Lilija
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Posts posted by Lilija
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That sounds like good baked ziti, and yeah that's perfectly acceptable. I do it that way all the time with ziti, lasagna, and all those baked dishes like that. Assemble, hold overnight, then bake the next day. Or, depending on the situation, sometimes I par-bake it then finish it when I arrive at my destination.
Let me add, bring a bowl of your sauce for the side, too, in case it dries out, which dishes like that often do.
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Paul, one rather labor-intensive solution would be to make her a selection of stews, daubes, etc. complete with cooked rice or noodles, and package them in individual Foodsaver plastic bags. She could then open one corner, put them on a paper or china plate or bowl, and pop them into the microwave -- most residents' set-ups have microwaves. Or she could defrost them in boiling water. And I bet you have plenty of recipes of dishes ou know she enjoys that would take such treatment. (Just provide a small salt-shaker, since the freezing removes the salt.)
This will be a lot tastier -- and cheaper -- than anything prepared by someone else.
This is EXACTLY what I'm doing for a few members of my family, for Christmas. This is my second year giving food gifts, and it's very rewarding for me, as the giver and my recipients. Some are too infirm to cook, or are extremely career oriented, and really look forward to a break from canned soup and Lean Cuisine, so I make 2 weeks worth of food for each of them, package it in single servings, and freeze it.
It really is a gift from the heart, if you make her favorite things, too.
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We give canned meal-type foods, like Chef Boyardee stuff, and canned stews. Baked beans and chili too, as well as meat products like Spam, tuna, corned beef, vienna sausages, and canned chicken.
I think high protien-more nutritional bang for my donation.
I view food pantries with a skeptical eye, since I know of perfectly employed and quite comfortable people taking advantage of these, pleading poor, and literally begging at local churches. I donate to a few specific local shelters, usually, and it's non-food stocking stuffer type stuff, like socks, toothbrushes, decks of cards, lip balm, hair ties, tiny toys, key chains, sewing kits, etc.
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This thread is too cute!
Bailey! That's the first thought that popped into my mind, when I read this. I've had bad pets, one dog loved coffee, one loved dairy, etc, but nothing tops my old orange cat Bailey. He was huge and gangly, long tall legs, slanky body, huge head, all boy. I swear his mom mated with an Irish Setter.
He ate most things (pizza, raisins, and mashed potatoes were some of his favorites), but made it a point to sample everything. Among his triumphs...the UNOPENED bag of Doritos left out on the kitchen table while we were out of the house, three frozen chicken breasts left on a plate, on the rangetop, a bag of wheat bread, a single serve sized bag of Cheeze Doodles, countless beers, and a pitcher of sangria, roses, you name it.
I can relate to the pinholes all over the rolls, the pineapple, etc, because that's what he would do. If it was in a crispy plastic bag, he would thoroughly ventilate said bag, and lick the dust off of whatever he could reach, his favorite things being cheeze dusted junk food. Bread, rolls, cheese puffs, whatever, if it was wrapped in plastic, it was his. He nailed the chicken breasts while my back was turned, I was like 2 feet away. At the speed of light, each one was covered with bite marks. They were frozen solid! I didn't hear a thing. To this day, my husband doesn't believe that it happened that way, but I swear the cat was a total ninja.
He also liked water, vases, pitchers, and tall vessels. I can't even count how many beer bottles and pilsner glasses fell into his clutches. Guests would come over, and foolishly set their bottles or glasses down. In mere seconds, here comes the cat, looking for a cheap buzz. During a small New Year's Eve get together at our place, he neatly waded to the center of a finger food laden table, passing chicken wings, chips, dip, various appetizers, to stick his face into a pitcher of sangria. When he realized he couldn't quite reach the good stuff, he knocked it over flooding out the whole table. It was then that he realized he didn't much like red wine, and fled.
Ditto to a vase of roses. Not quite food related, but it happened on the kitchen table...13 white roses, that husband sent to me for our first wedding anniversary. I fill the vase, arrange the roses, greenery and copious amounts of baby's breath. It was so stunning, this thing was 3 feet high, huge, totally dominated the whole kitchen. I had to run to the next room to get my camera, and you must know what came next...A heavy thud and the sound of water pouring off of a high surface, and return to see my beautiful arrangement half on the floor, half under his huge tiger feet, with his ass sticking out of my mom's lead crystal vase. He was licking the sediment from the rose food stuff. I was in tears.
