kayb

Welcome, near--neighbor, from northeast Arkansas. What part of Kentucky? Spent a good deal of time in the Mayfield/South Fulton/Murray area. Grew up in TN not far from the KY line.

Amen!

Interesting, and there's a lot of truth to it. I'm fortunate, because I work at home, so I have the luxury of stopping for 15 minutes and putting something in the oven or on the stove. I also bridge the gap between the big, midday meals and the both-parents-working, hurry-up-and-feed-the-kids-so-we-can-get-to-the-ballpark. I learned to cook a lot of things I could get ready in a hurry that would still be somewhat nutritious and not too processed. We ate a lot of BLTs, and chicken pot pies, and quiches (which I'd make the night before). I made great use of my crock pot and oven timer. I have taught several times a "Cooking Matters" class that is designed to teach folks how to cook a nutritious meal on a SNAP budget. The teachers' material warns us to be aware our students may not have access to a wide variety of kitchen equipment, nor may they know how to do basic prep -- i.e., soak and cook dried beans. As far as preparing meals-to-go that can easily be reheated -- the soup kitchen where I volunteer offers carryouts, and most of our guests leave with one. A good many of our guests are homeless, so they're not even reheating, but at least they're not hungry.

How about Hello Dolly bars? Graham crust, chocolate chips, chopped nuts, drizzled condensed milk, flaked coconut. You can vary with different chips, dried fruit, adding peanut butter into the condensed milk, etc. I won't be doing anything exceptional. Game comes sandwiched between two out of town trips for me, so I'll likely watch it, or have it on while I'm reading, alone while doing laundry.

The term for the device with which one opens this sort of bottle is "church key."

Counterclockwise from 12 o'clock, St Andre, Robusto, Jarlsberg, High Plains Cheddar, Welsh cheddar, sweet gherkins, preserved walnuts, Castelvetrano olives, capicolla, salami. The fruit of going to the grocery yesterday when I was hungry.

@rotuts Oddly enough, I read this no more than 20 minutes after I pulled a pack of Broadbent's ham seasoning pieces out of the freezer to thaw. Beans tonight! Had not thought about grinding up bacon end pieces to go in meat loaf. Great idea. I'll be trying that. For sliced ham, I've taken to ordering their breakfast steaks and biscuit pieces. Dinner steaks and center-cut slices are just too big.

Awaiting anxiously. I'll be in the Lou May 24, and counting on a dinner there then!

Ooohh. I bet it'd be good on pork tenderloin. And I have three in the freezer, as they were on sale at Aldi t'other day. My grocery carries a balsamic "glaze" as well as balsamic vinegar. The glaze appears to be a reduced, heavy syrup.

SOS. I love it. Mama used to get little glass jars of dried beef, and she'd make white sauce, shred the beef and stir it in. We would eat it over toast or over mashed potatoes.

The best fast food cheeseburger I've had in ages came from a local chain, David's Burgers, which I think has six or eight locations in Arkansas. They grind their own meat, cut their own fries, and your choices are single, double, triple, with or without cheese, and that's it. They have a great list of condiments including sauteed mushroom and caramelized onions, in addition to all the standards. The fries are a little limp; they'd benefit from a soak in ice water before frying, and the double-fry method, but the burgers are wonderful. I've had In and Out; not too bad. Five Guys is OK, but just barely. Have not had Shake Shack. None of the lower-end burger chains are fit to eat (I tried a Dairy Queen burger t'other day and pitched three quarters of it). But the best burger in the world was made in a little hole in the wall place, the Dairy Freeze, in northwestern Arkansas, in a little wide spot in the road called Hiwassee. Marvelous, hand-patted, flat-top-grilled patties, a big slab of cheese, bacon if you wanted it, ALL the trimmings, buns grilled toasty on the flat top. I once called that place and asked if they'd stay open an hour past closing so Bill Clinton could get a cheeseburger. They told me they wouldn't stay open, but they'd unlock and let us in and cook for us. He swore it was the best cheeseburger he'd ever eaten, and the man loved his cheeseburgers.

I will be trying this, but I'll roast my broccoli instead of steaming, because I just like it better. I bet it would also be killer on sauteed Brussels sprouts, or roasted cauliflower.

