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Lalo's Cacahuate Beans with Pico de Gallo from Cool Beans with flatbread from The Cook You Want To Be. This is a very flavorful pot o'beans. I had a bit of an issue with the cellophane-like texture of some of the dried chiles in the sofrito used to flavor the beans so I will be more careful about old chiles in the future and blend the sofrito if it happens again. I had the same breakfast yesterday and probably will have it again tomorrow.

Is there a quick explanation how to use it? I'm thinking the calculator is fairly self-explanatory (do correct me if I'm wrong) and you'd like to know what to do with the results of the calculations. This Perfectly Melting Cheese Slice has pretty good instructions for that part.

Should the gendarmes confiscate your stash, you could visit the Melty Cheese Calculator and make a pull-able cheese from something that actually tastes good! Also, I can't stop laughing about "American week" in a Lidl in France!

I can see me moving in and refusing to leave!

Thanks for your response! I think I'd find the price of that stuff more annoying than finding an empty bottle and a funnel but it's good to have choices!

It doesn't look all that different from various seafood boils I've seen dumped onto picnic tables covered with cloth or paper in US southern states. And, as in those boils, I see that @liuzhou's favorite vegetable is also represented in the Chinese versions he shared. Here's a photo from Serious Eats:

I tried a recipe for Flatbreads with Beet Yogurt and Jammy Eggs from Ali Slagle's I Dream of Dinner. Interesting and I got a veg in my breakfast but not something I need to repeat. Raw beet, jalapeño and lime zest are grated into yogurt and mixed with lime juice, ground coriander, salt & pepper, topped with a boiled egg and fresh mint and scooped up with a flatbread. I added a sprinkle of dukkah.

Do you live in El Cerrito? If so, can you say a little more about why it's such a PITA for you to dispose of the oil?

Welcome to eG, @rukie. For help with your sweet dish, make sure to visit the Pastry & Baking Forums and search for the dish you're working on. There's a lot of good information there and you might be able to fine some helpful discussions.. If you can't find anything, go ahead and start a new topic to ask your questions.

Our waste hauler specifically says not to put cooking oil in the compost bin. I save it in the bottles it comes in and put it in the regular trash, where is likely goes to a landfill, as @KennethT said. There are oil and grease recyclers that accept used cooking oil. Last time I checked, there wasn't one handy to me but should check again. Edited to add that there are plenty of places that accept used motor oil. I suppose because any place that sells it is required to accept it for recycling. Too bad the grocery stores don't have the same mandate to collect used cooking oil.

Today, May 13, is International Hummus Day. I guess there's a day for everything! Joe Yonan's book, Cool Beans is this month's book for the online cookbook club I participate in so I'm ready to celebrate with a few hummus recipes (and one bean dip 🙃), all made with Rancho Gordo beans. First up is the Perfectly Simple and Light Hummus, with a sprinkle of smoked paprika. This one is written to use canned chickpeas but I didn't have any so I used the ones I'd cooked. It uses relatively little tahini and no oil in the recipe so I was generous in pouring it on top. Next, we have the Black Chickpea Hummus with Black Garlic and Preserved Lemon. Lots of umami and nutty, earthy flavors in this one, brightened by the preserved lemon which is blended into the hummus and also used as a garnish. The book includes a recipe where this hummus is used as a base for roasted cauliflower that's really good. Today, I made Little Sesame's Creamy, Fluffy Hummus. Little Sesame is a restaurant in DC and is apparently the origin of this recipe. The chickpeas are to be cooked with baking soda to make them super soft. I don't find that Rancho Gordo beans need that so I left it out but gave the beans a good cook. This recipe uses both fresh garlic and garlic confit, slow-cooked in olive oil which adds a note of sweetness and complexity. That same garlicky oil is poured on top to serve and this is indeed a very fluffy, pillowy hummus. Last up is a Harissa-Roasted Carrot and White Bean Dip that I made with Rancho Gordo Alubia Blanca beans. I like the flavors and thought the little beans looked very cute as a garnish. Happy International Hummus Day!

Today is International Hummus Day so lunch was this Roasted Beet Hummus Bowl with Turmeric Tahini and Peanut Dukkah from Joe Yonan's Cool Beans, made with Little Sesame's Creamy, Fluffy Hummus from the same book, served with the Fluffy (and Crisp) Flatbreads from The Cook You Want To Be.

Thanks! I have the black garbanzos from Rancho Gordo. The are an Italian variety also known as ceci neri. They are smaller than regular chickpeas, they take longer to cook and the skin remains fairly firm even after the interior of the bean becomes soft and creamy. I think that textural contrast is their best feature so I like them in salads, etc. I'm not sure that hummus was their best use but it does use their cooking liquid which is very flavorful compared to regular garbanzos and I like the black garlic and preserved lemon mixed with the earthy beans so I'm glad I tried it. In the photo below, you can see the size differences. Regular garbanzos on the left and black garbanzos on the right. In each case, the raw beans are in the top row and cooked below. Due to the lighting, the cooked black garbanzos look a bit darker here and the ones used as a garnish for the black chickpea hummus in my previous post are a better representation.

