kayb

It's about time for my annual fish sandwich. With extra napkins to wipe off most of the quart of tartar sauce with which they douse it. Limp lettuce and insipid, pale, mealy tomato slice go directly into the trash. Fish, the remaining tartar sauce, American cheese and a bun. And that'll be it until (a) next year, or (b) the next time I'm traveling and swing through the drive-through for their "senior" coffee (which is free!), a hash brown, and an apple pie.

Thanks, @ElsieD. Got it saved.

<<<hanging head in shame>>> I don't know; I let it drain down the sink. I don't need to do any baking, and I have a quart of whey in the freezer for the next time I do, anyway. Have no other real use for it. I would say around a cup as there's somewhere close to three cups of yogurt. Depending on everyone's assurance that I could freeze braised red cabbage, I decided to make it in the IP today. I wound up with four single-serving size containers and one larger container I will take to a friend early next week (she wanted me to make her some German potato salad, and I figured I might as well make her some cabbage, too). Made it in the IP as well; sauteed the onion, shredded and sauteed the cabbage, added vinegar, caraway, juniper berries, and allspice, some cider vinegar and a little water, and gave it 15 minutes at high pressure, natural release. Tasted, let it slow cook an hour, stirred in a half-cup of heavy cream, let it slow cook another few minutes, and dished it up. Had a healthy helping for lunch, with a piece of toast.

Pineapple pork fried rice, aka clean out the fridge.

Can always cut them in half lengthwise if you prefer larger pieces.

We're in high peach season, and they're wonderful this year. I've been simply macerating them in some sugar, and eating them with yogurt or cottage cheese or on a slab of homemade bread spread with ricotta. Have made one peach cobbler. Will likely make peach preserves or peach jam next week, as I have a half-bushel I picked up at the market today.

I'm always sad to see your stay on Manatoulin come to an end. Thanks for taking us along with you, again!

Absolutely wonderful! I will never make it any other way. I did a quart of dry milk, and came out with something more than a pint of yogurt, very nice and thick after I strained it. It was most excellent. My dry milk was instant, and I went with it, as I had never seen any other kind. Worked just fine.

Yet another thing at which the CSO excels: Potato skins. These have been a favorite at my house since the kids were little. Bake Yukon Gold potatoes until barely soft (I generally do this in the microwave. Halve them and scoop them out, leaving about 1/2 inch or so around the edges. Brush with a little bacon grease and broil (CSO broil @500, 7 minutes). Fill cavities with grated cheese, chopped bacon, chives, scallions, whatever else suits your fancy. Broil again (CSO 500F, 3 minutes). Serve with sour cream or Greek yogurt for dipping. Please pardon blurry photo.

Potato skins, one of my favorites (albeit a blurry photo), from the CSO. Details on CSO thread.

I will confess I do find it tough when I can't increase the text size.

Have yogurt-to-be fermenting away in the IP as I type. Ready about 9 tonight. Tried, per @ElainaA (I think!) making it with a quart of mixed-up nonfat dry milk, though I used yogurt starter instead of an existing yogurt culture. My one attempt at using the existing culture resulted in failure, so I just do starter. Love that thing. Red cabbage in it this weekend.

I have done something I don't like to do -- gotten a cookbook I really wanted, on my kindle. I find it not friendly for browsing/looking at recipes, and I just prefer to have hard-copy cookbooks. But when a discount book "deal-finder" to which I subscribe offered me French Country Cooking, by Francoise Branget, for $1.99, I couldn't resist. The first few electronic pages have me contemplating ordering the dead-tree edition.

Belatedly, welcome. Guess you eased in while I was occupied elsewhere. Love to hear more about your curing meat...that's a plunge I'm thinking of taking this fall, once I get through canning and freezing and it cools off enough I can hang stuff in the storage building.

There is a watermelon in my outside refrigerator. I believe this may be its fate. I could make an entire meal off that and a few wedges of cheese...and a bottle of wine.

42.

I would poach a couple of chicken thighs, shred them, mix with corn kernels and basil, and use to stuff zucchini I'd then either grill or roast in the oven, depending on my mood and the climate. Sliced tomatoes on the side, as well as maybe some stir-fried green beans.

