Kim Shook

It isn't labeled, but this recipe is just across from it: So, not bad at all. Just god-awful black and white photography.

@CaliPoutine - even though I see you on FB, I love seeing you here again! You've been missed.

@Maison Rustique – the graphics on those pamphlets are fantastic. I would be tempted to frame some of them. Here’s one from Duke Power, which must have belonged to my grandmother since Duke was NC and VA was VEPCO: The back of the booklet. I love that he’s Electric Santa on the front and Electric Formal Guy on the back: 1950 GE fridge. Did mother’s really do matching mother/daughter outfits: As unappetizing as it gets: Front and back of this one: I feel like we’re supposed to know who she is. And I love the snarky dedication: LOL I believe that there have to be a lot more of these somewhere in my house. I remember having dozens of them. But I can’t find them right now. I really hope I didn’t get firm with myself and purge them. 😨

I don't have much in the way of kitchen space, so NONE gets wasted on stuff I use once or twice (sometimes for Easter) a year. These go in some otherwise unused cabinets in the family room.

What is that on your bread? Is it smoked salmon?

Here are the pears from my grandparents farm from a blog post back in 2010: The preserves: I wrote this without the pictures in the Food Traditions and Culture section in 2009.

Mr. Kim gifted Jessica and I with them for Christmas: Very pretty. I am assuming that we just put them in a cup and pour almost boiling milk over them?

How I miss the pears from my grandparents farm. They were tiny, hard, and had a truly astringent quality. But they made the best pear preserves I've ever eaten in my life.

Hello, @jamesyu, and welcome to eGullet! There are lots of your fellow Canadians here. I'm looking forward to your posts and hearing about your interests.

Picked up lunch from a local sandwich shop. Mr. Kim got a double cheeseburger with bacon: I got the Italian sub with ham, salami, and provolone: We shared onion rings and their fantastic fries: I’m not a huge fan of batter dipped onion rings – I prefer crumb coated, but these are pretty good. Those fries, though. Maybe the very best in Richmond.

@Dante – your Bodega sandwich and corn look and sound delicious. But there seems to be something besides egg or cheese peeking out from the roll. Maybe some kind of meat? I finished dinner about an hour ago and I’d gladly wolf down that sandwich! 😁 I used the turkey carcass from Christmas dinner to make stock and added the dark meat scraps and some egg noodles to make turkey-noodle soup. The stock turned out really well: We did a porch drop for Mr. Kim’s dad and stepmom and stepsister (who are quarantining because his dad has Covid☹️). We knew that it was unlikely they had ever seen homemade stock, so we warned them that it would look like Jello! The container that went to Mr. Kim’s mom needed no warning – she’s been making stock longer than we’ve been alive! So tonight was turkey noodle soup and a baguette with creamy Gorgonzola. This cheese is like a mix of Gorgonzola and Brie. Incredibly gooey and delicious. They haven’t had it at Wegman’s for a long time and finally, today, it was there.

I truly love the idea of adding refried beans and will try that next time! Instead of Rotel, I've always used salsa.

Almost the last of the Christmas morning lox on an ET bagel.

@heidih and @shain – both beautiful examples of black sesame art. We would love either one. The three of us in my little family share a culinary peculiarity – while we love all kinds of sesame creations, we ALL detest sesame oil. @Dejah – with the pickerel picture, I had a hard time telling which was flora and which was fauna! 😁 Dinner – Mr. Kim’s plate: Fruit salad, pork w/ gravy, kale from Jessica’s “Misfit” vegetable delivery (which she doesn’t seem to be able to stop – it’s like when I belonged to the Columbia Music Club in the 70s) and broccoli casserole. My plate: I decided to do something a little different. I cooked some medium egg noodles and heated up some pork. Instead of just gravy, I added some whipping cream and Dijon to it and used that. Also, the last of the Sister Schubert rolls and some leftover celery and pimento cheese.

I’ve posted most of these on the Christmas thread, but thought I’d put them here, too. They will be nothing new to anyone who has been here for more than a year. They are the things that I always make. These are the goodies that I made for the holidays this year – I cut back a little bit, but not much! Peanut butter cookies: Lemon Chess Tarts A tray of cookies: I did not make these, we bought them from a friend of Jessica’s who is going through some rough financial times. They were actually delicious! Especially the thumbprints, which I never make. Sugar cookies: Toffee: Oatmeal cookies: These were not for us but were made to put in the lunches that our church makes every month for 3 homeless shelters. Peanut brittle: Sponge Candy: Pretzel Pecan Turtles: What we call “Happy Accident Candy” – all of the crumbs and shards of the sponge candy go into melted (as tempered as I can get it): Cinnamon pecans:

We all got pops, but instead of toys we got little ornaments. Fine for us but not sure that a child would be happy with it! But better than what passes for a Cracker Jack prize these days! 😄

In this house, the only possible choice for turkey sandwiches, tomato sandwiches, and grilled cheese is white bread. For the first two, it must be fluffy white bread (milk bread is perfect), for the last is can be more of a rustic loaf. 😊

I completely believe this is true. I always forget to do it.

Dankeschön!!!

