What's Cooking (Take Four)

[Jenise]

Today I'm making that silly pot roast--the Mississippi Pot Roast. And I'm going to do the original recipe with the packets. The surprise factor upon reveal is just irresistable to me. I'm going to prepare it at home then drive it over to my brother's home where I'm going to serve it in chunks, not shredded, on pan-toasted thick slices of french bread baguette. A starter course will be steamed purple asparagus under shrimp marinated in a white truffle vinaigrette.

Dried basil is not the same as fresh, but Penzey's French basil is very peppery which gives it a purpose all its own.

Glad to see you say that. I like Penzey's French basil, too; it's really quite a bit better than any other dried basil I have found.

Yesterday I used the 10 velociraptor chiles and 5 habaneros in my latest batch of Inner Beauty hot sauce. This afternoon I'll be making South Carolina-style mustard-based barbecue sauce. Tonight will be soup and yogurt again. I'm hoping that tomorrow night I can resume eating the Moroccan chicken tagine and Thai chicken and fresh turmeric soup that I had to put on hold due to the biopsy. It will be that tagine if I do--I'm souped out at the moment.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Glad to see you say that. I like Penzey's French basil, too; it's really quite a bit better than any other dried basil I have found.

Yay, you too! I accidentally ordered it once upon a time intending to get the California one--after all I am a California girl!--and I've never looked back. That peppery quality has made it one of the most important dried herbs in my collection. And it makes many a winter tomato salad very enjoyable.

My wife returned from a 10 day trip yesterday and it was unseasonably cool, so I made meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and roasted brussels sprouts for supper last night.

I usually have a year-round supply of fresh basil, if not in my herb tub, then a plant at my sink by the window. I cannot resist trying a new product, so I ordered the French Basil... the shipping cost more than the jar!!

Hey Penzeys, come to Redding; we need one here. We have lots of great cooks and chefs!

I usually have a year-round supply of fresh basil, if not in my herb tub, then a plant at my sink by the window. I cannot resist trying a new product, so I ordered the French Basil... the shipping cost more than the jar!!

Hey Penzeys, come to Redding; we need one here. We have lots of great cooks and chefs!

We had a Penzey's show up here in Albuquerque several years ago. For some reason, it lasted only a few months.

The fresh basil I mainly use is Thai basil (horapa in Thai). Fortunately my grocery store now has it one of its standard produce items always in stock.

-Paul W.

We didn't get around to figuring out supper last night until around 6:00 and I didn't want to go to the store, so I made a pantry dish of pasta with tuna, onions, capers, and lemon. Unfortunately, the only pasta we had was bucatini, which isn't the best for this. It was still pretty good, though.

We had a Penzey's show up here in Albuquerque several years ago. For some reason, it lasted only a few months.

It's probably too chili for them there.

I made chicken piccata for supper tonight, basing it on a Daniel Gritzer recipe on Serious Eats. He calls for taking the pounded-thin chicken cutlets, dredging them in flour, egg, and panko, and then frying them. We had a dinner guest tonight, though, who doesn't eat gluten so the flour and panko were not going to work. Instead, I just gave the chicken cutlets a good coating of salt and pepper, let them sit a while, and then sauteed them in veggie oil. After that, I followed Gritzer's recipe, adding white wine, butter, capers, parsley, lemon juice, and a little Parmigiano. Everyone loved it. We had a Caprese salad that my daughter made and a bean salad my wife made to go along with the chicken. For dessert, an Italian cake that is traditionally made with almond flour.

Yesterday I got up to find my laundry room full of tiny ants all over the floor and puppies' feeding station. I walked all over them before I saw them on my hands and arms after picking up the pups' dish to refill. I was very disturbed by this, but thankfully pest control showed up a few hours later and solved the issue.
I was not going to cook, but I decided to shut the door to the laundry room and get to it since I had a pork tenderloin marinating. It is a great marinade of balsamic vinegar, EVOO, fresh garlic, salt, pepper, fresh rosemary, and French thyme leaves. I went back in time last week, looking through the two cookbooks I did for the police dept when I worked there. I ended up making the infamous green bean casserole with cream of mushroom soup. I sautéed onion and garlic to add and used the French's crispy fried onions on top. I also made a cabbage salad with green onions, and it also used a package of Top Ramen chicken soup mix. The noodles are broken up and toasted with sesame seed, sliced almonds. This is added to the cabbage mix with a simple white vinegar and oil mix. It is unusual and very good. It was a donation to the book by the Crime Prevention Officer at the time. It was fun going through old recipes that bring back many memories. Many recipes were donated by volunteers, staff, admin, K9 officers, and even someone called Sherlock. I did a second printing of the book, and enough money was made to replace the broken-down chairs in the briefing room, plus a new phone system in another area.

Yesterday I got up to find my laundry room full of tiny ants all over the floor and puppies' feeding station.

Some years ago the first sign that there was dry rot in one of the house beams was an incident at my cat's food bowl. The cat kept sticking her nose in the bowl and then suddenly pulling her head back. In the bowl was a soldier carpenter ant, defending the food against the cat. Behind the bowl was a dual-line procession of worker carpenter ants, one line traveling to the bowl and the other line away with each ant having some cat food in its jaws. Carpenter ants usually build their nests in rotten wood and they'd taken up residence in the rotten house beam. They were delighted to find the cat food.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

I had a big lunch out yesterday and wasn't hungry at dinner. Ended up eating a tomato and three hob-charred corn tortillas later on just to make sure I didn't wake up famished at 3 a.m. Such is my life these days.

