Kim Shook

@kayb – that yogurt bowl is killing me. With the potassium restricted diet I have to avoid yogurt and whole grains and I miss my yogurt bowls!! @blue_dolphin – there’s not one thing I wouldn’t love in that Benedict. Jessica says “game on”! LOL. Yesterday: Lidl croissant, Muenster cheese, OM egg, and Off the Bone ham.

Hi, @Maistoprofas! Welcome! Where (generally) are you in the world and, along with Darienne, I'd love to know your areas of interest/specialties!

Last night was leftover roasted shrimp plus corn and @patti's oven fries (neglected to get a picture): We didn't make it out to the produce stand, so that was just supermarket corn. It was fine, but you could certainly tell the difference.

Mine looks a little dull, but it tasted good: Egg, English muffin, and a really good Bosc pear.

Welcome to eG, @CookBot! I know I'm looking forward to seeing your posts! I think you'll find lots of interested and interesting folks here. As, @Smithysaid, we really run the gamut as far as food proficiency and specialties!

@Dejah – thank you, ma’am! I am a gravy/sauce fiend. I also would be perfectly happy with the onion gravy poured over that good bread. My mother always said that my turkey gravy was more like hash than gravy. All the better to load on a yeast roll! Still working with the potassium issue, of course. It’s just confounding and seemingly nonsensical. For instance, raw or cooked from frozen broccoli is considered low potassium, cooked from fresh is high. Cooked carrots (which I don’t care for) are ok, but raw ones aren’t 😵. What I’ve kind of settled on most days is being VERY sparing with potassium mg. for most of the day and being a little more free with my main meal. Still trying to make good choices and watching servings. Sunday night I made my best-ever fried green tomatoes: Perfectly tender on the inside and crisp on the outside. With blackberries and sausage gravy and biscuits: Tuesday night started with a salad for Mr. Kim and Jessica: No romaine for me and I’m not going to make them eat iceberg because that’s what I can have! Roasted shrimp with Old Bay, saltines, and cocktail sauce: Whitefish salad from our favorite deli and some leftover fried green tomatoes: Mr. Kim is supposed to be on vacation this week. He had a couple of phone meetings Tuesday, had another one yesterday and will be in them most of the day today. Glad we’re not in Hawaii or something🙄 😠. But he has managed to do this: He had five of these going yesterday. What 40 pounds of pork butt looks like pulled:

Saturday: An ET sourdough bagel from a place called Chewy’s. This was the bagel that won the Shook family bagel tasting awhile back. Absolutely fantastic. Mr. Kim had a cinnamon bagel with butter, but I didn’t get a picture. After church at our favorite deli. I had a tuna salad sandwich and onion rings: Mr. Kim had corned beef, pastrami, and slaw on rye:

I’m having a bit of trouble deciding what to eat. I’ll go to start something or pull out something leftover and remember to look up the potassium count and discover it’s too high for me. I know that tonight’s choice was probably bad for blood pressure, weight and diabetes. But I finally just decided to concentrate on the potassium tonight. Luckily Mr. Kim is out playing poker and Jessica is not eating dinner, so I only had to fend for myself. Sausage, egg, and American cheese on a roll and (canned) chicken noodle soup.

@Norm Matthews – the chili looks great. I’ve printed out your recipe and hope to try it soon. We love chili dogs and have them fairly often, but I’ve never had any luck making a good chili. Thanks! @Ann_T – Happy Anniversary! @Honkman – perfectly cooked snow peas. I’m a bit challenged when it comes to timing them. Mine are almost always overcooked. Had some blood tests in the past few days and it turns out that my potassium level is way too high. So, I have to make some changes in my diet. There are so many weirdly proscribed foods – so many things that are good for my weight and diabetes and just general health are LOADED with potassium. Some of my favorite vegetables are high in potassium: greens (except for kale, which I hate), potatoes, spinach, Brussels sprouts. White bread is better than whole grain. So much to learn. And some of the information is contradictory – on the National Kidney Foundation’s website charts broccoli is listed on both the HIGH and the LOW ones. So, I’m back to counting again – except instead of calories, it will be potassium milligrams. Sigh. Tuesday night was Sizzle Burgers (prepared with Worcestershire sauce in the beef and in the frying pan), watermelon, @patti's oven fries, and tomatoes: Last night Jessica requested that I make smothered pork chops. She’s never liked anything “smothered” before (she’s never been a big gravy lover) but wanted to try it again. Browned pork chops: Smothered with onion gravy: This was very good. Not sure Jessica is a convert, but Mr. Kim and I loved this recipe. Served with mashed potatoes and butter beans: We also had some gorgeous sourdough bread Mr. Kim got at the Capitol Square farmer’s market: From a local, small batch bakery that sells through their own small store-front and at local farmer’s markets.

