Ha! Shibby, that list is just some of the stuff I’ve managed to wedge into my postage stamp sized kitchen. But let’s look over this list of yours. I’ve done the seafood and cream, so buh-bye. Canned sketti sauce?! I think not. My inner child is Martha Stewart’s even pickier evil twin and I’ve only recently been able to muzzle her enough to buy tomato paste. Yes, I need therapy. This is news?
Now that salmon recipe is looking mighty intruiging. I drank the last of my white wine this weekend, unless you count the Pouilly Fuisse lurking in the back o’ the pantry. I wonder how that would be teamed up with the prosciutto and peas? Can I ixnay the onions? I don’t like onions. Good, no onions. Well, maybe if I mince some reeeeally small. Gah! I have no peas of any sort! Damn you Shibby, you give me drool worthy suggestions for stuff I don’t have. Eeevil.
Which makes me think of gardening, because what’s better than fresh peas? But I’m going to try my hand at growing some beets this year. I bought a packet of those cool multi-colored beets that have stripey rings inside. No black pumpkins.
Ahh, yes! The feeling you get when you take your young daughter to the wave pool for a midwinter swim (well, splash) and when you come back out your wet hair and (in my case) beard freeze!
On a similar note, -20°C two weeks ago, +10°C last week, -25°C yesterday. Just a typical Ottawa winter.
My now older daughter has invited Mrs B and me to dinner on her new dining room table in her new apartment, on condition that I send her my pot roast recipe so she can cook pot roast for us. I don’t know. Should I reveal the secret of my pot roast success, known only to me, God, and the readers of The Canadian Classic Cookbook in return for a free meal? Oh, the dilemma!
And Swampbear, there is no decent store-bought spaghetti sauce. The only spaghetti sauce fit for consumption is home-made and thick enough to stand the spoon up in! (I need to make me some spaghetti sauce.)
Okay, use the tomato paste, some fresh roma tomatoes, and lots of garlic to make a spaghetti sauce, then add the browned lamb meat. It is very tasty. As to the jarred tomato sauce, especially with family to cook for, I find it’s easier to make the stuff taste good then just whip up fresh sauce, especially after a 12 hour or more day at the office. I add garlic, spices, etc., and it tastes just fine. Maybe a splash or two of a nice red wine.
Try the salmon recipe, or use that as a start and adjust as needed. That’s how I use most recipes anyway. Usually I just create. As for the pasta, prosciutto and peas, the onion’s not an absolute requirement. But I find that carmelized onions are quite tolerable. And I hated onions (and mushrooms) as a kid. But I don’t know that I would add wine to the sauce. The wine’s more for drinking. It’s not really a saucy dish, the pasta soaks up most of the juices so it’s sort of dry, but not bad dry. C’mon over and I’ll make it for you sometime. Which part of the world are you in, anyway? Are you one of those PNW Dopers? If so, maybe I’ll come out there and cook for you all.
Hands off Kalley, he’s going to come cook for my bountiful charms! Yes, Shibby, I’m in the PNW if by PNW you mean BFE. Or DSW (desert southwest, don’tchaknow). But you won’t mind at all once I open the door and I’m wearing my transparent pink/UPS guy harrassing tanktop. Woo woo!
And sure we’d drink the white wine after I used some of it to make the salmon with white wine butter sauce. It’ll make you forget the peas don’t have a bunch of onions or maybe even mushrooms. Because mushrooms are wonderful. How could you have not liked them? You’re reformed now right? I mean, look this chantarelle in the face and tell it it’s no good. See? Can’t be done. Pure mushroomy goodness.
But it all has to wait until maybe friday because I have to go buy peas. For now I’m making chocolate shortbread. Cook’s Illustrated says it’s dutch processed cocoa that makes it super good. I love that magazine, it’s like Consumer Report for food.
Sorry, Ashes, I called dibs first! Darlin’, when an offer like that comes along, you just don’t lollygag around before you accept it. You got to jump on it right away. Shibb is cooking for me. So there!
But if you want to come to my house, maybe he’ll make enough for you, too.
I made fudge tonight. But only because the last time I made it, I didn’t let it boil at a roil long enough, so it tasted okay, but the texture wasn’t right. Just out of the fridge, it was hard as a rock, but then when it warmed up a bit, it didn’t get creamy and rich, it just got less hard. Not grainy, I haven’t made grainy fudge since Hector was a boy, just lacking in what I consider to be the ideal mouth-feel for fudge.
It roiled boiled the right amount of time–smooth, creamy and rich. Why is fudge so much better than any other type of chocolate?
Hey, girls, shibb lives only a coupla hours away from me so I bet I coult tempt him to my place first cause he could zip over, cook, enjoy the numerous diversions of Mickeyville and be home before Mrs. shibb even knew he was gone. Or he could bring Mrs. shibb, that’d be good, too! shibb, Mr. Anachi’s HDTV is being delivered today and the HDTV cable will be hooked up Saturday morning. I’m just sayin’…
Mmmmmmmm, fudge. Is there anything more divine? Is it hard to make, kalley? Not that I should be tempting myself with fudge. Too many fat grams, and then I’d be flossing forever.
I’ve discovered a culinary secret. I like using those little spice grinders to flavor stuff, especially the garlic-pepper one. Only after you open the durn things, they clog easily, probably from moisture. Anyhoo, I tried putting them in the freezer so they’d stay grindable. Worked like a charm! The burgers I made last night were so yummy, they didn’t even need condiments.
