Lilija

By request, I'm making these mini ham sandwiches, in brown and serve rolls. They're really good, it's diced or thinly sliced ham, shredded sharp cheddar, homemade honey mustard, stuffed into tiny dinner rolls, then packed on a sheet pan, and brushed with garlic butter, sprinkled with some kind of seeds, and baked till brown and meltylicious. Total crowd pleaser. Also, stuffed mushrooms, potato skins, and mini cheesecakes. We're not really football people, so we're going to our first ever Super Bowl thing.

I think B&J changed everything about everything. For the worse. You could easily insert any flavor in this post, and have the same results. Even their vanilla has started to suck. Not only are the flavors off, but the texture is weird, it's all foamy and soft. I definitely pick up the chemical-ness that you're talking about too.

It's because of the variety of glutamates. I'm not sure what it's called, but once we did a comparison study between the flavors of a yeast based umami vs. good old MSG. The yeast based flavor was sweeter, rounder, and more complex.

Our family business is seasonal work, we do landscaping. Every single winter, we face a severe economic slump, no matter what's going with everyone else. In the past year, we've been cutting back, and living like that all the time, and just socking money away. Job stability is a thing of the past, in our little world, and even though we are currently doing suprisingly well, we're not blind. Essentially, we're preparing for a long winter.

Me too on the beverages outside of the house. These days, it's a travel mug of green tea. Booze, also. The only thing I've bought in the past...8 months, has been a handle of Applejack. Shopping at Whole Foods. Lately, it'e been the managers specials at Shop-Rite, and good old Aldi.

Rye bread from this particular bakery that I've been going to all my life. It has those black oniony seeds on it, and it's heavy. No butter. No anything, just a soft, fresh slice of this bread in the car, on the way home from the place. Sometimes it's still warm. The seeds, and the density of the bread are what sets it apart.

That sounds like my kind of comfort food, right there. I think chicken and noodles might be my "desert island" food. Tonight, we had soup, kale, onions, potatoes, sausage, in chicken broth with lots of red pepper flakes and garlic, finished with enough heavy cream to make it pale. The only potatoes we had were big fluffy Idaho jobbers, so they dissolved in the soup, and it was perfect. I, for one, despise hard waxy cubes of potato lumbering around in my soup bowl.

The fried rice we make at home uses short grain rice... the only things I use long grain rice for are pilaf, Mexican rice, and Arroz con Pollo. ← Ditto!

When I lived on Guam, we ate the "white" kind of fried rice, about 99% of the time. It's still my favorite, but the other members of this house also like the bootleg brown stuff, we get at our local hot wok. I compromise, the white stuff at breakfast, the beige stuff at dinner. When I make breakfast fried rice, I use a lot of butter, a LOT of garlic, eggs, minced onions (or scallions or shallots), loads of black pepper, some sort of cured meat (chorizo, spam, kielbasa, ham, hell..even hot dogs) and sometimes, if the rice is dry, a splash of chicken broth. If I'm feeling REALLY fancy, a handful of frozen peas. Otherwise, this is super simple, and you won't get attacked by vampires for half the day, at least. The dinner one is usually a little more involved. Roasted pork or chicken or some kind of leftover meat, more involved vegetables, like carrots, broccoli, or whatever's laying around, soy sauce, and ginger, along with the stuff in the above fried rice. It's truly a meal in itself. Often, I don't put eggs in this version, because after all the other junk in it, eggs feel like overkill.

My stir fried anything loses by a mile to our local Crown Palace. Chicken with Hot Peppers, why do you elude me so!?!

Sipping an "Apple and Honey" right this minute, and it's a winner, for sure. Not terribly complex or serious, but very nice. Extremely nice.

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. Last night, I added a splash of orange juice, and it came out as I suspected. Kinda like Amaretto and orange, minus the almond, plus honey. It was good, but the flavor kind of got lost. I'm all over the Old Fashioned, that sounds like the perfect use. The "Apples and Honey" sounds so good, I might make one now. I love LOVE Laird's. Also, I never thought of mixing it with bourbon, so that's a good idea. Sipping it last night, I thought it would be wonderful over ice cream, or in coffee. This is tasty stuff, but it brought me up short, because I opened the bottle thinking "bourbon" heh.

Does the fact that Xanax is a palindrome make it any more appealing? ← In fact, it does. It also sort of sounds like an old Atari game, which makes it even more appealing!

