kayb

Are those little crocks glass/porcelain? They look like about the right size to put chicken liver pate in for Christmas gifts.

Kill me now. I don't look at this topic too often because it makes me curse the fates that caused me to develop celiac disease. But I'd deal with the aftereffects, for that.

How absolutely adorable. Both of 'em.

I'd just about come to Kansas for some of that; tomatoes here just did not do well this year. I canned a few jars of plain tomato sauce, and a few jars of tomatoes and a few of juice, but that's about it. FWIW, I've got a ripe tomato relish recipe I dearly love that I'd be happy to pass on to you. Very similar to the "community organizer" in Vivian Howard's book. Make a vat of that last year and still have plenty. I also dehydrated a lot of tomatoes (Romas, and cherries) last year. I dehydrate until mostly dry, then package in plastic bags and throw in the freezer. I've made tomato paste, but you just about have to have Romas or another paste tomato for that.

Pear preserves are the best. But I might also recommend pearsauce (like applesauce, only different), or a plain old pear puree, to be frozen or canned and do whatever you want with it later. A few suggestions: -- sub for blueberries in Vivian Howard's Blue Q barbecue sauce -- Use with balsamic vinegar for a glaze/baste for pork loin -- Add to a stirfry with chicken or pork; certainly not canonical, but worth a thought. --Add in place of any fruit element in any sweet or savory recipe. I think it'd be wonderful in anything garnished with blue cheese.

No. Please, just....no. Give me a Zagnut.

I am almost certain one of these is worthy of the "second-worst food thing I've ever seen." The worst was my late mother-in-law's salmon mousse. Canned salmon, gelatine, cream cheese. In a fish shaped mold. Slivered almonds for scales, and half a pitted olive for an eye. That nasty thing has made appearances in several of my worst night terrors.

I will never again let myself get a month and a half behind in reading the forums. Particularly the breakfast, lunch, dinner, food funnies and Cape Cod ones, which do not bear missing anything.

Spent about four times as much money as I normally do at the Farmers Market Saturday, though we're down to a handful of vendors. One of them was my favorite nursery, selling massive (crown is at least 2.5, maybe three feet across) potted chrysanthemums. I bought four, and he threw in one free. Plus picked up my previously-ordered Thanksgiving turkey, and on impulse got some pork steaks from the same vendor. Sunflowers, zinnias, okra, zucchini and about the last summer squash of the season finished things up. Oh, and green tomatoes; last tomatoes of the season, too.

What a shocker to read, just after reading his posts on huckleberry ice cream and peach tarts in the sweets thread. I loved David's recipes and his attention to detail and his wonderful collection of old cookbooklets. As many have said, he was unfailingly kind and helpful, and we are much poorer for his absence. May he RIP.

Superb vacation so far! Thanks so much for taking us along. I was ready for a good vacation.

My garden has about given up the ghost. As I never got the lettuce/radish/carrot bed cleared and replanted with later stuff, that all went to seed; Ill be pulling the old plants out, piling them up, and covering the soil with compost and straw and then probably covering the entire bed with landscape fabric for the winter. Ditto the cabbage/crucifer bed. Brussels sprouts never bore fruit, but the broccoli and cauliflower was good. Cabbages took FOREVER to mature, so I was late emptying that bed and never got it replanted either. Tomatoes, which went in pretty early, are almost completely through. Reasonable crop. Asparagus has sprouted a marvelous bed of ferns. Hoping to be able to harvest a bit next spring early. I think it's going to be one bed of tomatoes, another bed of Roma tomatoes to make sauce, and the bed of lettuce, etc., can go into late tomatoes, next year.

Well, I'll be damned. Another solution looking for a problem.

A fitting tribute to a good person.

A friend told me today she had acquired an "Instant Pod," a creature made by Instant Pot that makes coffee with Keurig pods and espresso from Nespresso pods. Anybody heard of such? I accused her of hallucinating it. My kids have a Nespresso. It does make a reasonably decent cup of coffee. Espresso. Whatever.

No, I don't seed. I slice the Romas crossways, cherry or grape tomatoes in halves or quarters, depending on size, sprinkle with salt, drizzle with olive oil, and go. Have taken a flyer at drying herbs (sage), and it seemed to work OK. On the tomatoes, if I'm doing a lot, as I slice I lay on paper towel covered racks and salt them there, to let them drain a bit, then move to the dehydrator trays. On my cheapie Ambiano, a round plastic model, I think it may have taken between 24 and 36 hours. Don't recall how long the herbs took. Never tried. I've soaked chickpeas, then dried off with a towel, tossed in olive oil and seasoned, and roasted them (200 or so for 3-4 hours), though. Nice snack.

Theoretically. I opted in to the "alert me to delivery" option, or whatever it is. It worked for a while. Then it didn't. One day my son-in-law had called me for some reason. Before we hung up, he said, "Oh, by the way, you have an Amazon package on your porch." "Huh?" I replied. Seems Amazon has been sending him text messages regarding my deliveries, oh, since about the time they stopped sending them to me. The only rationale I can find for this is that I have his address (but not his cell number) in my Amazon account list of shipping addresses, so if I order something for one of them, I can just have it sent straight to them. I'm not certain where they acquired his cell number. Or why the messages go to him and not my daughter. Go figger.

No, I don't. I usually wind up just eating them out of hand or tossing them in a salad, so the skin isn't problematic. If I were adding to a tomato sauce, I'd probably blitz it in the blender or food processor first to deal with the skins.

Spending much of this week with Child B helping her get her new house organized. She is about 10 minutes from the Agricenter, which houses Memphis/Shelby County's big farmers market. Monday-Saturday, 8-5:30. I obviously had to go. I am now super jealous of the child, who does not cook, living that near a superb market. I suspect the Friday-Saturday vendor list is even larger.

Got to be the most popular feet on the planet. Tell him welcome back for me. He was missed (you, too!).

Figs. Figs, figs, figs, figs, and more figs. Three pints of pickled figs (never tried 'em before, didn't have a recipe, but hey, they pickle peaches, so why not figs?). A pint of figs in brandy. What looks like it'll be 4-6 pints and 10-12 half-pints of fig jam. That from about 2 1/2 gallons of the fresh variety. Brown figs, quite small. Didn't seem like they had a lot of flavor. Oh, well, cooking down to jam consistency forgives a multitude of sins.

We got a BIG liquor store in the next county.

Come on down. I expect there's plenty for you, too. Course, you'd probably have to do the preserving at my house. Not sure fresh figs, even on ice, would make the ride back to Kansas. So just come a stay a few days. I got wine and a guest room.

Late next week will be figs. Friend has some getting ripe in his yard. He's going to pick and meet me to hand them over, after I return from Child B's from taking cats home and helping her unpack. "Will 4-5 gallons be enough?" Well, yeah. Given that a gallon will make all the fig jam I'll use in a year's time. In fact, I have some left from last year. But I'll make these up, and give him well more than half of them, and we'll both be ahead of the game. Can't say that it's that much harder to work up 4-5 gallons of figs than it is 1 gallon.

Call me a Philistine -- I like onions AND chorizo in mine. And I've been known to put cheese on top.