kayb

When Arkansas strawberries are in season... You make strawberry jam! Incidentally, you make a mess.

Never thought of eggs with tahini and lemon. H'mmm. Have to try that. Thanks!

Not all that long, but the temp is higher than many people prefer. I usually do it 24 hours; then, when it's cool, it slices really well. I've done it. Sorry. Just don't like it. It's a texture thing, I think.

Here at the plantation-light, crops are proceeding apace. I have thinned the yellow squash and zucchini once, and they need thinning again. The cucumbers are struggling a bit, with some sort of critter munching at their leaves. I have blooms on tomatoes, much earlier than I had expected. And the pole beans have peeked through the ground; I'll need to thin them and put cages up for them to run on, soon. Yellow squash, left, and zucchini. Cucumbers. These are all in the front flower bed. I'm going to call them "ground cover." Tomato blossoms. This is a cherry tomato plant, but some of my Romas and some of my hybrids also have blooms. Nothing on my Bradley heirlooms yet. Barely there, but we have the promise of Kentucky Wonder beans to come! These photos were yesterday afternoon. Anxious to see how things look today after a good rain last night.

Pulled pork (leftover from Sunday dinner), with potato salad, also left over; jail slaw and spring pickles. I made some vinegar based barbecue sauce to serve with it because it seemed more appropriate than the heavier tomato-based one I had on hand. The meat is from a pork loin I sous vided at 150 degrees for 36 hours, and then smoked for about an hour. Some of the best pork I've ever cooked. I know the idea of cooking pork loin that long, to that temp, horrifies many of you. While I love a rare steak, I just can't eat pork medium rare. Can't do it. Can't take pink in my pork. I guess it's all those years being told we had to cook pork to the point of incineration, lest we get trichinosis and die; must have conditioned me against less-than-medium-well pork. I actually SV'd this about 12 hours longer than I meant to, because I forgot it and left it overnight the second night. Then Sunday after I smoked it, I didn't let it rest long enough to slice; it pulled. That was awfully good, so I just pulled the rest of it and refrigerated it that way. I'm thinking the rest of it may go into enchiladas later this week.

Yum! And the centerpiece is absolutely lovely. No doubt amped the flavor level of brunch several steps, though it looks pretty fine as is.

No matter. While I love fresh ones, as noted in the Pea topic, the ones you buy are generally not so fresh, and I haven't had access to any to pick in a long time. Just finished breakfast -- yogurt, granola, blueberries. Still hungry. May snatch the bag of frozen peas from the freezer...

That looks lovely. As I love anything one can do with spring peas, I believe I'll have to try that.

Welcome, Tennessee, from an Arkansan across the river. Anxiously awaiting ice cream recipes.

One of my quirks is I like a heavy, dense texture in my meatloaf, instead of the barely-hanging-together texture many chefs recommend. I want something that'll hold up for a sandwich the next day. I generally do mine by hand, but the mixer isn't a bad idea. I'm not sure how I lived before I got my KA.

@JoNorvelleWalker, come on down here to God's country. 80 today. And my pole beans have finally peeked through the dirt! We've had gorgeous weather this week, and next week promises the same. Could use a little rain.

In honor of the first day of the local Farmers' Market: spring pickles. Cucumbers, carrots, cauliflower, radishes (best radishes I've had in forever; I regretted not buying two bunches). The brine, of cider vinegar, water, sugar, white pepper, dry mustard and celery seed, mixed and poured over, and the whole thing refrigerated. I'll eat this whole tub in probably a week and a half. One of my favorite things about spring.

The IP has had a workout today. A batch of yogurt, followed by a half-pound of RG yellow-eye beans, which are now BACK in the IP to slow cook all night in the sauce ingredients for Boston baked beans. Also, in rereading the recipe for BB Beans on the Hip Pressure Cooking website, I figured out a significant thing I missed. The recipe calls for soda, which I don't think I added when I had the adventure with them being so tough. That would, obviously, have neutralized the acid in the molasses. Duh! Helps to read the recipe THOROUGHLY.

Breakfast for dinner: scrambled eggs, country ham, pear preserves, and a roll (had a few extra when I made up rolls for tomorrow's dinner). All started because I had thawed a package of country ham in honor of Derby Day. The rest just sort of grew out of that.

Has anyone ever seen an unopened peony bud that did NOT have an ant crawling about it? I was always fascinated as a little kid by their ability to attract ants, and used to call them "ant flowers." We had pinks and whites, as well as a very deep pink that was almost a red. Doubles, all of them -- great huge almost snowball-shaped blooms. Beautiful things.

What I know about china could be written inside a matchbook cover by a kindergartener, with room left. But that is a beautiful pattern, and I'd be inclined to keep it and, if I had to, dispense with something else.

A friend went to Denver and brought back some cannabis "gummies." Odd flavor, familiar buzz. I discovered the currently available black market "weed" (it is, I've learned, no longer "dope" and certainly not "grass") is in fact, NOT the same stuff of which I was fond in the 70s. Got me quite inebriated, quite quickly. Decided perhaps I'd stick to single malt Scotch.

Three words: Rabbit and dressing. (Lots of black pepper.)

And I am not very virtuous. An almost exact description of why I no longer shop at WalMart. I found an assistant manager whom I chewed up one side and down the other, to the absolute chagrin of my three then-teen daughters. Of course, WalMart's produce also repulses me. As does its meat. I had already progressed at that time, to buying only things that were packaged elsewhere and sold there. At least at Aldi, the single checker works at warp speed, so the long, long line moves more quickly than lines most anywhere else. I will say, though, at my Kroger, they do a great job of keeping the lines short. If every line has two or more people in it, they'll open new ones. So I limit my trips to Aldi, in loyal support of Kroger. Except for butter and now, fresh pineapple, which is 99 cents at Aldi and $3 and change at Kroger.

Lord have mercy. That looks marvelous.

Gorgeous meals, everyone! @Thanks for the Crepes, a very Happy Birthday to you! I will be in West Memphis tomorrow; perhaps I will go to Pancho's in your honor! Plain old "country cooking" dinner last night: Pork chop, seared in cast iron and finished in oven, skillet fried potatoes with onions, purple hulled peas from the freezer, with sweet tomato relish.

Crop report: getting a good stand on the yellow crookneck and zucchini squash. Cucumbers are a bit slower, but coming along. 64 Kentucky Wonder pole beans have yet to show foliage. Unsurprising, as they were planted a few days later, and take longer to germinate. I won't worry about them until this time next week. Tomatoes all seem to be thriving; I put cages around them yesterday to give them something to lean on as they grow. Lawn care folks were here to spray my yard for weeds today. I warned them sternly that if they got herbicide on my garden plots or herbs, I would come looking for them with a shotgun.

Arkansan though I am, I don't trust anything that says Tyson on it. Factory farming at its worst.

Baked oatmeal muffins. Good, low-cal, and quick.

@Shelby, glad that mystery's solved. I'll know what to do next time!