Shel_B

Bingo! Great rice.

Farmers' Market organic blackberries, organic, full-fat Greek yogurt, Ethiopian coffee. I can't recall the last time I had full-fat yogurt, much less Greek yogurt, and this was such a treat. Creamy and smooth, and defintely more flavorful than the 2% I usually get.😍

Staff Note: This post and responses to it were split from the "Ever suffer from Culinary Ennui? If so, what do you do?" topic. @Katie Meadow where do you get your rice? I've started looking into getting some, but I'm a bt confused about the offerings' quality and authenticity.

This is very good cheese. I liked the depth of flavor, although it seems a little one note to me. I'll need to taste some more. Still, very enjoyable. I had it cold from the fridge, at room temp, and melted on an English muffin. In all cases I was saisfied, although it's not at its best melted. Perfect on a cheese platter, IMO, and a good addition to a charcuterie platter. A nice, and perhaps a better, alternative to many cheddars.

Pretty durned good ... Perhaps a bit sweet for my taste, but not by much, so they fell into the acceptable range in that regard. They cooked up nice and soft, although a few of the sprouts had somewhat hard stems on them, but they were easy to eat around. I wouldn't put them as a top-rated entrée, but I'd certainly buy 'em again. I'll have to compare them to the regular frozen Brussels sprouts

I grabbed a wedge of the 1000 day Gouda this afternoon and am looking forward to trying it. Maybe with breakfast ...

Yesterday we had donuts at a community gathering, and I had a couple. First donuts since September, 2024.

Baked, smashed, and charred Yukon Gold potatoes served with Chinese-style sauced Brussels sprouts. Cool Himalayan black tea was todays beverage.

Thus far, I've played with several spice blends and even tried one on a chicken thigh. I tend to progress slowly. I may try a bottled sauce to use as a reference point. Nando has come up as a good choice. The site Chili Pepper Madness has a recipe that I'd like to look into further. I've only superficially looked at it. I agree that Brian's recipe appears to be a good choice, and just on the surface I prefer it to the other. The paprika issue is one thing in Brian's favor and the other is how he salted the bird: heavily and early. I like mixing pepper types, and generally do regardless of what a recipe may suggest. I treat dried and fresh peppers as separate ingredients, IOW, I may use a dried and fresh version of the same pepper in a recipe. The dried may get added along with the soffrito and get bloomed in the cooking oil while the fresh can also be used in the soffrito, but just as often in a marinade or sauce. I don't remember what brand of paprika That Dude Can Cook used, but over the years I've developed my own preferences and have learned (but not yet tried) how to make my own. Rachel Cooks With Love has provided some ideas on how to work with chili powder, and her videos are peaceul and easy going, quite different than those from TDCC. She's mostly Tex-Mex oriented, and she's provided ideas for shortcuts and prepared ingredients. I like some of your ideas. Instead of vinegar I've also used the liquid from various hot sauces in its place. I use pickled jalapanos frequently, and when the pepper slices are gone there's usually a lot of juice left. I'll sometimes use that instead of another acid in various recipes. I like it in tuna salad instead of the more "traditional" lemon juice. https://www.mezzetta.com/products/deli-sliced-hot-jalapea-o-peppers? They offer a milder version and a diced version, which works great as a substitute for relish in some situations. Thanks for your comments. Useful and entertaining

A Bowl of Blackberries and a Cuppa Joe

Trader Joe's pitas ruined my lunch I wanted to make arayes for a while, and recently bought some ingredients from TJ's, including the pita bread. You might be able to see from the image how the bread came apart during the prep and cooking process. Here's the story. The pitas open to form a pocket, and one side (let's call it the bottom) was substantially thicker than the other, the top. The bottom was, by observation, about four times thicker than the top That made the top weaker, and you can see that it didn't take well to being stuffed with a light mixture of seasoned ground beef. It tore and pulled away from the bottom in several places, some of which are visible and highlighted. I felt that I could live with the imperfections, at least as far as lunch was concerned, but the situation got worse. The bottom cooked beautifully, and developed a nice, firm crust. However, when flipping the pita, the top, being much thinner, got soggy from the oil and meat juices, and became flacid and started to disintegrate in a few spots. The bottom also absorbed the juices, but being thicker could handle the additional moisture. I tried making another one, taking greater care in the stuffing process and cooked with substantially less oil in the nonstick pan (I added no additional oil to the pan), and the results were the same. Clearly, at least for this and similar purposes, the TJ's pita is an inferior product. It was a shame as the dish has great potential, and in this instance was diminished by a poor quality ingredient.

Years ago, when I was going through a period of self-doubt because of a couple of personal and business disappointments, a wiser man than me said that I should cut back on my big ideas and look for smaller things to accomplish, and those would give me some successes. IOW, little victories. Little victories allow for a rebuilding of self esteem, shows you that you can accomplish things, and form the building blocks, the foundation, for greater challenges and achievements. Years later, after Sweetie died, I was talking with my doctor and telling her that I've not been accomplishing much, procrastinating, and in general feeling poorly. She suggested taking on one or two small tasks a day, things that I'd usually do anyway and that I'd been avoiding, and not concern myself with bigger things. So, for example, instead of getting the car washed "tomorrow," I'd do it today, right now. Again, little victories. You set yourself up to succeed. You find that there's something positive to look forward to ... it's easier to look forward to something if you know you'll be successful. Doing this will help to assure here's "no cabbage left behind."

