blue_dolphin

As mentioned, I have an LC tomato that's pretty much the same size as this green pepper. I find the small size quite handy for things like cooking 1/2 lb of dried beans or braising a small-ish piece of meat, serving 2 or maybe 3 at the most. Not long ago, I used it for a half-batch of the beef cheek barbacoa from Josef Centeno's Amá with about 1.5 lbs of beef cheeks. Perfect size to cover that amount of meat in liquid for a braise. But most people don't braise miniature amounts of stuff like that. They want to serve more people and maybe have leftovers. The bottom surface is probably ~ 6-inches across at the base so you can't really sear anything big at all. It's a handly little pot for someone like me but I wouldn't embark on a braising binge over it. It's certainly a cute little serving dish so that's a good idea. It would only bake very small loaves of bread and in the ice bucket application pictured, it could probably hold 1 glass, surrounded by ice. Maybe 2 or 3 shot glasses in a bed of crushed ice.

I enjoyed this LA Times article about a San Diego photographer who turned his studio kitchen into a small bakery during the pandemic. With no street-level storefront and wanting to avoid customers crowding into the elevator to pick up bread, Izola Bakery lowers the still-warm bread to the street in baskets. San Diego bakery’s warm bread is coming right down, by basket

I use it where a cover is useful to manage evaporation. A braise is generally defined as being first seared, then cooked in a covered pot. If I cook dried beans in an uncovered pot, I need to add liquid more frequently than I can remember so I find a lid handy.

I went over and picked up a piece of the Enraptured Blanc this morning around 8 AM. They didn't have a ton of it in the case where they've been displaying these specials. Three 1 lb wheels and about an equivalent weight in cut wedges. I chose a half wheel, about 1/2 lb and skedaddled.

I have a red tomato-shaped Le Creuset pot of about the same size that I also received as a gift. I use it for beans, braises, casseroles, etc. same as any enameled cast iron. I've found it quite handy to have a smaller-sized baker.

This may be too close to juicing and I know you said you weren't into that, but when I was doing breakfast smoothies, cooked beets were a regular. With a fistful of raw cranberries for tartness, a few other berries for flavor. Whatever else you like. At the other end of the beverage spectrum, Lindsay Jean Hard's book, Cooking with Scraps makes a very pretty tequila infused with beet peels and trimmings. It picks up an earthy flavor and a bit of sweetness from the beets and is quite sippable as is. The book uses it in a beet peel margarita Another almost alarmingly colored beet dish is the Bright-pink pasta from Anna Jones in A Modern Cook's Year. You sauté grated beets and capers in olive oil, then add drained pasta and some of it's starchy water to bring it all together. A sprinkle of dill, squeeze of lemon and maybe some goat cheese or feta and you're done. Finally, there a good recipe for Puréed beets with yogurt & za'atar from Ottolenghi's Jerusalem. I cut the date syrup back by half and like to swirl the beet and yogurt mixtures in the serving bowl rather than mixing to a uniform pink. Beet salads that I really like are the Carrot and Beet Slaw with Pistachios and Raisins from Josh McFadden's Six Seasons, the Christmas Lima Beans & Quinoa with Beets & Avocado from Rancho Gordo's Heirloom Beans and Beets with Lentils and Yuzu from Ottolenghi's Plenty More. The beans or lentils make the last two suitable as a vegetarian main dish salads.

Once they get sizzling, I cover the pan for ~ 45 min, stirring occasionally. Then remove the lid and stir more frequently for another half hour or 45 min. That timing is going to depend on how many onions you use, how wet they are and the size and shape of your pan. In my kitchen ~ 4 lbs of onions in a 12-inch cast iron skillet will go from here: Through here, where I've removed the lid and have been stirring a bit: To here, where I have about 1.5 cups of nicely caramelized onions:

@CanadianHomeChef has a nice temp chart that suggests 275 deg F for caramelized onions. I’ve had good results with that temp.

Soups for sure. The Turnip Soup with Turnip Greens in Deborah Madison's Greens Restaurant Cookbook is easy and excellent. I've made it with an abundance of CSA radishes, too. If you add a snip of beet root, it will come out a pretty pink, otherwise beige. Not sure if you have Vivian Howard's Deep Run Roots but it has good chapters on beets and rutabagas. The bacon-roasted rutabagas that she serves with pork tenderloin is really good as are the basic stewed rutabaga. I enjoyed the rutabaga relish, too. I haven't tried the Duck, Date & Rutabaga Potpie with Duck-Fat Biscuit Crust but it sounds excellent. In the beet chapter, the roasted beet salad with orange segments and pecans nestled on a buttermilk blue cheese dressing is a favorite of mine. The beet tzatziki that goes with the grilled lamb kebabs is delicious and goes with other things as well. In Indian-ish, Priya Krishna has a really good Mustard Seed and Curry Leaf Carrot Salad. If you julienne the carrots instead of grating them, this salad will keep in the fridge and add a fresh crunch to plates for a week, kinda along the same lines as the sort of carrot/daikon quick pickle that @MokaPot mentioned but with a different flavor profile. In general, Indian cookbooks are a good resource for pickle-y/salad-ish/chutney sorts of things to make and I find that root vegetables can often be interchanged or combined. I liked the Beetroot and Green Chili Pickle that I made from Mowgli Street Food and can imagine it working with other vegetables as well.

