Kim Shook

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.

I keep looking for things to use it on! It is fantastic!

@weinoo – gorgeous looking tomatoes on your open-faced sandwiches. Love that you showed them the proper respect and love with Duke’s 😁😉 @blue_dolphin – love the concept of your BLT and I will try that Iceberg “slab” idea. I love the crunch of iceberg on a sandwich, but usually have it thinly sliced – almost shaved. @BonVivant – German potato salad is pretty much the ONLY potato salad that I care for. The others are just cold potatoes with a creamy sauce. On Saturday we celebrated Mr. Kim’s BD with a day (mostly) driving around in the Northern Neck area of Virginia – around and along the Rappahannock river. We stopped in Tappahannock at the very cool Acme Ice Cream and Antique store for a treat that substituted for lunch: Some of the ambiance: Sunday after church we ended up again at our favorite deli, Boychik’s. I had a sandwich with hard salami, turkey, roast beef, slaw, and 1000 Island dressing on rye: Mr. Kim had the “British Burger” with bacon and Cheddar: They do a great burger – especially considering they are a deli. The bacon is, of course streaky bacon and not British, but we’re ok with that. Having had a bacon burger in England, we decided that that was one of the few applications where we preferred American over British bacon. Today: Leftover cheese cathead biscuit. Split, toasted, and lavishly buttered.

@robirdstx – great looking BLT. I haven’t had one yet this year. It seems that when I have a good tomato, I don’t have bacon and vice versa! Or I have both of them but the lettuce is brown! I need to get my sh*t together or I’m gonna miss the boat! 😁 Saturday was Mr. Kim’s BD. Since we are still trying to be safe and not spend too much time around folks whose vax status we don’t know, we took a drive out to the Northern Neck of VA (along the Rappahannock River) and just wandered around. We had breakfast at Cold Harbor Restaurant in Mechanicsville. Just an old, classic breakfast and lunch café. I had eggs, sausage links, rye toast, and hashbrowns: Jessica had biscuits and gravy: Mr. Kim had corned beef hash, eggs, and a biscuit: Yesterday: Ace Baguette Bagel, IP eggs, and strawberries. The bagels are a new-to-me brand. They have a great texture, but the ET seasoning is a little sparse, so I just added some to the cream cheese. This morning: Packaged Belgian waffles with @David Ross’ mascarpone butter and IP eggs.

Super Steam at 300F - about 5 minutes or less. Check at 2.

Jessica would like to know time and temp for that. Publix has great fried chicken and she'd love to extend it's time. I'd like to know if anyone has done arancini and how that worked.

I used to put it on fruit and cereal when Jessica was little - in the belief that it was a healthy thing to give her. Not sure when or why I stopped. Haven't thought of it in years.

You absolutely can do that. I forget if you have a CSO or not, but if you do, steaming slightly will do the same thing as the hot water "peeling".

@Shelby – gorgeous watermelon. I could sit with a bowl of watermelon chunks on one side and a salt shaker on the other and eat them all day. We used to eat them outside in our bathing suits on my grandparents’ farm. When we were done, we’d feed the rinds to the cows and my grandmother would squirt us off with the garden hose. And @rotuts is right, all fruit eaten with juices running down your arms are the best. Today is the last day of Mr. Kim’s “vacation” (not much of a vacation for him, poor thing – couldn’t go anywhere and got work related calls every day), so he kidnapped me for lunch today. We went to a new diner called “Shorty’s”. Mr. Kim had the Open Faced 1/2 lb. Burger plate: Texas toast, fries, burger, sauteed onions & mushrooms, and house made gravy. Really good, though he felt that the burger was over seasoned. It was cooked perfectly. I had the pork tenderloin sandwich: Which was delicious, but slightly too thick. Fries were excellent.

