kayb

Another great grits source: War Eagle Mill in NW Arkansas, www.wareaglemill.com, which has a sizeable variety of not only cereals and whole grains, but lots of flours and meals and jellies and jams and preserves. My personal favorite grits are the old-fashioned ones, seasoned with salt and bacon fat during the cooking phase, cheese of choice stirred in, and topped with a couple of over-easy eggs fried in the fat from the bacon or sausage you're serving alongside it....and a big fluffy cathead biscuit with butter and fig or pear preserves. (Points to anyone who knows what a cathead biscuit is.)

Things I haven't tried, but will: Truffles Foie gras Jamon iberico Bisteeya Lobster roll in Maine Dinner at the French Laundry If I thought for a while, I could come up with several hundred.

For several years, I've done boxes with fudge and pralines and roasted chickpeas with wasabi and spiced pecan. Great gifts for co-workers, kids' teachers, you name it.

I've seen the words experimental and adventurous used in previous descriptions; I'd sign on to both of those. I'm of the "try anything once" school of cookery -- and of life in general. Cooking is something I've done all my life, but only for the past two or three years as anything other than what had to be done to stand between me and hunger. It's a way to explore other lands, cultures, histories. It's a way to sample new experiences and tastes; in the past year, I've cooked things I'd never eaten before. It's just another way of learning.

Agreed on hot chocolate. And hot spiced tea. How about potato skins/stuffed potatos? I use the fairly small ones, convenient to pick up and eat by hand. Having a variety of toppings on hand (bacon, olives, chrimp, cheese, peppers, whatever else strikes your fancy) and condiments (sour cream, more cheese, other dipping sauces), and a convenient broiler means everyone can build their own, and they can be substantive enough to stand for a meal. Other ideas...popovers, gougeres, a big sandwich built on a baguette and sliced into manageable slices.

I made an eggplant and chickpea casserole recently for a dinner that included a vegetarian as a guest. Sliced and roasted the eggplant, brushed with olive oil, until soft; layered in a tomato sauce that started with sauteed onions and garlic, added some oregano, a little basil, the tomatos, a touch of cinnamon, and a can of drained chickpeas. Really good.

I do a fritatta with chorizo, cotija, queso fresco and black beans (and a diced, fried potato, if I'm ambitious), and top it with more cheese, some salsa and diced avocado when it comes out from under the broiler. I also love it in chunks in a traditional chef salad. Best chef salad I ever had included avocado, blue cheese crumbles, and lovely rare tenderloin medallions. Love it on a bagel with some cream cheese and some pico de gallo.

I do what is, I guess, essentially a latke, with zucchini, and I've done it with yellow squash as well. It uses crushed saltines instead of matzoh meal or flour. I use my food processor for the potato and onion, the regular processing blade, just in a series of pulses until I get the texture I want, and then I drain that in a colander for a bit before adding the egg and crumbs and/or flour (I've done both). Has anyone done sweet potato latkes? I'm anxious to try this, being a fiend for anything you can do with a sweet potato.

The hamper I'd give is somewhat different than the one I'd want to get. In my "give" hamper, homemade goodies would include chocolate covered cherries, pralines, and fudge; spiced pecans and walnuts; roasted chickpeas with wasabi; old-fashioned popcorn balls, from my mother's recipe. Maybe some fresh peach sauce, if I could find out-of-season peaches somewhere that were decent enough to cook. And just because it's cold and any hamper ought to include some comfort food, a crock of Tuscan white bean and sausage soup. In my "get" hamper -- wine, cheese and charcuterie will do me just fine.

Will happily trade you bran muffins for plantains fried in butter and olive oil.....

Makes a wonderful meat loaf, with some pork fat added. Use your favorite meat loaf recipe. Also, it makes great pasta sauce, in a basic tomato/basil/oregano/garlic preparation. I like the chops just floured, seared and then braised in broth or red wine. Ribs are great baked in the barbecue sauce of your choice; ditto roasts. I generallly prefer my venison ground, as deer down here have a tendency to be tough. If it's a roast or even a chop, unless it's a very young deer, I cook the livin' h*** out of it.

