blue_dolphin

Oh, I didn’t mean those suggestions for you and your kitchen, which all looks meticulous in your photos! I think they’re more relevant to the nonprofit orgs running the fridge programs but thought people might be interested in the activity that has to go on behind the scenes to make these services as safe as reasonably possible.

@patti, those pulled pork meals look stellar! You and your husband really showed off your teamwork in pulling that one off (pun intended 🙃) I thought the discussion of food safety around community fridges was an interesting tangent for me and I hope it was perceived as another aspect of the situation, not any sort of intentional negativity. That’s actually a national law here in the US, the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act of 1996. It should apply to community fridges and donors like Patti, as long as they are acting in good faith. However, such liability protection does NOT mean the operations comply with local food safety ordinances. There are no federal guidelines for community fridges so they are subject to local rules. Curiosity around that aspect got me looking around for best practices (like these) and there are definitely steps that can be taken to reduce risk, like requiring dating of all foods, the use of recording thermometers in the fridges with remote alarms to alert staff, regular cleaning and sanitizing logs, purging of outdated foods and educating donors. Local authorities may or may not be willing to accept anything except the regulations they already apply to restaurants, caterers, or food banks and that’s fair, though it unfortunately results in more people going without. I certainly commend Patti and everyone who works so hard to help feed the hungry among us!

If you have an Aldi nearby, try their “Burman’s” mayo. I’m a Hellmans/Best Foods habitué and find it entirely acceptable for my purposes which are mostly tuna and egg salad sandwiches and doctoring it up with stuff like sriracha, gochujang , etc. I like Dukes just as well but it’s not widely available here.

If you mean, not on the pop-top type can that started this conversation, I bet it would. I don’t have the Kitchen Mama can opener but I think it’s a side-cutter. My manual side-cutter can opener works fine on pop-type cans and solves the rim issue.

Yesterday’s breakfast was green eggs & ham on a ciabatta roll, an idea I stole from Joe Sasto’s recent cookbook, Breaking the Rules which I borrowed from the library. His version is eggs, scrambled with pesto, piled on toast and topped with crisped up slices of salami. I browned a slice of Canadian bacon instead of the salami and put it on the bottom, though it’s kind of invisible in the photo. Not bad. Today, I made a bean version of the pasta with butternut squash, sausage, sage, and spicy chiles from Six Seasons of Pasta using Rancho Gordo Royal Corona beans instead of pasta. I also added a big handful of baby kale. This was really good for a chilly morning. I used bean cooking broth instead of pasta water to bring things together.

When I roasted the butternut squash cubes for the last recipe, I roasted the rest of the squash and made the butternut squash purée that’s used in the pasta with butternut squash with sausage, sage, and spicy chiles on p 375. The squash/sausage/sage combo is pretty classic but the Calabrian chilies are what make it sing! After finding the roasted squash/nut ragu pasta too sweet for my taste, I was a bit wary about trying this one but the purée was made so I soldiered on and was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked this. I used hot Italian sausage and used Calabrian bomba sauce instead of the sliced chilies called for and suspect a variety of chiles or chile pastes would work. I also threw in a handful of arugula to increase the veg quotient. I have more squash purée left and plan to try some variations on this theme.

Aww, that’s sweet of you to say ❤️

Thanks - I’ll check it out!

Maybe they know people have different preferences and are trying to appeal to both? Unlikely, I know.

