kayb

For Friday Night Lights, I defy you to top Berryville, Arkansas. The Home Ec department runs the concession stand. You gots your choice of: -- Chili. Honest to God, serious, thick chili. You can add your own Fritos if you wish. -- Homemade chicken pot pie. Individual size. -- Fried pies. Both savory and sweet fillings. -- Fried catfish fillets, with french fries, hushpuppies and slaw. -- Beef (or venison, if deer season has already opened) stew. For your generic burgers, popcorn, hot dogs, etc., you have to go to the Bandboosters' stand, in the opposite end zone. No, there's not a lot besides football to do in Berryville, AR on Friday night. But I can tell you, when I was in the sportswriting business, we used to fight to see who got to go cover Berryville!

Xilimmns -- belatedly, welcome! Lovely dinners. Entranced with the thought of shrimp, bacon, blue cheese. dcarch, I want that cauliflower. Dakki, I would want those tacos except for, well, tripe. Don't do tripe. Dinner tonight was liquid. It wasn't a very productive day. Damn the business world. I think I'm going to go occupy something.

Ha ha ! I tend to save these now, though I tossed plenty of them before. How does onion jam keep ? Well, I've had that batch in my fridge for three weeks in a plastic container, and it's still good. I'm of the opinion that anything with tomatos, onion and balsamic vinegar in it will be good until you see it sprouting mold. And this has not....yet.

Can I come visit? I'm fascinated!

This morning's breakfast was a pastrami and Swiss sandwich enjoyed at 8:30 a.m. at a little country store where they smoke their own meat. Exquisite. Not sure why I didn't photograph it. But I was hungry again when I got back home, so I had a "tide me over" snack of sausage and cheese bread topped with onion jam. The sausage and cheese bread I had in the freezer from a BIG batch a few weeks back, and the onion jam was made from the onions fished out of a tripled recipe of Marcella Hazen's tomato butter sauce. Discard those onions? Not HARDLY, Marcella!

Have been super busy at work and on the road some, so not a lot of cooking of late. Here are a couple of recent dinners: A grilled grass-fed beef burger, sans bun, topped with caramelized onions and blue cheese; grilled squash, and fresh pinto beans stewed with tomatos. Butternut squash soup with ricotta gnocchi "dumplings." Tonight will be an eye of round roast, roasted zucchini, and mac and cheese for the teenager.

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who doesn't do "creamy" eggs. I want those babies scrambled hard. Dry. Now, if they're over easy, I want the white barely done and the yolk runny. I do not try to make sense of what certainly seems to be a conflict. "It just be dat way."

Oh, my. Dorothy, I don't think we're in Kansas any more! Great stuff, Percyn. Loving it.

I don't know if they roast on-site or buy roasted beans, but the regional chain, Cafe Brazil, is a stop I don't miss when I'm in Dallas. Not a coffee connoisseur like many on here, but I like the good stuff, and their Brazil Estate is as good as I've ever had. I buy beans every trip to take home, and just learned this last trip that I can order online! Info on locations, etc., here: http://cafebrazil.com/. Damn fine breakfast, too.

That one must take the cake. Wow! And somewhere, an Albertson's manager got fired over that one!

For whatever rabbit meat you have left over, if any, and the stock from those bones, try rabbit and dressing. It was the prep of choice for the wild rabbit we ate when I was a kid. Just shred the meat up into the cornbread-based dressing. Yummm! And yes, that bread is a thing of beauty. I, however, will pass on the tripe from the Chinese restaurant. I was permanently traumatized by chitterlings when I was a kid, and have never been able to stomach tripe, menudo, you-name-it since.

Looking wonderful so far! Please keep right on!

Keith, that omelette may be the most gorgeous looking thing I've ever seen. The hot pot presentation is pretty astounding, too.

Woke up early to go shoot some sunrise pictures: Which worked up a significant appetite, which I satisfied with bran muffins, bacon, and a double-yolked, over-easy-in-the-bacon-fat, farm egg. And a large mug of cafe au lait.

Homemade ricotta gnocchi with Marcella Hazen's tomato butter sauce.

