Hi, friends!
Summer food is coming in fresh, and food is getting more exciting.
What’s on the menu? Anything different this week than last week?
I got fresh local eggs, so recently a lot of my meals have been some variation of *go pick a bunch of arugula from the garden and put a couple of fried eggs on it* which has been amazing.
This morning I went to the farmers market and so many wonderful things are in season. I got a bunch of my favorite kale!!! So that’s going to get cooked down with something fatty to be part of lunch bowls this week. I have to go back to the office all week and I realized this morning I need to figure out what the fuck I’m bringing for lunch.
The actual local broccoli is finally available, so that’s going to feature as well in whatever I end up making for lunch bowls.
And I got a lovely head of cabbage! I have been very vocal here about hating mayonnaise, but I accept that sometimes mayo is needed (for example, coleslaw). Since I have those luscious fresh eggs, I’m going to make mayo and then make coleslaw. I don’t have a lemon, hmm guess I’m running to the store for that still.
i ate 4 days ago
its warm
i think im okay tho
just very very angry
*shrugs*
I am behind on deadsplintering today and plan to catch up tomorrow but I saw this and just popped on to say that it’s to-may-to…
…END of discussion.
I made two chocolate strudels to send along to the carnivore’s poker game. There is a lot of freezer clean out, big salad, and make-the-night-of seafood this week, so very little cooking ahead. The herb rack for drying the bounty from the kitchen garden is up and in use, as of today.
I took 4 steaks over to the neighbor’s and we grilled them, along with two porkchops, cut them into slices and then ate them with our fingers like heathens.
Yum! Look at you conserving water by skipping needing utensils!
relatively new food/drink place opened near me. went there two weeks ago, and got a weird “fake” feeling about it? food was… meh?
Went again last night for takeout. got a “reuben” that was just… wrong?
I don’t know if I’m just being overly picky, but there didn’t seem to be much of a theme or overlap on the menu items. I’m suspecting they just order pre-made stuff from a vendor, and then reheat/fry it or whatever. the fried appetizers are okay, but that’s something that’s difficult to do badly. The entrees that I’ve tried were just not that great. Not bad, but like, not much above the level of college cafeteria food.
maybe later I’ll do some poking online to see what other people think of it, I may just be overly harsh based on irrational first impressions. Also, I’m kinda annoyed that so many good, local, long-standing bars and restaurants perished during the covid lockdown, to get replaced by mediocre places like this.
Anyways, today I was hoping to get a decent sandwich from the recently reopened bikeshop/cafe (it’s pretty hipsterish, but they’ve decent food and drink at least…) but they were sold out (good for them), so I ended up hitting up another place and getting “whole shrimp” I did this a couple years back, and I keep forgetting that whole shrimp means the exoskeleton, legs, and head are included. Can be good and fun if you are eating a literal bucket of them with friends/family and doing nothing else, but doesn’t really work as well for a half dozen while fucking around on the internet. I’ve probably washed my hands more in the past three hours than the average person did in a week pre-covid…
Possibly the worst meal I ever ate was at a place like the one you’re describing. It may stand out so much because of the unusual circumstances. Many, many years ago in Europe (and in America for that matter) getting hold of cash was difficult because ATMs were so rare, people used checks, and most places didn’t take credit cards. A gang of us were headed from Paris to Munich. Two carloads of us, and how at our young age we got a company to rent us these cars I’ve forgotten.
As we were approaching the border I realized that we only had francs on us and it was a Saturday night. That meant that we wouldn’t have access to Deutschmarks until Monday morning, and we’d better eat up on the French side of the border. We pulled off an exit at the last minute somewhere in Alsace. Alsace is kind of famous for how bad its cuisine is, an unholy blend of the worst of French and German cookery. This place—though meals might not be very tasty the food standards in both countries are universally quite high, but we were basically served World War II-era emergency rations warmed up in a failing microwave prototype. We all got something different so we could share, and nothing was edible. And yet we had to eat it, because we were hungry already and by Monday morning would have given in to our dormant cannibalistic impulses.
@lochaber, my mother firmly believes that the best test of a casual restaurant is the reuben because they’re one of those sandwiches that is basically meh or transcendent and there’s no real middle ground.
We got a transcendent one last week from the nearby butcher shop that did all the work in house with the corned beef and then used fermented brussels sprouts in lieu of normal sauerkraut. So damn good.
@brightersideoflife, I think your mother is on to something
Tonight is Taco Bell for KidSmacks2’s birthday.
Picked up some out of the ordinary meats (for us) at the grocery store this weekend… beef neckbones and pork hearts. They were both under $2/lb, so, we figured we’d be adventurous! Other-Husband is in charge of dealing with the hearts… I’ll eat it, but I don’t want to deal with it! Husband probably won’t touch either one because he’s fussy… he likes his meat in steak and burger form and that’s about it. O-H grew up hunting and trapping with his dad, so he’s a lot more open about what parts of an animal are edible. The neckbones I’ll roast and the kids can pick the meat off and then I’ll use the bones for stock.
Other than that, probably lots of sandwiches and similarly quick stuff because the rest of the week is going to be wild.
I’m less adventurous with meat options, but I do think anything can be good if the person knows how to cook it.
It’s interesting too because I will eat damn near any vegetable (except chard, which tastes like dirt and causes digestive stress I’d prefer to avoid) and I’ll ferment stuff and eat that. Plus I have no problem eating store-made sausages or ground meat, which like…. who knows what parts of the cow end up in that 93/7 ground meat. Because like do I think to go to a nicer store where I can buy ground sirloin or ground round? Normally nope.
@brighteresideoflife I highly recommend this recipe from Mark Bittman for what he calls kimchi cole slaw. It is really good with grilled meats, no mayo required.
https://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/28/dining/the-minimalist-fast-kimchi-in-hot-times.html