Kim Shook

How utterly cool! And what a great photo!

This is so great! I'm dying for both the seafood and the beach! We've decided on a whim to visit some dear friends in Jacksonville FL next month - two days driving back and forth and two days with them. She's already sent me links to the four restaurants we'll be going to for brunch and dinner those two days! LOL Sadly, we won't get a glimpse of the beach - they aren't so inclined. I have to say that I'd be like Sue - trying the shrimp as much as possible.

At some point in the past couple of months someone asked about my egg salad. I had to confess that the egg salad I was raving about was purchased. But yesterday I made a huge batch of my egg salad. Some to take to a church friend who had to have surgery and some to keep for lunches for us. So, I thought I’d give a little description of how I do it. Many years ago, when I was still spending lots of time at Chowhound, I was searching for my perfect egg salad consistency and asked for some guidance. I wanted something creamy but NOT WET (as a matter of fact the title of the recipe is: Not Wet Egg Salad😁). I was given some advice including mashing the eggs with a potato masher and using MUCH less mayonnaise than I thought was needed. Following both things changed my egg salad and now is the only way I make it. Mashed eggs: The only things besides eggs that go in: The tiny amount of mayo (that’s about 2 tablespoonsful of mayo to 8 eggs): Finished for lunch today:

We had the Tres Leches cake last night with our ersatz Cinco de Mayo. The cake was quite good, we thought. I do not understand how you have something as moist as this and it doesn't just dissolve into mush, but it doesn't: It was also our guest's birthday a couple of days ago.

You really should watch the actual Julia. There is no one like her. Truly a legend. If you can watch youtube.com, there are lots of the original shows.

Hi, @ErinKeegan and welcome to eG. Definitely tell us what kinds of things that you are interested in cooking/eating and I'd love to know where (generally) you live.

Even the local employees don't understand how the main office defines "seasonal". 🙄

For dinner tonight I'd like @Norm Matthews green beans and @Duvel's Køttbullar (no mushrooms, please 😁). Instead, I'm pretty sure it's going to be leftovers since I have a church group to host at church tonight at 7pm. Last night Mr. Kim took his mom up to Washington DC for her Christmas gift – Diana Krall in concert and dinner at Floriana. My dinner: Carolina dog – yellow mustard, chili, and slaw (minus raw onions, though) and fixed up canned baked beans. Funny – this seems a sad dinner compared to the pictures that Mr. Kim was sending me of their lovely meal, but it is just exactly the meal that Momma and I used to have – and LOVE – when @Ted Fairhead was out of town for some reason. He detested sausages of all kinds and wouldn’t even try baked beans, so we would indulge joyfully!

We have to get Alexa to call our phones fairly often.

Welcome to eG, @themistocles! Thanks for including the photo and your information about where you are in the world. I'm in the US, so I'm always thrilled to see folks from outside my country - adds a lot of interest! I'm looking forward to your contributions!

Well, I was destined to be disappointed in my quest for the pancakes. When I got to TJ's, it turned out what they had was NOT the Taiwanese green onion pancakes, but the Korean ones with vile mushrooms and carrots! 😠 I did manage to snag a Tres Leches cake for our very American Cinco de Mayo celebration on the 5th - crunchy tacos, black beans, and Rice a Roni Spanish rice 😂! We'll be celebrating Jessica's best friend's birthday, too, so I'll just stick a candle in it and call it festive! LOL

