Norm Matthews

He has not forgotten since I talked to him a year ago. It takes some elbow grease but if you get at it the first time, it shines again. Letting it go for a few times is a lot more difficult.

I tell my son to not put our perforated pizza pan in the dishwasher. Not because I am concerned about any ill effects of aluminum oxide, but just because I don't like the look of dull aluminum. When he forgets and puts it in anyway, I bring back the shine with Barkeepers Friend and sometimes finish it with SOS. It's an extra effort I prefer over looking at dull pans. I never put my sheet pans in the dishwasher but when they get grungy due to everyday crud build up, they are cheap enough to replace without much thought. It is nice to know, however, that there are stainless pans. I'll probably replace my pans with SS eventually.

My old wok got sold in a garage sale a couple years ago. It had not been used in a long long time. It did not do well on an electric stove. Now that I have a gas stove with a large burner, I thought it was time to get a new one. I broke it in today with some marinated steak. We had it with some roasted vegetables and rice.

Tonights dinner was Chicken Curry.

I went to a road side farmers stand and got okra and tomatoes for dinner tonight. I was going to just grill a steak to go with it but was afraid it would not be enough so I added a shrimp salad. I was wrong. Neither of us could finish it all. There will be left overs.

the only time I see any recipe from NYT is when they send me an email usually entitled "What to cook this week" It is out of curiosity that I even look at any particular recipe. When they send me a recipe title, then don't let me see the recipe, it feels like a bait and switch operation. Usually they are not blocked and I expect them to have original recipes, so I looked up Wedge Salad and Cheese Sandwich and a few others, because I thought: What is so special about that? Then what is so secret about it? Then I really don't care to spend money to find out.

Interesting idea @gfweb I would have expected more than wedge salad and grilled cheese from any paid recipe site, and especially more from NYT. My first reaction was they are slipping or sliding into meeting deadlines.

Since the NYT now has recipes set up so one must pay a subscription fee to see them, I have noticed, for instance, the following blocked recipe titles: Grilled Cheese Sandwich, Tomato Sandwich, Wedge Salad, Chicken Parmesan and Pasta Puttanesca. What is so special about wedge salad or grilled cheese that makes one feel the need to pay to see how to make them? Such food, if not intuitive, is at least so common as to be easily accessible. The first time I saw Puttanesca was over 40 years ago when it was called Harlots sauce.

Charlie is having friends over tonight. I smoked a brisket. I didn't want to take a chance that if I started today that it would not be done on time and the weather said rain for yesterday so I did it on Thursday, but the point was done way before the flat so we had it then and I finished the flat today. I grilled some hamburgers, smoked some brautwurst and they are keeping warm in the Breville. Also made some bread, potato salad fruit salad, and BBQ beans.the first shot of the brisket is after about five hours. The point was done in a little under eight hours and the flat took another three hours. PS it didn't rain at all on Friday but it did rain a bit on Thursday.

NYT recipe in my mailbox yesterday said it was Herby Pork Larb, a variation on a Thai dish. I had to wait dinner for a couple hours and when I reheated it, the herbs got a little wilted but it was still a keeper. We had bok choy with it and Charlie asked me to make again a fruit salad I made last month.

Using a CI recipe would give me indigestion. Not because the food would not be good but from reading all the superfluous verbiage.

I made a dinner that featured one of Charlie's favorites: Korean Chicken wings with sticky sweet ginger sauce. The candle on the cake is musical. It plays Happy Birthday

Charlie has been working 10 hours/4 day weeks. This week he went back to an 8 hour day and so we were able to eat earlier. We had a meatloaf dinner tonight.

Tried several recipes that were new to me: Vietnamese Steak With Cucumber Salad and Zucchini Pancakes with yogurt sauce. I don't like cucumbers unless they are pickled and these were, sort of. The recipe used a flank steak, but I used a chuck steak because I didn't want to pay almost twice as much for a flank steak. PS I just remembered I had rice ready to cook for this and forgot to start it.

If I could list all the recipes and variations on them I have made more than a few times, I bet Martini chicken would be right up there somewhere after hamburgers. Today we had a variation. It was made the same but topped with mozzarella and tomatoes marinated in a dressing with basil. Whoever wrote this recipe called it Chicken Milanese.

We had kielbasa cooked with cabbage and onions, noodles, baguette, and a fruit salad.

Looks like shrimp is on several menus today. I had to make an an attempt to redeem myself by making Shrimp Scampi. I made the huge mistake last week of getting an all-in-one bag shrimp scampi and it was not good. I hope I learned my lesson well enough to never try that again. I used egg noodles for the pasta.

One of my favorite breakfasts: Pineapple-mango fruit spread on buttered toast and fresh squeezed Valencia orange juice.

Lunch came from the smoker today. Well first it came from Walmart. I was in there because Valencia oranges are in season now and they have them. About the only time I drink orange juice is when I can squeeze those wonderful oranges. After I got them I looked around and saw this big steelhead trout fillet and decided it would be good for lunch. It spent about an hour and a half in the smoker with corn and tomato topped with bread crumbs and butter and smoked with apple wood. The corn had a little too much time with the smoke but it was still juicy and tender.

I didn't want to cook today so we had DIY sandwiches plus some deli fried chicken and later some cookies.

Thanks ElsieD. That avatar is a picture of a card I got that said almost the same thing. It says WHOA, do you know how fast you went over that hill? or words to that effect.

Thank you Shelby.

It's my birthday but decided to stay in and do something at home. The steaks were grilled outside. I made a mango salsa to go with them. Charlie is getting tired of baked potatoes so i did scalloped in the toaster oven. Despite the heat, oven did not heat up the kitchen with sourdough bread in the oven. The bread takes less then 20 minutes and that includes it heating up. The chocolate cake was from the store.

We had pork loin chops with a Japanese style sauce, a salad and rice.

We had an early dinner which probably means we will be having late night snacks later. The recipe said it was Greek. It was marinated and grilled chicken kabobs and some grilled vegetables too. With it was a lemon rice and (not Greek) Strawberry Crisp for dessert.