Thanks for the Crepes

I just rewatched this movie. I cannot recommend it enough for people like us who care about where our food comes from. There is quite a long segment on the Monsanto, Corp. They are suing innocent farmers and seed processors whose crops have been contaminated by Monsanto's GMO patented crops. Monsanto wins, and mows them over, putting them out of business or licking their wounds, and trying to proceed from ground zero. There is also a story about a lady who lost a small son to e-coli poisoning from hamburger. She comes out as a conservative, but has become an activist for food safety. It is sad to see her beating her head against the Goliath corporate wall with their purchased politicians, but she keeps at it. Thanks to folks like her, positive change is being effected. Pink slime, ammonia treated beef trimmings, have been dropped from many fast food menus. Since fast food outlets are some of the largest purchasers of food in this country, they have a huge influence on our food supply. Some have promised or already are offering cage-free eggs, not buying pork where sows are put into sow stalls and gestation crates. Organic products are becoming more mainstream. Huge, huge corporations are making efforts to comply more with informed customer needs. Information is good, y'all. Please share it.

You say you're no baker, but apparently the muffins were good enough to start disappearing pretty rapidly. They look delicious. What are the green bits?

We got to the fish monger again today. The husband had his usual of fried catfish and tater tots. I went with great side orders of fried okra and maduros, and a not so great eggroll. It was filled with not as much cabbage as I like and some kind of paste. I hope it was pork. When I bit into it, I exclaimed, "What the hell is that?!" and took my fork to probe into it. It didn't taste bad. I ate it, but I won't be ordering that again. I also picked up a pound of wild caught, North Carolina, head on shrimp to try frying them in the shells and sucking out the heads. I intended to eat at least a few tonight, but after eating my sides and eggroll, I was too full. These will feature in tomorrow's dinner, along with a couple of green tomatoes I got at the fish place. I also bought a large mango which is different than the ones I get at the grocery, but I've not a clue what kind it is. The now very pregnant little lady behind the cash register is from somewhere in Latin America and is responsible for the additions to the selections on offer from that area, like the maduros I ate for dinner, so I'm hoping it will be a good mango. I'll report back later. A 2 pound box of frozen New Zealand green lipped mussels in the shell also came home with me. So thanks to those on the board who gave me advice that frozen mussels are good. I am looking forward to these for an upcoming dinner soon. It will be the first time I've had them since the Romano's Macaroni Grill chain dropped them from the menu, which is where I had them the first time. I also found boxes with 4 whole frozen quail in the freezer case, but they weren't priced. I left them there this time because the husband was already complaining about the cost of the mussels. They were $9.50 for 2 pounds in the shell. I don't know if that's a good price or not, but I know they were brought here from New Zealand, and they're literally available no where else in town that I know of. I wanted them! Oh, I couldn't resist a bag of NONGSHIM spicy flavor shrimp crackers from Korea. This is such a treasure trove for food lovers to shop with the seafood, and Asian and Latin American influences of the family that owns it.

I love beans of all varieties. I love putting some pintos and pork into the crock pot to slow cook all day for dinner. Ribs are my favorite cut for the bean pot, but pork chops or chunks of butt work great too. Thrown in a little jalapeno and onion toward the last hour or so of cooking and bake up a pan of cornbread or vegetable corn pancakes in the summer and dinner is done. This time of year is when the fresh shell beans come in, and while I can't find any fresh, the Pict Sweet Company based in Bells, TN offers fresh frozen varieties in my grocer's freezer case. Speckled butter beans, purple hulls, black eyes, field peas with snaps (green beans), and baby limas were among the selection last time, and I picked up a package of purple hulls. I am hoping they will come up to the memory of the fresh ones I picked and ate in Louisiana. I got ripped off one time at New Year's when I bought clam shell packages of black eyes in the produce department thinking they were fresh. They were not even as good as the ones I cook up from dry and much more expensive. If I had known what I was buying, I could have definitely gone with dry or maybe frozen. Either would have been an improvement. I found out on eG that they were most likely just soaked dry ones, and sure enough, on reading the teeny tiny fine print, that is exactly what they were. This really stung because it was for a holiday meal. I do not recommend this product at all, and I'll never get suckered again. What is a Mexican dinner without frioles refritos? I love canned and rinsed chick peas as a garnish for salads. Baked beans with onion and whole canned tomatoes mixed with ketchup and mustard with bacon cooked on top low and slow is a dish I almost always fix to go with barbecued pork ribs. If you don't like beans, though, just don't eat 'em. Life is too short to try to choke down something when there are so many other things available that can be relished.

