kayb

FWIW, if you're going to barbecue it, it's worth going to a meat market and getting it sliced about 1/4 to 1/3 inch thick. Thin stuff doesn't do so well on the grill. When I was a kid, "rag bologna," or bologna whose casing is a cloth one, I don't remember the brand, was the preferred bologna. We lived down the highway from a country store, and we'd get it sliced thickly there, bring it home, and either fry it or throw it on the grill. God almighty, it was wonderful. Fried bologna, white Sunbeam bread, yellow French's mustard. Barbecued bologna, a little cole slaw on it, slapped between two buns. Damn. I'm going to have to hunt down some good bologna and barbecue it. My mouth is watering, just thinking about it.

Put some of it on the next burger you grill. Or make a grilled cheese with it -- with crispy bacon and fried green tomatoes.

@Smokeydoke -- Fried bologna is a food of the Gods. Try it with eggs in the mornings. And barbecued bologna is even better. Put it on your smoker, with an occasional baste with your favorite barbecue sauce. Trust me on this.

Add another buck to my "It's @Toliver's fault!" tab. Though, I must confess. I'd already bought it from reading my BookBub email, but it's more fun to blame somebody else. Along with another Persia cookbook, both to go along with a couple of non-sale-priced grain bowl cookbooks I ordered last night. Among the grains I have here to work with are farro, buckwheat groats, bulghur, millet, quinoa, several different kinds of rice, barley, along with couscous. Will be interesting to see what I find to try.

OK. Here's my contribution to the world of challenge-dom, as I expressed it earlier: A $5 or less meal, assuming no charge for pantry staples. This is a favorite that my kids loved when they were little, and I loved because it could be thrown together in a hurry with little thought. Mexican Lasagna (and yes, I use the term loosely). It resides near the epitome of Southern trailer park trash food. And I love it, on a very intermittent basis. Maybe twice a year. The ingredients list (prices are from Kroger or Aldi in NE Arkansas; ymmv): A dozen small corn tortillas ($1.39) 1 pound ground beef ($5.00*) 1/2 onion, minced (pantry staple) 3 cloves garlic, minced (pantry staple) Salt, pepper, cumin, guajillo chile powder, ancho chile powder, smoked pimenton, oil (pantry staples) 1 can white shoe-peg corn (1.39) 1 can black beans, drained and rinsed ($1.19) 1/2 can black olives, drained and chopped ($1.99 for a full can) 6 oz. cheddar cheese (1.99) 6 oz. monterey jack cheese (1.99) 1 large can El Paso red enchilada sauce ($2.98) For a shopping list total of $17.92. *My farm-raised beef costs me an average of $5 a pound, whether it's hamburger, or filet. Supermarket cost may well be less. I'm throwing in the other half of the can of olives because I'll eat them out of hand. Start out sauteeing the onion and garlic until just starting to soften, adding the ground beef and spices, and sauteeing until done. Drain if necessary, and set aside. Grate the cheese. I used grocery store sharp cheddar and Monterey Jack. Co-jack would be fine. Most any cheese you like would be fine. Set that aside as well. Chop the olives, if they're not diced. Drain and rinse the black beans; drain the corn. Put everything within easy reach, oil a casserole dish (I use a 7-inch round Corningware baker), and commence layering. Put a tablespoon or two of enchilada sauce in the bottom of dish. Swirl to coat. Lay down a corn tortilla. Add a layer of meat. Sprinkle on some corn, followed by some beans, followed by some olives. Top with some grated cheese. Drizzle with some enchilada sauce (3-4 tbsp is plenty). Repeat the layers. For the final layer, put a tablespoon or two of enchilada sauce on the tortilla, smooth with a spoon, and sprinkle with cheese. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes at 350. And here you are. My cassrole dish would feed two very hungry eaters; my daughter and I ate all we wanted, and half was left. In addition, I used the additional ingredients and make a freezer meal that will serve another two or three. So, I'm saying six meals, for the original cost of $17.92 plus pantry staples, or $2.98 per meal. The other two bucks would be enough to add a side salad and/or some chips and guac. I'll give the freezer meal to someone, because I've had this now, and that's plenty for me for the next six months or so. But nevertheless, it's an inexpensive, quick and relatively healthy meal that kids love, and that was really important to me when mine were little. I can't match Liuzhou's 80 cents a meal, but I wasn't ashamed of it. Come on; play along.

