kayb

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.

@gfweb -- gorgeous!

I do four pounds of garlic cloves (the big peeled bag at Sam's) in confit at a time. That lasts me close to six months. I portion it into two quart plastic containers with screw-on lids, and they live in the refrigerator. I put enough oil over to be sure they're covered, but once I start scooping garlic out of one, some cloves are exposed. I just use the oil I poached in, and pour off any unused oil into a container that goes in the pantry, to be used next time I do confit (it's some POTENT garlic oil at this point), though I always need to add fresh oil to it. I probably poach for at least 90 minutes. I have not died, nor has anyone to whom I've served a meal that used the confit.

Got a baguette squirreled away? Meatball sandwiches! Since they're in barbecue sauce, add some tangy vinegar-based slaw instead of the traditional cheese.

The last batch I cooked SV, I let it sit on the counter and cool for about an hour. The bacon "jus" absorbed back into the bacon, leaving just the fat for me to drain off; I opened the packages in the sink, grabbed the bacon out, laid it on a plate en masse, poured the fat up into a container, then put the bacon back in its original bag, which is equipped with its own zipper seal (I use Wright's). I thought the slices separated more easily, and when seared, had a better texture, with the soft, almost creamy inside and the crispy exterior. I bought four more packages of Wright's when I went to the grocery Saturday, as Kroger had them on sale for $4.99 for the 24-oz package. Can't pass that up. I know that cost me points in the FCO challenge.

Just an amazing trip, and amazing food! Thank you!

I recall Mama breaking off little squares of paraffin to add to the chocolate -- likely chocolate chips, or maybe the big squares of chocolate -- but I have no recollection of how many. Seems like paraffin was a relatively minor component -- maybe an 80-20 ratio?

I picked up my Belgian waffle iron at Big Lots for, I think, $12.50. Granted, it only makes one at a time, but then, I can only eat one at a time...

A poor attempt, beside all those posted here, but I dipped some strawberries in honor of Valentine's Day coming up. Actually, I dipped them myself because I looked at them at Kroger, which was charging $16.95 a dozen for them. I got a quart of berries for $2.50, and a package of chocolate coating for something under $3.50. (Yes, it's grocery store quality chocolate, but I have no doubt it was the same thing Kroger was using to dip theirs.) Mine are not as pretty, but I feel relatively certain they're just as good, and I made 30 of them for roughly $6. There are five left in the refrigerator now, 24 hours later. A question. Back in the dark ages when I was a child, my mother made lots of candies, including dipped sweets. I recall her melting chocolate with paraffin; it made a thinner chocolate, didn't tend to seize up, and hardened to a less brittle coating. Anyone familiar with the proportions, etc., or is this technique totally out of favor? My mother would have used grocery store chocolate as well. In rural West Tennessee, we had no concept that higher-quality chocolate than Nestles chips existed.

Vegetable soup and pimiento cheese on wheat Ritz crackers. Details on the soup topic. Pork roast marinated in a Cajun spice dry rub and braised in beer (Abita Amber, since it was Cajun spice!) in the IP. Steam-baked sweet potato wedges. Crowder peas, frozen last summer. Mac and cheese. I had homemade rolls, but ate mine hot, while waiting for the kids to get her for dinner.

Vegetable beef soup. 1 pound stew beef, a diced onion, three pints of home-canned tomatoes, a cup of beef broth, two bags of frozen mixed vegetables, seasoned with a little thyme and some marjoram, along with salt and pepper and a healthy shot of Worcestershire sauce. Served with pimiento cheese on wheat Ritz crackers. So, it was 75 degrees in the middle of February. When you want vegetable soup, you want vegetable soup.

Do I get points from a pork butt roast I brought home from Aldi and cooked, instead of putting in the freezer and taking out the one just like it that was already in the freezer? They're $1.79 a pound, and small enough to not have a half-dozen meals' worth of pork left over. I paired it with crowder peas, frozen from the farmers' market this summer, steam-baked sweet potato wedges, and macaroni and cheese, because the kids were all here.

OK. I'm pretty much in love.

That's pretty! Looks like it would taste good, too! @Thanks for the Crepes, I live about three blocks from a supermarket I don't patronize much, because it's pricy, and about 10 blocks from one where I do most of my shopping. I can't imagine how I'd manage walking to either and toting my purchases home. I admire your perseverance.