So...whats for dinner?

I'm going to be refurbishing a small diesel generator to power our well pump and the electronic controller for the propane heater. Since we're 12 miles outside of a small town, I don't expect to be a high priority for utility power restoration efforts. :-)

Sharon is making a kimchee stir fry tonight.

Both of us are feeling better, but neither of us are at normal energy levels. We did get the washer and dryer unloaded from the trailer and installed....an hour job that took 4 hours when rest periods were included.

Carole, pepper vinegar is good with just about everything! I've even tried it with french fries. :-)

Plain zucchini is bland to me, so it gets spiced up with whatever is available, usually with what Wallycat mentioned.

Carole, indeed, glad to hear the trees missed you.

Leftover socca "pizza" and slaw.

Tomorrow may be a "Linner" of grilled cheese. DH is having his procedure and we're not sure when we'll get home. He has to fast 6 hours before and it will be warm ...I think 76..warmest all year, so I have to figure out an outfit that I won't die from the swelter, LOL. Man do I hate summer.

Hello all!

I was down for the count for a week. No, not Covid again, but a real bad case of Bronchitis. Sigh. Ended up going to urgent care on Monday, came home with an albuterol inhaler, abx, Prednisone and another eyedropper for more conjunctivitis. Today after 24 hours with abx starting to feel better. But enough is enough. My sugars are skyrocketing, so is BP. Yay. Ugh. But I felt good enough to make a casserole from my home chef. Had to throw away the cooked noodles in the package, but everything else was usable. Since my sugars were 300 when I wasn't even eating, I upped my insulin a bit for the meal. Couldn't eat much anyway. What fun! Hope you all decide to remain as healthy as you can. This sucks. So does my regular side from abx. LOL. It's the dinner thread, I'll not go there! LOL. Much love

Last night's main dish was cabbage and carrot chunks cooked with smoked Polish sausage in chicken broth. Condiment was mustard for me and ketchup for dh. Side was a tossed salad. The veggies were cooked perfectly and tasted good.

I've been looking at some food kits for vegetarian meals. Any recommendations?

Moon, I'm glad you're getting better.

And I feel kind of silly not mentioning the trees missing your trailer, Carole...sorry...

I think Sharon and I have been in a "fatigue fog".

This might be first since I first joined the dinner in 2008. Absolutely NO posts for 24 hours. I do understand how frustrating it is on this "work in progress" BCO site and just wish they would at least fix the font & the light gray. Oh well.

Since my car was in the shop all day getting a new radiator (grrrr), I spent a good portion of my time slicing & dicing & prepping for several meals. And since tomorrow is garbage day, I wanted to get all the scraps & wrappings in the trash. Started out with potato salad. I didn't have green onions so I used "sweet" onions. I did have some tired celery and plenty of dill & hard boiled eggs. I make my potato salad with sour cream & mayo and no mustard. That turned out to be my dinner tonight.

Dropped 6 or 8 small Campari tomatoes in 10 seconds of boiling water so I could easily pull off the skins. I'll find a good use for them later in the week, whether it's salad, or pasta sauce or even just as an appetizer with sliced English cucumbers & baby carrots & radishes.

Moved on to prep for fried rice dinner. Organic, vegan brown rice cooked and in the fridge. I had a very thin round steak in the freezer that I cut in even thinner strips which I'll saute with some more chopped sweet onions. Cut some leftover asparagus in 1" pieces, and I have 1/2 a can of bean sprouts that I'll add at the end. Maybe water chestnuts but we'll see how full the pan is by then.

And finally started on Chicken Florentine. The chicken is a huge breast from a previous Costco rotisserie chicken that I pulled from the freezer and sliced. I pinched all the stems off a bag of spinach & ended up tossing probably 1/3 as too far gone. Sauteed sweet onion (since I didn't have shallots) and garlic & fresh mushrooms in butter, then added some dry white wine & reduced. Then sprinkled with flour to thicken and finally added heavy cream. This was the point that the repair shop said my car was ready. Luckily I hadn't added the chicken or spinach yet since I never got that far. So have everything ready in the fridge for another delicious meal. I plan to serve over Rummo egg nest Fettuccine. I've tried this recipe with shrimp and it was delicious so we'll see how the chicken meets the test..

As I'm typing, I'm sipping a glass of Bailey's Irish Cream. Seemed just the thing after potato salad. (Well, we long ago established that I have eclectic meals). Definitely not 'one pot' meals, but I hand washed the bowls & pots as I went along so there's no big mess. And really when I said 'one pot meals' in a previous post - that's just the end of the prep. It takes lots of bowls & pots to get to that point. Now finishing each meal will be a snap.

Fortunately the temperature outside dropped to 79 last night (OK, OK) and it only made it to 93 today. I'm not cooling the house below 78. Grateful for small things.

Does everyone like to cook? Some days it's such a chore for me, other days I am okay with it. Sometimes the biggest chore is figuring out what to have. There are times I make a simple meal and dh and I say, “this is better than you'd get in a restaurant." I like take-out, but not all the time. After vacation, I'm always happy to get back to home cooking.

