Katie Meadow

OMG I'm a member of your tribe. I'm not wild about having big hunks of meat on my plate either. More and more I'm liking to make Asian things where protein isn't the star, just a participant. Even fish. I've recently been grilling it outside in foil packages with a variety of Asian sauces/spices (and butter!) and then serving it on short grain rice. It works and affords plenty of flavorful juices My rice cooker is getting a workout these days, and the minimal clean up with foil packets is a big bonus.

Yes, pork loin is tender,, but I've never found it very flavorful. When I have it I usually cut it in very thin strips and marinate the living daylights out of it with garlic, soy, rice wine, etc. Then I use it in a stir-fry. Don't own a SV.

Crazy like a fox, you are. You either find the silver lining or you really make it rain

Exactly. No gummy cake there unless it's inside a mailing box.

You didn't say "nuanced." I did. You stated that the Nuri's had more character or flavor notes and that the Matiz was "one dimensional." Meaning the opposite of nuanced. I am in no way disagreeing with you! In fact my husband and I agreed that it was hard to taste anything but the heat in the Matiz. Although I could not have nailed the various flavors as you did. Or were you reading a label? Maybe I should check out the tin more closely, next time I am in the kitchen. Otherwise you are indeed a super-taster.

I finally got around to trying the Matiz spicy sardines. I think they are hotter than the Nuri. Without a side to side comparison it is hard for me to say the Nuri spicy ones are more nuanced, as you suggest. Ot course I really can't imagine a side by side tasting of spicy foods, it would just be too complicated to distinguish one heat from another after the first bite.

Okay, I can see where the confusion about "sweet" hams can get annoying. I looked at the website for Edwards, and they seem to be one of a few purveyors of smoked city hams that they refer to as sweet. Adding to the weirdness is the fact that their city or sweet hams are indeed sweet, because they come pre-glazed. In other words they are indeed sweeter than most unglazed city hams that appear to be sold on line. For a person who didn't grow up in a ham-cooking household there is indeed a fountain of dubious information about ham. After reading my own post I almost confused myself.

Thanks on both counts. Bean confit coming up in the near future. I soak all my beans. Just used to doing it. With RG beans I find a four or five hour soak is usually fine, so I never do an overnight soak. As long as I remember to unfreeze stock overnight I can finish cooking a pot of beans by late afternoon. So yummy.

Tempted to join the bean club a few years ago, but the reality is that I don't try many new bean varieties in any one order. I'm stuck on two or three kinds, routinely. It's hard for me to resist making Red Beans and Rice and I am married to Domingo Rojo for that reason alone. When my stock is low I make an order at least big enough to qualify for free shipping. My last order included Royal Corona which I admit to never having tried before, so that will be interesting. When living in NM I had my fill of refried beans, always pinto of course, but I'm less enthusiastic about pintos these days, from any source. Has anybody tried making refried beans with King City Pinks? I have one pack of them left and my daughter, who is bringing her twins to CA for xmas says the toddlers really like beans. She's way too busy to make them from scratch; if I want to make beans for her I have to tuck RG beans into my suitcase when I fly to Atlanta.

This should be in the AI thread. Just type in Pork, Brain, Spare rib. AI will churn through all recipes and come up with "Soup." Clever, innit? I wouldn't have thought of that myself, that's for sure.

Thanks @liuzhou, this has been a remarkable thread. Love it! Not that I would ever wish you a hospital stay, but this one has been incredibly productive! I hope you can go home soon--those oysters must be lonely in the fridge. Technicolor roe? I can't quite get my head around that, but it can't be nutritionally beneficial. I hope tobiko is really red, because I've eaten my share. The forest frog thing, well, chacun a son gout, as my dad would say in his dreadful French accent. I'll have the creme brûlée, hold the oviducts.

In high school my daughter developed a fixation with boba tea. She was at Berkeley High and downtown Berkeley was lousy with brand new shops to get the stuff. Not that I had high expectations, but one time she convinced me to try it and it was worse than I ever imagined. I had a similar experience with McDonald's fries. Believe it or not, until about four years ago I had never been inside a McDonalds. We were driving down from the Bay Area to my niece's graduation in southern CA. It was rainy and cold and I got this idea in my head that I wanted some nice hot fries. Despite my spotless record of avoiding McD's for seventy or so years their fries do have reputation. They were terrible.