@gfweb – the goose looks so good. I’ve only ever tried to make a goose once and was not terribly impressed, but I was a fairly new cook at the time. Your confit is making me think I need to try again. @BonVivant– as always, your food and your photography is beautiful and so appetizing. What I’m noticing so much with these pictures is the little cork and string Christmas trees. They are adorable. I saved one of your pictures and am determined to try to make some. @Shelby– I really want to try your method for fried chicken. My IP won’t SV, but I can use my Anova and get it to that point. I really want to do it soon, it looks SO good! @mgaretz – Happy Birthday to Mrs. Mgaretz! I missed getting a plate picture on Xmas Eve. We had SV pork roast, gravy, sweet potato latkes w/ brie and arugula, fruit salad, Marlene’s Broccoli Gratin, roasted mushrooms and terrible cornbread muffins (a failed recipe): Christmas dinner: Twice baked cheese potatoes, turkey, cranberry-orange sauce, Brussels sprouts, sweet potato souffle, and Jessica’s Challah and dried fruit dressing. Also: Pickly stuff and pimento cheese and celery. And then on the 26th, the strange combination meals started due to bizarre assortments of leftovers in the house: This was dinner – half an ET bagel with cream cheese and smoke salmon and a slice of fabulous pork (steamed in the CSO to reheat) and gravy. On the 27th, dinner was an open-faced hot turkey sandwich with gravy, a twice baked cheese potato, and sweet potato:

Turkey sandwich on completely the wrong bread 😁: along with pimento cheese stuffed celery and Funyuns.

@Porthos – so many people are “funny” about lamb. It is my favorite red meat, but I was raised by an Englishman. I’ve bemoaned my failure at having cracklings elsewhere, so I won’t go into it here, but suffice to say that I was disappointed in that part of the Xmas Eve. Nothing else disappointed, though. It turned out to be a very good dinner. The table: In spite of the crackling fail, I just love SV for cooking a pork roast. They were incredibly tender and positively glistened! Fresh Market pork: Butcher shop w/ skin: I wish that I had a better picture of the butcher shop meat – other than the cracklings fail (my fault), it was gorgeous. Mr. Kim and Jessica thought it was measurably better than the (very good) FM one. Even with my compromised taste buds, I could tell the difference. Gravy: Fruit salad: Jessica’s roasted mushrooms: @Marlene’s Broccoli Gratin w/ Streusel: Jessica’s sweet potato latkes: These are so good – topped with Brie and dressed arugula. Sweet cornbread muffins: This was another of the evening’s failures. I am a fan of all kinds of cornbread, I am not someone who limits my tastes to just one sort. I loved my grandmother’s coarse, crumbly, all white cornmeal version. I like a more cakey, slightly sweet cornbread. Heck, I even like Jiffy. The whole spectrum. Or so I thought. Since I also like the cakey, sweet cornbread, I’ve been interested in various recipes I’ve seen over the years for a true cornbread CAKE version. The one I decided to try was quite popular. They were so weird that Jessica and I couldn’t eat them. They were basically Jiffy mix and a yellow cake mix with some eggs and milk added. I didn’t mind the texture (very cake-like, but gritty/crunchy from the Jiffy mix), but the overly sweet and vanilla-ed overtones from the cake mix just made it unpalatable to us. Blech! And the lady who posted the recipe said it made 12 muffins. Well, it made 12 muffins PLUS a 9x9-inch panful. Jessica suggested brulee-ing the “muffins” and trying to do a Southern version of a Tres Leches cake. We’ll see – they are both in the freezer awaiting my decision. Herb butter: Well, that was good anyway. 😉 This is what we drank with dinner: Perfect and delicious. Christmas morning: Christmas dinner: The turkey: I applied a dry brine on the 23rd. It was a recipe from Geoffrey Zakarian that calls for salt, sumac (I used za’atar – it’s what I had), black pepper, and herbes de Provence. It was cooked in the Nesco roaster. I hadn’t used it in a really long time, and I’d forgotten how much more quickly it cooks than the directions say. So, it was OVERdone (190F breast temperature) an hour early. Consequently, it sat out for over two hours and was only hot because the gravy was. But it was delicious. Tender, juicy – not sure if it was the Nesco or the ‘brine’, but I’m guessing some of each. We really like turkey and I need to make it more often. It was a 12 lb. turkey, I think and we are almost done with it. All three of us love hot and cold sandwiches and detest deli turkey. Relishes: Pimento cheese and celery: Pickly things: Cranberry orange sauce: Jessica’s challah and dried fruit dressing: Fabulous, as always. Brussels sprouts: A little overdone, but tasted great. Twice baked cheese potatoes: Sweet potato souffle: Sister Schubert rolls: Much better than that icky “cornbread”. 🙄 Plates: I somehow missed getting a picture of the gravy and of my plate after the application of gravy. Oh, well, here’s a picture from March – it looked exactly the same:

Do you mean I should have cut the fat and skin layer off? If so, when - before cooking or after? The roast was scored when I got it. Should I have asked them to leave it alone? And to anyone. I cut off the fat cap and skin off of each slice and kept it. Is there anything I can do to produce some cracklings with what I saved? Thank you all so much for your advice and help!

I didn't do much in the way of drying other than a direct application of towels. As far as applying heat, I tried broiling and torching.

I should have recognized it. My SIL used to sell PC and I really was impressed with their baking dishes. I have a couple of really small ones - perfect for 2. You've inspired me to dig them out!