Kim Shook

Maybe a water "cooler"? Plumbed - not the kind with the big replaceable jugs. Hot and cold filtered water?

@BonVivant – that hake looks delicious. I’ve never had hake. I don’t ever remember seeing it on a menu. I’d love to try it. I’d also love to have one of each of those filled rolls! What is the consistency of pork paste? I’m imagining pate? The puppy under the table gave me a giggle. My parents had a glass dining room table at one point and the cats would curl up on the empty chairs and stare accusingly at the eaters. @Duvel – yes, you were missed. Glad everyone is good! On Saturday, we drove up to Washington DC to celebrate Mr. Kim’s birthday a day early. He wanted to tour the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (we love touring churches, basilicas, cathedrals, etc.). Jessica found a place for lunch within sight of the Shrine called The Runaway. She just basically pulled it off Yelp when I realized that the place I had intended for us to go to was closed on weekends (college neighborhood- ????). We shared these Hot Goat Poppers: Breaded and fried goat cheese drizzled with ancho honey. Gooey and deeply flavored (but not too spicy). Wonderful. Jessica had Biscuit French toast, house made maple sage sausage, home fries, and scrambled eggs with cheese: I don’t know how you French toast biscuits without them falling apart, but they were incredible. As was the sausage. Mr.Kim had the Cherry Bomb burger and gorgeous onion rings: The burger had arugula, brie, and cherry jam. And I’m not normally a big fan of battered onion rings, but the batter was so tasty, and the rings cooked so perfectly that I loved them. I had the appetizer meatballs and a “side salad”: The meatballs were stuffed with gooey mozzarella and were a great consistency. The sauce was really balanced – not too sweet. The side salad was fantastic. It was really that – a small, side dish-sized salad. But it had all that care that lots of places don’t put into their full-sized house salads. Jessica said it right, “In most places the side salad is a throw away”. This was NOT – arugula, assorted baby lettuces, fennel, marinated grape tomatoes and red onion, candied pecans, and a lovely sweet/tart house dressing. We enthused about the meal to our server who brought up the chef to meet us. Turns out, she was not the head chef. She is an assistant who was drafted when the chef who was supposed to be in charge didn’t show up. She was so thrilled to hear how much we loved the food. Kind of proud and abashed at the same time. Sunday was Mr. Kim’s actual birthday. We had after church brunch at the Northside Grill, an old favorite that has been closed on Sundays for a while and is finally open. Apps – lumpia and onion rings: Jessica’s Portobello sandwich: Mr. Kim’s steak and cheese: I got the half-size chef salad: One of my favorite salads, but I almost never get it because they are usually so huge. This one was manageable. Yesterday:

We went up to Washington DC on Saturday to celebrate Mr. Kim's birthday. It was a day early, but we had duties at church on Sunday. He wanted to tour the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. On the way up, we breakfasted on some apple cider doughnuts that I got on Friday at the produce stand: This morning:

This is an Oxo salad dressing shaker and when I took it out to use it Sunday, I noticed what looked like a film on the inside of the cup part: You can't feel it or wash it off. I even tried using vinegar. It won't scratch off either. I checked at Amazon and another person posted about this there. No response from Oxo. Any idea if this is still ok to use? Thanks!

Friday's produce stand haul: The lemons and the basket of goodies (upper right) are not from the stand.

Yep! Cream cheese and lox on an ET bagel is my idea of good sushi! 😁

See, I'm thinking that the cream cheese is a good idea. It might mitigate the taste and texture of raw fish and would certainly mask the flavor of the seaweed wrap. 😄

@BeeZee – oh, wow! A clam pizza. I’d LOVE to have a piece of that. One of my life goals is to go to New Haven for pizza. And a clam pizza is on the list. I didn’t know that they were also a thing farther south! Dinner’s main ingredient was some Schuller & Weber Weisswurst sausages that we got at Foods of All Nations last time we were in Charlottesville VA. Served with red cabbage (jarred) and boiled potatoes (and pickly stuff): Mr. Kim stopped on the way home and got some really good bread at Lidl: Everything was very good. The red cabbage tasted fine but was mushy. I serve red cabbage so infrequently that I rarely make it from scratch and don’t remember that the jarred stuff is mushy until I serve it.