I made butternut squash soup with chile recently -- it was excellent. I sauteed a small, diced onion and a couple of cloves of garlic, peeled and cubed two small butternut squash (maybe 3 pounds total) and tossed those in to saute as well, and added a tablespoon of ancho chile powder, two tablespoons of Santa Cruz chile paste, and two teaspoons of diced chipotle in adobo. When the squash began to soften, I added two cups of chicken broth and simmered until the squash was completely done. Pureed it in the pan with my immersion blender (you could do in batches in the blender or food processor if you wanted a smoother consistency). Then I added two ounces of crumbled goat cheese, stirred that until it melted, and a cup of half-and-half. It's thick, so if you want a thinner soup, use more chicken broth or more cream. I freeze it in single-serving bowls and take to work, or use it for a sauce over pasta or rice as an entree for two. It's excellent like that if you add some crisp crumbled bacon or diced ham.

I too grew up on a farm with hog-butchering, sausage-making, and lard-rendering. The lard stayed in the cellar, in gallon buckets filled to the top and covered so there was little if any air space. When a gallon was opened, it then stayed in the refrigerator. As well as I recall, the covered lard,stored as it was in a cool place, lasted for the full year (or until we ran out). Lard was used in pie crusts, biscuits, and most everything else.

Really not a Waldorf salad, in that it doesn't have either apples OR nuts OR celery, but I had some leftover ambrosia (pineapple, mandarin orange segments, coconut, in their own juice) and decided I wanted a creamy tang to it...added a couple of tablespoons of Hellman's. It was a most serviceable lunch. I tend to be a Waldorf minimalist -- apples, nuts, mayo. I don't even add celery. Arkansas Black apples are in season now, and they're excellent, especially mixed with Granny Smiths.

My favorite new green bean recipe is green beans Provencale -- steamed, then sauteed in butter and olive oil with shallots, rosemary, halved grape tomatos and basil. Wonderful.

Not a lot of cooking this past week. One night, it was cheese, smoked salmon, and bread and butter pickles while I browsed through my newest cookbook: That's Pyrenees, colby jack, and sharp cheddar cheese, and salmon a friend caught and smoked herself. Wonderful! Another night, in a confounding combination that was based on what I had handy and what I was in the mood for, it was fried rice and butternut squash soup with chile: Note the "fine china." This is my absolute favorite soup mug.

Oh. My. God. That's the most revoltingly hysterical, or hysterically revolting, thing I've ever seen.

I volunteered to cook dinner for our company staff retreat (12 people, a lake cabin). I wanted good food but knew it was going to be important to cook a good deal ahead. The menu wound up as bouef bourguignon, potatos dauphinois, green beans Provencale, and coriander glazed carrots, with a salad of mixed greens, walnuts and goat cheese. I picked up some bake-it-yourself French bread at a local bakery, and made a coconut cake with fruit salad for dessert. Cooked the cake two days ahead, so it could get nice and moist; made the beef the night before, and while it was cooking prepped the potatos up to the point of covering them with cream and baking, made the fruit salad, and packed what kitchen necessities I thought I'd need. That left me to do the salad, the carrots, the beans and the bread on-site, as well as reheat the beef and bake the potatos. It was a hit. Unfortunately, the pic of the beef doesn't seem to want to upload. Not that it was all that photogenic, in its huge roaster pan, but it was certainly good.

YUM! And it looks as good as it sounds. Recipe?

Bran muffins with All-Bran. I had a recipe years ago that used both bran flakes AND All-Bran, but have no idea where it disappeared to. Snack mix with Cheerios, Chex, pecans and pretzels, flavored with Worcestershire and butter and Tabasco. Oatmeal as part of the crumble topping (with brown sugar and butter) for baked apples or an apple pie. Or any other fruit, come to think of it.

One of the changes I made was to use tenderloin, since I'd happened upon a great sale on them and had some in the freezer. I was afraid poaching would mean too much of a breakdown of the meat, so I just browned the raw cubes and used beef stock. Worked like a charm. I subbed a couple of tablespoons of Santa Cruz chile paste for the jalapeno, which I didn't have handy, either. It was wonderful!

Posole, with baked arepas: I made some changes from the recipe posted in the posole cookoff thread, to accommodate what was in my kitchen. It was astoundingly wonderful. Thanks, Chris!

Trying again, to post the photos: Chicken pot pie and roasted tomato caprese: (and apparently they will be one post per photo, for some reason....)

A chicken pot pie with roasted tomato caprese: And Friday night, with greatest thanks to Chris Amirault for posting his mother-in-law's posole recipe: (which I seem to be having trouble uploading, but Chris, it was wonderful! Please thank your mother-in-law for me!) Last night was choucroute garnie and German potato salad, with no photographs because we were starving.

Entirely too much breakfast today, but some mornings you splurge: Potato latkes, country style bacon, apple butter, over easy egg, sourdough toast.