blue_dolphin

Happy Birthday, @Anna N - what an amazing birthday lunch! Now I understand today's appearance of the CSO!

@BonVivant, I don't know what sort of soft boiled egg practice you think you need. That one looks absolutely perfect - I don't think I'd be able to peel one like that without breaking it - well done! Everything else looks gorgeously delicious as usual. My much more plebeian lunch: Merguez with sweet potatoes, beans & chermoula from Diana Henry's Simple with yogurt and warm naan.

Spicy honey drizzled over homemade ricotta and walnuts on toast. Apple slices alongside.

Welcome to the club, @Anna N & @PattyO!

See @andiesenji's report on using coffee flour in baking in this post. Sounds interesting.

Have you searched on the AJ Madison website? They list a 36" Viking induction cooktop with 6 zones and a Dakor with 9 zones. Quite a few 5 element induction cooktops are also listed. The biggest is a 42" Miele.

I had extra beans and sausage from Sunday's Merguez with Beans, Eggs & Feta from Diana Henry's Simple so they got reheated with a fresh egg. I nailed the egg but forgot to add the feta. Still good.

Another plate of pasta. This one is Fusilli (standing in for the specified orecchiette) with Spicy Sausage & Parmesan from Julia Turshen's Small Victories. I'm not sure what I think about the use of cream in this one.

Made the recipe for Roasted Cauliflower with Anchovy Bread Crumbs from Julia Turshen's Small Victories (recipe online here) and served it on spaghetti with lots of black pepper

Carrot and Avocado Salad with Tahini from Julia Turshen's Small Victories. Recipe found via Amazon's "Look Inside" tool.

Olive oil-fried egg with yogurt + lemon from Julia Turshen's Small Victories for breakfast today. The lemony, eggy combination tasted good with the roasted asparagus I served alongside. I'm not sure I would have liked it as much on its own.

Avocado prices did go up around here last summer but as this article in Fortune shows, they are even higher now. Small-med size avocados that used to be 3/$1 at my local Farmers market are now $1 each.

Resurrecting an ancient thread here! I haven't seen this trick mentioned here and thought it was worth sharing. I recently had a chance to try the quick water/microwave method of softening brown sugar that Stella Parks wrote up on Serious Eats last month. Check the link for details, but basically you put the sugar in a zip-top bag, add 3.5 g water/8 oz sugar, seal the bag, microwave for 15 sec and then knead it through the bag until all the lumps are gone and it's soft. I had my doubts as my hunk o'sugar was hard as a rock but it worked like a charm and the sugar was soft and ready to go after just a few minutes of kneading.

Our previous poster's prejudice against beans inspired me to include them in my breakfast. I can be like that sometimes . Merguez with Beans, Eggs & Feta from Diana Henry's Simple. The recipe is available online here. The recipe title suggests it is baked but it's entirely done on the stovetop. I used Merguez sausages from my local farmers market and subbed Rancho Gordo Marcella beans for the canned white beans and limas specified in the recipe. As it cooked, I thought the bean-tomato balance was a bit off so I added a couple Tbsps of sun-dried tomato purée from my freezer stash. I liked this a lot. It would work almost any sausage/bean combo.

Salmon "burger" Tomatoes on the side.

Scrambled eggs with assorted other stuff: Leftover pea & basil purée topped with a garlic/basil/tomato olive oil mixture, Roasted Radishes with Kalamata Dressing from Julia Turshen's Small Victories (recipe found online) and bruschetta. I thought the radishes would come out sort of starchy like potatoes but roasting really concentrates the sweetness and the sherry vinegar and olives add a nice contrast.

Here is a link to the Santa Monica Farmers Markets with locations and times. The Wednesday downtown market is biggest, followed by the Saturday market in the same location. The Sunday market on Main St. is a smaller market (30 farmers vs 75 farmers on Wed and 50 on Saturday) so I'm not sure if you'd see anything unusual there but it's a pleasant thing to do on a Sunday morning. I lived in Santa Monica for quite a few years but it's been a while so I won't try to recommend any restaurants.

Salmon with tomatoes, pea & basil purée from Diana Henry's Simple I cooked the salmon sous vide, then seared it just long enough to get a nice crispy skin.

I've given up on their pie crust. At its best, it can be a lovely buttery crust but at its worst....well, I think you've showed us! I buy pre-made crust to save myself time and aggravation and I spent way more time piecing and patching the last TJ's crust than I've done with any of my own homemade efforts. I'm sticking with the doughboy!

I bought watercress twice for recipes from Simple and found it disappointingly tasteless. I have a recollection of it adding a nice peppery bite to little cucumber sandwiches so I tried a second time in case the first one was just a bad batch but both were the same. Unless I can taste it first, I'll be subbing in another peppery green.

I'm following @Kim Shook's considerable array of delicious-looking dishes with one lonely bowl of pasta: Pasta with asparagus, peas & saffron from Diana Henry's Simple.

As others have stated, our senses of olfaction and taste can decline as we age (see ref), impacting nutrition and interest in food. I can understand why this loss can encourage some to retreat to more familiar foods rather than explorations into the unknown. I lost my sense of smell for a number of years. For a long time, I lost my appetite and all interest in food. Why bother when I couldn't taste it? Eventually, I put more emphasis on choosing foods that provided contrasts in texture and taste but I tended to stick with familiar recipes so I could rely on olfactory memories to "fill in the blanks" of the missing flavors that we sense through olfaction. I'm ever so grateful that over the last 15 years, my sense of smell has slowly and gradually returned, not exactly to where it was, but to the point where I can try new recipes and enjoy new flavors. I've always been one to enjoy trying new foods but I can understand how that interest could be tempered due to sensory challenges - due to aging or something else.

I have not tried using it in a cocktail but I've seen mentions (for example here and here) of people freezing the bean liquid in ice cube trays for that purpose and microwaving very briefly, just to thaw.

I usually use black cardamom for savory dishes but I can imagine its smoky flavor working with chocolate. In much the same way that chipotle peppers can work with chocolate. I think would be interesting and a bit unexpected so it depends on what you are going for.

Inspired by comments on @liuzhou's (appetizing to me) repast, I decided that beans on toast were in order. Rancho Gordo Yellow Indian Woman beans smashed on to garlic-rubbed toast, topped with avocado, green onion, feta and a squeeze of lime.