Norm Matthews

Late last night, the garage door opened and Charlie walked in with bags from the grocery store. He got cookies, ice cream, chips, dip and two great big steaks. We had the steaks today with oven fries and cookies for dessert. The oven got it's first use of the convection feature with the potatoes. There is a lot of steak leftover. Charlie mentioned cheesesteak sandwiches, I wondered if they made Bahn Mi sandwiches with beef and he said that was a good idea. We will probably have some kind of sandwiches tomorrow.

So true Shelby. FYI, here is the countertop in one of it's incarnations before the present.

Thanks for letting me know about the wooden magnetic knife blocks. I ordered one and installed it yesterday. Let me tell you about our recent saga involving knife strips. A few months ago, my son complained about how cluttered our counter tops had become and how hard it was to keep them clean. He threatened to reorganize the kitchen. In order to prevent having to look in vain for stuff when he did that, I did it myself. I mentioned in another thread how I replaced a huge rubber cutting board and am using another smaller one that is not kept on the counter. I got a knife block from Bed, Bath and B. It didn't look all that great but it worked. It was cluttered looking with all the knives on it as well. I got a knife holder for a drawer for steak knives and for knives that were too long for the magnets. We decided two magnet knife blocks would be better and Charlie wanted the ones from Ikea. We put up one and the knives didn't hang straight for some reason. We put up one knife block above the other to fix that problem. The one from BB&B is barely seen by the window. I stuck it there for no real reason except I didn't want to waste it and until we can think of a better use for it, it stays there. Meantime I saw this thread and decided the it would be nice for the second one. It is now up too. I thought the M.O.C. ones looked best. It is working well but the hangers and directions that came with it were lacking. The instructions for hanging it were written by a liability lawyer and were not helpful. It just told me about the dangers of hanging it in stupid places for obvious reasons. The anchors broke and had to be chiseled off to be flush with the wall and then I used a Command sticky strip to keep it from being wobbly. Here are some pictures of our knives. I know I have too many. I seldom use most of them. It is the same with most things in my life. I get what I think I need then get distracted by new, shiner objects and soon I have a houseful.

Leftover turkey and leftover turkey gravy made turkey pot pie with White Lily flour biscuits for a topping. We also had leftover cranberry chutney with it.

I tried Shelby's Sticky Asian Wings today. They were good.

Every year that it is not my turn to do the whole family Thanksgiving meal, I make a mini meal the next day so we can have "leftovers" This is it minus the cranberry chutney. I made the cornbread with a little chicken stock and water. When it came out of the oven, I didn't like how it tasted an didn't plan to serve it but Charlie had a piece after it cooled and I was setting the table. He said it was really good so I served it too. The turkey recipe had seasoned butter added under the skin. I expected it to melt, baste and flavor the whole bird but it came out with dark brown splotches on the skin where I put it, so I left out that picture. I couldn't tell that it added much flavor either so I made a note to not try that one again. I asked Charlie if he wanted rice or mashed potatoes, thinking he'd say rice. (I only had one potato). He said mashed so I mashed a potato. It was enough for both of us luckily.

This is my son's marinade recipe for Korean beef short ribs. I admit it is a lot of sesame oil. You can cut it in half and probably still get good results. Charlie’s Kalbi 2 packeges 3 lbs Serving 4 strips/2 ounces 1/2 Cup. soy sauce 6 teaspoons sugar ( 3 oz) 5 teaspoons water 4 talebspoons Korean rice wine/sherry 3 tablespoons corn syrup 1 Tablespoons minced garlic /2 tbsp 1.2 teaspoons grated ginger 1/2 Cup sesame oil 1 cup Coca Cola chopped green onions pinch pepper

Our dinner tonight was soup made with sausage and white beans.

I thought I'd made this Copycat recipe for Shrimp Scampi before until I got into it and then I realized I hadn't. I liked it but Charlie thought the previous one was better.

Early dinner today was chili from a recipe that was a mystery for a while. The note said I got it from Linda last month and I know it didn't come from my sister who is the only Linda I know well enough to get a recipe, then i realized that my auto correct on the computer had "corrected "Lindag" to Linda. So thank you @lindag for the recipe.

The new cast iron griddle arrived broken. GE overnighted a new one double boxed with bubble wrap and stamped GLASS FRAGILE. I seasoned it yesterday and took it for a test drive today with some steak. The New York Times called the potatoes Mock Frites but the last time I made them from a different recipe, they were called Smashed Potatoes. What was different was a compound butter with these. Either way they were good. At a restaurant a couple years ago, Cassie ordered a Bourbon Steak. The first thing that came to mind was heresy but she gave me a bite and it was good. I made the recipe at home a month or so later and decided to do it again today. The steak was marinated in bourbon, soy sauce, ginger and garlic. The green beans were left overs.

