kayb

In the trailer-trash vein, pretzel sticks dipped in melted white chocolate chips and rolled in crushed candy canes are pretty good.

No pictures because the pork took forever to cook, but I took a pork tenderloin, seasoned it with hoisin and soy sauce and ginger, then peeled and cored a couple of pineapples and surrounded the pork, on a rack in a roasting pan, with the fruit, which also got a nice shot of soy sauce. Roasted at 400 degrees for-freakin'-ever to get to temperature, I guess because the pineapple was insulating the pork. Wonderfully tender and good. Served it with coconut rice and a cucumber salad in a dressing of rice vinegar, mirin, soy sauce, sesame oil, ginger and honey. There was a bit of pork and pineapple left, which is destined to show up in fried rice next week.

I have a side-by-side fridge/freezer, as well as a second refrigerator in the storage room with an upper freezer, and a 7-cubic-foot chest freezer. The storage room fridge-freezer holds lots of square plastic tubs of stock (chicken and beef), as well as corn and peas frozen from last summer. The chest freezer holds my quarter-steer, along with some odds and ends of pork and a few whole chickens. The inside freezer held, until shortly before Christmas, lots of stuff that was old enough to draw Social Security, until I cleaned it out. It was glorious for about a week and half, and I've crammed it back full in all its little cracks and crevices now. I want a big honkin' upright freezer. I find it's easy to organize in those plastic tubs from WalMart that have all the holes in all sides, and the solid bottom. I do like what someone mentioned above, the magazine storage rack for storing zip-locs of stock or other liquids. Got to try that. Must have that freezer by next summer. Planning a larger garden.

I, on the other hand, love it. Will happily use brown rice any time I can get away with it when white is called for. And as one who grew up eating rice with brown sugar and butter as a hot breakfast cereal, can I just say that brown rice is MUCH better in that application than white. In my book.

But you LOVE me. I thought of you, actually, when I saw the butchering book. I bought the vegetarian book and the James Beard book, and may well go back and get the curry book.

There is only one potential breakfast for a snow day when one's daughter is home from work: Pigs in blankets! The reason for Pillsbury crescent rolls in a tube to exist.

Aaaannnndddd: The New Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, Deborah Madison, $1.99 ebook. The New James Beard, $1.99 ebook. Curry, A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors, Lizzie Collingham, $1.99 ebook. Viniagrettes and Other Dressings, Michelle Anna Jordan, $2.99 ebook. The Complete Book of Butchering, Smoking, Curing and Sausage-Making, Philip Hasheider, $2.99 ebook. A sampling from the email Amazon so helpfully sent me today. You're welcome. ( @IowaDee, I'm looking at you....)

Re: raw oysters vs Rockefeller or other preps. If they ain't broke, why fix 'em?

@Jacksoup, looks like it's going to be a gorgeous kitchen! And I particularly like how you've matched the kitchen to the cat. @gfweb, I NEVER want to see behind my stove, nor in the small crack between the stove and the cabinet. I shudder to think. Please keep pics coming!

Adding rye to the list; had been thinking of that and forgot to list it. Will add maraschino liqueur and Cointreau, as well as Campari, I have both Peychaud's and Angostura bitters. Already planning to upgrade the brandy to cognac, as mentioned by you and @JoNorvelleWalker. Gonna be a pricy trip to the liquor store!

It's not as juniper-heavy, and has a decided citrus-y aftertaste. Very light. Back in the dark ages, I used to escape down to Pass Christian, when it was a funky little fishing village. There was a harborfront bar that served a hellacious Mississippi Punch. Thanks for the link. I'll have to try my hand at making one. Will look into the Pierre Ferrand as well.

Almost ashamed to post my poor efforts amid all these gorgeous confections -- but they DID taste good. Peanut butter fudge. Coconut macaroons. Both made and left at my daughter's house for late birthday/Christmas goodies, as they are her two favorites.

A curse upon whoever it was (don't remember if it was this topic or another one) who posted the link to igourmet! I can tell that place is going to cost me significant money.

I joined in 2009, when I was just starting to branch out and be a little more adventurous in cooking. I've loved it.

I have a reasonable selection of liquor, but for the fact I have no gin (an aversion that goes back to college, when I got deathly ill from drinking way too much of what was likely a horrible rot-gut gin). I've discovered a relatively new gin I like -- Seersucker -- and it's on my list to get. I have bourbon, single-malt Scotch, light and dark rum, vodka, tequila, sweet and dry vermouth, Triple Sec, Bailey's, Frangelico (mostly to cook with). I'm currently out of brandy -- must pick up another bottle of that -- and I need some guidance in building a stock of necessary liqueurs and such. I have not historically been a mixer of cocktails, beyond a vodka martini and/or a Manhattan or old-fashioned. My drinks have tended toward the simpler -- Scotch on the rocks, vodka tonic, the occasional Bloody Mary. But I think it's time I branch out. Waiting for responses before I make a liquor store run.

Minimalist chicken curry last night. Minimalist because the only vegetable in it was an onion. I need to go produce shopping; there's nothing green in the fridge except brussels sprouts, and I couldn't figure any way to make them fit in curry.

Felt like doing it up right this morning: SV bacon, crisped in a skillet; scrambled eggs in the bacon fat; toast from my potato flax seed loaf in the freezer; pear preserves. Overseared the bacon a bit. Still good.

Just please tell me the stone wall next to the fireplace is being kept. Love that.

Forget about everything else, and just give me that antipasto platter.

Welcome! Fire away with questions; lots of knowledge on this forum, and everyone has always been very willing to help!

Welcome! Jump right in. Love to hear your favorite foods, recipes. And this forum is a great resource for getting questions answered.

And in instances when I knew I was going to use the oven, I have stashed them outside on the grill. And then wondered for two weeks (in the winter) where in hell a particular dish or utensil was!

I don't, but an unsolicited suggestion (which is worth what you paid for it!) is to think about going with a CSO instead. I find that, since I got the CSO, my use of the microwave is limited to mostly warming liquids, melting butter, and serving as a proofing box for bread dough. If you have room, a CSO perches nicely atop my el cheapo $50 microwave from WalMart.

I've generally felt that my (frequent) failures with recipes have had to do with mostly (a) my failure to follow directions , or (b) my tendency to leave out ingredients I don't like, and add things I think would work in their place. (Not in baking; I try to follow recipes pretty religiously, at least for the first time or two, when I bake.) But then, I always have tended toward looking at recipe as a starting point for my own flight of fancy as to what would be good with ____. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's just, by-god, awful. But sometimes I'm pretty pleased with it. And sometimes, I go ahead and use an ingredient I don't really care for, because it seems like it's integral to a dish, and find that I like it more than I thought I would. To me, much of the fun of cooking is cobbling things together. But I could never do that had I not learned some of the basic techniques and flavor combinations from recipes.

Aaaannnddd, here's the traditional New Year's Day fare. Minus cornbread, because I wasn't in the mood.