My brown breakfast this morning: 😄 Good bread from last night's dinner and sausage.

@lemniscate - I love icebox cakes. Lemon or key lime makes a great summer dessert, too. Mr. Kim's birthday is Sunday and he's requested Apple Pie ala mode Parfaits for his dessert (weirdo). One of the layers is oatmeal cookies. So yesterday I made a batch of the CI Thin & Crispy Oatmeal Cookies: They are addictive. I practically had to hide them away to stop everyone from eating the whole batch. They are also so different from my big, chewy Oatmeal Raisinette cookies. Proof to me that it makes no sense to insist that there is only one RIGHT WAY to do something. People who insist that only chewy cookies are good or only crunchy cookies are good are missing out. Like those folks who only support one kind of BBQ.

@Captain – yet another delicious creamy pasta dish to lure me! @Ann_T – Like @Shelby, it never occurred to me to make Italian sausage patties. What a great thing to go with pasta and tomato sauce. You could even put some cheese on it to make it into Sausage Parm! And the beef burgundy looks wonderful. @Shelby – thank you! We are lucky to have avoided spending the money for either a service call or (God forbid) a new fridge. And, so far, everything is fine. I really wish ours had the beep. I think we bought it just one year too early for the ones in our kitchen at church have it and so does our friends’ who got theirs a couple of years after us. I’m so sorry about the poison ivy. I’ve been lucky as an adult, but I remember repeatedly getting into it at my grandparents’ farm. My grandmother would bathe me in the yard in a galvanized tub (they didn’t have a finished bathroom for years and used a makeshift shower) and then dab me all over with calamine lotion. It was miserable. Take care!!! Your gyros looks really good. I’ve actually never had chicken! I need to try that. @Tropicalsenior – stunning meals. I now have no interest in what I’ve got planned for tonight. I want salmon cakes, and ribs, and those amazing beans, and deviled eggs, and potato cakes, and empanadas…and on and on and on and on. Even the humble burger. Good LORD what a roll call of great meals! Dinner was Nathan’s hot dogs: With chili (purchased) and sauerkraut, fixed up baked beans, and tots: And marinated cukes. Because it’s summer: 😁

i agree 100%! Breakfast this morning was ham and cheese on an English muffin and some watermelon: Watermelon is one of my very favorite fruits (and the only melon I care for) and I'm always sad when summer ends and the good stuff is gone!

It's always been a favorite word. I don't know when I started using it, but I think in college. It isn't a word that my parents would have used.

The whole concept just blows my mind - selling ersatz "ethnic" foods in the countries that they are trying to emulate. And they always have indigenous partners. In the US, I'd assume that it was some kind of tax dodge - setting up for failure to lower their taxable income. I don't know how other countries work, though. I love Chinese-American, Italian-American, and Mexican-American food. But I confess that if someone from another country came here and tried to serve weirdly prepared "American" food, I wouldn't expect them to succeed.

Jessica wanted to try growing romaine from the cut off ends. We are decidedly NOT a farming family (my Italian grandmother only grew azaleas and my farm grandparents only grew calves and a neglected apple/pear orchard), but they are doing well: She wants to transfer them outside to a planter, but everything I read says just let them get some leaves and then harvest - that trying to grow whole heads almost never works.

@rotuts – I love B&M beans! For some reason, I’ve always thought that the jarred ones tasted best. Being influenced by my English stepdad, I’ve have had to heat them up and put them on top of some heavily buttered toast 😉! @kayb – thank you, ma’am! It wasn’t Benton’s – it was Appleton Farms and we just got it at Kroger. It was delicious, but maybe not quite fatty enough. It made very little grease in the sheet pan when I roasted it. @blue_dolphin – those fig crostatas are amazing looking. We’ve been without a refrigerator since Saturday (long story – thought it was gone, but it looks like the door was open all Friday night), so I treated myself to a good breakfast this morning. A grilled fried egg sandwich and sausage patties: There were a couple of good, gooey yolks in the middle. I haven’t yet perfected @blue_dolphin‘s method of spreading out the fried egg yolk yet! This is my favorite way to have an egg sandwich. Grilling it like a grilled cheese gives you a nice, buttery crunch on the outside and a soft, pillowy bite on the inside.