It's definitely worth a watch, if you are concerned about wholesome and nutritious food. It won 7 awards and 19 nominations, including an Oscar nomination for best documentary feature film, so it's not just nonsense from some crackpot with a conspiracy theory. I thought I was pretty up on some of the terrible practices in our food industry, but this one certainly opened my eyes to some really incredible things I wish were not allowed to go on.

We had fried zukes with the last yellow crookneck squash thrown in. This was drained and then blotted on an obscene amount of cheap paper towels from the dollar store to be virtually grease free and was delicious with only kosher salt. Then chicken parm with a small side of spaghetti with marinara sauce and fresh mozz melted over all in the oven in the last five minutes of cooking. Plenty of crushed red pepper on my portion.

@sartoric, It's not very challenging to use up top quality eggs like you were lucky enough to get, but if it were me, I'd like some over easy with runny yolks with good bread. That olive bread seems a very good candidate. Hollandaise with asparagus, eggs benedict or a nice fish would be good. Bernaise with a lovely steak. I would take advantage of the cleaner environment and serve them not cooked hard. Homemade mayo comes to mind as well. Caesar salad dressing? Oh my, you are a lucky ducky! Mystery bags. I'm not a fan either, but since my husband is, I will eat them in the form of Hebrew National pricey kosher dogs a few times a year. I figure if they get the kosher seal they can't contain lips and assholes, like I read somewhere and cannot purge from my tiny brain. ConAgra Corp. took the brand over in 1993. They make paints and are my enemy. Paint and chemical manufacturers should stay the hell out of the food business, IMO. Quote from the wiki link: "The Jewish Daily Forward reported that most Orthodox authorities did not follow this endorsement, and most Orthodox Jews continue not to rely on its kashrut.[6] In June 2012, ConAgra Foods Inc. was sued by 11 people in Minnesota for falsely advertising their product as kosher. Their complaint rests on the issue of ConAgra unlawfully tricking people into thinking they are buying kosher meat and being able to charge a premium fee for this alleged fallacy.[7] " So grossly overpriced mystery bags. You can't win with hot dogs, it seems, even if you throw too much money at it. I'm sure some small manufacturers somewhere make a respectable version, but for us masses, it seems it is best to avoid.

A wet hen is angry, it's an idiom apparently from the old Southern US, but still in wide use today, at least in these parts. God speed on your weight loss journey. I know how hard it is.

Chicken Divan Chicken Tetrazzini Fettucine Alfredo with chicken Chicken chilaquiles Chicken Florentine Chicken burritos Chicken empanadas Chicken tostadas BBQ or Buffalo chicken pizza* Club sandwiches Chef's Salad Chicken A La King (I love this over fluffy biscuits) *I am personally not a fan of chicken pizzas, because the meat is usually dried out. With perfectly cooked sous vide chix, if you sauced it and added in the last few minutes of cooking, it might come out moist and tasty.