What is your favorite meal to cook? I especially like meals that are easy but seem like they took a lot of work! Lately I've been making ribs in the slow cooker, use Sweet Baby Rays bbq sauce and broil them a few minutes before serving. I usually steam some frozen broccoli, make scalloped potatoes from a box and and corn muffins. It makes a nice, colorful plate and doesn't take much work.

I also wanted to mention that earlier this year I started using salt substitute due to high blood pressure readings. I got Dash, which used to be called Mrs Dash. They have numerous different seasonings now, I just use the original one. A very little bit of it used in cooking has made a nice different in flavor. I never used much salt while cooking but was starting to use it on my plate. Now I use it less.

divine - hello!!! Good to see you here! I love to cook, it is artistic expression for me and a creative outlet, but I am also periodically struck with zero ideas of what to cook! My favorite thing to cook is anything Italian, usually pasta. DH's favorite is spaghetti or linguine carbonara. I often cook extra peppered bacon and extra Italian sausage and keep it in the freezer so I can pull those out and it can actually be quite a quick meal with a salad on the side. Your ribs meal sounds excellent - I like all of those items!

minus - I have not posted for the last few days because our meals have all consisted of leftovers, lol! We had a couple of old military friends to dinner on Tuesday night as they passed through town on their way back from a squadron reunion up in the panhandle - one of them took some of the photos for our wedding 39 years ago! It was good to see them both - we were at the subsequent posting in upstate NY with them for several years as well. We had an antipasto platter for apps, a baked potato salad (I also make the dressing with half mayo and half sour cream), a green salad with grape tomatoes, cucumber, garbanzo beans, and red onion with a red wine vinaigrette, and a slightly spicy (pickled chapped jalapeno) grilled corn salad and some nice thick ribeyes. DD had been down in the Keys a week before and brought back my fave Blonde Giraffe Key Lime Pie, so that was desert. I had leftovers of all salads and some of the steak, so that has comprised meals for the last several days. I also had some leftover fried chicken tenders that were combined with the salads as well for one dinner.

Wed. night I grilled a grass-fed NY strip and an ear of bicolor corn, plus sauteed broccolini with the usual seasoning (garlic, lemon juice, red pepper flakes, finished with flake salt). Yesterday I spent most of the day at the Skokie Hospital walk-in orthopedic clinic, dealing with an exacerbation of the radiating R hip pain (down to the knee and even outside of calf) that began to really be annoying about 3 weeks ago. (Will elaborate on the "over 60" thread). Bob had said he'd be working late, so I had planned to go grocery shopping after the clinic--but when I got out the parking valet had gone off duty and I had to go to Security for them to hunt down my keys, which killed half an hour. While I was waiting, Bob called to say he was home and wanted to go out to dinner. So much for shopping. (Thank you, Instacart). He also said Wed. night to make an 8pm res at Regalia for tonight, so I did. You know where this is going...

We went to Calo and decided to split two appetizers. I'm ashamed to say I ate two pieces of the tomato foccaccia (sort of like Sicilian pizza sans cheese) from the breadbasket, as I hadn't eaten since 1pm. We split melon & prosciutto over arugula with Parm-Reg flakes & balsamic, and grilled seafood (squid, baby octopus, shrimp, scallops) over sauteed rapini with cannelini beans. Surprisingly good, and no leftovers to take home & refrigerate.

So at 6:30 Bob called and said he wouldn't make dinner till 8:30 or 9. Tried to call Regalia--busy signal (repeatedly). Went to the reservation page and made a 9pm res, and I just got confirmation so I canceled the earlier one.

Speaking of cooking, I decided to retire the older two of my OXO Good Grips Professional nonstick skillets. Their nonstick surfaces had some scratches & started to have tiny blisters, there was greasy buildup along the sides I couldn't scrub off with anyand the 10-incher felt fuzzy even though foods didn't stick. (I used them over med-high heat, starting cold with only salt & pepper, to pan-sear fish fillets--per America's Test Kitchen). (Another 10-incher still has a good surface, but arrived last year from Amazon with one side warped, like someone had dropped or banged it before packing--so I use it only occasionally). I did some reading and learned two things about nonstick: first, unlike with regular pans, not to wait for the pan to heat before adding oil or butter (The Frugal Gourmet's motto was "hot pan, cold oil, foods won't stick"). Second, to never ever use high or even medium-high heat except to briefly sear--but how "briefly" is safe? Anyway, they are all PTFE (regardless of what the surface is called), which is kind of dicey if the surface isn't completely intact. It's safe to eat from but who wants black flakes in their food?

I had experimented with two cheaper ceramic-surface pans--one Bialetti (white surface, red outside) from Target and the other "As Seen on TV" Gotham Steel ("copper" surface). Both worked as promised...for about four uses, and then everything stuck like crazy. And being aluminum, they didn't heat as evenly as my All-Clad plain stainless, so they were basically useless and I gave them to Gordy for his first apartment because he didn't want me to spend on the good stuff until he became a more practiced cook (and got a good steady job).

