kayb

First meal in four days -- I've been in the grips of a nasty stomach virus. Home-canned tomato soup (actually left over from last summer), with a grilled cheese sandwich and pickles. So far, the stomach is accepting it moderately well. I may venture further into solid food tonight. We had butternut squash and apple soup the other evening, first cool night of the fall. Very good.

It's not a flank steak. My presumption is it's top round, but it's a thin piece....someone up thread referred to it as the "cap piece," I believe.

Ah, if I only had a NY trip on the calendar....

Being from the land of all things pig, I can recommend to all of you two sources for two different kinds of ham: 1. Petit Jean Meats Smoked Picnic Hams. Available in a variety of styles -- cooked, uncooked, bone-in, boneless, sliced, unsliced, peppered, unpeppered, whole, half. Pricy, but worth it. Best smoked picnic I've had. Available here. I can also testify to their bacon and "smoked beef," i.e., pastrami. 2. Broadbent Country Ham. My first experience with these came when I bought one at a charity auction. Phenomenally wonderful example of "American proscuitto," that marvelous, salty, long-cured ham. However, after dealing with a whole country ham -- which is a metric s***load of ham -- with less-than-stellar knife skills, I have opted, since then, to order their sliced packaged ham. I prefer the breakfast slices, myself; the center-cut "dinner steaks" are just too doggoned big. I dearly love it. Available here. There is nothing better on a fresh hot biscuit, with sorghum molasses and butter.

You've compelled me to google bulla. I may have to try this.

Can't help it. I love holiday gatherings with gigantic meals. Especially if I'm cooking. But I loathe pumpkin pie.

I get a good bit of round steak in my beef share and enjoy it. Jaymes' aforementioned Swiss Steak is a favorite, and I've pounded it, or sliced it thin and SV'd it and breaded it for a primo Country Fried Steak. One of my very favorites, though is rouladen, made after one of my favorite German restaurants, where the round is pounded thin, wrapped around a bratwurst and a good kosher dill pickle spear, then wrapped with bacon, and browned and braised in red wine with caraway. That, with some German potato salad and red cabbage, is a sure signal fall has well and truly arrived. I also like to SV a London broil cut, then chill, slice thinly, and marinate in a viniagrette. Keeps ages in the fridge, and it's marvelous on a salad, or on any kind of appetizer plate, or for a light main in the summer.

ElainaA, I have a small wooden card file box that's crammed full of cards like that, along with clippings and cards from other cooks in our small community who were her friends. I really want to arrange several of them and frame them; must get my much-more-crafty-than-I daughters to do so. There are, in fact, enough of the recipe cards to do one for each of them as well as for me.

Oh, Lord, Shelby, that looks marvelous! About once every two or three years, when somebody gives me (wild) ducks, I make duck gumbo with some of that good Andouille sausage. This may be a year for it; will have to put out the call for a couple of ducks. Like you, it takes me forever to make it -- it's generally a Saturday undertaking while football is on TV. I was highly disappointed in dinner last night. I made an eggplant casserole EXACTLY -- well, almost exactly; I didn't have any celery, so I left it out -- like the recipe in the cookbook from the restaurant that makes it. It did NOT taste like theirs. And I took leftover chicken, picked it off the bone, shredded and diced it, then combined it with a cheese sauce over egg noodles cooked with peas and carrots. Just not terribly tasty. An experiment coming up Friday. Juicy Lucy French Onion meatballs. Meatballs with cheese and caramelized onions in the center, baked in a sauce that's a thicker version of French onion soup. With, of course, Gruyere on top. And mashed potatoes, fried okra, good crusty bread. Tomorrow's a long workday, so it's takeout from the Thai place.

I'm enjoying these. That applesauce cake looks good. May have to try it. My mother was not an exceptional cook -- she was a perfectly adequate cook, but not exceptional -- until it came to the area of pastries and candies, which was weird because she was a Type I diabetic and couldn't partake of any of them. She made tons of different Christmas candies, petit fours for every wedding shower in three counties. She made a coconut cake that I can STILL taste right now, and ditto for her banana pudding. But the best sweet thing she made was doughnuts. They were quite a production, generally involving making up the dough on Friday nights and frying on Saturday mornings, when the marvelous aroma would waft through the house all the way to my bedroom (front corner; kitchen was in the back corner, same side) and I would all but float back to the kitchen, half asleep, following my nose. She would fry up the doughnut holes for me, and I would sit down with a bowlful of them, and a glass of cold milk. The recipe, in her handwriting, on a grease-spotted, dog-eared 3 x 5 index card, is as follows: Potato Doughnuts 2 cups milk 1 cup sugar 1/2 cup vegetable oil 1 1/2 tsp. salt 1 cup mashed potatos 2 pkgs yeast 1/4 cup water 3 eggs 1 tsp lemon flavoring 1 tsp cinnamon 8 cups flour (I presume self-rising, as I don’t remember Mama cooking much with all-purpose) But what's really fun are the directions. In their entirety, they read: Fry in three pounds shortening. Glaze with 1 1/2 boxes powdered sugar I swear. I've always been terrified of trying them. Mama, rest her soul, has been gone 20 years. One of these days, I'm going to get brave enough to try those damn doughnuts.

