Thanks for the Crepes

I had a sandwich of Pane de Casa rustic bread. This was pan toasted on a 12" aluminum skillet. When I flipped the slices of bread, I put a couple of smoked provolone slices on one side of the very wide bread. They melted pretty well. When the bread was pan toasted, dry, I put Dukes mayo on the other side. Then loaded the mayo side with iceburg lettuce and Danish ham. This was a very good sandwich. I followed this up with very good local blackberries, pretty good cherries, and a not so good plum, that I ate anyway. These plums were touted as tree ripened, but as is not at all usual, these days, the plums were overripe. So a sad waste of good fruit that would have been much better if harvested a bit earlier. That is very unusual in these parts. Mostly fruit is harvested too early to be more hardy to make it to the market pretty, but not at prime.

So good to see you posting again about meals you have cooked, liuzhou!

Eggs or besan (chickpea flour), just a little, would bind it fine. You can get besan at Patel Brothers on your way home, along with a lot of other really, really interesting ingredients you can't find anywhere else. If you go, make sure you check out the 18 or so barrels filled with Indian snacks. I can't wait until I get up there again for the fragrant savory, spicy square crackers. Everything in the barrels is $4.99 a pound. The produce department is also a wonder for anyone who enjoys new food discoveries. Some vegan chefs even make a meringue style dessert topping from the liquid in canned chickpeas. They have surprising, egg-like binding properties.

I don't even like sushi, but have been known to eat some good sashimi. I very much relate to being served a bad version of something that absolutely propels me toward making a better and more satisfying version of the dish at home. It happens every. single. time. It's like I have a craving that was desecrated, and I must make it right.

Just a gorgeous account, @KennethT. Such a rich depiction and description of a culture I will never be lucky enough to encounter firsthand. I remember burning incense in the 70's following the Beatles' craze with Asian culture. My lungs were stronger then, and we usually only burned one stick at a time on one of those wooden holders that held the stick up at an angle, and then the ashes dropped into a trough in the long wooden tray. That image of the cones burning in a shop and dropping ash onto customers is priceless, but perhaps not something I would appreciate my local merchants adopting. As far as Vietnamese tailors, I had an amusing time visiting one with a boyfriend right here in Cary, many years ago. She was very skilled, but the boyfriend was abusive, so it was funny to see this diminutive lady bossing him around like she did. To his slight credit, he was also laughing about it, and her work was flawless. Thanks for taking the time to share your experiences of the lovely culture and food of Vietnam, and I trust you have now been able to repair and restore your hard drive? Much respect your way.

Peel and eat Argentine Red Shrimp boiled in shells with salt, Old Bay in the water and nothing else. Served with corn on the cob, which was local and very good, with some brussels sprouts. My last local peach for dessert. I must get more of these while the getting is good. This has been the best year for peaches in recent memory, maybe ever!

Thanks for checking. Your link seems to refer to a J.B. Dant and my longtime brand was J.W. Dant. Maybe that was his great-great-great-great ... grandfather or something? It doesn't really matter to me where it was distilled as long as the vodka tastes smooth and can pretty much disappear in water. I have found that in Bowman's and used to find it in Dant's. I'm really sorry I opened up this can of worms and apologize if I offended anyone.

I was probably being oversensitive.

Do you know what these flowers are? At first I thought crepe myrtle, but after popping the photo out, I thought maybe bougainvillea? Something else? Whatever they are, they are gorgeous, and thanks for sharing your experiences in Vietnam.

We used to have a 7/11 on Maynard Road in Cary near the intersection with Kildaire Farm Road, and I do very much enjoy a Slurpee, especially a cherry one! (I realize it is artificially flavored.) It became a post office, and now I think it is a dry cleaners. That was the last 7/11 in the area, so no Slurpee for me. Even my blender can't deliver that very finely ground ice texture. Maybe those with Vitamixes could do it? And, the Slurpee is also shot full of air to make it fluffy. This is the one instance where this is a good thing, in my book. Especially considering that our heat index in in the 105 F and over lately, I want a Slurpee brain freeze now!

