kayb

Yes. You want the cream cheese to be room temp or so to mix the dip in. I'd usually do that the day before, refrigerate it, then let it sit out to soften an hour or so before spreading. Works easier if you've done a sheet of dough to spread the cheese on the entire sheet, cut with a pizza cutter, then put the veggies on afterward.

Worked at the soup kitchen today, and the crew decided to go out to lunch afterward. We settled on Lost Pizza, a regional franchise. I had tamales with a cup of chili and grated cheese. Ate three of the six tamales, brought the rest home for another meal. They may be breakfast one day next week; I love them with a couple of fried eggs on top. We made ham and bean soup for the kitchen, a healthy portion of which I brought home. That's either dinner tonight or lunch tomorrow.

Lord, what a rabbit hole. I've used Lipton onion soup mix for several of the above listed uses, most notably roast beef and roasted potatoes. Never tried it in meat loaf but it makes sense. I've mixed it with cream cheese and spread on pre-baked dough (often of the Pillsbury Crescent Roll variety) to top with fresh broccoli, cauliflower, carrot curls and grated cheese for a very 80s crudite appetizer. I also often use it for flavoring my homemade vegetable beef soup.

Maybe add some more tomatoes and some more pork, and/or serve it over rice?

I'm with you, @ElsieD.

I find raw garlic too "garlicky," but I also find raw onions have an acrid onion taste I don't like. I find soaking onion slices/rings in ice water for 30 minutes takes care of that for a dish in which I want raw onion. Wonder if the same would hold for garlic?

I generally get close; what's left is usually ground beef, and I hand that off to the kids when it's time for the next one. Last year, though, I guess I didn't cook as much, and had enough left I skipped a year. I'll be ready this fall for another one. There are two of us, but my daughter often does not eat at home, so say 1.5. I often have other kids here on the weekends and cook then, too.

My choice is to boil a cup of water in the microwave for four or five minutes. The resultant warmth and humidity is perfect to proof dough.

I have never understood why one of my favorite Mexican beers is called Bohemia, but it surely is good. Tacos all look wonderful. I recommend some kind of squirt bottle filled with a solution of ammonia and water for the dogs. Just don't forget and drink from it.

I am obviously channeling y'all's situation. I dreamed last night a tornado hit my house while I was in it.

I need pants or a tunic with pockets into which I can tuck one end of a dishtowel.

My cleaning angel is a luxury I probably ought not splurge on ... but I do! My original one moved away but her friend/fellow angel "inherited" me.

SF's defense is something special, and contained Mahomes for three quarters. That wasn't enough. I agree, he's something special.

I like peanut butter. I like whiskey. The thought of one flavored with the other makes me break out in hives.

Do you cluck?

Thanks for that link. That's pretty doggoned impressive. Good move!

Having written sports, among all kinds of other things, at small newspapers for 20 years, I'm fairly conversant with football. And if it's a game I'm interested in and we're, say, at someone's house in a group, I'm typically watching the game with the guys instead of in the kitchen with the women (ain't nothing that'll sex-segregate like a ballgame watch party). I'm generally looked at askance, if it's people who don't know me, and feel like I need to make a reasoned observation or two to establish my "creds." If it's a game I'm not interested in, I'm in the kitchen with the women. And the food and the liquor.

The farm eggs I get are $3.50 a dozen and seem to be mostly large, with a few mediums in each carton. They're worth it for the taste. If I'm baking something that calls for a lot of eggs, or making eggnog or creme anglaise or some such, I'll generally buy large supermarket eggs, which are usually somewhere between 79 cents and $1.25 a dozen.

I agree with the above posters that there's not a lot of difference in cooking grass-fed chuck and any other chuck. Mine goes like this: I saute a sliced onion until it's limp and starting to caramelize. Add several glugs of red wine. When the "raw" wine smell is gone, I put the chuck roast on top. I surround it with potatoes, carrots and another peeled and quartered onion. Sprinkle everythign with Lawry's seasoned salt and lay a few sprigs of rosemary around. Add about a cup of water. Put a cover on it and stick it in the oven at 300 for however many hours is convenient; often, it'll go in before I start getting ready for church about 8:30, and we'll eat noonish. It's meltingly tender and flavorful, which is the big diff in grass-fed and any other beef. As for as eating for days, chuck roast is about as forgiving as a roast chicken. Day 2 is often shredded roast beef and gravy over mashed potatoes. Day 3 may be beef pot pie, using any leftover roasted veggies. Day 4 is a big pot of vegetable beef soup with whatever's left. Extras from THAT go in plastic in the freezer. I love a chuck roast. About three years ago, my beef supplier (I buy a quarter-steer, locally raised, every year) went out of business. He grain-finished his cattle. My new supplier is all grass fed. The big difference I can tell in cooking is that steaks need to SV longer before being seared. And the flavor of the grass-fed is, I think, better.

So how were the chips?

Sans the deli experience (Kroger's deli kids are almost uniformly excellent), this sounds like the self-check lane at Kroger. And I worry that people get impatient when I take time to put my reusable shopping bags on the bag stand and then tell the little computer, yes, I'm using my own bags. Self check at Sam's, on the other hand, is grand. Use the little scanner gun, leave everything in your basket until you get to your car.

@shain -- thank you! I need to make some ricotta, and then I'll try this next week. I've never toasted pasta before cooking; about how long does it take? @mgaretz -- glad to see you back in the kitchen

All I have ever done for RK treats to fancy 'em up is add colored sugar sprinkles for Christmas. Well, and there was the time I squished them out thin on a cookie sheet, cut them out with a star cutter, and sprinkled with graham cracker crumbs to make starfish for a grandkid's birthday party. That was pretty much a disaster. I'll not do that again.

Hint: Go to the supermarket. Get you a bag of frozen biscuits. No appreciable quality difference from what I can make. Of course, there are much better biscuits out there than what I can make. The folks at Bryant's Breakfast in Memphis, for example, I am quite certain have sold their sold to Satan in exchange for the ability to make the best biscuits ever. Bryant's Breakfast Don't go on the weekend. The line is centuries long.

I am not a fan of Chick-Fil-A chicken., although their lemonade is To Die For. Off-topic, but I had Sonic popcorn chicken today and it was pretty good.