Kim Shook

@blue_dolphin – what was it that made it too salty? It looks beautiful and perfectly cooked, so I hope you try again. Saturday: We’re already getting good pears this year! Post church brunch at a favorite diner. I had eggs Benedict: I always have a hard time turning this down. This was excellent – a really good hollandaise and perfectly poached eggs. Mr. Kim had a pastrami and Swiss: Which I would probably not have taken a chance on. They call themselves a diner, but the vibe is really more café. I would have been wrong. It was surprisingly good. Tender and juicy and such good flavor. And we loved that it was a normal sized portion. Neither of us care for those fist-sized gobs of meat between two puny pieces of rye. This morning: Egg and bacon on an onion roll with a white peach.

Welcome to eGullet, @alexburt! You should have no trouble finding recipes and ideas here - we are NOT shy 😉! Have you perused the RecipeGullet? Looking forward to your contributions.

Hi, @AnCand welcome to eGullet! I'm glad you joined us and hope you will post often - you are in my favorite part of the world. We visited England in 2011 and my husband has also been in Ireland. We want so badly to go back and hope we can one day!

Thank you so much for including us. Mr. Kim and I have pored over your photos and descriptions. Now we add Greece to our dream list of destinations.

Welcome to eG, @ThisIsEarls! I think you'll find a LOT of folks with your interests here. Also, I know we'd love to hear about your experiences in your shop and what brought you to that business.

@blue_dolphin - lovely looking breakfast - everything! But that toast!!! OMG 🥰 I am definitely a carboholic. This morning: Farmer’s market peaches and a bacon, egg, and Muenster on a toasted onion roll.

I was thinking of you the whole time the cheese was getting melty in the CSO. Also on my breakfast this morning!

Marked safe from kale poisoning. 😁

@blue_dolphin – I’ve been wondering about those corn “ribs”. I’ve seen them all over the place – even the Pioneer Woman made them. Your experience mirrored my instinct. Nice riff on the corn and shrimp sauté! It is great as is, but really lends itself to improvisation, too. When I have breakfast I almost never have lunch unless we go out somewhere. But I got a little rumbly in my tumbly the other day and this fit the bill: ET bagel and cream cheese with extra ET seasoning. And yesterday, I went without breakfast because I knew there was some of Mr. Kim’s leftover smoked tri tip in the fridge: I steamed it in the CSO and put it on an onion roll with melty Muenster cheese (horseradish sauce and BBQ sauce under the cheese).

@blue_dolphin – thank you, ma’am! Its just Duke’s mayo on the tomatoes. To me, tomatoes just taste right with a little mayo mixing with their juices. Those sardine and tomato toasts are gorgeous. I’m a big fan of fishy brunches, so I’d love them! Yesterday:

This morning - white peaches and tomatoes on toast - both from the farmer's market: I said somewhere that the tomatoes we're getting this year are better than we've had in many years and we'll be sad to see them go. Luckily, we have one farmer's market nearby that is open on Wednesday mornings and I'm planning a tomato run tomorrow!

Had a kind of sad dinner at a place we’d been to once before. Not sad because the food was bad (though some wasn’t very good), but sad because it’s pretty obvious they aren’t doing well. Not sure that this is the place for this little essay, but here it goes. As with our first visit, we were the only ones in the place and there were no food pickups while we were there. Our other visit was after church and this one was during what should have been the dinner rush. It’s especially sad because it is apparent that whoever is cooking knows what they are doing. We went specifically for the chicken, and it was fantastic: Juicy and hot with a thin, brittle coating. Our sides were mac and cheese, green beans, mashed potatoes w/ gravy, and slaw: The mac and cheese, which I had and loved last time, was obviously scraped from a steam pan that had been made earlier in the day. It was hard and crusted (not in a good way). The beans were just canned ones, but cooked a bit and flavored well. The potatoes were real with a few lumps, but the gravy was from a mix, I’m sure. The slaw was certainly NOT housemade. Jessica got the fish sandwich, which was made with whiting (I grew up calling this Lake Trout – what it is called on the Eastern shore in MD) that was a bit too fragrant, but well prepared. When we went last the menu was front and back of a printed menu. This time the menu was extremely pared down from that with only about 4 sandwiches and 3 dinners left and we were told when we walked in that all the hamburgers (regular and turkey) were sold out already (at about 6:35). I hate to see people work so hard and have so much talent fail. I hope that they will be able to carry on in some way – catering or a truck maybe.

Yay! You persevered.

I've been called a picky eater by more than one person. In spite of that, I eat everything he lists except for green peppers and Indian food. I don't eat any sushi, so I'm not sure how to count that one. So, if this is indeed humor, does he really hate these foods?

I understand this. Living with and working with the same folks is not easy. I think with the pandemic and so many folks working from home, many of us are dealing with the same issue. The "Gentlemans Club" is a great idea. I wish Mr. Kim would find one. I have barely been alone for over a year and I'm getting desperate. 🤪😁

Dayum! I don't even eat cooked carrots and I'm drooling.