I gave the new oven a rest tonight. Dinner was a stuffed pork roast and potatoes in the steam oven. It got done half an hour sooner than I expected.

The reversible cast iron griddle for my new stove has not arrived yet so I used the two one burner sized ones I already had to grill Kalbi for dinner tonight.

We had an Asian chicken wings dinner tonight.

Like @HungryChris I had a box of Red Lobster cheese biscuits that my son brought home a few months ago and made the second box for dinner today. The changes I made were 1. used dry aged Gouda instead of Cheddar, 2. made 6 instead of 10 and 3. baked them in a muffin tin instead of on a flat tray. We had them with pork chops cooked with brown sugar, cranberries, red wine and some herbs and spices. The apple cider was from Stephenson's. They had a restaurant for 60 years and it was a great place, in my opinion. I miss it. There is a story that Bess Truman brought her bridge club there for lunch and were served a punch. The former First Lady asked that it be served "with a little authority" and it was and became a popular menu item called wine punch.

This isn't my year to make Thanksgiving dinner but I started making a list of things to think about for when I do. It's just a list of suggestions and I'll look up recipes when I narrow it down, but here is what I have as possibilities. Whenever I see or think of something else, I'll add it. I have another year before it's my turn again. When I did it last, along with the turkey, I also served a Heritage Ham (Duroc) which was a big hit. Turkey Ham Rib Roast Challah Bread Georgia Biscuits Sides Dressing - Cornbread & andouille stuffing Cranberry chutney Layered salad 3 bean salad Creamed Corn Yukon Gold mashed potatoes Broccoli & Cheese Casserole Roasted Glazed Carrots Country Baked Apples Sweet Potato Casserole Baked Mac & Cheese Potatoes & Ham Au Gratin Green Beans Desserts:Pies Strawberry Peach Peach Praline Cherry Apple walnut Pineapple upside down pie Pumpkin Strawberry Rhubarb Southern Pecan Blackberry Blueberry Cakes Carrot Lemon

@Shelby Yes the recipe is on the blog and there are directions on what to use if you don't have a soft flour. I have made it with regular self rising flour alone and it is good but does not rise quite as high.

I saw some White Lily flour at the store yesterday. It is the first time I have seen it here. I hope it does not turn out to be a seasonal thing. In the town I lived before I moved back here to KC, they had Martha White flour for a couple years. The very first thing I made with it is Shirley Corriher's fluffy biscuits, a favorite with us. We had them tonight with a steak dinner.

Tacos

Picked up some Oxtails at the Asian Market last week and made stew with them today.

It lifts off and cleans in the sink quite easily. An extra is one that you could order is made of cast iron and reversible. The standard one is non stick aluminum If you wanted to use it for other pots, (on mine) you could get as an extra, a grate for pots. Mine has 5 burners. One is 1800 btu, one is 1200, that one is 10000 and the other two are 9500 and the simmer one is 5000.

I am not wishing to talk you into or out of anything but that is exactly what I said about my stove with a griddle in the middle but now that I have it, I find myself using it almost daily, sometimes multiple times a day. I toast hamburger buns on it and cook sausage and eggs for example.

You may be right. I am not familiar enough with the finer points of Italian cooking to know the difference. This recipe started out in my kitchen ten years ago as Breast of Chicken, Martini Style which has Parmigiana cheese as the coating and served with a wine reduction. Over time, I added bread crumbs with the cheese and so I thought about calling it after the cheese in the recipe, not realizing that the name was reserved to a special kind of dish. Recently I have served this over linguini and Alfredo sauce so I doubt it very much still resembles the original Martini chicken either. I should probably just stop calling it anything other than breaded chicken breast.

I baked some bread in the steam oven this morning. For dinner we had Chicken Parmigiana, 5 minute Instant Pot green beans and some carrots. I got all the stuff out for some cream and cheese sauce for some pasta when I discovered I had no cream. While looking for evaporated milk, I spotted that blue box of macaroni and thought, what the heck, Charlie likes it and I don't care right now. He said the green beans tasted a lot like what grandma used to make and hers took half a day. For the chicken, I used the same seasoning for the coating that I used a few days ago for the pork chops, but added some garlic powder and rosemary.

I tried a recipe from Fine Cooking called Pork Chops Milanese but changed enough things so it may not be Italian after I got through with it. In any case we both thought it was a keeper and worth doing again.