Shel_B

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.

Thanks for the info. I came across a mention of the box a while back and asked about it, but didn't see a response. I'll read the thread ...

Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt - screwed up that one ... I'll fix it. I was going to post a pic, but my phone was in the car and the cameras were on their chargers, and the dish didn't look very interesting, just a pile of fusilli in red sauce. Also, I was more interested in sharing the experience of my thoughts and what I did than the final image.

I had a craving for pasta, specifically fusilli, but I didn’t want to spend a lot of time making a sauce since there was none at the ready. How would fusilli work with aglio e olio … As an aside, fusilli is quickly becoming one of my fvorite pasta shapes. The size is perfect for me, I love the texture of the pasta as it’s chewed, and the ridges do a pretty good job of holding most sauces. Good enough for this poor dirt farmer from NYC. I broke out the new, deeper 12-inch skillet and added about 2½ quarts of filtered water and a big dollop of Diamond Crystal Salt. I grabbed the last of the DeCecco fusilli from its resting place alongside the microwave oven, where several other pastas are also stored. While the water was heating, the sauce started to come together. Some Rancho Milagro EVOO went into a 10 inch skillet and, seeing some beautiful Italian anchovy fillets in the fridge I decided to add them to the aglio e olio, and when that decision was made, I decided to just riff a simple sauce leaving the aglio e olio as primarily a building block. I added enough anchovy to, hopefully, be just barely noticeable in the background, or at least that was the intention. About three large cloves of pressed garlic were added to the anchovies cooking at a medium temp. The garlic sizzled a bit when it hit the oil so I immediately added a little less than ¼ cup of water from the container on the stove. There's always water handy to add to cooking garlic to reduce or eliminate its tendency to burn. Next came the Aleppo pepper, two generous teaspoons of that lovely, flavorful pepper. That was cooked together with the garlic for a while, and the oil tasted for intensity and flavor. The garlic seemed to be fine, but a bit more Aleppo was required … not too much, though. And then the riff continued. A couple of tablespoons of Mutti Triple Concentrated tomato paste was added and cooked to a brick red color with the oil and other ingredients. Tasting told me I was on to something, but more was needed, and I imagined a kind of funky pork flavor as being a good addition to this , and so I added just about 1½ tablespoons of ’nduja (https://ndujausa.com/). The whole thing came together nicely. By the time the sauce was ready, the pasta was done. I pulled some pasta water from the skillet, drained the fusilli, and dumped it into the sauce, adding a bit less than ¼ cup of the starchy pasta liquid. When the stirring and mixing gave me the creaminess I wanted, I turned off the heat and removed the pan from the hob. It was time to add the cheese, a blend of Pecorino Romano and a lovely Grana Padano from a local, old school Italian deli. Lunch was a delight.

Good for you, Nancy. Explorations of a recipe or a particular dish are often an evolving process with progress being made by experiencing failures and the elimination and adjustment of various ingredients.

That's the name I couldn't remember.

Toasted Tots in the Toaster Oven

A gift of food is, for me, quite rare. A few days ago I received a couple of pieces of freshly made focaccia covered with black olives, feta cheese, and caramelized onions. The unusual thing was how I got the gift. It was early evening and I had just pushed the doorbell button at a friend's house. A moment later, he opened the door and at just that instant I heard a voice from behind me. "Hey, you guys want some focaccia?" Turning to the voice I saw a young man standing on the sidewalk in front of the house. He was holding, and offering, a take-away container in which there were a couple of pieces of the described focaccia. Friend and I were were taken aback not only by the offer, but by the circumstances. The young man explained it was from a restaurant around the corner, on one of Berkeley's main shopping streets. The man said that the restaurant was closing early and that they had some items left over that they decided to distribute to folks in the neighborhood, something akin to an advertising promotion I surmised. I got some information about the restaurant, and since the bread was quite delicious I'll visit the next time I'm in the heighborhood. The incident reminded me of the times when I was a kid and guys would come through our neighborhood and sell meat and chicken out of the trunk of their car. It was a little different though, as those guys were always selling stuff that fell off a truck. As a kid, I thought how lucky those guys were, but later on I came to fully understand their good fortune.

@Margaret Pilgrim Do you have any that are unusual or particularly interesting? It might be nice to see an image of one or two.

I don't see them in so harsh a light. For some types of sandwiches, however, they seem inappropriate. Some items need more "air" in the ingredients, and the press may squeeze out that air, or space. The sauerkraut in a Reuben is an example of that, although Smithy's sando didn't seem too bad in that regard. OTOH, I've seen sandos that were much worse. IMO, for certain things, Old Skool is the way to go.

Cloche: good word choice, although the cloche is but a part of the entire aparatus, is it not. Isn't it just the domed lid?

I still (rarely) enjoy the mini shredded wheat biscuits as a snack or as croutons in a salad. I say rarely only because I've cut W-A-Y back on eating dry cereals and using milk. Someone gave me a big box of cornflakes recently, and I'll buy some milk and eat those, but it's been months since I've purchased milk. If ever I buy shredded wheatagain, I'll certainly use them as a snack and on a salad.

Love 'em grilled, just not with a panini press.