A riff on a recipe in Joe Yonan's Cool Beans for roasted cauliflower served on black chickpea hummus with black garlic and preserved lemon. The cauliflower gets rubbed first with a mix of garlic, lemon zest and olive oil. Towards the end of the roast, it’s brushed with tahini and sprinkled with za'atar and black sesame seeds, roasted further to brown evenly and served on a bed of that black chickpea hummus. The cauliflower is supposed to be roasted whole but I broke it up into florets and there are supposed to be crunchy spiced roasted chickpeas to garnish but I failed to allow enough time to make them and went with arugula dressed with lemon and olive oil instead. Scooped everything up with some of the Fluffy (and crisp) Flatbreads from The Cook You Want To Be. Edited to add: here's a photo of that black chickpea hummus which I made with Rancho Gordo's black garbanzos. It's rather murky looking stuff but it tastes pretty good.

I really like your blackboard and need to try something similar. Since my big fridge broke, I've got an apartment sized one which gets over crowded and I tend to miss things until it's too late. I can try sticking a white board to that fridge and get myself some nice colored dry-erase markers to make it fun! Sounds like you're good on the asparagus but I'll toss out an idea or two anyway. In her book, Ruffage, Abra Berens has a "recipe" for pan-roasted asparagus with yogurt + shaved radishes that's barely more complicated than just roasting it but looks very pretty: If you have Josh McFadden's book, Six Seasons, there's a great recipe for Raw Asparagus Salad with Breadcrumbs, Walnuts & Mint on p 73. I've seen it online, too, so I suspect you can find it. It's a great way to show off really fresh, first of the season asparagus. You can top it with grilled salmon or throw in some beans to make it more of a meal. Also in Six Seasons is the recipe for Pasta alla Gricia with Slivered Sugar Snap Peas which is one of my most-made dishes. It uses twice the amount of vegetables as pasta and works equally well with slivered asparagus. I could go on but I think I should shut up now. Oh, wait. One more on the mint. Eric Kim's Korean American has a super easy recipe for Salt-and-Pepper Ribs with Fresh Mint Sauce. The ribs are cooked quickly in the oven and the mint sauce is the perfect bright contrast to them. OK. I need to address my own veg collection now!

I'm not dying to make one but I don't think that looks bad at all. Crispy tortilla, layers of meat as thin as a McD's burger 🙃. Is the meat seasoned with taco seasoning? Is there cheese? What is the yellow stuff? Looks too liquid to be cheese but too yellow to be Big Mac sauce. Are there pickles?

Wow, what a treat! That sounds like a lot of fun. Do let us know if it's as delicious as it sounds and Happy Birthday to John!

Hetty Lui McKinnon's book, Tenderheart, has a recipe for a no-churn Fennel and Black Pepper Ice Cream. It uses both fennel seeds and chopped fresh fennel which get blended with sweetened condensed milk, cream, ground black pepper and a little olive oil. It just gets frozen and scooped. I found my Blendtec did a good job on the fennel but I didn't care for the texture of the seed particles. I could have put it through a sieve but decided to just freeze it in a Creami container and give it a spin to take care of those seedy bits and I thought it worked well. It's supposed to get a drizzle of olive oil but I forgot. The flavors make for an appealing, almost palate-cleansing effect.

I reheated a couple of the sopes I made the other day in the CSO and they came out nice and crispy. Filled with black bean purée, pepper jack cheese, scrambled egg and TJ's Green Dragon hot sauce. Pico de gallo and avocado on the side

The breads are really good, take almost zero effort, require no oven and reheat nicely from the freezer. The yogurt gives them the kind of tang that usually takes a much longer to develop. I'm scooping up some hummus with one right now! Compared with the online recipe, in the book he gives the option of using melted butter, ghee or olive oil, gives a 60-90 min rise time, has you place the rolled out dough on an oiled sheet pan and flip so both sides get coated and doesn’t put additional oil in the skillet.

Yesterday, I made a batch of the Fluffy (and crisp) Flatbreads from The Cook You Want to Be by Andy Baraghani so I reheated one, topped it with a thick layer of the black bean purée from yesterday's sopes and some grated pepper jack cheese and put that back into the oven to get all melty. I planned to scramble an egg and make a folded breakfast sandwich but I couldn't resist frying the duck egg instead so I needed a knife and fork but didn't mind. With avocado and pico de gallo.

I'm glad you are home and up to posting and that you had good nursing care. Sorry about the food, the bed, the insurance issues and the long drive home. Sending healing thoughts!

Thanks for the tip, I picked up a bottle. Mine had a harvest date of April-Jun 2023 so around 6 months older than the olive oil I have from Katz Farm and Frantoio Grove here in California. I must arrange a tasting 🙃 Also, TJ's has Mobay cheese once again @ $6.99/5 oz piece. That's the Wisconsin cheese with layers of goat and sheep cheese separated by a layer of ash and the name is a play on the French Morbier which is a cow's milk cheese but also features that ash streak.

I know you want to know the pan temp but it’s a lot easier and more relevant to a lot of cooking to measure the temp of the pan’s contents - water for low temp, oil to go higher. I assume you did that first but only read back to the IR thermometer part. if you want to visualize that hot spot in the middle, a thin layer of granulated sugar will show it to you. Its melting point is 367°F

Black bean sopes from Cool Beans I used the red corn masa harina from Masienda and they're filled with a black bean purée, feta cheese, arugula dressed with lime juice and Trader Joe's Green Dragon sauce.