kayb

Will be fascinated to experience your Seder via the blog, Pam. Anxious to learn about all kinds of food with which I'm not familiar!

Wow, everyone -- what a week's worth of meals! Shelby, that cheese oozing out of the puff pastry almost did me in. Were you/are you here for the Derby? If you're still around, PM me and we'll meet and grab lunch or coffee or a beer! A few other standouts that caught my eye were Corinna's lobster mac and cheese and Prawncrackers' Dover sole. Friends in town for Derby weekend, so Friday night I grilled shrimp, with arepas, black beans and corn, a pineapple-mango salsa, guacamole, and some stuffed dates wrapped in bacon: Last night, got home from the races (I had the Derby winner, a 25-1 shot, so I came home in a good mood!), and grilled some ribeyes, served with some premade English pea salad and capreses with greenhouse-grown winter tomatos from the local farmers' market. Served it with a slab of freshly baked multigrain bread, proofed in the fridge while we were at the ponies. Dessert was pound cake with strawberries macerated in sugar and balsamic vinegar, with sweetened creme fraiche. Don't think I'm going to cook today!

When I was a new mother, I avidly looked for and used coupons for diapers, baby food, formula and the like. I'd typically save about $10 a week on just baby items, and $10 a week when you have an elementary schooler, a toddler and a newborn is pretty significant (plus the fact that was 21 years ago, when $10 was worth more than it is today). Today, I'm in the store-discount-card and use-a-coupon-if-I-happen-on-to-one-for-something-I-use category. More typically, I'll get one in the mail for something I might conceivably use, stick it up on the fridge with a magnet, and forget about it until after it's expired. The only exceptions are the PetSmart coupons for dog food and grooming services. I covet those, and use them faithfully.

Last night, the first Boston butt on the grill this season. Details over on the Behold My Butt thread. Served with arepas and black bean-corn salad. Possibly the best arepas I've ever made. Recently, gyoza, fried rice and pickled vegetables. And one night when a full-blown meal was NOT on the agenda, potato skins!

Very cool first day, Evan. Anxious to learn more!

Bumping this thread back up, now that it's spring. I cooked my first butt of the season yesterday -- about a four-pounder. Rubbed it down heavily with a dry rub of chili powder, paprika, ancho chile powder, coriander, salt, pepper, garlic powder, allspice, dry mustard (I think that was all). Let it sit over night, wrapped in plastic, to marinate in the rub. Put it on the grill with a heap of coals on either end, and went away and ignored it except to turn it a couple of times. At the end of three hours, I was starting to lose my heat as my coals were burning out, so I transferred it to a baking dish and finished it with another hour in the oven. Marvelous!

Garlic jelly (left front). I am FASCINATED by the notion of garlic jelly. What's it like?

You have, indeed, found your people. Welcome home!

Breakfast out with my girls, in Nashville, where I'm visiting, at Pfunky Griddle, a neat little place where they bring you pitchers of batter, your requested add-ins, and you cook your own pancakes (cute little mini-hibachi-grill tables). Or, in my case, you cook your own potato cakes (mine with cheddar, feta, and black olives; I wish I'd ordered ham as well). I can testify, after sampling a kid's pancake, that Reese's Pieces are the bomb for pancake add-ins!

Porterhouse steaks from Walnut Hill Farms via the Nashville Farmers' Market, as I'm here visiting the kiddos. Dry aged, and they taste it; marvelous! I had eaten way too many cheese and crackers and stuffed dates prior to dinner, so I had only a small portion of one of the porterhouses, as I wanted some of the corn on the cob and roasted broccoli with parmigiano, also from the market (albeit shipped in from somewhere else).

Along the same lines as what has been mentioned before, it seems to me that likely most of us grew up with a good deal less variety at breakfast than at dinner; it is not unusual to eat the same thing, or at least from the samae small group of things, daily for breakfast, when we would not think of that sort of repetition at lunch or dinner. I had Chinese takeout earlier this week for dinner; I won't likely want Chinese takeout again for a couple of weeks. I had steel-cut oatmeal for breakfast yesterday; I'll likely have steel-cut oatmeal at least twice more in the next five days, with toast or a bagel the other days. Of course, all bets are off when one is referring to teenagers like mine, who would eat pizza four nights a week and burgers the other three. Or vice versa.

Basic recipe is here: flax seed potato bread I substituted mashed sweet potato for regular mashed potatos. Apparently they have a greater moisture content, because I then had to add another cup of flour, and the dough was still very, very soft. But it baked up nicely, although I did overproof it on the second rise, so my top collapsed a bit. Lovely, chewy texture, though, and a nice flavor. Good toasted with butter in the mornings!

Dejah, where can I acquire a freezer like yours? I want one that conjures up roasts and such. Kim, thanks for the recipe. We're not far from strawberry season, when I'll be eating them daily. This will be on the list of "to try." Tonight, as I'd been baking bread all day and it was a chilly, gray day (the last gasp of winter, I hope), I opted for comfort food: Meat loaf, mac and cheese, purple hulled peas (frozen from last summer), and sweet potato flaxseed bread. Hit the spot.

