kayb

Add me as a vote for gochujang. It's very versatile, and very good. And as far as I know, it lasts approximately forever in the fridge.

Good one. I think I've found my house. @Smokeydoke, I'll PM you my address and you can just ship me a dozen of those almond croissants.... Looking forward to this. Wish I could remember the off-strip Italian place (it was in a strip center, maybe not far from UNLV (?), very unassuming spot) where we ate last time I was out there. It was fabulous. My personal favorites, though are the Bellagio fountains choreographed to Frank Sinatra.

You are a mother after my own heart.

A beach, even in the rain, is a fine place.

Apparently not. On the roadvforvwork now, but will repost tonight.

Not great, but you get the idea. Part of dinner (Meat loaf, roast potatoes, broccoli). I don't think I put bacon in this one. Here's a more tomatoey one. And this one, on the plate, from the above skillet.

Which brings to mind my tomato cobbler. The recipe is one I adapted from one that appeared in the newspaper a few years back. Dice, salt and drain tomatoes, and stir together with some sauteed onion and garlic. Make up a basic (non-sweetened) cornbread batter, but make it thinner than usual. Pour it into your heated and greased skillet, and dollop the tomatoes all over the surface. Sprinkle with cooked, crumbled bacon, grated Parmigiano or other hard cheese, and some green onions, and bake. I see no good reason avocados ought not be a fine addition to that. Depending on how thin you make the batter, this is either a casserole one eats with a fork, or it could be sturdy enough to cut in wedges. Fine flavor, though.

Here in the Mid-South, there's a strong Catholic presence along the Mississippi River (mostly because that's the original area settled/colonized by the French and Spanish). Consequently, every little meat-and-three establishment in the Delta, as well as in much of the rest of the South, serves fried catfish as one of its specials on Fridays. It's typically served with French fries, hushpuppies, cole slaw, and white soup beans, with sliced raw onion and pickled green tomatoes as garnishes. Onion rings are sometimes an option.

I hesitate to post this in the schnitzel topic, as it isn't pounded nearly thin enough to be a real schnitzel, but Sunday was the long-awaited country fried steak. Round steak, pounded, salted and peppered. I would have preferred the already-jacquarded "minute steak," but I was digging in the freezer and this was what I came to first. It was cut thicker than I wanted, and I probably should have just butterflied it. From here, I bagged it and sous vided it at 150 degrees for about four and a half hours. I did a higher temp/shorter cook because I didn't get it started until Sunday morning. Out of the sous vide, ready for a second pounding. Still didn't get them as thin as I wanted them. Breading station. Seasoned flour, egg-and-milk, cracker crumbs (regular Saltines). Frying. After that, they went into the oven turned on warm, on a rack. Dinner. I like my gravy on my potatoes, but not on my steak. The cream gravy was the leftover seasoned flour from breading, the bag juices from the sous vide, and a healthy glug of milk, along with more salt and pepper. A leftover piece of steak made a quite nice breakfast this morning on a biscuit. Thanks, @Shelby, for making me think about getting frozen biscuits so I could cook just one at a time! Dessert was "red hot apples," apples baked with butter and cinnamon imperials candy, topped with a bit of heavy cream. Haven't cooked that in ages.

I know Shelby and Rosedale! And I love me some Delta tamales. I get mine either at Pasquale's in Helena or Miss Rhoda's in Lake Village, both on the Arkansas side of the river, but I definitely enjoy the ones from both Abe's and Larry's in Clarksdale. I love the ethnic diversity in the Delta. In the small Delta town where I used to live, we had Italian, Chinese, Lebanese and Syrian families, all of whom had been there for generations. The Garden Club had as its big fundraiser an "international food fair" every year where all those little old ladies made dishes from their home countries, and it was a do-not-miss event. I still lust for the stuffed grape leaves, the tabbouleh, the toasted ravioli, the cannoli, the dumplings, the noodles...

Methodists (Episcopal-light, which in turn is Catholic-light) typically observe Lent in some fashion. I'm giving up Facebook (and finding I have SO much more time!). In the past, I've given up candy, soft drinks, things of that nature. Abstaining from meat was never a thing, for some reason. I knew better than to vow to give up wine.

The food is spectacular...but I am lusting for that tablecloth. So very beautiful.

Oooohhh. I LIKE that. And it doesn't look like it'd be too horribly difficult to replicate. Going back to Aldi to score me another bag or two of scallops...