I'm glad you posted this, not that I'm planning on buying such, but I was sitting here wondering what I wanted to eat and read this and decided to have a smoothie. Frozen strawberries, a banana, some yogurt, a little protein powder, a little milk. Yum! I have a big Cuisinart countertop model that has a smoothie setting that I use quite regularly. Just hadn't been in a smoothie mood for a while, so again, I'm glad you brought it up.

They appeared to have a zone-free induction cooktop when Cyalexa and I ate at The Catbird Seat recently. I was lusting for it. I suspect lust for it is about all I'll get to do.

We've had a bit cooler weather, so I've been enjoying soup. One night, it was butternut squash soup, after someone (I forget who) upthread posted about that and made me crave it. I don't have a finished photo -- could have sworn I took one, but can't find it -- but here were most of the ingredients, save the diced apple, the spices, the broth and cream. I had it with a grilled cheese sandwich of butterkase and fontina, on homemade white sandwich bread. Then I took a flyer and crafted what I am calling Street Corn Chowder, a corn and potato chowder flavored with pimenton, chile powder, sour cream and cotija cheese. Had that with a quesadilla -- bacon, queso fresco and avocado grilled between a couple of corn tortillas. Good stuff.

I was shopping at Lowes the other day with an eye toward garden prep for spring and saw something I think would work for compost. It's a pair of 36-inch 2x4 woven wire fence panels, hinged together, with stakes to drive them into the ground. I believe I could get two such sections, set them up in a square, and have a fine compost bin.

Dinner last night was a quick riff on Vietnamese caramel fish, via the NYT Cooking recipe collection. It called for bluefish, which I've never had and don't think I can get in these parts, but I had tilapia in the freezer so I used that. Served over rice with edamame, another NYT Cooking recipe, and was GOING to be served with yet another dish from the same source, a smashed cucumber salad. Until I got home and discovered my cucumbers had been in the fridge too long, and had gone slimy on me. So we made do with fish, rice and edamame.

This will be a great thread. I love family recipes -- my own, or other people's! For me, the quintessential family recipe is the single dish that was always on EVERY Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday table I can remember, both at my parents' house and at mine -- Cranberry Salad. We used to grind the fruit in the sausage grinder, back before the days of food processors; my Kitchenaid makes much shorter and easier work of it. It is: 1 pound cranberries, washed 1 red apple, cored but unpeeled (I use Fuji or Arkansas Black) 1 green apple, cored but unpeeled (I use Granny Smith) Sections and zest of 1 large orange 1 cup pecans 1 small package raspberry Jello 1 1/2 to 2 cups sugar 1 cup hot water Chop all the fruit and the nuts; puree the orange sections. Mix all well in a big bowl. Heat the water and dissolve the sugar; remove from heat and whisk in Jello. Pour over fruit and gently stir again. This is NOT a congealed salad; the Jello makes a sort of syrupy dressing for the chopped fruit. I love this stuff, and always double the recipe. Also on the holiday table, without fail, are a sweet potato casserole (brown sugar pecan topping; no marshmallows!), green beans, and yeast rolls. Other dishes rotate in and out. My kids have different dishes they always want me to make when they're here. For one, it's red beans and rice; for another, it's zucchini fritters; for the third one, it's pot roast. I guess those are favorite family recipes for the next generation. Anxious to see how this thread develops, and to hear everyone else's family recipes!

No photos (because I forgot), but I made a sort of coq au vin, per a recipe I found in the local newspaper from a local personal chef who also writes a regular column for the paper. I had a whole chicken in the freezer so I cut that into quarters, and used it. While it was nice and moist, it didn't take on nearly as much of the flavor of the sauce (which was quite tasty) as I wished it would. The prep instructions called for searing it, then building the sauce (onions, garlic, tomatoes, wine, thyme and oregano, with chicken broth) and then returning the chicken to the pan and braising for an hour before adding the sauteed mushrooms. Any ideas why the sauce just seemed not to penetrate the meat? Also made some perfectly wonderful green beans -- a jar I had canned last summer, drained, tossed with a sauce made of soy sauce, worcestershire, garlic and brown sugar and with several slices of bacon, crumbled, and then baked. Just yummy. (Edited to add the mushrooms to the chicken....)

Cyalexa and I did, in fact, meet at the Catbird Seat, albeit a week later than we had originally planned. I have a full description on my blog, so I'll just share a few photos, and say that it was the most astounding meal I've ever had in my life, and I'm engaged today in, among other things, trying to figure out how to make beef tartare. That particular dish, of the 15 courses we were served, was my absolute favorite. The room. It seats 22 at a U-shaped counter. Two seatings a night. Two chefs handle each leg of the U, final prep and plating. The aforementioned beef tartare, which comes as a mise you mix at the table. I mixed, Cyalexa poured wine, a dry Reisling that was marvelous with the dish. The red things are begonia petals. Oh, and one I missed putting in the blog -- house-made cheese (a vaguely ricotta-ish cheese) with sundried tomatoes in olive oil and balsamic. Yum. Well worth going. The 15-course menu and the regular drink pairing (champagne, reisling, a saison beer, a pinot noir, a syrah, and a cognac) plus tip ran a bit over $200, and was worth every penny.

Fascinated by the tomato essence and the tomato vinegar. Will put those on the list for next year!

Thanks! I really thought the sauce-from-skins was a great idea. I mean, why throw away free tomato sauce? The relish, should you want to make it, is: 15 pounds of tomatoes, peeled, diced, drained (I salt mine a bit to bring the water out) 6 sweet banana peppers, diced 4 large sweet onions, diced 3 tbsp pickling spice, tied in a cheesecloth bag (I actually use a big tea ball) 1 1/2 tbsp salt 3/4 cup vinegar (I usually use cider, but had to finish this out with white as I ran out of cider!) 1 1/2 cups sugar Simmer, stirring frequently, until it cooks down, thickens and darkens. Process 30 minutes in water bath. Makes about 8 pints. This stuff is wonderful on purple hulled peas, and ain't half bad on a hot dog or hamburger. You can also add a couple of hot peppers to this if you want. I've thrown some chipotle adobo in there just for fun, in the past.

I believe I have, in the past two days, gotten about as much as one could get out of a 30-pound box of tomatoes. I took a gander at my "tomato shelf" in my storage room and decided, while 20 quarts of tomatoes and 15 pints of roasted tomato-garlic sauce were probably enough, I really didn't have as much tomato relish as I'd like to have, and I could stand another couple of quarts of tomato juice. (Home-canned tomato juice makes the BEST Bloody Marys....) So I betook myself to the produce market and got a 30-pound box of tomatoes, for which I paid $29. Pricy, but it's late in the season. From that, I have canned: 8 pints of tomato relish3 quarts and a pint of tomato juice16 four-ounce jars of tomato paste8 half-pints of tomato sauce The last half-pint of tomato sauce wouldn't fit in the canner. I was damned if I would process again for a single half-pint, so I stashed it in the freezer. The tomato paste represents about half the box. I blanched, peeled, deseeded, and squeezed juice (into a colander) out of the tomatoes, pureed them, added 1 1/2 cups sweet red pepper puree, lemon juice and salt, and let it cook overnight on low in my slow cooker with the lid off. The resultant paste is not quite as thick, nor as smooth, as what you get in the grocery, but the taste is astounding. Glad I did this. The relish is a sweet relish my mother made for years, that I love on beans and peas and in lots of other savory preps. It has tomatoes (juice drained), onion, sweet banana peppers, vinegar, sugar and pickling spice.I love it, and so do my kids. Juice from all the tomatoes just got drained, strained, heated with a bit of salt and lemon juice, and canned. A quart of that, a cup of vodka, and all the accoutrements makes a marvelous pitcher of Bloody Marys for brunch. The sauce was an afterthought. A friend had posted on facebook that she'd used tomato skins and cores from her canning session to make sauce. I decided to try it. The 30 pounds yielded almost 16 cups of peels and cores, which I cooked down, pureed, put through a food mill, and which resulted in 8 half-pints of unflavored tomato sauce (1/2 tbsp. lemon juice in each jar for acidification purposes). Just out of curiousity, I weighed the remaining skins and seeds after the sauce went through the food mill. It constituted 11 ounces, or about 2.1 percent of the original 30 pounds of tomatoes. I consider that a case of using just about "everything but the squeal." I was kinda proud. I'm done for the year, unless the neighbors come through with persimmons, in which case I'l do persimmon jelly. But I'm ready for fall, and soups and stews!

Samoas, followed by Thin Mint. I loved their lemon creme sandwich cookie, but they discontinued it. And I used to love Pepperidge Farm Brown Edge Wafers, but I haven't seen those in years. Do they still make them?

Got it. As I loathe bell peppers, I'm figuring I'll use some sweet banana peppers, red and green, instead. Think that will work?

Dear sweet Baby Jesus. Those are the most delectable looking things I've ever seen. In search of recipe, immediately. I have 'shrooms in the fridge. Very little cooking this week. I did hamburger steaks with caramelized onions and crumbled blue cheese on top, with potato salad, one night. Thanks, rotuts, for the wine cork tip! Ratatouille last night. Not half bad. Big culinary experience coming up this weekend -- will be heading to Nashville to meet our own Cyalexa, and have dinner with her at the Catbird Seat! Excited!

That's good to hear. We do have a couple of Amish families who sell at the market -- one does baked goods (KILLER cinnamon rolls!), and the other veggies. We have one man who raises beef that's a (relatively young) retiree, and one other young couple who grow a lot of flowers, as well as early spring veggies. They also operate a farm-to-table restaurant. I don't think there's another vendor, other than crafts/baked goods, who is under 60. Sad.