Lovely work! Going to hold on to that process/recipe. Will pick up ducks one of these days at the Chinese market. Pastrami from the breasts, confit from the legs.

That one I have. And it is. I will tell you I believe it is nigh impossible to eat the carpaccio and then the Hussarde and finish both. And I only had one mimosa.

I had always, from the time I was big enough, "helped" in the kitchen. It might have been turning the crank on the sausage grinder, or fetching and carrying things, or stirring. I remember being convinced I was "making" teacakes when my grandmother would make the dough, roll it out, then put me on a stepstool and let me cut them out and put them on the cookie sheet. As there were two adult women in the home (my mother and my grandmother), and they both cooked, I came a little late to the cook-by-myself process. I wanted to enter the biscuit making contest in 4-H Club when I was in 5th grade, and that's the first time I remember cooking biscuits start to finish by myself. I learned a great deal about cooking from those two, but I didn't really cook a lot on my own until I lived on my own. There wasn't room in the kitchen!

Could you send me maybe a dozen of those? They look lovely. Croissants are something I have never attempted, and don't expect I shall. I see too much potential for making a hellacious mess and a dismal failure.

Looks like a great meal! I hope all the youth were as happy with it as I would have been!

This is it! (although I didn't recall the andouille viniagrette) Thank you, thank you, thank you! On my list for the next fancy brunch.

Today, on a pilgrimage to the new Home Goods that just opened here, I decided if my good ol' Calphalon non-stick had served me well for 20 years, and I could replace them for, if memory serves, the same price I paid for a 10-inch and a 12-inch 20 years ago, I might as well hang with 'em again. $40 for the pair. Coating has just begun to come off of my larger, old one, so I figure the smaller can't be far behind. The only things I ever use them for are eggs/omelets/frittatas and potatoes, either home fries, tortillas, hash browns or latkes. None of those are cooked much higher than medium, so I figure I'm safe on the temp ranges. Everything else gets the cast iron or carbon steel.

Bumping this up to get the group's opinion on how to accomplish something. Last year in NOLA, I treated myself to breakfast at Brennan's, which has two of my very favorite breakfast dishes in the world: egg yolk tartare and eggs hussarde. I was talking with the waiter about how they achieved the perfect texture for the egg yolks in the tartare dish; it's exactly what you get in the ideal over-easy or lightly poached egg. Perfectly runny. No solids at all. That good "done" taste and velvety texture that lets you know it's cooked enough. I'm thinking through how to accomplish this. The yolks tartare are not served whole; they're as if one just poured them out on the plate. I did not ask, and should have, whether they are cooked whole, or whether they're lightly beaten and then sous vided. I'm thinking if I were to lightly beat the egg yolks, then pour them into a bag, and sous vide, I'd get the effect I want. What would be the time and temp y'all would suggest for this? I'll save the whites for another day. The yolks tartare are pooled in a salad plate at Brennan's, with some grilled shrimp circling a tower of crispy fried sweet potato strands in the center. It's insufferably good.

Supposed to have a few reasonably warm days this week, so I will get out and cook a whole package or two of Wrights bacon on the grill in a sheet pan. This is how I'm reduced to cooking bacon, since cooking it in the house any time, whether my daughter is there or not, triggers her migraines. I think I may have to just shoot her.

A lumberjack sort of breakfast, for me. Hash browns (from frozen), over easy eggs, bacon, toast with jam. Requisite egg porn.

My tomato-canning every summer extends to tomato juice canning. A bloody Mary made with homecanned tomato juice is an insipid, weak-looking thing, due to the high percentage of colorless tomato water in the juice. But it packs the most marvelous BIG taste wallop! I add worcestershire, horseradish, hot sauce, Lawry's seasoned salt, and black pepper. One or two of @HungryChris's pickled asparagus spears, a couple of olives on a spear, and there you are.

First thing I can remember learning to cook was biscuits. And yes, from my grandmother.