@mgaretz's Blasphemy Ribs are smoked at a constant temperature of 225F and are as tender and flavorful as anyone could want. @shain – I love the idea of spanakopita cups! On Thursday, we had to drive across town and took the opportunity to give my favorite Richmond pizza. Served with a “Dill Pickle” salad kit: Sounded strange, but tasted very good. The pizza: It isn’t perfect, but like I said, it’s my favorite pizza that I’ve found in Richmond. And it does this: 😁 Dinner Friday was a complete heat-up meal – all from Trader Joe’s and Lidl. And Greek themed: From 12 o’clock – puff pastry bites with spinach and cheese (from Lidl), kalamata olives, falafel (Trader Joe’s), kibbeh (Trader Joe’s), and tzatziki (TJ’s). Along with some garlic flat bread that I steamed in the CSO (TJ’s): The spinach/cheese bites: The falafel: The kibbeh: All of this was surprisingly good. We had lots of leftovers and will be happy to eat this again in a couple of days. As much as I’ve been craving spaghetti and meatballs, Mr. Kim has been craving Mexican. Went to our closest Mexican place on Monday night. Not sure how authentic they are (one day I might be brave enough to try lingua tacos), but they are so fresh and good. I had a burrito and a taco with beans and rice: Mr. Kim had his usual – 3 enchiladas: chicken, cheese, and beef: Sunday was a friend’s recipe for creamy tomato soup. One of those “cheater” recipes that starts with Campbell’s Tomato soup and is transformed with other ingredients – half-and-half, sundried tomato pesto, and petite diced tomatoes. We were having a phone visit with them and they were talking about this soup and some grilled cheese dippers that they had had the night before. She developed this from another recipe that she also likes that includes things like Italian seasoning, onion powder, and cheese-filled tortellini. We were tasting it the whole time that I was cooking it and decided to add the Italian seasoning, garlic, onion powder, Worcestershire sauce, and sherry. It was really good, but in the end, we decided that it needed more diced tomatoes and another jar of sundried tomato pesto. They had found caramelized onion Monterey Jack at Publix and recommended it for the grilled dippers. I got some focaccia and found the cheese and they went beautifully with the soup: Last night – super easy dinner for me: Some toasted leftover focaccia, the last two Easter eggs, and some deli Edwards country ham (we are definitely blessed down here😉).

@blue_dolphin – lovely pasta dish! Sounds like such a refreshing combination. Lots of eating out for us the past week! Mr. Kim took a few days of vacation and on Friday we celebrated by getting bagels for brunch and wandering through a local antique mall. I had a BEC ET bagel: Mr. Kim had the Bada Bing on a salt bagel: Prosciutto, sopressata, fresh mozzarella, sweet peppers, lettuce, tomato, and oil and vinegar. Sunday, we went to a formerly favorite place of ours. They have a downtown location that we’ve loved for years and were so thrilled when they opened a location out in the suburbs a few years ago. We ate there a lot and took folks there, too. Even before the pandemic, we had some problems with our food and they have not gotten better. The service wasn’t great, but we allow all the leeway in the world for that. I was saying that so many of the career servers are just gone and we are having to practice patience with the high school kids, just out of high school, and untrained staff that simply don’t know how to be good waiters and waitresses. Our waiter today was very young (as was everyone we saw) and very nice but spread all over the restaurant and clearly not experienced. At the end of the meal, we had all of the dishes that had been set on the table STILL on the table and no one had had a drink refill. They use runners to deliver the food, so the waiter hadn’t had a chance to check our order again his check (if he had even known how to do that). Things started off really well - Jessica and I got the she-crab soup: It was hot and fragrant and quite “crabby”. Mr. Kim’s soup, which was the soup of the day, had been described as a split pea/lentil soup, came with the soup slopped all over the side of the cup: He could detect no lentils, but it was full of red bell pepper, zucchini, and squash. He ordered the “Health Bowl” – mixed greens with brown rice, avocado, tomatoes, chickpeas, strawberries, candied nuts, craisins served with extra virgin olive oil and a lemon half: This was probably the best thing on the table. I had the Monte Cristo and fries: Very ordinary ham and turkey and crinkle cuts!!! I love a good crispy crinkle cut, but this is just NOT a crinkle cut kind of place and they were undercooked. Poor Jessica got treated the worst. Her beef tenderloin eggs Benedict was dropped at the table by a runner who dashed off before she had a chance to notice that there was NO hollandaise. It took a while to flag down our server to ask for it. By the time he got back with it, her entire meal was cold. But so was the hollandaise🙄! The meal that she didn’t eat: She’d pretty much lost her appetite by then, so we just asked for it to be taken off the bill. Jessica heard the server go back and fuss at the kitchen about it a few minutes later. We were out running errands today and went back to my favorite diner for lunch. We’ve had some service issues here, too, but the food is so good that we’re more forgiving! I had the pork tenderloin sandwich and Mr. Kim had the burger:

Thank you, ma'am! It was utterly ersatz! Canned frosting, cake mix, and Kirkland strawberry jam! 😉 An experiment for looks. But it ended up tasting pretty good. LOL

Why not do it like a Victoria sponge? Almond cake with the pastry cream and raspberry jam as the filling, like you say and just dust the top with confectioner's sugar. If you get a nice, domed top it looks lovely, I think.