I'm preparing for a WLDG-related house guest. Many of you will remember Randy Buckner aka 'Bucko'? He used to live in Washington state. And once upon a time in the early 90's my husband and I flew down from Alaska for medical reasons. Bucko arranged an offline at his home near Olympia to welcome us, inviting several WLDG members who were also area residents. One of those was Marshall Manning and his wife Carolyn. Marshall and Carolyn, who lived in Portland, were well known for an annual party called Marshall Manning's March Magnum Madness. I had plans but didn't get around to attending one before the Manning's divorced. Via Facebook, both Mannings found me and we've actually stayed in touch. Carolyn is coming up to spend a few days with me. Can't wait!

Paul, interesting story about the ants. These were the smallest ants I have ever seen. They appeared in my kitchen sink three weeks ago—hundreds of them. My two sinks were spotless, with no food around. They were crawling all over the granite, and also where the granite slopes down, attaching to the sink. I sprayed them away with Aunt Fanny's Vinegar, Lemon cleaner. Pest control came, put some sort of substance in hidden areas, away from my pup; they disappeared within hours, carrying the stuff back to their colony. I never saw another ant until yesterday. I have a service that comes once a month to spray outside for ants, spiders, and to check for yellow jacket and wasp nests, which, along with moles in the lawn, seem to be an issue all over town this season.

Karen - We get those little ants around here periodically. They are quite the little pests, and they appear at a few spots around the house. Sometimes they'll seem focused on one area for a while and then they'll just disappear again. We use Terro liquid ant bait, which works reasonably well. It's basically boric acid in sugar water.The ants that don't die from immersion in the sugar water carry it back with them to the colony, where it wreaks havoc (supposedly). When they enter the house, we put one of the bait packs next to their trail, It might take a couple of days, but eventually they'll go away.

We did a luau theme for our Labor Day block party today. I made Shoyu Chicken that was taken off the bone and mixed with rice, a macaroni salad (which was not like what you get from the Hawaiian barbecue places around here) and picked up some Spam musubi from one of those same Hawaiian barbecue places. My wife made her trademark Whoopie Pies and my daughter (the younger one, visiting from New York) contributed homemade focaccia.

We had a Penzey's show up here in Albuquerque several years ago. For some reason, it lasted only a few months.

It's probably too chili for them there.

Long time, no see!

[Jenise]

We had a Penzey's show up here in Albuquerque several years ago. For some reason, it lasted only a few months.

It's probably too chili for them there.

So you're moving to France? Tell us more!!!! (I'm so envious.)

[Jenise]

My wife returned from a 10 day trip yesterday and it was unseasonably cool, so I made meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and roasted brussels sprouts for supper last night.

Oh my, meatloaf sounds so good! Btw, seen on a restaurant menu in Kentucky: meatloaf stroganoff. From what I could tell, a slice of meatloaf is served over a bed of fettucine tossed in a rich mushroom gravy. Doesn't that sound GOOD?

Dinner last night was a salad of sliced cucumbers, frisee, chopped raw walnuts and sliced red scallions seasoned with Penzey's French Vinaigrette seasoning shaken over the vegetables straight from the jar, combined with peanut oil and vinegar. It's a to-die-for combination. Afterwards, I ate a nectarine--the variety that is the season-enders of the stone fruit family are a favorite I wait for every summer. I bought several at the Farmer's Market on Saturday, and commented about them to the person in front of me. The guy behind me said he doesn't care for nectarines, but he was basing that on the vapid early nectarines. These are mostly yellow, not red and shiny, and have gray veins on the skin that he found unattractive. I told him that's not outward ugliness, that's inner beauty--that gray stuff is where the sugars settled in the skin. They are denser in texture and richer than peaches!! It was a great little speech and talked several onlookers into buying some, too. The vendor, for whom this would be his last Saturday at the market, was very grateful.

[Jenise]

To make room for something else in my freezer, I removed two pint containers of Amatriciana sauce I made last summer: fresh tomatoes, bacon, onions, garlic, wine and thyme would have been the ingredients, roughly speaking. I planned to just dispose of them, but off came the lids and out came a spoon and I went, you know what, this is still good. So I went to the pantry and found a package of corona beans, soaked them in cold water for about two hours and then started them in a pot with the sauce, a quart of water and a few other seasonings.

These beans don't cook fast! After about five hours, with frequent additions of water, they were done, and I added two chopped tomatoes and half a head of sliced cabbage for another 30 minutes of cooking. The cabbage adds bulk in the best way possible. And wow, what tasty stuff. Will be my lunch today and a perfect lunch in the next few days for my houseguest. A container might very well end up back in the freezer, but I won't mind!

Tonight I'll be making Thai noodle and bamboo shoot stir-fry from this recipe from the late importfood.com. It looks a lot like a Thai variant of lo mein.

-Paul W.

Jenise, were those Royal Corona Beans?

[Jenise]

Karen, yes. I expected them to be creamier, but otherwise enjoyed them.