kayb

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?

The Bread Maker's Apprentice.

Interesting sidelight upthread about what our children eat. I have three grown daughters, all of whom will eat fairly adventurously, like most stuff, but don't really get into cooking at all. And I have a 15-year-old son I took in last year, after his eating habits were formed. Nothing green. Very little fruit. If it weren't for his fondness for anything with tomato sauce on it, I'd fear he'd get scurvy. I'm trying my best to get him to branch out, but with little success. Any suggestions?

Gorgeous dinners, everyone! It's been a couple of weeks since I've had a chance to look, and post, so it was a virtual smorgasbord to see everyone's wonderful food. Finally had a chance to do some cooking this weekend. Friday night, Ann T's Greek meatballs over orzo, with zucchini fritters on the side. They're really not burned, though they look it.... Saturday, flank steak that was destined for the grill but didn't make it because we got home too late from the racetrack. So I seared it in a hot skillet, instead. Perfect rare/medium rare. Served it with a mixed green salad and a potato gratin: Today, I made shortcut banh mi with pickled veggies for lunch (and I got that recipe from some blog I read, can't remember which, but if it was anyone on here, thank you; it's wonderful). Rolled it up in a flatbread wrap. And finally, tonight, fired up the grill; pork chops and chicken breasts. The pork chops were just salted and peppered, grilled and then glazed at the end with Sweet Baby Ray's barbecue sauce. The chicken breasts were marinated in an orange juice based marinade with Asian spices. Had it with black bean and white corn salad, and mac and cheese that I didn't eat, but the menfolk seemed to love.

An extremely busy month so far -- new grandchild on Feb. 28, and work stuff when I got back in town a week later -- has kept me away from this thread and most of eGullet (and much of the rest of the internet). But this weekend, I got serious about cooking. To do that, of course, one must fuel oneself properly: Corned beef hash, made from leftover corned beef and mashed potatos I'd made for an early St. Patrick's Day dinner. With an over easy free-range egg. And a slice of spicy cheese bread, spread with fig preserves. A gal can cook all day on that. Except I went to the racetrack instead.

It's fairly common around here at the meat-and-three places that are popular with the noontime office crowd. You dash out by yourself, sit at a table with eight or 10 others, order from the menu, chat if you want, read if you don't. Beats having to wait for a table for a single.

Took me until now to get to your blog, and I just read it in its entirety. Marvelous! Particularly loved the potato skins, one of my family's favorites as well (and quick and easy to make if you bake your potatos in the microwave). Your kitchen is lovely, and I envy you being so close to the coast with your access to good, fresh seafood, and far enough south there's fresh produce so much earlier than here. I'm making my first New Mexico trip in about six weeks, and will be looking forward to some of that wonderful food! Oh, and add me to the list of those with kitchen envy.

I corned beef with it last summer. Worked fine.

Cranberry salad. Cornbread dressing. BLT's. Biscuits (unfortunately, not gravy, at which I am still horrible). Southern standards. I never branched out until I was an adult.

Way cool on the pierogis! I'm gonna have to try that .... but not this weekend, which is bread and short ribs!

Have been cooking in my daughter's kitchen the past week, visiting her and her husband and my brand new grandchild. A bit limited -- you don't THINK to buy things like, oh, baking powder, that aren't staples for her -- but I managed to turn out some decent dinners: Organic, grass-fed rib-eyes, from my local organic farmer, that I took up there with me for a celebratory home-from-the-hospital dinner: Short ribs, which after browning got braised in a lovely tomato ragu, heavy on paprika, and served with gnocchi and carrot croquettes topped with yogurt sauce: It was my maiden attempt at making gnocchi, but I had a bunch of homemade ricotta I needed to use, that I had taken up there with me. So I made about 5 1/2 dozen, cooked 2 dozen, and froze the rest. Discovered you CAN, in fact, make gnocchi with gluten-free flour. And shrimp enchiladas in chile verde sauce.

Sigh. To be able to eat at Highlands B&G twice a month. And the Hot and Hot. And what is that Fish Market place? Birmingham DOES have some fine restaurants.

Loving the blog! (Just got caught up on the first two days, after spending a week out of town with the brand new grandchild!) Inquiring minds want to know -- was that a sugar bowl in the hummus ingredients pic? Don't know that I ever heard of sugar in hummus; share a recipe? As a Kitchenaid noob, I'm looking forward particularly to the breadbaking part of your week. I missed my breadbaking the past two weeks, and will be anxious to get back into it this next weekend. New Orleans cuisine rules. Will be ordering Cooking Up A Storm. And the furbabies are adorable! Lucy Lu says to tell them Hi from her.