Well, I got around to at least two-thirds of my Hawaiian meal tonight. We decided we weren't hungry enough for steak, so we had the tuna poke with rice as an entree, along with the Hawaiian potato salad and some cucumber salad I threw together for good measure. The poke was excellent. I chilled the tuna for about 45 minutes in a dressing of soy sauce, sesame oil, ginger and a bit of mirin. Tossed it with chopped pineapple just before serving. Forgot the sesame seeds. Rice was plain brown rice cooked in the IP. Sweet potato salad holds promise; I'll try it again tomorrow to see what I think after the flavors have more time to meld. Sweet potato chunks and more pineapple, some chopped bacon and scallions, dressing of mayo, soy sauce, sesame oil, and a dash of Sriracha to liven it up. Off the top, I'll ditch the bacon next time; I love bacon as well as the next guy, but it hit a false note with me on this. Dressing could have been a touch sweeter; recipe called for sweetening to taste with agave and I didn't have any, so I used a teaspoon of white corn syrup. Could have stood another one. Cucumbers had a dressing of gonger, soy sauce, mirin, rice vinegar and sesame oil. Standard issue stuff, and we love it. Hawaiian ribeye will marinate another day (I would have been nervous about that, but the recipe says it can marinate up to three days), and I'll grill it tomorrow. We'll have sweet potato fries in the CSO, and maybe more cucumbers. Meanwhile, I have leftover rice for breakfast tomorrow.

My favorite is that I can saute the makings for a soup, stew or braised dish before shifting over to the slow-cook function. Love it for beans. Love it for rice; haven't tried for grits. Also love being able to cook a cut of meat, quickly, as in for carnitas, etc. Retains moisture well in dishes with chicken breasts, which I have a hard time not drying out. I use it at least twice a week. More in cool weather, when I tend more toward soups, stews and braised things. Oh, and it makes GREAT apple butter.

Good to know. Red cabbage very soon. With latkes and some kind of good sausage. Too damn hot to do braised meat (I know I could cook it in the IP, but it's too hot to EAT braised meat). I had never thought of using leftover meat loaf in a casserole; I always go with ML sandwiches with (per Rotuts) a good, runny Brie. This intrigues me. I think it'd work in a shepherd's pie, too. Sounds like a perfectly balanced meal to me. Am finally going to get around to the create-my-meal challenge for this evening, being as I'm actually going to be home.

They did, finally. Took about 36 hours. Turned dark, though. I didn't dip them in any preservative. Cucumbers were kinda fun. I've been munching on them. They're a good snack. That's kind of what I thought. It's a good way to get rid of excess produce I don't want to freeze or can. And I think I may try my hand at jerky. It's obviously not a heavy-duty machine, but should work just fine for my purposes.

@Shelby, I've found if I want to convert a recipe for a 9 x 5 to two 8 x 4s, I can increase ingredients by 1/3 and it works pretty well. Also, I think I knocked off about 10 minutes from the cooking time listed in the recipe for CSO bread, a timing I arrived at by checking with my instant-read thermometer. When it got to 195, I yanked it.

Appropriate timing, as I have a head of red cabbage in the fridge and a hankering for Austrian red cabbage. It freezes well? I'm the only one who likes it, so I'm thinking of making some and freezing small portions. A work of art. Makes me hungry.

My very favorite summer dessert is blackberry cobbler. Now, I am a cobbler purist. I do not like the ones with the cakey-like topping, although I'll accept that on a peach cobbler (but not a berry one). No, I want dumplings. Thin, non-risen dumplings. I make up a pastry recipe for a two-crust pie. Roll it out, cut out a big enough piece for the top. Cut the rest up into short, thin dumplings. Stew the fruit just lightly with sugar. (Dumplings are not sweet at all, but will soak up sweetness from the fruit juices.) Put it in a deep dish pie plate. Distribute the dumplings around in the dish. Top with the top crust, pierce in two or three places, brush with melted butter and sprinkle with a little granulated sugar. Bake at 350F for 30 minutes or so, until the top crust is golden. Eat within 30 minutes. With vanilla ice cream. Repeat until dish is empty.

Well, I stopped by Aldi yesterday to pick up half and half, cream, and a pineapple, and they had the dehydrators (we're always a little slow here in Arkansas...). So I got one. About to try dehydrating cherries, because I bought some at the grocery a week ago, haven't touched them, and need to do something with them....