kayb

I don't cook hot soups much in the summer, but I will keep watermelon gazpacho in the fridge most all summer long. Love the stuff.

Leftovers-R-Us. Took the white rice from Saturday, and the asparagus and corn and shrimp from Friday, and made fried rice. I am replete.

Two iterations of pork tenderoin: After the char siu, with which I was not overwhelmed, I stuck the other half of the tenderloin in the fridge. Sunday, I diced it up, peeled and diced some potatoes and cooked them, made a Mornay sauce (with the addition of some paprika) and stirred it all up together. Topped it with a combo of panko and grated parmigiano. With frozen lima beans and an apple salad, it served well for Sunday lunch.

A wood rasp works wonderfully as a citrus zester.

You put me to shame. I still have the raised beds to do, and the seed garden needs hoeing, but before that, the hoe needs sharpening, and before that, this twingy muscle in my back needs to quit.

I am likely now one of the few Southerners to own a set of Paderno cookware, thanks to the kind efforts of @Kerry Beal, with assistance from @Anna N, who went to Canadian Tire to check out the cookware sale. Kerry was kind enough to buy the set and ship to me. My old, mismatched stuff has gone home with the youngest child; it doesn't look nearly as nice, but it's an order of magnitude better than what she was using. The Paderno performed admirably tonight on the orange chicken and rice. I thought the recipe sucked -- it was unGodly sweet -- but the cookware did great.

I would love to have two of those. No bun, no aioli, just plenty of lemon wedges. Oh, Antoine's! Or Mary Mahoney's!

I am bowing to the child's wishes tonight and cooking -- Chinese. Orange chicken, in point of fact.

Cooking the bacon, pouring off the grease, wiping the skillet out with a paper towel. Over and over and over. That's why it's good to season skillets in the summer, so you can make lots of BLT's. I would suspect the burger thing is the same principle, but beef fat has never seemed to me to be as "greasy" as pork fat. Dunno why.

Clemson spineless is good okra. When you pick it, it's a good idea to wear a long-sleeved shirt, as the leaves have a stickery "fuzz" on them that can make you itch something fierce. And like all okra, it has tough stems, so carry a knife or kitchen shears to cut it from the plant, rather than just pulling it.

Welcome back! Share one or two of your favorite dished with us, why don't you?

Stick it in the oven on the "clean" cycle. When it comes out, wipe it out, and season again. My Lodge carbon steel pans didn't season "pretty" --- but they don't stick, either. I've seasoned with everything from flaxseed oil to bacon grease. I'm about to be of the mind bacon grease is as good as anything.

God bless y'all. A dear friend went to India on a business trip. Contracted food poisoning the night before he left. Spent the flight home, as he tells it, "locked in the airplane lavatory, sitting on the floor, hugging the toilet and praying to die." He can't eat Indian food to this day.

I believe I owe the original recipe for this four-ingredient piece of brilliance to @Kim Shook, but tonight, I added something and took it to a new level. These four things -- fresh corn, chopped asparagus, minced tarragon and cooked/frozen and thawed salad shrimp: with the addition of about three tablespoons of butter, will give you a start-to-finish-in-20-minutes dinner you'd be proud to serve guests. Saute the corn and asparagus in the butter, on medium high.Throw in the tarragon. Cut the heat back to medium, cover, and steam for two or three minutes, just long enough to get the asparagus almost to crisp-tender. Stir in the shrimp, cover again, steam some more just until the shrimp are hot. Eat immediately. Get seconds. I'm betting you could add this to a pasta with beaten egg and grated parmegiano, and have a phenomenal pasta primavera. I'm planning on leftover on a grain bowl with a balsamic viniagrette and shave parm. If I don't just warm them up and eat them as they are.

Just a word to the wise -- if it looks like it's going to bear heavily, you may want to be prepared to prop up heavily-laden branches. We had a Pineapple Pear tree that regularly shed branches because they'd be so heavy they'd just split off from the truck. We'd prop them up with 2 x 4s, because those pears made the finest pear preserves going, and did NOT need to be wasted.

Never had the Spanish, either. Chicken ain't bad. It IS salty. I'd love to take a look at that recipe, if you find it. I like salads with rice and pasta.

I'd love to know which recipe you went from. Were the sub flours also KA products?

Blueberry muffins.

No, but I've made pressure cooker carnitas. Cook the pork in the sauce about 90 minutes, NR, shred, spread on a baking sheet and crisp up in the oven. Reduce the juices for serving sauce.

I'll have one of each, please.

Well. I am closer to caught up than I was in the last post. Today, I replaced the tomato plants that didn't make it because of the delay in planting them, and added another pepper plant (ancho). I planted the herbs, and noticed that the rosemary has vanished, apparently having fallen victim to the rampant sage (I think that's what it was closest to). I tilled and planted the seed garden -- squash, cucumbers, lima beans, carrots, cabbage, radishes, pole beans. Decided I'd waited too late to plant the sugar snaps, the broccoli, the cauliflower, the Brussels sprouts, the leeks, and the cauliflower, so I'll hang on to those seeds and plant them next year. Tomatoes, planted and caged. Better Boy, Arkansas Traveler, Brandywine, Cherokee purple, yellow and red cherry, and Roma. Peppers in the background, though I'm not sure you can see them; pimiento, ancho, cubanelle, Thai hot. \ The herbs that overwintered/reseeded: Bronze fennel, sage, thyme, oregano, copious amounts of mint I should have never planted in the bed itself. I added to the pots, dill and onion and garlic chives and interspersed them in. There was rosemary, earlier this year, and it's vanished. I think the thyme and the sage ate it. Must get some rosemary. And the new ones planted today: Purple basil, regular basil, marjoram, and back in the back where you can barely see them, badly wilted cilantro and parsley. Still to come: Must plant the melons (no room in the seed garden, as I opted for an extra row of pole beans instead). Must put together, fill and plant the raised beds (one with asparagus, one with potatoes and onions). I think I can squeeze a few hills of melons in along the edge of the raised beds, at each end of the long garden. Will hope to get to that Saturday or Sunday. Right now, I'm so sore and tired I can barely move.

I'm behind. Tomatoes and peppers are in, herbs are going in today, but I have not yet planted potatoes, onions, or any of the seed garden. Hope to get that done today. Life has conspired against me this week. Starting an asparagus bed this year; I've lived in this house for five years, so I don't guess I'm moving any time soon. There will be green beans, lima beans, peas, carrots, cabbage, cucumbers, yellow squash, zucchini, eggplant, okra, broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts. And Sugar Baby watermelons and some kind of small cantaloupe. I'm thinking since I've waited so late, I may wait and plant the broccoli, cauliflower and sprouts on up in July and let them be fall bearers.

Steak and Shake has opened an outpost in my town; been open four days, and when I went at 1:15 yesterday, I had to wait 10 minutes for a seat. Single bacon cheese steakburger with fries, $4. And that's not an introductory price. Good, thick country bacon. Patty is thin, but nicely crusted from griddling. Fries are thinner than McDonald's, not my favorite, but you have the choice of several other sides (beans, slaw, applesauce, I forget what else). Added an Orange Freeze milkshake into the deal. Severe overeating. Should've left off the milkshake. Sandwich was great.

Well, that's worthwhile to know. Checking that one off the "H'mmmm..." list.

I don't know why meals from one end of one animal's spinal column makes me long for the other end of a different animal's spinal column. I'm jonesing for neckbones and dressing. Need to visit a market on the other end of town. No neckbones at Kroger, sadly.