kayb

The photo is from Portugal. Trying to remember who on here recently traveled to Portugal.

@liuzhou, I hope those lovely meals mean you're steadily gaining your strength back and moving toward being 100 percent!

Highly recommend you try the Vivian Howard Blue Q barbecue sauce. Amazing on chicken.

Oooohh. I can bacon jam regularly, and have some on the shelf now. I use it on grilled cheese, on soft cheese on crackers, on biscuits in the morning, and to jazz up grits and/or baked eggs en cocotte, but I never thought about "not-cinnamon" rolls. I occasionally do some with finely minced ham and shredded cheese, and those are pretty good, but MUST try the bacon jam ones. Oh, and it's marvelous to dollop a spoonful onto a burger about 30 seconds before you take said burger off the grill.

That would be much like Vivian Howard's baked eggs in stewed tomatoes, with the addition of the bottom layer of cheese, and VH's topping of crispy ham chips. I canned two pints of her stewed tomatoes, and envision this a few times over the winter. I suspect I shall add the cheese, because, well, cheese.

Oh, hell. And me with a quart and a half in the fridge.

Her husband does have a nice butt. At least in the pictures.

Please forgive horribly blurry cell phone photo. French toast from sourdough from the Farmers' Market. As I have been grandmothering all week, this is one of the two times the stove has been turned on all week.

I'd love to have that recipe, if you have a link, @ElsieD. It will, someday, cool off enough to bake bread again. I've been buying it at the Farmers' Market.

I just put it on the stove, cover with olive oil (I keep reusing the garlic oil I saved from last time), and poach on low or very close to it until they're soft. Cool, pour up, being sure they're covered in oil, and refrigerate. Scoop out however much you need, just bearing in mind it's milder than raw so you may need more. Combine half and half with melted butter, mash the soft cloves completely, and brush on bread for the best garlic toast on the planet.

Enjoy the drive! Wish you were coming in two weeks. I'll be up in that part of the state for a few days then.

Apropos of the "things you might want to know for no particular reason" someday category, EdgePro is a fine Arkansas product, and has been since 1886, when Mr. Smith, whose name I don't remember, began mining Arkansas novaculite in the Ouachita Mountains and making whetstones. They no longer manufacture in Hot Springs (like so much else, it's been offshored), but their HQ and distribution center is here. Somewhere, I have a couple of pieces of raw novaculite I picked up from the grounds of their former plant, now DC, in Hot Springs. Really nice guy that's the CEO now. FWIW, Microplane is an Arkansas company, as well.

I prefer, in almost all applications, the taste of slow-cooked garlic over that of fresh. So I get the big bag of cloves and poach them in oil, then store them in a couple of quart plastic containers (that are dedicated, as one might imagine, to garlic!) in the fridge. Lasts me about three months. Plus I have great garlic infused olive oil.

I love an entrepreneurial woman! Please tell her congratulations for her thriving new business! @rotuts, there is a gyro food truck here in town that does to-die-for falafel. Unfortunately, it parks downtown, where if you don't work there, parking is a pain in the butt, so I rarely go. But damn, it's good.

Wise choice.

You folks need to come to Memphis. You can't throw a rock without hitting smoked shoulder. We call it barbecue.

I don't remember any duty when I brought my Misonos home from Tokyo in my checked luggage. Of course, I'm not sure I remembered to declare them, either.

I generally don't do it, because I'm not that organized, but I have done so in advance of my Saturday at the soup kitchen. Don't do potatoes, obviously, but I will certainly do onions, pepper, carrots, even meat if I have access to it; usually the meat is at the church, so generally not unless it's a pre-cook (I've done two or three Instant Pots of chuck roast, for instance, and then shredded it, though). Stuff like squash, eggplant, etc., is easy enough to prep I don't bother with advance. But any hard veggies may get done a day or two in advance, and refrigerated. We did something, I forget what, that called for caramelized onions, so I did those at home in the slow cooker well in advance.

I add my thanks. The region fascinates me. Thanks for bringing it to my living room.

No photos, but... Used some of @ElainaA's roasted cherry tomato sauce I had in the fridge as the basis for what wound up an excellent meat sauce for dinner yesterday. Sauteed a diced onion, browned a pound of ground beef. Added a couple ounces of tomato paste. Pureed the roasted cherry tomato sauce with a stick blender. Added it, as well as a cup of homemade tomato sauce from last year's batch, and simmered for 30 minutes or so. Added fresh, minced basil and oregano from the herb garden, and a couple of pinches of red pepper flakes. Pretty marvelous. Served it over a combo of tortellini and small ravioli I'd picked up at Aldi; had one two-portion package of each, and three adults, so thought we'd need more. Tortellini was excellent; ravioli, not so much. Cheese-filled, and the cheese seemed chalky, for want of a better descriptor. I picked out and chunked the remaining ravs, and dished up some leftover tortellini with some leftover sauce, as well as a dish of just sauce that will serve nicely on English muffin halves or flatbreads as "mini pizza" with some cheese.

Fascinating. In Hot Springs, AR, they brew beer with thermal water from the springs. Still have to heat it hotter, but it's already at 145F. Considerable savings on electricity to heat, plus it's damn good water and damn good beer.

Those onion rings! I LOVE a good onion ring, and those look like prime quality.

I echo @blue_dolphin's sentiments -- very much enjoying the your travels! Damned if I'd do that trip in the summer, though.

They have obviously never been to Payne's Barbecue in Memphis, nor Jones' BBQ Cafe in Marianna, AR (winner of a James Beard American Classic award).

The remains of a breakfast pizza the kids, grandkids and I decimated this morning. Going to see how the leftovers heat up in the CSO tomorrow.