kayb

Welcome, and enjoy! Be warned -- this forum will cost you money. I have several things that would have never occurred to me to purchase, absent this group. We're the original enablers.

The vines finally decided to yield enough cucumbers at a time to do something with. Therefore, a half gallon of what will be, by the middle of next week, half sours. As I will be on the road, I will leave instructions for Child A to transfer them to the fridge. Four leftover pickles are chopped and draining for a salad for tonight. There is no reason one cannot have cucumber salad with paella, is there?

My beans didn't do well, either. Luxuriant vines. Lots of flowers. Maybe a dozen beans, all told.

This has a marvelous taste. Makes me want to make some bolognese.

Today's adventure in tomatoes: tomato paste. Five four-ounce containers, from about a gallon of quartered tomatoes. Cooked down in olive oil, put through the food mill (used the wrong plate, used medium and it let some seeds through, wont do that with the next batch), then poured into a baking dish and stuck in a 250F oven for about 4 1/2 hours. When it cools, it'll get a dollop of olive oil on top and go in the freezer. I didnt want to fool with canning it.

I'm a fan of the low-and-slow, and I've either braised or roasted, covered with foil. I also love them in choucroute garnie.

This makes me long for my preferred variation of this dish -- cream cheese, crackers and Jezebel sauce (apricot jam and lots of horseradish). Sadly, I can't eat the soft wheat crackers any more, and I don't think I have any horseradish in the fridge. I DO think there's a jar of apricot preserves, though.

Am I to take it that it doesn't look like Kansas any more?

Mine did the same. Dunno whats up with that.

Details on the canteloupe pie? Looks good!

My Jimmy Buffett t-shirt may never be the same. 13 pints of tomatoes, two quarts and a pint of tomato juice, and enough juice left over to make a good-sized Bloody Mary with. Second canner-full is still going. Here's the first: (The big Mason jars in the background along the left wall serve as canisters.) Arms aren't long enough to do justice to the spattered shirt without cutting off my head, and that just felt weird. The rest of the crime scene is cleaned up, except for the sink-full of pots, colanders and strainers.

Well, my kitchen looks like a crime scene -- it's tomato-canning time! I bought two boxes of "canning tomatoes" at the farmers' market yesterday; 10 bucks a box, mix of varieties, some little, some huge, some split, some with bad spots in them. Blanched and peeled them, diced them roughly and let them drain in a colander a bit, and I've got two dutch ovens full simmering away, plus about a half-gallon of tomato juice. This may call for a Bloody Mary tonight. I'm guessing I'll have 12 pints or so. Photos to come, once I get the crime scene cleaned up and the 'maters in jars.

Welcome! Mexican food is a favorite with many of us, so we'll be anxious to hear what you have to tell us!

Pretty country up there. I've spent some time in the Bristol/Jonesborough area. Let us hear how it turns out!

For the dentally-challenged, I chopped up some leftover roast beef and used the jus and some chicken stock and a dark roux to make a brown gravy. Mashed potatoes, overmashed them and they were "gluey." Squash casserole. Tomato cobbler, which is thinner-than-normal cornbread batter in a pie plate, with a mix of diced fresh tomatoes, garlic, bacon, olive oil and a splash of white balsamic vinegar dolloped in liberally, then the whole thing topped with a handful of grated parmesan cheese before baking. And ate about two bites of each of them, because nothing tastes good. Child A said it was all excellent, but for the cobbler, which had "way too many tomatoes." I burnt her out on ripe tomatoes, I guess, because I craved them when I was pregnant with her. Attempted a gluten free peach cobbler. It was not pretty.

All it takes is some entity to coordinate it, and volunteers willing to gather it. Most farmers would much rather give stuff away to those who need it rather and see it rot.

