blue_dolphin

Sweet potato & coconut pops dipped in white chocolate and topped with chopped walnuts The sweet potato mix was very thick and I was too lazy to address it so I ended up with those unsightly bubble holes that I was also too lazy to disguise with a more artful application of chocolate 🙃 I got the idea from this sweet potato & coconut popsicle recipe although I based it more on Nikki's Sweet Potatoes from 101 Cookbooks that is a standby for me. I intended to use the macadamia nuts that top that recipe but they tasted off so I went with the trusty walnuts.

After an uproar, the county revised their Halloween guidance on trick-or-treating from "Not Permitted" to "Not Recommended" Per the local paper, the state will be issuing guidance soon that should make it easier for counties to maintain consistency with neighboring areas. I rarely got many kids. My neighborhood has no streetlights and few sidewalks so it's really not a hotbed for trick-or-treating anyway. I used to give out those lunchbox-sized packs of chips, Fritos, Doritos, Cheetos, pretzels, etc and happily scarf up the leftovers. It won't hurt me to skip that practice!

Thanks. Takes me back to the days when I worked at McD's and we'd play around with various breakfast food/hangover remedy combinations. We could only get away with this early in the AM before the manager showed up. I recall 2 hash browns were often used as a bun substitute. Not sure I should still remember that quarter pounder/egg/cheese/Big Mac sauce version 🤣

My county health dept has banned trick or treating for this year. Wonder if the candy has been marked down?

Not exactly from a bakery, this is the Steak & Stout Pie from the freezer case at Trader Joe's. Most decidedly not health food. Cooking Light has it on their list of most unhealthy meals at TJ's. 800 calories, which is certainly a lot but also 1189 mg sodium per pie, which is really appalling. In other times, I might have skipped it. Well, in other times, except for this thread, I'd never have given it a glance. But once I picked up the box, I could sense people behind me so instead of reading the label, I threw it in my cart and moved on. Did I mention that I was very hungry? $6.99 or ~$3.50/serving. There are 2 pies in the box, both individually wrapped. Cooking time given on the box, from frozen is 45-50 min @ 350°F Unsurprisingly, I found this unpleasantly salty. But if I was hungry at TJ's, I was starving by the time I got home and waited 50 more min for it to cook in the CSO, so I dug in anyway. I'm sure I'd be happy with 1/4 the amount of salt, which would still be a very high sodium meal. Or high sodium day. A pity, because it's otherwise it's quite good. Lots of meat, a little potato, a nice amount of (very salty) gravy and a mostly flaky crust. One or two meat bits should have been better trimmed but most of it was really quite good, aside from the salt. One small area of crust was overly thick but that was all that I left behind. If you're a salt hound, I recommend it. Meanwhile, I'm drinking a lot of water and wondering if dialysis would be advised....

Good luck with both the reno and relo, @Porthos! I tend to prefer well-maintained originals over quick-flip renos but addressing deferred maintenance so the property looks well-cared for sounds very wise, especially getting rid of small amounts of mold that you can deal with safely. A buyer would surely present fabulous quotes from mold-abatement companies in order to lower the price. Please keep us in the loop with progress updates!

I think I'm tired of cooking just for myself. That's generally the case but I still had friends over or brought dishes to gatherings, cookies to the library, stuff like that added a little variety. I should seek out more sharing opportunities, aside from the popsicles I've been deluging people with!

My current favorite are these vintage brown drip mugs from McCoy Pottery that I retrieved from my late parents house. The shape of the small handle includes a perfect rest for your middle finger below and feels very comforting to me. Good memories.

I'm with you! I blame the recent stretch of hot weather with threats of rolling blackouts (so no oven) and now the beige, smoky skies. And, of course, the pandemic. They've all teamed up to make me less active and that's pretty much shut down my appetite and interest in making anything other than popsicles...and even that is waning! I'm trying to avoid going to the store. If I forget an ingredient for something I planned to make, I'd normally just pick it up the next day. Now, I say, "Forget it, I'll have another egg salad sandwich!"

You should be able to go to the App store, search for iMovie and download it.

Good suggestion. I don't care for it cooked, either, but like it raw. Cut into julienne, kohlrabi can replace cabbage in any sort of slaw-type salad.

That inexpensive little waffle iron I own is non-stick so no sticking and no mess.

Poached eggs on toast... ...in the yellow morning light we have around here

Spaghetti waffle per this recipe: Waffled Spaghetti Pie with Pecorino and Black Pepper Not bad!

Having them already cooked to mush does take a lot of options off the table. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's damson recipes You could make great popsicles, too!

