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blue_dolphin

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Everything posted by blue_dolphin

  1. I'm absolutely making note of this. Eric Kim's chamomile tea cake had a glaze made with freeze dried strawberries and it was really nice. Would love to try it in a whipped cream.
  2. Talk about leaving us hanging!
  3. So sorry, @Darienne! When I bake multiple oven loads of cookies I almost always burn the last one but it's much more tragic to lose them all! Me? I will never again buy cooking oil with a plastic snap cap. Acceptable screw cap on the left, unacceptable pop-top on the right. I gave it the side-eye in the store and even moved it from the pantry cabinet where I feared it tipping and dripping through the wire shelves on everything below. I put it in a lower cabinet instead and managed to nudge it off the shelf when putting something else away. It only fell about a foot but the jolt popped the top open and it splattered all over. Then it wobbled a bit and tipped over, pouring out all over the floor. Of course, I was putting that other item away in a bit of a hurry because a friend was on her way over so I didn't have time for a proper scrubbing and was afraid that one of us would go flying. Thankfully no injuries ensued, the floor is clean and I will never purchase oil in such a bottle again!
  4. blue_dolphin

    Breakfast 2022

    Country ham & egg sandwich on a seedy spinach waffle
  5. blue_dolphin

    Lunch 2022

    Pasta with shrimp, sugar snap peas and preserved lemon butter
  6. blue_dolphin

    Breakfast 2022

    A little jam buffet with my 1/2 English muffin
  7. Thanks for taking us along - as always, it was a fun trip!
  8. Canada does import some US beef but I don't know how much, if any, is already ground at the time of import. Hopefully, someone more knowledgable can jump in to help you out. To your second question, US and Canadian agencies work very closely together so I would expect that information to be shared. I can find reports of Canadian ground beef recalls due to possible E. coli contamination that extended to product imported to the US and it was reported in both countries so I would assume the same would be true for a US recall.
  9. blue_dolphin

    Breakfast 2022

    Made the recipe for French baked eggs with smoked salmon and tarragon cream from Melissa Clark's Dinner in French and tipped it out onto a toasted English muffin instead of eating it out of the ramekin.
  10. I just bought Kindle version of The Herbfarm Cookbook (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) by Jerry Traunfeld for $1.99. Lots of recipes organized by type of dish followed by sections on growing and buying herbs and about individual herbs. There are beautiful illustrations of the herbs but in this kindle version they are all oddly placed at the end.
  11. Having grown up in northern NY in a house on the shore of Lake Champlain, the local wisdom was that one should never take off for 2 weeks of vacation between June & Sept because the summer might come and you'd have missed it!
  12. blue_dolphin

    Breakfast 2022

    Toasted English muffin topped with butter and marmalade mixed with fresh ginger. This was inspired by the Sandwiches of history guy and I must say that adding freshly grated ginger will really give your marmalade a punch!
  13. blue_dolphin

    Lunch 2022

    Bought a packet of frozen gorgonzola, toasted walnut and endive ravioli from Roan Mills the other day. Made a walnut brown butter sauce with tarragon and added asparagus.
  14. I don't think that looks bad at all and I think it would also be fine with a 36" wide fridge of that same depth. That said, I wouldn't want it to stick out any further and I do think it would look a bit nicer if it were more flush. I totally agree that when the fridge is at the end of a run of cabinets, it's barely noticeable if it sticks out but when it's in the middle, it's more obvious. I think it also matters if that side view is one that you often see from other vantage points or just from within the kitchen while cooking. The former is more bothersome to me than the latter. Gorgeous kitchen in any case!
  15. I put my first thoughts on Sally Schmitt's Six California Kitchens over in the 2022 cookbooks topic. I think it's just lovely!
  16. I received Six California Kitchens a couple of weeks ago and just finished reading it. If you enjoy food-related memoirs, it's very much worth a read. I think the recipes sound delicious and look forward to cooking from the book. I've mentioned elsewhere that Sally Schmitt passed away last month which is certainly sad but what a lovely memoir she's left behind in this book. It's full of stories, recipes and photos woven together to take us through a lifetime of cooking - from her mother's 1930's kitchen where she first learned to cook to her restaurant kitchens (The Vintage Cafe, The Chutney Kitchen and The French Laundry) to the Apple Farm where instead of retiring, she continued to cook and teach cooking for years to the Elk Cottage on the Mendocino coast where she and her husband lived for 8 years before returning to the Apple Farm to live closer to family. Such a treat to read. I feel like I just had a cooking lesson from my grandmother....if, you know, my grandmother had started the French Laundry 🙃 Sally advises us to read through a recipe carefully, three times before beginning to cook, to clean as we go and to take a break for a few minutes if the soup seasoning isn't coming together as you'd like. The recipes are written with clear, simple instructions paired with the ingredients as they are used. Measurements are given in both cups and spoons and grams and milliliters. She doesn't use any equipment fancier than a blender or mixer and while she's mostly a "scratch" cook, she doesn't shy away from doctoring up some good old Best Foods Mayo. I haven't started cooking from the book yet but have quite a few recipes marked to try. Amazon's "Look Inside" feature includes the recipe listing and several recipes so you can see what's included and how they are formatted. That Amazon sample is from the Kindle edition so notes that appear in the margins of the hard copy are kind of merged in with the rest of the text although they appear in red for memories or stories or blue for notes that pertain directly to a recipe, the same text color scheme used in the hard copy.
  17. blue_dolphin