And that's a fine thing. I agree, we all have our luxury items on which we're willing to spend. I have a friend who is horrified I'll freely spend $6 a pound for Rancho Gordo beans. Yet she doesn't flinch at driving a $30,000 pickup truck and pulling a $20,000 horse trailer/camper.

I will confess to being somewhat ashamed Saturday morning when I made Little Smokies in crescent roll dough (hey, for canned stuff, it ain't bad) for the kids. I knew Anna would frown at me.

A major "Ooooohhhhh!" for the sachertorte and the pear tart.

I guess I'm a Philistine; I just can't see a grand for a grill/smoker. Of course, my charcoal/hardwood smoker is a 24 x 36 galvanized sheet metal box, with no bottom but with a removable top (with a thermostat in it; one puts one's coals in through a door in one end, directly onto the ground) that my father, who was a welder, built 50 years or more ago. It will hold four pork shoulders or about a dozen racks of ribs, or a dozen chickens cut in half. It has an expanded metal grate with another one to lay on top of the meat, so two people can grab the extensions on each end and flip the entire rack at once; very handy when cooking in mass quantities. It has cooked for a family reunion or two over the years, not to mention many church dinners, Fourth of July and Memorial Day festivities, and so on. I would not part with it for anything in the world. Shoulders would have been put on the coals about 6 p.m. last night to serve for midday meal today. Which meant someone, or two someones, would stay up all night and drink coffee and tell stories while they tended to the meat, which needed to be mopped with a thin, vinegar-based sauce and flipped hourly, the temperature monitored to keep it in a precise range. Those two would go to bed about 5 or 6 a.m., when the second shift took over. Good times.

Now, that's just cute. Happy New Year!

Sadly, Lamb's is no more. Nor is the Curb Market. However, the old Sears Crosstown has been turned into a gleaming new retail/office/apartment development.

How about the P&H Cafe? Wanda?

It can't hold a candle to the other confections here in terms of looks, but I'll put it up against anything in terms of taste. Homemade banana pudding, with old-fashioned boiled custard and a meringue topping that could have been fluffier but I didn't want to overbeat the whites like I did last time.

Ah, the barbecue contest. Only place I've ever been drunk with 250,000 other people. So you were at SCO, huh? I was at Tiger High, aka Memphis State. 1973-78, Memphis State's five-year plan. Was The Cupboard, over on Union at Kimbrough, one of your haunts? That place and the Buntyn Cafe stood between me and malnutrition for many years.

I think I'm going to call this one "forgotten bread." It's the Classic White Bread recipe from the SoNo Baking Company cookbook. I made up a batch of dough yesterday morning, put it in the microwave to rise (microwave serves as a proofing box more than it does a microwave) and promptly forgot it. Got back to it about 4 p.m., some eight hours later. Punched it down, put it back in the microwave. Discovered it when I got up this morning. Oops. Shaped it into a loaf, put it in a pan, let it rise for another hour, and at least remembered to bake it. The extended rise didn't seem to hurt it, amazingly. It has a very yeasty taste, which is not a bad thing for me. It's a very soft bread, but it's still pretty sturdy. I think it'll make some primo sandwiches or breakfast toast. In the interest of good, fresh bread for sandwiches and toast, I sliced the entire loaf, interleaved the slices with waxed paper, put it in a plastic bag and stuck it in the freezer as soon as it cooled.

Last night, youngest daughter came down for a sleepover preparatory to taking off on a shopping expedition early this morning. I decided I'd make coquille St. Jacques, because I'd seen the NYT Cooking plug for the Ina Garten recipe, which is certainly pretty easy. I scooped the baked casseroles out of the ramekin to dish it up on the plate for the photo; served with roasted broccoli and potatoes roasted in duck fat. Very rich dinner. I have to say I am less-than-overwhelmed with Ina's inclusion of curry powder in the sauce; next time, I'll go back to the traditional pinch of nutmeg. Otherwise, it was good, but for the fact what I thought was Gruyere in my cheese drawer was, in fact, Jarlsberg. It sufficed. Because I didn't think my 12-oz bag of frozen scallops from Aldi would stretch to three people, I thawed a package of Aldi lobster tails that had been residing in the freezer, diced them up, and added them. Went together nicely. Earlier in the week, another frozen Aldi seafood, ahi tuna steaks, served as the centerpiece for poke bowls. From 11 o'clock, marinated tuna, pineapple, edamame, diced cucumber in sesame dressing, all grouped around brown rice. One of my favorite weeknight dinners.

Lovely! The country fried steak that did not get made last Sunday is on the agenda for tomorrow. So I'll have my version of schnitzel for y'all.