Just realized that I forgot to share my other 2 hand pies. First up is a ham & cheese hand pie: Reheated in the CSO on convect-bake @ 350°F I thought this might be a thin slice of boiled ham and Swiss cheese rolled up to fit but it was actually good sized chunks of ham in a very cheesy sauce Nice. No issues with doughy crust on this one. I left the pizza hand pie for last. Sort of regretted buying it. Doesn't pizza belong in a yeasted crust like a calzone? I reheated this one on steam bake @ 425°F. The bottom felt soggy and damp so I put it back in on convect-bake for a while to dry it out. I'm not sure the steam did the crust any great favors as you can see by the way the piece on the right sort of drapes over the half on the plate. See the ham & cheese above for comparison. Even though it was a bit soft, the crust was cooked through - no doughy layer - the filling was very tasty with thin slices of pepperoni, a chunky, flavorful sauce and a good amount of cheese. I ended up enjoying this in spite of my prejudice.

I think that looks great, @liuzhou. I didn't reply earlier since I've never been to Cincinnati but I'll chime in with my 2 cents. Love that you are including a squid recipe as it's one of the first recipes I learned from my Chinese coworkers. I still have her recipe on a page of lab notebook paper, titled, "Protocol for Squid" complete with the instruction that removing the skin from squid was like peeling meninges from brains and you just do your best to remove it but don't worry if there's a little left ❤️ Anyway, you say that "your seafood purveyor" should be able to prepare the squid. In my US supermarket experience small squid are usually available at the fish counter either whole or pre-cleaned and offered as separate tubes & tentacles or sometimes rings. Frozen are most economical, but do require cleaning. The duck recipe calls for a pound of duck meat, preferably from legs & thighs. I can buy whole duck, leg quarters or breasts, all frozen but have never seen frozen duck leg/thigh meat that would be easy to chunk up like the dish in the photo. Nor would I know how much to buy to get a pound. I was wondering if boneless, skinless chicken thighs could be offered as a non-traditional and less desirable alternative? You do say that you've been told that the duck meat is available in Cincinnati so you should probably just ignore me on that! As mentioned above, mustard greens could be a challenge which made me wonder whether a substitute could be offered, again with the caveats that it's not traditional or desirable. I know writing up recipes like this takes a lot of time and thought and how annoying it must be to be asked about substitutions for something that you've already thought about carefully so a preference to stick with the traditional is very understandable. Since pork is inexpensive and easy to find here, I was wondering if you'd considered including a pork dish. I don't know if you are expected to highlight certain sorts of dishes typical to Liuzhou but in the past you'd shared some student recipes for the common and ubiquitous tomato/egg dish. I thought they were quite endearing and liked knowing that was often the first dish they learned to cook. Any chance you could share one of their recipes for that? Or rope a young person into writing one up for you so you have proper permissions? It's so simple, maybe too simple for this project but that also makes it quite approachable.

While the layers in my pops don't look quite as pretty as the one held by the young gentleman above, they do taste pretty good. Blueberry, mascarpone & peach

It's supposed to be 108°F today. These roasted peach & bourbon pops will be on the menu for later in the day. Note they are modeling their new bags 🙃

Nice pops, @BeeZee! I love blueberry and the addition of cassis sounds perfect. Re-answering your question because I ran out of snack-sized zip top bags the other day and didn't need anything else from the store so I ordered these popsicle bags from Amazon. They have an adhesive strip so don't need separate stickers like some similar bags. You put the pops into the bags, peel off the protective strip to expose the adhesive and fold it over. The result is a more professional appearance than the zip tops. Also, less bulky for freezer storage. The price, $6.99/200, is comparable to what I pay at Target for the zippies. I'm sure the pros have better options for volume purchases of such things but these seem a reasonable option for me. Since they're just folded over instead of zipped, there may be implications for odor transfer or freezer burn. Right now, I'm giving them away at a brisk pace so I'm not too worried but will keep an eye on it.

@Shelby, are you doing anything for this very odd September Derby Day? Anyone else? Mint juleps aren't really my thing but maybe I'll make some sort of cocktail with mint since I have quite a lot.

Excessive heat warning in effect here through Monday night. Passion fruit & yogurt: Got the passion fruits at the farmers market. Should have bought more but this was sufficient for a test run Peach & yogurt: Fig, goat cheese & honey I considered adding some chopped, toasted walnuts to the goat cheese mixture. Consulted with my cousin, who thought it was a bad idea so I left them out. I've got a bit of that mixture left so I'll try freezing up a little ice cube with nuts so I can see.

I've never had a MoonPie. Seems like they might be nice if you were to freeze them. Especially the mint ones. Yes. It's hot here. The pumpkin spice variant didn't sound awful to me until I saw the orange-colored coating. No, thank you.

Here's the Marie Callender restaurant pot pie deets from their website.

This comment is pretty good, too: