Kim Shook

It truly sounds dreadful and the "chef" full of himself, but expecting a "main course" in the middle of a tasting menu is completely unrealistic. That's not how it works. Even I know that.

It's this one. It is just stacked up cheese ravioli with a pretty good beef and pork Bolognese. I like the addition of the tomato sauce and some Parm. We originally bought it for my in laws when they were still in their house and they raved about it so much that we tried one. We like it a lot and it freezes very well.

Freezer dive yesterday produced half of a Costco ravioli lasagna: Topped with Victoria tomato sauce: which we like a lot. Served with a salad and a roasted garlic loaf:

Your French friend's daughter would have approved of my plate after finishing the croissant - the plate itself was almost completely hidden by shards of crust! I'm with you on sweet stuff with eggs - it just doesn't appeal. BTW - your French toast dish is amazing looking! This morning we had English muffins, butter, and Benton's bacon in the house. Ergo:

@Dante – my mother used to make a similar chicken dish, but I never heard it called Chicken Jerusalem. Thank you! @Annie_H – would you share your cod cake recipe, please? I think I need these in my repertoire. And the gold medal for the blandest dish of the thread goes to...ME! What can I say? It's exactly what I needed last night.😊

Thanks, @shain! I'll add that note to my recipe!

Thanks for your advice, @shain! One more question, please: Here's the recipe. What kind of starch and how would you incorporate it?

"Myth: You can cook with cheap cheese" American here. I appreciate good cheese and go out of my way to get the good stuff. But I use cheap cheese (deli American and even the dreaded Velveeta) in small amounts to stabilize a cheese sauce for things like mac and cheese and broccoli cheese soup. The flavor of a good Cheddar is wonderful in these kinds of things, but when I try to use my 3 years Cheddar in them, the sauce breaks.

I have been known to cut a fried fish sandwich in half and put tartar sauce on one half and cocktail sauce (or just catsup if not available) on the other. 😁 We ended up at our favorite Chinese-American restaurant last night. I’ve talked about this place before. If there is somewhere we consider “our place”, this is it. We’ve been going since Jessica (now 37) was a toddler. They remember us and treat us like friends. It is in our larger neighborhood (only about 2 miles away – we’ve walked it) and we’ve spent the past almost 2 years ordering take out from them. It was the first place that we dined in person once we felt comfortable doing that. Jessica and I shared the Pu-Pu platter and shrimp fried rice: Mr. Kim got Five Flavor Chicken:

I so agree, ladies. I think about David so much when I look at my old cookbooks and magazines and know how much he'd love to see them and talk about them. I loved how he saw food both from an almost scholarly point of view, but also from the view of someone who appreciated good food - fancy or plain. He and I shared an appreciation of Taste of Home magazine and those check out booklets you were talking about, @Tropicalsenior! When I look at those booklets and magazines from the 1960s and 70s (when I was growing up), I honestly don't remember people cooking lots of the odder dishes. I have a collection of Betty Crocker Recipe Cards from the 1970s (?). I actually collected a set when they were offered back then - my first stirring of interest in cooking - and stupidly got rid of them in college. I found an almost complete set recently and got them. I did make some of the dishes, but most were just not things we were interest in. Neither my mom, nor any of my friends moms cooked the weird and over complicated stuff I see from them.

I have this Trudeau cut resistant glove. I like it a lot. It says one size, but it's actually snug and I really feel safe because of that. I know that I would use it less if it was huge and flopped around on my hand.

One of the truly good ones has always been the Junior League of Charleston (SC) "Charleston Recipes". Really good seafood and game recipes.

I love the community fundraising and family published cookbooks. My grandmother was an easy mark and had one from every church and organization in her town - many of which included her contributions. What I've discovered in looking over them is how many duplications there are. The same recipes, tricks, menus over and over again - some even in the same book (I assume this happens because they don't want to offend anyone by leaving them out). Most of the ones that I have seen are from the Southern US. I would like to see ones from other regions and I wonder if other countries have the same publications?

