blue_dolphin

I got my first vaccine dose yesterday in Ventura, a few miles away from the only WinCo in my area so I went in to take a look. Verified the whole frozen ducks as mentioned by @Toliver. They were $2.99/lb. Also the goat meat, lamb legs, pork belly and frozen head-on prawns that @David Ross mentioned were all there along with beef soup bones and both pork and beef neck bones. The bulk section is indeed huge, though right now, it's all pre-bagged. I liked the way much of the produce was set out right in the shipping boxes rather than being arranged into artful piles by store staff. Less handling and potential for bruising. It's a huge store and I didn't take the time to go through everything but I'll go back again. Thanks all for bringing it up! Like I said, I'd never heard of it before.

I would also be delighted to receive a wonderful butter with a great loaf of bread, cornbread or the like. The nice thing about butter, assuming it’s wrapped well to protect it from picking up odors, is that it keeps in the freezer for a long time. I like to keep some of those small bars of Bordier butter in the freezer so I can make up a little basket with bread and butter to go along with jars of marmalade or jam that I’ve made. Always very well received.

The Aldi that recently opened near me offers delivery via Instacart and curbside pick-up. That said, I’m not familiar enough with their offerings to order sight-unseen.

Another option I should have mentioned, especially if you are concerned about a high alcohol burn, is to just infuse the zest into a vodka you find acceptable, maybe giving it a bit longer if you are going with a lower proof option. Then, just strain and add your sweetener to taste rather than diluting further with additional vodka. You can add a little water if it's still too "hot" but I'd let it sit a while before you decide if that's needed. I went that route using lime zest and tequila and got a nice result.

A lot of recipes say to let the ingredients "marry" for about a week or so after sweetening so I'd recommend that you taste it again in a week and see if that affects the burn you are tasting. I generally use an inexpensive 151 proof vodka for the initial extraction and don't have an issue with the harshness after it's been diluted and rested a while. It looks like you used a microplane to zest the the lemons, I don't think you need more than a month for the extraction, though you could try. I've done all sorts of things when I forgot a batch! It's possible that the missing lemon flavor is really tartness so you could also try squeezing a little wedge of lemon into your glass to see what you think. I'm sure it's not at all traditional but I like the addition of the fresh flavor. And your glasses are perfection! Edited to add that this recipe from Kathy Casey's book Sips & Apps is a delicious use of limoncello in a cocktail.

For unknown reasons...maybe the carbonara that @Ann_T prepared for Moe on Monday...I made pasta for breakfast yesterday and today. Today, I made Eric Kim's NYT recipe for Creamy Asparagus Pasta featured in this recent article. That's probably about 1/4 of the suggested amount of roasted seaweed on top. I added the rest after the photo and it was an appropriate amount but would have photographed like a bowl-o-seaweed. I dialed back the pasta and upped the asparagus to 3 oz each/serving. Cooking the pasta in a kelp broth and adding more to infuse the cream sauce is a good move. I enjoyed this though it's not as decadent as the amount of cream would suggest. As the title of the article says, this is not an umami bomb, it's a balm. Yesterday was a recipe for Pasta With Marinated Artichoke Sauce from Food52, where marinated artichokes get blitzed into a sauce. A few are reserved and added at the end. I added asparagus and red bell pepper for color and texture. This was OK. Glad I tried it but no need to do it again. Lemon zest or maybe some preserved lemon might help. Maybe a different brand of artichokes, too. For marinated artichoke pasta tricks, I prefer a Mollie Katzen recipe that cooks sliced onion and garlic in the marinade. I generally add other veg to that one, too.

Viewed on my iPad, the shadows in the rice are warm rather than neutral but I'd stop short of calling the whole image orange.

I know. I was going to look for an April Fool's thread but it just made such a good fit here with the Peeps Pepsi and root beer Peeps 🙃

Green Giant® and PEEPS® Partner to Introduce Limited-Edition Cauliflower Flavored Marshmallow Bunnies Available beginning April 1. Photo from PRNewswire at the link above 🤣😂🤣

Yep, this one especially. It's a relatively small, black-owned, family business specializing in catering which, of course, has disappeared so they've been doing take-out to keep the lights on. Hope they make it!

It was really good. He's got the soft shell crabs on the menu as an a la carte item and I'm seriously tempted to order again but 2 decadent meals in holy week doesn't seem right!

Wrong forum 🙃!

Took myself out to lunch....well take-out...and ordered a crispy soft shell crab po'boy Edited to add that I considered posting this over in the Ladies Who Lunch thread but it's not exactly a ladylike sandwich is it? Here's a link to the photo the restaurant posted on Instagram this am which lured me in: https://www.instagram.com/p/CNFqcZdgC1a/

The price here was 95 cents/lb for the spiral cut hams. That price is still the same here but I am tempted by this week's 69 cents/lb for the unsliced

Toastie with sautéed garlicky spinach topped with blue cheese-caramelized onion butter (from dinner posted over here) and broiled

Thanks! I've been especially annoyed by portobello "burgers" where their slippery selves squirt out the opposite side of the bun with the first attempted bite. I marinated these with sherry vinegar, olive oil, shallot, smoked paprika and a little Worcestershire which I think helped. I ate 2 🙃

Wow, it's been a while! With this week's >80°F weather, I made a small batch of pear, ginger and cream pops from the People's Pops book. I added a splash of King's Ginger liqueur. I've been enjoying them and it looks like it should be back down in the 70's by the weekend so this batch should get me through.