@kbjesq, I sure would have been proud to join you for a meal there! It would be hard to choose, but I think I'd order the combo dinner with frog legs and turtle with hash browns and salad the first time out. I'd also have to sample the swamp cabbage (palm hearts?) I think. I wish that place was close to me. It sounds like just my kind of place. I'd be back for clam strips, shrimp, catfish, okra, fried green tomatoes, ... Mmmmm! I've had frog legs before, but not in a looong time. One time, during an exceptionally lean spell, we even cooked up the frog bodies. There's not a whole lot of meat, and it takes a long time to glean what there is off the bone, but as my dear departed grandma used to say, "It sure beats nothin'". I've never had turtle or anything but canned palm hearts. I found a video on harvesting swamp cabbage, but haven't watched it yet. Never heard it called that before. Hearts of palm has a foodie cachet; swamp cabbage, not so much. I made some good gator tail from one my husband's crew accidentally ran over on the way back from a job in Florida. They kept it on ice all the way back and gave it to him, because they knew I could cook. I occasionally send treats for them with my husband to the job site. It turned out quite tasty when I cooked it, but the few times I've had gator in restaurants, it's been pretty disappointing. Is that a bowl of collard greens I spy in the first photo of your meals? I think @Okanagancook is just jealous because she's on a diet. Lord knows dieting makes me crankier than a wet hen.

When we lived in Chula Vista, California, some of my earliest food memories are pizza at an Italian restaurant my mom would occasionally take us to. It had those straw covered wine bottles with candles in them and the now old-fashioned red and white tablecloths. The pizzaiola would hand flip and stretch the crusts in the air. I remember that while I liked toppings, she sometimes limited us to cheese pizza because of the cost, and that she bought some sturdy red plastic glasses from the restaurant for us to use at home. I also remember becoming indignant when a waiter ignored my request for no dressing on my salad, and had to confirm it with my mother. I was a precocious child. Even today my favorite food is pizza or rib eye steak, both of which must be executed perfectly to qualify for the category of favorite. Also from Chula Vista is the lemon trees and the apricot trees on the landlord's property we rented from and were allowed to eat all the fruit from the trees that we liked. I have never had better apricots. I usually don't even bother buying then in North Carolina, because the ones we get here are pale, pale ghosts of the sweet-tart perfumed specimens I cut my permanent teeth on. Later, I remember the pork, and chicken from my grandparents' small family farm in Louisiana that I helped to raise and butcher. It was all free range, and the best I'm ever likely to eat. One of my aunts raised rabbits in hutches for meat and we got our share of that in exchange for chicken and pork. Free range goat was usually purchased from another farm for pit barbecue along with a couple of our own hogs for the big Fourth of July family reunions. We usually had around 200 people in attendance and folks brought potluck dishes, some really good, some not so much. There was so much food, who cared that my aunt's potato salad looked like yellow mashed potatoes? Of course there were fresh vegetables from the garden too, but the great meats are what stick in my brain, and I'm not even much of a meat lover today, but that's probably because what I can usually afford are factory farmed excuses for meat. The ever present eggs were stellar too. One time Grandpa took a short trip into Texas and we came back with a pickup truck load of tree ripened peaches to sell from the truck bed parked under one of the ancient oak trees in the front yard. Us kids were allowed to eat all the fragrant, juicy peaches we wanted! My aunt took us one time to pick purple hull peas from a pick and pay field. These were memorable, and I just bought some frozen ones and have a stash in the freezer. They might even come up to the level of the memory. We shall see. Oh, and crawdad boils! We kids got them from the cattle ponds. In Vermont, I remember the sugar houses in early spring, and the great and relatively inexpensive maple syrup. I can still get maple syrup sometimes. I am hoarding a small bottle from Trader Joe's in the fridge now. There is no way to reproduce drinking the sparkling clear, slightly sweet and ice cold unprocessed sap from a collection bucket hanging under the tap of a majestic maple in the Vermont woods now. We had home grown veggies there too. There was a "hippie" goat farm down the road. I went to school with one of the daughters. We bought some of their excellent goat cheese sometimes. I didn't care for the milk though, when I tried it when sleeping over one night. It was a sad memory when one of the pregnant nannies got lost outside during a blizzard, gave birth, and her two kids lost the tips of their ears to frostbite. Could have been worse, though, I guess in that brutal climate, and I seemed to mind it more than the happy, playful little goatlings did. Baby goats are CUTE! In Toronto Ontario, there were a bunch of (good to me at the time) take out places near where I worked where I usually ate. One had the funny name of Takee-Outee, and I loved the stuff on sticks and other things I didn't have any experience with. I think that was my first experience with an eggroll. On my way back to the states, I stopped in Windsor, Canada for a week or so, and there was a smorgasbord restaurant just across the road from my motel. They had many, many dishes on the buffet, and dang they were good! I was in a food wonderland after my modest farm beginnings. My (really good) restaurant experience only starts after I got out on my own in Memphis. I didn't have much restaurant experience at all or culinary horizons beyond the "Betty Crocker Cookbook" until then. Sorry I can't remember the name of the restaurant, but I do remember some of the dishes I had there. There was a "Mobile Shrimp Dinner" that was shrimp done four ways, and I was always devising ways to get there and eat this dish. One day, at this same restaurant, the daily lunch special was spaghetti with shrimp in garlic butter. My young and ignorant self stood for several seconds on the sidewalk staring at the chalkboard near the entrance stunned by the genius of this chef, and of course, that is what I ordered. I had never dreamed of pasta and shrimp in the same dish. I had many memorable meals at the Hungry Fisherman, which was right over the Mississippi state line from Memphis. They specialized in all you can eat seafood. It's also where I had my virgin lobster experience. I was kind of insulted when the waitress pinned a paper bib around my neck, but I got with the program quickly after I started cracking into the beast and stuff went flying everywhere. One of the funnest parts was going out on the huge deck out back and feeding your leftover fries and hushpuppies to the ducks, geese, swans and koi that lived in and on/around the large pond/small lake that abutted the restaurant. They had floodlights aiming down so you could see the beautiful fish and birds. Another food memory that really sticks is Shakey's Pizza buffet, of which there were several in Memphis, including one handy to my first real job for lunch. I know it's pedestrian to some of you food connoisseurs, but let me tell you that for a young active woman with high metabolism, buffets were the bomb! The pizza, salad and fried chicken were all very good. There was live entertainment at night too, and beer. Well they probably had beer at lunch too, but I needed to keep that job.

Lovely meals everyone. This thread is such an inspiration/aspiration to me. We had one my husband's favorites tonight: kielbasa sausage. I don't like it nearly as much as he does, but not to worry, I had plenty of other dishes to enjoy. We had the rest of that old-fashioned crookneck yellow squash casserole, and it was even better after melding in the fridge for a couple days. I also roasted nectarines in a little olive oil, and made sure it was a whole one each this time, as a mere half leaves me wanting another. I boiled a little fresh broccoli in plenty of water too. Much later, as in second meal of the day later, I had a large serving of homemade banana pudding, more commonly known around these parts as nanner puddin'.

I like a lot of vegetables microwaved in glass covered with glass. Corn and sweet potatoes are almost always done this way. I also will nuke chopped carrot I'm going to add to fried rice or another stir fry for a few minutes before adding it, as I like it softer than it can get in a stir fry without scorching on its own or overcooking the other components. I've tried broccoli a few times too, and expected a good result. What I actually got was a little scorching on the tips of some florets, which seemed to transfer an acrid, bitter flavor throughout the entire dish. As huiray says, it has a bad smell and taste at least to me. Now I do broccoli in ample boiling water for about four minutes, on the advice of Marcella Hazan, and I much prefer it that way. I love some roasted cauliflower, and other veggies, but my bad experiences with nuked broccoli have prevented me from trying to roast it.

I'm all for introducing more flavor in our food. I love the muscadines I'm able to get now, but not for much longer. I also love Concords when I can get them, skins and all. I am not sure from the description, that I'd personally be a fan of the cotton candy variety, but more power to any grape breeder who is trying to bring more flavor to the table without resulting to introducing e-coli bacteria genes and such shenanigans.

