Kim Shook

Deviled eggs and, oddly, cocktail meatballs - never any leftovers.

Yes. Too sweet - and this is from someone who dips their sausage in syrup. Some of them have a funny aftertaste, too.

@Dante – your chili dogs are scrumptious looking! And a patty melt is one of the top burger sandwiches, in my opinion! @gfweb – gorgeous scallops! You always get such a great sear on yours. @Ann_T – as always when you post chicken and gravy, I now have a craving. What is that to the left of the chicken? Between it and the mashed potatoes? It looks like dressing (be still my heart). @Anna N – re: growing up traditional sides to roast chicken. With an English stepdad and sisters it tended to be Brussels sprouts, roast potatoes, Bisto, and even Yorkies. In later years, my mom began sneaking in Stove Top because she and I love dressing so much and it was acceptable to the Brits 😁. @mgaretz – I love burgers on bread instead of buns sometimes. My mom did that fairly often (there was always ground beef in the freezer, but not buns) – queue the famous Eddie Murphy McDonald’s vs. Mom’s burger bit. But you smartly make your burgers big enough to pretty much cover the bread. We always had leftover over corners of bread! Lots of dining out for us in the past few evenings! Night before last we met friends for dinner at a new (to us) Vietnamese place that they discovered. We started with Started with 5-Spice Calamari: No detectable 5-Spice flavor and a bit tough. But very delicate, sweet squid. Mr. Kim had the Shaking Beef Pho: The flavor of everything was excellent and the beef was very tender, but he said the Shaking Beef flavor was kind of lost in the broth. I had my favorite Bahn Xeo: It was one of the best I’ve ever had. It had plenty of pork and shrimp (in most places I’m tempted to request extra shrimp) and the crepe stayed crispy throughout. Last night Jessica and I went out to see the movie “Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris” and had dinner at our favorite Mexican place. Their excellent guacamole: And the Virginia Mexican restaurant white sauce: This sauce may have traveled outside of the Commonwealth by now, but it apparently began in southeastern VA. It’s an interesting story. I had beef chimichangas and Jessica had shrimp (they look the same): And I added a regular crunchy taco because I love White People tacos: 😁

@kayb – that casserole looks wonderful! I bet it’d be nice with a dollop of cream gravy, too! I'd love to have the recipe. And, most of the time, I am totally with you on maple-flavored sausage. I’ve had one or two I’ve liked, but most are just not what I want in sausage. Yesterday was yet another cinnamon raisin bagel with Honey-Walnut cream cheese and a peach: Today: Farmer’s market blackberries with cream and crumpets – one with butter and honey (thank you, @ElsieD) and the other with strawberry preserves.

I confess that I'd be right there with your nephew being drawn in by the menu of the Frog and Onion. The food is exactly what I love to eat. That deserted beach is incredible. I can see that if we ever make it back to Bermuda, I will have to ask you for your secrets!

Oh, don't get me wrong! I am all in favor of designs to make it easier for people with all kinds of issues to do things without having to seek help from someone else! I have arthritic hands and waning strength in my arms. This jar opener is wonderful and I don't know what I'd do without it. I'm sure that as I age (63 now), I'll be using more and more of these helpful things. NO, I have no issue with gadgets that are truly helpful. I just didn't see these particular things are being anything but a money waste and asked in case I was missing something.

Most of these are savory and all are sides - I also have lots of sweet things and congealed salads and main dishes. LOL Hey, I am a southern girl who summered with her Presbyterian church-going west Tennessee farm-girl grandmother 🤷‍♀️ 😄. Corn Dip/Salad Short Cut Fruit Salsa and Pie Chips Tropical Salsa with Sweet Chips Chicken Pineapple Macaroni Salad Grilled Cobb Pasta Salad My layered salad - so dated, but still really good and it goes fast! Wild Rice and Orzo salad My Baked Beans Roasted Balsamic Onion Wedges depending on your main course, they can make a great and unusual side dish And you know what is incredibly popular? A loaf of good, homemade, white or wheat bread with good, sweet butter (sprinkled with sea salt) on the side. @Shelby's White Bread Loaves are delicous and the recipe makes 2 loaves. I set those out on a cutting board with the butter and a serrated knife and it positively evaporated. I hope I haven't overwhelmed you! When I dive into my recipes, I can go overboard with suggestions. Much of the time I'm seeing things that I haven't made in a long time and want to make for us!

I make too many to list (it would have to be specified to course/hot or cold/etc.), but I would like both @kayb's and @Darienne's recipes, please.

