Norm Matthews

I have made bread three or four times so far this month and as a result am getting enough day old bread to start thinking about doing something with it...like croutons. So I made Ribollita with bread in the soup and as a topper with cheese sprinkles.

I had not made any bread in a while so when I made some a few days ago, Charlie told me about the first day he came back from Seattle. I had made some game hens and bread, the air conditioner was on, and he had his room back. Apartments in Seattle don't generally have air condition. He remembered how good if felt to have all those things again. He asked me if I'd make Cornish hens and more fresh bread again and so today I did. We also had rice and kimchi.

My mom had only one knife and one sharpening stone, actually half a stone. It was shaped like an elongated football but it was broken. When she sharpened with it, she ran the stone along the whole surface of the knife so it got thinner and thinner as time went along. By the time she had to stop using it, it was so thin that it was about as flexible as a piece of spring steel and it must have been two inches shorter.

It was decent enough to cook outside and test a Christmas present from my son today. The gift was a thermometer that can monitor four things at once and send it all to my phone. I tested the ambient temperature of the front and back of the smoker interior. I usually cook ribs by time and appearance. Its hard to stick a probe in a slab of ribs. The sides were coleslaw, BBQ beans, green beans, Mexican street corn ( I wanted to do corn on the cob but all they had was packages of five) and store bought potato salad. I had company when I posted the recipes a little while ago.

I imagine it would be really difficult to recreate a 1300 old recipe from a photograph. There were lots of things to wonder about in his reconstruction but something you said added a concern. You said savory wheaten foods outnumber sweet wheat foods by a lot. If the original report mentioned the morsels found in the tomb were described as biscuits, ( presumed to be savory in the USA) but it is quite possible that someone from the United Kingdom read biscuits as meaning cookies, (sweet) When English and Australians refer to biscuits it means cookies to lots or people everywhere else.

This recipe was included in a Kansas City Star article ( Jan 21, 2024) about a cookie found in a 1300 year old tomb in China. The headline of the article was “This simple 1300-year-old ancient tomb cookie recipe blew me away” A quote from the article said: “ After seeing a picture online of the cookies, Nadeem Ahmad, the founder of Eran ud Turan, a living history group based in the United Kingdom, took it upon himself to reverse-engineer the ancient dessert for the modern-day cookie lover. Ahmad says he decided on grapes and apricot jam since the Turpan basin is still famed for its grapes and apricots hail from Central Asia and China.” A picture of the ingredients shows the flour to be White Lily which is a low gluten flour. I substituted cake flour. I read once, quite a while ago, that wheat is grown in the northern part of China. Google tells me that Turpan is in a region where winter and spring wheat is grown. Recipe is included in the blog address below When Charlie saw I was busy with this he made Hamburger Helper and that was supper. The cookies will be dessert. PS I added a tsp. of salt to the recipe and used red grapes. I haven't seen purple grapes in the store for a long time and they weren't seedless.

Yesterday it was just a couple of KC strip steaks and potato cakes.

I got a large pork shoulder with making carnitas in mind but Charlie wanted it cut up for spicy pork bulgogi so that is what I did. I don't know why it turned out so dark. It should have been red but it wasn't burnt. It tasted like it should. Maybe it was the cast iron grill that is the cause. It's going to take a long time to get it cleaned up. Next time I'll use the wok. This is about a third of the whole. The rest is portioned out and in the freezer.

This is the recipe I used today. I lost the original recipe years ago and reconstructed it from what I could remember and with a few adjustments along the way. I've used it this way for a long time and everyone likes it. HONEY LACQUERED GAME HENS II 2 game hens 1/4 C. triple sec 1 C. orange juice 1/3 C. soy sauce 3 inch strip orange zest 1/3 C. honey 1/2 tsp salt 1/4 C. dry vermouth 1/8 tsp red pepper flakes 1/4 C. sesame oil 1/2 inch thin slice of ginger 1/4 tsp. sesame salt 1 garlic clove, split and peeled 2 tsp. cornstarch dissolved in water to make a paste 3 green onions Mix all ingredients except cornstarch and hens and bring to a boil. Simmer 5-10 minutes, add cornstarch and water, boil until thickened. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place birds in shallow bakingpan, bake 1 hour or according to package directions, basting hens every 15 minutes. Tent with foil if browning too much. Pour some more sauce over birds, serve rest on the side. Garnish with orange peel.