As far as the larger shrimp being easier to peel and clean, they are sometimes. Usually even. These large 16-20 per pound Argentine wild caught shrimp I bought are very good. Many times with smaller shrimp, I mostly ignore the top sand vein. This is not at all possible with these large babies. Not only are thier shells thick and tough, but the dorsal sand vein is ridiculous! There is a lot of black stuff and in some of them some orange stuff. The orange stuff is the color of roe, but homogeneous, so it doesn't look like roe. It is actually easier to clean when raw than cooked in the shell, although both are a challenge. I love the taste of these shrimp boiled in their shells, though, so that will probably happen again.

Okay, now how would one translate this into a location? As I said above, the bad batch of J.W. Dant has a number: 240-6011. This differed from the previous batch I bought in the last four numbers. The monopoly has a full shelf of the bad batch for the first time I've ever witnessed for J.W. Dant vodka. Even longtime fans like me are unable to choke this crap down. So probably the first three numbers might indicate where it was made, and the next four indicate the lot number, but to us great unwashed, how would we discover where it was distilled and processed? Also, the Bowman's label is forthcoming with a toll free phone number and email address for feedback from consumers. Not so on the J.W. Dant's.

Well, with all due respect sir, I was writing about information from the very product labels that I bought here in the North Carolina state liquor monopoly store I am forced to buy from. Thanks for the info, but it sort of makes me bridle a bit if someone accuses me of spreading false information, to the point that I fetched the J.W. Dant's vodka bottle from the recycling bin, and it only identifies Bardstown, KY. The label does not acknowledge an association with Heaven Hill, but I have no reason to disbelieve you, or interest in researching it, because after years of using the product, I find their current quality control process totally unacceptable. Again, after checking, the Bowman's bottles are only owning up to a Louisville, KY location, but also acknowledge being bottled by the Sazerac Company. I don't mean to argue and recognize that your are probably much more conversant in the origin of spirits than I. I just do not want to be reflected as a person who is not able to read the label on a product I buy and then communicate that accurately. The labels for booze containing products of all kinds seem to be exempted from many laws that apply to other consumables. Case in point: I consumed something in a can called "Peacherita" at a party my brother gave on the fourth. I was pretty sure I wouldn't like it because the flavoring would be artificial and the sugar content too high for me. No ingredients or nutrition info to be found on that label, though. IMO this should change. And as anticipated, I hated this overly sweet, artificially flavored drink. Peace out.

I made the Pancho's Shrimp Veracruz, which is unlike any other recipe you will find for shrimp veracruz. This one calls for a layer of Mexican red rice with sauteed shrimp on top, smothered with cheese dip and topped with melted cheddar. I thought the cheddar was overkill, and did not include it in my version. This was served with sauteed zucchini with some onion, and while the meal was good, I think I have finally worked the Pancho's craving out of my system for a while.

I made another batch of Pancho's dressing with lime juice this time. It was good, but so was the vinegar version, and that is cheaper and easier. I had a small bowl of leftover pinto bean soup. I had been reading and looking at the photos on the Pancho's Yelp site and decided to make a small batch of Pancho's inspired cheese dip. I had only white American cheese and thinned it with some of the tomato juice that drained off the chopped tomatoes in the pico de gallo I made. The tomato juice, along with the crushed red pepper turned the dip orange, so it looked like Pancho's. This was really good along with some of the pico on warm tortilla chips. Then I made beef tacos and drizzled the dressing over them. This was a satisfying meal. Now I have to make Shrimp Vera Cruz. I think the cheese dip I made tonight will work well in it. I used to make this over 30 years ago at home, along with the cheese and onion enchiladas a la Pancho's. @kayb, since you've eaten there much more recently than I have, so you know what kind of cheese they use? I seem to recall green onions were in the filling with the cheese, but may be wrong.

Well kay, As I'm won't to do, I did not follow the recipe as written this time. I mixed up just enough for one serving using their proportions very roughly and not in the mood for a lot of math conversions. I'm sure I backed down the sugar ratio, and I added some nice chili powder as well, because my 30 some year old memory of the original at the West Memphis location seemed to include it. Also I just shook it vigorously in a sealed jar instead of dirtying the blender. Oh, and I added a little salt and black pepper. All that said, I liked it well enough that I'm going to make another one-serving batch for tonight's dinner very shortly. I might use fresh squeezed lime juice in place of vinegar this time. Wish I had an avocado, but the salad was good without it. The poster of the link claims to have taken the recipe from the Commercial Appeal, and I have no reason to doubt it. Also I checked the ingredients for the commercial dressing on Walmart's site, and they seem to be in line with those in the recipe. If you give it a try, you can always adjust it to your taste.

