion salad with cornbread croutons and some Star’s Brunswick stew (out of Burlington) from a recent trip to NC:

So many lovely desserts! deensiebat – your chocolate cookies are just speaking to me right now! Here is a CI German chocolate cake that I made last week: My MIL ordered it for a friend’s birthday. I’ve made the cake, but not the frosting, before and it was delicious. I tasted the scraps and they were good, but it’s odd to send a cake out and not know what it really tasted like – what professionals go through all the time, I know. The cake is supposed to have bare sides with just the frosting showing between the layers. Two layers are split into 4 and then you frost. Once I trimmed them up, it just didn’t look nice, so I ran to the store for some canned frosting (sorry, but it was LATE and I’d just done the fantasy football draft party and was getting ready to go to NC for the weekend) and dolled it up. My MIL said that everyone loved the cake and that the birthday lady wanted it again next year.

I just use the canned ones, but if someone wanted to go to the trouble of converting the recipe to dry beans, I'd be ordering some Rancho Gordos tomorrow !

Blether - sorry, I somehow missed the request for the smoky bean recipe until just now. Here's the recipe. I don't know what makes them 'smoky' other than the BBQ flavor beans. If I can't find them, I just use canned baked beans with some good BBQ sauce added. I've also added leftover BBQ'd pork when I have some in the freezer.

Oops! We also had Smoky Beans: (I thought that I could edit my post, but couldn't find the edit button)

RunBe4UFly – gorgeous pictures! And that dessert…wow! Have you found the “Your Daily Sweets” thread on the baking board? I can tell that you would be very, very welcome there! On Monday night we had brined pork chops, cous cous, creamed corn and tomatoes: I loved the tenderness and juiciness of the pork chop, but really disliked the flavor – the brining liquid called for pickling spice. I really found it inedible. Mr. Kim seemed to like it, though. I think that next time, I’ll try more of an apple cider, mustard brine. Last night was Mr. Kim’s annual Fantasy Football Draft party, which I’ve catered for the last 4-5 years. They used to get a private room at a local restaurant, but one year couldn’t get it on the night that they needed it and so Mike asked me to cater it. They’ve voted for me every year since. It’s 12 guys and I always take the day off and cook up a storm. They love everything and take food home to their families and PAY ME (a big deal to an ordinary home cook – the concept, not the money ), so I have a blast. Last night we had: quick party nuts: just easy, glazed almonds and pecans Jaymes' incomparable caramel corn: I decided to make this without nuts so the poor guy who is allergic could have some. Still the best caramel corn ever. Buffalo Wing Wontons: Some of them overcooked a bit, as you can see, but I watched more carefully with later batches. The filling for these is just my version of that Buffalo wing dip that was going around the food boards a couple of years ago. They are trashy and fried and totally delicious – perfect guy food :lol: ! I did sandwiches with the CI eye of round roast: We love this recipe and I make it a lot, but we discovered that it just isn’t tender enough for cold sandwiches – the fellows kept pulling the whole slices out with each bite. I sliced them EXTREMELY thin, too. I did horseradish sauce, BBQ sauce and roasted red peppers to serve with the sandwiches. Chile-cornbread salad: weird and wonderful – a layered salad (remember those?) with crumbled cornbread, bacon, pintos, green pepper, cheese, tomatoes, spring onions and a mayo/sour cream/ranch dressing mix dressing. Another trashy and delicious concoction. Pickles, pretzel chips and Alexia Crunchy Onion Strips (these were incredible – like Durkees kicked up a million notches!) – no pictures. Gratin Dauphinois: fruit salsa and cinnamon flour tortilla chips: Perhaps the most popular dish of the night. I made probably 2 quarts of this salsa and had about 1 cup leftover! Just strawberries, kiwi, raspberries, blackberries, apples and a tiny bit of white and brown sugar. Chocolate Toffee Bars: Dream Cookies: These are our family’s favorite cookies. Very simple – almost a shortbread and so incredibly tender and buttery and crisp. I sometimes dress them up with cinnamon sugar, nuts, chocolate dip, etc. But even plain, they are my best-remembered cookies. I've been making them since I was 9 or 10 years old - about 40 years! Well, tonight I’m ‘wore out’ and I’m very glad that we have some leftovers!

Nicholas – what delicious looking salsa and what a GORGEOUS photo. I love that you can see the stripes on the little bits of tomato! djyee – those fig/prosciutto/pasta plates make the perfect summer meal. Saturday night I had to bake some chicken breasts for a dish I’m making Tuesday for Mr. Kim’s fantasy football draft party, so I decided to piggyback dinner onto that. I also did a fridge/freezer/pantry inventory yesterday, so most everything was either leftovers or stuff that needed using! I did baked chicken with herbed Monterey Jack and prosciutto. Mr. Kim had yellow squash and kale and Jessica and I had creamed corn and cous cous. Mr. Kim’s plate: My plate:

(((Randi))) - I work for a urologist so I have seen lots of folks going through what you are! Take your drugs and I hope you feel better soon - I'll be thinking about you!

As soon as she can eat something besides mush, she will be getting that biscuit and the preserves!

Actually, I cheated and made the bread pudding with doughnuts from a grocery store bakery. I've made it with chocolate covered doughnuts and cinnamon buns, too. A young friend of ours used to work at Starbucks and would bring us bags of leftover pastries every couple of nights and I ended up with a freezer full of them. I was desperate to use them up and googled and came up with this recipe!

Please, I need the recipe for this amazing looking creation. ← Here you go! Enjoy!

