kayb

The first law of dish breakage is that whatever you break is in all probability 1. a favorite, 2. irreplaceable, or 3. both. I'm sorry. It IS beautiful. If nothing else, have a jewelry/metal craftsman encase the fish part in a metal band-type frame with a loop at the top so it can be hung, like an ornament. I have seen lovely jewelry made from broken china in this fashion.

I do. I ordered a bag of little plastic babies from Amazon; they're about an inch long. Should be enough to keep my King cakes supplied for a few years. Yes, Lent and Easter are late this year, but the season starts right after Epiphany, so we've got plenty of time to get King cakes made and distributed. I make them two at a time, generally. And I'll actually be in NOLA the two days leading up to Mardi Gras weekend, so there'll be no baking then! My eldest daughter was asking for a King cake yesterday. I'll probably start in a couple of weekends.

It's a handy creature. I had a stovetop pressure cooker that rarely came out of the cabinet. I use the IP probably twice a week. I can throw in a brick of frozen stew meat with some water, sauteed onion and spices, come back 45 minutes later and add potatoes and carrots, and have beef stew in less than an hour. I make yogurt weekly. I use it for all kind of soups. I got the little stacking steamer pans which are marvelous for meat and sauce with rice, or put the rice in the bottom of the pot, cook it and the protein, then add the veggies in a top pan for a short cook and you've got a whole meal. And I'm a fan of beans and bean soups. The keep warm function is marvelous. There are some things -- like pot roast, for example -- that I just prefer oven-braised. Not sure why. Not sure if there's a real difference you can tell or not. All in all, it gets two thumbs up from me!

Last night: meat loaf and potato salad. Tonight, meat loaf sandwich and potato salad.

Again, not Ozarks, but Appalachian roots transferred to West TN: New lard was stored in the basement in metal cans. We didn't deep-fry much, so there wasn't really a big volume of "used lard" floating around. If/when there was, fish lard/grease was stored separately from everything else, but French fry lard could and did sub for doughnut lard. We ddn't deep fry either chicken or fruit pies. Both got a pan fry. You made gravy with the chicken lard/drippings, and there wasn't enough left from frying fruit pies to fool with saving. My favorite "saving" tip was the two quart ice cream bucket that lived in the freezer, into which odds and ends of veggies were scraped from bowls. When it got full, it was time to make soup.

Well...the best laid plans. Mostly because I never laid out the sausage to thaw. So I decided to make a savory version of my sweet rolls. I used my basic dinner roll recipe of 5 1/2 c soft white flour, 2 cups water, 1 egg, 2 tbsp sugar, 1/4 cup butter that I replaced with olive oil because I wanted that flavor, 1 tbsp yeast, 1 tsp. kosher salt. Split it into two batches after the first proof, and rolled it out flat after letting it rest five or 10 minutes. The ones on the left are "pizza rolls." Filling is tomato paste spread thin, sprinkled with Italian seasoning; diced pepperoni, grated mozzarella and parmigiano. Rolled and sliced. The ones on the right have my fig-and-olive spread (4 oz. figs, 1/2 cup Kalamata olives, 1/2 cup stuffed green olives, all whizzed up in the food processor with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and rosemary) and cream cheese spread. The cream cheese is simply whipped with a good olive oil and some black pepper to easy spreading consistency. Both are good, but I think my preference is the fig and olive. Next big baking adventure, beyond an occasional loaf of sandwich bread, will be King cakes. I somehow got in the King cake whirl a few years back, and now I have about six people who depend on me for their King cakes annually. Laizzez les bon temps roulez!

@blue_dolphin -- I will cheerfully bequeath to you my share of all the collards in the world. Any other green, too, with the exception of spinach, which I like raw in a salad but don't care for cooked. Still not sure how I managed to grow up poor, in the south, in the country, and hate greens, but I do.

Ooohhh. Neckbones. When I was a kid, Mama used to make neckbones and dressing. She'd boil the neckbones, pick the meat off them, use the broth to make up a cornbread dressing with no or very little sage, but heavy on the black pepper, and stir in the meat. With long-cooked green beans and potatoes, and maybe some corn, that made a fine, fine dinner. I had neckbones and gravy over egg noodles at a soul food place in Cleveland, Miss., a year or so ago. First neckbones I'd had since I was a kid.

Half the weight makes sense to me, as a good part of the weight of the fresh is likely to be in moisture. Adjusting the brine, I'd say, would be being prepared to add more, as I'd expect the dried koji to soak up some.

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!