Thanks for the Crepes

I have such a crawl space under the stairs and behind the coat closet at the front door in the foyer. I call it the black hole. Enter at your own risk. Beautiful chocolates, as usual!

It got to nearly 70 degrees F/21 C today, and the gusty winds we've been having lately had died down somewhat, so I planned to cook outdoors over charcoal. I am also loving the extra three hours of daylight we are experiencing in the evenings compared to just a few months ago, and only one of those hours is attributable to the time change. It was sunny and perfect for a grill out. I grilled almost the whole dinner. The star of the show was a nice thick and fatty rib eye steak with a supporting cast of corn on the cob, asparagus, and good bread toasted, and roasted on the grill. This was preceded with a Greek salad with fig vinaigrette dressing. This was one of those meals where I had to stop myself from eating so I didn't hurt myself. So good! Marshmallows toasted over the embers for dessert.

I can't speak for @weinoo, but he, probably like me, is just fed up with the lack of durability in what should be durable goods lately. It is very hard to argue with the logic in @Shalmanese's post above though. He makes a very succinct and good case for less is more in the case of a hot pot.

Yes, @Franci. Thank you so much for responding. I value your knowledge of Italian cuisine very much, but I am still unclear on how one would say the Italian word "pane". pan-E? Is this correct? I think we can all learn something here about the Italian word for bread on the Bread Topic. There are also videos that follow the pane pronunciation one that are very enlightening and pertain to Italian food pronunciations. I found that I have been saying several of them incorrectly. Here is a good one with a very cute little Italian lady as your guide. This video is proof, at least to me, that Italian is not at all easy to native English speakers. Spanish seems much easier to me. Also, Franci and others, what is your opinion of this site on Italian breads. There is one that looks somewhat like the one I am loving so much that they call "pane casareccio" and claim it is from the Lazio region. I cannot believe they get the crust so thick and crunchy and still the insides are so moist, light and tender. I put mine in a plastic bag and seal it up to soften the crust up, as it is quite challenging to bite and chew at first. The second day, the interior gives up some moisture to soften the crackly, tough crust, and each day down the line, the crust becomes softer. The bread has no preservatives, though, so it needs to be eaten in a few days. I love this bread my purveyor calls Pane di Casa!

What about savory pastries? I'm a fan of TJ's spanakopita triangles and little mushroom turnovers with cream cheese pastry. A platter of fresh fruit would also appeal to me. These are all healthier alternatives than sweet pastries.

All legume soups, including black bean, will thicken up noticeably with an overnight rest in the fridge. It's especially apparent with split pea soup, so I make sure to make this a day ahead of when I plan to serve it.

Yeah, I bought my ultra thin ones for the the first time ever to avoid leftovers, which I have come to despise. Even with the large footprint of the T-bone center cut, they are under four oz. raw. They broil up fine to me, but they are thinner than @robirdstx's. (She is an excellent photographer, isn't she!) I still have two raw frozen ones left, and I will buy these again, once I get my oven fixed. They work for me with broiling. Crunchity, crispity pork fat! What could be better? Another idea for next time, maybe for others, because I think Jo has sworn off this cut: Debone and cut into smaller pieces for "veal" Marsala. Veal is expensive here now, and this is done a lot. I remember reading a link to an interview here where Marcella Hazan calls out "veal" Marsala as not veal, but declares it superior with pork, at least with the kind of veal lately available in the US. I can't find it now with my best mad search skilz.

This looks wonderful, and just adds to my sense of awe of your ability to cook up such interesting and varied dishes every day for only one person without falling victim to the monotony of leftovers! I especially love to see your posts about this native daughter of my state, who is now officially a James Beard Award Finalist. And yes, collards can be challenging, can't they? So many love them around these parts, and I have never developed a taste for them. I do wish I could, because they are one of the most beautiful greens I've ever seen.