I could spend some serious money in that deli. Enjoying this trip!

Re: Ornamental edibles. I have a flower bed (raised, brick border) that goes across half of the front of my house (from carport to front stoop). It is my herb garden. Mid to late afternoon often finds me out there harvesting herbs to go in dinner. I grow mint, summer savory, oregano, thyme, basil, sage, chives, cilantro and parsley. The cilantro and parsley are just to the sorth side of the stoop, which is elevated five steps and affords them a little more shade (front of house faces west), so they take a bit longer to bolt. My big mistake was planting mint in the bed. It will be a mint bed in two or three years. I just KNEW tomatoes were smart! Going to attempt nasturtiums after I move and get new garden beds set up. I have had "pickled" nasturtium flowers, which I think were just tossed in a very light viniagrette, with steak tartare, and they were marvelous.

I saved that one, too. Thanks! @Darienne, I have read that you can sub fresh chives or thyme for dill. Have never tried it. Seems reasonable it would work.

Sometime last year, I bought a little "baby" Pullman pan (only about 7 1/2 inches long, and so an excellent size for me) when I caught it on sale at Amazon. Yesterday, I decided to use it. I used the recipe from Rose Levy Berenbaum's Bread Bible. I am VERY pleased with the way it turned out. Great, soft crumb. Good, rich flavor. (I may have undersalted just a tad.) I was somewhat surprised it took 50 minutess at 425 to bake, but it was perfect at that time/temp. And it was marvelous for a childhood throwback treat for breakfast this morning: Cinnamon toast, sans cinnamon. Just butter and sugar. I see a Croque Madame in my immediate future.

Leftover roast beef, sauteed onions and mushrooms, over mashed potatoes. It started out to be beef stroganoff, but I decided to separate it and will use part of what I saved for stroganoff later.

Unless you're in and out of your freezer a dozen times a day, I'd say you're in the market for a new gasket.

You can order Tony's online, here: clickety Shipping might be outrageous for the refrigerated, but... it's not every day you've been married 59 years! Many congratulations, and may there be many more!

I've gotten it in a four-ounce, vac-sealed package at Kroger, at the seafood case. It ain't great, but it ain't awful. I don't remember a name, sorry.

A natural interest in this topic, and a desire to avoid real work today, led me down the rabbit hole of trying to document some of what I thought I knew about immigration patterns into the Ozarks, presuming, as @gfron1 has mentioned, when folks moved in, they brought their culinary traditions with them. Seems I was mostly right. It does, in fact, appear that many early settlers in the Ozarks had come from the Appalachian areas of East Tennessee, Eastern Kentucky and Virginia. A lot of those settlers came in through ports in Virginia and North Carolina and migrated westward. Other Ozarks settlers came down the Ohio Valley to Cairo, Ill., and crossed the river, or down the National Road through the Shenandoah Valley and west across Tennessee. International immigrants were primarily German and Central European, with a sizeable Italian immigration as well. Lots of German settlements in the Ozarks, particularly in Missouri. This is a fairly interesting (to me, anyway) article on it. You can see a potentially marvelous fusion of cuisines!

A couple of good friends are from, respectively, Australia and Trinidad. He swears by black cake. She makes it, and sent me a recipe. I'm going to try it one of these years, havig never seen a dried fig I didn't like.

I have always found balsamic vinegar to be a natural pairing with Brussels sprouts; my favorite prep is to cut them fry them cut-side-down in bacon grease (or olive oil) until they caramelize, and toss them with a healthy portion of balsamic vinegar. I'm not sure exactly what you'd put with that to make it "saucy" enough for pasta, though. I'd agree I think a tomato sauce would get crossways. How about using more balsamic, and just adding a little pasta water?

Particularly for @Anna N:

My Aldi yesterday had a NICE butcher block cutting board, about 16 inches square, about an inch and a half thick, and it said what wood but I've thrown the label away and don't remember, for $14.99. Insets cut in two opposite sides for ease of picking up. I didn't really need it, but for that price, could not turn it down. I'm thinking I'll give it a light sand and rub it down with mineral oil. They still had the sous vide circulator, marked down to $40 from $49, so I suspect those are on their way out. Had I had my phone, I would have taken a photo.