Kim Shook

Welcome to eG, @mjm240! I'm looking forward to your contributions. I always love when new people get involved. Keeps things interesting! Is there any specific kind of cuisine that you are interested in or specialize in preparing?

Welcome to eG, @yekasi4! I think a lot of us were lurkers for a good while before jumping in - I know I was. I'm looking forward to seeing more from you! Happy Holidays!

Thanks! Fixed now?

I'm guessing you're not referring to my "slap everything on the counter" meals. 😄😄😄

@Shelby – whenever you post a few days’ worth of meals, I become suddenly dissatisfied with what I’ve got available 😁! I now want meatballs and pizza and RIBS 😍 and, always broccoli salad (which I made last week). @Duvel – thank you so much for posting the Christmas market pictures! I truly cannot get enough of them. Not to mention that gorgeous sauerbraten! @C. sapidus – was the salmon cake bought at a grocery store or a fish shop? I’ve never seen a store made one, but I’d definitely try it if I saw it! @FrogPrincesse – I’ve put those salmon pinwheels on my TJ shopping list! I confess that I’m more like @liamsaunt’s brother and @MaryIsobel’s husband when it comes to vegetables. I like a LOT more than they seem to, but there are so many that I find repugnant – all squash, bell peppers, chard, mushrooms, zucchini, eggplant, etc., etc. Oddly, though, I’ve always liked the ones that most children don’t – broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, and Brussel sprouts. And I like some raw that I don’t care for cooked – carrots and cabbage, for instance. Jessica made a couple of the last few dinners that we’ve had at home. One night we started with a gorgeous salad (she really excels at salads and dressings): Chicken Kiev (frozen), Rice-A-Roni, glazed carrots (no idea why they are so dark), and street corn: Last night she made chicken enchiladas. With Spanish rice and fiesta potatoes: SO good! Both meals were a mixture of leftovers and freezer food, so she’s definitely meeting the December brief! I did it again: My plate: Pepperoni pizza and some sausage gravy on a Hawaiian roll. Jessica’s was more interesting: She had some leftover potatoes that she put a cream sauce she’d made on and she used the French toast, some ham, Swiss cheese, and cranberry sauce to make a sort of Monte Cristo.

Breakfast was the last of the biscuits leftover from the ones we ordered for our Episcopal Church Women Christmas party last Saturday: Still really good.

We finally had our Trim the Tree chocolate fondue last night. When we first started doing beef fondue for dinner and chocolate fondue for dessert, we had many fewer ornaments and much more energy! Not to mention larger appetites! We managed to have an early dinner and to stay alert until 8pm for the fondue! The chocolate sauce was just some Smucker’s hot fudge sauce and a chocolate fondue that Santa put in my stocking LAST Christmas (it was still within its OK date). The dippers: Angel food cake, pound cake, Peeps, cinnamon-sugar pretzels, animal crackers, bananas, dried figs/dates/apricots, maraschino cherries, and strawberries (not pictured). We didn’t go all out this year, but it was still TOO much. Most of it got put away to have later. This ONLY way I eat Peeps: I think that @Shelby mentioned discovering this method. We've been doing it every since they started coming out with Christmas Peeps! 😄

I am decidedly NOT ahead of the game. Rather, I'm behind the 8 ball 😜! I have NO presents wrapped. I have multiple rooms that still need decorations set out. I'm going up to my dad's on Thursday to have a little visit and drop off all the gifts for folks up there (northern VA) and I'm not even finished shopping for that yet. I've got SO many things yet to cook ahead of time and I don't have my timeline done yet (doing a day by day and hour by hour timeline helps with my holiday anxiety). So, yeah, I'm freaking out. If I remember to take the picture, you certainly will. It is topped with a sweet pecan topping. Mr. Kim and Jessica are fans of sweet potatoes any way they come. I, on the other hand, only like them if they can be mistaken for dessert 😁.