@shain – your fatayer meal was lovely. Just exactly what I love to eat. @Katie Meadow – Matiz is a great brand. I haven’t had the sardines yet, but they are the cockles that @weinoo recommends for his clam sauce and they were excellent. I’ve added the sardines to my wishlist! @Annie_H – You should contact @Chris Hennes or @Smithy and they’ll help you get your picture problem sorted! Welcome to eG! Lunch yesterday was a split and toasted cathead biscuit: With the last of the sausage gravy I made the other night:

@Ann_T – I showed Mr. Kim your impeccable and perfect poached eggs and we now have egg envy! @blue_dolphin - I keep meaning to tell you how beautiful your food and your food photography always is. The peach and ricotta toast from yesterday is especially lovely. Friday: On Saturday we ran errands and ended up at The Dairy Bar for brunch. This was the place that used to be the cafeteria for the employees when there was an actual dairy here. I had the Tricia’s Special: Biscuit, sausage, hashbrowns, scrambled eggs, and gravy. Mr. Kim had the club: After church brunch at Jessica’s friends' restaurant, Satterwhite’s. Mr. Kim had eggs and country fried steak with rye toast: I had an open-faced turkey sandwich with fries and green beans: This morning: Martha Stewart recipe for Honey-Caramelized Figs with Yogurt. We got the figs from the farmer’s market. This was delicious.

@robirdstx – do you make your own dirty rice? The only kind I’ve ever had is from Bojangles’s. I like it a lot but would like to try to make my own. @dcarch – those tomatoes are absolutely gorgeous and bless you for donating them. @mgaretz – I’m sorry that the ribs weren’t good. Glad the fries were. Such a delicious looking plate, too! @weinoo – those duck legs and potatoes look so incredible. So simple and so perfect. @Shelby – good Lord, girl! What fantastic looking food. Your tomatoes are killing me and I’m making deviled eggs next time I do hard cooked ones. I keep looking at @Duvel's holiday tomato-rubbed bread and thinking that one would need your exactly perfect tomatoes to do it right. Dinner on Friday was a repeat of the Aldi schnitzel: With a slice of my MIL’s chocolate cake (made to celebrate Mr. Kim’s birthday) for dessert: Saturday was leftover spaghetti and meat sauce from that same BD dinner: She does a very nice thing when she’s making spaghetti for us. She makes her sauce with green peppers and knows I don’t like them, so she makes the sauce to the point of adding the peppers and then sets aside my portion. She made a ton, so we had leftovers. One of the few leftover meals I care for. Served with salads: Last night was @Maggie the Cat’s Shrimp and Corn sauté with caramelized cauliflower: Served with tomatoes and a new (to us) pimento cheese: The corn, tomatoes, and pimento cheese were all from one of the farmer’s markets and were SO good. We have been getting such good tomatoes this summer and are really going to miss them when they’re gone.

Found these at Food Lion and got a couple of bags: This was 2nd flavored Doritos to come out and have always been my favorite. They are really hard to find - literally years between seeing them in stores. We always buy a lot when we find them.

Ok, y'all owe me. I took one for the team and bought and tried these things: Mr. Kim asked if they were from Yankee Candle rather than Oreo. Terribly fake tasting. No recognizable "Apple Cider" flavor at all. We're hoping that the squirrels will be less discerning than us.

Oh, good! I can "like" it then. I thought it was raw salmon at first and passed it by. 😁

I do all manner of additions with chicken salad, but never have gone beyond sweet relish, mayo, AC vinegar, and hard cooked eggs for tuna. I may experiment. Yesterday: Fried egg and deli ham English muffin. This was a lovely mess a couple of bites in. My plate was swimming in runny yolk and I was dragging the muffin through it. Heaven. This morning: Hot Cross buns from the freezer compliments of my MIL at Easter.

I envy folks who like melon. I love the fragrance of it and always thought that it would be something I would “grow” into. Unfortunately, I never did. All melons (except for watermelon, which I adore) taste rotten to me – as if they have started to spoil. @Shelby– that is a perfect looking BLT! And good Lord – that fig crostata🤪! @shain – gorgeous cheese bread. I would hog all the non-pepper sections😁! @Margaret Pilgrim – so sorry about your blah dinner. Happens to me a LOT. Not often for you, I think. @Ann_T – I agree with you about lamb shanks. Wish they were more available here. I remember that my mom would get them for next to nothing and roast them. They were so flavorful. Better than any beef I’d ever had. I’ve loved lamb since. Breakfast for dinner: Leftover blueberry pancakes (with @David Ross' yummy mascarpone butter) and some good strawberries that Jessica brought. As I mentioned in the breakfast and lunch topics, Saturday was Mr. Kim’s BD and, trying to avoid crowds of possibly unvaxxed folk, we chose to mostly drive around the Northern Neck of Virginia (around the Rappahannock river – famous for oysters – about which, more anon). We ate dinner at Halterman’s in Manquin. Jessica got snow crab legs, baked potato, hushpuppies and maybe the best spoonbread we’d ever eaten: Jessica and I are really anti-foil wrapped potatoes (judge-y women run in our family😉), but everything was so good, we just went with it. But WHY do restaurants do this? You always end up with gummy insides and wet, limp skin. Sigh. The spoonbread: I got the fried seafood platter – something I grew up eating on the Eastern shore and have been craving for literally years. Very few restaurants do this anymore and even fewer do it this well: Rappahannock oysters, shrimp, scallops, fish, crab cake, and hushpuppies. Every single thing was really well prepared and sweet and fresh tasting. Crab cake: Not lump, but good tasting, filler-free sweet crab. Mr. Kim got steamed shrimp, deviled eggs, and a sweet potato: We were too full for birthday cake, so we took a gorgeous piece of Lemon-Berry Cake home: Last night: Yeast rolls, yellow pepper strips, egg noodles, green beans, kraut, Aldi Pork Schnitzel (sorry, @Duvel) w/ a shortcut sauce I made in about 3 minutes in the pan when the cutlets came out.