I mentioned upthread that the J.W. Dant's vodka from Bardstown, KY, that I've been buying for years had gone so far south in the last batch, that I entertained throwing it out. If I had any disposable income at all, I would have, because no refunds at the state liquor monopoly for any reason. I'm still here, so apparently it's not poison, just tastes that way now. When I went back for my next rounds from the liquor monopoly, I'd written down the lot numbers from the good and bad batches. All the bottles I checked of J.W. Dant's were of the bad batch, and there was more on the shelf than I have ever seen before, so others who buy it are probably finding it unpalatable as well. Now that I think of it seriously, there was less and less smoothness to it recently, it's just that this last batch was so vile, one couldn't help but ignore it. I, for one, will never buy it again, if this dreck is what they let escape their quality control system. I went with Bowman's which is currently distilled in Louisville, KY, although this site claims it originated in Virginia. I selected this because it's in the same price range, and when my longtime neighbor, who has since moved up to Kerr Lake, would come on Sundays seeking a loan of vodka because the liquor monopoly is closed, she'd pay me back with the Bowman's. It's much cheaper than what I was buying at the time, so I sort of resented it, but I remember it not being bad, and it isn't at all. So I am not poisoned, and back to drinking odorless, flavorless vodka. That is just like I like it, and all is right with the world again, except I still have a consuming hatred of the state liquor monopoly. And! the Bowman's was in short supply on the shelves. They will probably have a hard time moving the J.W. Dant's except to unsuspecting victims, and not stock enough Bowman's. I see that coming, as a monopoly does not have to be responsive to consumer preferences or normal market influences.

I made pinto bean soup with bacon, onion, chilis and carrot, and had this with a slice of crusty bread with butter. Then I made a shredded lettuce and tomato salad and dressed it with Pancho's salad dressing I made from an online recipe. I served the salad with 8 huge Argentinian Red Shrimp. I boiled them in the shell with just salt and Old Bay in the water, and I didn't think they needed anything more to serve. They were good and sweet. These 16-20 size Argentine Red Shrimp are on sale this week at Harris Teeter for only $6.99 per pound at the fresh seafood counter as thawed, previously frozen, or you can get IQF, as I did, in a two pound bag from the freezer case in front of the seafood department. My bag rang up as $33.98 before discount, and after discount $13.98, so $10.00 off per pound! You can't beat that for wild caught shrimp of this size. They're on sale through Tuesday the 11th.

I love fruit, but this is ridiculous! Fortunately this is a very abundant and good local fruit season right now. I just had another lovely peach at the modest price of $1.49 a pound.

I made beet and onion pakoras and chili pakoras stuffed with cream cheese. I don't think I really like beet pakoras. The raw beet had plenty of fine, sweet beet flavor before frying, but the treatment sort of nullified that. I ate them. They weren't bad, but not something I'd do again I think. I can think of many better ways I like to prepare beets. The chilis were more successful. I was scared the cheese would ooze out into the oil, but the besan/atta flour batter kept it from doing that. I thought that was an unusual filling for Indian chilis, but I found some recipes for it, and my Indian grocer does sell it near the paneer, so it's not as outlandish as one would think. I used one Anaheim, one large jalapeno and one red one that was also large and looked sort of like a jalapeno except it had a pointier end. The red one was new to me, so I tried a little of the membrane while cleaning out the interior with gloves, and my lips also contacted some seeds briefly. It was very hot before frying. After frying, none of the peppers were very hot at all. I'd also intended to do shrimp pakora, but fried stuff can be cloying in too large quantities. I decided to go lighter and just did some cottage cheese with local blackberries for the main protein component. Then I decided to go heavier and had one of the chocolate cupcakes from Food Lion, before they go to waste, saving the planet and all.

I hate handwashing too, and try to avoid it for anything that won't suffer damage from going through the dishwasher. My main knife, never goes in the dishwasher, and all the other prep knifes don't either. Non-stick skillets never do, and of course cast iron doesn't, my carbon steel Bromwell box grater never does either, and I don't like putting anything aluminum in there either. That includes my cast aluminum meat mallet and garlic press, Club aluminum dutch ovens, and probably more stuff, I can't think of right now. I just thought of carbon and stainless vegetable peelers that don't ever see a dishwasher, and I'm sure there's more. Still, when I cook one meal a day from scratch, I usually have a full load. 3-quart stainless saucepans, their glass lids, stainless colanders, stainless mixing bowls, long spatulas, spoons, bamboo cooking utensils all go in, as well as plates used for resting cooking implements on, prep bowls or plates, for stir fry, where timing is everything, jars with lids used to mix up a thickener for stir fry, and on and on it goes. The actual plates and cutlery for serving and eating a meal are minimal because I live alone. I always have as many prep and cooking dishes and implements as though I was cooking for more people, though, and they take up a lot of space. Even when I'm doing leftovers and just reheating, I usually have a plastic lidded container, and either a conventional saucepan with lid that go into the dishwasher as well, or a serving plate, but also the bulky plastic microwave plate cover that keeps spatters down and steam in, if I choose to go that way. Say with chicken cacciatore, that I made from the freezer leftovers recently. There was the Chinese takeout soup container I had frozen the chix cach in plus its lid, a 3 qt ss saucepan with lid to heat the chicken dish up slowly, because I thought this would do a better job than the microwave. There was another 3 qt ss saucepan that didn't need a lid to cook the pasta. There was a ss colander. Then I had the plate I served the meal on, the knife and fork I ate it with, the big ss spoon I used to serve the chix, the pasta fork/spoon I used to stir and handle the pasta, coffee cups, glasses, beverage spoons. I'm sure I'm forgetting something. My point is, that is rare, even as a singleton, to not run the dishwasher every day when I am doing any real cooking. I don't own a food processor and rarely use my blender, and am already doing everything I know or can think of to reduce washing up, because it's the part of cooking I really don't like. Actually, @Johntodd, I think you may need to give us some tips on how you manage to cook so many meals for so many people with a standard home dishwasher and still usually run it once a day. Respect.

When I go to Sea Depot in Cary, they frequently have fish heads in the lower right hand corner of their iced seafood bins. Since it would be a drive for you, you might want to call ahead in case you want to go that way. I would not doubt that they would also save fish skeletons over a few hours since they fillet to order and are a busy place. If I wanted seafood stock, that's the route I would take. Bottled clam juice is also a great idea and absolutely loaded with Vitamin B12.

There are fresh coconut cores already shelled I can get, but in order to use it all, I would have to freeze it. They are wrapped in plastic, so I picked one up and shook it near my ear, and sure enough, it has the coconut water still inside! I know coconut goes bad pretty quickly though. I'm probably not up to cracking a fresh coconut myself anymore. I do remember how hard they are, but the fresh stuff is so good! There is also shredded or flaked coconut in the Indian grocer's freezers I can get. I know cracking your own is the best way, but given what I can get and what I am capable of, will any of these work? I can even buy bunches of fresh methi. So I'm very excited by this thread. Thank you for this recipe and your future advice on the coconut.

@liuzhou, You do not know how happy this makes me that you can make your great escape! I will be looking forward to the cooking adventures you get up to after your release from (well you know, hell). Yah! I had dinner at my brother's house tonight with three nursing home residents who will probably never make a permanent escape from there, but we partied tonight. One lady was 90 years old, and she told me she never wanted to live that long, but was still having a really good time doing it. I told her it gives me hope. She is delightful.

