blue_dolphin

They are kumquats that I got at the farmers market! I had a kumquat tree planted when I did some landscaping a few years ago but it has not fared well with the drought and I think all the growth now is coming from the root stock, below the graft. With all the rain we've had, I should have pulled out and planted a new one in Dec. I'm sure it would be happy by now! I have a little mandarin that's still growing but struggled badly when we had to cut back on watering. Hopefully it will stage a come back. My lime and orange trees are absolutely loaded with blossoms!

Barley breakfast porridge with spiced milk, dried cherries & pecans from Grist. The spiced milk is made with cinnamon, ground and fresh ginger, turmeric, black peppercorns, cardamom, vanilla and a little brown sugar - like a chai spice mix with out the tea - and is delicious. For me, the proportions of barley:milk:fruit:nuts are off but that's easy enough to adjust to taste.

I find them handy to add oils slowly while whisking to form an emulsion. I can’t manage quite the same steady stream when pouring.

We never had limas. Perhaps someone in my family was a lima-phobe (I know my dad was) but liked the rest of it.

In my friend’s defense, she has joint pain that bothers her a lot when gripping a knife but not so much with scissors so she is quite delighted with hers and just wanted to share. I think a lot of the items mentioned here are likely quite useful to certain people in certain situations.

Funny this topic should pop up today as I just pulled out these 5-bladed scissors for herbs (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) that I received as a gift. I used them for the first time in all the years I've had them. Having done so, I can now donate them with a clear conscience. I can do a better job with a knife and the knife takes a fraction of the time to clean.

The dairy element is crème fraîche. Sour cream is listed as an alternate and I think yogurt would be fine. The recipe also includes aioli, which also gives it a creamy appearance.

Little Gem Lettuces with Creamy Pistachio Vinaigrette from Taste & Technique I thought this one was very cute - like little baby wedge salads! Just lettuce and radishes but the pistachio vinaigrette is the star of the plate.

No, everyone got several spoons of milk with little butter droplets in their bowls.

My mother cooked green beans in butter and milk as well. Only done with nice fresh beans from the garden and almost always a mix of yellow and green string beans. Always seemed a little fancy as we each got an extra little bowl to put them in. We called them, "butter beans." Edited to add that they weren't creamed. No thickener.

Just spotted this WaPo article and thought I'd add a link here: 7 savory porridge recipes for grits, oats, polenta and more The linked recipes are for: Kale and Black-Eyed Peas with Smoky Grits Congee Steel-Cut Oats with Kimchi Padma Lakshmi’s Kichidi Polenta with Balsamic Scallion Greens Salmon with Cheesy Fonio Grits Savory Indian-Style Oats (Oats Upma)

Congee? Grits? Polenta? Upma? There's a Porridge topic here that has a few ideas. Or search for "savory porridge recipes" and you should find a lot of ideas. If your focus is limited to oatmeal, look for "savory oatmeal recipes"

Barley with roasted squash, gingered apples, and arugula dressed with a mustard vinaigrette from Grist.

Hoecakes with gingered apples and shaved manchego cheese from Grist. I'm not particularly good at this style of hoecakes (just cornmeal, water and a little salt) and the gingered apples didn't go with the cheese as well as I'd expected but at least I tried! The apples are good though and I look forward to using them in other ways.

However much you like 🙃 When I'm making something that has at least as much veg as pasta, I go with 2 oz for a main dish serving. If it's pasta-centric, like carbonara, I bump it up to 3 oz for a main dish. I consider those very ample servings, not small.

I inherited one from a friend that's about 22 x 22 inches and 33 inches tall. I'm not tall so the shorter height could be handy for some tasks but it's not really big enough for much and I've never had the ideal spot for it. My friend had it at the end of a run of countertop so there was extra space available. I cook a lot of pasta but have no desire for extra plumbing that can leak and cause water damage. Same reason why I'd prefer a combi oven with a refillable reservoir to a plumbed unit. If the pot filler had an aspirator arm that would drain out the water after cooking, I might change my mind. It's carrying hot pots full of water back to the sink that I don't like. I have a single-bowl, deep sink in my laundry area. Very handy when I need to soak half-sheet pans and racks. It would kill my back to be bending down to reach the bottom all the time if my kitchen sink were similarly deep. In the kitchen, I have a 60/40 double-bowl sink in the kitchen. The 60% side is deeper and the 40% side is more shallow. I use the small, shallow side the most. If I had the space, I'd want a full size fridge and full size freezer, side-by side. If your space is so large that you can leave room for a larger fridge, I'd do it.

I always weigh dry pasta. I started eons ago when I participated in a nutrition study where we had to measure and log everything we ate for about 6 months and the pasta weighing stuck with me.

For any new wafflers looking for ideas, I highly recommend Dorie Greenspan's Waffles from Morning to Midnight (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). Used copies are available very inexpensively. There's an eG topic on cooking from the book here: Cooking with Dorie Greenspan's Waffles from Morning to Midnight.

Black bean dip with harissa

Yesterday's leftover cornbread, split, lightly toasted and buttered, topped with peperonata and a boiled egg on a bed of arugula dressed with a little vinaigrette. A variation on a recipe in Grist.

Charred green beans with black beans, peppers, red onion and roasted corn from Ruffage, dressed with Red Weapons instead of the chili oil from the book. As I was putting the veg on the plate, I occurred to me that it would be nice with some cornbread so I made a 1/3 scale batch of the all-corn cornbread from Grist in a 6.5" skillet. All-corn meaning no wheat flour, just cornmeal. I failed to follow the directions properly so I can't comment on the recipe but, split and buttered, it was just what I wanted. As you can see, I ate half of it 🙃

I use one of these asparagus steamers (eG-friendly Amazon.com link), which was only $25 when I purchased it a few years ago. Does a nice job of containing any spatter. I like to use it with my Paragon induction burner but its thermometer is rather chunky and doesn't fit between the pot and basket which means I generally use it without the basket. Depending on what you're making, it's best for 1 or 2 people, 3 at the most. Upside is that the small diameter minimizes the amount of oil needed. It is also useful for steaming asparagus.

Yep, that's me. For many years, I had gas stoves with a big swath of empty space down the middle, between the burners. It was pretty much wasted space so I always put a spoon rest there. My current cooktop has 5 burners and no free real estate. At first, I put the spoon rest next to the stove but I was just moving it all the time to clean under and around it so it's long gone!

I'd like to say my knives are incredibly sharp and I have amazing knife skills but I used my Oxo V-slicer (mandoline-wannabe) for the radishes. They were pretty big and I figured cutting them as thin as possible was the way to go.

Per the recipe, the salad is dressed simply with oil & vinegar, salt & pepper, and the goat cheese is sprinkled over the top. I, however, happened to have some of the goat cheese vinaigrette leftover from the beet & radicchio salad I made the other day from the author's other book, Grist, so I used that and just added a small amount of additional goat cheese. I tend to think it's worth mixing up the vinaigrette as it brings along a little shallot, lemon juice & zest but is still light and in no way mayo-like.