Norm Matthews

I am single. My son and his fiancee live with me. My son came back here when I got ill and decided to stay after I recovered. ( I am closing in on 70 years old.) Their interests and work hours do not fit well with my shopping. For instance the Farmer's Markets are best visited early in the morning, long before they awake. When we do shop together they pick up stuff I wouldn't and it is mostly frozen meals for when their schedule for eating and mine differ. Last January I broke my ankle and they did the shopping and cooking for two and a half months that I couldn't. The grocery bills were a lot higher than when I shopped and I recently threw out a lot of what they got that was still in the freezer in the garage. They both like my cooking and prefer that I do it and I am happy to be the one that cooks. Son's fiancee has a side job baking special occasion cakes, cupcakes, cookies and so forth, but most of the time the two eat take out when I am not cooking. It's not that they can't cook. They can, it just isn't something they are all that interested in doing on a regular basis.

Thanks for the compliment jayt90. Your ribs and corn look done to a T.

Dinner tonight was Pork (tenderloin) Scaloppine with Mushrooms over noodles and Grilled Zucchini Salad. We had some Chardonnay with it.

The recent discussion about frying chicken made me hungry for some so I made chicken strips, some Mexican style rice, a tossed salad and dressing.

Or Panko. Dip in flour, beaten egg, then panko.

You can get crispy chicken fingers in a cast iron skillet. Oil can get just as hot or even hotter on the stove than in an electric fryer. Adding corn starch to the flour or even using it instead of flour adds crispness. When you submerge chicken in oil, it cooks from all sides at once but in shallower oil, the moisture that hinders crispness has a way to escape while cooking. PS sugar aids browning but that does not always also mean extra crispness.

I always pan fry chicken strips in a cast iron skillet. I get good results. I only deep fry thick chicken pieces like legs, thighs and breasts.

Learning to cook and learning some menu's are two different things, but one follows the other. As others have said, breakfast meals is a good place to start. Grilled sandwiches and roast chicken are a couple of other things. Most men learn to make some kind of pasta dish early on in their cooking careers, I think.

That's true but additional flavors will be imparted depending on the flavors in fat, water and alcohol. Vodka adds alcohol without much additional flavor. Wines have flavor to add along with the flavor components drawn out by the alcohol. Broth or stock adds flavor to water and bacon fat will be different from duck fat or butter.

Been out of action for a couple months with a broken ankle. Finally got back in the kitchen and made Braciole di Manzo, fettucini, a salad and some honeydew.

We always have my Southern mom's traditional ham hocks, collards, black eyed peas and corn bread but the store didn't have hacks so I used a ham bone that was in the freezer. We had it NYE instead of new years day and I mentioned that I was getting tired of this every year and suggested we start something new. Cassie said her dad always had a Mexican shrimp cocktail on New Years Day so I made it for dinner today. Cassie helped. It was good. Better than I thought it would be. We had it with beer and clamato juice.

I haven't been cooking much. I have been looking for a new Mayan calendar. My old one ran out of days. I thought the bank would send one but they just have the regular one year ones. Oh well. I guess it isn't the end of the world if I don't find a new one. Since we had Thanksgiving at my sisters, we had no left overs. Tried to remedy that today. Roasted a very small turkey for Christmas eve dinner with guests. Also had the usual suspects: Dressing, sweet potatoes, pan sauted squash with parsnips, mushrooms and onions, etc.

Actually I don't know. It sprouted from a seed in my front yard. beautiful bright red leaves. dcarch It looks like Japanese Red Maple

Amazon has them... http://www.amazon.co...=sizzle platter Thanks for the link but I believe those are different. Mine are rectangular and stainless steel. I recently got one of those oval ones and it was aluminum and the under tray is thinner and chiped easily.

I have a cookbook/history of BBQ and one of the oldest known sauces isn't possible to duplicate exactly now because the original English "catsup" used was a concoction that used oysters- no tomates. The book says the closest sub is Vietnamese fish sauce. They specifically state to only use the Vietnamese variety.

Thanks. I brought some home from our restaurant just before we sold it about 25 years ago. I wish I'd grabbed a few more.

I had some coconut shrimp at a restaurant that I thought was good so I tried to make it at home. I think it was a successful experiment. Along with it was a dipping sauce, rice pilaf, pineapple dak bulgogi and pepper steak.

My mom used to make poached eggs in one of those egg poacher pans where the egg was put in a pan held above the water and the egg was steamed, not really poached. I always hated poached eggs until I realized that those weren't really poached eggs. Eggs poached IN water are so much better tasting IMO.

Kim, if interested, you might try this shrimp boil. It makes really good shrimp 2 tablespoons rosemary 2 teaspoons dried thyme 1 teaspoon black pepper 5 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped 1 teaspoon celery seeds 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes 2 quarts chicken broth 3 ounces tomato paste ½ cup butter 1 ½ pounds shrimp, peeled, tails on, save shrimp shells. Combine all the ingredients with the peeled shrimp shells and simmer 30 to 45 minutes, Strain out the shells, return to heat and cook shrimp a few minutes, until just opaque.

If you break the egg into a glass custard dish and look at the edge of the white and see no watery edge, it is fresh enough to use without vinegar. If there is a little water around the egg white, vinegar helps congeal it but you may also have to trim away some of the trailings to make it look 'professional' . I lower the custard bowl into the water and let some of the hot water in to help set the egg before slowly and carefully letting it drop in the water. If you must, take a spatula and coax the wayward white strands back in the middle. The biggest problem with the vortex method is that you can only do one egg at a time. You can cook them ahead, then drop them in cold water to set and keep them until you have enough or are ready to eat, then just reheat in hot water.

Everyone's dinners look amazing. Thank you C.Sapidus and Nikkib for your comments about the brisket. Last weekend two of the neighbors helped us take down a dead Austrian pine so I invited them over for dinner last night. We had Shrimp appetizer with beets, hard cooked eggs and a dressing on the side. Cucumber salad Bread Slottsteck (Norwegian pot roast) roasted potatoes, zuchinni and yellow squash and pan juices from the pot roast and Black Forest cake... lopsided. LOL

Despite the morning rain and subsequent cold and damp, I fired up the smoker for possibly the last time and did a small (2 1/2 lb.) piece of beef brisket. Because it was small, it only took about 4 hours.

As i mentioned before, I first make ham and beans with chicken stock and then make baked beans from left over beans but beans for BBQ is a step farther. Start with baked beans, either your own or in a can. For this i prefer canned- Bushes is fine- because they are blander than my baked beans and they take the additional seasoning well. For BBQ beans I add finely minced smoked brisket, BBQ rub, BBQ sauce, brown sugar and molasses.

Thanks Kim and robirdstix. I am a retired art teacher and although I taught calligraphy, It was a different kind. I just recently started teaching myself in this particular style.

Thank you. The pen is a jade green Sheaffer'S from the 1920's, a style described as Oversized Flat Top. Here is a picture of it.