kayb

Agree with both of you. I will buy a bunch when I'm cooking Cajun, use two stalks, and wind up chunking the rest.

Update: The finished product. Over rice, with peas and corn, and a side of cucumber salad as it was starch heavy. Steak was perfect.

Felt fruity t'other day. A very good blue (Faribault?) whose provenance I forget, except it came from the specialty cheese shop at Kroger, where most of the cheeses carry a "Murray's" sticker. Don't know if Murray's sold the right to use its name, or actually curates the cheese selections, or what. Pear was a Bosc, and wanted a bit of ripening. Watermelon, since the grandchild had been here and was begging for watermelon, was decent for being out of season.

Sure is. Oddly, I did not grow up eating Hellman's; we were a Blue Plate or Kraft or whatever was on sale family. When I tried Duke's and Hellman's side-by-side, Hellman's just had a taste I preferred. Everyone's mileage, obviously, varies. But now I have a taste for homemade mayo. Specifically, green garlic mayo. There should be green garlic at the farmers' market. If not, Chinese chives from the Asian market make an acceptable substitute. @ChefPip, I have never tried heating my egg first. Will have to try that.

I use a combo of cow/horse manure (depending on which source I use, the Home Depot or a friend's barn) and compost from my back yard bin. My guy who cuts the grass dumps the grass clippings in the bin. So I guess I have all the bases covered.

I am anxious for you to get this venture up and going. I feel pretty certain I will be a good customer.

My personal favorite to go with a Mexican meal is cranberry beans. Cook 'em an hour on high pressure (with no soak) with some onion, garlic and olive oil, a little cumin, a little smoked paprika. Salt and mash with a potato masher, let 'em simmer until they're as thick as you want. Hard to beat, particularly topped with some queso fresco.

Is that tomatoes, or red bell peppers in your succotash? Never tried either in mine. It's a dish I enjoy, but mine's always just plain ol' limas and corn.

Taco night. With refried beans, rice, and some corn tortillas, fried crispy, with cheese melted on them and drizzled with Pancho's dressing. @Thanks for the Crepes will be familiar with the dressing; for the rest of you, its a sweet, mustard-y viniagrette Pancho's, that venerable Ark-Mex standby for 60-plus years, has always used for its taco sauce. One can buy it in the grocery around here, and I frequently do. Makes a good cabbage dressing for slaw for fish tacos, too.

Today, SV was an interim step in the cooking process. It's steak tips and rice, planned for Sunday dinner. I went pawing through the freezer for the couple of top sirloins I was pretty certain were in there, and only found one. One top sirloin will not do dinner for four, not when one of the four is a big ol' boy of 6'4", 250, and the other three have middling decent appetites. So I looked further. Found a two-pound package of round steak. H'mm, sez I. I brought it in, pitched it in the SV bath in the vac-packed bag in which it came from the butcher (part of my quarter-steer), after peeling off the label, and let it go at 130 for eight hours overnight. Pulled it this morning, cubed it up, tossed the cubes in seasoned flour, browned it, and let it simmer 30 minutes in a combo of the jus and beef broth. Pulled out the son-in-law's portion, added caramelized onions and sauteed mushrooms to the remainder. (The boy's odd; he won't do either onions OR mushrooms. Sigh.) A quality control sample indicates a success. We shall see, come noonish.

Got the compost down this week; was going to till it in, but I'll let tomorrow's rain handle that and then I'll retill toward the end of the week when I'm ready to plant. Finally. I could have already had lettuce, carrots, and probably my brussels sprouts, broccoli and cauliflower out, but it's been so doggoned wet it's been hard to think about getting in the garden. Next week should be a good week. One more chilly snap tonight and tomorrow and hopefully that will do us.

I love corn flakes on top of any kind of creamy dish.

