blue_dolphin

Looks like Kristin Kish is slated to replace Padma: https://www.bravotv.com/the-daily-dish/top-chef-season-21-new-host-and-filming-location-revealed

I've been working my way through the roasted beet variations in Ruffage. These options are just lists of 3 ingredients that might be paired with the roasted beets and it's up to the reader to decide quantities and preparation. Thus far, I've turned most of the variations into very enjoyable salads but decided I should leave my comfort zone for this last one so I give you warm Roasted Beets w/Parmesean, Dried Cherries + Wheat Berries I sautéed the beet greens with garlic, put the dried cherries and some toasted almonds into the farro that I subbed for the wheat berries and warmed the beets in some citrus vinaigrette. I didn't love this as much as the salad variations I've made but it was a perfectly decent, nutritious meal and I learned to stick with beet salads for the summer so no complaints!

Interesting. I really like these but always pan fry/steam for a crispy bottom and soft upper. Never thought of microwave or oven. Then again, I only cook one serving at a time so I can see the oven being handy if you need to cook a lot at once.

I figured all those fried chickpeas were punishment enough for you!

Today's breakfast is from Tenderheart and may just be enough to convince @Anna N not to buy it or to return her Kindle copy if she already did 😉 Salt & Vinegar Kale Chips with Fried Chickpeas and Avocado I made this with the optional fried egg and added a few dollops of the aji verde from the roasted sweet potato recipe in this book.

We all envy Moe! The other day, I made a small batch of the pickled blueberries from Pulp. The brine is a gastrique so you start by caramelizing sugar and deglaze the pan with vinegar. For blueberries, the book suggests either red wine vinegar or sherry vinegar. I used some of that delicious red wine vinegar from Katz and I have to say these are some tasty little nuggets! Going with the suggestion in the book, I smeared a slice of of toasted bread with a triple cream bloomy rind cheese (I used Trader Joe's Le Délice de Bourgogne) and topped that with a spoonful of the pickled blueberries. This was supposed to be just a taste test but I went back for another slice, then kept nibbling them until I'd polished off most of the jar and it became breakfast!

I think we've all got some amount of emotional baggage around food, eating, drinking and social gatherings that affect our comfort levels to some extent. Too much, too little, too expensive, too fancy, too cheap, etc. I do some of the things you mention, never taking the last of anything, never taking the largest piece, etc. and I have felt uncomfortable and "watched" at restaurants but that's only when I was dining alone, generally on business travel, and I felt like people were wondering if I was stood up or didn't have any friends. Silly, I know. I'm sure no one was paying a bit of attention to me, let alone making judgements but still, it was my perception and made me uncomfortable. I'd like to assure you that no one is paying that degree of attention or judgement to your choices either but your father's behavior completely counteracts my argument! After my father had a pretty serious heart attack, he changed his diet (90% due to my mom's guidance) and became a fitness nut, running, biking, hiking, playing tennis. Good for him! But he'd also comment on other people's weight or what they were eating. I'd only have to hear this during occasional visits but my mom heard it all the time. It was never directed towards her but it still bothered her a lot so I know that what we hear certainly affects us.

If you can come up with any uses for cooked fruit or a purée, consider roasting some of those plums and see what it does for them. It will concentrate the sweetness and flavor and add a note of caramelization, depending on the time and temp you choose. I cut them in half, place cut side down on a parchment or foil-lined baking sheet, roast @ 350°F, for 20-40 min. Cool and remove the pits. For a purée, you can whiz them skins and all in a blender or food processor and leave it as chunky as you like. Edited to add that I do this as a first step for any stone fruit sorbet, ice cream or popsicles

And while I was defending my baby kale, I was also eating some for my breakfast, based on an idea in Ruffage: Roasted Beets, with Apples, Cheddar and Walnuts The addition of baby kale and arugula was mine, so kale-haters shouldn't hold it against the cookbook author. Also my idea was dressing the greens and beets with leftover grainy Dijon vinaigrette, and turning the Cheddar into crispy frico.

Lots of kale hate here on eG so you are in good company but take a look at this handful of the kale I used: It's just a baby - way too young to be nasty, especially when lightly sautéed. I'm even like it raw, in salads, cause it doesn't get wilty as fast as spinach but I know that's too scary for a lot of people here!

Never been to Costco but here's the nutrition data from a rotisserie chicken that I picked up recently from my local Walmart Neighborhood Market. No sodium phosphate listed. It doesn't claim to be gluten-free but doesn't list any obviously gluten-containing ingredients. The serving size is the same 3 oz as listed for the Costco bird. The 8 servings per container makes me chuckle when I imagine putting one of these little guys down in front of 8 people! The sodium content is listed at 250 mg/serving vs Costco's 460 mg/serving as cited in the article @rotuts linked to. I haven't had one of these in a very long time. I recall them being salty but this one tasted less seasoned than chickens I dry-brine and roast myself. I didn't taste the skin. That was crisped, chopped and used as gourmet cat food topping 🙃

More beets! This is a combo from Ruffage. Roasted beets with smoked whitefish, sour cream and dill that I turned into a salad by putting it on a pile o'greens. I went with Trader Joe's smoked trout instead of whitefish and used some leftover aji verde (garlic, jalapeño, cilantro, lime juice and mayo) instead of sour cream.