So, I got a bottle of this for Christmas, and now I don't know what to do with it. It's a little sweet. Ok, it's a lot sweet... It's got the sweetness and mouthfeel of a heavy liqueur, which I don't generall drink, because I'm a bourbon kinda girl. Does it mix well? I was thinking orange juice, like amaretto and orange, or making a half-assed whiskey sour. Anything to cut the syrupy texture. It has a lovely flavor, but it's dancing on the edge of cloying. Anyone have any experience with it? Can anyone suggest a good mixer?

Heh, maybe she should walk, and you'll get a promotion. You could supervise this quite well. Especially because you know what it's like in the trenches.

Xanax, right at the top of the ol' food pyramid, in that tiny little part with fats and sugars. The top, because it's the most important.

Oh, nothing, these days I nip across the street to the mediocre bar with decent burgers...

Burgers. My homemade burgers (grilled, fried, whatever) never taste half as good as a decent restaruant burger, not even as good as the burgers from the mediocre bar across the street.

Hey, at least I didn't say "hand me the bottle of Knob Creek, and the Vicodin" Saftey first!

Sure, I'll help you downward...how about some caramel to go with all that? Maybe with a handful of pretzels on the side? Also, Manhattans aren't a craving for me, anymore, I used to list them...at this point, they're MEDICINE. Keep the Midol, hand me the bottle of Knob Creek, and the Advil.

It's funny, I was just thinking about this the other day, when I was sick and crampy, and needed to make fresh egg noodles, for something. I see fresh pasta all over the place. I would KILL for a pound of fresh, homemade egg noodles, or at least a rich eggy noodle dough, to take home. I know it's easy, but sometimes I don't want to flour my whole kitchen, y'know? Doughs are good, bread dough, pizza dough, fresh pastas, etc, but no one has the market cornered on egg nooodles!

I think that sounds right for spinach. I always felt it was kinda slimy, too. Chiffonading it helps. Dicing it up helps. Me? I prefer chard. It's not quite as weirdly textured, and offers a more astringent, interesting flavor, so I sub that in. Most people don't mind the spinach texture, but I think I know exactly what you mean. I'm not sure about escarole, since I'm not too familiar with cooking it, but kale is a whole other animal, it's tougher, and requires longer cooking. It's got a nice hefty toothy texture, definitely not slimy. I love kale. Seriously, though, my solution to spinach is this: Wash and cut up some Swiss chard, I usually roll a pile of the huge leaves together, and cut them into 1-2 inch squares, and sub that in for any spinach. Cook it a bit longer, and you might be happier with the results.

Yesterday, I had some Italian sausage to use up, that went into a pan, followed by onions, fennel, 3 times more garlic than looks prudent, cannelini, and 2 bunches of Swiss chard, diced up. Sage, lemon juice and rind, Parmesan, a ton of red pepper flakes, and a slosh or two of vermouth. That was dinner yesterday, and it was amazingly good. Today will be those leftovers, turned into soup. I'm going to reheat the mess in chicken broth, with more cheese, pepper flakes, and garlic, with a potato or two, cubed in it, to stretch. So, a white bean sausage and potato soup.

I've been scanning this thread, trying to find one good pizza rule that I can agree with, and this is definitely it. I, personally dislike a lot of stuff on pizza. Peppers, onions, olives, mushrooms, meatballs or any kind of beef product, chicken, pasta, the list goes on and on... (ironically, I like pineapple, when it's done well). I'm also a stickler for 2 topings or less. Sometimes, even sauce is too much. However, I don't feel like there should be rules. If pizza rules were so strict, we would never have a Chicago style, or a big floppy Jersey slice, or all the million decent styles! They would all be the same!

Ooh, I love their macaroni and cheese, I'll have to look for Annie's ravioli, too. For the kid, of course... Chocolate croissants...wow. Why didn't I think of that? Back to the bakery! Further along this epic day, I nixed the Spam idea, and had a peanut butter sandwich on this really great coarse multigrain from the same damn bakery as that cake (and my future chocolate croissants). Dinner was leftovers from an awesome Sunday night out, filet mignon, eaten cold from the fridge with Sriracha, three bites of chicken and dumplings from last night, and half of another peanut butter sandwich. I applauded myself for moderation. It's only 10:45 though.