I came back from the grocery store with some deli roast beef that I made cold subs out of that night. The beef was, to put it kindly, disappointing. I hate wasting food, so a couple days later tried to rescue the second half pound by making a cheese steak of sorts. First I caramelized onions, and cremini mushrooms, removed from the pan, and added in the beef which I had cut into strips about an inch and a half long by a quarter inch wide. I added garlic powder, black pepper, a little soy sauce, and a little Worcestershire sauce and stir fried over high heat very briefly. I piled the meat and veggies into deli French bread that had been hollowed out some in the middle and then grilled. I topped it with provolone cheese and popped into the hot oven for a few minutes and served alongside cantaloupe. These were far from the best cheese steaks I've ever had or made, but let me tell you, they were a lot better than the first time out with the sad beef. The next night we had hot Italian sausage with onions and peppers. The original plan was to serve it on buns, but I was getting tired of sandwiches and didn't want pasta either. I just served the sauteed veggies over the browned and beer braised sausage. The star of this meal to the point that I had to rack my brain to recall the protein I served with it yesterday, was a yellow crookneck squash casserole. It's an old-fashioned one with caramelized onions, canned cream of mushroom soup, mayonnaise, and topped with a layer of cheddar cheese. The recipe given to me by an elderly church lady called for a whole cup of mayo and Stove Top stuffing on top of the casserole. I liked her version enough to ask for the recipe, but I'm not putting a cup of mayo in anything unless I am serving a small army. I also used some of the French bread cubes and crumbs with melted butter, Knorr Caldo con sabor de Pollo chicken bouillon powder, parsley and sage instead of the Stove Top. This was really, really good. I think we had more cantaloupe, banana, muscadine grapes and garden tomatoes, but again, my memory is focused on the squash casserole. Tonight was a broiled pork blade steak with rosemary, salt and black pepper, baked sweet potatoes served in their split jacket with butter and salt, and I made two stir fry veggie side dishes. I caramelized some onion in butter first to split between the two dishes, and removed half from the pan to reserve for the second dish. Then, to the onion still in the hot pan, I added white corn that had been cut off its cob and some diced red bell pepper along with mo buttah. All this needed was a little salt. When that was done, I plated it on the plates I had heating on the hot stove top, which gets really hot when the top element electric broiler is going. I rinsed and wiped out the same skillet, added a little oil, and stir fried some thin sliced cremini mushrooms until they gave up their moisture and began to brown. Then I threw in about a quart of counter grown mung bean sprouts, the reserved onion, a half teaspoon of brown sugar, a little splash of white wine, a bigger splash of soy sauce and some black pepper. I stir fried like crazy for just a minute or two, and plated this. As usual, in my rush to get hot food to the table the garnish of toasted sesame oil was added to the bean sprout dish at the table, and I had temporarily forgotten the small but very flavorful sliced garden tomato on the cutting board on the counter.

I wanted to share a quote from author Anne Lamott from her book "Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life". It's about gardening and why we do it. It struck a chord with me, as a former serious gardener who now just dabbles a little. “The garden is one of the two great metaphors for humanity.The garden is about life and beauty and the impermanence of all living things.The garden is about feeding your children, providing food for the tribe.It’s part of an urgent territorial drive that we can probably trace back to animals storing food.It’s a competitive display mechanism, like having a prize bull, this greed for the best tomatoes and English tea roses.It’s about winning; about providing society with superior things; and about proving that you have taste, and good values, and you work hard.And what a wonderful relief, every so often, to know who the enemy is.Because in the garden, the enemy is everything: the aphids, the weather, time.And so you pour yourself into it, care so much, and see up close so much birth, and growth, and beauty, and danger, and triumph.And then everything dies anyway, right?But you just keep doing it.” ― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life Lest you get the impression that I am some lofty intellectual peering down at lesser beings from my ivory tower, this quote was first brought to my attention by binge watching the latest season of "Orange is the New Black". It's uncredited, but I thought it was beautiful, and researched more about it. I think the quote is particularly apropos this time of year. It also brought to mind Shelby's trials with the weather and marauding raccoons this year in particular. We all know she'll be back at it next spring and are wishing her better luck against "the enemy".