I’ve been spending most of my weekends lately going to Reidsville NC to visit my grandmother who is in a rehab center working to recover from a stroke. Most of my childhood summers were spent in Reidsville with my grandparents on their farm. So many of my food memories, tastes and lessons were learned there. Either in my grandmother’s (or others’) kitchen, in the cafes that my grandfather took me for ‘dinner’ (lunch to Yankees) and at church suppers. Granddaddy had 80 acres and 30-some head of cattle, so we ate LOTS of beef. One of his friends had a huge vegetable farm and pigs. His tenants cooked exotic things like fried fatback and hog jowls and took me to tent revivals (slightly alarming to my Episcopal soul) where the food afterwards was always delicious, warm and always slightly damp from being covered with foil in the summer humidity. I remember my grandfather taking me along to the Tire company where he did business (along with a poker game) and, while he was busy I’d visit with the men in the factory, who would always buy me a Co’cola and a Tom’s peanut bar. There is one pear tree left in my granddaddy’s orchard. Where there used to be almost two dozen assorted apple and pear trees. Snugged up next was a cow pasture where gathered the whole 30-some of them, chewing and drooling, their eyes entreating us to toss them the apple cores they loved so dearly. In spite of Granddaddy’s threats of switchings to come if I overfed them, I always obliged with a few. And never got the switch, either. Granddaddy was a tough talker, but soft inside. Those apples were tiny and puckeringly tart – cooking apples, I suppose. They dried out the inside of your mouth like you’d been eating alum. Mostly, Grandma Jean cooked with them. But small, sour apples are still my favorites. The pears were small, too. Crunchy, with no pear-y juiciness. But they made the most divine pear preserves. Granddaddy is gone now. Grandma Jean’s recovery from a stroke and return to home is questionable. The old log house and the huge, sheltering tree are gone and where there were cows and a barn and an old tobacco shed are new houses and a road (!!!). But the pear tree is there and Granddaddy’s shop still gives off a wispy scent of machine oil, hay and cigar smoke. When I was there a couple of weekends ago, I dragged a step ladder out to the pear tree and picked all I could reach. I thought we’d eat what we could at home. But a couple of nights ago, I was driven to make some of Grandma Jean’s preserves. I had no business making preserves! I needed to do laundry and clean at least one bathroom. Or go to bed early. But I needed to make those preserves…I needed to TASTE those preserves. So I peeled and cut up the pears: I finally found a use for the useless (to me) Y peeler – it is wonderful for peeling extremely hard pears with very stubborn peels! Added lemon juice and sugar and let them sit overnight: Last night when I got home from work, I boiled them down and put them in jars, not forgetting to add the lemon slice that Grandma Jean always adds. Sometimes, when I make them, I add a slice of ginger, but not this time; this time I want HER preserves, not my version. There weren’t a lot of pears. There was only enough for two jars: One for me and one for Momma. I may never have these exact preserves again – it is a very old, gnarled tree – and who knows what will happen to it by next year. But for now, I have that jar and these preserves: And they taste like sunshine and autumn and my grandparents and my childhood. All in one spoonful! Does anyone else have a similar story? I'd love to hear it!

It looks like I haven’t posted about a meal since July! I’ve been spending a LOT of time on the road lately dealing with family health problems and so haven’t been cooking much at all. Monday nights are for unpacking and going to bed early and Thursday nights are spent doing laundry and packing. So Tuesday and Wednesday nights have been mostly take-out, frozen pizza, quick sandwiches or breakfast – i.e. nothing worth noting or taking pictures of, certainly. But I have been sneaking peeks at eG all the while and longing for the days when I am home more! Just a few comments to catch up! percyn – that patty melt with the egg is fantastic – I have to try that SOON! And your smorgasbord is my very favorite kind of meal! Shelby – your tomatoes are gorgeous. I haven’t had any that looked like that in YEARS! Not from a farm stand, garden or market! Wow. menuinprogress – love the taquitos – I’ve never made my own and I don’t know why! Now I want to try soon! monavano – your corn soup is lovely, but I was totally captivated by the idea of putting a ham croquette on top! Thanks for posting the Catalina dressing recipe. I can’t wait to try it. Alinka – I would have asked for both a slice of the gorgeous fruit tart AND a cupcake! lesliec – your ‘Christmas’ dinner sounded delicious and intriguiging! I wish I could have seen pictures! Prawn – I would trade all of my next week’s meals for one plate of your Fritto Misto Di Mare! Amazing! Bruce – that’s the best looking BLT I’ve seen all summer! The one occasion that I have cooked for recently was Mr. Kim’s family reunion last weekend. I made a fresh salsa with a lot of help from an online friend. It consisted of grilled corn and jalapenos, black beans, tomatoes, roasted tomato sauce and roasted garlic and all the usual add-ins: red onion, cilantro, lime juice, etc. The corn and jalapenos: The roasted tomatoes and garlic: Finished: It was delicious (and made a TON of salsa – we still have some left) and very popular. I also made the much maligned, but delectable Krispy Kreme Bread Pudding: It is trashy, fragrant, utter delicious doughnut goodness . I’ve noticed that the folks at all the food boards who express horror at the idea of this dish are never the ones who’ve tasted it. All I can say is that 20 minutes after I put it in the oven, everyone in the house starts to congregate in the kitchen, sniffing and wondering when it will be done! Tonight is Mr. Kim’s birthday and we are off to his favorite German restaurant (it’s 90 degrees here today – do Germans even eat German food when it’s that hot?), the Bavarian Chef in Madison, VA. I am planning on ordering the snail fritters and begging bites of everyone else’s entrees! :lol: