KennethT

That is an extreme closeup!!! Whooooooaaaaahhhhh!!!!!!

Years ago, a friend of mine gifted me the Veal stock one of these since earlier I had complained that it was so time consuming and expensive to make veal stock on one's own... I quite enjoyed it.

Bastardized fettuccine cacio e pepe

I make it 2 different ways, depending on how much time I have. The fast way is not nearly as good, but it's much quicker and easier. For the fast way, I just combine a few tablespoons of bottle chili paste - like a sambal oelek, with a few cloves of garlic and a shallot that have been pounded into a paste. To that, I'll add a few tablespoons of the chicken rice poaching liquid (basically a strong chicken stock with ginger, garlic and green onion), a touch of lime juice if needed, and then a small amount of roasted sesame oil. Of course, salt/sugar to taste. Just before serving I'll grate a few inches of ginger into the sauce, and add sweet soy sauce to taste. Some people like to drizzle the sweet soy sauce over the dish, but I prefer it mixed in with the chili sauce. The long way is similar, but rather than using a bottled chili paste, I'll put a bunch (maybe 6-10 depending on size) of red spur chilis, the garlic, shallot, poaching liquid and sesame oil in the blender and blend until smooth. Then continue as normal - it's longer because of the blending and cleanup of the blender, but I like it better because it has good chili flavor without being as spicy as the bottled chili paste can make it.

Singapore style Hainanese chicken rice.... Not nearly as good as my fave Wee Nam Kee but since that's about 10000 miles away, I'll have to settle for this....

My favorite way to enjoy ginger is with the Singapore version of Hainanese chicken rice. Ginger in the rice, ginger in the poaching stock and ginger in the chili sauce.

What's funny is that much of our collection wasn't purchased (at least by us)! Years ago, when my wife was taking wine education classes, we would hold a weekly tasting group in our apartment so that she and some of her fellow students who she became friendly with (and me by default since I live here too and like to learn) could study wines from a different region each week to be able to do a really deep dive. Many of the people who came were very appreciative of us opening our home like that and would constantly bring gifts. And also, through other stuff, wineries would send us wines directly... so we've got that going for us... which is nice...

We've done a similar thing with our wine fridge, which holds about 200+ bottles. Each shelf is numbered, and we have a spreadsheet sorted by color, region, sub-region, producer and vintage. Very fast and easy to find something specific.

Braver than you realize - harvesting them is incredibly challenging - they usually are stuck in between rocks on the coast... check this out!

Plantains cooked in lard!!!!!! Arrrrrggghhh........ drool...... mofongo, tostones...

You need Samuel L. Jackson for this....

When the supermarket runs out of chicken, what is one to do? Bison burger with avocado on pretzel rolls... Served with a salad with a garlic-lime juice 'vinaigrette'

You peel the leathery skin off and eat the inside meat, using the "toenails" as a handle... I had this little guy in a restaurant in the Basque area of Spain - there were a few on the plate, but I remembered to take a photo after I finished most of them... the waitress showed us how to do it (she didn't speak English or Spanish) - you peel back that leathery looking part in the middle, from left to right, towards the nail looking stuff on the right. All that peachy colored stuff is meat to eat...

Dinosaur toes!!!! They're actually quite mild in flavor. I had them just simply grilled once when in the Basque area of Spain...

Who needs a mattress when you have 10 bags of flour?

Farfalle with asparagus and a white wine and lemon sauce

oooh... I love percebes!!! Where did you get them?

I have an excel spreadsheet with my freezer inventory. It works great for seeing what's in there without opening the door and searching around - the only problem is when we forget to update it when we take something out! One day, when I eventually retire, I might think about writing machine learning software with camera system that can identify what you take out of the freezer and automatically update the database/spreadsheet... then again, there's probably something like that already out there, or there will be by the time I get to that point so why reinvent the wheel.

This assumes that one already has a BBQ sauce that they really like... can you share your favorites?

How about something like Pok Pok's Vietnamese Fish Sauce wings? Ricker built a restaurant on them!

Fringe benefits of having your spouse work in the wine industry. This lovely single vineyard Barolo (that was sent to us for free) was perfect with some fettucine with porcini mushroom sauce. Sure, her job barely pays anything, but it comes with a lot of perks. The porcini were dried grade B - which means they were medium sized broken pieces, but they're much more affordable than the A grade.

I wasn't planning on any gardening until I moved into our new apartment, but it seems like that won't be happening for quite a while. Our new building is currently not allowing renovations or workpeople in the building and I imagine that is going to last for at least 1-2 months. Then I've got probably about 2months of renovations. So, since I won't be going anywhere for a while, I figured now would be a good time to start up my indoor garden again... so far planned: herbs like cilantro, mint, lemongrass, rau ram (vietnamese coriander)...

The issue I have in using gloves rather than sanitizing the cart handle is that you use the same gloved hands that touched the cart handle (and is now potentially contaminated) to touch all the items you purchase to put them in the cart. So now the outside of every item you have purchased is potentially contaminated. Nowadays, when I go to the store, I bring an alcohol prep pad (like the kind they use before giving an injection or taking blood) and wipe down the surfaces I am going to touch. That way, my hands (and the items they touch) stay clean.

You beat me to it!

OK - due to an ordering snafu from our online grocer (we use Fresh Direct in addition to going to our local grocery stores) we wound up with 6 sleeves of garlic, each containing 3 heads... that's in addition to the 2 heads I scrounged at the local stores this weekend. I usually use a pretty large amount of garlic - but I don't know what to do with 20 heads of garlic before they go bad and start sprouting. Any ideas??? So far I've come up with fried garlic and the offshoot - garlic oil.