kayb

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.

"Challenges" may not be the proper term, but I'm not sure what I'd call them. "Premises," perhaps. I like the eGullet cookoffs, which invite a variety of posts on a given dish. I like the threads that have to do with use of a specific ingredient (how many ways can you use xxx, etc.). I thoroughly enjoyed the discussion on how many meals one can get from a single roast chicken. I am, fortunately, not in the income category where I have to constrain myself to eating on a SNAP budget (though I've taught a class on how to do just that). But it's entertaining to me to see just how cheap a meal I can make (albeit not every day!). Nor am I in the income category where I can afford to travel the world and enjoy all the marvelous cuisines I enjoy vicariously on eGullet -- which is one of the several reasons I so thoroughly enjoy eGullet. And I do, occasionally, get to travel, so it's always good to have a resource to check out food I ought not miss! It's also interesting to me to see how food costs compare elsewhere in the wider world; I know, living in an agri area, food is cheaper here than it is lots of places. As a converse to the $5 meal, I'd be interested in a comparison of the costs of preparing the same meal in different parts of the world. Say, sausage and eggs (as I think most places in the world have some kind of sausage). Not for any "bragging rights" regarding how cheap or how expensive something is where you are, but just for information and the sake of "well, I'll be damned." (As an old newspaperwoman, I have never lost my love for the "well, I'll be damned" piece of writing. So, bring on the good "challenges." What's the weirdest flavor combination you tried and loved? What can you always make from your pantry and freezer when it snows 12 feet and you can't get to the grocery? What's your best recipe for xxxx? No, please don't make them the only thing on eGullet. But they're fun.

One of these years, I'm going to make some and try pressure-canning it, so it'll be shelf stable. I generally, if I'm going to gift it, put it in the little four-ounce jelly jars. Would be handy to have them shelf-stable.

Don't they call that Thousand Island dressing? Or, if you're in Mississippi, Comeback Sauce?

There's "cheap," and there's "inexpensive." I often cook meals with expensive ingredients, when I could cook them more cheaply, because they're better, and it's worth it to me to pay the extra. I have a friend who's horrified that I buy beans from Rancho Gordo instead of for a quarter of the price at the grocery; it doesn't bother me a bit, because they're much better, and it's well worth it to me. On the other hand, there are things I dearly love to eat that just aren't expensive. They're better when prepared well, and that's part of the attraction to them, and to this forum. I have learned a great deal from it over the years, from better prep techniques for inexpensive ingredients to learning about how to use, and finding sources for, exotic and often expensive ingredients. As I noted above, I enjoy the occasional challenge, whatever its nature, and I learn a lot from those as well. YMMV.

I use this recipe from Gourmet magazine. About every third or fourth year, I'll make it and include it in the Christmas goodie baskets.

I enjoy the "challenges" we've had from time to time -- the cook-offs, the "how many meals can you get from a roast chicken," etc. There used to be a food blogger who had a regular challenge going all the time -- cheapest meal, best fusion meal, best meal from pantry items. No, I don't want to see it become the only thing on eGullet, but there are lots of threads on eGullet that I don't read, either. That's why, I presume, it's set up the way it is. I am, in fact, thinking in terms of one tonight that's a standby from when the kids were little: Mexican lasagna. Ground beef, onion, garlic, spices; cheese; diced black olives; black beans; corn; enchilada sauce; tortillas. Brown the ground beef, layer everything in a casserole dish, as many layers as it'll hold, and bake. You can make it for less than $10 in ingredients, and it'll serve four. Leaves some left over for salad. Will follow up with photos.

Italian Cream Cake. I was on the road earlier this week and ate dinner in a restaurant that makes the best version of it I ever had. So I thought home a couple of extra pieces.

This is the recipe I used, but I used more cranberries. The one you posted looks good, though!

Not half bad. I used red cabbage; green might have been prettier for the contrast. Used a "spicy Russian sauerkraut" recipe that had sugar, spices and vinegar in it. First time I ever put vinegar in kraut.

Harvest grains toast with blackberry jam.

There's a reasonably good dim sum place here. But it can't touch that.

I refer to my latkes as "Methodist latkes," as they're cooked in bacon grease. (and served with a crispy fried egg with a runny yolk on top.)

Having taken to using exclusively farm eggs, which can vary widely in size within a carton, I'd like weights on eggs. I realize it's probably not always critical, but surely on some recipes it is?

There's another way to do it?

The way I like my fried egg. With the yolk still runny, the white lacy and crisp at the edges.

Multigrain bread from the King Arthur recipe collection. Didn't have white whole wheat flour, so I used sprouted wheat flour. Very good.

Pizza night. Four 9-inch pizzas. One ham and cheese, one cheese, two veggie (artichoke hearts, olives, sundries tomatoes, over spiced labneh).

Pretty hard to beat Rancho Gordo's wild rice, in my book. I do not pretend to be enough of a wild rice connoisseur to tell you whether it's wild or cultivated.

The recipe I use came from Food 52. I don't see it there any longer, but I preserved it in my blog, here. I've also done them with pulled pork, and I suspect you could use most any protein you wanted. I love the dang things. Of course, I also love to just slice a wedge of cabbage, salt it, and munch it raw. Not to mention just about any way you can cook it. (Another Food 52 recipe for "Suspiciously Delicious Cabbage" is one of my favorites, too.)