Kim Shook

Back to back me, again ! Breakfast for dinner tonight – sausage gravy and biscuits, scrambled eggs and fruit salad: The eggs were amazingly fluffy and tender. I really took my time with them tonight instead of hurrying them along like I sometimes (usually ) do. I cooked the so low that they probably took 15 minutes to get done. Perfect eggs!

MiFi – As usual, everything looks gorgeous, but those strawberries and that stroganoff are calling to me! Dinner on Monday was slow cooker ribs with Sweet Baby Ray’s sauce, corn casserole and fried green tomatoes: I do these ribs fairly often on a worknight. I give them a rub the night before and let them sit in the fridge overnight, then dump them in the slow cooker on top of some slice onions and some kind of soda. They cook all day and we just crisp them up on the grill with some kind of sauce (homemade, if I have it, but there are some bottled ones that we like, too). It makes a nice change from the usual weeknight leftovers, quick chicken dishes or takeout !

Christine, that's a great idea! I'll be trying that! I started mine this past weekend and they should be ready for tasting/reseasoning today or tomorrow! Now if the tomatoes would just come in!

Wow, Randi! Real food and they liked it! That's a bit of progress, huh?? It all sounds good to me!

Yes, it is. We might end up with corn, which was my choice if I couldn't find fresh butterbeans ! Thanks, Soba!

I'm going to try to find fresh butter beans for Father's day dinner. If I do, and they are unshelled, how much should I buy to serve 12 people? I can't find anything about yield for unshelled butter beans!

No kitchen table , but the dining room table currently has the binders with all my tried recipes (the ones that are on my website) spread out on it. I am in the middle of reorganizing and recatagorizing them - for example, I had 9 billion 'meat' recipes, so I'm braking them down into 'beef/veal', 'lamb', 'pork', etc. Oh, and a set of green glass candlesticks with purple candles ! We mostly eat on trays in the family room, a habit I keep trying to break, because there is always some project or other on the table!

David – that is a beautiful steak! Dinner tonight was a real southern meal! We started with hot pepper jelly on cream cheese with Ritz: We stopped by the farm stand yesterday and they had local green tomatoes! So I did BLTs with fried green tomatoes: These were amazing! I also served baked sweet potatoes and corn casserole: Dessert was just strawberries and blueberries:

Kim, Will you be posting the Parmesan mac and cheese recipe in your cookbook? It sounds like it would be perfect addition to a ham dinner for a group of Habitat for Humanity volunteers that is scheduled for July 4th weekend. Thanks, Kay ← Kay, I'm putting it in today! It will be called "Skip's Parmesan Mac & Cheese"! We really liked it and hope you do, too!

No, you aren't and I am so very, very glad!

Ilana - well, I went home after work last night and cooked it for today (not during lunch time the same day or anything) - am I still kind ? Those dates are gorgeous looking. Are they coated with something? You didn't say, but they look like they have a crumbly coating on them. We adore dried fruit. When an elderly aunt was alive, she gave everyone a tray of dried fruit including nut stuffed dates and figs for Christmas. No one else in the family liked them, so we went home loaded with bags of the stuff!! Also, I've been watching with awe the progess of your chocolate bowls - they are truly amazing!

I made a cake for a birthday at work. It was SUPPOSED to be for Friday, but turns out the person isn’t going to be in on Friday, so I had to come home and make it immediately. I just used a mix and canned frosting. It looked cute, though – and once again I decorated in such a way as to avoid having to do lettering:

MiFi – summer, indeed!! And was I the only one who read “Eberly Chicks” as “Elderly Chicks”? Dinner tonight was another recipe from The American Diabetes Association’s Family Cookbook Volume II: Summer Night Salad with Parmesan mac and cheese and garlic bread made from some of the whole wheat baguette that I made on the weekend: All three of us LOVED the pasta. It was sharp and creamy and really, really satisfying! Only Mr. Kim liked the salad, though. Jessica and I really did NOT. It has broccoli, cauliflower, yellow squash, zucchini, hard boiled eggs, cheese and ham in a mayo/vinegar/sugar dressing. I don’t care for squash or zucchini, but my real problem with it was that the vegetables were steamed – only for 5 minutes, but I think it would have been better with them raw. I might have even liked the squash that way.