As far as the canned cherry tomatoes go, I’m really wondering what would be the point for us specifically. Since we don’t like hot tomatoes, I’d mush them up and they would lose the “look” of them. I was really wondering if there was some inherent cherry tomato flavor I didn’t know about. @Dejah – I’m impressed with that “fried” chicken – especially since it was cooked in the oven. It looks very much like oil fried chicken! @gfweb – what beautiful schnitzel! Tree trimming dinner on Saturday was way after normal dinner time (even for us). We got hungry, but not for a real meal, so I set out an assortment of cheeses and things to go with them: From 11 o’clock: Alouette ET, crackers, bread, Cabot 3-year Cheddar, and incredibly delectable and perfect yellow skinned pear, Trader Joe’s Fromage Pavé (thanks again, rotuts), Pina Colada flavored Wensleydale, and an aged Gouda in the middle. The Wensleydale was ok – a little too sweet. As much as I love coconut, I think that might have been the main culprit. I’m actually a fan of all the different fruited Wensleydales, but this one was over the top. I have some peppered Carr’s water biscuits and will give it a try on those. Also, some salami and a few slices of Havarti: Jessica had this which we got caught up on: The first two bits were very good Gouda and Edam, which I can’t remember EVER buying as an adult. I was transported back to childhood to one of my mother’s cocktail parties in the 1960s. I remember she would place a round of each (Gouda and Edam) – still covered in the wax - on either end of the platter and cut the cheeses into wedges down to, but not through, the bottom of the wax. She would then carefully fold back the wax wedges to form “petals” around the now cut into wedges cheese rounds. She would decorate the platter with grapes and apple slices and put baskets of crackers and sliced bread on the side. I love it when food brings back memories like that. Sunday dinner was Old Bay roasted Gulf shrimp: Caesar salad: Crispy Smashed Potatoes: which got a little extra crispy, but were good dipped in bearnaise, anyway. Crusty bread: Dessert was a LillyPuds Xmas pudding. I grew up with Xmas pudding – my English grandmother would make it when she visited in summer and we’d have it at Christmas – so I knew I would like, but not love it. I was pretty sure that Jessica wouldn’t be crazy about it and thought Mr. Kim would like it at least as much as me. After steaming: Turned out: Serving with custard: Here, I made a mistake. My mother always served this with hard sauce (brandy butter) which I don’t care for. I asked my FB British ex-pat group if I could use custard instead. I got lots of positive responses. Perhaps if I’d made my own custard or even used Bird’s powder (which is exactly what Momma did when she needed custard for trifle or canned fruit), it would have been ok. But someone in the group mentioned canned Devon custard, which I’d seen at Publix. It was awful. Luckily, I just used a dab. All three of us agreed it was NOT good. And my predictions about who would like it were true – Jessica not at all and Mr. Kim and I liked it a lot. Since I wasn’t sure about this pud, I made something I knew we’d all like – a chocolate cream pie: Complete with a Cool Whip topping 😂: Jessica was much happier with this and Mr. Kim and I, even though we liked the pud, agreed that we’d never crave Xmas pudding. We both admitted that we actually preferred the instant pudding/Cool Whip concoction to the beautifully made pud 😊. There is apparently a gremlin in my computer today. On this thread and also the lunch thread I seem to have no control over bold and spacing of my letters.

There was an odd order to our meals on Saturday. Not sure if we had two late breakfasts or two lunches! Our neighborhood Mosque was having an open house from 11-1:30 and we went. They offered a lovely lunch with Mujadara (lentils, rice, and caramelized onions), falafel, flat bread (no pocket), hummus, and baklava) which we completely enjoyed. We came home to trim the Christmas tree and a couple of hours later we had our planned brunch – Blueberry Croissant (basically a bread pudding): With Benton’s bacon: We were still trimming the tree on Sunday and had a little snack to sustain us until dinner: Crackers, Cheddar cheese, cocktail sauce, and (store bought) crab dip and some homemade limoncello: I haven't the slightest idea what is going on with the font/bold letters in the post. I can't seem to correct them and they all were copied/pasted from the same document.

We used to have one that would jump up into a recently vacated chair at the table (usually mine, since I was the cook and up and down a lot) and reach just his arm up to try to snag something off the plate. It was such a parlour trick that he'd sometimes succeed while we were busy laughing at it.

I was at Trader Joe's a couple of days ago to pick up our wreathes and found that they had the Fromage Pavé. We've accumulated a lot of cheeses in the past couple of weeks and were planning on trimming the tree this weekend and I thought a cheese and bread meal would be perfect, so I picked up a package. We were delighted with it and send a thank you to @rotuts for the introduction and recommendation. I wish I had a better picture than this (we didn't finish it, so I'll try to remember to get an inside picture when we get into it again): It was creamy and rich and flavorful and fantastic on bread. Jessica found it a little TOO funky, but Mr. Kim and I loved it.

Thank you so much for linking to the bread recipe – looks like something I would like to try. One question – you bake it in the CSO, but do you also rise it there? I’m so sorry, but I admit that I laughed in a very unladylike manner when I saw Miss Scout’s nefarious deed. I even called Mr. Kim and Jessica over to see it. All three of us have experience with animals doing those things. Mr. Kim grew up with a Collie/Norwegian Elkhound blend who once ate FIVE filet mignons that his mom had set out for Mr. Kim’s 16th birthday dinner and who also ate Mr. Kim’s and his siblings' Whitman’s samplers from under the Xmas tree early one Xmas morning (with NO negative results).

Dogs are goobers. They get excited over a green bean. Now, cats, on the other hand...😄

Big hugs to sweet Chum. ❤️ If only you could explain that staying home with Momma means more yummy snacks!

Hers always are beautiful. Such a great food stylist, without a dot of the oddness that stylists sometimes go to. Gotta love an eat over the sink breakfast:

Last night I made Pork Tenderloin w/ Pepper Jelly Glaze from @JAZ's new 5-Ingredient Instant Pot Cookbook: It was excellent and ready in about 15 minutes - with only 5 minutes actual cooking time! I loved the pepper jelly with the pork.

Last night was the seemingly eternal Thanksgiving sides and a recipe from @JAZ's new IP cookbook - Pork Tenderloin with Pepper Jelly Glaze (at 6 o'clock): We are actually still enjoying the leftovers and the pork was excellent. I have a question. I saw this yesterday at Lidl: Is there any advantage to using canned cherry tomatoes rather than regular canned tomatoes? Any particular recipes that they would be especially good for. We love tomato based sauces, but NOT hot tomatoes (such as broiled or stewed tomatoes).

Welcome to eG, @Wisp! Love your kitty avatar! I think you'll find lots of help with fairly arcane cooking stuff here. We have a bevy of extremely knowledgeable and generous members.

I told her and she was thrilled to hear that she had inspired an eGulleteer! Breakfast this morning was from the Lidl bakery case: