kayb

Breakfast for dinner, inspired by a Facebook friend who mentioned cracklings and got me thinking about crackling cornbread with sorghum molasses. I had no cracklings and so had to make do with biscuits, but I did have the aforementioned sorghum molasses, as well as farm eggs, and I made some biscuits. I appear to have shaken off the bad biscuit juju; these rose decently and were pretty tasty! And I made them with butter, as I am out of shortening. The Canadian bacon is from my second attempt at making my own, per the Ruhlman recipe. (My first attempt, I forgot the loin while it was curing in the storage room fridge...for about two weeks. It was a hockey puck when I discovered it.) Brined 72 hours, smoked to 145F, then chilled. I cut slices about 1/4 inch thick, seared them in a hot pan. Pretty good. When I get ambitious, I'll slice up the entire chunk, vac-seal it in smaller portions, and freeze it. I think it'd be wonderful in a carbonara-ish pasta sauce, or a brown butter sage sauce, or in a lot of soup applications. I'm thinking I may have some tomorrow morning on a leftover biscuit for breakfast, too! Yes, there was wine for dinner. With bacon and eggs. Sue me.

I'm liking this solar oven. Think I'll have to make use of one for defrosting things, particularly; what a great idea! Try the collards in a frittata. Although I'm with your DH; no fan of cooked greens, either.

Ohhhh. Jealous. I MUST go back soon. If you are a fan of the massage chair, take a couple of days, get on the bullet train, go to Hanamaki (about three hours, as I recall, north into the mountains) and stay at the hot springs resorts. Wonderful baths outdoors in the hot springs, and then a massage to relax every cell in your body. There was good food. I don't remember what it was. I was too relaxed.

Taco Bell. My dirty little fast-food secret vice.

One of my favorite, not-too-sweet, pretty healthy snacky things is bran muffins. I use this recipe, cut the sugar to about a third of a cup, and add diced figs or dates (raisins are canonical, but I don't like raisins) and walnuts or pecans. Of course, I negate all health benefits by grabbing a couple fresh out of the oven and slathering it with an unhealthy amount of butter....

Sounds like a fine boyfriend. I believe I'd keep him.

Maybe sear from frozen, to keep from overcooking the inside? Not a problem for me, as, like @robirdstx, I like my pork with no pink showing.

Ohhhhhh...I want to go back to Japan SO BADLY! It's been six years. I'm due. Sushi at the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo at 6 a.m., just after the boats come in, is the most memorable food experience I've ever had.

Absolutely!

@FrogPrincesse, that sounds absolutely marvelous. I've bookmarked that recipe; I have cooked a good deal of pork loin recently, so it'll be a while before I go back to it, but will certainly try this. I recall we often used milk and/or buttermilk to marinate wild game when I was a child; it toned down the "gamy" taste and added a level of tenderness not see otherwise.

It is Just Not Fair for me to have to look at scallops and sand dabs. I had popcorn. And wine.

Also makes good stir-fry, cut crossways and then into strips or diced. If I have a big pork loin like that, I generally cut part of it into boneless chops, as mentioned above; they lend themselves to any number of cooking methods. I'll leave one chunk whole as a roast. You can also brine and then smoke, for Canadian bacon.

Have always planted it directly in the ground before. Experimenting with an eye toward using these trays year-round for microgreens.

Hopefully, by July! Maybe late June.

Well, THAT'S no fun.

Thoroughly enjoyed this.

Ok. I have played in the dirt today. In these trays: I have lettuce, carrots, radishes, cabbage, and sweet peas. I topped each with about a teaspoon of potting mix, as it seemed to me the seeds should be covered. I have never worked with rock wool before. It was damp when I opened the trays. How often should I water? How much? Below are five kinds of tomatoes, and two kinds of peppers. They will come indoors at night and outside in the daytime, or take a turn under the grow light. Tomorrow, particularly if I don't get my computer back from the shop, there will be herbs, squash, fennel, asparagus, and maybe green beans. Guy is coming Friday to till up my plots. I have 16 40-pound bags of compost for him to till in. And today I built a compost bin from pallets. One can get a lot done outside when ones computer is on the fritz.

M'mmm. I made slaw today. Got a little corned beef left. That may be on my agenda later in the week. Today, pork loin that went for a SV bath earlier in the week, with baked beans, potato salad and slaw. Simple, but good. Loin was cooked SV for about 8 hours at 145, then chilled. Sliced about an inch thick, glazed with some barbecue sauce, and broiled in the CSO.

Sweet potato latkes, if you can figure out how to make them without the egg, are a great source of fiber. I have homemade granola, homemade yogurt, and fresh fruit most mornings. Fruit/veggie smoothies with protein powder are healthy, tasty, low-cal and quick. Hash with leftover beef. Bran muffins. I'd hate to know I had to do without pork, but I could do it. Don't know that I could do without eggs.

A lovely day yesterday, so surf 'n turf on the grill -- steak, garlic-butter shrimp, asparagus. With roasted cauliflower and fresh ricotta (my adaptation of the NYT recipe). Small filets, SV 125F for an hour, chilled, then onto a hot grill. Got 'em just about perfect. Getting the most out of the grill, in the left rear is a chunk of pork loin that had been brined and was being grilled/smoked for Canadian bacon. Haven't cut into it yet.

And on the Saturday after St.Patrick's Day, one must have corned beef hash. I think it's a law. I saw nice eye of round roasts at Aldi yesterday. I'm thinking I may have to corn something else. There's maybe one meal worth of corned beef left out of that bottom round. It also made a quite excellent sandwich this morning, with some horseradish cheddar.

Shrimp, filet, cauliflower, asparagus. Not to be sneezed at. All on the grill. It was a gorgeous day today. Last week, it was snowing. Back left is a piece of pork loin brined and then smoked/grilled for Canadian bacon. Unlike the last time I forgot the brined pork curing in the fridge for a few hours, which became a few days, at which point it was a hockey puck and I chunked it. We will try Canadian bacon tomorrow, maybe. Tonight, it was filet, garlic butter shrimp, asparagus, and roasted cauliflower with ricotta. Good dinner. Wish I'd been hungrier.

My 5 % Ruhlman brine, for 10 days (vs. the 5 days he recommends) left me with a small grey spot in the middle of one end of the bottom round I brined. Not certain if that was due to to the failure of the brine to penetrate or to the fact there was a vein of fat running through it. In any event, it was quite excellent. Ran by Aldi today. They had eye of round roast at a semi-reasonable price. I very nearly bought another one to corn, as we have pretty well decimated the bottom round I corned the first time. Perhaps @rotuts had the right idea when it comes to corned beef -- nothing succeeds like excess.

Have Driscoll strawberries in the fridge as we speak. They're better than no strawberries at all, albeit not a whole lot. Given the early spring, we might get some decently early strawberries; in any event, with the late Easter, we will have local asparagus and strawberries for Easter dinner. May have ham and deviled eggs, but who will notice?

That looks lovely. I often see these (zucchini, in the US) at the farmers' market. This round variety is known here as "eight-ball," for its resemblance to a billiard ball. I like the idea of the buckwheat stuffing; I will try this when the season begins!