C. sapidus

Xilimmns – Nice seafood! Near the coast in Brazil, presumably? ScottyBoy – Those flavors sound like they would go very well together Chicken sorta-Panang curry with Thai basil and mild chiles from the garden, onions, red curry paste, fish sauce, and crushed peanuts. Served with jasmine rice and green salad. With the first cool days of late summer, time is growing short when I can pick chiles and basil outside the back door. Sigh.

For visiting cousins we made scampi and a simple green bean salad (parboiled green beans tossed with salt, olive oil, and lemon juice). One cousin, as it turns out, doesn't eat shrimp so I made a quick aio e oio, which went over well. Tossed leftovers together and nuked for this morning's breakfast.

Kim – Best wishes for your grandmother. Your pastries look fantastic, especially the nectarine pie. I need to learn to work with flour. chefmd – Nice! Stir-fried fish curry: Chunks of halibut, with red curry paste, ginger, garlic, fish sauce, chiles, and Thai basil, served over coconut jasmine rice. Not pictured: Mrs. C made tomato-watermelon salad, and another salad with baby romaine, parsley, red bell pepper, jicama, and a watermelon vinaigrette.

BBQ rib omelet with feta cheese, thyme, and cayenne, fried in garlic butter.

Thanks, Prawn, arroz verde sounds good with ribs. Mrs. C prefers higher-protein rice, so she made a package of “quinoa & brown rice with garlic” from Seeds of Change. Nice! Yes, things always sound classier in another language. I had a music appreciation teacher who pointed out that Giuseppe Verde = Joe Green.

Percyn: Thanks! Clean-out-the-fridge fried rice: Leftover smoked baby back ribs, deboned and chopped; edamame, corn, and tomato salad; chopped onion, red curry paste, fish sauce, and an egg. Basmati rice grains stay separate, so they are much easier to work with compared to our usual jasmine rice.

Soba: Beautiful pictures as usual, but your Greek lemon potatoes sound especially appealing Patrick and Douglas: Your chicken/egg dish and the sashimi look completely delectable Dcarch: Gorgeous and delectable, what’s not to like? Baby back ribs last night; Mrs. C made rice and an edamame, corn, onion, and tomato salad.

Kim – Thanks, and nice omelet! Percyn – Gorgeous! Mark me down with Judiu in the pro-eggplant column. Roberta, we usually have similar tastes in food, but I'm gonna have to throw you overboard here. Vacation at home = good breakfast Slow-scrambled eggs with leftover green beans and a fried sauce of blended chipotle, white onion, and roasted garlic, tomato, and red Serrano chile, enriched with a dollop of crème fraiche. Blended chiles and slow-scrambled eggs taste so good but look so, um, questionable. Avocados and leftover basmati rice. Corn tortillas would have been better than rice, but that would have required a trip to the store, which would have required getting dressed.

Now that’s an understatement. I know you are still cooking up some wonderful food, so don’t be a stranger! Kebab omelet – leftover steak, mushroom, and bell pepper kebab, topped with oregano and feta cheese. Tasted much better than it looks!

ScottyBoy – beautifully crispy fried chicken Patrick – Details on the murgh chana masala, please Edit - never mind, I see that you linked the recipe on the chole thread. Thanks! mm84321 – How did you get such beautiful color on your scallops? Steak salad, one of my favorite summer meals. Grilled ribeyes, marinated with garlic, white pepper, and soy sauce. Ginger-lime dipping sauce as salad dressing. Romaine, cucumber, tomato, scallions, cilantro, and sliced shallots in the salad. Summer in a bowl.

First dinner with elder son off to college was an I-don’t-feel-like-going-to-the-grocery-store affair, cobbled together from the freezer and garden. Shrimp with garlic and lemon juice, with olive oil, red chile and smoked paprika, over fettuccini Peas with onion and basil

Sounds like the mini-meshuganas have good taste - corn and green chile is a magical combination PanCan: Thanks! Try to stay out of the way of pyroclastic flows Dong an (vinegar) chicken: Cornish game hens, actually – poached in stock, shredded, and stir-fried with dried chiles, Sichuan peppercorns, Shaoxing wine, rice vinegar, sesame oil, and slivered ginger, scallions, and bird chiles. Recipe from Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook. Jasmine rice. Tomato and cucumber gazpacho, courtesy of Mrs. C. Variations of this are a staple during tomato season. Made a nice lunch the next day, too.

mm84321 – Thanks for taking the time to document how you made that gorgeous lobster. Prawns steamed with garlic and Thai chiles: Thai chiles and 10 cloves of garlic mashed in the mortar, mixed into a sauce with fermented soybean paste and fish sauce, spread over the prawns with another 10 cloves of slivered garlic, and then steamed for about 8 minutes. Recipe adapted from Dancing Shrimp, and very popular with the family. Thai scampi? Stir-fried Napa cabbage with garlic and fermented soybean paste: plus chicken stock and a little brown sugar. Simple and satisfying. Coconut rice: made with chicken stock, salt, and sugar. This complemented the shrimp and its garlicky-spicy sauce beautifully.