This morning: An excellent pear and an English muffin.

@mgaretz – I’m ready for some ribs! I need to inspire Mr. Kim by showing him your picture! @Dejah – gorgeous char siu! Saturday morning, we discovered that, for the second time in 2 weeks, our refrigerator was not working. Last time by the time we got in touch with the appliance guy on the following Monday, it was working again and he thought that it was probably a door left open the night before and didn’t need to come out. Well, this time we were sure that was not the case. So we packed everything up and took some of it to Mr. Kim’s mom’s house. A couple of Jessica’s friends came through for us and loaned us two dorm-sized fridges and we put the everyday stuff in them. Such a giant PITA to be without a big fridge for the entire weekend, but the guy came over almost as soon as Mr. Kim talked to him Monday morning and fixed it, so it was nice to not have to go buy a new fridge last night! So, Saturday night was leftover Moo Shu pork from our neighborhood place: I roll a much better Moo Shu pancake than I do a burrito 😄. There was also shrimp fried rice. Last night, I did breakfast for dinner. Watermelon: A fabulous tomato, some ham and sausage: With biscuits, tots, and scrambled eggs:

@Ann_T - If I served a steak lunch like yours to Mr. Kim, he'd think he'd died and gone to heaven! Just gorgeous! I'm craving quiche now. I've always meant to make the famous Thomas Keller quiche and never have. I really, really need to! My modest offering: A peach from a friend's mother's neighbor (😁). Very good. And a Stan's (Brunswick NC) pimento cheese sandwich.

Thanks for doing this. I love seeing what people are up to in their home lives and their travels. And your surroundings look lovely. Those look like tasty fries, too!

Spotted these in the store this weekend: Didn't even know they were still made. Still taste just as good.

@rotuts – I have to confess that the sausages you were talking about were the fully cooked refrigerated (not frozen) Jimmy Dean sausages like this. I saw a taste test of supermarket sausage on America’s Test Kitchen and they won over everything that was tasted including raw sausage. They really are good (I always brown them in a pan – not the microwave) and truly convenient. I like them nearly as much as the sage Jimmy Dean sausage in the rolls. I also loved the Jones that you recommended (the brand my mom always bought), but it is hard to find here. Yesterday: A Lidl croissant and a sweet pastry with a boiled egg. This morning: A ham biscuit and another Lidl croissant.

@Dejah – I’m fine, thank you! That roast and the Yorkies looked so perfect. I have wanted some serious BEEF for a couple of weeks now. A big, thick rib eye or a rare roast – something like that. And your roast would fit the bill perfectly. @Honkman – your risotto looks lovely! Last night was almost identical to my last post: Added corn and tots and changed variety of cabbage. 😄

This morning: No description needed, I think!

@Dejah – Thank you! Here's the recipe for the parfaits and this is what I used for the crumble. I’ve done a quick version in the past with purchased cookies, but these work best. The original recipe was from Cooking Light Magazine and called for low fat ice cream. I used regular. @Shelby – I totally agree about needing more sausage with sausage gravy! I also want the meatloaf and the fried fish! I was feeling kind of poorly on Tuesday and needed some gentle comfort food for dinner: Creamed chipped beef on toast and chicken and wild rice soup (canned). Last night: Lidl bakery soft pretzel, a couple of dogs, and sauerkraut.

@gulfporter – Yay! So glad you’re up to going out. That CFL looks fantastic. I would love to try that. Could you tell if it was still tenderized like cube steak? Jessica and I went down to Williamsburg for an estate sale and stopped at new to us place called Patsy’s in the tiny little burg (5000+ souls) of Lenexa for lunch. Great country food. Can’t wait to go back and sample more things. We’ve told Mr. Kim that we’ll be taking him there soon one Friday night after work. Jessica had the chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, and corn: I had fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and corn: The potatoes were from scratch – just a little bit lumpy and I’m pretty sure both of the gravies were, too. The brown gravy tasted like BEEF not salt. The chicken pieces were very small and I’m thinking that’s by design, because it seemed to be made when I ordered it and smaller pieces would cook quicker, of course. Every piece (leg, thigh, wing, breast) was tender and juicy and the coating was incredibly crisp.