Put me squarely in the traditionalist camp for Thanksgiving. Brined, roasted turkey, cut-up apple and orange inside, olive oil, s&p outside. Cornbread dressing with giblet gravy. Sweet potato casserole (eggs, sugar, butter, vanilla) topped with a brown sugar-pecan crumble. Cranberry salad, a mainstay at every Thanksgiving and Christmas I can remember -- chopped cranberries, apples, oranges, pecans, in a jello syrup. (Don't be hating on the jello, here; you could actually make it with simple syrup, some stewed cranberries in it for color, and a little gelatin to sort of tie things together. Jello's easier and it's such a minor element you'd never know it was in there.)Another side or two; sometimes it's mashed potatos, sometimes corn pudding, sometimes roasted broccoli, sometimes glazed carrots and/or parsnips, sometimes green beans. I make a pumpkin pie for the pumpkin pie-lovers in the house, a coconut cake for me (fortunately it freezes well) and lemon icebox pie for a couple of the other kids who adore it.

I bought a can of San Marzano tomatos today at my local gourmet shop, as I plan to make Marcella Hazen' tomato butter sauce this weekend to go over homemade ricotta gnocchi. It's a 3-kilo can. Which looks an awful lot like a gallon of tomatos, or a little more than half what I need to make the sauce. I bought it because it was cheap -- $7 and change for the can, vs. doggoned near that much for 16-ounce jars -- and they didn't have any other selections. What's the best way to preserve these babies that I don't use, after the can is opened? Can one freeze, vacuum packed, the remainder? How long will it keep in Gladware in the fridge? If I can find a reasonable method of storing them for, say, as much as two weeks, ideally a month, I'll go back and get the other three or four 3-kilo cans they had at that price, which sounded quite reasonable to me. (I just looked, and they do NOT specify DOP. They also indicate they are "con basilico," which I didn't notice when I bought them. Will this compromise Marcella's sauce?) (Edited to closed parentheses.)

dcarch -- the brisket is absolutely mouthwatering. Gorgeous presentations, as always. scotty, love the whimsy of the "planted" veggies!

I have two friends who absolutely, positively, not-in-a-million-years-when-starving, will NOT eat seafood of any kind. In both cases, it was a piece of "bad" fish consumed as a child that turned them against it. I grew up in western Tennessee, far from any coast, but on Kentucky Lake, so catfish, bass, crappie and bream were staples for me as a child. I never knew shrimp came any way other than breaded, frozen, deep-fried until I went to the Gulf Coast for the first time in my early 20s, and after experiencing them boiled, steamed and grilled, almost never eat them fried any more. I love scallops, crab, lobster, clams, but can take or leave oysters. Sushi-grade tuna, either barely seared or completely raw, is probably the most sublime thing I have ever eaten. I don't care for squid or octopus, but I think that's a texture thing; my first experience was with calimari, probably not very good calamari, and I think I was traumatized by it. Oddly, the one fish I really don't care for is salmon. Unless it's smoked. Go figure.

Norm, that Chicken Parmesan is a thing of beauty. When I do it -- which hasn't been in a LONG time, something I must remedy -- I used a mix of bread crumbs and grated Parmigiano to coat the cutlets. Inquiring minds want to know: What's martini chicken?

I caramelize about five pounds of onions at a time in my slow-cooker -- slice, pile into the slow-cooker, throw in a stick of butter, sprinkle on a little kosher salt, turn it on low and ignore it for about 18 hours. Perfectly caramelized onions, every time. I portion them out in about one-cup portions and freeze in plastic bags. And then when it's time for French onion soup -- thaw out a bag of frozen beef stock, a bag of frozen caramelized onions, add the big crouton, and Presto!

That brioche photo makes me swoon.

Agreed. A recent meal, which I didn't photograph or blog about, was meat loaf, purple hulled peas, carrots, and mac and cheese. Other than the pasta, which was Barilla in a box from the supermarket, the cheddar (Wisconsin) and Velveeta (wherever they make Velveeta!), and the bread crumbs in the meat loaf, everything was from within 50 miles of where it went into my oven or onto my stove burners. And I thoroughly enjoyed it and I expect will have leftovers tonight.

And bump again....I'm in Dallas this weekend. A group of us have reservations at Al Biernat's. I wasn't famliar with it, googled, looked at the menu, and it looks fabulous. Comments? Suggestions? Reviews?

Wonderful, Scotty. I'd hate to have to follow you.