Buckwheat crêpes with fried eggs and sautéed kale from Grist The instructions were to put the sautéed kale (I used a mix of baby kale, chard and spinach, sautéed with onion and some diced country ham) on the crêpes, fold up the edges and put them in the oven to keep warm while the eggs are fried. My crêpes were on the small side and refused to stay nicely folded in the oven. This annoyed me for photo purposes*, but at least you can see the pile of greens under the egg! Also, because the crêpes were small, I used medium eggs and cooked them in egg rings so they didn't get too big. *See that one in the back has 3 tomatoes helping to hold up the sides 🤣😂🤣

I agree the price isn’t awful, especially since the Canadian hard copy price is C$54.00! I'm very impressed with her creativity. The fennel chapter has a fennel frond pesto that’s used in a fennel & gnocchi salad that I’ve already posted about, a fennel and lentil avgolemono soup, quick pickles that go into a Niçoise salad, a fried rice dish and fennel ICE CREAM 😮 Lots of variety and not just rehashing stuff from other books.

$5.99 isn't exactly in the crazy category but I wanted to give this one a shout-out because I think it's a great book. It's also a large book, so the Kindle version may be a good choice for many. In the US, but sadly not in Canada, the Kindle version of Australian Chinese author Hetty Liu McKinnon's Tenderheart: A Cookbook About Vegetables and Unbreakable Family Bonds (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) is currently at $5.99 on Amazon. It's just a great book. Her family stories are lovely so it's a great read. You can see a good sample of that via Amazon's "Look Inside" feature. It's a vegetable cookbook with recipes organized by vegetable. For all but the egg-based recipes (like omelets, etc), she offers vegan options including a vegan egg sub for baking. For almost all recipes, she offers gluten-free options, not all that hard for a veg cookbook, but still nice. I'm very impressed with her creative recipes and will write up a review in the Cookbooks topic once I've tried a few more but I'm not sure how long this price will last so I wanted to share it here.

Roasted sweet potato wedges with aji verde from Tenderheart I put them on the greens to make it more of a salad. The aji verde is a quick blitz of garlic, jalapeño, cilantro, lime juice and mayo. Would be good on a lot of things.

Roast chicken salad with green beans, fennel, potatoes and grainy Dijon vinaigrette from Getaway Not sure if this should really be called a chicken salad or a potato salad or whatever but it's good!

I think there are quite a few mentions of GripStix, going back some years. Quite recently you may have read of @JoNorvelleWalker's dissatisfaction with them starting around here. I'm a fan!

As I mentioned just above in this thread, I've had good luck using the ratio he gives in the book: 2 parts fruit + 1 part sugar + 1 part vinegar. I would recommend sense-checking that when using the actual book recipes. Particularly the recipes that give the amount of fruit only as the number of fruits. I tried the Roasted Peach and Lemon Shrub on p 132, which calls for 5 peaches and I got a thick sludge that I couldn't pour at all. It actually set up in the bottles like a jam and I couldn't even get it out in order to try diluting it. Later, I noticed that the recipe for Peach, Ginger and Cinnamon Shrub on p 121 calls for 6 peaches (about 1 1/2 pounds), telling me that he was likely estimating 1/4 lb peaches while my big boy peaches were all over 8 oz each, so I'd probably used double the amount of fruit expected in that first recipe and I should have checked that the ratios made sense instead of following the recipe.

This one from NEAT (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) has a similar pinch and flare shape at the top but lacks the heavy base shown in the photo. The price is quite reasonable, though. Here's another one (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) from the same company as the one I mentioned above that has a heavier base but with a slightly more rounded shape than the one in your photo. A little more expensive, but not outrageous.

Some of the 2-pot rice cookers I saw had the word "dormitory" in the description and I can see it being handy for students or someone who didn't have a kitchen but wanted to do a little cooking or reheating of food in a small space.

Well, without anything else being said, I'll assume the company was stellar, as usual!

I was resisting but then read the reviews that say it can be used in an oven so I now have one in my cart! Not @Smithy, but here's a recipe that a reviewer shared on Amazon:

I’d expect they are but if I manage to get one, I’ll report back.

Local bakery Café Ficelle posted these cute burger macarons on their social media and say they’re available through July 4. Not burger flavor, just chocolate. I'll see if I can get one to try tomorrow.