kayb

A burger, sans bun, with a topper of bacon jam, spooned on while it was still on the grill so it'd get nice and warm and melt into the patty. Yum! Roasted sweet potatos with leftover barbecue dry rub, glazed with honey chipotle butter. Greek-ish salad -- tomatos, cucumber, onion, olives, in an olive oil and lemon viniagrette with oregano, topped with probably-too-much crumbled feta. And a ginger mojito.

Catherine Iino, I am thrilled to learn you can get the flat ones, still! All the cloth diapers I've seen in ages have had the quilted center piece, which prohibits their use as straining cloths AND hinders using them as burp cloths if one has an infant around! I'm off to Target! Thank you!

gfweb, nothing wrong with old school!

Scotty, love the pig. I was so proud of my Boston Butt last weekend...have yet to try the whole pig route. Tattoo is cool, too. And the dumplings look just gorgeous. Dakki, great tacos, and I have to go google to find out what chistorra is. Jan V, I had to look up onglet, too. That looks delectable.

When I got serious about losing weight a few years ago (and lost 40 pounds in a year, of which I've kept about 35 off), I did the 3 meals, 3 snacks thing, and always made sure the snacks included a good protein source since that controlled my hunger better than anything else. Now, I will occasionally snack, mostly in order to avoid eating too much at a meal, so I keep graham crackers and peanut butter, and some sort of fruit, at work all the time. At home, the snack tends to be cheese and pickles, or veggies and hummus. For what it's worth, the biggest single eating habit change that helped me lose weight was breakfast. I made myself eat a good one, and it made a huge difference.

If you want to shell the peas instead of using the entire pod, this is absolutely one of the best recipes I have ever tasted. I will confess to oh-so-lightly blanching my peas, for less than a minute, then shocking them in ice water.

Absolutely stunning kitchen, FP. And my next trip to San Diego will absolutely include a trip to Bali Hai -- I love Polynesian/Hawaiian cuisine. Am also enjoying very much the look into your cooking. The marvelous assortment of fruits and vegetables available to you is almost enough to make me want to move to Southern California! I can almost taste the freshness and the play of the flavors in looking at those gorgeous photos. In short, wonderful blog.

Kim, my potato salad is my own weird recipe, because I'm particular about the things I don't like in potato salad (raw onion, celery, bell pepper), and the way I like it prepared. I peel and cube the potatos (redskins are best, but this I finished out with russets, as I was low on redskins) and boil in salted water. The sauce is mayo, mustard, ketchup, sweet pickle relish (just the jarred store variety). I add garlic powder, Lawry's seasoned salt, and sweet paprika and stir it all together, then gently fold the cooked potatos into it. I never measure anything, but I'd guess for about six servings of potato salad, it's 2/3 cup mayo (Hellman's only, please!), 2 tbsp dijon or spicy brown mustard, 1/4 to 1/3 cup pickle relish, 2 tbsp ketchup, and spices to taste.

Oh, that sounds like a lovely barbecue party! Dying to try the watermelon feta salad and the pineapple with mint sugar!

Salvadorean breakfast cakes, aka quesadillas (I always thought a quesadilla was a tortilla with cheese and other fillings!), courtesy of the Food52 gluten-free cookoff recently. I did not have the called-for rice flour, so I used masa harina, which gave them a nice corn muffin-ish texture. With ripe strawberries and strawberry yogurt.

Pulled pork barbecue, mustard/vinegar slaw, potato salad, black bean and corn salad, and arepas. Barbecue details on the Fourth of July traditions thread. Followed by raspberry cream cheese pie, all decked out for Independence Day.

Mine has always been barbecue. And in the Memphis tradition, by barbecue I mean pork shoulder, dry rub, low-and-slow with indirect heat. I started out Saturday morning with an 8-pound chunk of Boston butt: It got a healthy coating of dry rub consisting of ancho chile powder, salt, garlic powder, allspice, paprika, coriander and sugar, then got wrapped in plastic, then in foil, and stashed in the fridge. This morning, about 8:30 a.m., it went onto the old barrel smoker grill, with coals on either end and the butt in the middle. Six hours later, it had developed a lovely charred crust, the coals were almost gone, and it was threatening rain. So it went into the oven, covered with foil, for another two hours at 200 degrees. The eight-pound butt yielded enough pulled pork to feed five hungry adults, including two males with significant appetites, and there was a gracious plenty left over. It was so good I didn't even use a sauce. A fine holiday barbecue!

LOVE the idea of the zucchini and peach salad; will have to try that. It's just about to start zucchini season here, and one of the big things I look forward to is zucchini fritters: 2-3 medium zucchini, grated 1 egg, beaten 1/4 cup half-and-half or milk 1 "sleeve" regular Saltine crackers, crushed Mix to form a thick batter, drop by 1/3-cupfuls into hot oil,and fry until golden brown.

FP -- looking forward to your week! I've been to San Diego once, and loved, loved, loved it! Anxious to return.

