On 2/15/2023 at 2:03 PM, Kim Shook said:Crap. I’m ready to un-alive myself (as they say on the Instagram 😄). I am SO incredibly far behind on this thread due to health and other issues and in the last couple of days, I got within FIVE PAGES of being all caught up. I took a break last night to cook dinner and have a nice evening with my Valentine and woke up this morning to find that my *&**&& computer closed down WORD on me. It auto-saved my notes, but not up to the point I quit. Oddly, it saved them only up to day before yesterday. Grrrrr. Being so far behind and having such a LONG recitation of meals, I won’t comment on much, but please know I’ve loved perusing all of y’all’s wonderful meals.
@Shelby – I will have to look for that boudin brand at Walmart – less spicy sounds really good to me. And brava on those roast potatoes. They look absolutely perfect!
@Raamo – sorry to hear about that second infection just as you’re exiting COVID! Hope you are now completely better.
@RWood – those baby blooming onions! Wow. I love cippolini onions and those look amazing.
@Dejah – your SIL sounds like me some years ago – I only wanted the crispy stuff. Now I love it all – rice noodle crepes are a favorite.
Going WAY back – January 27th was Jessica’s Birthday. We were supposed to have a big shrimp themed dinner that night with her closest cousin and then go up to Washington for a food and museum weekend. I ended up not being able to walk due to cartilage problems in one knee and I also was starting a terrible head cold or upper respiratory something. They wouldn’t go without me, so we are postponing the dinner and the trip until I’m better. We still needed a somewhat celebratory dinner and Jessica chose pho at a new favorite place. Pork wontons:
Shrimp spring rolls:
Banh Khot:
My seafood fried rice:
Jessica’s seafood pho:
Mr. Kim’s pho tai chin (steak and brisket):
I was still feeling awful at the end of January, but I was trying to put something decent on the table. I pulled some stuff out that I’d stocked in the freezer to try out. It was a mixed bag. Lidl orange chicken:
The chicken was ok, but the orange sauce was tasteless. Also from Lidl, fried rice:
This was actually pretty good and very easy to make – just tossed in a sauté pan frozen and cooked until hot. I added some soy and white pepper and some leftover protein wouldn’t have gone amiss. I will buy more of this to have on hand.
Bibigo frozen mandu:
Trader Joe’s green onion pancakes and some shrimp spring rolls that Mr. Kim picked up on his way home:
Plate:
A few nights later was breakfast for dinner:
Buckwheat pancakes, mandarin oranges, mini quiche (frozen), and sage sausage.
Jessica made dinner a couple of nights. This one was soup:
Corn chowder w/ paprika oil, garlic toast, and crudité. The soup was wonderful.
One of my efforts:
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Salad, grilled cheese, and leftover rice mix.
Another one of Jessica’s meals. She made the entire thing and did a great job. Hoisin glazed pork loin:
This was amazingly tender. She actually made this last night, but it ended up being so late that we decided to put this dinner off until tonight. This was cooked to 140F last night and reheated at 250F for about 45 minutes until it reached 120F. This is a Cook’s Illustrated method that I found for reheating whole roasts and it worked amazingly well. She also served Blistered Soy Miso Sugar Snaps:
They look a little floppy in the picture but were actually nicely crisp and a bit charred.
Brussel sprout and broccoli slaw:
Slaw is a bit of a misnomer – this was more of a stir fry with a soy-based sauce.
Honey Garlic potatoes:
These are a work-in-progress. She got the recipe from some youtuber she follows. They are supposed to be crisp with a sticky glaze, but they were just swimming in liquid, as you can see. They tasted very good, though so she’s going to make some adjustments and try again.
Napa salad topped with toasted almonds and ramen noodles and dressed with a garlic vinaigrette:
Everything was very, very good. The meal was a little soy heavy, though. Almost every dish had the same flavor elements of soy, garlic, honey. And, of course, you ended up with a bit of a salt overload. But the bottom line is that each dish was pretty much successful.
A few nights ago (I’m definitely much better):
Honey-mustard chicken, rice, and miso sugar snaps. With a pita:
The chicken was really good cut up and stuffed into the pita!
On Sunday dinner was Super Bowl goodies. Sweet Piggies:
Little pigs in a blanket cooked in a brown sugar and honey butter sauce. Jessica’s pork and shrimp egg rolls:
She did an amazing job – especially considering these were her first try at them. She used the leftover Brussels sprout and broccoli “slaw” from the other night.
Crudité and green onion dip:
A very wet, but very tasty Buffalo chicken dip:
Jessica’s Crab Rangoon dip/casserole with egg roll wrapper chips:
Plate:
There were also slow cooker meatballs which I forgot until we were too full to eat any! @racheld says that with any major meal there is always one “forgotten thing”. This time it was the meatballs.
Valentine’s dinner was SV filet mignon w/ a pan sauce and béarnaise, chili-glazed shrimp(made with sweet chili sauce), roasted cauliflower, baked potatoes, crusty bread, and salad. There was also a purchased crème brûlée cheesecake, but we were too full to even think about that. Steaks were SV at 130.5 for 2 hours. Out of the water bath:
Seared:
Perfect doneness for us. Plate:
Salad and bread:
I discovered a new (to me) market and went yesterday to shop for Mr. Kim’s Valentine’s day gifts. It’s called Europa Market & Deli and it stocks lots of German and eastern European goods. Fully stocked deli, flown-in NY bagels and delicious sounding sandwiches and soups. They also had leberkase which @Duvel has me obsessed with. For Mr. Kim, I got D’Amour salami (heart shaped!!), cocktail pork sticks, cook cheese (from what I could discover it’s just a cheese sauce that you can dip things in), eucalyptus candy, and some ginger-strawberry tea:
The leberkase is most likely just for me – unless I can convince Mr. Kim its pate 😄.
Kim, I envy the choices you have for eating out. In our town there is very bad Chinese, quite a few pizza places and a few Indian places, of which one is okay. We do have a falafel/shwarma place nearby which is always my choice but only for take out, as there are just a few plastic tables and chairs so not a lot of ambience. The food is quite good though not my husband's first choice. It's where I order from on the odd occaision that I am on my own.