    Breakfast 2022

    And much like the items you mention, you can always put an egg on it - as I often do!
  18. blue_dolphin

    Breakfast 2022

    None needed - I'd start my day with a bowl of pasta over cereal - hot or cold - any day of the week! I've been rather remiss about my breakfasts of late. There was a nice leek quiche with asparagus, mushrooms and red bell peppers. This probably accounted for 3 or 4 breakfasts so the last slice gets a second photo: Then there was the last pumpernickel bagel from my recent batch. This one with the dried apricot and thyme cream cheese schmear from Cathy Barrow's bagel book: Both were good. The schmear was not as appealing to me as much as the others I've made from the book. Perhaps I could have gotten better dried apricots? Perhaps I don't like sweet stuff so much with my bagels? Tuna fish salad on seeded spinach waffle which was one of the last bread-type items in my house on this particular morning: No complaints from me. I always think of @Anna N when I make something like this because I know she very much dislikes tuna, at least in this form. I believe I made this more than once before yesterday's bakery run provided me with more options. Today's breakfast was the same as yesterday's, a roasted mushroom hand pie from a local bakery:
  19. blue_dolphin

    Lunch 2022

    My condolences, @Kim Shook, on your mom's passing. Where I grew up, it was very common to hold springtime burial services for those who had passed away in the winter while the ground was frozen. I always felt it was a bit wrenching for the families to revisit that grief at a distance and even more so for everyone who lost loved ones in these last few years and had to postpone gatherings. How lovely of your friend to handle the food, too. It's so nice to be able to visit with people over a bit of food and drink, especially when they may have traveled a ways. My lunch today - spaghetti with asparagus fashioned after the recipe for pasta alla gricia with sugar snap peas in Six Seasons. Asparagus going in for the sugar snaps is the obvious sub but I also used diced country ham instead of pancetta. Those little biscuit slices from Broadbent's are ever so handy to have on hand! The asparagus spears were big and fat but very tender and delicious. I peeled about the last inch or so but I don't think it was necessary.
  20. Not exactly the sweet treats shared thus far in this topic but I paid a visit to a local-ish bakery this morning and figured I could share here. Roan Mills grows the grain, mills it into flour and bakes a range of goods they sell at the bakery in Fillmore, CA and at local farmers markets. On the sweet side, today they had several kinds of croissants, scones and pies. The same family own Kenter Canyon Farms and since the pandemic, they have been offering their produce in the bakery. What I bought today: Clockwise from the nice organic asparagus are a bag of polenta, a Sonora sandwich loaf, sourdough baguette, English muffins, a bunch of tarragon, a bag of mixed cremini, shiitake and oyster mushrooms, a frozen packet of Gorgonzola, toasted walnut and endive ravioli . In the center, a very tasty roasted mushroom hand pie that I had for breakfast (brunch?) when I got home.
  21. I love Massa Organics brown rice. It's medium grain, not the short grain you ask for but it's absolutely chewy, hearty and not mushy, at least as I cook it in the Instant Pot. I realize it's not what you asked for but it's very good stuff. Not sure where you would most easily find it locally.
  22. This thread got me to check into what food delivery services might be available for low income seniors in my area so I consulted the website of the largest area food bank. I was rather shocked at just how low the threshold is. They are using 130% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines as the qualifier and show the table below on their website. Sounds reasonable, doesn't it? But before looking at the table, consider that the average rent for a 1-bedroom apartment around here is $2305/month. Good grief.
  23. I figure food is cooked if heat has been applied to it.
  24. Yes, I'm sure this is due to all the planning work you did up front but it really does seem to be moving quickly....of course I wasn't the one washing dishes in the bathroom 🤣 Looks really great!
  25. Does anyone have both the book being discussed in this thread, Super Easy Instant Pot Cookbook: Quick Prep, One-Pot, 5-Ingredient, 30-Minute Recipes (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) published this month and the somewhat older title, 5-Ingredient Instant Pot Cookbook: Simple Recipes to Get Meals on the Table Faster (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) that was published in Nov 2021? The titles are a bit similar so I was wondering how they differ?
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