Kerry, your corn chowder is a thing of beauty, and I think a version with shrimp is on my menu for next weekend, soon as I get back from the market with fresh corn and new potatos. If I don't go to a produce stand and get both, before then.

dcarch, I remain in awe. Lovely! Norm, I may have the solution for those eggplants reposing in my fridge. Crawfish pie here. Details on the eG Cook-Off 56 thread.

Goodbye Joe, me gotta go, me-o mi-o.... Oops. Sorry. Disclaimer: I am not Cajun. I have never lived in Louisiana. But I've eaten crawfish all my life, and tonight, as the Independence Day weekend is traditionally the end of crawfish season, I decided I'd have myself some crawfish pie. Cue Hank Williams. I started out with four pounds of boiled crawfish from the crawfish truck that lives right out in back of the flea market and across the street from my favorite bar. I could've had andouille or boudin sausage to go with it, or potatos or corn. I opted just for the mudbugs, at $4.50 a pound. Sigh. Four pounds of crawfish yields 7.5 ounces of crawfish tail meat, and a pair of sore hands that are burning from the cayenne-heavy boil. I told you I wasn't Cajun. Proof positive is that I don't use the Trinity. I don't care for celery, and I loathe and detest green bell pepper (and will eat the red ones only when they're roasted). So my "Trinity" is Vidalia onions, chopped green onions, and a chopped green tomato. I swear. And it worked. I forgot to take pics during the interim, which involved sauteeing the veggies, adding the tail meat and some stock made from the heads, into which I'd dissolved two tablespoons of flour. Then it went into a standard pastry crust. I had really planned to make individual hand-held pies, but by that time, I was tired. Jambalaya and a crawfish pie, file gumbo.... Great start to a holiday weekend!

If there's anything in the world I love more than tomatos, it's fresh corn. Some of my favorites: Corn and black bean salad. Boil the ears, cool, cut off the cob, combine with black beans (I used canned, rinsed, drained) and roasted red bell peppers. Make a dressing with lime juice, vegetable oil, cumin, pimenton de la vera, and powdered pico de gallo seasoning. Add cilantro if you like it. I use this stuff on everything; add fresh diced tomatos to make a salsa, put it on a fish taco, and it's one of my go-to sides with barbecue. Proportions are about four ears' worth of kernels to a can of beans to a single big bell pepper. Creamed corn. Barely cut the tops off the kernels, then scrape the cobs with a table knife; saute the result in butter until it starts to stick. Add a half cup of heavy cream (for about 4 ears' worth of corn). Cover and simmer. Don't bother to salt and pepper. Chipotle corn. Dice and saute 2 strips of bacon until crisp; remove the bacon. Saute diced onion in the bacon fat until soft; add the corn kernels and a diced chipotle pepper with some adobo (or two, if you like it hot). Add a half-cup of so of water, cover and simmer. There are a bazillion versions of corn pudding. I have never had a bad one. Corn is always improved by being served with sliced tomatos and fried okra.

RRO -- That Chinese style risotto is absolute genius. It goes on the list to try!

I love me some Groupon. I got three pounds of the best cured bacon in Arkansas, along with the best cured (spiral-sliced, yet) half-ham in Arkansas, from Petit Jean Meats, for $35, plus about $6-something shipping. Believe that I jumped on that. I've cooked half the bacon, will get into the other package this weekend; the ham's reposing the freezer for future use. I use their restaurant deals on a regular basis, as well as several others. We're starting a new, similar service here in Hot Springs (the nearest one is for Little Rock, which is an hour from me), called Try It Local, so you might see if you have one of those in your area as well.

Vegetables, redux: More of those marvelous tomatos (Shelby, wish I could get some of them to you!), butterbeans, new potatos roasted with black truffle oil, sea salt and grated Parmigiano, an ear of corn on the cob, and a slice of leftover ham from Christmas, vac-sealed and frozen until this week. Ham had a sort of watery taste/texture to it. Anyone had that experience with cured, vac-sealed, frozen ham? I didn't do anything other than thaw it out. open the pouch and eat it; I tend to like my ham cold.

Very cool! I'm gonna try that!

I started my herbs as tiny potted seedlings around Easter, but I'm a lot further south. I recently did a pot of basil for a friend's birthday gift, and bought two sizeable plants in a 6-inch pot and repotted them together in a 15-inch pot (like me, he really LIKES basil, and makes a lot of pesto). I have most of my herbs in 15-inch pots; some I don't use as much of may share a pot, two varieties per pot (i.e., my oregano and thyme are together, ditto my sage and parsley). I use a lot of basil and mint. Rosemary is a perennial, so it gets a big pot to itself. Mint dies down in the winter, but comes back in the spring for me; ditto chives and thyme and oregano and parsley.I'd think with a good southern exposure, you should be able to grow any and all of those. Be sure and pinch off the flowers at the top of your basil stalks when they appear, so your plant won't bolt.

No, I meant I didn't think yeast dough counted in this particular cookoff. If it does, wonderful!

I hate a cereal bag, inside the box, that is all but impossible to open without a knife or scissors. I don't eat a lot of dry cereal, and I'm convinced this is why.