I'll add my thanks to everyone else's! I enjoy this so much every year and dream of doing the same. I know most folks like to follow the sun, but I wonder if it would be possible to follow the Autumn? 😁

We have a few of these wonderful places popping up. One of them makes a strawberry version during strawberry season. It is indescribably good.

Thank you! I've been to Pastries by Randolph many times and liked it a lot. I think it may come down to distance. I'd like to stay as far away from DC as possible that morning and Paris Baguette is just five miles away from my sister's house!

I'm trying to revive this moribund board to ask for some advice and I hope someone will respond. I'm planning to visit my little sister May 20th to see my brand new (yesterday 👶❤️) niece. It also happens to be my sister's birthday. We don't really do gifts, but since I'll actually BE there, I'm planning on an arm full of flowers and I'm hoping for some fantastic pastries. We are driving up from Richmond that morning, so I don't really want to have to go into the District on a work day. I'm hoping for something delectable and (fingers crossed) possibly French in the NOVA area. She's in Oak Hill (Herndon). I found a place called "Paris Baguette" in Fairfax (inside an HMart?). Their menu looks amazing, but anyone can make a great looking website. Anyway - does anyone up there have any ideas for me? Thanks!

Always happy to share! Here you go!

They are similar to a chess pie, if you've ever had that. Very buttery and sweet. The butter and sugar slightly caramelize.

This morning: ET bagel with cream cheese and additional ET seasoning and Easter eggs (still)!

Great price! I've just added one to my wishlist. My ultimate dream is under cabinet lights, but in the meantime, I'm hoping this might help with the dark kitchen issue.

@Tropicalsenior – your Swiss steak meal looks fantastic! I’d be making it with LOTS of onions and no mushrooms! And your popovers are wonderful looking! @MetsFan5 – I’m sorry about the house. Might be for the best in the long run, but it’s a giant PITA now. @Ann_T – gorgeous, perfectly cooked steak and fries. I wish I had planned that for dinner tonight. @Shelby – every single meal looks delicious. Tuesday, I finally got the spaghetti and meatballs I’ve been craving. We went to The Grapevine (a favorite local Greek/Italian place) for dinner and for once I ordered Italian (I think I’ve always ordered Greek before). Mr. Kim and Jessica started with fried mushrooms: Very odiferous. They said they were great. Mr. Kim got his usual baked spaghetti: This was the “Chef Michael’s Favorite” with meat sauce, meatballs, hot Italian sausage, pepperoni, and mushrooms and topped with mozzarella cheese. I got spaghetti and meatballs: Way too much sauce, but it was delicious. Jessica got the gyro sandwich: And then, the bread: I’ve never been able to figure out what the herb/spice is that Greek restaurants use that flavor their rolls so distinctively. But these rolls are addictive, as are most of the breads I’ve eaten at most every Greek/Lebanese/middle eastern/Turkish restaurant my entire life. We love this place and the family so much. We’ve been going to this family’s restaurants in Richmond since we moved back in the late 1990s. They are not Greek, but Lebanese (I guess they call it Greek to appeal to more folks). We’ve ordered lots of food from them during the last two years. I’m so glad that they are still weathering the COVID storm and serving good food and hiring good people.

@blue_dolphin - thank you so much! I still am a bit of a mess dealing with the loss of my mom and especially how unhappy her last couple of years were – mostly due to dementia. But, thanks to friends and family, this service was not nearly as hard as I thought it was going to be. I got so much love and support from everyone. I had friends from HS (I’m 62) show up. Folks at church arranged flowers, blew the leaves off the sidewalks and driveway to make it look nice, and cooked. And Jessica’s singing and eulogy truly blew me away. I was awash, but in a good way. Someone else at church recorded the service and put it on FB so I can watch the whole thing any time I like and share it with friends and family who couldn’t come.