Kim Shook

Monavano – the chicken sandwich looks wonderful – I adore grilled pineapple! By ‘burger’ did you mean ground chicken, or just a boneless breast? Percyn – lovely pasta! I have no luck finding light cream anymore, so I usually use half-and-half. I’d like to try this. Prawn – that T-bone is gorgeous. I won’t get Mr. Kim out to eat cous cous tonight if he sees that! Bruce – as usual, your dinner looks incredible – both your cooking and your photography are always so perfect! Dinner last night was VERY basic – grilled hot dogs w/ kraut, French fries (frozen – too much going on to do fresh, besides, I’m a philistine, I like the frozen ones just fine), fixed up canned baked beans and sliced tomatoes: Tonight we are going out to Cous Cous with eG’s Zeemanb and Meredith. It’s a Moroccan restaurant – we haven’t been, but since Greek/Mideast/Mediterranean food is probably my favorite ‘foreign’ food, I’m looking forward to it.

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! ← let me know what you think, we think it takes them to a whole nother level, kind of almost a competely different dish. I've heard it called Russian salad. ← Christine, I did this tonight and it was wonderful! Thank you so much for the idea! I do something similar at Christmas with labne and mustard, but this was so easy and quick - with the cucumbers I have around all summer long!

Following myself again! Where is everyone? Stuffed potatoes for dinner tonight. Jessica’s was cheddar, chicken and broccoli: Mr. Kim’s was ham, Fontina and mushrooms: and mine was ham and Fontina: We also had corn, rolls, marinated cucumbers and Hanover tomatoes (I bought white bread just so I could have a sandwich !).

Dinner tonight was a family effort – we had mushroom, cheese and asparagus omelets, Marlene’s smashed roasted potatoes (leftover from Sunday and still really good) and a grilled ham slice glazed with pepper honey. Mr. Kim did the ham slice, Jess did the mushrooms and I did the asparagus and cooked the omelets:

that is the perfect example of 'one person's waste is another person's prize' - I adore my mango splitter and now have mango much more often than ever before. It is a 'worth every penny' item for me!

Thank you so much for your work, John. I agree with Magictofu that folks like you are what made me join eG!

Kim, everything looks great. What is the name/recipe title of this salad? Thanks! ← Thank you so much! That is Panzanella Salad.

David – for the tomatoes, I slice them fairly thinly, soak them in buttermilk for a hour or so and then dust them VERY lightly in cornmeal (mixed with S&P), then a quick egg wash (thinned down with water – it shouldn’t be too thick – and a little hot sauce), let the excess drip off and then a coating of panko. I like to let them set up for a few minutes in the fridge and then fry in bacon grease. Classic tomatoes are just given the buttermilk and cornmeal treatment, but we always have leftover and the panko crumb ones heat up VERY nicely in the toaster oven. Percyn – the garlic bread looks wonderful! Our Father’s day menu was mostly Mr. Kim’s requests. We started with bleu cheese shortbread w/ fig preserves and olives: The shortbread recipe was from Paula Deen. It called for strawberry preserves, but I thought that fig would work better. They were delicious and very popular, but I’ll try a stronger bleu cheese next time, I think. The table: There were eleven of us – it was a little tight, to say the least – thank goodness we all like each other! Dinner was rib eyes w/ sautéed mushrooms. Before: Crimini and shiitakes And after: All the fungus folks loved the mushrooms. The steaks were from Costco and Mr. Kim did a great job grilling them, but we had the memory of that gorgeous dry-aged steak in our heads and that interfered with our enjoyment a bit – educating one’s palate can get expensive :lol: ! I also made béarnaise and Mr. Kim’s favorite Bobby Flay sherry vinegar and piquillo steak sauce. (The hot dogs are for a teenager who STILL eats almost no meat but hot dogs and chicken nuggets - and her parents bring hot dogs to every dinner that they come to .) The sides were Marlene’s smashed roasted potatoes)which were a HUGH hit – I sent everyone home with the recipe), corn on the cob and Panzanella Salad: I learned to make the salad at a cooking class with chef Roberto Donna (this was also a huge hit, but everyone assumed that it was complicated, so no one asked for this recipe!) Dessert was this really country, but pretty and extremely tasty ‘Strawberry Shortcake’: I got the recipe from my mother’s lifelong best friend who is a wonderful country cook – everything from canned-good casseroles to from-scratch biscuits and the most delectable preserves and pickles. It consists of sour cream, 10X, angel food cake, evaporated milk and COOL WHIP ! The strawberry layer is fresh strawberries and that glaze that you can buy in the produce section to make strawberry pie just like Shoney’s !

Happy Father’s Day! Breakfast was Banana stuffed croissant French toast w/ caramel maple syrup and sausage:

Percyn – those sausages look so good and I don’t even like mushrooms (the breakfast below was Mr. Kim’s – I had a fried egg w/ bacon salt ). Breakfast this morning was omelets w/ mushrooms and ‘Picante’ provolone cheese and cheese toasts: I have no memory of any other food consumed. I’ve been on my feet ALL day getting ready for our father’s day celebration tomorrow! Don’t know when I’ll post those pictures, so a Happy Father’s Day to all the dads!

This was the first thing that I thought of. Not because it's a waste of money, it's just not my taste. I like a warm, farmhouse kind of kitchen and 'shabby' defines my taste and my pocketbook! I don't like anything to be too shiny!

I am not much of a breakfast eater at all, but when I do - it must be hot. Cereal has always been a bedtime snack for me. I love all sorts, but my favorites are the very sweet ones - Frosted Flakes, Lucky Charms, etc. - with extra drifts of sugar on them and just the BAREST dampening of milk. Otherwise, you might taste plain milk !

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.