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More from Prue. Duck egg & rainbow chard with Dijon butter on toast from Bliss on Toast. Edited to add that Dijon butter is a very good thing!

It’s Trader Joe's Harvest Grains Blend that contains pearled couscous (mostly), orzo, baby garbanzo (oh the horror) and red quinoa. A handy side that cooks up in a 10 min simmer. Probably discontinued as my TJ faves tend to be!

Excited to use the sea beans I got at the farmers market yesterday, I tried a recipe for Sand Dabs with Shallots, Sea Beans and Sherry Vinegar from the Zuni Cafe Cookbook. I got Pacific grenadier filets in my fish share this week so I used that instead of sand dabs. Pacific grenadier is often by-catch in black cod fisheries. It's a mild white fish, good for fish & chips or fish tacos and worked nicely here. The fish is floured and pan-fried in butter and the remaining browned butter is the base for a sauce of shallots, sea beans and sherry vinegar. Very easy and delicious. I tossed the sugar snaps with a preserved lemon butter but needn't have bothered as the brown butter/shallot/sea bean butter would have done the trick.

Looking forward to cooking with these sea beans, already mentioned above by several people, but a new item for me and the first time I've seen them at my local farmers market. They are foraged and were being sold by Murray Family Farms who come down to our market from Bakersfield, not exactly a coastal town 🙃. I'll ask them for more deets next week. My plan is to try the recipe for sand dabs with shallots, sea beans and sherry vinegar from Zuni Cafe Cookbook. I'll use Pacific grenadier that I got in my fish share this week instead of the sand dabs. Prue Leith includes a recipe for mussels and sea beans in a toasted bread bowl in Bliss on Toast so I'll try that if I can track down some mussels. Zuni also has a recipe for pickling them simply in white wine vinegar so I'll do that with whatever's left.

TJ's Délice de Bourgogne triple cream ripened cheese & blackberries with chili sauce on rye from Prue Leith's Bliss on Toast. The recipe calls for sweet chili sauce. I used sriracha. Sambal oelek might have been better but I'm out. Edited to add that this needs a super flavorful, sweet and tangy fruit to stand up to the rich cheese and spicy chili sauce. These blackberries were only so-so.

Book Depository is no more but I recently ordered some cookbooks from Canadian-owned and operated Book Outlet (https://bookoutlet.com or https://bookoutlet.ca in Canada) and thought I’d pass it on. They sell mostly store returns and remainders so they don’t have everything but some of their prices are very good. I was interested in Renee Erickson's Getaway: Food & Drink to Transport You (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) as it’s next month’s book in a cookbook group I participate in. When I ordered, it was $30.99 on Amazon and $16.23 at Book Outlet. Of course, I went ahead and added Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Cookie Bible for $13.27 so my actual savings is questionable 🙃

From our friends over at Cook's Illustrated/American Test Kitchens: Don't Toss Expired Cocoa Powder

Happy Birthday 🎂 from a fellow Gemini! I was wondering about that number before your edit. I know they made a movie about Anne of 1000 Days and was wondering if there was one in the works about @Anna N of 2200 Days 🙃

@Ann_T's post above made me want egg salad. Sadly, I don't have her beautiful bread. In fact, I'm pretty much out of bread at the moment but I did find a lone brioche hot dog bun in the freezer so I toasted it up and filled it with egg salad.

An early review of the show, generally positive: Read the rest of the review here: Barbecue Showdown Serves Up Cooking Competition Staples in Its Second Season

I commented the other day that I was quite capable of putting all sorts of things on toast without needing a recipe and scoffed when I saw the toast chapter in Diana Henry's book, Simple. I had to eat my words (on toast, of course 🙃) because I ended up quite enjoying her ideas. Then someone asked me if I had Prue Leith's Bliss on Toast (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). A whole book on toast? NO! I don't need that! And yet, now I have it! There are 75 recipes in the categories of Cheese & Eggs, Vegetarian & Vegan, Fish, Meat & Poultry and Desserts. Some interesting, some not so much. Some are actually toasted sandwiches and others don't really need to be on toast at all. But still, plenty of ideas I wouldn't have come up with on my own and am curious to try. For example: Fried chicken livers and grapes on mustardy focaccia Camembert & blackberries with chili sauce on rye Anchovy toast sticks with pickled pear Duck egg with rainbow chard and Dijon butter on multigrain toast Stay tuned, those and more are likely coming to a Breakfast topic near you!

'Mad Men' did feature Don Draper visiting the Ho Jo's in my hometown, Plattsburgh, NY, as noted here. The episode was filmed in CA but recreated that P'burgh location. We always stopped at Ho Jo's for lunch on family road trips. I got the clam roll and, if allowed, ice cream or sherbet served with a little cream cone-shaped cookie in those icy cold metal dishes they used. At the time that episode aired, there were still 3 restaurant locations but the last one, in Lake George, NY, closed last year.

There's a new food court at a mall in the SF Valley that's set up for ordering and payment from all stalls via tablets or, eventually, a phone app. Log in and you can order from all stalls on one bill. The name of the place is Topanga Social, but that part of the operation sounds rather anti-social to me! This New Food Hall in the Valley Is Redefining Mall Dining for the Modern Era I'm waiting for Curtis Stone's Pie Room to open up before I go over to check it out.