We also learned the very hard way not to keep glasses of water on our bookshelf headboard.
I genuinely miss the guy. He was 3 tons of personality and mischief in a 14 lb body.
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Whether there's empirical evidence or not, dairy makes most of us that have dealt with URI and other related afflictions miserable, so why even go there?
Salads, too, make me violently ill, when I've got an URI, for some reason. Nothing sweet, either. Sweets just stick in my throat make me feel like I'm suffocating.
Other things I like, besides pho, when I'm down with it...saltines and other scratchy salty starches, like pretzels, dry toast, and crusty breads. Clear, refreshing liquids, and hot brothy things, with slippery noodles. Cool (not cold) grapes and citrus sections, sometimes. I also weirdly crave dal, and other beany spicy smooth things, with some body.
I guess this is close to my heart, because I just got over a vicious stint of bronchitis.
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As I recall, it's a pimento olive wrapped in some kind of cheese pastry flaky stuff, and baked. I'm a child of the 80's, myself, so I'm just going on what my mom liked and what I find in my vintage cookbooks.
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As far as dairy...It does, I suffer from chronic respiratory problems, dairy KILLS me. Pana cotta sounds light enough to be alright, but the dairy thing isn't a myth.
Me? I go for pho. Meaty, warm, rich without being heavy, nourishing, spicy enough to clear my head, and lots of bright herbal bites to spark through my dulled tastebuds.
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The Original Chex Mix!
Deviled Eggs
Some kind of hot canape, like something cheesy/oniony/mayonaissey mounded on little round melba toasts.
Cheese olives...
That's what I got off the top of my head.
I read a lot of old cookbooks.
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For the sake of contrast, I'll share my all time favorite egg noodle recipe for such things as homemade chicken soup, chicken and dumplings, and other heavy warming wintry dishes.
This is a very rich egg dough, that produces a dense, homey almost chewy noodle.
Two and a half cups of flour, a big pinch of salt, two eggs, half a cup of milk and a few tablespoons of melted butter.
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Just a small addendum to this thread, since I'm a fan of the Sahale snackies, too. They all seem to be delicately glazed in some not-terribly-sweet way, so that the tiny chunks of fruits and seeds or whatever stick to the nuts. Like, the glaze sort of sticks the black pepper to the pecans, instead of having it as a dust, and all at the bottom of the bag.
See, this is exactly the problem I knew I'd encounter. I like my mixes, but they aren't quite the same. I put sesame seeds into clusters because they stick together that way, but other things are kind of floating around. Although the Sahale ones did have a fair amount of stuff on the bottom of the bag, too.
I did use the egg white glaze for the wasabi almonds, and just coated with butter and spices for the pecans. Hey, maybe I'll try heating up some butter with a little honey and balsamic vinegar with spices and coating the nuts, then heating them in a low oven for a while. That might work. The problem is how to get them sticky enough for the fruit to be added after and still adhere to them, but not have a tooth-breaking-sticky-hard-candy mess.
That sounds like a great glaze mixture, light and not too sweet. Maybe even do tiny batches of something inexpensive like peanuts, for experimentation purposes. You've really got my gears turning here, I'm seriously ready to undertake a similar project, if not for my friends and family, at least for myself!
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Just a small addendum to this thread, since I'm a fan of the Sahale snackies, too. They all seem to be delicately glazed in some not-terribly-sweet way, so that the tiny chunks of fruits and seeds or whatever stick to the nuts. Like, the glaze sort of sticks the black pepper to the pecans, instead of having it as a dust, and all at the bottom of the bag.
This is really inspiring, to me, as well. I might try my hand at making some, too.
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I like 'em, therefore I make a small bowl, every Thanksgiving. They're also good with a roast.
I use the Birds Eye pearl onions, because they're the perfect tiny size, and easy. I cream them a little differently, though. I simmer the onions in chicken stock till they're soft, then thicken the reduced stock, combined with some half and half to make a sauce. For seasoning, a little garlic simmered with the onions, salt, pepper, as well as some thyme and a small dollop of dijon mustard.