Yes, I had to try it because I couldn’t quite imagine what it would be like. Very much like a ragu made with ground meat, except it’s ground/chopped nuts! The nuts are softened from the long cook but retain some of their texture. He calls it a “delicately chunky” 🙃

Catching up with one from last week. I made the Nut Ragù on p 71 and used it to make the last recipe in the book: Pasta with Roasted Winter Squash and Nut Ragu. I liked the nutty texture of the ragu but with the roasted squash and tomatoes in the ragu, the finished pasta skews sweet for me. It was fine but could be better. Nut Ragu I’ve seen a lot of recipes for walnut and mushroom ragu but this one is just nuts - all kinds of nuts! There are almonds, cashews, hazelnuts, pistachios and walnuts. They’re all chopped and get toasted with garlic in oil on the stovetop. Fresh thyme, rosemary, chile flakes, tomato paste and crushed tomatoes are added and the pot goes into the oven for a couple of hours. A portion is blended and returned to the pot. I didn’t want it to look like nuts in sauce so I may have blended too much as, in the end, I liked the nutty texture. Between the nuts and the oil, it’s pretty rich. I’ve got those six servings of the ragu to play around with. Pasta with Roasted Winter Squash and Nut Ragu This is basically pasta, finished in the ragu, with cubes of roasted butternut squash and garnished with fried sage leaves. The texture of the nutty ragu, chewy pasta and tender squash is excellent. The book recommends serving this with ricotta salata. I tried some feta as a sub but it was a bit too rich and salty as I’d already used a good amount of salted pasta water to finish cooking the pasta. It does need a jolt of something tangy, I’d just need to balance the salt better. Edited to add that I’m thinking some pickle-y, spicy thing would be the ticket.

Rusack 2017 Ballard Canyon Estate Reserve Syrah I thought this might be over the hill but it still has a delicious balance of fruit and earthiness. Rusack has been one of my favorite wineries for years and it’s the last wine club I belonged to. I even liked their Chards which weren’t overly oaky. They closed up the club and their lovely Santa Ynez Valley tasting room last year and went to an allocation system. I missed the ordering deadline for their first allocation last month but understand the prices were quite high. Not sure what they’re up to but I’ve still got a few bottles of Syrah, Pinot Noir and Cab to enjoy.

Today, I made the Green Lentil Ragu from Six Seasons of Pasta and used it to make the Pasta with Roasted Cherry Tomatoes and Green Lentil Ragu. I used Rancho Gordo lentils, half green, half black for the ragu as I didn’t have enough green ones. I made a half batch as the full recipe says it’s enough for 14 servings of pasta and I’m a party of one over here! By the time my lentils cooled, they’d absorbed most of the liquid and weren’t saucy like the photo in the book. Easy enough to add some water or broth but next time I might add more tomatoes to the ragu. The pasta dish was delicious and very satisfying. I’d never thought of combining lentils and pasta but I will certainly keep it mind for the future. There’s a drizzle of balsamic vinegar at the end that really highlights the flavors of the roasted cherry tomatoes against the earthy lentils. I look forward to using the ragu in other ways but will likely repeat this one, too.

@Smithy & @Maison Rustique, if you find some nice little Hakurai turnips, you should definitely give this one a try. I was initially more excited by the recipe for Pasta with Turnips, Preserved Lemon Ricotta and Hazelnuts that I posted about a week or so ago. That one was very good but this one exceeded my expectations. Maybe my expectations weren’t very high because it seemed like a standard anchovy/garlic pasta but it was so easy and the way the flavors melded together won me over!

I have enjoyed the videos that Sohla El-Waylly and her husband Ham have made together for NYT cooking. This is a turkey day version that they made on their own and I found it quite entertaining. Sohla goes the traditional route, Ham is modernist man with a sous vide, meat glued turkey breast roll and brined, braised legs and thighs. In the end, what could go wrong does but the dog clearly wins! Worth a watch!

I will be joining my cousins for what I expect will be a traditional turk-stuff-mash-gravy situation. The cousin and his wife who usually cook the bird and host are dealing with health issues so his daughter has stepped up to host. I’m bringing Vivian Howard's Brussels sprouts (yes, LGBoD), apples, pomegranate salad with blue cheese honey vinaigrette (recipe here), and have been asked to bring a butternut squash dish, TBD. Any recommendations on that? It shouldn’t be mashed or include anything green and should hold well once cooked. The littles will eat cubes of roasted squash but they look pretty wizened after a while. I believe I’m the only family member who eats vegetables, other than potatoes, on a regular basis. I’ll probably bring a cranberry curd tart which one of the little cousins is greatly enamored of.