Highly recommend when you cook your farro you toast it in oil or butter in the skillet first, then add water. Really brings out the rich, nutty taste. I think it's probably my favorite. I riffed on a recipe I found somewhere and created a "salad" of farro cooked like that along with brussels sprouts, in a balsamic viniagrette, that was pretty good. Barley is OK. Bulghur I like a good deal. Also need to get to the bulk store and get some rye berries; found a recipe for a Reuben grain bowl that sounds marvelous. Two cookbooks I have that I like are Bowls! by Molly Watson, and Grain Bowls, by Anna Shillinglaw Hampton. Have never tried amaranth. Will be anxious to hear.

I keep a bottle of (light) Karo in my pantry all the time. Don't use it for a lot of things, but there are things in which nothing can replace it. When I was a kid, I preferred it to pancake syrup for pancakes or French toast.

NOTHING that tastes like Key lime pie is a failure.

Found it at the link. Saved and noted. Thanks.

I've tried using barley, bulghur and farro. Of those, farro is my favorite. I bought some buckwehat groats at the health food store the other day, but have yet to try them. Have not yet tried freekeh. Millet is "meh," tastes and acts a bit like quinoa but not as nutritious, I don't think. Teff strikes me as something like flax seed -- good in combo with some other stuff, but not by itself. Haven't tried using millet or teff in a grain bowl; I have them more for use in baking bread.

Duke's or Blue Plate, my hind foot. Hellman's (the original; don't be bringing no "light" stuff up in here, now) or homemade, please. Good on anything, but best on grocery store white bread. Toasted, if it's not impeccably fresh. With a bread and butter pickle spear and a glass of cold milk.

Lawry's Seasoned Salt. It'll make the difference. Well, you can always replace it with "Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Mayer Weiner...." When I was a small child, there was a TV commercial for a Nashville, TN, area chain of dry cleaners, the Happy Daze cleaners. I will never forget that jingle; it is engrained on my auditory nerve. "At HAP-py Daze, we CLEAN your clothes The SOFT touch way with SAN-itone. Make THIS your happy, HAP-py day, Just CALL us on the SAN-iphone." Lord. More than 50 years ago and I can still hear the obnoxious thing.

Has anyone done a fennel bulb in the IP? I'm not experienced in cooking fennel -- I've only ever roasted it, or used it raw in a salad. Wonder how it would be cooked whole in the bulb, in the IP? Fennel is another one of those vegetables I'm just discovering, because we never grew it and thus never ate it when I was a kid. I'm planting some this year.

Thanks. How do you maintain the humidity, given the tendency of fridges to dry things out? Do you just keep a bowl of water in there? And how do you measure the humidity -- are there gauges?

I see Tennessee is on the map. I'd expect that more up in East TN, in the Smokies, or around the northern part of the Highland Rim. Don't think they grew in W. Tenn., which is a flatter, lowland area more like the Delta. And I see Arkansas is not on the map, though I might expect to find them in the northwestern part of the state, in the Ozarks. Ain't gonna be any over here in the Delta, that's fo' sho'.

Perhaps a bit off-topic, but I'm interested to hear about the curing chamber. Did you build it, or convert it, within your house? What temp do you keep, and how do you keep it there? Am looking at the possibility of buying a small "dorm room" fridge to use for hanging and curing meats. Not sure if the highest possible temp setting would still be too low. Thoughts?

I don't guess ramps grow down this far South; I'd never heard of foraging or eating them, and as I grew up in a community where people were used to foraging, I think I would have. I do see where morels are being harvested apace up in the Ozarks. May have to take a weekend road trip. I have never had a morel.

I never had lamb growing up. We raised beef, pork, chicken, and knew people who had goats, but raised them for milk. I don't remember ever seeing lamb in the grocery until maybe the last 10 years in this part of the world. (Although not too far from home, in Kentucky, was the home base of mutton barbecue, which I always thought was pretty horrible.) I guess maybe because I never had it growing up, I am not a huge lamb fan now. It has a flavor I don't like. I can deal with it when it's highly spiced, as in an Indian or Middle Eastern dish. I will buy ground lamb for something specific -- moussaka, kibbe, shashlik -- maybe once a year.