I remember grapefruit that looked like those in the NYT article with the brown trails of mottling on the skin! I enjoyed these as a kid and don't remember eating pink or red much, if at all. Now, I usually have access to both red and white, but I noticed on Sunday, when I picked up a red one, that there were no white on offer. The white ones I see now have pretty perfect-looking skins with none of the mottling on what might have been the Duncan variety of my childhood. When I've eaten the modern white ones that I can get, they seem to me more bitter, and not as nice as the reds. The reds I get, and they are from supermarkets, taste better to me. When you're buying produce from the supermarket, you are very rarely privy to a name for the type of fruit/veggie you are buying and eating. The reds I get here have plenty of seeds though. I don't mind the large ones that are easy to pop out with a knife or serrated grapefruit spoon, but I really dislike those teeny seedlings which are not only hard to see, but seem sometimes to cling tenaciously in the fruit, and they are myriad. If I could find a grapefruit with a lot of larger seeds that separate easily from the fruit in a good-tasting grapefruit, it wouldn't matter the color or having a lot of large seeds. Not only very insightful, but it brings to mind a line from the movie "Black Swan". Natalie Portman's character is eating a red grapefruit and says, "How pretty and pink." It is the only thing we see her eat in this movie. Ballerinas, like fashion models, have to severely restrict their eating. This really resonates with me. The movie came out three years after the quote here.

I too am shocked as some of the food prices from other points across the world. Most of them are enviably much cheaper than here. It's not uncommon to pay $2.99 for name brand squishy-white, commodity supermarket bread here, so the price for artisan loaves is, of course, even higher. Also it's not a mainstream thing. There is artisan bread available but it's like a niche foodie thing instead of an everyday thing around here. I'm lucky to live in an area where I can get a variety of very good breads and other foods. Many areas around here and in the US, generally, are not so lucky.

I had a salad of red leaf lettuce dressed with soy sauce, honey, white vinegar, olive oil and a little toasted sesame oil. Then followed a king crab leg and asparagus with some of the great Pane di Casa bread. I cooked the asparagus in the same pot with the crab, dropping the crab after the asparagus, and this worked fine. There were melted butter and lemon wedges for both the crab and asparagus.

I do in my Amana. There isn't one in the Hotpoint (landlord's cheapo). The light is a great design, I think. My second husband was really good at mechanical stuff and rigged up a light in the trunk of my car in the 1980's. I think they are pretty standard now in car trunks and freezers. I hated going back out with a flashlight to search for a missing item from my grocery order in the trunk in the dark. Hee hee, sometimes he would go out while I was stowing groceries instead of listening to me complain about the missing item. I loved that trunk light, and the light in the freezer too. Other than the fact that the duck may have been old, it looks and sounds like a prime time dinner to me. I am sensitive to "freezer taste", though, so that would have put me off. I like the sweet potato accompaniment with the pecans on top and asparagus never goes astray with me.

I just remembered that Harris Teeter also had cape gooseberries, which I have never seen before. I didn't know what they were, so did not get any.

I'm enjoying a grazing plate tonight of a couple outer Romaine leaves rolled around crumbled feta, a pepperoncini, some sliced cheddar, strawberries, California dried figs that are nice and soft, a Mexican Campari tomato and slices of Pane di Casa purchased rustic bread. I could not believe Food Lion had 1 pound clamshells of Camparis for only $1.49 yesterday! They are good too.

I figured that since I know pan de casa in Spanish, but is this a legit style of bread, or a marketing name. I am thinking marketing name. Either way, it's delicious!

I was at our local Food Lion grocery store yesterday, and they had no pomegranates. They are considered low end, but usually have mangoes, plantains and the usual winter suspects. Today, I walked up to Harris Teeter, which is much higher end. There is soothing classical music on the speakers, a Starbuck's outlet, hot pizza bar, sandwiches made to order, and a killer salad bar, plus all sorts of other stuff you would never see at Food Lion with high end prices to match. They did have pomegranates from Chile. I tried to check the price, but could not find one. They also had horned melons, labeled "Kiwano" by Melissa's Produce. They offered sugar cane, key limes, golden and larger green papayas, kiwis, starfruit, and key limes. There was a sign for passion fruit, but none on the display. There was also a sign for fresh figs, but again none in sight. I did pick up a pack of dried figs that are nice and soft in texture, but I haven't opened the package yet. This was 9 oz. for $3.99. Oh, and the wine section at HT is at least 6 times the offering at FL.