Not nearly as good. I'm not crazy about them with smoked turkey, either. But a ham hock, or some cut-up pieces of good bacon... When they're simmered a good while with smoked pork, they develop a sweet, earthy taste that I have never experienced in anything else. Other green beans don't do this. Kentucky Wonders do. If it ever warms up enough, I have a packet of them waiting to plant. I will drive all over hell and creation looking for them at the markets this year, to can plenty for the winter, if mine don't produce enough. Felled with a rock from a slingshot, and smoked.

I like their collection boxes, generally, though this one doesn't really trip my trigger. The tie-dyed dishtowel that came with my last one, though, was way cool.

Yogurt. Granola. Blackberries. Coffee and OJ, not shown.

I would defy that, with a bowl of Kentucky Wonders simmered low and slow with a ham hock. But to each his own.

All good ones. I'd also add, what's your best meal, period? What's your specialty you trot out when the boss is coming to dinner?

Wasn't especially photogenic, so I didn't take a pic, but panang curry at one of the local Thai places. With a salad with ginger viniagrette and tom kha soup. Hit the spot. I had had a craving of late. And I learned this weekend is Thai new year. So Happy New Year to any of our Thai members!

Guess it'd work with a hock (or hocks) as it does with a hambone, but what I do is this: Put the bone (hock) in water and cook (I do 90 minutes high pressure, NPR), then strain. Broth goes back in pot to reduce via two saute' cycles (what are those, 20 minutes each? 30 minutes?) Then cool and portion out and freeze. I have been known to refrigerate it overnight, all in the IP pot, when I didn't want to mess with it until the next day, and then heat it back up a bit for ease of straining. The bone gets the meat peeled off and vac-sealed and frozen separately. I'll put it in any number of dishes. The bone used to go to the dawg, until she had an attack of pancreatitis. Now it goes in the trash, and she sits and looks at it mournfully. I have the baby food trays you use to freeze portioned baby food in. Works wonderfully for freezing reduced stock. When frozen, you pop them out, stick the lumps in a big zip-lock, label and return to the freezer. (This is one of the reasons you lose points on the freezer cleanout challenge.) The key is to not leave the tray in there long enough you forget what kind of stock you froze...was that ham, or chicken? (Said she who has a mystery tray in the freezer at this moment....)

OK. I'll offer this as an official eGullet challenge (insofar as I have any authority to offer anything official on behalf of eGullet, which I don't). Cook a meal for one for $5. You may exclude from the $5, but must specify its source: Pantry staples (flour, sugar, oil, spices, etc.) (If you bought an item (say a spice) you don't normally use, specifically for this dish, it doesn't count as a "staple." ) Refrigerator staples (butter, milk, any cheese you keep on hand as a matter of course, refrigerated condiments you keep on hand as a matter of course) Foraged foods (hunted game, wild-caught fish, foraged greens and fruits, etc., no matter what you spent on that trip to Alaska to catch that salmon or shoot that moose) Self-gardened or self-raised foods (vegetables, fruit, chickens, eggs, livestock, no matter what that chicken cost you to feed or that ear of corn cost you to raise) Self-preserved foods (canned, frozen, otherwise preserved from self-foraged, self-raised or self-gardened stuff only. Recycled leftovers should be presented as a cost factor based on what the original element cost (a third of that steak I cooked last night and didn't finish). Again, all the above must be specified as to the source of the excluded item. We can all impute at least a ballpark figure to the cost of the moose you shot in Alaska, if we're interested. Yes, the playing field will not be level. It ain't a contest. It's an exercise, or I think it will become so, in what we go to when money's tight, or what we look toward when we're lacking either inspiration or the motivation to go to the market. I will guarantee you I will eat more asparagus once my beds start producing, for instance; the size of the asparagus bed will be an indicator of how much I love the stuff. If it's nasty and you just don't want to get out, you're going to cook from what you have on hand. If we're lucky, it'll become a resource for "Oooohhh, if I kept THAT around the house, I could do THAT with it when I wanted to." Which is one of the wonderful things about eGullet, and the reason my pantry and fridge are so damn crowded. I, for one, am looking forward to seeing what y'all come up with.