Kim Shook

Randi - you can make angel food cake in a loaf pan, too. You just use 2 loaf pans in place of a 10" tube pan. Easy to portion, too! Thinking of you a lot these days and hoping things are going better for you.

I hope the surgery went well! Your pasta looks soooooooo good. ← Thank you, Shelby! The surgery went really well and he's already out of ICU - feeling very groggy and sore, but improving. On topic - his dinner last night was turkey, gravy, stuffing, green beans, cranberry sauce and vanilla wafers. Ever single thing tasted exactly the same. I'm glad that I made him the pasta. He was talking last night about how good it was and how glad he was that we had a freezer full of it!

Bruce - while you're PM'ing the recipe for the crab soup recipe to Dejah.... ??? Mr. Kim's surgery is tomorrow so he got to pick dinner: pappardelle with meatsauce, salad and garlic Asiago bread. Then Jessica took him out to Krispie Kreme for doughnuts!

MMMM, how I wish I could take you up on that offer! I'm not a heart eater, but fried livers are one of my very favorite foods. Here's my recipe for the soup, if you like.

Alexus - gorgeous dumplings - I'd love that recipe! Shelby - I want some of them Ducknuggets!!! And liver, too. No one at my house eats liver, so I never get any ! percyn - that is one awesome chicken! Was that skin as good as it looked? Bruce - crab soup . My favorite thing in the entire world!! Ce'nedra - that crab dish looks wonderful. We'd love that! I made my chicken soup this weekend. We ate some and froze some. I realized that I developed the recipe with a lot of help from folks here a couple of years ago and I don't think I've ever shown it. I start out with the scraps (wings, backbone, neck and giblets) from a chicken, salt, pepper, poultry seasoning, celery, carrots and onion. I make a slurry of tomato paste and olive oil and toss with the other stuff and roast. Here's everything before roasting: and after roasting: Then I simmer all that junk in low salt chicken stock to make a good, chickeny stock: I strain and defat the stock and add the chicken pieces and simmer until tender, cut up the chicken, add some cooked carrots and kluski: It really is good soup - I've tasted better, but never homemade.

Some lovely breakfasts, everyone! Leftovers in omelets (a popular idea, it seems) is genius! Shelby - what's German breakfast sausage like? And where do you get it. Fantastic looking hashbrowns, BTW! Rachel - that grilled cheese breakfast sounds exactly like what a weekend breakfast should be! Bruce - more lovely rice <sigh>! RAHiggins - Wow. That vegetable frittata is a thing of beauty! Soba - your little potatoes and omelet look lovely - and I don't even like mushrooms ! Sunday breakfast: gruyere and chive omelets, Benton's bacon and MIL's hot cross buns (from the freezer - they were still so good!)

I have a couple. Bomo's Chuckwagon Stewhas been my go-to beef stew for at least 20 years. It was my grandmother's stew and the only thing that she cooked well! It only has 1/4 c. of flour and that's used to dredge the meat before browning. Also, have you thought about doing beef bourguignon? That recipe is very good and can even be done in a slow cooker. I've always done it in my large le crueset, but I was originally given the recipe as a slow cooker dish. Hope these help!

Shelby – that is some gorgeous chicken, girl!! Since next week is Mr. Kim’s surgery and we’ll be inundated with friends and family, we decided to have a family night last night. Just Mr. Kim, Jessica and me. Pizza and Bob Hope in “The Lemon Drop Kid” on the DVD player. I purchased the crusts which were ordinary, but this was kind of spur of the moment, so I had to improvise. We had just a regular pepperoni pizza and a shrimp pizza with fresh mozzarella: the sauce for the shrimp pizza was ricotta and a nice pesto sauce that one of Mr. Kim’s coworkers made.

I'm curious too. They were tender without being cakelike, the struesel topping is part of the muffin and doesn't crumble off. The lemon taste is a gentle and almost elusive. Not too awfully sweet, but not one of those sawdusty healthy specimins either. Just wondering what you hated about them.

Merstar - yep, those are them! Really lemony and good - I love the combination of lemon and blueberry!

Thanks, all! I used a little sugar and chicken stock like you suggested. I changed out the chicken stock a couple of times and it worked fine, but I boiled all the sidemeat flavor out too! So I cut another piece of sidemeat, stuck it in the microwave to get it going and boiled it with the beans for awhile and they tasted fine. Thank you for your help, folks!