I was wondering on Yelp between these three options: Train Station, Esmeralda Grill, and Himalayan Nepali Cuisine. They're all in walking distance, and it's the Fourth of July, and I was completely sick of being alone. Just before I'd made my decision on the restaurant, my evil brother calls. He hates me because I donated some furniture to his wife in 1999 when his kids were sleeping on the floor and did not have a dresser for their clothes. I am the enemy now, because I helped her a little bit when she was already completely bent on leaving him. She donated the furniture I gave her to her church when she took off for New Hampshire, which surprised all of us, but my brother cannot get over this. He has to keep hurting me for giving her this furniture. His children were sleeping on the floor! So bro calls me at six PM. He came last week and took my husband's truck which has been sitting in my driveway since November 14, 2016, without telling me. This is the disrespect I am shown. I am just a free storage for this uninsured and uninsurable vehicle. It was purchased with a broken seatbelt, which means it will never pass NC inspection. My husband and brother go through the good ole boy network and get 'er done anyways. I don't know how to do that. So that truck sat out there for eight? months, before it disappeared one day. I called my husband, and he pretended to not know what was going on. I wanted to call the police, and he discouraged it. Of course, he let my brother take the truck. He is an in consummate liar. Always has been from the beginning in 1999. He lied about everything, and I do mean everything. But you know what? We had a great Fourth anyway. My evil brother (who has denied me rides for many months to the nursing home in Raleigh, which is well out of my walking range) actually came and brought me to his house where he lives with a homeowner, who somehow puts up with him. It must be hard. We heard a story of bro putting a not quite out ciggie into the plastic trash can and having it burn up the side of the house, the door frame, having to call the fire department. Some people are much more charming than others. You or I would be out on our asses, but you do not know my evil bro. The brother brought three people from the Pruitt Health nursing home to where he lives not too far from me. Two were in wheel chairs, my husband and a ninety year old lady called Net. She was lovely, but quite deaf. You had to get right in her face to speak to her, but she was very, very nice and appreciative of the opportunity to get out of the nursing home she had been given. The other one was, of course, my husband, and he seems to have some nerve pain at times from his stroke, and that is sad for me. The third guest from Pruitt was called John. He was the only one not in a wheelchair. He had a walker, but claimed he did not need it at all and went on and on about his escapades in Memphis, TN in the early 70's when he went to college there and went down on Beale Street and the Orpheum Theater, like I did a few years later. He had an analog Nikon camera and a long lens. Everyone was taking photos. My bro had a cd player set up on the deck, and when REO Speedwagon "Keep on Lovin' You" came on, I danced beside my husband's wheelchair and we sang it together. We used to rock karaoke together when we were younger and dance up a storm. He seemed quite cogent and said he still loved me. This was the first time I've seen him in months, and I'm still wiping tears back at home now. Many pics were taken of this. I have to say something about the sweet old dogs that were there before we get to the food that I know we are all anticipating. Bro has a 12 yo part lab with hip dysplasia and continence trouble, and his gracious and tolerant landlord has a less age-impacted 12 yo hound of beautiful white and brown with a little few black scattered spots. Both of these old dogs are sweethearts and taken often to the Pruitt Home. Everyone loves them. Finally, on to food. Well it pretty much sucked. I was given 10 minutes notice to get ready, and took twice that, but no time to do anything myself about food or drink. There were frozen already cooked shrimp and bottled cocktail sauce. That was the best offering of the night, so we know we're going downhill from there. There was fresh pineapple on the app plate as well, but it had not been cut that day or even close. A couple strawberries, meh. I gave whatever horrible cheese was on the two crackers to each of the dogs. They appreciated them. Hoo boy, I did not. So moving on to dinner in the dining room. Most of the guests from the nursing home wanted to eat outdoors on the deck, because they are cooped up in what one called "The Gulag". Net, the lady in the wheelchair, was marveling over seeing the moon before sunset and although, her hearing aid usually doesn't help much, she did hear a melodious bird song in the beautiful backyard we were sitting in and remarked on it. These nursing home folks don't get out much, and actually neither do I. The evil brother did manage to do a good thing. The landlord wanted to eat inside, though, so that is what happened. The main meal was brats and sweet Italian sausage in cold buns that were supposed to be served with fried peppers and onions. I asked, when I was directed to serve plates where were the peppers and onions? Under the brats, says bro. Almost no one ate these. They were cold and terrible. No one ate very much, but they were polite and complimented the food. I'm not that polite, although I did say the potato salad was the best thing on the plate, because it was. There was a little bit of edible, good really, potato salad and some canned beans that weren't too bad. There was also a cucumber, onion, and bell pepper salad that there should have been nothing wrong with. Leave it to evil bro. Way, way, way too much dill. The dogs were very happy this evening. Actually, so was I. It isn't always about the food. Tonight it was about seeing my husband for the first time in months. Tonight it was about singing "Keep On Loving You" with someone I had not seen in person for months.