Crabs on the runway! @liuzhou, where do I order the polka dot tops and blue leggings? One question. I must be dense, but how do you commit fraud with a mitten crab? Give them a matching fuzzy scarf? That would be a give-away, indeed; But if you can pull it off I can see how they would command haute prices.

Kill me now,

Priya's first mistake was not programming the AI recipes to omit the words "pumpkin spice."

Wow, time is speeding up. It seems like you just got back. Happy trails!

@liuzhouso sorry to hear you are back in hospital. Many wishes for a quick recovery.

Our Aebleskiver pan hasn't been used in thirty years and it looks great! My husband's mother came from a long line of Danish aebleskivers and she gave all her kids lovely cast iron pans. We did have a waffle iron that was quite old and well seasoned and we went through a waffle phase. Basically after each use it just got wiped out with a paper towel and a little oil. Eventually, and this is true, it languished in the basement and became a home for small critters. I'm pretty sure we don't have it any more, but you never know what's in a dark basement, especially if you have a husband who is phobic about throwing out anything.

We've been making our marmalade for the last twenty or so years, every year. Sterilized jars, new lids. Once in a while one jar out a typical batch of seven pints won't make a popping sound. We use that one first. I've never had a problem with mold, but then the climate here isn't that damp. The last jar left by December or January always tastes and looks exactly the same as the first batch in February. I'm too lazy to do anything that needs to be given a second bath and I don't have a garden anyway. I used to enjoy taking baths myself, but I don't do that any more either.

Don't Oysters Rockefeller usually include a topping with romano cheese or some such thing? I like my oysters raw with as little fuss as possible. I've never been a fan of cheese with seafood. I don't grate hard cheese over linguini with clams. And when I make shrimp and grits I don't make cheesy grits, just plain. The only exception I make is when we eat crispy shrimp tacos at our favorite place for them. The cheese is minimal compared to the shrimp, salsa and pile of chopped lettuce so I just go with the flow.

Official canning cars with new lids are pretty much required for anything that gets boiled in the jars, no? I don't do any real canning, but I do make a year's supply of orange marmalade during the two months Sevilles are available. For that I do sanitize canning jars by boiling them first before filling, but they don't get an after-bath. We generally don't give away much marmalade, so the pint canning jars are reused every year of course.

I'm trying diligently to weed out any older plastic containers that come from a deli or takeout or whatever. I don't really trust that they are safe to use more than a few times. Of course not really based on science but sort of. I do have some heavier duty plastic reusable containers that I mostly use for frozen stock. I assume they will last longer than the cheaper plastic. The quart and pint size have the same size lids, and they are stackable. The misc. plastic stuff is a PITA also because they may not stack, have peculiar lids, etc and that matching game drives me nuts. But Deb, I have to toss stuff while my husband isn't watching. When being frugal starts edging toward hoarding a line must be drawn!

It makes me happy to have lots of different sized glass jars. Some I collected at flea markets a million years ago, lovely old blue glass Ball jars with metal screw tops. I use them for storage of dry goods. Others are in constant rotation with various pickles, etc. And it's always good to have some standard canning jars for gifts, which may or may not be returned. I usually bring jars of mustarda and escabeche to dear friends the day after Thanksgiving and the next year they fastidiously have them clean and ready for us the next year. It's so sweet of them and I take it as incentive to keep on doing it. They make a fantastic anti-Thanksgiving meal on Black Friday, so I would never go empty handed. and they show their appreciation by opening at least one jar of something right away. It's the Thanksgiving I look forward to most!

I never had mac n cheese at Thanksgiving until a few years ago, when some fresh recruits came to dinner and brought a delicious one. I can't tell you how happy it made me. I'm so bored of the usual suspects my husband's family insist on. And that includes turkey, which my husband and I have made every year for the last thirty years.