Sorry @rotuts, what’s “IDS”? I tried Google and got the following: Intrusion Detection System Interior Design Society International Dance Supplies Please advise.

I'm another fan of that Hasselback gratin and it’s just the right time of year to make it again. I will probably use the mini scale version I posted here a few years ago. For @rotuts, I used some kind of small potatoes and I’m sure I didn’t peel them.

I didn’t actually get this yet, but I was told that I won a “Pantry Glow-up” giveaway offered on Maggie Hoffman’s Dinner Plan Substack. It includes a copy of Samin Nosrat’s book Good Things and a bunch of little food items. I don’t know if they’ll be teensy tiny samples or a little larger but it should be fun in any case. I’ll report back when I receive it.

I’m not really up on what’s “a thing” these days but I know people use it to make black cocktails like a “spooky margarita” but that’s just for looks, not any other benefit. When my cat Patrick got into some lily pollen, he and Michael both got a charcoal gavage and a charcoal enema. Poor guys! A charcoal michelada sounds much more pleasant than either of those routes!

Yes, in my area it’s not unusual for Mexican-style restaurants to have lengthy Michelada menus and shrimp versions show up often. This list from Alta Baja Market in Santa Ana, CA where I had lunch recently is more fruity than fishy, but gives an idea of what’s offered.

I’d suggest putting the chiles on some sort of screen to improve circulation. This 11-inch aluminum pizza screen (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) fits conveniently in the CSO and I use it often in lieu of an air fryer. They come in all sizes though. In my CSO, the lowest plate warmer setting is 125°F but mine fluctuates from 115-130. It will run with the door slight ajar but probably not long enough to really dehydrate them. I’ve had little Thai chilies dehydrate themselves nicely on my counter!

From Six Seasons of Pasta: Garlic Butter p 27 Garlic Bread p 47 Pasta with turnips and turnip greens with anchovies and garlic butter p 200. The pasta was the main event, so I’ll start with that. I thought this was absolutely delicious! The salty, funky anchovies melded with the sweet, tender-crisp turnip slices perfectly. Everything was bathed in the garlic butter and brightened up with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. So easy to toss together if the garlic butter is on hand. I will certainly make this again. Six Seasons sold me on compound butters so I was happy to add this little log of garlic butter to my freezer stash. I only made a half batch - one stick of butter. It’s got plenty of garlic, fresh parsley and oregano and a pinch of red chile flakes. I don’t make garlic bread often but once the garlic butter was made, I figured I’d try it out with a few slices and it was very good. Just a schmear of that garlic butter and a sprinkle of a Parm/Romano mix. Could become addictive. The oregano and chile are a nice touch.

I missed the edit window but wanted to add that I made a half recipe of the recipe above with artichokes, chicken and preserved lemon ricotta and it made 2 ample servings.

From Six Seasons of Pasta by Joshua McFadden and Martha Holmberg: Pasta with artichokes, chicken and lemon ricotta p 152 This was not on my radar screen but I had some of that preserved lemon whipped ricotta left and everything else was on hand so I tossed it together and it was excellent. I used leftover roast chicken instead of cooking it from scratch, frozen artichoke hearts and a lemon flavored pasta. The use of chicken broth in the sauce was very effective. I will most likely repeat this as a veg version with mushrooms instead of chicken, maybe with the addition of red bell peppers. The chicken was very good, I just wouldn’t cook it specifically for this. I’d also take the time to cut the artichoke hearts into smaller slices. The book doesn’t recommend flavored pastas but I had it on hand and thought this was a good use of it. The recipe seems to add the whipped lemon ricotta and lemon agrumato oil as toppings but I’d probably just mix them in.