kayb

I will volunteer to be in charge of the visitation schedule for @rotuts as he recovers in the hospital following his heart attack from overindulging in pancake bread...

I'm sort of horrified by the notion of a carrot cake oreo. A carrot cake ought not be crunchy.

I got a package of ground beef out of the fridge to make meat loaf tonight. Small steps. I am obligated to cook a pot roast Friday.

Thinking "budget" and "different" puts me in mind of my old standard favorite, white bean and sausage soup with spinach. How about if you did a riff on that: Slice and saute the smoked sausage Cook the beans in chicken broth with tomatoes and Italian seasoning and mash into a rough spread Cut mini-baguettes into slices, top with a spinach leaf, then the bean spread, and a slice of sausage. Spinach leaf would keep the bread from getting soggy.

Doesn't halal have to do with how the meat is slaughtered? Or did I hallucinate that?

Got an email from Darto this morning (in Spanish), which my broken Spanish and an assist from Google Translate tells me they are putting all their "seconds" on sale at 50 percent off starting Jan. 18. Of course, there's still the astronomical shipping to contend with, but if you ordered enough, you could likely still get some decent deals. According to the letter, the seconds may have "stripes, blows, pressing problems, but in all cases we consider them perfectly functional." The one exception is the #27, which was made by mistake from 4 mm steel instead of 3mm, and they're just going to sell those as usual and not make any more.

Now, that brings up a question. Could one leave vac-sealed packages in room temp and would they ferment? Obviously one would have to pin-prick the bag so the co2 could escape. I let mine go 30 days before I taste. I've gone as long as six weeks.

There are two cookbooks in my collection I pull out over and over and over. One is the Marion Firefighters' Auxiliary cookbook, because it has recipes for the fudge and the pralines I make at Christmas. One is the Marion United Methodist Church cookbook, because it has the recipe I use for my dinner rolls and for the best chicken salad I ever ate. I used to pull out Bittman for pizza dough and fried rice until I committed those to memory. Other than those, the ones I use most are my King Arthur Flour book, Rose Levy Berenbaum's Bread Bible, and Beard on Bread.

Ages ago, when I first started baking bread, I made a loaf with browned sausage and cheese in it that, toasted, made a great breakfast. No clue what base bread recipe I used. I'm thinking about trying to replicate that. It was also great with tomato soup.

Y'all who are starting tomatoes, let me recommend Arkansas Travelers, if you can find them. My personal favorite tomato.

I was hoping someone would have meat loaf, so I could see what a $21 meat loaf entree looked like. I love me some meat loaf, but...

A Reuben and some sweet pickles. Unfortunately, the only chips in the house were stale.

I would have taken a photo, but I forgot. Leftover from yesterday cherry almond coconut muffins, split, spread with butter and toasted in the CSO. I make muffins every Sunday morning for my Sunday school class, and have gradually taken on a mission of trying new muffin recipes. This one has dried cherries, flaked coconut and slivered almonds; I took it on myself to add almond flavoring instead of vanilla. These suckers were GOOD. Recipe is from The Ultimate Muffin Book, by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarborough, which I bought a week or so. Next week's version, I think, will be the lemon ginger muffins from the same book. So there were two of the cherry almond coconut ones left, and they became breakfast today. I may have to give the lemon ginger ones a trial run before taking them to church; a quarter-cup of minced fresh ginger sounds like a LOT of ginger.

Nothing at the moment, but I made some marvelous Indian-spiced fermented cauliflower, and some Brussels Sprout kimchi that is pretty excellent. Shred your cabbage and mix in 1 tbsp kosher salt per pound of cabbage. Knead it with your hands, hard, to bruise the cabbage a bit. Pack it into your glass jars, using a tamper of some sort to squish it down as tight as possible. (I use a skinny olive oil bottle.) Put a whole cabbage leaf over the top, and a weight of some sort (a plastic bag filled with salt water will work just fine) over that. If the cabbage doesn't make enough brine on its own to cover the kraut in a day, you'll need to add some water (1 tbsp salt to a quart) to cover. Cover the jars with cheesecloth or waxed paper and secure with a rubber band, and set in an out-of-the-way corner out of direct sunlight. I let my kraut go six weeks; the longer you ferment, the more "sour" it'll go. I make mine five gallons at a time in a big food-grade bucket with a dinner plate for a weight, and then I water-bath can it. Yes, it kills the good probiotics, but the wonderful taste is still there. I opened a jar the other day to have with brats, fried potatoes and beans, which led to my "needing" to buy corned beef, swiss cheese and rye bread at the grocery so I could have Reubens this week.

There are, for sure, times when an Awful Waffle trip just hits the spot. I just wish my local one could make decent coffee.

Happy birthday to Ronnie!

See if they carry Tennessee Pride. May just be regional distribution, but it's my preference among supermarket brands. Of course, Petit Jean is wonderful, and you could order it....

I love this plate. The rest of the spread looks pretty tempting, too.

H'mmm. My to-bake-this-week list may have grown....

I love Pickapeppa. I don't like a lot of heat, and Pickapeppa is a very complex blend. Fine stuff.

I was tremendously fortunate when I lived in Hot Springs. There was an outstanding bakery that made challah daily. And I bought it EVERY Saturday morning, and made up the entire loaf in French toast for a teenaged boy, a 20-something girl, and me. I miss that bakery, among the many things I miss from Hot Springs.

Well, I comfort myself with the notion that dinner tomorrow is country fried steak, mashed potatoes, gravy, lima beans and a salad.

I don't soak nearly that long. Dip, flip, dip, and onto the griddle.

Bumping up an old thread to ask if anyone else has this issue. Went to the grocery (two different ones, in fact; Sam's Wholesale and Kroger). Spent better than $200. Bought a take-home-and-bake-it pizza we later decided we didn't want, so it's in the fridge for early next week. But after bringing all that in and putting it away, what did I eat for an early supper (because I skipped lunch)? A Twinkie. Five of those el-cheapo chocolate-covered cherry cordials. And a single serving bag of generic Ritz Bitz cheese-and-cracker sandwiches. I'm somewhat ashamed, both that I bought that much junk food (didn't realize I was hungry when I went to the grocery, but I must have been), and that I ate that much junk food. Oh, well, I'm cooking a good dinner for the fam tomorrow.

I would be hard pressed to name a favorite soup. I love tomato bisque, and can several pints of it every summer. (Heat, add cream, and you're ready to go!). I love vegetable beef, which is what first comes to my mind when you say "soup" because it was the soup we had when I was a kid. I love Brunswick stew. Every winter I have to make at least two pots of white bean and Italian sausage soup. I love French onion soup. I made a carrot and sweet potato soup with sorghum recently that was pretty good. I love potato soup, and corn-and-seafood chowder. I love miso soup, and pho. I'm not sure I've ever had a soup I don't like.