kayb

Can't wait!

A Spanish-style tortilla with swiss and mozzarella cheese, onions and roasted chiles. Layer the cheeses and chiles in between the potatoes. To give you something green, a broccoli stir-fry with a peanut sauce.

@BonVivant, everything you post always looks absolutely luscious, but I almost fainted dead away at the figs dipped in chocolate. I could eat a dozen of those, easily. Pimiento cheese, bacon, tomato sandwich redux, this time with a photo:

That looks so good! I love tofu in a broth like that. Sounds like a great hot-weather dinner. Roast pork loin in apple/balsamic glaze with baked apples, sauteed yellow squash and onions, and cucumber salad. Pork slow-roasted in the CSO, 300F steam bake for an hour. Too done. Won't do that again.

My basic cheesecake recipe, which I've used for years, is this: 2 cups graham cracker crumbs 1/2 cup butter, melted 2 tablespoons sugar 4 (8-ounce) packages cream cheese, softened 1 3/4 cups sugar 7 large eggs 3 (8-ounce) containers sour cream 1 tablespoon vanilla The first three ingredients, of course, are the crust. The filling recipe (softened cream cheese, creamed with sugar until light, eggs addedonce at a time, sour cream and vanilla folded in) makes enough to make a thick cheesecake in my 9" springform pan and have enough left over for my 9-inch shallow pie plate, so I generally use half the recipe. When I'm using ricotta, I sub it for half to three-quarters of the cream cheese, depending on how much I have. I find it needs a little cream cheese in it for texture purposes. The recipe says to bake it at 300 for an hour and a half, then turn the oven off and leave it, untouched and door unopened, for four hours. It adapts well to cooking in the Instant Pot, with half the recipe and the little springform pan.

Meant to say via Amazon. Still there today.

I've used a peach/chipotle sauce to good effect on grilled chicken before, as well as pork chops and pork loin. But I've got to try peach-bourbon ice cream.

Don't know, don't care, can't wait for the blog! Love 'em!

Instant Pot Lux on sale for $99.99. Don't know for how long.

Amazon currently has the IP LUX on for $99.99. Here.

Making mashed potatoes last night, I peeled, diced and boiled my potatoes until soft in heavily salted water; drained off the water, added butter and half-and-half together, and commenced to mash. Mine were not perfectly smooth, but I'm OK with a lump or two. Adds authenticity, don't'cha know.

Good dinners the last two nights, though I've forgotten to take photos both nights. Wednesday night, finally cooked the Hawaiian ribeyes that had been drained from the marinade and frozen in a vac sealed bag. I was going to grill them, but the grill ran out of gas about the time it got hot, so I did them in the CSO. Very good, 5 minutes on steam broil at 500F on each side, perfect medium rare. Two of us split three steaks and had plenty. We had sweet potato fries (the frozen and oven roasted variety), Asian cucumber salad and coconut rice as sides. Last night, I warmed some leftover chicken from Sunday on steam bake in the CSO. Very simple sides of mashed potatoes, gravy and frozen green peas. Hit the spot. Tonight, I'm thinking some kind of chicken pasta or casserole.

Forgot to take a photo of yesterday's lunch because I was starving when I fixed it: A bacon, tomato and homemade pimiento cheese sandwich, on homemade whole wheat toast. Quite good. @rotuts, on your advice I grabbed a jar of the Aldi mayonnaise (I forget the brand name, and the label fell off). It does indeed taste a dead ringer for Hellman's. Thanks for that tip!

Well, I don't patronize Chick Fil A, but that has as much to do with the fact I loathe their food as it does with their political attitudes. Truly, it makes more difference to me with smaller, locally owned places than it does with chains. I once went into a small Mom and Pop sandwich shop, where Pop was engaged in some horrible racist diatribe to a customer at the counter who was nodding in apparent agreement. I turned around and walked out.

Raining and I'm working, so needed to scrabble together lunch from the fridge. Leftover German potato salad, warmed in the microwave, topped with a couple of poached egg yolks, most of the whites drained away (and I managed to break BOTH yolks, dammit). This is a keeper. I'll do it again. Possibly tomorrow.