Done!

Two pounds of Georgia pecans from the friend I made the quiche for last week. They are fresher than anything I usually see in the stores around here.

I have Amazon Prime. Looks like that makes me eligible for free delivery of $35 minimum orders from WF. That would be a bigger piece of cheese than I had in mind.

Me, too. One of my favorites. I got 2 of the Prosecco-washed Harbison on Saturday. I like Red Leicester (tomorrow) and the Rogue Enraptured Blanc (Wed) sounds good but not sure they are worth 2 more trips.

Thanks. I learned from that (and verified elsewhere) that the Italian Nocellara olives that TJ's been selling are the same olive variety sold as Castelvetranos

I've been feeling so isolated, I'm sure it did me more good to feel useful than anything else!

The other day, I went over to Roan Mills in Fillmore. As usual, I asked a few friends if I could pick up anything for them. One asked for a vegetarian quiche and a vegetarian pot pie, among other things. They didn't happen to have veg versions of either so with her permission, I substituted a potato tart. The guy at the counter told me it was good and only $15 instead of $25 for the quiche. "TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS???" I said (to myself) , "I can easily make her a quiche! When I dropped the stuff off, I asked her to pick a day for quiche. She was ever so grateful and picked today. Here's the bake, slightly overbaked, but OK: Spinach, mushroom & onion on the left, broccoli, red bell pepper and onion on the right. I also included a bag of the caramelized onion and cheese pull-apart rolls I'd made from Vivian Howard's recent book. She's got a stressful job, she's working at home along with her husband and 2 kids and said needing to prepare lunches and dinner everyday was pushing her over the edge so she was delighted. Hope the kids will eat them! After the holidays, I'll set up a schedule to prep lunch for them once a week or so.

The cookies are good. I'm having one with my coffee now! Thanks for the duck input. I might go back and get one. It's not really any different from a wet brine and while I wouldn't want to pay $10/lb for water, at $2.49/lb, it's not so bad. Thirteen bucks for a bit of entertainment couldn't be all bad!

Yes, I think they are supposed to be fake Triscuits. Haven't tried them yet. I meant to get plain but grabbed the cracked pepper flavor by mistake. If they're OK, I'll go back for the plain. I used to buy the dearly departed TJ's ones all the time and it would be handy if these are a good substitute.

When I saw them, I thought I remembered you mentioning that they were good. Of course, there was hardly anyone in there but it does seem quite spacious. They had the aisles marked for one-way traffic, not sure anyone was paying attention. That port wine cheese in the little brown Wispride crock was a regular holiday treat when I was growing up so I had to get it for old times sake! This doesn't taste quite as sharp as I remember but it's not bad.

The Opal apples have been sold at Trader Joe's for a few years. I've bought them there and liked them. I haven't looked lately as I've been getting apples at the local farmers market.

Yesterday was the Grand Opening for the Aldi store in my neighborhood I drove by the morning and saw that the parking lot was mostly empty so I decided to stop in. No crowds! I was apparently in some kind of porky mood as aside from some bananas that missed the photo, this is what I ended up with: It's about 2 miles away, so within walking distance as long as I don't buy too much stuff. Also, they had these whole frozen ducks for $2.49/lb. I was kind of put off by the "seasoned with approx 12 percent of water, salt and sodium phosphate." Has anyone tried one?

I put the cheeses I'm interested in on my calendar and today's Cowgirl Creamery Hop Along is the first one I marked. I also see that they are opening at 7 AM (they used to open at 8 AM here) so I will pop over shortly and report back. Edited to add that at 8AM, they had a fair number of pre-cut pieces and 2 wheels in this small “specials” case. There were more wheels and cut pieces back with the rest of the cheese.

Gin and Tonic

I haven't made either one of them but I learned yesterday that next week is Collard Week so they are on my list for sure. See my post here if you want more info on Collard Week 🙃

From this segment, on Evan Kleiman's Good Food podcast, I learned that there is an Heirloom Collard Project and that next week, beginning Dec 14, is 2020 Collard Week with a variety of presentations scheduled: I'm guessing that these presentations will end up archived on the Culinary Breeding Network's YouTube channel as I see that recent Garlic Week and Radicchio Week sessions are there.