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Chicken thigh schnitzel, warm potato salad and snap peas tossed with house dressing, all from Good Things by Samin Nosrat.

I do it all the time. I freeze the rice separately. Edited to add that I use the recipe from Alon Shaya’s book. This looks to be the one.

Just curious, what defines “a better quality butter” for you? Fat content? Something else? Seems like the flavor components found in cultured butters, for example, would be filtered out in the process of making ghee.

Another grilled chicken wrap from Good Things. Samin calls this one Souvlaki-ish chicken. The chicken thighs get marinated in the creamy oregano dressing before grilling. Same smear of whipped tahini. Today’s veg were cucumbers, radishes, carrots and cherry tomatoes and got tossed in the same dressing.

Chicken kabob wrap from Good Things by Samin Nosrat This appears as one of the “three ways to use” the Tahini Sbagliato dressing in this book. Chunks of chicken thigh are marinated in the dressing, skewered, and grilled. A mix of veg, in my case, shaved Brussels sprouts, watermelon radish and cherry tomatoes get tossed in the same dressing and piled onto flatbreads (I made the fluffy and crisp flatbreads from Andy Baraghani’s book, The Cook You Want to Be), spread with whipped tahini, and the grilled chicken.

Pasta with Peas, Squid, Tomato, and Parsley from Six Seasons of Pasta. I kind of mucked up this recipe, due to not reading it carefully, but still enjoyed my meal. I recently made another squid recipe from the book so I assumed I knew the drill but this one is a long cooked squid recipe. I really prefer the snappy texture of quick-cooking, particularly as my squid were small. Think finger puppet size with some barely pinky-size. Not really the best choice for a long cook. The tentacles all disintegrated. But, in doing so, they nicely flavored the sauce. I chose snap peas instead of regular peas because I had them on hand but knew they were unsuited to the 40-50 min cooking time. I went with 20 min for half the snap peas and 10 for the rest, both of which I thought was too long. Honestly, the longer cooked ones were a better fit here so I can see where he was going with almost mushy peas even if they’re not my jam. Unlikely to make again but I appreciate the learning experience.

There’s a local take-out BBQ place that always offers a layered banana pudding. Given the cost of ingredients, and the fact that everyone gets it, I suspect they make more profit from that than the meats 🤣 They use a Biscoff-type cookie and I really prefer that to a ‘Nilla wafer. My brother uses Pepperidge Farm Chessmen. I like them better than ‘Nilla wafers but not as much as the Biscoff flavors.

I also love a ribbon bookmark and was delighted that Good Things included one. Especially handy in a book like this that includes a lot of condiments. Other than the Time-Life books @SLB mentions, my only books with 2 are the recent Ottolenghi’s - Simple, Flavour and Comfort - and they each sport a pair of 2 different colors that coordinate with the cover graphics. I must also share this exchange: ❤️❤️❤️ Indeed they do!

I’m glad you liked it! I’m finding it very versatile. One of the book’s uses for it is a warm potato salad that’s next up on my list.

Spaghetti with cabbage, pancetta and Calabrian chile from Six Seasons of Pasta I made this with Brussels sprouts instead of cabbage and bomba sauce instead of oil-packed Calabrian chiles. Very homey flavors of cabbage and a little pork, perked up by the Calabrian chiles and a squeeze of lemon. I’ll make this again with cabbage but I think the sprouts were a fair substitute.

I missed the edit window but should have added that the choice of squid ink pasta here was mine as I thought the photo in the book was a little bland with white squid on white pasta and I had the squid ink spaghetti on hand. The authors don’t use any flavored pastas and specifically say their flavors are either undetectable or “not very nice.”

Probably not. I’m afraid that when I was tasting the pasta for doneness, I wasn’t paying any attention to the flavor but it didn’t jump out at me either.

I can see this becoming family lore: When I was a kid, my father breaded my fingertips and fried them for a snack!

Salmon burger on a brioche bun with arugula and yuzu mayo and a quick slaw of Brussels sprouts, carrot, snap peas and scallions

Hot chiles with shrimp, mussels, squid, basil, and mint on squid ink pasta from Six Seasons of Pasta. I love the garlicky, lemony, winey sauce, kicked up with the fresh hot chile but ultimately, fishing mussels and larger shrimp out of a dish of pasta is awkward. I made this with squid ink pasta, manzano chiles and shrimp that were big enough to need cutting up. My fault on the shrimp size but unlike the mussels and squid, they didn’t add a lot to the dish. I’d make this again with the mussels & squid but take the mussels out of the shells before serving.

