Lilija

I've discovered that just about anything you can reheat in the microwave will be better either in a frying pan, or in the toaster oven. Now that I have a convection toaster...I say screw the microwave, too.

I totally agree, I love brining, I brine wings a lot, chicken breasts, drumsticks, whatever, but sometimes I want more, I want something really slow cooked and deep seasoned. Brining is my fast and dirty route to a superb grilled weeknight chicken. Outside of slashing, or deliberately rubbing stuff beneath the skin (how tedious would that be, with wings, wow....) brining is the most direct way to flavor em right through. You can do a lot with the flavor combos, too. Brining, drying and grilling, then finishing with a simple bbq sauce is a nice fast option, too.

I slash it, because it takes the marinade right down to the bone. Skin is a tough barrier. By design, it keeps stuff out. Besides brining, it takes a lot to get that flavor in there. I used to do it without, and came up with puzzling very subtly flavored wings. I got the idea from our Indian place, when they do tandoori chicken, they slash it right to the bone, before cooking it. I tried it, and it works to get the flavorings past the skin. I feel like it makes the skin crispier too. Generally it's sort of a diagonal slash, across the meatiest part of the drum, or across both bones of the flat. Not exactly from joint to joint, but not directly perpendicular, either.

I am completely jealous of you people and your tomatoes coming up so fast. I'm staring at about a hundred green tomatoes, heavy on the vine, making my poor tomato cages bend and tilt, as I type this. I cannot wait to have some fresh tomatoes roasted, I've been craving them so badly, I don't think any are going to make it to the freezer. I have big plans. Big plans!

We make some pretty infamous jerk wings around here, that's all flavor, meaty, chickeny, spicy, smoky, right down to the bone. It's not in one evening, exactly, but if you plan ahead, it could be. The paste, we make up ahead in huge batches, and it keeps for 6 months. Sometimes, we trim and prepare the wings when we get them, and freeze them with the paste, allowing them to thaw slowly in the fridge, overnight. I make a homemade jerk paste, for starters, and I think that's important. Just about any pastes or wet rubs you buy will be mostly salt. Plus, with the amount I use, the cost for the jarred stuff would be prohibitive. So, I take about 5 lbs of wings, and trim them, and slash each wing crosswise once through the skin, down to the bone. For the marinade/rub I use about 2 cups of my jerk paste, add a few glugs of rum, about a quarter cup of brown sugar, about half a cup of some neutral oil, and the juice of a lime or two. We marinate the wings in this thick liquid, more like a very wet rub, in ziploc bags for 24-48 hours, flipping and massaging the bag a few times, to evenly distribute the paste. We've even had them accidentally sit for 3 days, and they were damn good. For the cooking, I suppose it's kind of like a hot smoking. I cook them up high over a very low wood fire, with a layer of briquettes in there for stability. Mostly smoky low heat, it takes about 30 minutes to cook them through. If I'm cooking for a crowd who likes it hot, I'll smear some more jerk paste on them as they're cooking. You could speed it along, by just grilling them faster, but the wood adds a lot, so I wouldn't skimp on that, at least. Sometimes, I use a huge spoonful of jerk paste and a glug of rum to a standard homemade barbecue sauce, and glaze them, right before taking them off the heat. It's a nice, non-authentic touch, if you're in the mood for a stickyish barbecue experience.

I haven't tried to order a sundae at McD's since I was maybe 14, so it came as a HUGE shock to me that they no longer carry caramel or strawberry toppings. Terrible. Seriously, the hot caramel ones were the best $1.09 sundae in the world. I'm kinda craving one now.

Fish have fingers?

Oh no. Now I have to make two batches! I don't know whether to thank you, or run fleeing from this thread >.<

I don't know if it's honest-to-God PMS, or what...if so, it's coming early, but I've been having HORRIBLE cravings for Yorkshire pudding. That custardy, eggy, beefy, slighty salty damned thing. I've been having dreams about them, in fact. I might just fake it, and make a small one without the real drippings, and use garlic butter instead. For breakfast tomorrow. This is intense, this is a serious craving.

I'm not much in the way of measuring, but, for each 1 cup of cider vinegar, I add half a cup of water, a clove of minced garlic, a teaspoon of salt, a tablespoon of sugar, and a huge pinch of red pepper flakes (or a whole dried bird chili). Basically all to taste. Little more or less of anything, depending on how you like it. Sometimes, I'll add a spoonful of minced onion. Stir it till the salt and sugar dissolves, pour over paper thinly sliced cucumber, zucchini, or if you can get your hands on some green mango. Let it sit for anywhere from a few hours, to a few days in the fridge. For fancy, I use a mandoline and make cucumber ribbons.

The method I mentioned is a SE Asian inspired pickle, and it's not what one would call "sweet". I use just enough sugar to take the edge off, maybe a tablespoon for a cup of vinegar. It's a good balance of pickly, hot, with a bit of sweet, and salty, plus garlic for aromatics.

It's cool that we all have similar fridge cucumber bowls. With ours, I use the cider vinegar, some water, sugar but a little less than you, dash of salt, garlic and a whopping pinch of red pepper flakes, or a few whole dry Thai Dragon chilis. It's similar to the green mango pickle I used to love on Guam. Zucchini is also really REALLY good like this, and gets a bit closer to the green mango texture.

