We had leftover Tuscan bread that my gf served with her Lemony Shrimp and White Bean Stew. So, I needed a way to use up the bread. I stopped to buy rhubarb at the farm market, but when the proprietress saw me walk in she grabbed a cardboard crate and covered up the rhubarb. My gf set me up! End of rhubarb season for me.
Instead I bought potatoes to make air fryer fries. Served them with grilled cheese and barbecued turkey sammiches. Good dinner!
The other night my gf convinced me to go to a nearby red neck bar/restaurant for drinks and dinner. It is a 10 minute walk from our house, which is one reason we’ve never gone. The redneck part is the other reason.
Turns out they have decent beer options, so we had a few. The walking home part was looking good. We looked over the menu and I ordered a steak salad with blue cheese dressing.
Worst steak salad ever!!! The lettuce was an accumulation of the parts of a head of lettuce that usually gets thrown out. There was a pinch of shredded cheese. I assumed they used the last bit in a bag of shredded cheese and then forgot to add more; no was was it intentional. The steak was an over cooked then crumbled steakumm. Haven’t seen a steakumm in a restaurant in decades! I was actually shocked.
The blue cheese dressing was actually pretty good.
Walking home after a few more beers, I told my gf my salad was my worst meal in 2024 so far, and it would be surprising if another meal could be worse.
I’m cheating slightly as this is not dinner tonight, but dinner for some forthcoming night. While looking for something else at the supermarket I happened to notice a jar of vindaloo curry sauce that was labeled as “very spicy”. Perfect! Got a package of fresh garlic and rosemary seasoned lamb chops and lamb curry will soon be in the offing! Even the much-vaunted Pusateri’s is now making their prepared curry with chicken instead of lamb, so a real lamb curry will be a treat! I forgot to get mango chutney but to hell with it – I’ll counteract the spiciness with a nice Cabernet!
We had what was supposed to be chicken cordon bleu tonight - our local grocery store is being updated and they have some new ready meals, where you buy something premade and bake it at home. I like chicken cordon bleu, so I decided to try it.
Nope nope nope. First, the cooking instructions were wrong - 375F for 50 minutes was about 15 minutes too long, so the chicken was tough and dry. Also, cordon bleu is supposed to have a slice of ham and some cheese in the middle. There was NO CHEESE even though it says right on the label there is.
Fortunately everything else was fine - I made rumbledethumps and snap peas for sides, and we still have fresh blueberries from the bushes outside, but man. That chicken was a real bummer.
How disappointing!
Sunday night was Japanese chicken curry with brown rice and a salad.
Tonight I picked up a takeout slice of veggie pizza. I used enough crushed red pepper flakes that I probably could have called it another vegetable.
I was still in a salad mood after the weekend’s disappointment, so I made Big Salads (Seinfeld nod).
Big Salads are a way I use up produce that needs used up, plus capers.
My gf told me she was making dessert. It consisted of vanilla ice cream, butter toasted crushed pecans, and chocolate sauce. Delicious.
Country time strawberry lemonade and vodka to drink.
Night before last I made fried catfish, dirty rice, and corn on the cob, with sliced tomatoes. I must have eaten late before bedtime, or my meds messed with my tummy but I got sick first thing in the morning.
So last night I made homemade chicken soup and ate early, to make sure I was feeling ok. It was delicious! I added orzo instead of noodles.
I don’t know what I’m making tonight just yet.
On the menu tonight at Chez Tibby, we’ve got a feast that’ll make anyone’s taste buds do the cha-cha: beer-battered cod, beer-battered onion rings, cocktail shrimp, coleslaw, hushpuppies, tartar sauce, and cocktail sauce—all homemade and guaranteed to make me forget all about that diet.
Beer batter fried foods are so simple to make—just flour, seasoning, baking soda, and beer. And let’s be honest, any beer that doesn’t go in the batter ends up in my belly. Cheers to multitasking! 
If you lived next door I’d come right over, invited or not! 
All of those are among my faves, though none have ever been homemade (unless you count cocktail sauce made with ketchup, hot horseradish, and a touch of Lao Gan Ma Spicy Chili Crisp as “homemade”). And IMHO coleslaw is an ideal side for fish’n’chips, or in your case, fish’n’rings.
Having a Big Salad tonight myself. The pre-made Cobb salad came with just half a hardboiled egg, so I hardboiled two more last night and will add one of them, so a Cobb salad with all the usual ingredients plus three halves of hardboiled egg. Eggs will be removed, salad tossed in ranch dressing, then eggs added back.
I may or may not have room for a hot roast beef sub with melted white cheddar and Grey Poupon Dijon later on. Didn’t get up until very late today so that may be a great midnight snack. Would go well with the last of the Australian Cabernet-Shiraz.
