kayb

I have often done PB&J on flour tortillas for events where kids were attending...easier for little hands to hold, less chance of a major mess if dropped.

Thanks for the recipe, Greg, and let me add my welcome to both you and BertaBurtonLake. It's a great forum, even for amateurs like me. And that's a beautiful boxer, even if she does chew USB cables! (I have a Pug who does the same....) My Easter menu, for just youngest daughter and me, is simple and has our favorites -- Ham (mustard and brown sugar glazed, in the oven as we speak, as dinner is tonight) Asparagus (roasted, with Hollandaise) Potato salad Deviled eggs Angel food cake with strawberries and sweetened creme fraiche for dessert.

From a Southern goy who loves latkes -- sour cream and apple butter.

Roast chicken marinated in a miso-mirin mix, and roasted in what I thought was a clever manner, for someone who doesn't have a formal chicken roaster. A conventional tube pan would work better than a bundt, but I didn't have one. Skin at the neck opening was almost charred, but that was because I failed to lower the oven rack enough. Great way to roast a bird, though! That's a mashed potato gratin with gruyere and caramelized onions in the back.

I believe that is the cook's privilege!

Loh rd God. I know when I'm outdone. I'm WAY outdone. That's amazingly wonderful, and I'd love to be able to turn out that dish on command. I salute you.

Yuengling Lager. OK, I'm a plebian.

H'mmm. I may have missed the reduction step, or perhaps it's because I finished it in the slow cooker because I wasn't going to be home. Thanks for that knowledge. Regardless, it was good.

Rendang (beef braised in coconut milk) over brown rice, with sesame snow peas.

Smoked salmon hash with scallions, topped with a misshapen pair of over-easy eggs, but hey, I'm flipping eggs lefthanded because I'm still in a cast (until a week from Wednesday!), so I deem them acceptable. I have to say,this was not as good as I had hoped, having eyed the recipe for a few weeks before I got around to it. Something about the way the smoked salmon, the potatos and the eggs play with each other, or fail to.... So I recouped this morning with Cheddar Bacon Muffins (recipehere) and fresh strawberries with creme fraiche and brown sugar. Florida berries, but good.

I had an absolutely marvelous sea bass filet at Cafe Pacific in Highland Park, Dallas, last fall....they called it "three onion" sea bass, and it was roasted in a marvelously crispy panko breading that had grated Vidalia and red onions in it, with scallions chopped and scattered over. They served it over roasted corn risotto with ancho chile cream sauce, and I thought I had died and gone to heaven...

New York Strip steak seared on a griddle pan, with risotto and caprese salad from the first locally grown (in a greenhouse) vine-ripened tomatos of the season...and I had to use dried basil as the grocery had no fresh and my herb garden is not yet begun for the summer....

Andiesenji, I love Idiazabal as well; like it better than Manchego, I think. I tend toward the hard, aged cheeses or the semi-firm younger ones. Lately I've been buying 3-month aged sheeps milk and cows milk cheese from my free-range organic meat supplier, and that's keeping me happy. I supplement it with an aged Gouda (most recently Green Heart), Idiazabal, Manchego or Uniekaase Robusto. And I try to keep Gruyere and Jarlsberg around as well. When I've had a big lunch, dinner is often cheese, fruit, toast, honey and a glass of wine.

Gradually getting back to cooking, with assistance from daughter/apprentice for things I can't handle yet, like dicing onions or shallots. Steak and onion sandwiches on French bread with melted Provolone: And another night, tortellini with pesto cream sauce, and reasonably decent out-of-season tomatos:

My very favorite summer lunch is sliced tomatos with a scoop of ricotta cheese, a little sea salt, and a healthy grind of mixed peppercorns. Also love freshly ground pepper on my second favorite summer lunch, a caprese salad. And on watermelon, with a splash of balsamic vinegar.

Be SURE there's time for lunch at Willie Mae's on Tuesday. Worth the effort.

I did Steel Cut oats on my Cuisinart slow cooker overnight. It's a 6.5 quart ceramic pot unit. I've learned that as nice looking as it is it runs hot on the low and high cooking settings. Now that I know this I actually cook everything with the Warm setting. That's the setting the unit switches to after the cooking timer shuts off. Warm goes to about 180-190F on my unit. Because my pot is on the large size the AB recipe would probably burn given the times etc even on the warm setting. <snip> Every crock pot/slow cooker has a different heat range. I'm not suprised so many people get questionable results from the AB recipe. I'm going to try sous vide oats next. Crazy talk? Absolutely. After seeing some frozen fully cooked steel cut oats at Trader Joes the other day I'm getting excited about the possibilities of taking frozen vacuum packed oat pucks to work. I can't wait to find out if I'm making glue or something scrumptious. Have not yet tried this, as I am not a huge oatmeal fan, but I've read on another food blog to use the slow cooker as a bain marie and cook all night on low. Might be worth a try. Kay (who since she can't cook at present is reading the entire breakfast and dinner threads and clipping recipes)

Barbecue on waffles-- what a cool idea! I've done it on fried cornbread, and that's good. Are your cornbread waffles regular cornbread batter? New and hopefully more mobile cast today; hoping I can cook at least something simple this weekend. Tired of snacking and eating out.

Potato salad. Specifically, my potato salad, still warm from cooking the potatos, with a dressing of mayo,mustard,ketchup,pickles, salt.pepper.garlic and paprika. It's what I love to make for myself when I'm tired or it's been a rough day.

Sigh. A broken arm means I can only read and drool for a couple of weeks.....

Today's weekend breakfast cookery for the rest of the week: Bran muffins with figs and walnuts: Sausage and biscuits (homemade biscuits; sausage from my organic free-range meat purveyor) Feeling somewhat ambitious, I even made up a batch of pimento cheese for lunches. Now I feel very virtuous, and think I'll take a nap. Darienne, congrats on the anniversary! Have a wonderful day!

I cook breakfast maybe twice a week, on the weekends. Unless I have one of my "can't sleep" mornings and get up at 3:30 a.m. and make muffins or something. The rest of the time it's either fruit salad or muffins or sausage biscuits I made on the weekend for Child C's and my weekday breakfasts, or the once-every-two-weeks fast-food binge on Burger King French toast sticks, which are really pretty good and probably absolutely horrible for me.

Seed (or actually, ground). Just tossed them in olive oil, a little sugar, a little salt, and the coriander. Roasted at 325 so the sugar wouldn't burn, for maybe 35-40 minutes (I didn't time, just tested from time to time). M'mmmm....plantains. LOVE plantains. Ate them three times a day last year when I was in Miami. The ones I fry at home just aren't as good.

Now that is brilliant. I am going to steal your idea and use it. Please do! Mama would be pleased.

I used to frequent a (now, sadly, closed) martini bar in Memphis that offered what ranks as my all-time favorite bar appetizer: Fried olives. They took a mix of different kinds of olives, minced them fine, mixed them with egg and I think bread crumbs, rolled them into olive-sized-and-shaped ovals, and deep-fried them. And served them in a martini glass lined with a couple of cocktail napkins, with picks to spear them. Of course, it was Memphis, so they served them with the ubiquitous ranch dressing as a dipping sauce, along with marinara. I cared for no sauce at all, but if I did, I don't think it'd be either of those; maybe a Greek yogurt and cucumber raita, or something. My other favorite appetizer that might lend itself well to bar snacks is asparagus spears wrapped in proscuitto and broiled until the proscuitto is crispy.