That probably has something to do with what you're cooking at home versus what you're buying out. There's a lot of variables involved, too. Sometimes jumping into a new cuisine has a lot of startup cost, like the aforementioned Thai. If you're making a Thai meal at home for the very first time, and have to purchase all the ingredients, it's gonna be expensive. Most of those things, like a bag of jasmine rice, a bottle of fish sauce, etc, will last you through many many more Thai meals. So, initially, yeah going out and buying a bowl of green curry might be cheaper. Your next bowls of curry would be a lot more cost efficient, I'd bet, where all you'd need is maybe some fresh vegetables, herbs, and perhaps a protein. Start growing your own herbs, and vegetables, then the cost goes WAY down.

Here's a weird flipside... My husband owns a landscaping business (which has not seen any kind of hit with the economy problems, weirdly enough) but now he's working later and longer than ever...so we're resorting to takeout dinners at 9:30 pm a little more than the previous years, or simple salad dinners, or sandwiches. So, I've kinda been cooking less, because he's working more. I think he's cutting more grass, and doing more odd jobs for people because THEY'RE working more, leaving less time for yard maintainence.

Yeah, I sincerely wish I could get a chicken biscuit breakfast outside of McD's around here, but I can't, so this one does the trick. I'm envious of you Southern folks.

What are you buying from Amazon that includes coupons? I've never gotten a single one (and I usually order 2-3 times per month, mostly books, music and cookware). In fact, I just received a book order about 20 minutes ago. I double-checked the box, to make sure that I didn't overlook anything. There was nothing included but the invoice! ← Books! I recieved two orders with books, in the past two weeks, and another one's on its way. Both orders came with two coupons, one for breakfast, one for lunch, free sandwiches. I'll report if this order comes with coupons. As far as the pickly flavor, I have to go back and try it again. If you guys are detecting it, I could be missing something. See, I -taste- for work, and generally when I'm not working, unless I'm cooking something new, or fancier, or eating something really intriguing, I don't go about -tasting- it on the level that I have to, for my job. There's eating, and then there's tasting. I've just been eating these chicken sandwiches, I've had 2 lunch versions, and 4 breakfast versions so far(coincidentally all on work days) so I'm not going out of my way to really analyze them. Next one I have, which will probably be next week sometime, I'm gonna look for the pickleyness, and really give it a thorough tasting.

I've never detected a pickly flavor with the breakfast sandwich, maybe someone at your McD's made a mistake, put some pickles on, then took them off? That's the first thing that popped into my mind, when you mentioned it. If they really are adding a pickly flavor, that would be so bizarrely off the mark for a breakfast thing. The Chick-Fil-A pickle addition is milder and more in the background, and just about perfect, to me. McD's pickles are way sharper, and way more forward in the overall flavor. Of course, it could be because whoever is in charge of it at my local place is heavy-handed. They go bonkers with the ketchup there, too.

Oh yeah, love those Amazon coupons. Seriously, Amazon has bought me lunch and breakfast about half a dozen times.

I commented about this on the McD's thread, but I found them to be decent, at least equal in quality to our not-very-local CFA. The seasonings are different, they don't butter the bun like CFA does, and the one I had was really thick, almost an inch through the center of the breast. I found the sandwich itself dry-ish, even though the chicken was moist. It was better with a bit less pickle, and a bit of mayo. For people that can't get to CFA, but like a sandwich that's not goopy, or graced with slimy tomato, or wilting lettuce (like most fast food chicken sandwiches) it's a good option. As far as the breakfast sandwich....if you like McD's biscuits, and a lot of people do, they're a total godsend. I love chicken-biscuit sandwiches, LOVE them. Where else in NJ am I gonna get my hands on one at 6 am? I can't lovingly marinate chicken breasts in buttermilk and hand bread them, to fry and have alongside homemade biscuits every Tuesday morning Overall, in the realm of fast food, it's a definite welcome change. Especially the breakfast item.

Haha, I thought the same thing, when I saw that pic "Oh, thank goodness, she's alive, and hasn't torn out all her hair!" The second thing I thought was that Randi looks exactly like my close friend Angel, and I had to take a double take! I could go for some sex bread, myself. Anything with garlic, cheese, and slathering involved is definitely worth making.

Oh, those lucky girls, having you cook for them, for a weekend. The food all looks amazing, I can't even pick a favorite dish or picture. Totally impressive, so well done. As others have said, it must be such a welcome change cooking for people that truly appreciate your effort and food. With more practice for events like this, the portioning will come together, better, and you'll have less leftovers. Not that leftovers are a bad thing...

I'm a big fan of plain or vanilla yogurt, and wheat germ. Add some honey or strawberries, and it's dessert. It's a fantastic breakfast, adds a lovely delicate crunch. I also like it on oatmeal, and other hot cereals. Adds a nice textural contrast, and nutty flavor.

You girls are killing me with the whole hot dog thing. Last night, I made a huge pot of rich, smoky, spicy, meaty chili. Now I'm thinking wicked thoughts about a chili cheese dog, graced with a spoonful of that killer dip.

So, I just finally got my aunt's recipe for "Joelle's Party Stopping Dip" which includes such disparate ingredients as corn, feta cheese, sugar, avocado, black beans and cilantro... Well, I sat my ass down with the leftover, and a spoon. I want to say I had some nice pita chips, or corn chips...but I ate about 2/3 of a cup of it, with a spoon, icy cold, out of the fridge. At least it's kinda healthy...

Arroz con pollo, tuna salad, chicken picata, nibbled right out of the jar for a smack-in-the-mouth salt fix...