Hadn't thought much about my nonstick pans till this month's Consumer Reports, which had a "best cookware" article. For ceramic, they picked GreenPan and as a best buy, Blue Diamond (which claims to be ceramic but is probably a hybrid). So I ordered both in 10"--and the GreenPan came as a set with an 8-incher (my OXO version of which is now no longer as nonstick--at least for fried eggs--as the little 7-inch used cast iron I got 5 years ago).

Oh Devine - GREAT to see you here. Welcome to the table. My favorite since Covid has been fried rice. I make it at least once a week. Since it includes whatever is in the fridge, it's never the same.

My son will be in for a day next week (two if I'm lucky). I'll be making Laurie's Salsa Chicken since that grabbed his fancy a couple of years ago. The second night will be huge delicious looking NY Strip steaks from Costco. He & his girl have been together for 21 years now. She's vegetarian so he doesn't really get meat at home.

Nance - doesn't the prep sound impressive? Actually it was either that or throw away a bunch of stuff in the fridge. And since I was stuck home w/o a car.....

Wally - I'd love the recipe for Kahlua pork.

Special - I too want some of the Key Lime Pie.

At Regalia tonight we went with the specials with each course (sharing). App was a "Bufala panna cotta:" a terrine of mozzarella di bufala (water buffalo milk) and creme frâiche with speck (barely cured and very lightly smoked prosciutto from the Sudtirol across the border from Austria), pesto and sun-dried tomato sauce, with crostini. Pasta course was lobster ravioli with shrimp and vongole (tiny Manila clams). Entree was Arctic char with chimichurri sauce and sauteed broccolini. Dessert special was a parfait of lightly sweetened ricotta with macerated strawberries, mint and a cookie. I still can't believe this place is in my neighborhood, only two blocks away. They may have their patio ready this weekend--they already dismantled the storm vestibule.

Went out to lunch with my ex-DH today. He doesn't like to wait in lines (think cafeterias) so BBQ was immediately out. And he didn't want a big meal. And he didn't want to drive any further than a couple of blocks. We ended up at Dennys - since they've had a reliable Patty Melt for 50+ years. Well - it's changed. Texas Toast & 1" burger so way too thick. I miss the rye. Two cheeses so everything slipped apart every time you picked it up. But the worst - they added a "secret sauce". The manager wouldn't tell me what it was, but it looked like Thousand Island Dressing. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't what my brain & my mouth expected.

Wally - thanks for the pork recipe. Your salmon dinner sounds delicious.

Minus, I too thought that sounded like a lot of prep.

Wallycat, no rice included with your dinner! That's amazing.

Friday I made Salsbury steak (just hamburger) in a mushroom gravy, over mashed potatoes with some green beans. I made 5 patties, pulled one asside and had a burger yesterday. Froze the three I didn't eat, with spuds and gravy and froze it, 3 individual meals.

My adult son will be here to do 'honey dos' on Friday. He comes maybe once a year for a day or two. He always wants one meal out for the Tex-Mex he grew up with. Other than that, I gave him a list of 10 dinners and asked him pick two. Instead he deleted all but four and told me to do whatever I wanted. His girl is a vegetarian so the list was admittedly meat heavy, but I was still astounded by his choices. I had even purchased some beautiful NY strip steaks at Costco (I prefer Ribeyes but he doesn't like the fat), but no.... Salsa Chicken (GO LAURIE & thank you for this thread - he picks that every time), pork medallions in brandy cream sauce, Hawaiian sliders (1/2 with turkey & 1/2 with ham) and Korean Pork (thanks to Wally I think?)

Tonight was fried rice w/onions, garlic, beef strips, mushrooms, bean sprouts, leftover asparagus and touch of Soy sauce. Delicious and enough left over for one more meal.

Sat. night I had my leftover Arctic char & broccolini, plus a small Caesar salad made from romaine leaves that needed to be used up. Yesterday's brunch was shakshuka with a single egg. For dinner I grilled a salmon burger on the last of my keto buns, with lettuce, tomato, and grilled Vidalia onion. Also grilled some shishito peppers (all mild again--wonder if what's left in the bag are all spicy), and stir-fried snow pea pods.

This morning, used the new 10" GreenPan to make a veg-and-chêvre 2-jumbo-egg folded omelet. It's so slick that the eggs slid around in the pan as I tried to hold back the edges to let the loose parts reach the pan's edges. Cleaning up was insanely easy. These new ceramics are slicker than the traditional non-stick ones were even when brand-new. Maybe following the cautionary directions (low-to-medium heat but not in an empty pan, low-smoke-point oil) is what's making the difference. The proof will be in a few weeks, to see if their slickness holds up better than the Gotham Steel's and Bialetti's did.

Tonight, snacked on three hot wings. Bob is bringing home (very late) some Filipino food his medical partner made (she's an expert cook). I'm a bit nervous, as it's mostly "no-nos" (pansit noodles, lumpia rolls)--but she always sends him home with some marinated squid for me. It is delicious and on my diet. Trouble is, it makes the whole fridge smell like pickled garlic. Need not to eat too close to bedtime, as I need to be in Evanston at 9:30am for my first PT appointment for my back, hip & sciatica. To my chagrin, the closest parking garage is 3 blocks away. Hoping I can find an on-street spot so I can use the ParkEvanston app on my phone.