@Shelby - such a great looking assortment of meals. Between you and @rotuts, I am now craving meatloaf! Thanks to everyone for the understanding towards my rant about my in laws! Dinner last night was breakfast-for-dinner. Tomatoes and strawberries: Cat head biscuits: With sausage gravy, fried apples, and scrambled eggs: Been craving this for a couple of weeks! It was just exactly what I wanted!

I've probably told this here before, but when I was a little girl (4 or 5), my uncle showed me that it said "English Peas" on cans of peas (Le Sueur, probably) and convinced me that these were what the Beatles ate. I gaggingly ate them for a couple of years until I smartened up. 😁

I have a peculiar situation as regards salted vs. unsalted. I used and liked unsalted for years. Within the last 5 or so years, I started noticing that unsalted butter was smelling "off" to me - just slightly rancid - even when it was fresh. Neither Mr. Kim nor Jessica can smell it, so I'm wondering if it is connected to my Burning Mouth Syndrome. I switched to salted and haven't had any problem with it since. Lately, I'm starting to notice the same thing with sour cream and cream cheese. ☹️

Had the same thing happen to me with an Emeril recipe and lemons. They were used whole - including the pith. I thought it was odd, but went ahead. Yep. Inedible.

Club sandwich. Between two pieces of bread-type things. 😁

@Ann_T – my blueberries were frozen (the fresh ones were all enormous and tasteless). Everything I read said not to mix the frozen ones into the batter before cooking. Do you think I should have – even with frozen ones? Thank you! @Norm Matthews – pork in any form is my favorite meat, but I especially love a good fried chop! @Margaret Pilgrim – I had to Google “galantine”. Looks and sounds lovely. My recent dinners have been shameful – at least the ones that I “prepared” have. The other one was a meal out that is a story in itself, if you care to partake of the “tea”. Monday’s dinner included tomatoes from our friends’ garden (nothing shameful here! Just wait.): We will be sorry when these are gone. I used them to their best advantage: 😁 It was really a catch as catch can meal. I set out a bunch of leftovers, prepared a couple of things and told them to have at it. My plate: Corn, tomato sandwich, leftover mac n cheese and pork chop from Sunday lunch and sorta-kinda @Shelby’s cucumbers: @Shelby's dressed cukes always look so good. When I asked her what was in them she said, mayo, sour cream, fresh dill, cider vinegar, sugar, and S&P. We had a huge cuke from our friends and I was planning on doing @Shelby’s when I remembered I had a big tub of so-called tzatziki from Costco in the fridge. When we first tasted the tzatziki, I remarked that with the addition of some dill and cucumbers, it would make decent tzatziki🙄. So, I fixed the stuff in the tub up with @Shelby’s ingredients and added the cuke. Really good. And it lasted a couple of days. Here’s the dinner out and the story. It’s mostly me whining and venting, so skip it if you like. We celebrated Mr. Kim’s mother’s 80th birthday with dinner out on Tuesday at a sushi/steak place with Mr. Kim’s siblings and SOs and assorted nieces. It is a favorite of Mr. Kim’s sister and her husband’s. It was an extremely, and unnecessarily, expensive evening. Jessica has been out of work for the last month and her car broke down this week and Mr. Kim is supporting two households. He let his sister know that we were trying to economize, but it seemed to make no difference at all. Tons of sushi ordered “for the table” and not everyone even ate it, though it was reportedly fantastic. Neither the restaurant nor the sushi was my MIL’s choice and she and her best friend were obviously uncomfortable with the menu choices and food. The bill was equally divided by person and even though the three of us had been careful in our ordering and didn’t have alcohol, our portion was $400😳. That is basically our grocery budget for a month. Here’s the food and I truly hope that I haven’t let the negative family experience color my views of the restaurant. Some of the dishes – crab stuffed shrimp with lemon risotto and a lemon cream sauce: This was good, but no flavor of lemon came through. Brussels sprouts w/ sticky Asian sauce and spicy ranch: The flavor of this was excellent. It was too spicy for me, though. And the sprouts were overcooked. Mushrooms: Some of which were extremely woody and tough. They were apparently tasty. The poinsettia: Spicy tuna, red caviar, eel sauce, sriracha, and spicy mayo. OG Cali roll: Lump crab, avocado, cucumber, and tobiko. As I said, everyone, including Mr. Kim, loved the sushi/sashimi/rolls. The BD cake: Chocolate cake and 7-minute frosting. Thank you for your indulgence! Last night was at home – more lovely tomatoes: It was all even MORE catch as catch can than the other night. I literally just tossed stuff out on every flat surface in the kitchen and said, “it’s ready!”. Cheeses: Crackers and chip/dip: (see how utterly trashy I was?) Marinated cucumbers and the rest of the kinda-sorta @Shelby’s cukes: I am embarrassed. 🙄