I wish I could remember the timing when I cooked a split breast and a couple of legs for Christmas. I want to say I smoked (in an electric smoker) at 300 degrees for about four hours. Do better than I did -- write down what you do, and take a note on whether it needed more or less! Mine was about a five-pound split breast. He was a sizeable bird. In any event, I know I dry-brined first, and it was about the best turkey I ever cooked. What part of Tennessee? I was born and grew up in Camden, on Kentucky Lake.

The Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance, which coordinates the five regional food banks (which in turn supply the many food pantries and other programs) has a Gleaners Project. Volunteers all over the state will go into a field or orchard after the main harvest is completed and get what's left, which will be distributed via the network of banks and pantries. Last year, gleaners harvested about 50,000 pounds of sweet potatoes, among lots of other stuff. Food banks are also set up with area "hobby farmers" to take excess from them that they don't sell at farmers markets, etc.

Yep. Saw it, snagged it this morning.

I've done both poached chicken breasts and meat from a roast chicken. I dice it in decent sized dice and then put it in the mixer for a minute or two while it's warm to get the consistency I wanted. I don't like celery in tuna salad, so that's no loss for me. A potato dish my kids always loved that is soft and easy to eat is what we called cheesy potatoes -- peeled, diced, boiled, then make a white sauce, add lots of cheese, and pour over.

Bumping this old thread up because of an excellent experience I had today. I volunteer with a soup kitchen that feeds anyone who shows up every Saturday; since the onset of the pandemic, it's been a sack lunch. The kitchen is a joint effort between my church and the Episcopal church down the street. We both support the local food pantry and a couple of other programs that feed folks, like the Salvation Army, Reclamation House, which is a halfway house for female offenders, and another church that holds food giveaways weekly. Kroger has begun this spring and summer donating to us about-to-be-out-of-date bakery and deli items, as well as some meat and dairy. Today the usual pickup person couldn't get the Kroger donation, so I volunteered. Y'all. I left Kroger with a shopping cart full of bakery items (breads, rolls, pastries, and seven or eight whole peach pies); two more carts full of deli items that included close to 10 pounds of sliced deli meat and cheese; at least a dozen roasted chickens; at least a dozen racks of ribs; more than a dozen meal kits; and a whole raft of fried chicken. Had I had the room, and had we had the room in the fridge at church, I could have had another cart full of deli salads (chicken, tuna, slaw, potato salad, etc.). Deli meat will be used to make sandwiches for tomorrow's soup kitchen. The rest will be dispensed before the weekend's out. The food isn't being wasted, and a few less people will be hungry for a day or two or three. Any of you who are involved in feeding programs (I know @Kim Shook and Mr. Kim are), I encourage you to get in touch with the supermarkets in your area, especially if you have Kroger, and see if this is a possibility. And as for food pantry donations -- we have a small box pantry at the church parking lot which we fill daily and people take what they need. One request we've had is for dry milk. I'd have never thought of that, but it makes a lot of sense.

I feel your pain on the dental work. During my own saga with it this summer, I have found shredded chicken is a game-changer. It's gone in pot pies, soups, assorted casseroles. I've eaten several casseroles of squash and onion, stewed soft in butter then blended with cracker crumbs, cheese and eggs and baked; one could add chicken to that, or have in another preparation on the side. I've been able to handle ground beef; meatballs, meat ragu over pasta, meatloaf. The crumbly texture may not work for your partner's dental issues. A cheese and veggie lasagna might be workable; a risotto with, again, shredded chicken or some kind of chopped seafood. In fact, most seafood is flaky and soft enough I would be able to handle it; YMMV. Good old fashioned tuna salad, with eggs, is nice and soft, as well. I've also been relying on fruit and cottage cheese.

Having had the last (!) of what seem to have been interminable dental surgeries yesterday, I'm on soft stuff for a day or two or three, so last night it was protein shakes. Tonight I have peaches, so it may be peaches and ricotta. Perhaps by next week I'll be back to the good stuff.

I still daydream about that paella that was cooking in the four-foot-wide pan at the Tower Grove Market in StL last summer.

You know, if you just cook whole shoulders, you don't have to fool with those distinctions....