I thought I would share the purchased bread I bought at Harris Teeter grocery store today. I was determined to walk up there since I noticed they had Pane di Casa artisan bread on sale for $2 off the regular price of $5.99. This is a huge loaf, and although they say it is only 24 oz., I measured my humongous rectangular free form loaf at 14-1/2" x 8" x 4" tall. It's a crusty, rustic bread sold in a paper and cellophane sleeve open at one end. When I get it home, I always put it in a big plastic bag and seal it up with a twist tie so it doesn't get even crustier. The flavor and texture is great, and while it may not be as wonderful as some of the homemade loaves we see on here, for the yeast bread challenged among us, it is a delightful option. I can't wait to have a sandwich with some of the pastrami and provolone I also picked up there today. Has anyone ever heard of "Pane di Casa"? Is this a real style of bread or just marketing speak? Any idea how to pronounce the "Pane" part of the name? pane/pa-nay/pan?

I wouldn't consider it either, but I was going to wait for at least one of the professionals to weigh in before throwing in my 2 cents. Beeswax wouldn't be an enjoyable addition, but also has an ignition temp that is pretty low when melted. It's not something I would want to put in a deep fryer for sure.

Hey there, Dani, and welcome to the forum! It's nice to have a fellow North Carolinian here. We have some members from the state, but I believe most of them haven't posted anything in a while. I'm looking forward to hearing about your culinary adventures.

Shelby, They are said to "walk" because when the top borne onions become large and heavy enough, they pull the stalk over and root themselves at a distance from the parent plant, and then the process can recur. Maybe they should be called "spreading" onions, but it is not as cute and vivid as walking onions.

@mm84321, Those green lip mussels are tasty, aren't they? The only ones I have access to around here are from the freezer case at my fishmonger, but they are still very good. I noted they still have boxes of them the last time I was up there for king crab legs. @dcarch, I was admiring the plating of your fine looking corned beef, and thought to myself, "Now that bell pepper bottom with the stem set off to one side sure is an unusual garnish, but the color makes the plate pop." I scrolled down to the second picture and thought, "Duh? That's a shamrock!"

Is this a trick question? It looks like a disher or ladle, with a projection to hang it on the side of the cooking pot. It must be a trick question, because the 90 degree bend on the hanger should be oriented the other way. I'm curious.

Boo on no index! Crabs and spiders belong to the same phylum: arthropoda, so may not be such a wild substitute. Spiders have eight legs and crabs have ten. Crabs taste a lot better too than the daddy long legs spider I accidentally chewed on many years ago while picking blackberries and greedily cramming them into my mouth. Didn't take me long to spit that out! Wow, what a vile taste.

Beautiful pita bread right in the middle of the baking desert! Lovely meals too, and the shrimp are amazing. Ah, the nuances and misunderstandings we can have with language. Until we all evolve into telepathy, I'm afraid we're stuck with its shortcomings, though. As a Southerner, I can assure you that @kayb's usage of "God love you" held no negative connotation at all. Bless their heart/God love you/them/her/him is always a sincere expression of sympathy for an adverse situation. Sometimes, and not in this case, it can have an implied meaning that the victim of the adverse situation inflicted it upon themselves though foolishness, or feeble-mindedness. I have never heard this inflection addressed directly to the person by a Southern speaker. It is always when speaking to someone else about the person when that person is not present or out of earshot. I thought Southern speak was pretty straightforward, but we find here, that it can be vulnerable to misunderstanding too. I'm pretty confident when I state that anyone who has gotten to know Nancy through her postings thinks of her as the opposite of foolish or feeble-minded.

Those of us who grew up when trichinosis from pork was a threat sometimes never grow out of the habit of eating it well done. I am such a one, although the extremely rare state I prefer in beef is off putting to some. I bought a package of center cut pork chops a while back and have a few left in the freezer. They look like miniatures of what is called a T-Bone in a beef cut and are only a little over a quarter inch thick. I don't know how they manage to cut them so thin, and you need to clean up the bone chips before cooking, because cutting them this thin seems to make the bones prone to that. I just salt and pepper them with maybe some rosemary or cumin or whatever depending on my mood and broil them a few minutes a side. Many modern ovens don't get as hot as my 1970' electric GE model and it takes a very hot oven to do justice to these. I like the fat rendered, brown and crispy. They are not juicy med well, but well done. They're not hard or dry, though, and I like them this way. The thin cut also allows me to eat a whole chop for dinner with no leftovers. My oven is broken again, so I am appreciating the tips on frying them on the stove top here.