Following on, a veggie burger (from Six Seasons) with bacon and cheese, riffing on the Bacon Jalapeño Smashburgers in I Dream of Dinner. The book recipe involves chicken burgers and mine are veggie but frying them in bacon fat is a win. As you can see, I lost some bits around the edge so I need to work on how thin I can smash these burgers without them falling apart. Still, a step in the right direction!

@Smithy, I surrendered an email address so I could see it and will message it to you. Basically a spaghetti with pulled or chopped pork in a sauce made with both BBQ sauce and tomato sauce. Proportions vary, that one is 2:3 BBQ:tomato sauce with some other stuff thrown in. Here's one recipe that cites the same sources but is a bit different. What seems unique to the recipe that @kayb shared is that after simmering the sauce on the stovetop for 30 min, the whole pot goes out on a grill that you’ve heated up with wood chips or pellets to basically smoke the sauce for another 30 min. That newspaper recipe calls for a pound and a half of chopped pork shoulder for a pound of pasta so it would be quite meaty. It also doesn’t specify that the pork is already cooked (or else I missed it) but all the other recipes do so I assume it’s the case. Especially since she says you can reserve half the pork to serve on top! Editing to add one more recipe link. This one, Memphis Barbecue Spaghetti, is from the Washington Post and instead of combining prepared BBQ and tomato sauces, it adds the seasoning for both types of sauce to one batch of tomato purée to make a hybrid sauce. Seems like this would be more easily tweak-able to suit personal tastes and complement the seasonings used in the meat.

Looks like you might have had some help!

There's no excuse for promising a reply and failing to do so but their website clearly indicates customer support hours of M-F, 9-5, so I’d cut them a tiny bit of slack for not replying yesterday or today.

I'm so glad you were able to get the book from your library instead of buying it! Many of the reviews of Prune were conflicted, loving some aspects while lamenting others, like the lack of header notes and an index. That last omission is kind of appalling but Eat Your Books has me covered there, as would an ebook search. If I had space limitations, I might not have purchased it myself after borrowing it from the library but must confess to being entertained by that restaurant notebook design that you found "cutesy." It may well be over-designed, as @Katie Meadow notes but I'd stop short of calling it gimmicky because it seems honest and true to who Gabrielle Hamilton is. Edited to add: I just pulled out the book and OK, the fake stains and wrinkles on the pages are a bit gimmicky but I get wanting to make it look like a restaurant notebook. Several reviewers seemed to have hopes that the book would be a Prune version of the Zuni Cafe Cookbook. It's not that, there's no hand-holding in Prune, but like cooking from the recipes in Zuni, I always end up learning something from trying Prune recipes.

@Kim Shook, I will be stealing Jessica's ham, Swiss, arugula, fig jam combo for a future breakfast! With that pesky crab cake out of the way, I was able to access the bag of veggie burgers I made from Grains for Every Season. Sautéed greens, aged Gruyere and TJ's onion chips (oddly spongy so I crisped them in the CSO) were involved, along with the last of the frozen onion rings and some fresh veg. Not bad but the middle is a bit mushy. I think I'll try the next one as a smash burger to maximize the exterior crunch and minimize the interior mush. Also, bacon will be involved.

Season 2 of Netflix's Barbecue Showdown drops May 26, 2023. I will be cheering for my local boy, Logan Sandoval of ZEF BBQ who's one of the contestants. https://youtu.be/yVsulvEVO5Q

I like to add toasted sesame oil to any cookies that call for tahini. You can also toast and grind sesame seeds but that may change the texture, too. Edited to add that the tahini cookies in Ottolenghi's Jerusalem get a sprinkle of cinnamon which might be an option if it appeals to you.

Well, that's annoying! But yes, that recipe is exactly the same.

I'll try one more: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1024066-gochujang-buttered-noodles?unlocked_article_code=97BSoPj_GEo1-X9XG9AK6Z4SeQ6NHhzA7cYYs1ikppRahLZQfJurtuZ3onp3FIPkvVgWuAC097lGDSW1ogBBFfR8hpb5nFAy-KMF6ACvBZzSoHtAsR561lXxf21YNN3pVlyj-J_sU-d7BZOb5hZZxNmgCYDHh8unORl8ncptKoVxB3t_nTYY39p-Rd1_oaEeC2Xems-N3JDmADmjtrfBD76CtIpoo3hIVbGoh1DybqqLXZ8HpOD3SpJFm9TS_uQdRzS10zcpTA0gfwKbbit7J1Xp-vVO6aZR0UkjXruNwtFlYxIfzpQBSTwqvV43rLuSezocGEv6XYVi3hqY_BSr&smid=share-url

This one was a gift link so it should work:

Lately, I've been following a fellow on Instagram who is cooking (Jello-ing?) his way through the the 1963 version of the book mentioned here, The Joys of Jello. Why? I don't know. Not sure how long he'll keep at it but I find his little videos oddly amusing. He begins each one with a jaunty, "Jello there!" He's @otto_vs_jello on Instagram. Here's one he rather liked: Ginger Fruit Mold with Lemon Jell-O, Ginger Ale, Chopped Nuts, Pineapple Tidbits, Mandarin Oranges, Green Grapes, Candied Ginger. Here's one he really didn't: Plum Pudding with Cherry Jell-O, Salt, Cinnamon, Clove, Raisins, Prunes, Citron, Nuts, Post Grape-Nuts Cereal, Water. Blech!