chord

Baked eggs with ham, swiss, and sage.

Stir-fried shrimp and bok choy.

Dry-rubbed country-style boneless ribs and pearl couscous with spinach. This was my first time cooking pork with the immersion circulator and my first really long cook (155 F for 21 hours). The pork turned out beautifully, I'll definitely have to make this again.

Out-of-focus photo of my lunch. Carrot and roasted red pepper soup with cornbread.

Panko baked cauliflower with avocado-tahini dip, corn on the cob, and a green salad

This hardly compares to some of the great deals I've seen posted, but I found a plastic beaker for 75¢ at a local thrift store. When I moved recently, one of the things that broke was my immersion blender cup. The Braun replacement parts website was asking something like $15 with s/h for a new cup. Finding this one means that I can make mayo again. The sides flare out, so it holds quite a bit more volume than the old one, but because the base has the same diameter it still works for the Serious Eats 2-minute mayo recipe.

Bratwurst and stir-fried spicy green vegetables

I found the Camaronazo in the Mexican foods aisle at a nearby supermarket. It's pretty good, although the shrimp flavor isn't very forward. It's bottled in the U.S. and has HFCS, so I suspect it's more Mexican-American than truly Mexican. I've also used it for micheladas.

A relatively elaborate breakfast for me. Eggs in puff pastry Potato and shallot home fries Avocado Bloody Mary made with Tito's and Camaronazo (the latter is apparently some kind of shrimp version of Clamato)

Shrimp and rice vermicelli stir-fry.

Looks like a Mac Professional with some of the writing on the blade worn away. Pic from Amazon.

Leftovers. I puréed my bean soup and topped it with the carrot top pesto I made the other day. Served with a side of cheese toast.

Bean and vegetable soup. This was an opportunity to clean out my fridge, so there's a little bit of everything in there: onions, garlic, carrots, portobellos, celery, radishes, cilantro, spinach, parsley, roasted chiles, leftover wine and probably some other things I've forgotten. It was good though, the peppers gave it some heat.

Tonight was a vegan dinner party with old college friends. The side dishes turned out pretty nice--roast potatoes and sous-vide carrots. I'm annoyed because I became inattentive and burned the main course, a mushroom Wellington. Still it tasted good if you turned it on it's side so you couldn't see the burned top. Dessert was strawberry plum crumbles served with vegan ice cream.

In the lunch thread, I mentioned that I made a carrot top and pistachio pesto, and @Shelby suggested I post the pesto cube picture here. I never really thought of pesto as a preserve, but I guess it is. Canning is one thing I've always been a little intimidated by, but I hope to try it soon. Succeed or fail, I'll post my results here.

I bought some carrots this morning that were 1/3 root and 2/3 greens. I didn't want to waste the tops so I made a carrot top and pistachio pesto, and I've reserved the stems for stock. For lunch, I made a small pesto and potato frittata, along with some toasted store-bought sourdough. There's still plenty of pesto left over . I'll be working my way through it for a while.

Shrimp and red lentils

After moving half way across the country, I'm rebuilding my liquor cabinet from scratch. So far, I have gin, vodka, and bourbon. (And dry vermouth, I guess.) My first cocktail in the new apartment is a classic martini, garnished with two olives and served in a sherry glass.

Braised citrus chicken and roasted vegetables (potatoes, zucchini, and radishes).

SV strip steak with chile-lime corn and braised cabbage

Shrimp cocktail and a salad (chickpeas, carrots, radish greens, and red cabbage)

It's not the prettiest plate of food I've ever made, but it tasted good. Chicken thighs with cabbage and potatoes. The thighs were sous-vided from frozen at 165 F for 2 hours, 10 minutes, and then crisped in a carbon steel pan.

Rigatoni with Shrimp, Spinach, Chickpeas, and Tomatoes As I mentioned in my intro thread, I just moved into my new apartment and this is the first real dish I've cooked here. The shrimp was sous-vided (135 F @42 min from frozen). That is another first for me, my first sous-vide attempt with the Joule that I bought recently. I'm pretty impressed. The texture was perfect and they tasted "extra-shrimpy" just like Kenji said they would.

I've been lurking on eGullet for almost as long as the site has been around, but for one reason or another I never signed up. Now I'm here. Recently I made a lot of changes in my life--I've retired from my day job and moved halfway across the country to start anew. One of my goals is to focus more on cooking instead of just eating takeout. I'm a pretty decent home cook, but I want to continue to improve and expand my repertoire. In fact, I just bought a Joule during the recent sale, so I'm forward to experimenting with sous vide.