I was supposed to have a doctor’s appointment late today, so hadn’t made any specific plans for dinner. Then the office called and said they needed to reschedule - this is the second time they’ve done this. Get it together, people!
This made dinner turn out to be Hebrew National hot dogs, more rumbledethumps, and some clementines. For dessert there were cookies that I accidently invented (by f’ing up the recipe - I only had enough chocolate to make a half recipe of this particular cookie, but had a brain fart and added the full amount of flour - oops). They’re like a soft mocha flavored biscotti - pretty good dipped in port, and I’m sure they’ll work with coffee, churro chocolate and crumbled over vanilla ice cream. Sometimes dumbass mistakes work out.
Shrimp tacos and an IPA.
Sorry, had I read your reply before dinner, I’d have saved you some.
I’ve decided to put beer-battered cod & onion rings on my weekly menu rotation (instead of just occasionally). Kroger delivery, my go-to grocery store, sells 8 oz cod fillets for $5, and I can get two meals out of that…because my appetite has diminished with age, and the beer-battered 4 oz portions puff up to giant size when you add a good amount of baking soda to the batter.
Interestingly, frozen grocery store fish is just as good, if not better, than the fish they display fresh. The display fish is typically thawed from fish frozen on the boat. It might then be mishandled or left unfrozen too long, making it inferior. However, their frozen fish stays frozen from the boat until you thaw it. I never buy display fresh fish.
Of course, nothing beats fish bought at the dock, or better still, caught by yourself and cooked soon after. I miss my days of fishing. We don’t have cod around these parts, but I caught plenty of redfish, whiting, bluefish (patriotic), flounder, snook, sheepshead, sea trout, mackerel, shrimp, and other assorted marine critters back in the day.
And, sure, baked, poached, or raw fish is nice and healthy once in a while, but nothing beats fried!
BTW, your cocktail sauce sounds good to me.
The prepared battered fish I buy (leaning as usual to ready-made stuff) is beer-battered haddock, which I believe is more traditional for fish & chips. You might try that for a change. The only battered fish I’ve prepared myself in recent memory is the excellent crispy potato-flake pickerel recipe posted earlier by @swampspruce. That stuff is wonderful and it doesn’t necessarily have to be pickerel – cod or haddock works well, too.
The most wonderful fish & chips I’ve had in the world was in a small resort town on the shore of northern Georgian Bay, served out of a converted old school bus serving as a kind of non-mobile food truck, with the fishing boats that supplied it docked literally right there beside the place. Word soon got around and every day of every summer there were lineups, but the wait was worth it!
It’s winter, time for hearty meals. I went shopping for lambs liver and came home with Osso Bucco.
Coated the meat with seasoned flour, left to set. Cut up onion, carrots and celery (the holey trinity) then browned the meat in the French Pan and remove. Add some more EVOO then sauté the veges with some dried garlic until the onions are soft. Tip some flour in and stir till coated then 2 cups of white wine, 2 cups of chicken stock and a tin of diced tomatoes.
Add a couple of Bay leaves and some Thyme, salt and pepper, put the meat back in, lid on and simmer for 4 hours. Serve with mash spuds and steamed veges.
(The first dinner I prepared for my gf was Osso Bucco and it was amazing. It was also funny, because I used veal shanks and turns out she hadn’t eaten veal in decades.)
Last night was Jerked Chicken on the grill. Walkerswood Jamaican Jerk Seasoning came through again.
Made an interesting “salad” also. Combined leftover sushi rice with chickpeas, crushed pineapple, ponzu sauce, seasoned rice vinegar, etc. Sauvignon Blanc to drink. It took an atrocious volume of wine to put out the Jerk fires. 
First, I’m jealous, I can’t eat rice anymore (diabetes), and home is the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, we ate rice at every meal.
Second, I have to watch how late I eat, as well, apparently my meds cause a bit of gastroparesis. Idf I eat too late, or don’t get up and do some serious walking around after supper, it’ll sit in my stomach all night, and reappear in the morning.
Supper this week (I cook a bit thing on the weekends, so I don’t have to cook during the week) has been pulled pork on pretzel slider buns, topped with a slice of sweet onion and homemade coleslaw.
I have diabetes, too. 
I’m not always compliant, but I try… mostly.
Love it!
Rare/medium rare burger topped with blue cheese and sauteed mushrooms, with cole slaw and an IPA.
Made an Indian dinner. First, I made my own paneer. No local Indian markets, but my homemade turned out great.
Made palak paneer and Chana masala. Made the Chana extra spicy. My gf made fun of my meat free meal (ina good way). Served with Southern Tier 2X IPA.
@needscoffee: I see a rare blue cheese and shroom burger in my future!