I made my green beans like I normally do - salt pork, pepper, a little crushed red pepper, a little hot sauce - boiled like hell for an hour and then simmered for a few more. They are hot as fire. Mr. Kim loves them, but I won't be able to manage them. Is there anyway to reverse the heat? Can I boil them in more plain water (my poor firey pot likker)? Will that help? Or do I just get to have frozen butter beans tonight while Mr. Kim makes mmmmmmmm sounds over the green beans ?

AlexusF - that is one gorgeous chicken! Ditto on the souffle. BTW - I'm pretty sure that meat-stuff is canned corned beef - the only canned meat that is actually pretty good. Especially sliced, fried and cuddled up to some eggs for breakfast. I had a very busy Sunday morning. I made three meals for this week. Mr. Kim has some surgery coming up next week. He will be recuperating for at least a month and we are going to be very busy this week trying to get things done that he'll be unable to do, so I thought that if I had some meals 'in the bag' it would make things easier. I had a huge package of kielbasa from Costco and used it two ways. The first was this: It's a white bean and kielbasa casserole. One of those things that is much, much better than the sum of it's parts. Tangy, sweet - really, really good! The other is this old family standby: My mom's family has been eating some version of this for years. My great aunt San used to make it with cabbage, ham and potatoes all steamed up in a giant stock pot. My version was potatoes, kielbasa and green beans. All we'll need is some cornbread and we'll be set. I also made this very simple, soothing and very good beef noodle casserole: Easy, but not one can of Cream of....soup was involved!

I made these CI blueberry muffins this weekend: Absolutely delicious! We all loved them and my MIL says that these are going to be her go-to muffins in the future!

I understand why it is done and it doesn't bother me to look at it - like when I'm looking at the menu to see what I might like to order that night or to convince someone we need to go to a specific restaurant over another one ! But I like to put the meals that we've enjoyed in my journal/scrapbook and it's wonderful to be able to cut and paste and print it out - rather than having to type it out or print the entire document. Silly, but there it is.

Thank you so much for the advice. I went ahead and cooked it a couple of hours ahead of time and then warmed up the slices as recommended by Marlene and JField. I wasn't happy with my results: clickety but it didn't have anything to do with this issue. I think that I just saturated the thing with butter and maybe next time I'll use more layers of phyllo.

...when you check every single day for the food blogs to come back. And every PM to other eGulleteers mentions this. WHERE ARE THEY?????

Randi - re: that eye of round roast - I, too, am roast challenged actually. I usually would rather make a pot roast so I don't have to worry about getting it perfectly done. The problem with this roast is that I don't really know how much of a temperature jump it takes after you turn the oven off - it sits in there awhile and then tented in foil awhile - so if the roast isn't exactly the same weight as the recipe calls for, its hard to adjust the timing to get a perfectly cooked roast. My first one was great, the second a little overcooked. (sorry - I know your post was way back, but I just noticed it). Dr. J - using puff pastry as a base for benedict is a great idea! And gives me an excuse to do what I always want to do with puff pastry anyway - just eat giant slabs of it ! Bruce - that Green basmati rice with pureed spinach and watercress is just making me crazy! What a lovely dish and a great picture, too. I do pretty well substituting orzo for rice most of the time, but that picture perfectly shows why sometimes rice is necessary to a dish. That fluffliness, the perfect separate grains . <Sigh> Shelby - I want all that stuff for dinner tonight. I don't care if it doesn't go together or that I hate hot tuna, I want it!!! Sunday night dinner we started out with a caprese salad made with these teeny-tiny little heirloom tomatoes: too cute to pass up at our brand new Whole Foods. Mr. Kim requested this: its a pork loin roast with an apple/bread stuffing. It was kinda hard to do since Costco decided to cut the entire thing in half and tie it up so that you couldn't tell . Instead of one big butterflied loin, I ended up with two little ones. Served with extra stuffing (I baked it in little pans, because all the stuffing wouldn't fit in my mini roasts), mash potatoes, and brussel sprouts: Boy, could this dish have used some of Marlene's gravy! It tasted really good, but it was a little dry - the pork was a little mild, next time I'll invest in the good pork from our butcher shop. Also, we have enough left for probably 4 meals each! Jessica won't eat it and I don't like leftovers (not a flavor issue, I just don't like eating the same thing over and over). This strudel (also a Mr. Kim request - this always happens when he watches the food network on weekend mornings!) was dessert and you can read of my troubles with it here:

Mary Elizabeth - your milk jam and fudge sauce are just swoony. I'm thinking big spoon, no ice cream even necessary! And your pains au chocolat - am I seeing correctly? Is the dough actually chocolate as well as bits of chocolate in there? Goodness ! DesertCulinary - the pound cake is just up our alley! What perfection! I look at your list of recipes on your site and dream of the time, ability and blood sugar to allow me to make every single recipe! dystopiandreamgirl - allow me to join in the general hosannas for those beautiful, amazing, lucious looking cakes. I am just in awe! pups224 - beautiful tart! Rob - the cake is lovely and I think that your piping looks really good. I wish mine was somewhere in the vicinity of that! I took a Wilton class, but I don't practice like I should. I'd love some help with this strudel that I made on Sunday. The filling was fabulous - tasty and rich and perfect. My phyllo, however, sucked. The recipe is here. Let me preface this by saying that I haven't worked with phyllo in a very long time. But I don't remember having much trouble with it, even as a novice cook. What I got was a flat, damp layer that barely enclosed the filling - no shatteringly thin layers. Also there was more than twice as much filling as was needed to fill one strudel. I also used much more butter than called for because when I brushed it on (using a silicone brush) it just didn't spread enough to get butter everywhere. Here are the strudels: and a slice: One thing that occured to me, besides maybe too much butter, was that the phyllo seemed to be smaller than I remember. Each sheet was maybe 8 1/2 X 14 inches. The original recipe doesn't give measurements, so I figured they were standard, but maybe not?? Anyway, if anyone has any ideas what I did wrong here, I'd welcome the help! Thank you in advance!

Just found this thread last week - I made Jaymes' caramel corn on Sunday. It was gone last night! Fantastic. I can see me making lots of this in the future, Jaymes! Just excellent. I put it on my webpage, duly credited to you, of course! Without really thinking about it I baked the caramel corn on one shelf with a big pan of Benton's bacon baking away on the bottom shelf. The corn picked up a little smokiness. Nice surprise.

Can I make this strudel a couple of hours ahead of time up to the baking part and then put it in the oven to bake as we are sitting down to dinner so that it will be warm? I know that I'll have to cover and refrigerate so that the phyllo won't dry out, but otherwise will it work and not get soggy?

Randi - that stinks. What an ugly way for someone to act. Especially when she is so new. No people skills, obviously. I've worked with people like that and I've never had one improve on aging. I hope things go better for you and that she realizes what a treasure she has in you. You have a clear record of what you've fed them and what they liked and didn't - why not show her that. I'd ignore her ugly actions and just pretend that she has the good motives that you do - feeding those folks, good, healthy food that doesn't go over budget. Assume you are on the same page and she won't have any choice but to act nice or show her true colors. If you can't work with her, it's better to know now before you agonize over it for ages. Thinking of you! <<<<hugs>>>>!

A couple of spoonsful of brown sugar are traditional in our family.

I'm getting to sound repetitive here, but where's the recipe for that? I cook for a bunch of folks that would go NUTS for something like that casserole, but I don't see it in the 'Casserole' chapter, not in the master list on your cookbook site. Give, girl! PLEASE?! ← What I did was to use this recipe (minus the beans) and add a TON of sliced, sauteed beef hot dogs and top with cheese. I made it a week ahead of time and froze it (without the cheese) - that worked just fine. Percyn - gorgeous meals! I love lettuce wraps, but most people overload them with ingredients - I really like the simplicity of yours - it looks like you can actually taste the contrast of that lovely beef and the crisp, cold lettuce. Nice sauce bowl, too! Do you know where that came from? Thanks, everyone, for all the kind comments! I am cooking so little 'fun' stuff lately that I had a blast just diving in and cooking up a storm!

I much prefer cooking bacon in the oven - both from a taste and a clean standpoint, but Mr. Kim and my punk prefer pan-fried, so I trade off the method. I use Release foil under the bacon and since its bigger than the sheet pan, I have exactly NO clean up.