Welcome to eGullet, @marialma! I'd say you found your people here! Like @TdeV, I'm no candy maker, but love looking at a reading about all the folks who are!

Not a joke, but still hilarious to me - Domino's exits Italy. Next up Panda Express in China? 😂

@liamsaunt – gorgeous scallops! And I love the sound of the risotto! And I would LOVE your nephew’s goodbye meal. @Shelby – I’ve been craving Alfredo for weeks now and here you go showing off that creamy goodness😁! And no apologies for the Whiz. I like it just fine! I’ll be making that. Also, Whiz or Velveeta is great as part of the cheeses in mac and cheese or broccoli and cheese soup if you are going to freeze them. Those processed cheeses help to stabilize the sauce. @Dejah – much love to you and your husband! Your food looks wonderful! He is well taken care of. @mgaretz – I love how big your mushroom pieces are – I could fork those to the side and chow down on the rest of that delicious looking meal 😁. Friday was delivery sausage and pepperoni pizza: and I put together a salad: Well, we’ve been eating toast and fast food for the past few days. On Saturday morning, we thought our refrigerator was dead. The freezer was fine, but to be safe we emptied it out and put everything in the two shed freezers. We sorted through all of the refrigerator stuff and tossed all the warm meat/deli/dairy products (fridge temp was 67F at this point) and took everything else over to Mr. Kim’s mother to put in her extra fridge. On checking the temperature throughout the rest of the weekend and yesterday, the temperature was dropping steadily and now is 42F. The appliance guy we finally got in touch with yesterday says he thinks the most likely thing is that the door to the fridge was open all night and it’s just taken this long to recover. Sigh. So tonight we are going over to my MIL’s to get our food back, go to Kroger for the stuff we tossed and fill up the fridge again. Fingers crossed please.

I guess I'm a weirdo. I never peel celery. I love the strings. LOLOLOL

I hate the stems and buy the heads when I can. I still trim those really close to the florets. One thing I do like the stems in is broccoli slaw.

It was two eggs - I only popped one yolk for the photo "shoot". 😄 There was plenty of good, gooey, runny yolk to dip my toast into!

@gfweb – your meatloaf sounds really good. And it looks perfectly cohesive. I have issues with that, so I’m always super impressed when I see a meatloaf that actually stays together. Also – your schnitzel is beautifully coated! @btbyrd – Happy Anniversary! Great meals! @Annie_H – Wonderful lobster meal. I honestly don’t think there is a better summer meal than corn and some kind of shellfish! Wednesday night was an ATK recipe for Orange-Miso Glazed Salmon along with some leftover angel hair pasta seasoned with ponzu, soy sauce, garlic, and parsley: I wouldn’t exactly call it a “glaze” as I think of a glaze as being translucent, but it tasted great – Jessica has even been eating the leftovers cold. I think it was the miso that muddied it. I’m not even completely sure that I did it all correctly. It is one of those recipes where they give you the basic recipe and then a bunch of options. The basic recipe was for glazed salmon and the orange-miso was an option. So, I may have glazed it twice 🤪. Served with a simple romaine and cucumber salad w/ the delicious ranch dressing that Jessica got from Libby Hill Restaurant while we were in NC last week: Libby Hill is a seafood restaurant that has been in the town where my grandparents lived for almost 50 years. Oddly enough, this little town manages to support TWO classic seafood places and has for years. There are only four locations left now, all in NC, but there used to be more. We love their old-school fried options and they have the best ranch dressing we’ve ever had (and I am not a Ranch person) – don’t know if it is house made or a mix or what, but it’s truly salad enhancing! Last night was my vegetable soup, some leftover cheese fondue, and some of a fresh baguette:

Plain Greek yogurt, raw honey, and Cornflakes because we’re out of granola.

Yep. I don't find pepper (black or white) or horseradish injurious to the taste buds. I find that they fade pretty quickly and that they don't get in the way of actually tasting the food.