As promised, I eventually got around to the Steaks Dripping in Blue Cheese-Onion Butter p 55 from This Will Make It Taste Good. Since I'm not much of a steak eater, I used a big portobello mushroom instead. It was very good and I'm looking forward to finding other uses for the blue cheese/caramelized onion butter. Crispy smashed potatoes and basic broccoli & red bell peppers in the background.

One of the "no brainer" ideas in the R-Rated onion section of This Will Make It Taste Good is to tuck them inside a grilled cheese sandwich. Did I need Vivian to tell me about caramelized onions and grilled cheese? No, but I thought of it today because I took caramelized onions out of the freezer to make the compound butter for the Steaks Dripping in Blue Cheese-Onion Butter which I plan to make with portobello mushrooms instead of steak. I was getting hangry waiting for all of that so I made a quick grilled cheese to tide me over: Mix of Jarlsberg and sharp cheddar plus a layer of spinach sautéed with garlic in there, too. I feel much better now. Stay tuned for the mushrooms!

Continuing on with the Sweet Potential chapter of This Will Make It Taste Good, we have I Wish I Was A Cheese Baller p 312, which is not a cheese ball but a baked cheese spread that includes some fruit preserves. It's very similar to the Party Magnet cheese ball from Deep Run Roots with additional cream cheese instead of butter (which would surely break and melt in the oven) and Sweet Potential fruit preserves instead of dates. The photo in the book looks like strawberry or raspberry, which did not appeal to me. Nor did the pineapple, blackberry, kumquat or apple Sweet Potential preserves that I made recently. One of the things Vivian says in the beginning of the chapter is that we all have Sweet Potential in our fridges already so I reached into my pantry for a jar of the Whole Fig and Lemon Preserves that I made last year from the recipe in Deep Run Roots. They were more cooked down than the syrup that Vivian describes for Sweet Potential so I dumped the jar into a pan, added some water and simmered for a while to get them back to that consistency. I also gave the figs a rough chop since the whole ones are way bigger than cracker size. I made a half batch and baked off a small 2.5 oz portion so I could test it. I used walnuts instead of pecans because I like them with figs & blue cheese. Here's my tester portion: It's very luxurious. I was worried about it being too sweet but it was delicious and I'm sold on adding the fruit preserves. I also liked the small size so I packed the rest into similar 2.5 and 4 oz ramekins lined with plastic wrap. Once they'd firmed up, I pulled them out and stashed them in the freezer. I took one of the small ones out of the freezer last night, unwrapped it, put it into the ramekin and baked it in the CSO @ 400°F for 12 min, sprinkled on the nuts and it was perfect. Thanks to my above efforts to thin down the fig preserves, I now have fig syrup to work with so I turned back to the cocktail page and made a Fig (instead of Cherry) Boulevardier p 315. I dialed back on the syrup and adjust proportions to my taste and it was delicious. I think a Fig Old Fashioned or Fig Manhattan will be happening, too. Just the thing to have with the cheese!

In my area, the sweet stuff is called cream of coconut and like @heidih said is often found with cocktail or baking supplies. Coco Lopez is a popular brand. As described here from thekitchn:

Bean dips & veggies used to be one of my staple lunches to pack for work. Aside from hummus, I hadn't made any in quite a while and forgot how handy it is to have some at the ready!

Happy hour nibbles...aka dinner...from This Will Make It Taste Good. A trio of bean dips from the Party In A Can Bean Dip p 164 with fresh veggie dippers. I made the main recipe on this page a few months ago but I can't remember if I posted about it. It was a curious conglomeration of beans, Castelvetrano olives, sun-dried tomatoes, Citrus Shrine preserved lemon with lemon juice, garlic, salt & olive oil, whizzed to smoothness in the blender. It was pretty good, especially the next day as Vivian says in the recipe. Today, I had 3 of the variations: The green one on the left has beans, Herbdacious, Greek yogurt, anchovies, capers, lemon Citrus Shrine, lemon juice and olive oil. Upper right has beans, Can-Do-Kraut, R-Rated Onions, sour cream, Parmigiano Reggiani, hot sauce and olive oil. Lower right has beans, Red Weapons, Lime Citrus Shrine and olive oil. All were made with Rancho Gordo Vallarta, Alubia Blanca or Giant Lima beans instead of canned cannellinis. All were good. All were better the next day. I had the most doubts about the one with the kraut and caramelized onions but it was surprisingly good. None of these variations indicate quantities of the ingredients so you need to play around so they suit your taste. I also made the one with Quirky Furki, soy sauce, sesame oil, rice vinegar and olive oil but I didn't get the flavors where I wanted which was disappointing as I was looking forward to it. I'll probably try again. There's another one with LGD, avocado, lime, lemon Citrus Shrine, honey and olive oil. Not sure about that or the one with Sweet Potential but maybe I'll try them when I have some leftover beans handy.

Those could be deadly for my bacon-loving cat!

Oh yes, I agree with you. I would never think of omitting it. Just wanted to note an observation I've had with a few photos in the book that don't exactly match up with the recipe instructions.