Bookkeeper (maybe we’ll call you Bookie) it was Shibb not me who suggested store boughten sketti sauce. I would never suggest such an abomination myself. Nope. Not me. *
The waffles and bacon I had for supper last night were wonderful. Aftewards I had a nice long soak in the hot tub. Alone. How pitiful.
Ashes[sup]2[/sup] beets are icky. Unless they’re a part of something else. By themselves, ick! ick! ick! In borscht or some other dish they are good. My Russian friends make a salad that has beets, potatoes, dill pickles, eggs and other stuff in it that is waaaaaaaaay yum. Just beets sittin’ all alone on a plate are ick!
*Bookie doesn’t need to know about those three jars of Ragu in my pantry. No need to let that be known.
Wow, hot Doper wimmins fightin’ over my mad cookin’ skillz. I must be dreaming.
I love mushrooms now. My problem was, I believe, that when I was a kid my parents (my mom, mostly) cooked nasty stuff, and this nasty stuff was often cream of mushroom soup or mushrooms from a jar. What I’ve since learned is that I like fresh mushrooms, or at least mushrooms that were recently fresh but have since been grilled, sauteed, stir-fried, etc. I especially love more esoteric mushrooms like chantarelles, morels, steinpilz (hee hee), those skinny little white mushrooms whose name I can’t quite remember, etc.
Aw, don’t pick on beets! They are lovely little round roots that are “very low in Saturated Fat and Cholesterol. [they are] also a good source of Dietary Fiber, Vitamin C, Iron, Magnesium and Potassium, and a very good source of Folate and Manganese.” Vitamins, folks, are much better than fat grams and you never need to floss them.
Beets taste like dirt. Even my sister says so, someone who doesn’t agree with me on anything else.
I cooked pierogies and kielbasa last night. I get special shipments from the old Polish ladies that live in Pittsburgh, 'cause you can’t get the real stuff down here. The Factotrix was stuck in the snow and ice until about 8 pm last night, so it was either have sumptin ready for her when she got in, or make her cook instead of sitting down and decompressing after her 3 hour drive to cover 20 miles. Hey, I know what’s right and what’s wrong.
Of course I got the kielbasa stuck between my teethus, but there was a happy ending to it - I flossed.
Hey! Beets are scrumptious good. Especially if you grow them and eat them right away. Then they’re good plain even. Otherwise yes swampy, you’ve got to make them an ingredient. Plus merrily, MY beets will be multicolored orange and yellow and pink and red – stripes! Their color is fine as long as they don’t touch the macaroni and cheese. Gah! Hot and cold touching food, plus accidental coloration!
Are the skinny mushrooms straw mushrooms Shibby (or maybe those are the little black and tan ones)? That’s what they were called at the restaurant where I ate some. In a salad with dandelion greens and a lovely vinaigrette. Goodness, lunch is a million years away. Until you get here, I will have to spend my time arranging my lovely self here upon the divan. That naughty transparent, clingy pink top I bought by mistake, looks so nice with these little white shorts (take that Kalley).
I desperately need book recommendations. As soon as I finish these last two, I will be completely out. I’m a little afraid, somebody hold me.
Sorry to revive a topic that died yesterday, but this is important people, especially considering all the talk of eating chili. My bf’s family has a theory on this: Cone Theory. When out in public, say walking around a store, and you feel the need, it is imperative that you consider cone theory. See if you’re walking forward, the smell is going to dissipate behind you in a cone. The faster you’re walking, the longer and skinnier the cone. The slower, the shorter and fatter. Therefore, if there is anyone behind you, first, make sure that it’s not someone you know, and second, make sure that the person you intend to blame (i.e. for those of us girls, the big burly looking guy) is in such a position that any other person would assume it is from his cone (i.e. the cones must intersect). Yes, we have spent time discussing this, why?
Oh, and as for food, I used up the last of the basil I was growing to make a particularly devine pesto last night. Lots of garlic, some leeks 'cause I had them on hand, and plenty of basil and olive oil. Now I’m sorry the basil’s gone, but it didn’t seem to like the wintery conditions (There’s ice building up on the inside of my windows… ah, winter in the Northeast.) so it had to be used up.
Hey, you leave ACBG outta this. Course he’d be proud to claim the fart cause he’s kinda weird like that. I mean, he’ll let one go, even in public and say “That felt soooooooooo gooooooood!”
As Ashes[sup]2[/sup] does her best Blanche DuBois… The kind of mushrooms I was thinking of were Enoki mushrooms. Straw mushrooms are those little stout ones you’re talking about (Mrs Shibb doesn’t like them because she thinks they look vaguely pornographic, so now we sometimes refer to these as “penis-head 'shrooms”).
I respect marriage too much to discuss shear pink tops and shorts, let alone a divan, with a married man! Not naming any names or anything. Of course, some of us have such obvious charms that we needn’t talk about arranging ourselves–we are always a treat for the senses.
Plus, I have been known to actually watch hockey, and have even been to a game. taxi78cab, I think I can safely say that swampy’s ACBG would be proud as all get out to claim your farts—think of the prestige: he farts in Georgia, but it smells in NY.
Too many fat grams, and then I’d be flossing forever.