blue_dolphin

I have one like this and quite like it, though I usually don't think to put it on until I've already gotten something on my clothes 🙃

I also had an airport breakfast - Huevos Rancheros, rice & beans from Loteria Grill @ LAX No amazing plating but it will keep me safe from plane food!

On Instagram, apparently.

Another thank you from me. Your food photos are amazing as usual and the before and after photos are striking. Thanks for sharing!

Interesting. Our HoJo's had icy cold metal cups - like your tongue could get stuck to them!

This video of a guy breaking his chocolate egg made me think of you: https://www.reddit.com/r/MadeMeSmile/comments/b2smef/this_guy_breaking_open_chocolate_eggs/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x

I have no personal input for you and this may go beyond what you are doing but for another perspective, you may want to listen to Episode 358 of Dave Arnold's Cooking Issues podcast where a vision challenged user called in looking for an induction unit with a knob rather than a membrane touch pad, or some other way to get positive, non-visual, feedback from adjustments. It's not a specific need that I have but I can imagine it being useful for many people.

I understand there have been diet associations with cottage cheese which would taint it for anyone singled out and required to eat it but I was still really surprised that the college students refused to buy it because they didn't want to be seen with it in the grocery store. This did bring back memories of a "Cheese Danish" recipe that Weight Watchers used to promote - basically cottage cheese with a little vanilla & cinnamon broiled on raisin bread toast. This version calls for ricotta but is basically the same thing. It is very, very far from a Danish pastry but it wasn't a bad breakfast. I may have to revisit that one!

Interesting article, @Alex, thanks for sharing. I'd never really thought about how cottage cheese was made and didn't realize that curds and "dressing" are made separately and then mixed together. I like an occasional summer meal of fruit, especially melon, and cottage cheese but I don't keep it on hand regularly. It always seems to go off rather quickly and grows weird pink slime.

I used to see frozen rabbit from Pel-Freez Foods in grocery stores. I haven't seen it since their animal welfare concerns but they are apparently still in business. The name always caught my eye as we used to have Pel-Freez prepare custom antibodies when I worked in the lab. I always wondered if they used the same rabbits to make antibodies and then sold the meat.

Egg, avocado & bacon onigirazu with brown rice (Massa organics) Somehow my egg cooked with an unintended bubble on one side which I filled with the avocado slices 🙃

I don't know how they'll be used but they look like beautiful sculptural pieces!

Back in this post, @Katie Meadow said the use of fish sauce in this NYT recipe for Citrus Salad With Peanuts and Avocado made her wobbly. @Smithy's friend reported the fish sauce being a bit much. With those advance inputs, I give you this Citrus Salad with Peanuts & Avocado: I used Red Boat fish sauce and it's quite salty so I reduced it by half. Tasting the dressing before tossing, I bumped up the rice vinegar a bit and had to omit the cilantro because I am out. Citrus and avocado are all at their peak at the local farmers market and that may have contributed to my positive response, but I like the salad and the little hit of umami that the fish sauce adds.

I spooned some lentils under my poached egg:

Here are a few more photos of my fava purchase. @ProfessionalHobbit/@SobaAddict70 mentioned them a few times in the past but I didn't find much other discussion. The bunch: Hollow stems: As I mentioned, the woman selling them said these could be steamed and eaten. Out of focus flowers. These are edible. They taste sort of nutty. The leaves, washed and ready to go: I got about 5 oz of leaves from that bunch. I'm reserving some for a salad and sautéing the rest.

They're just the ends and leaves of the fava bean plants. These have a few flowers on them, too. The leaves taste kind of like a somewhat bean-y spinach. I have never had them before but they were only $2 for a bunch so I figured I would get them to play around with. Joshua McFadden mentioned them in Six Seasons and suggested using them in salads or sautéing them. I found a few recipes using them to make pesto. The woman selling them at the market said the stems could be steamed. Not sure I will do that, but the first options are likely.

