kayb

I'm en route back. Should hit normal by midweek.

Dog. Gramercy Tavern. Japanese Soul Cooking. Country Inns and B&Bs. I'm swearing off.

I'm somewhat ashamed of my garden; the grass and weed crop is about the best one out there, though everything else is growing luxuriantly as well. Between the incessant rain and being sick, I've not gotten out into it to weed or to stick the pole beans. Perhaps one day when I get that done.... I do have baby tomatoes.

Only way to effectively eat crawfish is from a paper tray, leaning over a newspaper-covered picnic table. Snap the little critters in half behind the head, getting your thumbnail under the first pair of legs to break them, too. Bite the tail meat gently and drag it out of the shell. Then suck the tomalley out of the head, and toss the remains. Take a swig of beer, and repeat.

Prednisone has completely taken away my appetite. I'll cook again...someday, I guess.

@rarerollingobject, your cakes are such works of art. Not to mention the flavors I can only imagine.

Such lovely meals. I wish I had an appetite.

For pastrami, I cure for a week, then steam in the IP for 30 minutes for a fairly small piece of brisket. You wouldn't need that long on ribs, I wouldn't think. Depend on how old the deer was, and whether it was wild or farmed.

Never thought about curing, but one of my favorites is to smoke and then steam, a la pastrami, in the Instant Pot. Would be good to cure/corn first, though.

Good thought. Too hot here for Scotch, though.

Oooohhh. Enchiladas. Another one for the list of "to make."

A nap. It was wonderful.

Well, so much for clean eating. I have been down with a sinus infection/sore throat for two days, and when I'm sick, I revert to junk food. My diet has included: Dry Cheerios (I was out of milk) Nacho cheese flavor Doritos (only a few; they're as nasty as I remember. My kid loves 'em, though. Ruffles potato chips and onion dip Taco Bell a Wendy's stuffed baked potato Kroger Private Selection butter chicken spring rolls (these things are awesome) A frozen single-serve pizza I unearthed from the freezer. I did make a pilgrimage to the grocery today (Kroger Clicklist is awesome, btw, when you don't feel up to traipsing through the store), and had some fresh watermelon chunks for a pre-dinner snack. Going to make up some fruit salad for dinner. If I feel up to it tomorrow I'll make some buns and make pork loin sliders from the pork loin I smoked last weekend. Also found a recipe for a ham spread that calls for ground ham, crushed pineapple, cream cheese, green onion, and assorted seasonings. Thought that sounded interesting. May have to try it. I'm about in the notion to get back in the kitchen.

You're killing g me. I want Indian SO badly...and since out local place closed, I have to go to Memphis.

I have done well at Cutleryandmore.com, shopping off their clearance section. Currently, I'm using a 12-piece place setting of Lenox that I got for something under $80.

I keep nuts of all kinds in the freezer. I use them in granola, and a great deal in holiday cooking and baking. Always good to have a handful of toasted nuts to throw on salads, etc.

There are fads, and there are fads. I eat probably 75-85 percent unprocessed (or at least relatively so) foods; very little fast food (the occasional Taco Bell taco notwithstanding), and am working hard to cut back on sweets and chips. I don't eat, necessarily, organic, though it's nice when it's available. I do cook LOTS of fresh veggies and non-processed meats, just because, well, that's what I like. I do fry stuff (though I rarely deep-fry, because it's just too damn messy). I cook with a lot of butter and bacon fat (I'm a Southerner). I'm blessed with good cholesterol. But I've also learned to roast a lot of veggies, and to love olive oil. Health isn't the main reason, although it's certainly a consideration; taste is.

Potassium. I'm not a big banana eater, so that's never been a big option for me. However, frozen orange juice from concentrate (and who knows, maybe fresh-squeezed OJ as well) is high in potassium. So I tank up on OJ.

Any Southerner will tell you: An original 6 1/2 oz glass-bottle Co'Cola. With a bag of salted peanuts poured in it.

Will y'all adopt me? Will bring zucchini.

I guess I'm a plebian; whatever blend my butcher sends me as part of my beef quarter (trimmings from steaks, roasts, etc., no pink slime, no organs/internals/assorted other not-nice stuff) is fine with me. What makes it into a perfect burger, to me, is: -- Cooking on the grill to a nice medium, good outside crust, just a little pink in the middle. -- Good buns, preferably ones I've made. -- Topping that suits my taste of the day; currently, I'm crushing on caramelized onions and blue cheese and good mayo. -- Lots of cold beer.

There's a little Gulf seafood place about halfway between home and Little Rock that is a regular stop for me when I travel between the two and am coming back at a decent hour. They travel to the Gulf Coast (an eight-hour run) three times a week and bring back fresh shrimp, oysters, whatever else is in season, along with seafood for their Cajun restaurant (which is marvelous!). I can get good jumbo shrimp at a much better than grocery store price; ditto oysters, crab, grouper, etc. Most of it has been frozen, but most Gulf seafood is flash frozen before it ever comes off the boat any more. Been a while since I've been down that way. Need to make a run. They're also a good place to get crawfish, and it's prime crawfish boil season now.

When my father's health was declining, near the end of his life, I would go up home every weekend. One weekend, he said, out of the blue, "I wish I had a good Reuben." I thought, "I can handle that." The next weekend, I stopped off by a Jewish deli in East Memphis, picked up corned beef, baby Swiss, a jar of sauerkraut, some rye and some Thousand Island, and we had Reubens that weekend, and I repeated it for several weekends, until he had his fill of Reubens. It was a pleasure to find something he enjoyed.

Lord, how I envy you your seafood! We get so little here that isn't frozen...

There are things in my kitchen that are green that should not be. (Time to clean out the fridge.)