We shared a Cornish hen with a sauce made with orange juice, honey, soy sauce and sesame oil. We had a salad and rice to go with it.

We had crab boil last night. A local store has them at a reasonable price all the time now.

We're having chili while watching the game today,

New Years Day dinner was Standing Rib roast, Blackeyed pea chip dip, Potatoes Dauphinoise, green beans, collards, and creamed onions

After the ham dinner on Christmas eve, I used leftover ham to make ham and egg salad. By the time I remembered to take a picture, it was almost gone. Early this morning Charlie asked if I would make a tuna casserole. While I was trying to remember if I had ever made one before, he explained that he had first had one when someone I was dating in the early 1990's made it for us. He was surprised that he liked it. Then his cousin's wife had made it a few years ago when he was visiting. He described what was in it and I found a recipe that covered those ingredients. It was topped with potato chips. He said it was good.

@Shelby I did a search and found the recipe for those potatoes after reading a discussion you had on here with some others about some kind of roasted potatoes... 😊

Christmas Eve dinner was Ham, Southern Green Beans, Mexican Street Corn and Melting Roasted Potatoes. The potatoes burned more than browning. I probably used too much butter.

@rotuts"The object bring more than the sum it's parts" When I was an art teacher I used that term once in a conversation with a science teacher. He said that was impossible. I asked him if he had ever had a root beer float. He just looked at me and didn't say anything.

Every once in a while, mom would put a piece of brisket in a covered skillet on the back of the stove just before we went to church in the morning and by suppertime we had my favorite Sunday dinner. I have never been able to match the delicious flavor of that brisket. I still try from time to time but still fall short. I tried one today in the slow cooker. It was good but not up to what mom made. I had scalloped potatoes with them and carrots and turnips as well. I needed one turnip a while back and the store only had a bag of small ones so these needed cooking and today was as good a time as any to use them.

I had just put new burners in my grill and the store had these two steaks in one package for $10.00. Too good an opportunity to pass up. We had salad and twice baked potato too.

Charlie requested Swedish Meatballs a couple days ago. I also made egg noodles to go with them. Today I made chili but didn't take a picture.

Yes. I'll post it here too. It says it is a Mexican street food. Sorry I didn't see this until now. Street Corn Pudding serves 8-10 Ingredients Yield 8-10 servings Nonstick cooking spray or butter or pan 1 large or 2 med. jalapeños 1 (8.5 oz) box cornbread or corn muffin mix 1 (14.75 oz) can creamed corn, not drained 1 (14.75 oz) can whole kernel corn, rinsed 1/2 C. salted butter, melted, cooled 2 T. sugar 2 large eggs, breaten 1 C. sour cream 1/4 C. milk Crema, Tajim and crumbeld queso fresca for serving Preparation Heat oven to 350 º. Coat 8-inch baking dish with nonstick cooking spray. Roast the Jalapeños, about 20 minutes. When cool enough to handle, cut stems off, discard seeds. Dice. Mix together the cornbread mix, creamed corn, corn kernels, butter, sugar, eggs, sour cream, milk and diced jalapeños until combined. Don’t over-mix. Pour the batter into the prepared baking dish. Bake until golden brown and gently set in the center, 55-65 minutes. Top with the crema, Tajín and queso fresco. Serve hot.

It isn't until next year before it's my turn to cook for the family. I will be taking some Cranberry Chutney, some Cranberry butter and a pumpkin pie or two depending on how much pumpkin I get from the two pie pumpkins I got for it. I also tried a turkey recipe to see if I want to do that way next year. The turkey was spatchcocked with the breast pushed down flat and cooked until the centermost part of the breast cooks to 157º. After letting it rest out of the oven the temp. rose to 165. The dark meat was around 190 and surprisingly it all was good tasting, not a Kodak moment for pictures though.

Our dinner was a couple of grilled steaks and some Street Corn Pudding with some Crema on the side

Tonight dinner was meatballs with bucatini and a Sicilian style tomato sauce from our favorite local Italian restaurant.

This is probably the last time I'll use the smoker this year. I did baby back ribs.