@blue_dolphin – I have some of those pancakes in the freezer, I need to dig out my waffle maker and do that! First breakfast this morning: Lidl chocolate croissant. They do a decent job with the croissant dough, but I always wish for more chocolate in a pain au chocolat. What I should do is just buy plain croissants and spread them with Nutella. An hour later, I was still hungry, so 2nd breakfast: Fried egg and ham on and English muffin. Overcooked the egg a bit, but it was still tasty.

Rambo apple from Virginia orchards and caramel dip:

@Matthew.Taylor – those cookies look and sound great. It was Mr. Kim’s birthday on Sunday. Jessica made the dinner, but dessert was my responsibility. He had requested Apple Pie ala mode Parfait. It is layers of crumbled cookies, cooked and spiced apples, and ice cream. I also drizzled on some caramel sauce. The cookies are the ones that I posted on Friday: Crumbled: Apples – sauteed with lemon juice, sugar, and Penzey’s Cake Spice (cinnamon, star anise, nutmeg, allspice, ginger, and cloves): Ice cream drizzled with caramel: Then another layer of everything and it’s done: I should have set my ice cream out a little earlier so that I could spread it a bit and used a thinner taller glass to get a good parfait effect, but it was very good.

👀👀👀 @kayb – any relief yet? @Ann_T – your escargot are making me hungry. They have always been a favorite. When I was a little girl – around 7 years old my mom’s friends would love watching me order and devour them. @Dejah – so much delicious looking food. But what is speaking to me for some reason is that beautiful ham! I think it was Dorothy Parker who said, “Eternity is a ham and two people”. 😁 On Saturday, we went up to Washington DC to celebrate Mr. Kim’s birthday a day early. He chose touring the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and dinner at Floriana. He’d been talking about it since he took his mom up there for dinner and a show as her Mother’s Day gift. After wandering around the Basilica for a couple of hours, we were thrilled to get to Floriana for dinner. The first thing that arrived was the bread: Very good bread, but the real surprise was what would normally be butter or possibly oil for dipping. Instead, it was some kind of pesto. Not sure what kind because we neglected to ask. It was really tasty, though. I’m not a huge pesto fan, but I was piling this stuff on top of my bread. Mr. Kim started with the yellow tomato soup: I had the calamari with spicy tomato sauce: The sauce was too spicy for me, so I dipped my squid in Mr. Kim’s soup and he dipped his bread in my sauce! Jessica chose the black gnocchi: Black with squid ink, lobster cream, roasted peppers, Andouille sausage, and rock shrimp. Mr. Kim’s main was the same thing he had when he was there with his mother – the orecchiette with sausage, rapini, and Parm: Jessica had the Ravioli di Zucca: Roasted butternut squash, gorgonzola, walnuts, and brown butter sage sauce. I was the problem child. My first order was the Tuscan chicken with fennel citrus salad and rapini pesto: It was beautiful and the salad was delicious. Unfortunately, the chicken was super spicy. Even Jessica thought so. They checked on us right after the food was brought to the table and I hesitantly said that it was a little spicy for me. He was so kind and understanding and didn’t make me feel bad at ALL (it’s amazing how many servers almost shame me about it). He asked what I’d like instead, and I chose lasagna. That was a lucky choice because it came so quickly. Mr. Kim and Jessica had barely started when mine came. The bonus was that the lasagna was probably the best I’ve ever tasted: They asked when we were seated if there was any special occasion and we said we were celebrating Mr. Kim’s BD. At the end of the evening, they brought out a tiramisu: It was really a wonderful evening. Everything combined – the staff, the ambiance, the food (all housemade pasta) – to make a truly celebratory time. Sunday was Mr. Kim’s actual birthday. Dinner was mostly Jessica’s doing. She did a pasta, feta, and roasted tomato dish with a salad and bread. The pasta: It was delicious. She added lemon zest to the recipe to alleviate the richness of the cheese a bit and it was perfect. The salad: She made garlic confit to go with the baguette: I did dessert. He requested Apple Pie ala mode parfait:

I do. I never thought about that. It gets so greasy with the salad oil that it just doesn't feel clean when I hand wash it. Always top shelf. Do you think I can continue to use it if it is only etched? Well, damn. Did you do it because you thought it unattractive? Or did you worry that it was somehow unsafe? Because I don't care what it looks like. But I don't want to be careless.