SLB

It is *really* hot here in NYC. I may have mentioned somewhere, in teh context of summer cooking or possibly preserving, that I don't have A/C. Well. I found some cooked RG chickpeas in the freezer, though, which are currently thawing on top of my head. Efficiencies, etc.

I made the "Healthy Soup" yesterday, p 434. It was horrid! I should've known something was up with the "healthy"; but the real flag was the 2t salt, for 3 quarts of liquid, 3 lbs of chicken; and a pound of green vegetable (I used bok choy). Don't get me wrong, I'm gonna be able to eat it. But tricked out with copious olive oil (or, let's keep it real: bacon grease); cheese; and A WHOLE LOT MORE SALT.

I loveLoveLOVE Marsh Hen Mill's grits, all of the varieties. And I get that instant grits are genuinely inferior. But when camping you just can't cook stuff for that long -- even if you had the time, you don't usually want to commit the fuel that is necessary to simmer something slowly. That's why people usually eat instant oatmeal; I was trying to switch out for grits because I like them better and corn has a little protein in it. It sounds like I'm stuck with Quaker for this scenario.

In this Year of Our Lord 2025 -- are there still no exceptional instant grits??? Should I make and dehydrate my own GoodGrits? Asking for those of us who eat in the backcountry, and want grits every day instead of oatmeal . . . .

To report back on my corned eye-of-round -- I braised it at something like 200 degrees in the oven overnight over potatoes. Which is, I guess, a kinda-sorta SV. I don't remember what the braising liquid was, but I think it was leftover turkey broth that my neighbor gave me from last Christmas. It came out very tender and tasty, and made for good sandwiches as @rotuts promised; and even better hash, tricked out with frozen roasted hatch chilis. That said, I don't love the sweetness of the Ruhlman brine recipe, and made a note of this in the e-file. And I might not like Penzey's pickling spice either, too much of *something*. Maybe allspice? Anyway. It was good enough. But I'm going to have to play around next year.

@TdeV sorry to have been unclear. I mean that the EYB universe includes several online recipe sources, which apparently have been been indexed. If you include them in your personal library, your searches will produce results from those sites as well as your designated books and magazines. For example, my library includes 7 "blogs", like Smitten Kitchen, Food52, etc.

You can include preferred websites and blogs in your EYB library, as long as they are independently within their indexed base.

I don't SV; I may be the only person on here who does not. I was thinking, the old-timey pressure cooker. That may be a bad idea with such a lean cut.

Over thisaway, an eye of round just went into Ruhlman's brine recipe; pickling spice from Penzeys, fancy pink salt from "Eric Ripert and La Boite", which I remember walking a million blocks west to acquire pre-pandemic. I might cut the meat into chunks, it's 10 cm at the widest end. I hope it works out. The cattle farmer I buy beef from tops me off with cuts that he has in surplus because he knows I'll cook almost anything; I don't have the heart to tell him that I've had it with round. Also, turning down meat seems crazy . . . anyway. I hope this corn concept works out tasty.

Costco Harlem (NY, USA): 5 dozen in two flats, $22.49. Not organic, obviously.

I hated milk as a child and since school dictated the boundary of how long I could be made to sit at the table, the unfinished cup was placed in the fridge only to be put in front of me at breakfast the next morning. This was before ultra-pasteurized, I believe, and after a couple-three days, things started to smell and my brothers joined forces WITH OUR MOTHER to get me to drink it to relieve everyone the foul. You see why I live far away from home? Anyway. I also hate water chestnuts. I will not eat them at all, I behave like a child and pick them out and make a pile on the plate, even in nice restaurants. It would very much shame my aforementioned mother.

I irrationally dislike shrimp. I mean, I like shrimp, sort of. But I am afraid of them. Almost 30 years ago, I had a negative response to a shrimp in a pasta dish at a restaurant called Carrabbas, which was a promising new option in Montgomery, Alabama. The revolt was immediate, which is to say it wasn't even all that disgusting! But since then, any shrimp that has been cooked to any texture other than exactly perfect is gag-inducing. Which is unfortunate, because shrimp dishes can be quite good, and also shrimp is comparatively cheap. I've never eaten at a Carrabbas again, either. The other food I can't stand, a feeling that I think is genuinely rational unlike my shrimp aversion, is jelly donuts. I don't get it at ALL! I can work with a lemon curd donut, but even then I usually discard 2/3 of the lemon curd. But cold jelly by the gob? Sweet surrounded by sweet sprinkled with more sweet? And at least here in the United States -- they are GIANT-size!! Are there grownups out here who can really eat such a thing?

Chile'. I am in the "LITE" version of the club, which was on offer for, like 90 seconds, a few years ago. And it's still more carbs than I really need. Yes, @Laurentius, the fiber helps. But only so much. It turns out that "healthy" is a spectrum, not a binary. **Especially if your carb load includes [non-negotiable] wine.

Oh, I know about bluskillet beauty. They lost me with that lottery, though. I can't put myself through that, month in and month out.

The strawberries are done this way, up through Step 4 on the actual recipe: https://foodinjars.com/recipe/urban-preserving-small-batch-strawberry-vanilla-jam/ I put them in the pan, slowly melt the sugar, and cook until the strawberries are soft. Then drain, sometimes for days. Then into the dehydrator. The leftover syrup is great in cocktails. Also? I have been known to leave it in the fridge for a year and then use it again to simmer/candy the new strawberries. Possibly this is gross.