Thoroughly enjoyed your blog. Now you've got me craving crawfish; got to get out this week and see what I can find in the markets!

RRO, I've done asparagus wrapped in proscuitto with good results; never thought of wagyu! Brilliance! Must try that when asparagus comes in season. Kim, I need to know about roasted strawberry cheesecake. Never thought about roasting a strawberry. RobirdsTX, I feel proud I know what a porcupine meatball is! Though I haven't made any in years....might ought to revisit that! Tonight, I felt Caribbean. So it was vaca frita, fried plantains, coconut rice and black bean/white corn salad. With Red Stripe beer.

I've got round steak boiling now to become vaca frita tomorrow (flank steak is canonical, but round works just fine, too). If I'd read this before I started it, it might have become steak and gravy. I can't think how long it's been since I made that! LOVE the benefit idea -- that it's such a regular thing! We have them from time to time when a need is presented, but it's usually a club or civic organization that undertakes one. I like the whole community coming together to help its members who need it. And to enjoy some fine jambalaya!

Oh, Lord. Crawfish, boiled in that great BIG ol' pot, with potatos and corn and some Andouille chunks, and a six-pack of ice-cold Dixie....a tail-pinching, head-sucking, beer-guzzling FINE time, with Sunnyland Slim blaring from the stereo! Rhonda, you're killin' me, here!

Ohhhhh, man! If I leave now, I can be there before breakfast. Save me one?

I had a leftover grilled tuna steak once (go figure; someone didn't show up for dinner!), and the next day, I chopped it up, and tossed it with some leftover brown rice and a dressing of rice wine vinegar, mirin, miso paste and a touch of sesame oil, some ginger and some cayenne pepper. Served it alongside some pickled vegetables. Now, when I'm grilling tuna steaks, I try to always have an extra so I can do this again! For the canned tuna variety -- canned albacore, drained; sweet gherkins, chopped; hardboiled egg; salt, pepper, a little lemon juice, mayo. Can't abide onions or celery in my tuna. Diced apples and slivered almonds make a nice add for textural purposes. I love a scoop on top of a slab of fresh, red-ripe tomato. Or two scoops and two slabs.

YAY! The last time I was going to have crawfish pie, I'd bought 5 or 6 pounds of crawfish and laboriously spent a couple of hours peeling and collecting tail meat. I put it in a bowl in the fridge to be compiled into a pie the next day, and headed out for something or other. When I got home, my daughter had eaten Every Bit Of IT! That's as close as that child has ever come to death.... H'mmm. And Tony's ships? We may have to see about doing some business, here.

My salads are usually sans lettuce or other greenery, though sometimes I'll get in the notion for it. The problem is that I don't get in that mood often enough but what I'll buy lettuce or spinach or rocket or what-have-you, make one salad, and the rest of it goes bad. But some of my favorites I go back to time after time: Diced peel-on apples, tossed with bacon, toasted walnuts, feta cheese and honey balsamic dressing. Marinated veggies -- cauliflower, carrots, cucumbers, white radishes marinated in a rice vinegar-salt-sugar-ginger mix, or a hot brine of cider vinegar, water, dry mustard, turmeric and white pepper. (Kinda fun; turns the cauliflower a brilliant psychedelic yellow.) Roasted asparagus tossed with canteloupe chunks, diced fresh mozzarella, and a viniagrette of lime juice and oil, sprinkled with grated parmigiano. Black bean and corn salad with chopped roasted red peppers, a couple of spoonsful of salsa, some cumin and some smoked pimenton. You could add raw onions and bell peppers if you wanted; I don't like 'em, so I don't. I used canned black beans and canned white shoe-peg corn, being sure to drain and rinse the beans well. I keep this stuff in the fridge all the time, and eat it like a salad; my daughter eats it on tortilla chips as a dip. Diced fresh fruit, whatever's in season, with a dressing of just slightly sweetened creme fraiche. Roasted asparagus, hearts of palm, ever-so-slightly sauteed mushrooms, barely cooked early June peas, all tossed in balsamic viniagrette and topped with a healthy grating of parmigiano. And the most astounding salad I've ever eaten in my life: http://www.food52.com/recipes/4106_spring_picnic_pea_salad

If you are not now, or have not at some time made your living from writing, you have missed your calling. You're a wonderful storyteller.

Oh, Lord. Just take me now. I LOVE me some red beans and rice, and never thought about using ham stock to flavor the beans and adding the Andouille at the last minute. (I get mine at a restaurant in Little Rock where they make their own; guy used to be the chef at NOLA, pre-Katrina. Pricy. Worth it.)

dcarch, I repeat myself for the nth time -- but that was gorgeous. I love your creativity. Blether, tell me more about salting the pork loin for 60 hours. Was it in a brine, or a dry salt rub? I have one in the freezer waiting for the next time I'm feeding a bunch of folks, and I'd wondered about what brining it would do.

All right, you two, scoot over. I'm in, too. Looking forward to it, Rhonda. Living just a couple of hours north of the Louisiana line, I'm some kind of fond of Cajun/Creole cookery. Been through Hammond a time or two, best I recall; I'll wave next time I'm headed to the Big Easy! Oh. And can we have crawfish pies? Please?