The recipe for this Spinach-and-Cilantro Soup With Tahini and Lemon appeared in the New York Times recently. Interesting. There's a small amount of tahini in the soup as well as in the drizzle on top. I added a little preserved lemon and would have liked more but even though I only used half the called for amount of salt, the soup is too salty for me and I didn't want to make it worse. On the upside, it reduced my refrigerator load by 2 bunches of spinach and 2 bunches of cilantro. I'm debating whether the 1.5 quarts of soup should go in the freezer or directly down the sink. Maybe I'll try one round of leftovers first.... Updating a day later after breakfasting on a bowl of this soup. It may be growing on me. The leftovers have earned a reprieve.

The way the recipe is written, most of the broth gets absorbed by the lentils, then you add back as much liquid as you want. I decided to leave it pretty stew-y!

Thanks for noticing that, I corrected my mistake!

Today's haul: Left to right, more or less. Flat leaf parsley, fava shoots/leaves, celery, 2 bunches of cilantro with sage and blood oranges above and a leek at the top. a few small tomatoes and 2 bunches of spinach.

I think foraged (the food finding word) and forged (the blacksmithing word) are distinct and have different origins. Edited to add that you probably don't need to get your brain to do anything, just straighten your glasses 🙃!

I was perusing The Zuni Café Cookbook towards lunch time when the phrase, "An easy, hearty soup that can be ready in half an hour," caught my eye. It leads off the header notes for the Lentil-Sweet Red Pepper Soup with Cumin & Black Pepper on p 167. Thirty minutes was perhaps a stretch, mostly because I had vegetables that were not long for the crisper drawer and required some attentive butchery but also because even Rancho Gordo's Black Caviar Lentils don't quite cook through in 15 minutes flat. But the timing was not off by a lot so I was shortly enjoying this bowl which is garnished with some of the braised bacon (p 205) that I made earlier for a pasta dish. I wouldn't say this was a revelation but it made for a nice quick lunch and I enjoyed it. An even quicker dessert from the book is this plate of Oranges with Rosemary Honey p 456. This is barely a recipe, just orange slices, drizzled with rosemary-infused honey but like the mandarin/stuffed date recipe I posted about yesterday, it's a simple, fresh fruit dessert that works well in the winter months. Since the orange slices are more sturdy, this one can easily be served on a big platter. I strained the pounded rosemary leaves out of the honey before serving because they can be unpleasantly pointy and added an easily-removed rosemary sprig to garnish.

The writing in the reviews has been the big draw of the Piglet for me. I probably have a selective memory for some gems but I haven't seen quite the same sparkle this year. Like Susan Orlean's 2011 review of The Frankies Spuntino Kitchen Companion & Cooking Manual vs Ottolenghi's Plenty, in which she says this about Plenty: The phrase, "Yotam Ottolenghi -- a mellifluous vowel parade which I'm sure is an anagram for something," delights me! And Gabrielle Hamilton's earlier round review in the same year where she frames the match up of Plenty vs Dorie Greenspan's Around My French Table as a horse race and takes particular exception with the photography in Greenspan's book:

I took a peek at Bottom of the Pot at the library and will have to go back and borrow it one of these days. Today's quarterfinal review made me want to purchase both Todd Richard's Soul and Nicole Ponseca and Miguel Trinidad's I Am a Filipino, which was already on my list. I like books organized by ingredient as Soul is and while I initially thought it might repeat too much of what I have in other cookbooks, a look at the contents over on EYB makes me think there is still much of interest. Since it's close to $30, I think I will request that the library purchase I Am a Filipino so I can get a look at it but those little buns that Kyle MacLachlan pretty much sold me!

I agree! I've got some crisped prosciutto already made and was tempted to sprinkle it on yesterday but decided to just enjoy it as written but I will try that variation while I've still got everything handy. Thanks! The little mandarin slices are prone to falling apart so it's the kind of thing that's worth taking a few minutes to plate individually.