Margaret Pilgrim

Viet lettuce-wrapped beef (garlic, lemon grass, fish sauce), cilantro and mint; Jasmine rice.

Print and frame.

Mental lapses are indeed a different category.

Bingo! And those times you combined some mystery meat, a half cup of gravy, another of some kind of tomato sauce, some miscellaneous broth, and other spurious suspects for a one-timer dish. And it becomes the most requested and memorable plate you've ever created.

Good posts, Anna. You highlight how idiosyncratic "stuff" is. One person's crush is another's meh. And we're each happy with our collections.

More often it's when my fingers type there for their, your for you're, here for hear, then for than, than for from... Pesky digits!

"Scour the veg compartment Soup" 4 small zucchini, quarter head broccoli, half head romaine, handful of sorrel, quarter pound button mushrooms, an onion and two cloves garlic, can of chicken broth, equal amount water. Blitzed with Bamix, garnished with sour cream, guanciale, green onion. Complex and quite delish. And tomorrow morning's Compost Collection cheated of half a bucket!

It's kind of sad when good writers stoop to churning out drek, possibly to meet quotas and deadlines, maybe from fatigue. Humor is tenuous at best, embarrassing when ill-conceived. There are a handful of writers whom I have loved and followed in their early careers but whose late work I find heavy-handed, not amusing, even painful to read. IMHO, the quoted passage fits the latter.

I will suggest again my stupid-easy workaround. Not MCC based, but results in silky smooth melted cheese in sauce or soup. I simply add a bit of white vinegar to the sauce ingredients, heat and whisk -> total integration and a velvety cheese melt.

Condensed or evaporated milk? Sweet cheese sauce does not appeal to me.

Precisely. The discussion can get quite heated, particularly at a dinner party where the hostess presents a pear "claufouti" to claufouti traditionalists after a substantial amount of wine has been consumed. Only, of course, it they are all on close terms and such banter is expected.

When is a flaugnarde not a flaugnarde? When it's a claufouti. Although even the French willingly debate this.

Greens Pasta all'Amatriciana Now that I've found a convenient source, guanciale is a larder must-have. And saved rendered fat is wonderful add-on to subsequent meals.

The internet photos of this pattern all show a colored border that could be described as "gold" albeit not metallic or gold leaf. As does yours in your photo.

Still baching it so, since husband called a moratorium on them, I pulled a couple of mini lamb Tbones from the freezer. And baked a mini potato, and sauteed up some spinach in the lamb pan. Happy me.

Gag memories. Long, long ago we used to go gold panning with another couple. The other couple were not food oriented. As in, eat to live. But she was in charge of riverside lunches which consisted of a can of Vienna sausages and jar of Heinz chili sauce. I am told that canned Vienna sausage and grape jelly/Heinz chili sauce were chafing dish cocktail highlights at about the same time. We somehow never encountered them. They had to be better than these cold-out-of-the-can riparian lunches. At least I was able to stand my ground and insist that at night we go into town to the local "local" for martinis, steak and red.

I get the feeling that the separate sauce you envision is special and the reason for wanting to keep the cooking liquid simple. If so, the slight flavor the meat loses to the braising liquid will probably not be noticeable.

A neighbor in the country advised us that a rattlesnake (lair) smells of rotten potatoes. Should you ever need this info! I've fortunately never needed it.

Coming soon? Do kids today even recognize the Flintstones?

Spagheti=Os and dogs are questionable served hot, but COLD???? Defies definition.

liuz, I was in San Francisco in '67. "There" was often not as cool as it was made out to be. And you're right. A lot of minds got fried. And a lot of gawdawful food was eaten.

It's my sense and experience that the meat will flavor the water to a considerable extent, therefore by not using the cooking liquid you are forfeiting a lot of retained flavor. Think of boiling a chicken, and the resulting broth. Might you cook the meat in water, cool both, then remove meat and make your sauce by concentrating the cooking liquid? Or is time the issue here?

Tangential to rotuts' post, husband and I spent an entirely engrossing afternoon sitting on our room's deck overlooking Camden, ME harbor where a tall-ship was being outfitted for a week's sail. To borrow a local mover's slogan, truly "poetry in motion".

I immediately identified it as a sprouted spud. But then, I have experience with these since I'm sometimes slow to finish a sack of potatoes.

I'm trying to conceive of the planning snafu that caused this glitch. Certainly they have acquisition models ad infinitum.