kayb

Chargrilled oysters at Drago's. About to grab a quick nap before dinner.

Ohhhhhh, yeah. Gardening will begin apace with the starting of seeds, next week after I recover from New Orleans. Both the Farmers' Almanac and the Accuweather long-range forecast do not call for any more frosts this spring, though some nights will be in the upper 30s. Nevertheless, I'll wait until about the third week of March to get early stuff in the ground. Which will give me time to get a bunny-proof (one hopes) fence in place.

Oh, hell, no. I want details. Details!

Me too. Fifth grade. Most books we'd ever had in the house at one time. I started with Vol. A in the World Book, and read it through. I read enough that when Amazon was handing out refunds due to the class action lawsuit on price fixing a year or so ago, mine was $300-plus. That's what bought my CSO.

Much like migas, which always look like something the cat threw up. The huevos al abanil sound good, albeit hotter'n hell.

Tongs for pulling pasta out of the water, maybe? Or the weirdest salad tongs I ever saw in my life.

FWIW, I cooked a tenderloin SV t'other day; marinated a couple of hours in char siu sauce, SV in sauce for 3 hours at 135 F, cooled, then steam-baked at 400F for 10-15 minutes to crisp it up on the exterior. Drier'n a bone.

Once you can get past the horror of boiling a flank steak, it's marvelous. Made quiche on Friday because daughter was en route to visit for the weekend. We finally got around to it this morning. Ham, fontina, and chives, no crust because daughter has celiac disease. Ham was part of a package from the freezer. I should have pressed some moisture out of it with paper towels. It had a bit too much water in it. Still good quiche, and we'll enjoy it the next couple of days.

Oh, my, that looks lovely. I haven't made beef and broccoli lately. I should. That looks pretty lovely too. There would not have been too much had I been there.

I dearly love ripe plantains; tostones, not so much. When I was in Miami for a conference, I found a little Cuban place about a block from the hotel and ate there three times a day. They knew me after the first day, and knew to bring me maduros, plus whatever else they wanted me to try. It's where I learned to love vaca frita.

Last night's red beans and rice (photo on dinner thread) took a package of frozen ham left over from Easter 2015 (thank you, FoodSaver!), a package of frozen dark meat chicken left over from a week ago, and a package of frozen andouille sausage out of the freezer. It returned three one-meal baggies of rice, and a quart and a pint of red beans. At least the quart of red beans will be going home with my child when she leaves Monday. The rest of the ham went into a quiche, along with a bunch of grated fontina, which is presently residing in the refrigerator. It'll serve for dinner tonight, and most likely breakfast tomorrow.

I have had pork shank, and this appears to be a crossways cut of shank or the lower end of the shoulder or ham. The shank I had at a restaurant in Atlanta was braised in apple cider with warm spices, then glazed with either reduced sauce or with honey and finished in a hot oven to give it a tasty, crisp crust. It may have been the best portion of pig I ever ate.

Hello Dolly bar cookies, also known as "Sin In A Sheet Pan." I added salted caramel chips to the top, expecting them to melt in the oven; they didn't. Will put them underneath, with the chocolate ones, next time.

And so...it begins! First shipment. These were the ones I forgot with the first order, and added on. They came first.

Pork wings.

Or, as we call it around here, "Big Chicken" wine. Middle daughter is here with her pair of urchins, so dinner was her favorite, red beans and rice, with stove-top cornbread, or, as we used to call it back in the day, "hoecake."

Pimiento cheese sandwich on honey buttermilk flaxseed bread, with pickles and olives.

Pork tenderloin from the freezer, marinated and SV'd in char siu sauce, then brushed with a combo of char siu sauce and honey and baked at 450 convection in the CSO. Cauliflower by the NYT recipe, but I think I left something out,as I was going from memory (never a good thing at this stage in my life). Not bad, but lacked something. Corn casserole with Jiffy cornbread mix, an old favorite and always good.Corn was some of last summer's, from the freezer as well. I'm having a real problem with alliteration this week, though. Kudos to @rotuts for a wonderfully sleek-looking freezer! (You're welcome to come defrost mine...)

Theoretically. Which means, for me, I'd have egg all over the kitchen and be left with nothing but shells. But thanks to both of you. H'mm. OK. I'm going to try this. I've always tended to poached or over-easy or sunnyside, but I feel the need to broaden my egg horizons.

And here, sigh, is where cleaning out the freezer goes bad: I pulled out a package of boneless, skinless chicken breasts (4 small half-breasts in a package, from my organic chicken farmer). Cooked them from frozen in the Instant Pot, shredded them, made a cream sauce of butter, flour, onion, garlic, concentrated chicken stock from the freezer, cream and grated cheese. Cooked some wide egg noodles. Combined all of the above with some poppy seed, and topped with crumbled-and-buttered Ritz crackers. And portioned it out into one casserole dish to bake for last night, and two other foil dishes to go in ... the freezer. As the total freezer space consumed is double the original mass of the chicken and baggie of stock, I'm presuming I lost points. Ah, well. @Thanks for the Crepes, these are the foil dishes I referred to earlier. They're about 4 x 6, and stack nicely.

and @ElsieD -- I use a scant 1/4 cup, and it does well for me. It has a sweet-tangy taste, from the fish sauce and soy sauce.

@scubadoo97 Here. I love this stuff. It cooks up quickly, so you'd better have your rice on ahead of time. It does NOT make enough sauce if you want to dribble some over your rice, btw. I've used both tilapia and salmon, and both are good this way. Just don't use in-the-freezer-too-long fish.

Dumb question of the day, as I have never soft-boiled an egg in my life: Do they just sort of slide out of the shell, or, in the alternative, how do you peel them?

No alliteration involved, that I could see, but I pulled a couple of tilapia filets out and subbed them for the bluefish in the NYT's recipe for Vietnamese Caramel Fish. Served with plain brown rice and frozen peas. Unfortunately, the fish served as a reminder as to why freezers should be cleaned out. It wasnt' dated, and showed no sign of freezer burn (the filets are individually vacuum sealed), but, cooked, had an unpleasant, strong "fishy" taste. Peas and rice were good, though, and I wound up scrambling a couple of eggs to mix in with both as a sort of faux fried rice after discarding the fish.

But I can drive the 130 miles to Little Rock on the interstate in two hours. All things considered, I might well prefer 75 degrees on the patio with hummingbirds and waffles.