Norm Matthews

Charlies grandparents lived in Koreatown for a while. He stayed with them one summer when I was finishing up my masters degree. The main reason we don't have lettuce very often is because I don't usually have the right kind in the refrigerator and seldom think far enough ahead to get some first. I like it, Charlie is eh about it. Never had shiso. Not sure I have ever seen it at the store. I'll have to pay more attention when I go to the Asian market.

We did have rice with it and more kimchi. Sometimes we use laver for a wrap but seldom think to use lettuce.

Spicy pork bulgogi cooked with kimchi and galbi.

Our dinner tonight was an Asian style beef stir-fry with some steamed vegetables and rice.

I accidentally posted our dinner in the wrong place. Charlie requested a crab boil dinner after he saw a large box of seafood delivered at his cousin's yesterday.

Charlie was at his cousins house when he took delivery of a large box of seafood. It made him hungry for a crab boil type dinner so that is what we had tonight.

I have not felt up to doing much cooking lately but with today coming up and the family having cancelled the big get together a couple months ago, I had been planning for this ever since then. The two of us won't be complaining about not having enough left-overs this year. Charlie told me about having some cornbread at his cousin's house made with some yellow cake mix so I gave that a try. It was good, just barely corn bread and no where near cake.

I asked Charlie what he thought about meatloaf tonight. He said OK but didn't sound very enthusiastic about it. So I said how about some pasta with ham and a cream sauce and he liked that idea better. The original recipe called for bucatini and pancetta but those aren't all that easy to get here in Kansas, especially not in an hour or two. So I substituted bacon and ham; they are cheaper too. It probably didn't taste anything like it was intended but it was still good and filling.

We had Cornish hens (at Charles request) with rice, spinach and corn muffins.

Happy Birthday @CantCookStillTry. Dinner was last minute. I doubt there was more than 45 minutes between starting to cook and putting dirty dishes in the sink. Crispy Pork Chops and potatoes. Should have made gravy but didn't.

Thanks. They were a gift from my son.

I only needed two pound of pork shoulder but three was the smallest I found, so I cut off a pound and used it for making sausage. I used the rest of the roast to make carnitas and put it in grilled cheese sandwiches. They were really good. The recipe is at the blogspot at the bottom of this posting.

and beautiful bowl too.

I came across some recipes for one and thought they would be a lot easier to double than the ones needed to be cut down. This is one of the two I saved: Salmon and Brussels sprouts. The sauce is Hoisin based.

Thanks Heidih. I never thought of it that way. It was a four unit apartment. Ours was top left. It had a walk in pantry and quarter-sawn oak and glass built- in china cabinet in the dining room.

I got nostalgic when I decided to cook a small brisket in the crock pot for dinner. I don't remember the last time I made brisket in the slow cooker but I remember mom putting one in a heavy lidded skillet on the back of the stove on Sunday morning before church and by dinner we had one of my favorite meals. That was before crock pots and television. I also remember when I started to learn how to cook on my own and discovering that you can't cook a brisket in the oven like a rib roast. Mom, dad, my sister, and I lived in a red brick apartment on Strawberry Hill in KCK, pictured below in more recent times. It had a candlestick phone and the oven was an enameled cast iron Magic Chef. Tonight, we has some cheese scones with the brisket but those pictures turned out blurry.

I recently got new grates for my gas grill and about the same time got an email linking to the way a guy prepares his ribeye steaks for competition. He used the same grill grated that I had and I wanted to try the method, with some reservations. I used a much thinner steak and some of the same seasonings but did not do the trimming and other prep that he did. My gas grill does not get as hot as his charcoal grill did and I shortened the cooking time since mine was at least 1 1/2 inch thinner. We had ours with twice baked potatoes

I have a recipe for cheese scones from an Australian born friend and it has strong white flour as an ingredient. I am not familiar with that term. Can you tell me what is meat by strong flour? Her recipe uses baking powder rather than yeast. I normally would think a non yeast bread would use what I would think of as a soft flour but your recipe would be best with what I would call a hard flour.

I think of the Chicken pot pie I make sort of similar to Southern chicken and dumplings with a crust instead of soft steamed dumplings.

liuzhou said it better but I was trying to explain why the US Supreme Court is not the Irish High Court so a comparison is not applicable. Of course state and local laws are different and there are other Federal taxes on some consumables. Kansas has the same rate of tax on all grocery items as it does on everything else. A lot of other states have lower or no taxes on some food or all foods.

@Eatmyswords Ireland has a tax on non-staple foods (VAT). The Irish suit was asking the court to rule that Subway bread was a staple food and as such, not subject to the tax. Because the sugar content exceeded the definition for bread, the court ruled that it was subject to that Value Added Tax. I don't think our US Supreme court would have reason to consider such a case because our laws do not add an extra tax to pastries, ice cream, chocolate, etc.

Still had green beans and tomato from the farmers market so we had those with grilled ribeye steaks. Charlie had his with mac&cheese. Mine was a nuked potato. The green beans were done in a couple minutes in the Instant pot. Neither of us like crispy green beans.

These were not frozen. I dipped the okra in milk and egg then put them in a bag with flour, salt and pepper. I started them in a hot skillet and they were not gooey, but probably would have browned more in a hotter skillet.

I got some tomatoes and okra at the farmers market and found some shrimp in the freezer. Initially I thought about cooking the shrimp with mussels in fish stock and white wine. I went to the store and got some mussels but when I got home I found that they smelled really bad. Both the guy behind the meat counter and i were wearing masks so neither of us noticed anything at the time. I ended up cooking just the shrimp with some Creole seasoning with red bell peppers and garlic.

When Charlie was a preschooler, he spent the days at the restaurant with his Korean family and had whatever he wanted when he was hungry. About the time he was ready for school, his mom sold the restaurant and moved on to bigger and better things in San Francisco. In elementary school, Charlie really complained about cafeteria food. I told him he just had to adjust to American food. I didn't know until later that he threw up after every lunch. When he ate at home, everything was OK. I told him that if he didn't like something on his plate, he didn't have to eat it but he at least had to taste it first. I don't recall that happening too many times. But when he went to live for a summer in LA with his grandparents while I finished my masters degree, they let him eat McDonalds everyday and he was a chubby little boy when he got back home. He did better by the time he got to middle school About 8 years ago, I was in the hospital with a broken ankle. I waited 4 or 5 days until the surgeon scheduled me. I think the lady who brought the food didn't like me because she usually took most of it back. As someone said earlier, it was low fat and low salt and really bland. Luckily Charlie and Cassie would bring me some food from home or a restaurant when they visited.