BeeZee

I was cleaning out a cabinet a while back, and found that a tube of chipotle paste had sprung a leak. The surprising thing was it happened so long ago, the goo had completely solidified and I was able to just chip it off the shelf and just had to clean a little residue with hot water. During the pandemic “lockdown” I got better at rotating things so the cabinets didn’t become like archeological digs.

Early lunch since I was near a pretty good local deli, the Kibitz Room. Bagel with whitefish salad, half sour pickle. I take the two halves apart and eat them open faced.

This is not, strictly speaking, about cooking...but rather about storage of an ingredient. I was given a gift of homemade herb vinegar. It is in a really large glass bottle, fresh (now pickled) herbs suspended in the vinegar. The bottle has a cork with some wax sealing it. I want to decant it into smaller containers. I plan to strain out those herbs. Additionally, as the vinegar had vegetation in it, is it better to store in the fridge once opened (as it isn't unadulterated vinegar)?

Disrespectful is a great word. How is it with half the world talking about inflation/food prices, the other half are finding ways to be wasteful (I am no fan of butter or any other “boards” which smear copius amounts of spreads on wood planks, either).

No photo, because beige sludge isn't too visually appealing...but I had some really tasty overnight oats made with Bob's Red Mill 5 grain hot cereal, chia seeds, peanut butter powder, milk, cinnamon, and a few dried goji berries. Bob's cereal is great for keeping it's chew, I had been buying TJ's multigrain hot cereal but they either discontinued it or it has been out of stock for months.

Bought white chocolate gingerbread bark (clearance rack at Whole Foods). I like white chocolate (as a confection) but the fail on these was they had a dusting of the gingerbread crumbs. Literally crumbs...it could have been really good if they had little pieces of cookies mixed into the bark, the gingerbread dust was nicely spiced. I missed out on a lot of holiday treats this year so I was hoping this would fill a niche.

My husband requested roast beef, cooked it today and have two more dinners leftover for him. He prefers his beef not too rare, he was happy with this. We had baked yams and steamed broccolini (I had some vegan meatballs).

Sort of minestrone, mostly vegetarian except I used a small amount of anchovy paste for salt/umami. Didn’t have kale, so I used frozen chopped spinach for the leafy green.

Our HQ office always has a big green tin of Goya soda crackers in the kitchen. Jar of pb on the counter, as well. More than once I have made that my lunch while working there for the day.

That time of the year, cookies and sweets being delivered to the office for the Holidays. I've eaten a couple of cookies already, and one soft caramel (very carefully, since I have a habit of pulling my crowns out) and it's only 10:30 a.m....😬

We had friends over for dinner last night, endive salad with pomelo segments, olives, and mustard viniagrette, vegetable lasagne (Barilla no-boil noodles, spinach, mushrooms, zucchini) and locally baked semolina bread. They brought dessert, cheesecake from Termini Brothers in Philadelphia, which was outstanding.

I know I checked the date on the bagged baby spinach before buying (nothing like a bag of green slime) but the tomatoes had no date, unfortunately. The culprits are some split/mashed/otherwise damaged ones at the bottom of the box. No big loss, they were tasteless, anyhow (despite looking suitably red). The remainder will probably go into soup.

Picked up 3 persimmons at 79 cents each, they need to ripen a bit. I hesitate to buy produce at TJ’s, the large carton of grape tomatoes had several on the bottom that were already moldy. Not worth returning.

Too much meat the past couple of days, I needed something lighter. Quick soup with pantry ingredients - boxed stock with asian flavors, baked tofu, rice noodles, seaweed, carrots, roasted broccoli florets. DH enjoyed it also.

Interesting how many turtle dishes they had.

I have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Mastodon accounts. LinkedIn for work. I use each one for different info, and so far I have found Mastodon hard to get used to, but the hosts have been working on it and posting a lot of suggestions on how to navigate it.

To put things in perspective, I am glad we could get together. That is always most important. That no blows were thrown or tears were shed is a bonus😉

Predictably, my sister didn’t follow my timeline for meal prep (this was her first time hosting Thanksgiving) and at 3pm I opened the fridge to put something away and the turkey was still in there😵. It was a bone-in breast around 6 lbs, so I took it out to come to room temp, prepped it for her, and in the oven around 3:30. It was done at 6:15. The lasagne she made primarily for her husband wound up getting served as a first course while turkey rested, it wasn’t quite warm enough in the center, but by then we’d had it with his whining. My cousin gleefully boasted how she doesn’t follow recipes and her 2 pies were evidence, but they were OK. I was exhausted because I more or less wound up cooking most of the dinner, sans the clean up.

I appreciate your foresight in bringing something to properly line your stomach before imbibing!

Roasted turkey wings for make ahead gravy, you can see where I pulled off my cook’s treat. I picked most of the meat to use for another meal (got 6.8 oz from 4 wings, less my snacking).

Tried this today for lunch, on some Wasa, a sprinkle of lemon juice. I like cracked black pepper and thought they could have had even more. Fish was mild, meaty texture, light smoke. They were pretty fused together in the tin so I found it hard to pull out whole fillets (4 in the tin). Fish was from Latvia.

Leftover from dinner last night. Brown rice, grated ginger, little soy sauce. Roasted butternut squash (S&P, garlic powder). Pepitas and dried cranberries. Last night we ate it with roasted salmon fillet.

I had the lentil soup (lentil and "ancient grains") which is in the refrigerated case, pretty good, not overly salty. Quite thick/hearty, not a "looker", it's brown and bears some resemblance to dog food when it's congealed. Some little pieces of carrot in the mix. Intended to be a couple of work lunches, wound up splitting with DH. He added some green can parm, I think I would put some sherry vinegar in mine next time. I'll buy it again.

Yes, I picked up a bone-in one (7lbs) on Saturday. It was free due to the supermarket's customer loyalty program.

I haven’t had to be the main cook for Thanksgiving for a while, it is nice not to be stressing out, but I still have the feeling that I should be doing something. Bought the supplies for my contributions (gravy and veg), except the Lacinto kale, which I will buy on Monday. I will make the gravy Wednesday and cook kale Thursday a.m. This all assumes my sister doesn’t panic and realize she needs me to make something else… BTW, for all of the talk of turkey shortages, I saw no evidence of that in the supermarket, at least for the mainstream products.