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I cooked for just my nuclear family, this year, just the four of us. It was extremely low key, and pleasant, from the get-go. Of course, my mother and stepfather had a change of plans, and instead of going to Atlantic City, wound up inviting themselves to my house about a half hour before the bird came out of the oven. This year, though, I cooked entirely for US, and not THEM, which is a big step. My sweet potatoes were very spicy, and just a little sweet. My cranberry chutney was the only cranberries on the table, rather than the usual 4 varieties. Of all the meals I've cooked and hosted, this one, from a culinary perspective was the far-ahead winner. I was experimental, we ate a TON of veggies, loads of flavor, lots of textural contrast, just everything went so well, I'm amazed. Normally I have my share of duds and outright messes.
My real bloopers came with dessert. I made pumpkin pies, apple, and for the second time in my life, pecan. Inspired by a pumpkin hot fudge sundae I had last year, I wanted to put a thin layer of chocolate on the pies, so I made a fantastic bittersweet ganache, and put a thin layer on the cooling pie. The texture was sumptious, silky, velvety...the chocolate TOTALLY overwhelmed the poor delicate pumpkin custard. It tasted like chocolate-and-mild-spices pie. My husband now insists that very soon, I need to make a real pumpkin pie without chocolate. That, and I overcooked the pecan pie, so that the custard part got grainy.
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I wish we had some kind of firm tradition, it sounds like such a nice thing. Our "tradition" is easy and often junk foody. It's a good night for delivered pizza, take out Chinese, hmm, last year I think it was red beans and rice, with chorizo. I'm thinking chili dogs, tonight. We're not swamped with prepping, so we have time to "cook".
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Ouch...200 degrees....
See, I love cooking the meal, marginally like eating the meal, but LOVE (and this is really universal in my nuclear family) the leftovers. Seriously, it's all about the leftovers. After dancing with a turkey, ham, stuffing, gravy, stocks, sauces, pies, pastries, breads, veggies, potatoes, etc for 3 days, I don't even wanna look at the stuff glommed on my plate.
I really can't appreciate anything, its like a plate of weird multicolored hash, with a bite of everything, but nothing really shining. This can be said for the most painstakingly prepared from scratch moist, gourmet, perfect meal, as well as the sawdust turkey, canned corn, and instant potatoes, canned gravy nightmare (real menu, true story, almost ruined me on Thanksgiving forever). So, honestly, for us, it's all about the leftovers!
That way, if I want a stuffing sandwich for breakfast dotted with creamed onions, by God, I'm havin it. If I want turkey shreds sauteed with mashed potatoes and garlic, hell yeah. Cinnamon ice cream, with some leftover cranberry sauce eaten at 2 am? Bring it on! We love LOVE leftovers. That's why, this year, we're cooking a 22 lb turkey for 4 people.
As far as not liking the foods? Make other foods? I mean, they didn't even have turkey at the first Thanksgiving, start some new traditons, or go back to the very very old ones, go for a goose and a vat of oyster stew. Have duck! Look up some great old Colonial recipes and put a modern spin on them. Thanksgiving should be what you make it, not a trap or a meal to dread (unless you're heading to my step-sister's house, in which case, you'd be prudent to dread it.)
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I like the smallest version of most candy bars, the really tiny Milky Way Dark type that you mentioned are the best versions of those brands. But I prefer minis, and fun-sizes of whatever. I like a little variety, I would rather eat 3-4 of those tiny ones than commit to 10 bites of one kind of candy.
Some notable exceptions are the Take 5 bars, and like you mentioned Reese's peanut butter cups.
It's funny that you bring this up, because I just had this realization over Halloween, the smaller ones are way better. We never buy the full sized bars, even when we crave chocolate, but man, we were all over the Halloween candy! Caused me to wonder why.
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It used to be -- may still be -- that McDonald's in the US automatically put ketchup and mustard on hamburgers in the West but just ketchup in the East.
In my area, it's pretty random with the ketchup and mustard. For example, the one here in Hazlet doesn't do put mustard on the cheeseburgers, but the ones in Cliffwood and Matawan do. All these places are within 10 miles of each other. Maybe it's something they do on a managerial level, now?
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If it's something fairly straightforward (most recently, crepes) I first check here, for wisdom concerning my dish, then I consult my Big Three cookbooks, the voluminous go-to-it-for-everything books, Cooks Illustrated, Joy, and the Gourmet cookbook, to compare and contrast. That usually does it for basics. If I still don't "get" it, I hit Harold Mcgee and Cookwise.
