kayb

In honor of scoring the first zucchini of the season, along with an alleged vine-ripened-in-Florida tomato, we had zucchini fritters, creamed corn and sliced tomato for dinner. The corn was some I had frozen last year. The tomatoes were good, if not spectacular; flavor was vine-ripened but the texture was mealy, I expect from refrigeration on the trip up here. Still better than grocery store tomatoes, by a long shot. I'll have the rest of that one today on a BLT. The fritters weren't....quite....right. I think it was the off-brand saltines I used for crumbs. Must go back to using Nabisco.

If I didn't use mine for anything but steaks, it'd be worthwhile. But I love a pork loin roast done in one. Going to try some short ribs this weekend.

Meant to express that the weight prior to cooking was 8 ounces. Didn't do a very good job of expressing that. Sorry.

No, Huiray, I lived in Hot Springs before I moved to Jonesboro. Wish the farmers DID commute. We have several who come 50-60 miles, mostly because we're the largest city in about that range to the east, west or north (we're also about an hour from Memphis, southeast of us). I generally make a visit to an Asian market once a month or so when I have occasion to be in Memphis (haven't done that since I started thinking about quail eggs, but I will soon!). The Jonesboro market is actually operated by Arkansas State University, which has a sizeable ag program, but the growers all seem to be unrelated to the university. Oh, and I stopped by the side-of-the-road vendor today. Yellow squash and zucchini from Louisiana. New potatoes from -- I forget where. Alleged vine-ripened tomatoes from Florida. I demurred at the tomatoes, and let him talk me into a single one, just to see if they're decent. We shall see, in a blt tomorrow.

Road trip with daughter yesterday to Little Rock to take grandson to Children's Hospital for a second opinion on a problematic ear condition; good report, and we stopped for dinner and later dessert on on the two-hour drive back home. First, a burger and fries at Big Orange, a local chain of very excellent burger places. You can get everything from truffle and wagyu burgers to turkey burgers with miso and ginger, and a multitude of other offerings. We split a bacon/avocado burger, with the bacon from a local packing company, Petit Jean Meats (excellent cured meats; info here). The beef is from a local grower, and the pre-cooked patty is an eight-ouncer. It came with a good half-inch of chunky avocado puree spread over one side of the bun, and lettuce and tomato on the other. Bun from a local bakery. Plenty to split. I had sweet potato fries, and she had regular. Grandson had a grilled cheese and appeared to like it just fine. Got half-way home and stopped at a little dairy bar type place that's noted in Northeast Arkansas for good food (love their smoked chicken sandwich!) and, this time of year, their strawberry shortcake. Really more of a sundae, as it has soft-serve on the bottom, topped with macerated strawberries, surrounded by rectangular shortbread wafers dusted in sugar before they're baked, and topped with whipped cream and chopped pecans. Astoundingly good. I asked them once how many they served a day during the season -- the answer? About 200 or 300. In a town whose population is about 1,800, but people come from MILES away to eat there during strawberry season. Later in the year, they'll shift to a peach shortcake which is the same model, and just as good. Made a long day and drive worth it.

I miss the Hmong farmers at my Farmers' Market here in Jonesboro. We had two families of Hmong farmers in Hot Springs, and I could always count on them for peas, both snow and sugar snap, long beans, daikon, Japanese eggplant, and assorted vegetables the others just didn't grow. On the other hand, I could rarely get asparagus there. Here in Jonesboro -- also a college town, but very much a "country music" town as opposed to an "indie/jazz/blues" kind of town like Hot Springs, we generally get "country" vegetables. Plus asparagus. And I'm glad to have them. But I'd surely love to have green peas and some of the other veggies. Meat prices at the market, I think, are quite reasonable. I pay $1.50 per pound on the hoof for my quarter steer, which works out to between $5.50 and $6 per pound for my finished beef. So I'm paying the same for hamburger as for porterhouse, and everything in between. I'll take that. If I buy it by the package at the market, it goes from $5 for hamburger to upwards of $12 for steak. Pork also starts about $5 for sausage, $4 for ground pork, $7.50 or so for chops. We have a roadside vendor who sets up all summer, and sells produce that's not local, but that he buys wholesale from farmers in a several-state area. I find that I get better produce that's not in season yet here, which he brings from states south of us, than I can get from the grocery. He has tomatoes from Georgia right now which are acceptable, barely, as well as peas and green beans which are several steps above supermarket quality. I believe I shall stop by and see him today.