I swear I thought I'd responded to this already. I must have typed it in and then closed the window without entering it. I'm sure that you are right about the fresh strawberries being the culprit. I think when one is using a particularly wet fruit in cooking you have to somehow mitigate the moisture. I do a strawberry cheesecake where you roast the strawberries before putting them in the batter. If I were making a cake with strawberries, I think I would cook them down to reduce them or lessen any other liquid ingredients. As far as the icing goes, I would probably have crushed some dried strawberries to flavor it. Putting in more and more 10X was an error. And, honestly, as far as wastefulness was concerned, we are a family of two diabetics and the three of us tip the scales at over 700 lbs. total, so I didn't worry overmuch about wasting passive-aggressive cake. 😄😜

I’ve been trying to get caught up on the two little travel blogs I did recently and I’ve gotten SO far behind posting my regular stuff. Please forgive how long this post is! @Ann_T and @Duvel – y’all’s schnitzels are looking SO appealing to me this afternoon. We’re meeting friends for Vietnamese tonight, but I’ll be thinking about schnitzel! And congratulations, Ann, on the successful smoked steaks. I think that was something that @Marlene did and she loved them that way, but we’ve never tried it. @gfweb – I’m with @Shelby – your stuffed potatoes look fantastic. @Norm Matthews – those Asian ribs look great – I love that flavor combination on pork. Living with a BBQ judge, I know all about that perfect “bite” from a rib. That’s how we prefer it. Usually if it is at the “fall off the bone” stage, it’s overcooked and mushy. Nice that you didn’t find that with yours! @Smithy – that’s too bad about the stuffed clam and scallop disappointment. At that price, I’d have tried them, too. @Shelby – everything looks so good. I want a sandwich and some fried chicken and those GORGEOUS tomatoes. You grow corn – you have any idea why sometimes the silk is super hard to remove and other times it just pulls off with no problem? I use the microwave method to cook – I cut the stalk ends off up to probably the 3rd row of corn, leave the husk and silk on and microwave for about 3 1/2 minutes and then shake the cob out holding it by the "tuft" of husk/silk at the top. I’d love to know if there is some trick I’m missing. I don’t ever remember having this much trouble. @Margaret Pilgrim – your artichoke lasagna reminds of a short cut I discovered some time ago. I made a chicken, artichoke and spinach pasta sauce with a creamy, Parmesan base. Tasting it, all three of us said it tasted like chain restaurant spinach and artichoke dip – in a good way! They sell that frozen in the grocery store, so I’ve made it much more often the short cut way than the “from scratch” way! A dinner last week was “Greek” lamb chops, tomatoes, and cous cous with lemon zest, dried cranberries and pine nuts: I marinated the chops in the Greek Marinade for Chicken that I made recently. The flavor didn’t really come through in the lamb and I’m not sure why. I only marinated for about 8 hours instead of a full 24. Not sure if it was that or just that lamb doesn’t take to the marinade as well as chicken. Any thoughts on that? Thanks! The tomatoes were heirlooms from the produce market and so good (crappy photo), as was the corn: Salad and a baguette: Another meal from last week started with a salad: And we had (frozen) Chicken Kiev, egg noodles, and corn: Tuesday was @Dianne’s Garlic Shrimp, tomatoes (including a few of Mr. Kim’s little ones), corn, salad, and a baguette: Wednesday, I dug some flatbreads out of the freezer: Served with my marinated cukes and (what else?) salad: Last night was our local and usual Chinese restaurant. Soups (hot & sour and wonton): Mr. Kim had the orange beef: And I had the crispy honey shrimp:

This morning was Dave's Killer cinnamon and raisin bagels: I'm not a huge sweet bagel fan, but I have a LOT of honey and walnut cream cheese that I mixed up on Sunday. I didn't use half of what I made and don't want to waste it. Decent bagels for packaged ones.

We took it home to be polite. Mr. Kim dumped the cake and washed and dried the cake carrier and plate before we'd been home an hour!

It really did. Our area has been known for years for a local tomato- the "Hanover". Kind of like a Vidalia onion. Not sure what has changed, but in the last few years the flavor and even the LOOK of them has been different. Last year, we never got a really good Hanover, so we started filling in with produce stand heirlooms and they were good all summer. We've bought a couple of the Hanovers this season and found the same thing. Another one for lunch today:

I know that this is going to come across as me being an ungrateful bitch, but if I can’t bitch here, where can I 😁? My MIL always insists that everyone must have a cake for their birthday and sees anything that we chose that isn’t cake as invalid. She will literally come to our house for a birthday party and if the dessert isn’t a cake, she’ll bake one and bring it by the next day. It’s always seemed like an odd flex, but we’ve gotten used to it over the years. So, my birthday was July 9th and when she heard that we were eating out that day, she asked what kind of cake I wanted. I suggested strawberry cake with 7-minute frosting. She always uses a cake mix fixed up with Dream Whip, and that’s what I figured she’d do this time. She didn’t. She found a recipe for a strawberry cake with fresh strawberries in the batter on Pinterest and made that with a buttercream icing made with more strawberries. She ended up having a very busy day and instead of bringing the cake over that night (as planned), she requested that we come and have cake at her house. I wasn’t even planning on getting dressed after our out of town adventures the day before, but we went over. The cake was beautiful, but just a wet mess: The flavor was good, but the texture was just saturated. I’m not a big fan of buttercream and this was so incredibly sweet that it was almost inedible. She explained that the strawberries made the icing so loose that she had to keep adding more and more 10X to try to tighten it up. It seems so strange that she would screw up so badly, being such an experienced baker. By the time we got home with the cake, the majority of the icing had slid down the sides. Very sad looking. The other day Mr. Kim brought home some cherries and blackberries from the downtown farmer’s market. Blackberry shortcake seemed like a good idea. I made some Sweet Shortbread Biscuits: They are just slightly sweet and very fragrant with lemon zest and are perfect for blackberry shortcake: For coffee after church today, I got some breakfast bread at Publix, made Honey-Walnut Cream Cheese, and put together little sandwiches: They were very popular. I have to say that my MIL completely redeemed herself. She brought by some cherry pie that she had made: It was excellent!

Last week - the first of the season heirloom tomato BLT: Another lunch from last week at our old favorite pizza place, Mary Angela’s. Slices: We shared a steak & cheese and fries: We heard that all the Virginia Shoney’s are going to be closing by the end of 2023. Not being sure what that meant for our immediate are, Jessica and I went to one of the nearby remaining ones for what could be our last Hot Fudge Cake ever: It was as good as we remembered. We also had some onion rings: Good, but nowhere near as good as the ones we had in Staunton (on my mini food blog I posted). Saturday was our day to make and deliver lunches to 4 homeless shelters. We stopped for lunch afterwards at our favorite soul food place, Ms. Girlee’s. I had a crab cake sandwich and mac and cheese: The mac and cheese was delicious, as always, but the crabcake was disappointing. I’m pretty sure that it was made of claw meat – very dark and strong tasting. No filler or green peppers, though, so that was a plus. Mr. Kim’s Baby Club was fantastic: The slices of meat were thick and not dry at all and the turkey was obviously cut from a roasted breast. In the future, I’ll stick with country food and sides. Brunch after church at Shorty’s Diner. Mr. Kim had a cheeseburger and I had Eggs Benedict and hash browns:

@blue_dolphin - both courses of your 7/9 breakfast look fantastic, but those incredibly lovely and juicy peach slices keep drawing me back. I’m getting good tasting peaches, but they just aren’t drippy and juicy like they should be! I have to go back a bit to catch up! Sunday before last was some lovely things from our drive to Charlottesville and Staunton VA on Saturday: The kouign-amman and the lemon curd “cruffin” were from Albemarle Baking Co. and the mini baguette was from Food of all Nations (a local specialty grocery store). A week ago Tuesday : Toast and a deceitful plum. The plum looked, felt, and smelled ripe. It was tasteless and crunchy. Friday: Watermelon and tomatoes on toast. I had made some sweet lemony biscuits a few days ago to do blackberry shortbread and toasted one up the next day to serve with some seedless blackberry jam we’d picked up in our travels: This morning I was quite a hybrid – NC country ham and a buttered crumpet: 😁

That's lovely. I'll remember the honey at snack time!

Local company that is becoming regionally known. Nightingale Ice Cream is available through many outlets here and delivered anywhere through Goldbelly. My sister (in Northern VA) has found it at her local Walmart and and Exxon station (!!!). Delicious, creamy ice cream and inventive flavors. I had the strawberry shortcake last month: and Mr. Kim and I shared the salted caramel and the chocolate blackout Saturday:

I didn't. But I've done plenty of burgers with fried onions on top since then and NONE of this recipe, so that says something, I think. 😁

Watermelon and a buttered crumpet: I've been buying crumpets at Wegman's that are ok. The brand is "Farm Country" and I can't find out much about them. But I found a British brand (Lakeland Bake) at the "gourmet" grocery we were at on July 9th. SO much better. The Wegman's ones don't crisp up like these do. And lots more flavor. Yet another reason to put points WEST on my regular shopping routes!

Jessica loves finding new or unusual things for us to taste. She records our reactions and puts them on FB. Last night we tried these two: The pickle chips smelled exactly like a jar of dill pickles had been opened, but the flavor was lacking. The cheese curls were very mild (we loved the Pepperidge Farm Old Bay goldfish crackers). Nothing objectionable, but also nothing special.

Love fish chowder - we tried it at every restaurant we ate at! And what a gracious gesture for them to offer to make your nephew's calamari separately so that he could have what he wanted!

About 30% of the time, this is what happens to me. 🙄

I made these back in May of 2020. In my notes, I said, "I truly wonder if these are any better than a hamburger cooked like always and topped with caramelized onions. I'd like to try a side by side sometime. I suspect that getting the onions done enough overcooked the burgers."

These arrived the other day as a little surprise from Mr. Kim: Time to make this Caesar salad!