I made the sweet potato layer of the souffle for Christmas Eve dinner to put in the freezer: and cheese potatoes:

@BonVivant – yes! I got it and it looks fantastic. I got an incredible deal on it at abebooks.com – someone in the US had it and it was $5.48 with free shipping. I love that site – I don’t think I’ve bought a new book in YEARS! And thank you for posting the photo with the robin and the message about Heidi. She would have loved that. For lunch the other day, I let my inner child choose the meal – fish finger sandwich and spaghetti hoops: This was a common lunch that my English step-sisters would give me when I’d go over to their mom’s house visit them. The hoops were from Lidl and tasted NOT like SpaghettiOs, but like canned tomato soup with macaroni in it (a common way to embellish tomato soup when I was a kid). I think this lunch might belong on the guilty pleasures topic! Today: Trader Joe’s Slightly Smoked salmon, crackers, and an apple. Colby Jack was very interested:

What a remarkable man he was.

Jessica makes pickled garlic and uses the brine in all kinds of stuff. I think we use the brine more than we do the garlic.

From Facebook today: Dear friends, it is with a heavy heart that we announce the passing of our beloved mother, sister, daughter and aunt; Heidi Maria Husnak. She passed peacefully on December 2, 2023. There will be a service held to celebrate her life on Wednesday, December 13 at 2pm in the Chapel at Green Hills Cemetary in San Pedro which we welcome her friends to join. Love from her family, Matthew (Son), Chris (Sister) and Heidi (Neice). I am so sad to hear this news. She's been such a good, supportive and helpful friend over the years.

I'm always happy to share! This is the original recipe for the Reese's Cup fudge. I never cared for the chocolate layer in that recipe, so you'll see in my notes that I now use a half recipe of my Aunt San's fudge instead. Also, I now add about a bag of peanut butter chips and probably 1/4 cup of peanut butter powder to the mix in the peanut butter layer. If you can't get ahold of those things, don't worry - I made this for 35+ years without them and there were never any complaints!

Some of the almond Kringle I got at Trader Joe’s and bacon: My bacon looks weird. I think I over-crisped it in the microwave.

Cold chicken sliders, salad, and Rice-A-Roni:

I had two successes and one failure yesterday. I made chocolate fudge and Reeses Cup fudge (chocolate and peanut butter): This is my mother's family recipe and has been made for over 80 years. My mother remembered her aunt making it when she was a little girl. It's made with milk chocolate (my great aunt specified Hershey's in the recipe - I tend to use the Trader Joe's Pound Plus bar, but the times I've used Cadbury were the best) and is very smooth and creamy. The top layer is just a half recipe of the chocolate fudge, but the PB layer is unusual. It isn't cooked - it's just 10X, PB, brown sugar, and melted butter. Over the years, I've added PB chips and PB powder to up the flavor, but that's it. It does have to be refrigerated or it breaks down. But it has a lovely texture - similar to the inside of a Reeses cup. Hence the name, I suppose. My failure were my iced almonds - they are basically a glazed almond cluster. I just overcooked them - they are much too hard and taste burnt. I'll give them another go today. I have to wait until someone is around to sprinkle coarse salt on top of each cluster as I dollop them out.

How about these? As you can see, they really hold their shape - the lettering on them is TINY and still completely legible: It was done with a little stamp set.

@Captain – that pie is gorgeous and delicious looking. I’m not a mushroom person, but I’d dissect that in order to have some 😁! @liuzhou – Jessica and I are quite impressed with the look of your pizza and fries! I had bible study and Mr. Kim ended up working from home all evening. So, I left a rotisserile chicken, a pan of Rice-A-Roni, and a salad for him and Jessica: When I got home, I made a little chicken, lettuce, and Duke’s sandwich on a Hawaiian roll and gulped down a bowl of rice. We finally got a start putting ornaments on the tree – JUST a start. We were all too full once again for chocolate fondue, so we just had some cookies and a few slices of stollen:

This morning: ET bagel, cream cheese, and Trader Joe’s Slightly Smoked Salmon.

How about these: Flo's Chocolate Snaps? @emmalish shared the recipe a few years ago. I've never done them as cut outs - only sliced, but they are very firm and I'm pretty sure that you could roll the dough out. This was originally a David Lebovitz recipe that she adapted, so you know they taste great.