Very nice work on the Seahawks cake, and I'm glad your client was happy. I would guess you love decorating. When I am zoning on a task I enjoy, I have no real perception of time. That phenomenon is difficult enough to manage in a home kitchen with other people expecting food to be served at a reasonable hour. It would be very much harder in a professional setting, I imagine. That no-time-perception zone is also where I do my best work in the kitchen or out.

Your small clams with linguine looks so good, and I think beet greens just might be my very favorite green of all. @David Rossjust detailed how he makes his very nice-looking apple tarte tatin over here. Maybe you can get some ideas from it for your pineapple one. Here's a link to the post where he shows photos of his apple version.

Okay, we must agree to disagree, and I still luv ya and MC.

I can understand part of the appeal of these prepped meal kits in NYC after having seen some photos on here of teeny tiny kitchens with nonexistent counter space for those who would still like to cook at home. Also if you live in an area without a vehicle to transport groceries where public transportation is laughable or doesn't exist, like I do, then I can see a demand. Otherwise, not so much. I wish them well, though, and hope their efforts can be profitable and fill a niche for the small demographic they're aiming for. I would not invest in these ventures, personally, though.

Okanagancook, I would not dream of trying to tell you what to do with your tomatoes, but it kind of hurts me to see green maters going into the compost pile. Have you ever tried dusting them with flour and shallow frying them? Also I would take all my unripe tomatoes from the indeterminate vines inside at fall at the first forecast of frost. I had the luxury of a spare room where I set up sheets of plywood on cinder blocks, and laid out all the tomatoes. Some would ripen in the sunny room, and some would get used for fried green tomatoes. I'd turn them an inspect them for signs of going bad every couple days, and only then, did they get relegated to to the compost heap.

Yes, that does sound like quite the bargain! I want some too, so they're going on my TJ's list too.

Sorry to be obtuse, but what is "the old Gray Lady"? Okay, Googled, and found that's the nickname for the NY Times, but anyone know why? I'd never heard that before. Yeah, as a person who drove a used (well maintained) 1979 Chevy Malibu for 26 years, and still has cherished kitchen equipment from even earlier, I suspect I am not their target demographic either. My grocery carries sliced meats for stir fry, pre-marinated meats, cut fruits and veggies, but I never buy. They're more expensive, more perishable, and the one time I tried marinated pork ribs on sale, we could not even eat them! Coons were happy that night. Also the cut fruits and veggies seem to be frequent targets of recalls for food safety. The concept is not for me either. That said, I do buy thin sliced rib eye steak at the Korean-owned Pan-Asian grocery, and pork too. It's usually still frozen when I pick it up from their meat case. It takes very little time to thaw. It's also quite inexpensive which comforts my thrifty (cheapass) soul.

Good apples are starting to appear in our stores. I was attracted at first to the Honey Crisp, until I saw they were priced at $3.99 a pound. I settled for Gala at $1.49 and Bartlett pears at the same price. I also got some nectarines and some huge southeast peaches, a cantaloupe and more muscadines. I can't wait for Macintosh to start showing up. They are my favorite, and @Darienne I would be making the trek to your farm to meet you, your husband and your Rotties, and take some Macintosh off your hands if it were possible. We used to live pretty near an apple orchard in Vermont, and made unbaked pies in the fall to put in the deep freeze and pull out and cook all winter. The apples were as cheap as $2.00 a bushel back then for drops or "windfalls". We kept bushel baskets in the basement where they stayed good for months. @David Ross, Would you be kind enough to share more details on how you created your great-looking Tarte Tatin?

I hope you get the opportunity soon to make and eat one of your fabulous southern vegetable dinners I'm always so envious of. It sounds like you need it!