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I reheated a small portion of the peach & pistachio crisp that I posted about here yesterday and had it with some Greek yogurt. To save space in the fridge, I moved the rest of the crisp into a smaller container. Then I ate that, too

Yes! I was imagining two kids going at each other with the ketchup & mustard! Seeing that food-shooting gun brings to mind this Bug-A-Salt Rifle that shoots table salt. A friend has adopted it as a regular item of kitchen equipment in order to deal with an annoying fly problem. I had no idea that such a thing existed but she finds it quite satisfying. I'm considering the pink camo version myself

While my polenta was cooking this AM, I tossed together a peach version of the Pistachio-Plum Crisp from Dining In p 286. I used coriander instead of cardamom and a splash of bourbon instead of the rose water. I made a 1/4-sized recipe with 1 lb peaches and baked it in a 1 qt Pyrex dish. I like the flavors, especially the pistachios but some of the topping that slipped down in-between the peaches didn't crisp up and I didn't care for the flour-y texture of those bits. There's a small hiccup with the recipe calling for 1 cup of nuts while the instructions use 1.5 cups. The ice cream isn't necessary, I think I prefer the crisp on its own, but it was in the freezer, so I had to check.

Polenta with peperonata and Parmesan

I haven't subscribed to either one in several years either. I subscribed to Cooking Light for many years then switched to Eating Well for a while because I thought Cooking Light was turning into more of a lifestyle publication. I liked the recipes in both.

Crostini with crushed fava beans & 'nduja from Diana Henry's How to Eat a Peach How to Eat a Peach is a menu cookbook and this was listed as a starter for the roasted fish I cooked for dinner last night. I preped the fava bean spread but figured I wouldn't be hungry for the fish if I started with this so, breakfast.

Roast whole fish with fennel - these are some local blue rockfish Served with anise aïoli and roasted tomatoes with anchovy All recipes from Diana Henry's How to Eat a Peach. The fish and aïoli recipes are available online at this link.

The more cookbooks I read and Google recipe searches I run, the more I think there's nothing really new, that everything's been done before, by someone, somewhere. That said, I get a lot of enjoyment and inspiration from my cookbooks, from recipes I find online and from what I see folks cooking here, whether the dishes meet another's standards for real creativity or not. Deb Perleman, who writes the Smitten Kitchen blog, regularly draws on the inspiration of others for the recipes on the blog. She credits the source and generally presents a modified version, formatted and discussed in a different way than the original. Her cookbooks contain a lot of material not previously published on the blog but you can be pretty sure that there are similar recipes out there, somewhere. Rehashing? Of course, but I still enjoy trying them when one piques my interest. When I look over the books on my shelves, the authors whose recipes are most readily available online are Yotam Ottolenghi, Diana Henry and Melissa Clark, all due more to their newspaper columns than blogs. There are a lot of Alison Roman recipes out there, too, because she's written widely for a number of years. I'm not aware that she has a blog, but I'll look for it!

Amazon can be quite handy but as a household of three (which includes two cats), there is no value for me in Costco.

No, thank you.

I saw this noted on EYB the other day and finally got around to listening to the first two episodes of Yotam Ottolenghi's podcast, Simple Pleasures. The premise is that a different guest visits him to chat and eat a meal. The first guest was Nadiya Hussain, who won the Great British Bake Off a few seasons back and the second episode features Nigella Lawson. Not sure if this will just be a limited run to flog his new book, Simple - his website has a link to a recipe from the book for each episode - or if it will continue. The slow-cooked chicken with a crisp corn crust from the Nigella Lawson episode sounds awfully good!

I suspect this PSA will be in my mind during my next visit to the local Goodwill shop: A great reason to cheer

It was pretty incredible! I should have taken a photo of the brie, bacon and figs on the bread before I put it together - so much decadence smooshed together in that sandwich!

Fig, bacon and brie grilled cheese Based on this Blackberry, Bacon, and Brie Grilled Cheese from Fine Cooking but using some of the figs in caramelized honey that I made the other day. No butter on the bread, instead it's fried in bacon drippings - oh yeah!

Good point. The ChefAlarm comes with a single hole clip. I bought the separate clip for the Dot, before I had the ChefAlarm.

Spiced Black Lentil Salad with Oil-Packed Tuna, Radishes and Purple Potatoes from Dining In p 134. Looks pretty but kind of a meh salad for me. This starts out with the recipe for Spiced Lentils with Spring Onions p 133. The lentils are nicely seasoned and would be a fine side dish on their own. Though this is not suggested in the recipe, I tossed the potatoes and beans with some of the spiced garlic oil used for the lentils but should have done so while they were still warm.

Not sure if this has been reported already or not but the frozen puff pastry has returned, at least to my TJ's. It disappeared immediately after the holidays - like there was none left on Jan 2 - last year so I didn't get a chance to stock up. I will have to be more diligent this year.

According to Eat Your Books, 11 of 148 recipes in Dining In call for legumes, including 2 of the 6 recipes I've posted. Seven of them use beans. One of the 7 bean recipes calls for both beans and black eyed peas and and an additional 3 recipes call for lentils. One recipe calls for split peas. To further your perception, I expect I'll make another lentil dish today

It looks like the stirrer mechanism is rather different than a standard stir bar that can fly off the magnet and end up quivering at the far edge of the vessel instead of actually stirring.

The Thermoworks Dot also has an alarm. I have both the Dot and the ChefAlarm and the additional buttons make the ChefAlarm easier to set for alarms. They sell the $4 multi-hole clip to hold the probe and it works well, though similar clips are also available elsewhere.

Sadly, it's not homemade bread. Happily though, that toast is made from a Glenn Country Rosemary Batard from Roan Mills, operated by the folks who run Kenter Canyon Farms. They grow and mill the grains and bake the bread locally, in Fillmore.

@JAZ - I'd vote yes for both sections you mention - vegetables & sides and beans & grains. I know there is a whole lotta love out there for the one-pot IP miracle meal and there are some great examples just above in this thread with @ElsieD's pasta and @mgaretz's stew. As lovely as they are, a cookbook based entirely on that concept doesn't appeal enormously to me because of the challenge of cooking all elements to my taste. On the other hand, being able to expedite a potato salad, rice dish or grains is much more appealing to me. Also, a new IP user may find side dishes an easier entry point to the IP than committing to an entire meal. Just my 2 cents...I'm firmly in the camp that believes the IP is a great cooking tool but not a miracle meal machine, so take it for what it's worth!

Boiled egg, mashed with butter on toast and topped with crumbled bacon

The other day, I made the Peperonata from Six Seasons p 247. This photo is what we call pre-Peperonata, my mise en place for the recipe: The cherry tomatoes were late to the class photo and also took forever to burst - I had to smash them then cook further to reduce the liquid they released. In the end, I overcooked it so a lot of the peppers disintegrated but it's a super concentrated flavor bomb and I'm sure I'll find some uses for it. Here's one use - smashed beans on toast topped with some of that peperonata: Edited to add another use - on polenta

Melon and Goat Cheese with Red Wine and Lavender Dressing from Diana Henry's How to Eat a Peach. This is nice enough. Easy to put together and pretty on the plate but not as interesting as I thought it might be. Maybe my lavender wasn't up to snuff. Slices of melon are drizzled with lavender-infused/honey sweetened red wine and goat cheese. In the photo in the book, the red wine dressing looks rich and syrupy - as if it was a reduction - but there is no instruction to reduce it. Mine looked more like I spilled red wine on my melon 😮. Diana Henry confirmed on Instagram that spilled wine was about right so I guess that's as it should be.