kayb

The IP and I made 14 4-oz portions of highly concentrated ham stock. Pressure cooked yesterday's ham bone for two hours last night, then left it on slow cook overnight. Fished the bone out and picked off the meat today, while running the stock through three saute cycles with the lid off to reduce it. It's currently in the freezer in the silicone baby food freezer containers; in a day or two, or when I think of it, I'll pop them out and transfer them to a gallon freezer bag. A couple of them ought to flavor up a pot of bean or split-pea soup quite handily.

Looks remarkably like my breakfast (it's still breakfast if it's the first thing you've eaten, right? Even if it's after noon?) Hot ham and Brie on a leftover yeast roll, with honey mustard. Except you take MUCH better photos than I. So, everyone, imagine a version of @robirdstx's breakfast in the space below.

Think I failed to ever post the results of the peanut salad. My verdict: not nearly enough brine, resulting in a relatively bland dish. I added several tablespoons of red wine vinegar and a teaspoon or two of sugar, and that improved the taste markedly. It's interesting. Don't know that I'd take the trouble to make it again. The pickled mustard seeds seemed very faint in the flavor profile. The onion and carrot sub worked nicely.

Had to make an unexpected trip to Little Rock this week, which included a shrieking preschooler having to be physically restrained while his ears were suctioned. After that, I felt like I deserved a treat, so we went to Big Orange, a local chain, for lunch. Maytag blue cheese burger, with caramelized onions and pepper jelly. Went a long way toward assuaging the trauma of the morning. Big Orange is part of a Little Rock restaurant group that includes a couple of those, a couple of pizza/pasta places (Zsa Zsa's) and a couple of Mexican places (Local Lime). Very, very good fast casual dining. They source all their ingredients locally, buns from a local bakery, grass-fed beef from area farms, etc. There were tomatoes, good tomatoes, on the burger, but they made it too hard to handle, so I took them off and ate them separately. The sweet potato fries came with chipotle ketchup, which was GOOD.

I'm with TftC on the crunchy tacos, eaten immediately, with a packet of mild sauce. About three at a time, about every six months.

Oh, my, @scubadoo97. A true work of love. That tenderloin! Mine wasn't nearly as attractive, but good. I had been craving ham, so I picked up an Appleton Farms spiral sliced ham at Aldi because I'd heard good things about them. Did my standard glaze, which consists of coating the ham with ballpark mustard and then packing brown sugar on top of that. Had it with potato salad, beans and rolls.

I'm curious. How many "stuffing," which I interpret as white bread based, vs cornbread-based "dressing" do we have here? And am I correct in believing cornbread dressing is mostly a southern thing? My dressing is all cornbread. My mother made it with probably 3/4 cornbread, and the "heels" from loaves of supermarket white bread to lighten it a bit. Sage is a common ingredient, along with onion and, for some folks, celery (I don't like celery, so none in mine). Some have chopped, boiled eggs. Some put chopped boiled eggs in the giblet gravy. This year I'm getting my dressing from a local restaurant that makes great chicken and dressing. Mine is tremendously inconsistent; some years it's great, other years inedible. Decided I'd play it safe. Leftover dressing, crumbled and moistened with chicken or turkey broth and spread into a casserole dish, with depressions for eggs to be cracked into it and then baked, makes a fine after-Thanksgiving breakfast. You can shop for a while on that.

Yum. The crust looks luscious. Love the tiny cow. Steer. Bull. Whatever.

Oh, my. I daresay I know what dinner involves...

I will confess to envy at the eggs benny, money shot or no. I'm an oozy-yolk kinda girl....

They look like green mangoes.

Barbecue potato chips and a Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Pie. Swear 'fo God. I probably ought to be ashamed. I'm not. Much.

Loving this travelogue and the food. Keep it coming!

In-flight meal beats merry hell out of Soutwest's peanuts and pretzels.

I'm coming over to eat with you. Will bring additional fruit.

Nunavut, heck. Jonesboro is a small city of 80,000, and we just got Uber last summer.

I'm not a spinach fan, but my kids love the stuff, and this is how I used to make it when they were small. I'd hardboil two or three eggs, peel and dice them. Dice up 4 or so strips of bacon and fry until they were crispy; pour off all but about a tablespoon or so of the bacon fat. Toss in the spinach and egg, and saute just until it wilts; add a splash of wine vinegar and some salt and pepper. I couldn't handle it, but they loved it.

I did not see them at all last year. Been watching like a hawk this year. Apparently it's been a good harvest. We'll see how many jars of apple butter I get out of a half-bushel, and see if we need to go back. I wouldn't mind having some to dry...

Ah, Zinnie's! Have knocked back a beer or three there.

Have acquired a half-bushel of Arkansas Black apples. Apple butter making will commence Monday.

<<shudder>> There are jailhouse foods of which I am quite fond (having covered a good bit of court and cops during my newspapering days). To this day, the best pinto beans I ever ate were at the Crittenden County Jail. And I still make jail slaw, and occasionally will have it with fried bologna, on a bun. The prison tamale reminds me of something Paul Newman might have gotten fed during his time in the box.

Glad to have you. I'm currently tentatively exploring my way around the world of the electric smoker. And I know little charcuterie I do not love. Are you a Razorback kind of hog, or the cured/smoked kind of hog?

Done.

Frito Pie is a culinary masterpiece. Particularly when they make it at the Frost-T-Top by slitting one side of the bag, putting the bag in a cardboard Frency fry tray, and using the resultant container as a bowl. I'll have mine with cheese, no onions or jalapenos, please. (Before someone chides me: I don't like raw onion; cooked is marvelous. Don't like Jalapenos; they taste too green. Let them get ripe like God intended a pepper to be, and I'm OK with 'em.)

Big. Real big. Because you don't have to get up to mix another one as often.