A very happy birthday to your Mom, @sartoric, and best wishes for the coming year and another big celebration for No. 95!

Being a typical southern USA resident reared in the 1950s and 1960s, I grew up in a very meat-centric household. While I still, on a worldwide scale, eat a lot of meat, it's much reduced from what I was used to being served as a child, when there was meat at three meals daily. I probably eat meat four days out of seven, maybe five days. Often, though, it's a much reduced portion of meat, more as an accent to the meal than a "main dish." So I consider I've made progress in that regard. However, I haven't progressed as much in the area of preparation; I still tend to fry things, and I still season vegetables with bacon grease, neither a tremendously healthy habit. However, I'm genetically blessed (thankfully!) with good cholesterol levels, and since I lost weight and got out from under some stress, have a respectable blood pressure level. So there's that!

And if you want a cheesecake, I can only say that fresh homemade ricotta surpasses cream cheese in SO many ways.... I might add, I make it pretty frequently and in small batches, because it doesn't have a long fridge life.

@rotuts The rolls were...OK. A tad dry, and I think that may be because I cooked them just a bit too long. I was making a Philadelphia butter cake, with the yeast-bread-type base and a gooey sugar/butter top layer, and decided midway I wanted to make a smaller cake in my 8 x 8 pan as opposed to a 9 x 13. Already had dough for the base made and risen; took half for the cake, rolled the other half out thin, painted it generously with melted butter, sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon, rolled up, cut in rolls, let them rise. Baked 20 minutes at 400. Should have been lower temp and/or shorter time. The dough is a light brioche -- two eggs, 1/2 stick of butter, milk, flour, yeast, sugar. I think the recipe called for 1/2 cup milk, 2 1/4 cups flour, 1 packet yeast, 1/4 cup sugar. It made 13 small rolls, which were baked in the CSO's pan, with a little left-over room. Frosting is simply confectioners sugar with a couple of tablespoons of heavy cream, applied while rolls were still hot.

I use about a quart of whole milk, a half to three-quarters of a cup of cream, about 3 tbsp of cider vinegar and a tsp of kosher salt. That makes about a good cup of ricotta.

Fingers in ears. And blindfold on.

Old-fashioned Southern Sunday dinner: Fresh corn, tomatoes from the back yard, roast chicken (details on the CSO thread) and fresh purple-hulled peas with tomato relish. A fine repast, if I did cook it myownself.

Oh...my...God. My first roast chicken in the CSO, and I swear, I believe it's the best roast chicken I ever made (and I've made a bunch). Five pound farm-raised chicken, frozen, thawed yesterday and brined overnight per the NYT's Beer Brined Chicken recipe. Well, mostly by that recipe; I had neither shallot nor leek, so I subbed a quartered and peeled Vidalia onion. Into the CSO for an hour at 400 on steam-bake. After 30 minutes, the skin was promising to burn, so I put foil over it. Next time, I'll put the foil over first, and take it off for the last 15-20 minutes to crisp up. After an hour, the breast meat was 175, the thighs nearly 190. I pulled it, crimped the foil around it a bit tighter, and covered it with a dishtowel as a guard against a pesky housefly, and let it sit for 30 minutes. Breast was moist, toothsome, perfectly done. Good, delicate flavor from the marinade and the herbs baked inside it. I haven't tried a thigh yet. I may never cook a chicken any other way. Elsewhen, I also made cinnamon rolls in the CSO yesterday: Obviously a kitchen bandit made off with a warm cinnamon roll.

Bhukhhad, I love the "sabji days" idea! I eat a lot of vegetables, and often no meat at all, but it's good to have a good name for those days. Salads are fine, but not what I want that often. I have, though, been wanting to try to sprout some mung beans, and this post inspires me to get to the market and get some beans! (Of course, I will also have to go to the international market to add to my spice collection. My favorite "sadji" is probably fresh corn, roasted and cut off the cob; avocado, cut in chunks; diced tomato, salted and drained; and chopped scallions, in a dressing of mayonnaise, lime juice and smoked paprika.

Damn, that looks wonderful! Winds up being served room temp to slightly warm, with the combo of cold yogurt and hot chickpeas?