What I liked about this show was the same things that I enjoyed about The Next Iron Chef - real professionals, doing smart, good food and respecting one another. Also NO drama - loved that. I have never understood the draw of watching people behaving badly. What I didn't like was Gael Greene. She has always given me a major case of the creeps.

percyn – We have Williams-Sonoma, Sur la Table AND Crate and Barrel and would you believe that it didn’t occur to me to go to any of them until I read your post ? I just tried Target and Bed, Bath and Beyond. What a maroon ! judiu – I have one of those on my Amazon wish list (BIG birthday coming up – 50! )

Matthew – that is just an amazingly gorgeous salad! Dinner tonight was a shrimp and sugar snap stir fry with oyster/soy sauce on garlic/ginger orzo and corn on the cob:

My mother says that's why God made chocolate and vanilla !

jeez - I forgot! The ketchup comment reminded me - at a little cafe that was in the basement of a building that I used to work in, the vendor used to make these awesome egg sandwiches - scrambled eggs, bacon, cheese and HASHBROWNS on a soft roll - squirted with ketchup. Those were so good!

Lunch/dinner yesterday for Mr. Kim was leftover steak on toasted some slices of toasted WW baguette topped with Gorgonzola sauce, chips and jalapeno pickles: I had tuna salad on the baguette slices, chips and sweet dills: Dessert was these delicious banana chocolate chip muffins that meredith h. made:

percyn - that looks great and I love the knife - is that a Laguiole? I did basically the same breakfast this morning as yesterday with the addition of homefries w/ onions. I cooked the soft boiled eggs for 4 1/2 minutes this morning and that was NOT enough – egg snot, ICK !! Will try 4 3/4 minutes next time: I couldn’t find egg cups anywhere, so I ordered a set of cups and tiny little spoons last night. Maybe I’ll have them by next weekend so I can try again to get the timing right!

menuinprogress – gorgeous lamb !! Dinner tonight was a dry aged rib eye from Whole Foods w/ Gorgonzola sauce, Jacques Pepin’s Gnocchi Parisienne, salad and a whole wheat baguette that I made earlier today: The steak was the best steak I have ever made and one of the best we’ve ever tasted. I seared it in a pan and roasted it at 400 degrees in the oven to 125 degrees and after it sat, it was a perfect medium-rare! I was so happy with this dinner! The sauce is just a pan sauce with port and Gorgonzola. It was delectable! Also, the steak was much redder than it looks in the picture. It really was medium-rare, though it looks medium in that shot.

Today I tried out a recipe from the American Diabetes Association Family Cookbook Vol. II. It was a whole wheat baguette: It tastes fine and has slightly less calories, fat and carbs than regular WW bread, but I’ve never tasted a WW baguette before, so I don’t really know how it matches up. It has a tighter crumb than I really like and the crust isn’t very crisp (I forgot to brush it with ice water before turning on the oven – might that have been the problem?), but it rose beautifully and I don’t think that it’s a bad effort for the first time I’ve done the recipe.

Breakfast this morning was soft boiled eggs done by Maggie’s method in her wonderful essay in the Daily Gullet. She ended up cooking them for 5 minutes, but I think I’ll try 4 1/2 tomorrow. Getting them right depends on so many things individual to your house, climate, eggs, temperature, etc. Five minutes is close, though, and her method is easier than any other I’ve tried – cold, pierced eggs put into gently boiling water and left alone for 5 minutes. We also had Benton’s bacon and toast: Pardon the dark bacon – my kitchen is a dungeon this morning. We switched the light on last night to find it smoking !! Mr. Kim took the fan/light down last night and we went off to try to find a replacement light (a real aggravation and a topic for another thread !). I’m off to the store to buy some egg cups!

Rona - I make my Christmas turkey gravy ahead of time and freeze it every year. There is no way that I am making the amount of gravy we need at the last minute. I use turkey wings and sometimes make it as early as Thanksgiving. It needs a bit of thinning out when I thaw it, but I've never noticed any degrading of flavor or texture. Here are some notes about how I do it. I don't fool myself that I am a truly accomplished cook, but I am proud of my gravy - I have worked on the recipe for about 30 years and it's pretty durn good.

Oh, yeah! We make those a lot! Not usually on a roll, just because, like you, I don't usually have them. But they are great on a soft onion roll, when I have one. Egg, bread (untoasted normally) and, also like you, ham, cheese, bacon, etc., but no lettuce, tomato, etc. Spread with butter or mayo. I do sometimes make mini omelets and put those on bread, too. Not many places do egg sandwiches around here. But Waffle House does a great one on Texas Toast!