Kim, welcome back! Thai tonight Green curry beef with eggplant: thinly-sliced sirloin, Thai and Japanese eggplants, Anaheim, Serrano, and Thai chiles, and Thai basil; served with jasmine rice Salad with Thai emeralds dressing: lettuce, tomatoes, and Thai eggplant in the salad; cilantro, garlic, chiles, brown sugar, fish sauce, and lime juice in the dressing

BLAT, courtesy of Mrs. C

DanM: Can’t help with kid-friendly dining, but there is a Haagen-Dazs shop next to the Alamo gardens. We just returned from a 3-day trip to SA. Fruit empanadas at the Mi Tierra bakery were incredible, even the next morning, and carnitas from the restaurant were wonderfully crisp-tender and succulent. Monterey was interesting, which was exactly what I was looking for that evening. Curried roasted cauliflower with salted grapes was fantastic. I ordered pickled seasonal vegetables and got kimchi, nothing wrong with it but not what I was expecting. Chicken liver mousse with tomato jam was good, but overly sweet to my taste and not enough bread. Tomato salad was quite good but outstanding backyard tomatoes have spoiled us this year. Like I said – not everything worked, but all was interesting. We drove about 45 minutes out of town to enjoy a meat-laden lunch at Coopers in New Braunfels. Pork loin was the best I have ever eaten by a long stretch, and the beef ribs were fantastic.

Crabs and eggs, two of my favorite things! Cheesy scrambled eggs: Smoked Gouda, cream, scallions, and a sprinkling of cayenne, scrambled slowly and served over buttered multi-grain toast.

Toolprincess: Thanks, and sorry I missed your question earlier. Try starting with black-ripe plantains, softer and riper than seems reasonable. I buy them so black and soft that sometimes they reduce the price at check-out. I fry plantain slices in olive oil over medium to medium-high heat, but I am intrigued by PanCan’s method and look forward to trying it. Good luck!

Prawn – You are quite right, the steamed sole and dry-fried green beans would be right up my alley. Keith - Very nice! Grilled ribeye salad with tomato, avocado, and escarole, tossed with a dressing of olive oil, lime, garlic, and chipotle. I meant to top with crumbled feta cheese, but was distracted by the Olympics. The yellow beefsteak tomato from our garden was remarkably meaty and delicious – I wish I remembered which cultivar I planted. Cowboy beans with bacon, garlic, tomato, pickled jalapenos, and cilantro.

Percy and Anna, gorgeous breakfasts, and Kerry’s garlic tart looks crazy-good. Omelet with mango-ginger Stilton, chipotle black bean dip, crème fraiche, and Cholula salsa. Toasted multi-grain thins not in picture.

Prawn: Rendang AND soft-shelled crab in the same meal? My definition of heaven right there. We have been doing a lot of quick summer cooking lately. Charcoal-grilled chicken, marinated with fish sauce, lime juice, black pepper, and oil. Not pictured – grilled yellow squash with the same marinade, and brown rice.

dcarch – head and shoulders the most beautiful scrapple I have ever seen frogprincesse – lots of gorgeous meals, but the jambon and mint salad jumps out for me Red curry with chicken and green beans, aroma courtesy of our very happy Thai basil plant. Jasmine rice and Mrs. C’s un-pictured salad to go with.

ScottyBoy: Beauty! mm84321: What’s the sauce on your lovely salmon? Fried plantains: ‘nuff said Picadillo: ground pork, browned with garlic, cinnamon, thyme, oregano, and black pepper. Fried onion and tomato, bay leaves, cinnamon stick, raisins, almonds, and diced potatoes, plantains, and roasted Poblano chiles. Boys were riding bikes around the neighborhood and claimed that the aroma drew them home from blocks away. Rice with black beans and corn and an un-pictured but lovely salad, both courtesy of Mrs. C

Lovely meals, all Chu chee curry with mixed seafood – shrimp, squid, clams, and fish, plus red curry paste, cracked coconut cream, fish sauce, and homegrown chiles, holy basil, Thai basil, and slivered lime leaves. Braised cabbage with dried shrimp – with garlic, black pepper, and a touch of sugar, from Cradle of Flavor. Jasmine rice

Chicken and potato curry, turmeric rice, salad