@Paul Bacino – I promise I’m not trying to be funny. What am I seeing when I look at your tomatoes you posted on Monday? It honest to God looks like the top of your pepper shaker came off. @blue_dolphin – that’s one of the sandwiches I want when I come visit you😉. @rotuts– I’ve never in my life had a meatloaf sandwich on anything but white. And never with lettuce and tomato. I promise to try that when I have my next meatloaf success (about 1 every 4 tries). Some of y’all are picky as hell🤣. You bet I’ll eat a sandwich with a fork and knife and call it a sandwich and a delicious one at that – I did it today. Clubs may start out as a hand sandwich, but usually end up more like a panzanella. A big Sloppy Joe and some cheeseburgers are the same. To me, they taste as good off a fork as out of my fingers. Lunch earlier today at SB’s Lakeside Love Shack – a favorite breakfast/lunch place. We shared a Grandpa Joe’s Cinnamon bun: Topped with salted caramel maple syrup and cream cheese. The video of this was sexy! Mr. Kim had the breakfast burrito: Scrambled eggs, spicy pimento cheese, jalapenos, tomatoes, black beans and green onion. And apropos of my above comment, I had the “Club”: House roasted chicken, VA Ham, bacon, fresh greens, tomato, Swiss, Cheddar, and mayo on a grilled croissant. I didn’t even try to pick this up. I ate the whole thing with a knife and fork and enjoyed every single bite!

Tuesday’s simple breakfast was an old favorite: Wednesday: Leftover cake from my MIL’s BD celebration. You have to eat it as soon as possible because otherwise the frosting just dissolves! 😁

Southern girls diet lunch: Tab and a packet of Nabs! 😁

Yay! Meal of the week!

RE: Mt. Dew - I don't doubt that artificial sweeteners are worse for you than the sugar. I drink them because I have diabetes and I drink so much (too much) during the day to feel comfortable drinking the full sugar version. That said, I would MUCH rather have the full sugar and can happily give up the diet kind when it isn't available (i.e. our trip to England/Paris in 2011 - no diet Dew, but plenty of hi-test. I was in heaven).

Happy Birthday, Gully! I can't express what having this community has meant to me. Almost exactly 16 years here for me, with another couple of lurking.

@gfweb – that skirt steak is truly a thing of beauty. I think I’d rather have a slice of that than a “steak”. And, can you tell me about that cobbler, please? Dinner was breakfast for dinner. @David Ross' and @Ann_T‘s huckleberry and blueberry pancakes combined with the crappy pancakes Mr. Kim had at lunch last Sunday, had me craving pancakes. I decided to make blueberry. I don’t think I’ve ever made them before. They ended up being a giant PITA. I’ve seen folks make them on TV tons of times and read a number of recipes and NOWHERE does it mention that when you flip them (blueberries down) the blueberries will stick to the griddle! They didn’t burn exactly, but they stuck and I ended up with some ugly, unevenly cooked pancakes. It’s obviously just me, but I think next time I get a craving, I’ll make my regular pancakes and blueberry syrup! Before the flip: Served with some mini quiche I had in the freezer: