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Katie Meadow

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Everything posted by Katie Meadow

  1. Yes, it makes good French toast...ok, Italian French toast. Like French toast made with brioche bread it doesn't need a long soak. No doubt kids would love that, even if the panettone was full of neon fruit. Or maybe because of it.
  2. For all the years I've been on eG I have been a huge fan of Anna N. This news is extremely hard to take. She was clever and funny and generous. I loved the Manitoulin blogs, which I suspect were often spooled from her brain. I can't tell you how many times I wished I were there with the two of you having cocktails and looking at the sun set over the water. BFF's like Anna are a lifegiving treasure, and I know how much she appreciated all the love she received from Kerry during the pandemic years and up to her very last day, I'm sure. I will miss her terribly.
  3. Here's my two cents about panettone. Most of them are too sweet and contain plasticky neon fruit. Also many sit on shelves for weeks and are stale. Once in a while a really good one pops out of the xmas murk and it is plain and delicate and delicious. And yes, very nice toasted. So, love it when it is really good, but usually it isn't worth writing home about.
  4. It's hard to imagine anyone taking that recipe seriously, but the world is big and there are some strange people in it.
  5. A whole crocodile roasts for only 20 minutes? It must be a baby croc. In which case 250 g of ginger is rather a lot.
  6. Truth be told I am a long-time devotee of Trader Joe's chocolate biscotti. Although the texture and shape are nothing like Nabisco's Famous Chocolate Wafers, the not-so-sweet chocolate flavor is similar. So, if you are mourning the demise of those wafers, you can't make an ice-box roll with them, but the TJ's biscotti may satisfy your nostalgia.
  7. Katie Meadow

    Dinner 2023

    Dinner in Decatur last night was a combined effort. My SIL made his prize winning lemon pepper wings, my daughter made sweet potato fries, and the grandparents (us!) made braised greens with bacon. The greens were a mix of collards, turnip and chard. All delicious. The sweet potatoes were a new to me variety called Mississippi, and they were very good. The other sweet potatoes/ yam choices were Garnets from CA and a few picked over Beauregard's that didn't look very fresh. All thanks to the amazing Dekalb International Farmers' Market.
  8. I've never seen chocolate ones, but I will be on the lookout. I too first tasted them on a plane. Sometimes, if making a graham cracker pie crust I will mix in some crumbled Biscoff with the grahams f.or a little extra flavor.
  9. @Kim ShookWhat brand ceramic knife is it? I have used Kyocera paring knives for years and I've never had a handle go gooey on me. The handles are not rubbery in any way, so maybe Kyocera are made of different material than some other types. And when I say knives I mean several replacement knives of the same size. Even though I don't use the ceramic knife for most tasks, over time they do chip and they do get dull. They can be sharpened, but that costs more than the price of one small knife.
  10. These islands look incredible. I never knew they even existed. Fantastic trip.
  11. Katie Meadow

    Dinner 2023

    My oldest friend in the world (from 4th grade!) came down from NY to spend a week with us in Decatur and Highlands. The night before last we made them shrimp 'n' grits. At home in Oakland we pay about $20 or more per lb. for wild gulf shrimp. At the amazing Dekalb market they were were super nice, for $13 lb. My daughter claims her husband really likes shrimp n grits, so I'm trying hard to accommodate his eating preferences. Anyway, if I do say so myself, I make an excellent version. This trip I went as far as to bring my favorite Cajun spice mix from home all the way to the South, since every mix I've tasted from local GA sources takes like nothing but a mix of cayenne and salt. Mostly salt. The twins like grits, and one of the girls ate a bucketload of shrimp. What do toddlers eat these days? The juice box has morphed into the Puree Pouch with an opening the size of a boba straw. It's supposed to be mixed vegetables and fruit, the assumption being, I am guessing, that the apple juice in it masks the taste of carrots and green stuff. The twins love these things, so I suspect the great percentage is apple juice. They like apples and talk about applesauce all the time, and yet neither of them liked my fried apples made with butter, sugar and Steen's syrup. More for me!
  12. Katie Meadow

    Dinner 2023

    ,Most unbalanced dinner ever! My daughter's HOA had their annual get together, which for the past few years has involved a wing contest. My SIL won it last year, but didn't enter this year. There were six entries, all spicy. Five were quite good. I passed on the various pasta salads and the pizzas. and just had wings and beer for dinner. Our family contribution to the potluck was brownies, made by me. That was my dessert. The weather was lovely, not hot. The crowd was diverse and interesting and there were hoards of children, most of whom looked to be under 7 yrs old. As you would expect there was abundant talk about the schools in the area. SOO glad I'm done with that!
  13. Katie Meadow

    Dinner 2023

    Dinner last night was a casual affair since my daughter and SIL went out to celebrate their fifth anniversary at a tapas bar in Atlanta. So my husband and I had a quiet dinner after the girls were in bed: Gaelic Ale on home tap (so fun!), warm boiled peanuts we made from our Dekalb market splurge and Ronni Lundy's fried apples made using a selection of the current crop of mostly local apples. The selection of apples in the south at this time of year is astounding. Some leftover rotisserie chicken and leftover mac n cheese. The boiled peanuts were a huge hit with the twin who likes savory and salty snacks. The other one has a major sweet tooth. She would crash anybody's birthday party for a piece of cake. We call her Miss Congeniality because she will go up to any group of random people and insinuate herself.
  14. Katie Meadow

    Dinner 2023

    I'm green with envy. I forgot to mention this market is exactly three minutes by car from my daughter's house. There are two downsides to cooking for her family. One, their kitchen has a lousy old range, and is missing a lot of what I consider necessary pots, pans, measuring cups and mixing bowls; there's no toaster and a very old toaster oven that defies human intervention. The second, and more delicate issue, is my son-in-law's chiild-like eating habits. There are a ton of things he won't eat, other things he will only eat if prepared on way and a meatless meal is, to his mind, worthless. So, a challenge. And I'm not the most placid or patient person. My husband's family are mostly vegetarians, and I'm very used that. At home my husband and I typically eat meatless meals at least half the time. I can't get my head around someone who is unwilling to eat a veg meal once in a blue moon.
  15. Katie Meadow

    Dinner 2023

    Dinner in Decatur with all ingredients from (and a shoutout to) the amazing DeKalb Farmer's Market. This may have been a farmers' market once upon a time, but now it is a giant international grocery. It is unlike any other "super" market. For certain products they contract with only one supplier. For instance just about all pasta products are Delverde,. dozens and dozens of shapes and sizes. There was only one brand of milk, something organic, that is is phenomenally good, and I don't say that about milk very often. The variety of vegetables is remarkable. Four different sizes of collards alone. There was Culantro and Cubanelle peppers, along with just about any other fresh pepper you could name. There was a bin of fresh green peanuts in the shell: it's the season for boiled peanuts! A fabulous fish market. Lots of smoked turkey products that they make in house. Berkshire pork. Tropical fruits you never heard of. A zillion things for making Indian dishes, including curry leaves and kaffir lime leaves. And on and on, with a few very strange omissions. My daughter says they don't carry any kind of tortillas, which is pretty weird, considering. Of course she shops in similar fashion as her father: fast and furious. and like him, if she doesn't see it right away she assumes they don't carry it. At least she has an excuse, like a full time job and toddler twins. Me, I'm dawdling and gawking. The most diverse bunch of shoppers you could imagine. Some jaw dropping turbans and other headgear and swooping African print dresses and saris. . So, dinner was put together from our market trip. Cooking for four plus is not something I'm used to on a daily basis, but my husband and I managed pretty well. Mac n Cheese with Delverde small penne. You can't go wrong there with toddlers. Long cooked green beans cooked with heirloom tomatoes, fresh beans and house cut hickory smoked bacon. Thanks to the twins, lots of leftovers there! Rotisserie chicken, one of the best ones I've ever had: spicy hot rubbed, plump. At first we couldn't find the rotisserie chicken, partly because it was such a large space unto itself, and for some mysterious reason, roped off with traffic cones and yellow tape like a crime scene.
  16. We cooked the bacon and put it on paper towels. In some of the bacon grease we sautéed half an onion and. some garlic. Then the greens went it, tossed and briefly cooked until totally wilted. Added salt and tossed a bit more. Added about a third of a cup of water, covered the pan and steamed for five or so minutes. Broke up the bacon, added it back in and cooked for another five minutes or so. Uncovered the pan and cooked off the liquid and served with a generous pat of butter. Really good despite how minimalist it was. A home I would have used ham broth instead of water, and finished the greens with a bit of vinegar and Steen's can syrup. I typically do this with chard, but now I think I will start to branch out and mix up the greens.' So, these were not long-cooked greens as collards are often done. And certainly spinach cooks quicker, but I'm not a fan of spinach, which would certainly cook quicker. When it comes to long-cooked collards I think that's an art, and when I order them along with BBQ I am always disappointed. But the rare times I find tender baby collards they can work really with this method.
  17. Totally agree that substitutes mostly don't cut the mustard. But one thing I swear to is that after a while on a reduced salt diet your taste buds adjust and you literally don't need as much salt as you once did, or as you thought you did. Give it time. After a few months of using less salt almost all restaurant food tasted over salted. I still love salt, and over the years I've increased my intake, but I still use less than many recipes suggest. Also I find that instead of heavily salting while cooking that a little bit of good finishing salt goes a long way when it comes to flavor.
  18. Our choices are limited here in the NC hills. I know the selection will be great at the huge international market in Decatur; there's a whole aisle with nothing but different greens. After the remarkable unusual chard we scored at the local farmers' market the best we could do at the big grocery store in town was a bag of pre-washed and cut greens called, simply, Southern Greens. It was a mix of turnip greens, collards and mustard greens, and ,surprisingly fresh and good cooked with a little bacon.
  19. Katie Meadow

    Dinner 2023

    I've made Italian Wedding Soup with escarole, cavolo nero (Tuscan kale) or chard. All good, but I like escarole best.
  20. Katie Meadow

    Jiffy love

    I have to admit that I thought Jiffy was something from the past. I had a rude awakening the other day at a supermarket in NC. An incredible variety of Jiffy mixes take up a lot of shelf space in these parts. Just try and get artisan cornmeal or Bob's Red Mill cornmeal in the all-white moneyed town of Highlands.
  21. Katie Meadow

    Breakfast 2023

    Whatever Clara is eating it appears to have put her in a trance. Always a pleasure whether you are in one or watching one. Half the pix of my 2 yr old granddaughters are of them eating, since that's one of the only times they are sitting relatively still.
  22. Pregnancy cravings are a special category. I like sour, but when I was pregnant nothing was too sour. I craved Japanese pickled vegetables above all, grapefruit as puckering as I could get it, and in the realm of the really hideous: those gummies with that weird sour powder on them.
  23. All my cravings seem to come out of nowhere. Except for root beer floats which are always in the front of my brain.
  24. Katie Meadow

    Dinner 2023

    Another no-name farmers' market melange in the NC cabin. From the market: purple cherokee tomatoes, big and juicy. Shelled purple hull peas, similar to black eyed peas but I like them better. Fresh okra, dark in color and very tender and tasty. Bacon, not local I don't think, but good. Everything sort of sautéed separately and then mixed with rice and seasoned with Cajun Blackening Spice that I brought with me from CA, believe it or not, because all the ones I've tasted so far in Atlanta are ninety percent salt. For dessert, scuppernongs and double dark chocolate Milano's. How southern can you get? Does this dish have a name? To drink we had Asheville Highlands Gaelic Ale, always available in these parts on tap or in cans. I'm not a big beer drinker, but I like this stuff. Believe it or not my daughter and her husband now have some kind of setup that keeps two kegs cold and you can have beer on tap whenever you desire.. What I love about it is that I don't need a giant glass, and can have a half glass at a time, nice foam and all. Highlands Gaelic Ale is a standard, and the other keg is on rotation, I think. The tap handle is only a few months away from being reachable by the taller of the two year-old twins. The two girls are like mountain goats; they'll figure out a way. Too bad I won't be there to see them get sozzled. Most astonishing, my husband baked bread this morning. As per usual for airbnbs the selection of pots and kitchen equipment is arbitrary as can be, but there is a bread pan! Four forks, a bizarre selection of bowls and some frighteningly ugly plates with a leapard-skin pattern that makes it just about impossible to see what you eating. There's one gigantic stainless steel skillet and two small pots. A dishwasher that's functional but obviously forks need to be washed by hand. The coffee cups are stupidly wide and unbalanced. There is no dish drain. There is no water kettle for my tea. Behold, there's a quarter sheet pan that's heavy duty and gorgeous. That means biscuits for breakfast using White Lily flour!
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