Breakfast this morning was a bagel, cream cheese, and TJ's Slightly Smoked Salmon:

I had the same problem with the regular Oxo can opener. It's useless. I can't get it to "hook on" to the cans. When I do, it slips off before the lid is removed. Frustrating and painful for arthritic hands! I got this battery operated side open one for Christmas either in 2022 or 2021 and I love it. The only cans that I have trouble with are tiny ones - like tomato paste cans. I honestly don't remember whether or not I've ever had to open an oddly shaped can (like sardines) yet. I can highly recommend it.

@Duvel– going to a Christmas market in Germany is Mr. Kim’s and my dream. We watch every YouTube video we can find about them. We follow a few British and American ex-pats who live there and it has been so wonderful to watch them experience the markets. Those lit Christmas stars are on my wishlist. Incredibly beautiful. Thank you SO much for sharing your day. @OlyveOyl – those sprouts look precisely perfect and exactly how I want mine. Unfortunately, mine are never precisely perfect. Always slightly mushy before they get the perfect browning. @lindag – that casserole sounds really good. And I like that website. I ran across it a while back and everything I’ve tried has been dependable and very good. We went out for Chinese a couple of nights ago. Soups: Wonton, egg drop, and Hot & Sour. Crab Rangoon: My Mu Shu pork: (sans mushrooms 😁!) Mr. Kim’s Crispy Hot Beef: Jessica’s Salt and Pepper Shrimp: Another night everyone got hungry at different times. My dinner: Ham and cheese. Night before last was our Tree Trimming dinner. The tradition is beef fondue and chocolate fondue for dessert. We decided to do something easier than beef fondue this year. We had steaks instead. Menu: Steaks Lobster tails Sauces: Bearnaise Steak sauce Horseradish Curry mayo Green Salad Broccoli salad Smashed potatoes Baguette The steaks were very disappointing: They look great, but were not. The one on the left is a NY strip (Mr. Kim’s favorite) and the other two are rib eyes (Jessica’s and mine). All three were tough and mealy and not very tasty. Jessica’s actually tasted a bit livery. I SV’d them at 125F. The strip was very thick and was cooked perfectly. But the rib eyes were thinner and by the time I got a good sear on them they were overcooked – probably a medium. The steaks came from Lidl and weren’t terribly expensive. I won’t be buying that particular brand again. I’d heard good things about their meat, but they stock a few different brands, and this was not good. The lobster tails, on the other hand, were a pleasant surprise. They was from Tom Leonard’s (a local farm stand-type store that sells a lot of local produce, meats, seafood, etc. – related to Stew Leonard’s if anyone in NE knows of that) and they were inexpensive – 2/$14. Very small, of course, but they ended up being delicious. I steamed them at 210F for 10 minutes at which point they were not quite done. I deshelled them: I was proud of the fact that I didn’t mangle them like I did last time I made lobster tails. When I was ready to serve them, I sautéed them in butter. They turned out great: The sauces and some of Jessica’s pickled vegetables: Horseradish, Green Goddess, and curry sauce. There was also steak sauce, but no one needs to see a bottle of A1 😊. Broccoli salad: As usual, my ratios were off – too little broccoli to add-ins. But it tasted good. Jessica’s beautiful salad: with arugula, endive, goat cheese, dried cranberries, carrots, and her pickled shallots. Served with an orange vinaigrette. Béarnaise (like @Shelby's from a powdered mix 😊), bread, and smashed roasted potatoes: I know lots of folks make these potatoes, but the first time I ever heard of them was when @Marlene made them and shared the recipe back in 2008. I’ve served them countless times over the years. They are so great for entertaining because you can do all the prep ahead of time. My plate: We usually do chocolate fondue for dessert, but it was just too late. So, we had a few German cookies from my Lidl haul: Speculoos and cinnamon stars.

I made cinnamon pecans a couple of days ago: Yesterday I made peanut brittle. The two batches came out very different. First batch: Second batch was much lighter and more “brittle”: Both are good. I’m guessing that the temperatures were slightly different even though I used my thermapen. I've got some of the "debris" left from breaking up the brittle: Any ideas of something good to do with this. I mix the crumbs and shards of sponge candy with chocolate and make what I call "Happy Accident Candy" - it resembles a Crunchie bar (the best candy bar in the world, in my opinion) and I'd love to do something with these delicious scraps, too.