Time for a hand-held grater, primarily for veggies such as onion, carrot, fennel, turnips, etc. A typical box grater is not workable, but a flat grater, such as this from OXO, (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) would be fine. also, this one from OXO:(eG-friendly Amazon.com link) Has anyone used either of these and can you speak to their suitibility and durability. Amazon reviews show an overall very good rating, but also enough negatives to make me cautious, but not completely dismissive. Any other flat grater that you might recommend?

A couple of days ago, I grabbed what turned out to be some fantastic blackberries from one of the local Farmers' Markets. A neighbor gave me a box of corn flakes, and for some reason, there was a half gallon of 1% milk in the fridge. So, that, plus a cup of Ethiopian coffee, was breakfast today. The blackberries were the highlight of the meal. The coffee didn't turn out to be as good as usual, and I was reminded why I don't buy corn flakes. So, I plucked out the berries from the flakes, enjoyed them with corn-flake infused milk, and relegated the remainder of the flakes to the compost bin.

I can make a meal of pickles, sauerkraut, and good, strong bread, and maybe a chunk of cheese. Making a sando can sometimes be too much work.

Cooking ennui (I love that word) sometimes snakes into my life, and usually I ignore it and make a simple potato or rice dish or ramen with veggies. Essentially, it's just boiling liquid, although with the replacement microwave a meal is just a zap away. Frozen veggies live in the freezer, often alongside frozen rice, so it's a simple, no-brainer task to make a quick, nutritious meal. The real issue is when I've purchased items for a specific meal, and there's a risk of the food going bad if it sits around for too long. For that scenario I'm lucky, as there are a number of folks in my apartment building who I can call and invite to dinner, thereby forcing myself to cook or, perhaps a better way of saying it, motivating me to cook. Mostly my boredom comes from just cooking for myself. When Sweetie was alive, there was constant challenge, motovation, and excitement. There was always someone to cook for and often the challenge of cooking with sparse ingredients as Sweetie would sometimes let her larder get quite bare. And then there are time when I just don't give a rat's patoot one way or another. Then I fire up the ol' chariot, head down to one of my go-to take away joints, grab a meal, and eat it at home. The thing that makes that work is that there are a quite a few good restaurants that offer take away, so one isn't relegated to fast food or burger joints.

I found a site that may offerwhat I'm looking for, and another couple of recipes that may be close (hard to say without seeing the original, although I'm looking for ideas as much as the recipe. Never heard of Google Books, but I'll explore that as well. Thanks.

That sounds like an amazing tuna salad thing. Can you provide the recipe(s) or a link. I'd love to play around with it all.

OK, gotcha about storing the EVOO. But why is it OK to refrigerate the infused oil? Also .how.about an example of an infused oil just so i know we're on the same page.

Would storing EVOO in the fridge be a bad idea? If so, why?

Extra Crispy Spud Buds I love crispy potatoes, and tots are no exception. Yesterday I was going to make a batch of smashed potatoes, but other obligations got in the way. I kept thinking about'em, though, and wondered how smashed Potato Tots might be. And that's what you see on the plate. Heated the tots in the microwave for about three minutes ... put 'em on parchment paper placed on a tray. When the oven beeped, I pulled out the tots on the parchment paper and put it directly on a sheet pan, separated and smashed 'em and baked in the Breville until nice and crispy. A little habanero hot sauce after the fact added some more flavor. Man ... they turned out well, and going forward I'll refine the technique. If you like crispy potatoes, and enjoy tots, this may be worth a try ...

Arriving tomorrow. These tomatoes are an Amazon subscription option and a few days ago Amazon told me that they were out of stock and it was unknown when they'd be available again. Not a big deal as there are always a few cans of tomatoes in the pantry, these or one of two brands of San Marzano dell’Agro Sarnese-Nocerino. But I don't like to get too low. Well, Amazon came through and shipped them much sooner than expected. But what made them the most fun is that the price dropped by abut 20% from past orders, and in these days of rising prices that's real fun. And from TJ's this morning came this item: Thanks to @blue_dolphin for making me aware of it. I'm hoping I'll like it enough, and that it'll work well in some of my recipes, that I'll have no need to drive into Berkeley to get my feta. There are a few recipes in which I'd like to try this cheese, and maybe I'll get to at least one of them in the next few days.

I'm with you. The plethora of Oreo variations is overwhelming and, generally, uninspiring. However, I do enjoy and make horchata, so I'd like to try some.

Thanks for the post. I'm planning to make stuffed pitas (arayes) in the next few days, and your description and image has given me an idea or two.

Thanks for posting @liuzhou. The information presented is worth a deeper look. I've been skeptical about "ceramic-coated" cookware for a whle, having a rudimentary understanding of ceramics in general.