Are you talking about savory potato cakes which have cheese, as opposed to sweet cheesecakes which have potato? I've often made potato cakes using leftover cooked potatoes, usually stewed or baked, leaving lumps of potato in the batter. They involve mashing some of the potato and/or using the stewing liquid and adding flour, egg and milk to make a stiff batter, then frying as fritters. I see no reason you couldn't add cheese to this; you'd just have to be extra careful to avoid sticking as they cooked. I have no experience with adding potato to a sweet cheesecake. I have had savory cheesecake (notably the crawfish cheesecake at the Palace Cafe in New Orleans) which could, I guess, utilize potato in the batter.

It was a dinner marred by a couple of mishaps, but it turned out OK. First, I'd been smoking a bacon-barbecue meat loaf, and when I went out to take the meat loaf off and put the steaks on, I found the gas bottle had run out and had to change plans and cook the steaks and asparagus inside. Then, my hollandaise -- it went together perfectly, and I covered the soup mug in which I'd made it with foil and set it on the back of the stove to stay warm. I sat it too close to where the oven vents heat through one of the units, though, and it curdled a bit on me. Didn't hurt the taste. It's very bright yellow because I used farm eggs. And as I was the only one in the house who likes hollandaise, I put it on my Hasselback potato, as well. Because I could. This was the purple asparagus from my farmers market trip yesterday morning. Very good -- less of a bitter taste than the regular green variety. I'll buy it again. I like the fat spears, too.

If there is already a similar topic, please forgive me, but I didn't see one. As April ends and May arrives, Farmers' Markets, at least here in the MidSouth, are either opening for the year or switching from winter to summer schedules. I went to my local market's first session today. Here was the haul: Green tomatoes, two kinds of asparagus, radishes, green onions, strawberries, two pounds of pork breakfast sausage, and a bag of kettle corn. I passed up leaf lettuce and cucumbers. The Amish farmers who had the green tomatoes (fried green tomatoes tomorrow, everyone!) raises them in a greenhouse and expects to have ripe ones next weekend or the next. I'm anxious. There were lots of garden plants -- peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, melons. I'm a little disappointed there are no early peas; I may have to make a trip to the Memphis market, an hour or so drive, to get a broader variety of produce. Gardens are all late around here because we had a late spring. Two months from now -- around the 4th of July -- will be prime garden season, and the market will be overflowing. My local market offers locally raised beef and pork (we're not much of a lamb region, in general), lots of fresh eggs, a ton of baked goods, lots of crafts. There's a new food truck this year, whose menu I didn't peruse, but I don't see how it can top last year's truck that had the sausage, egg and cheese biscuit, which was a thing of beauty. Later on, we'll have lots of sweet corn, lots of green beans and purple-hulled and crowder peas, lots of tomatoes. We'll have blueberries and blackberries and peaches and melons. My grocery store bill will drop to nearly nothing, and we will eat well at my house! What are other places seeing at their markets this time of year? What are the big hits? What harvest can you just not wait for?

My gardening is limited to a dozen or so pots of herbs. My sage, thyme, oregano, rosemary and mint overwintered pretty well. I've planted basil, tarragon, chives, parsley and cilantro. Thinking about adding marjoram and lavender -- have never cooked with either, What are some uses for them? I've mostly had lavender in pastries and such. Not sure about marjoram. This fall, I plan to do the prep work for a "straw bale garden." Allegedly one uses bales of straw, which can be framed around loosely and used for a couple of years. Over the winter you add compost, and in the spring, break up the decomposing straw a bit and add potting medium. It's allegedly a good way to grow tomatoes, peppers, melons, cucumbers, squash. Think I will give it a try. I'm fortunate to have a lawn that gets a good deal of sun.

I have in my pantry at present: Olive oil, peanut oil, canola oil, and a crock of saved bacon grease, as well as some flavored oils, some walnut oil, and some tangerine oil which makes outstanding citrus viniagrette. Oh, and there's coconut oil in the bathroom; I've never cooked with it, but it makes an outstanding moisturizer. I use the first four with some regularity, the latter ones for specialty purposes.

Ooooohhhh. That's lovely, Okanagancook. I have never cooked a prime rib at home, nor have I ever made a Yorkshire pud. I need to remedy both of those. Shelby, I bought asparagus today at the Farmers' Market and plan to hold back a few spears for one morning next week, to be garnished with a poached egg. However, I will have to pass on the biscuit with sausage gravy, as one of the two things I cannot make worth a damn is sausage gravy. (The other is chicken and dumplings.)

Ham-and-egg salad, something of a combo of egg salad and deviled ham. I used Kentucky country ham left over from dinner the night before, ground up in the food processor. Earlier in the week, grilled cheese with slaw and some fruit salad, made with grapes, strawberries and fresh mozzarella, with a lemon-honey-red wine vinegar dressing.

I buy my beef in bulk (a quarter-steer at the time) from a local farmer. His cattle are pasture-grazed until the day they're taken to slaughter, as were the ones we used to raise when I was a kid, but they are fed grain, in addition to hay, during the winter, and are "finished" on an extra grain ration for about six weeks prior to slaughter. Which again, as I recall, was similar to what we did, although we didn't grain-finish much at all. Slaughter was generally in October, and we still had sufficient grass that we generally didn't start feeding hay until mid-month, and I think added the grain ration about the same time. I think my farmer, who slaughters his bulk beef in September, well before first frost, feeds significantly more grain for finishing than we ever did. I find the texture of the grain-finished, while still being grazed simultaneously, much preferable to the much tougher more-grass-less-grain beef with which I grew up.

Didn't realize there were so many variations in making stock. I put my roasted chicken carcass, generally with wings, which no one seems to want to eat, in the pot, add a quartered onion and a couple of carrots, some salt and pepper, bring to a boil and let it simmer until I need that spot on the stove or I have to leave, anywhere from 1.5 hours to 4 hours. I prefer to cool it all together, chill it in the pot, then de-fat. I do it in my pot with the basket, so the solids go in the basket and can just be lifted out, and then I can ladle the cold stock into freezer containers. I use the square ones -- they stack better in the freezer. If I get close to running out of stock....it's time to roast another chicken. While we're on the stock question -- can I make beef stock from short rib bones after I've cooked the short ribs? seems to me that it should work, but there's little meat left in that case. Should I add maybe some round steak or something?

It's a great place. I'm down about the bottom 10 percent on here in the area of cooking experience/ability, and I can't TELL you how much I've learned. Folks are great. Welcome!

I'll testify to the immersion blender version. Easier clean up than the big blender, too.

My big loaf pan is 11" long, 5" wide, but only 3" deep. I just looked and it has no markings at all on it, but as I recall, I bought it at TJ Maxx, which periodically has nice cookware at good prices.

This weekend, I was involved in the cooking and serving of 884 chicken halves, of which those below are a small portion, accompanied by beans, slaw and assorted desserts, as part of my church's 51st annual Chicken Barbecue. I guess if they've been doing it more than half a century, they've learned to do it right, as this was some of the best smoked chicken I believe I've ever had. These were relatively small chicken halves, I'd guess about a pound and a quarter, cooked. The sauce was tangy and good -- a thin, vinegar-based sauce used to baste while they were cooking -- and smoke permeated every fiber of the chicken. Fortunately, we had some left over, and I came home with four halves, which are residing in my refrigerator as we speak. At least one is destined for my favorite smoky chicken salad -- smoked chicken, roasted corn kernels cut from the cob, crumbled bacon, dressing of mayo, Greek yogurt and pimenton de la vera. The others I expect I will pull from the bones today and vac-pack and freeze for future use. I think they'd make a fine chicken alfredo, adding a little pimenton de la vera to the sauce, and some may get scattered over salad. I was tired enough Sunday that dinner was potato chips and dip, a narrow choice over Chinese delivery.

I am highly anxious for the Farmers Market here to open a week from Saturday, so I can get farm-made sausage from my favorite vendor. I can get it in the off-season if I go to their farm, but it's an hour and a half away, in a direction I have no other reason to go, so I have to really get desperate. But man, they make some fine sausage!

Tonight's dinner was a throwback to childhood in the country. Country cured ham, pan-fried potatoes and onions, pinto beans. My mother would have had turnip greens or "poke sallet" with it. I loathe cooked greens, so I didn't.

Kerry, that was a marvelous travelogue. Sensory overload just looking at it -- I can only imagine experiencing it.

Unfortunately, my closest TJ's is in Nashville, TN, 3+ hours away. But I'll bear that in mind and perhaps stock up when I go visit my daughter. My local Kroger, one of the new, big ones, does have a respectable selection of cheese, including several bries.

I'm good with both those methods, plus occasionally steaming them just barely crisp-tender and serving with Hollandaise. But one of my favorites is to wrap in proscuitto and bake. Yum!

Grilled bacon, egg and cheese sandwich. I beat the egg and cooked it as if it were a one-egg omelet with no filling; made a suitably flat and cohesive layer for the sandwich. I used American cheese; just seems like one ought not mess with the classics. Grilled it in butter. It is not a low-fat offering, and thus not for everyday consumption, but I felt like a morning treat today.