Roasted butternut squash salad with pears and Stilton from Fine Cooking magazine (RIP) The recipe called for bacon but I was out so I used guanciale and I pretty much ignored the plating instructions.

I’m not a Canadian but I grew up in northern NY, about an hour south of Montreal and have visited both places multiple times. I’m sure you would enjoy either option but I agree with Kerry that Quebec City is worth a visit. It’s pretty unique, almost like visiting another country. And it’s small enough that with good planning, you can see a lot in 2 days and it would add a very different experience to your trip. The weather is likely to be a few degrees cooler than Montreal, not enough to make a big difference but in mid-May, you may notice that trees that have leafed out in Montreal are still in bud in Quebec City. There shouldn’t be crowd issues that can make the place less charming in July so you can make the most of your time. If you’re interested in a more urban, metropolitan experience, then staying in Montreal might be better for you. Lots to do and see. Two great cities - you really can’t go wrong!

I agree, the description sounds quite appealing. I generally avoid prepared meals from TJs or elsewhere. Usually due to salt content, meaning too much for me. Occasionally I try something but there’s nothing I’d recommend so despite being a very regular shopper, I’m no help in that area. On the upside, here are a few items I’m liking. The soup is in the refrigerated section. A friend served it recently at a ladies lunch. She thinned it with chicken broth and added extra broccoli so that’s my plan. I suspect it would be rather rich on its own. I’ve been buying the cherry & pecan shortbread cookies for a few months now but haven’t mentioned them because it seemed like there was never much stock and they might disappear. And they might, but if you like shortbread and see them in your store, try them. I bought 3 boxes this morning. The Greek EVOO from Crete is very good. It was $8.99/500ml bottle. TJ’s used to carry a Greek Kalamata olive oil that’s been MIA for some time. It was my go-to cooking oil. This isn’t the same thing. It’s actually a lot nicer.

Well, I figured the cabbage may give off some liquid when it thaws, but if it could be reheated on the stovetop, it could easily be reduced back down. I’ve frozen things with chunks of cooked pork that didn’t suffer too much so it seemed promising to me. Just a hunch. Edited to add that I’ve mostly frozen cabbage in soups. Seems the worst that could happen is that it would be soup after thawing but a nice soup, at least!

Heck, I’m pretty sure I’ve had cabbages that lasted two months in the fridge so it could outlast the recovery period entirely 🙃 That sounds very amenable to freezing, too!

Very smart to avoid over complicating things! Which makes me wonder why (aside from the presence of a 5 lb cabbage) you want to combine 6 new-to-you recipes into a newly designed and untested creation at what seems like a rather stressful time. Maybe this is a fun activity to keep your mind off of the stress? If so, great. If not, I’m wondering why you’re not leaning into the sameness and freezing batches of old favorites.

In this context, I don’t think the sameness is a bad thing as you probably won’t get tired of having the same thing as often as twice a month or even once a week.

I know you didn’t ask me, but I’m curious. Can you give us some examples of casseroles that use a separate sauce? I don’t think I’ve had one with a separate sauce, let alone two sauces.

Charred sweet potatoes with garlic & herb labne and Calabrian chile crisp. From Samin Nosrat’s Good Things. I used the purple-skin, white-flesh Japanese sweet potatoes. They’re charred after cooking (I steamed them first) by placing them directly on a gas burner for 5-7 min. Not the same as being cooked buried in the coals but the skin is crispy and the flesh underneath has some of that same delicious roasted flavor.

A simple carrot salad from Good Things. Kind of a riff on the classic carrot-raisin salad. This one tosses the carrots with dates, fresh ginger, garlic, ground cumin, cilantro and pickled Thai chiles, then adds a quick dressing of olive oil, lime juice, chile vinegar (from the Thai chiles) and salt. I piled the salad on a bed of baby kale that I dressed with the same dressing. This wasn’t a meal salad, I had it alongside a salmon burger for lunch.