If it's a more complex dish, or one open to a lot of interpretation, or I feel like I still haven't learned enough, I hit the lower shelves. There's where I find more regional approaches, older, newer, more specialized. I always use more than one recipe, but depending on what I make, it could be from 3 to seemingly 300.
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Breakfast chicken biscuits for all of us?! Hooray!
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When you've been thinking about Thanksgiving since August.
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This year it's low and slow. 15 pound bird is in the oven already at 79 degrees. Will roast until Thanksgiving to an internal temp of 185. (GD&R)
Well --- it sounded good in theory....
hvr
I had to read that twice, before I got it. The first time was "whoa...what?
"
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You get chicken for breakfast at McD's? That's so depressing. Depressing because I have, my whole life, been deprived of such a wonder.
Just recently, my local deli started carrying chicken biscuit breakfast sammies, and whoa, what a revelation. Chicken...for BREAKFAST! But to hear that it's a common thing!? *gasp*
On topic: When I lived on Guam, my favorite breakfast was the "Local Platter" with chorizo and fried rice. A side of finadine, and it was really great stuff.
Also, on Guam, anywhere you go, any fast food resturaunt you can get a side of rice. Rice with your value meal, rice with your pan pizza, rice with your McMuffin breakfast, rice with your burrito meal. Every place, too has a giant bottle of Tobasco and a tub of finadine at the condiment station. I really took it for granted, and then missed it sorely when I moved back here. My favorite was Wendy's Chili (and rice) with a side salad. I tried ordering chili and rice about a month after coming back to NJ, and was met with blank stares till I figured it out.
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We love spiced nuts, marinated olives, and maybe some marinated shrimp. That's IT!!!
I made a savory cheesecake once, then a light soup course, and no one ate dinner.
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It's still kinda up in the air around here, there's some family drama, and we haven't decided if we're even DOING Thanksgiving, buuuut...I have a menu, just in case. My family is extremely traditional, my usual cooking is way too outlandish, so I give them what they want, on the Big Day. It's just about the same every year, I usually play with the veggies and sweet potatoes. They bitch if I get wild with the important stuff, that's why we have 3 kinds of cranberries, ham glaze on the side, and 2 kinds of gravy and stuffing.
I generally go easy on munchies, because the one year I went all out with a soup course and nibbles, no one ate dinner, so I keep it very light and simple.
-Spiced nuts
-marinated olives
-stuffed mushrooms
Meal:
-Brined and butter injected turkey, roasted the Alton Brown way.
-both giblet and ungiblet gravy
-spiral ham
-candied pineapple/bourbon glaze on the side
-2 kinds of stuffing, basic bread stuffing and a cornbread sausage one, for me.
-mashed taters
-roasted glazed sweet potatoes, some with chipotle, some with just cinnamon, honey and butter
-steamed broccoli and cauliflower polanaise
-dijon creamed onions
-green bean casserole (my way, not the soup way)
-3 kinds of cranberries, the canned jelly goop, homemade plain whole berry, and this fantastic cranberry chutney with diced apples and golden raisins
- 1 baked potato for my BIL, who found out that my secret mashed potato ingredient is carmelized onions, had a hissy fit, and still to this day refuses to touch them...if only he knew what I did to the turkey!
Dessert:
-pumpkin, apple and coconut custard pies
-homemade vanilla and cinnamon ice creams
-homemade chocolate plate, with truffles, chocolate covered pretzels, chocolate covered cherries, etc. Still trying to work that out
-I'm open to suggestion, or whatever folks bring. When someone asks me "what can I bring" to any meal I'm cooking, barbecue, party, or family get together, I always say dessert. A) I lose at pastries, and B) it's guaranteed not to screw up my menu
Wray & Nephew Overproof Rum
in Spirits & Cocktails
Posted
Part of the reason it sells so big in Jamaica is because they use it for EVERYTHING. Cold medicine, hand sanitizer, spirits for making their home remedies, aphrodisiac, breakfast drink, teething babies, etc. They sell it on the shelves of little mom & pop shops, right along with all the other basic household staples.
Also, typically, they don't mix it. If you order a rum & Coke outside of a tourist area, then you get a little cup of W&N and a cup of Coke. Good stuff