kayb

The second planting of green beans is up; the tomatoes are starting to turn; I have yellow squash. And have to depend on someone else to pick/tend to it, as I can't yet navigate that well on the broken ankle. My timing sucks.

If you cut the dog in half lengthwise, you can make a flat half-sandwich with it. A bit easier. Standard sandwich when I was a kid was two hot dogs, split open and fried, between two slices of white bread with mustard.

Looks GOOD, Shelby. I'm about to get seriously anxious to cook something.

Thank you so much, Shain!

@shain, Oh, my! What a delectable spread! Would you share the recipe for that cheesecake? I have a wonderful cheesecake recipe, but a no-bake version would be very nice to have!

Ditto on Lady and Pups. Got it bookmarked. Will browse it later.

Huh. Will have to try that. Bet it would be excellent with leaf lettuce. I had grandmothers whose recipes included directions and measurements like that, too.

Bury me in the same plot with rotuts. Killing me, too. Beautiful.

How interesting -- never occurred to me to pickle romaine. It looks like cooked greens, with the darker color. How do you do it? I actually cooked, bum leg and all! I told my daughter I thought I could manage it by rolling around in my desk chair in the kitchen. She got stuff out of upper cabinets so I wouldn't have to, and cleaned up dishes for me. Granted, it was nothing exceptional, just scrambled eggs, an English muffin, and bacon, but I was so pleased to learn I'm not entirely helpless. Now I just have to figure out how to get it from the kitchen to my little nest in the den, and I think I've got that sorted as well. I have never been so glad to live in a small house!

I dearly love my Anova, successor to the SideKic that several of us here on eGullet bought a few years ago. Mine died a natural death -- controller quit working -- and I did without until Anova came along. I've encouraged a couple of other friends to try SV, with good results, but have one friend who just did not like hers, and contended she could cook as good a steak without it as with it. I probably use mine more for steak than anything, though I love it for pork loin and chops as well. Short ribs and chuck roasts are also good; I'm contemplating doing a chuck roast sometime next week and shredding it for roast beef poboys, with jus. I've also done rouladen (think I like them better seared, and then braised in wine) and short ribs (love them after a long SV and a few minutes on a screaming hot gas grill. I haven't felt the need for a second Anova. I've needed a second Instant Pot, but not often enough to pull the trigger on getting one. It's usually when I'm making yogurt and have it tied up for 8+ hours. So I try to put yogurt on at night before I go to bed. I think my next pressurized device will be a pressure canner.

How lovely! (Both of them.)

Was wearing a pair of wedge slide sandals. Tried to pivot; I moved, shoe did not. When my heel slipped off, rolled my ankle all the way over and down I went. Really cute sandals free to anyone who wears an 8.5.

The toe has now faded into the background, as I now have a broken tibia and fibula and a torn-up knee. Same leg. I'm contemplating mid-thigh amputation. As kitchen duties will be suspended for a while, I will be counting on eGullet for my food fix for a while.

Very nice!

@rotuts, look for the Ball Big Book of Canning and Preserving. Should be lots of pickle recipes.

Fascinating. Glad you're cutting back a bit, glad you're staying with something you so obviously love.

@Anna N, I can almost TASTE that blue cheese dressing. I have a surfeit of blue cheese on hand. Think I will try my hand at making some. I had some more of my leftover-corn-and-bean salad, with a slice of ricotta loaf, toasted, and topped with an interesting spread. I was making homemade veggie juice yesterday, and I strained it through cheesecloth as I don't like the "vegetable smoothie" texture. Started to chunk the remaining paste -- essentially, veggie fiber -- in the compost, and stopped myself; thought I might taste it. Well, it tasted good; as well as tomatoes and tomato juice, it had beets, carrots, spinach, a zucchini, parsley, and a big handful of basil in it. No seasoning at all, and no onion or garlic, but I thought it tasted almost like a pizza sauce (from the basil, I guess). Anyway, I spread it on my toast and topped it with some homemade ricotta. Excellent! Sort of a bruschetta on a grand scale. I'll have that again this week. Dessert was fresh, local peaches, macerated in a couple of tablespoons of sugar, with cottage cheese.

There's also a fairly minimal amount of salt used in a lot of pickling recipes. My pickled green beans didn't call for any salt, but I thought they needed some, so I added a teaspoon per pint jar. Kraut requires only three tablespoons of salt for five pounds of cabbage. My bread and butter pickles require a very little salt, and my ripe tomato relish doesn't have much. Vinegar is a key in preserving things; salt's not a requirement, except for taste. Anything with enough acid content can be water-bath canned for shelf stability.

I can testify to the benefits of brining + SV, albeit not for chicken. I did it with a pork loin and it was fabulous. Brine with sugar, salt, ground juniper berries and caraway seed, 24 hours, then SV with a seasoning rub of allspice, caraway, salt, pepper, and just a touch of cloves, at 145F (sorry, I just can't do pink pork) for 8 hours, then a quick finish in a flaming hot oven with apple cider/brown sugar glaze. Pretty freakin' marvelous.

I have harvested: First fruits of the 2016 crop, if you don't count the herbs I've been snipping for a month. I ate them. I started, in fact, to eat them right on the spot. But I remembered my daughter's warning, "Mama, you wash that stuff before you eat it. You know Jack (the attack Yorkie) pees on all of it." I figured she had a good point, so I brought them in and washed them off, and ate them standing in the kitchen in front of the sink. They were glorious. In other garden news, if squash blossoms are any indicator, I ought to have a bumper crop of yellow crookneck this summer. Zucchini, and my cucumbers, are a little behind the yellow ones.

...balance a six-pound frozen Boston butt on the edge of the chest freezer while excavating for something else, only to knock it off with my elbow, squarely onto my bare big toe. I may not wear shoes for a week. Thank God it's summer. I can get by with sandals. I am also about to buy an upright freezer. Need more freezer room anyway.

Hi, Spork! Welcome to Food Central. The professionals in this forum, and there are some marvelous ones, tolerate mildly capable amateurs like myself quite happily. I've learned amazing things in here and truly expanded my cooking repertoire. SV venison is a fine, fine thing. Wish I could learn to like lamb, and that probably would be as well. Is it good foraging up there in your part of central Appalachia? That's something I wish I was in a part of the world to do. Not a whole lot of foraging here in the Delta.

Years ago, Daddy did electric fence on our garden. Deer jumped it. He took to sitting on the deck with a shotgun around dusk and sunrise. Didn't take long for the deer to clue in.

@Smithy, my father used to make it (only indoor "cooking" he ever did, but he was the kraut-maker in the family), but I've never made it myself. Of course, when I was a kid and we had it regularly, I hated it. I've seen the error of my ways as I've gotten older!

Thanks, @shain, for the info, and @Smithy for the links. Going to try pita again in a couple of weeks.