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Post by Bean on Feb 22, 2021 7:58:53 GMT
If you know the cooking isn't the key factor in the price rise, please don't let it put you off! You two having lovely meals adds lots of enjoyment to your lives, it improves your health and you enjoy doing the cooking too. That makes whatever the electricity for that costs well worth the money!
I planted some veg seeds yesterday. I need to get some more but have gone through and worked it out now. Fingers crossed they germinate inside so I have some good strong plants to put out in spring. Roll on spring!
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Post by 3piggles on Feb 22, 2021 17:03:44 GMT
I love that you planted some veggie seeds. We're still so far from putting any plants out, it's not even an option. 10F felt like 4F this morning, when I went out to feed the critters. We actually couldn't start any seeds, anyway. We have no space left. The plants have taken over, lol What veggie seeds did you plant? Do you have a germinating set up, or just put them in dirt and let them go? We've tried several types of germinating set ups, and haven't been all that pleased. Main problem is knowing when to start the seeds, as snow and below freezing temps can last into May, here. Are you going to do a container garden on the patio? You're right that cooking and enjoying some great meals is important to us, so I'm still doing that, though I'm not wasting time(preheating the oven so it's ready before I am, etc.) and I'm trying to use the energy saving appliances as much as possible. I'm cooking a pork roast in the slow cooker. It's a recipe I got off a cooking show. I made a bacon/onion jam, or started it, so there was bacon fat in the pan, and used that to sear the pork roast, after I rubbed all sides with garlic powder, salt and pepper. The seared roast went into the slow cooker with a mix of white wine, chicken stock and a bit of maple syrup on the bottom. I use a rack to keep the meat off the bottom, so the liquid is more for indirect steam, and to add to any pan gravy after cooking. The bacon/onion jam is just onions cooked until translucent in olive oil, add bacon cut into lardons and cook to desired doneness. Remove from the pan to a sauce pan, add some coffee and brown sugar, and cook on medium low heat until jam consistency. Add about 2 tbs of apple cider vinegar, and the jam goes over the cooked meat. Surprisingly good. Yes, now that I've made the bacon/onion jam, I would use microwave bacon, add that to the sauteed onions, and finish the process-no bacon fat to use. I follow the recipe the first time, and make my changes to it, after that.
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Post by Bean on Feb 23, 2021 7:45:54 GMT
That sounds nice - we have a pork recipe where you caramelise onions and garlic in butter and then add honey. Simple but very tasty.
So far I've planted a few different kinds of green beans, courgettes, butternut squash, broccoli and sprouts. I plan to get some more cucumber and tomato seeds, and see what else there is too. I'll keep them in the lidded seed trays indoors and aim to grow them on a bit ready to plant out in April, but have a mini greenhouse I can use in between if I run out of space.
Carrots, parsnips and radishes I'll wait to plant straight into the ground (one side of the garden has a flowerbed which has a few shrubs in, but is mostly used for veg), alongside the salad leaves which I usually do in window boxes in the mini greenhouse. But it's not warm enough for those yet. I might have a go at potatoes this year too as I accidentally grew quite a decent crop in the compost bin last year (an old potato sprouted).
I need to plant some sunflower seeds too, get those at a slug resistant size before I plant them out. Who knows how much will work out as I hope, but I always have something!
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Post by 3piggles on Feb 23, 2021 22:31:12 GMT
Do you share your veggies with family and friends? We tended to have no veggies until everything came in at once, then we had so many we couldn't keep up with them. Most people we know have gardens, but there are a few in the neighborhood who don't, and were glad to get the fresh veggies. No garden this year, as we have to get the grass going. I will use the containers to plant some tomatoes in front of the house, as we'll be trying to get grass to grow everywhere else, so everything has to be moved onto the walk or the driveway. That's a great bunch of veggies you're planting. I hope they make it, and you have a bumper crop I love butternut squash, but I think with just the two of us, we're better off buying it at the supermarket. I never managed to cook all the ones we grew a couple of years ago, lol Those onions sound really good, and I'll probably try them, as I don't have much of the bacon/onion jam left. The pork came out great, so cooking the right type of pork in the slow cooker definitely works. Hubby is off to get us some sub sandwiches for dinner, as I'm so stressed from the mess of trying to get our vaccinations, I'm in no mood to cook or clean up. I still have to empty the dishwasher. Oy
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Post by Bean on Feb 24, 2021 7:01:41 GMT
Many of the things we grow have a staggered picking period so we eat them as we go along (I don't grow masses of anything, but go for variety), and I also freeze things like the green beans. But yes, we share too, although a lot of my friends grow veg too and there's often a month when everyone's swimming in courgettes - if we've grown different colours that makes it a bit more interesting!
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Post by 3piggles on Feb 24, 2021 21:01:57 GMT
They come in different colors? We only ever get green. We also plant summer squash, which is like a zucchini, but yellow, and more squash shaped. They look nice together in a salad or stir fry Yes, they tend to all come in at once, seemingly by the thousands, but it's probably more like by the dozens, lol Then there are the tomatoes! We grew a very sweet, green tomato one year, and I really want to grow those again. Don't remember where we found them. We won't grown many tomatoes this summer, as we don't have much space in the driveway for containers. Making pork cutlets tonight, and using the rest of the roasted beats and potatoes. We found some rice cakes that have whole grain rice, whole grain wheat, organic corn, organic rye and organic barley. * net carbs per three thin cakes, 45 calories, only 30g of sodium, and no fat. This noon I sliced some meatballs, put mustard and catsup on the three cakes, put the meat ball slices on, covered those with cheese, and that was hubby's lunch. He really liked it, and all three cakes didn't have the carbs of one piece of bread. They'll also make great snacks. Not good for people with gluten intolerance, but we're okay with it. Better than a lot of the crackers we've tried.
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Post by Bean on Feb 25, 2021 7:48:06 GMT
I've never tried a rice cake I liked (I've never actually bought any myself), but if they have other grains in, maybe that gives them some flavour and stops the texture being so polystyrene-esque?! Glad you and hub enjoy theses new anyway!
We have light green, dark green, yellow and some different stripy courgettes (some are kind of ribbed), although the supermarkets only ever sell the smooth dark green ones. They all taste pretty much the same anyway, but the different colours are pretty.
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Post by 3piggles on Feb 25, 2021 19:39:24 GMT
Yes, good description of a typical rice cake. These are definitely not like that. They are crunchy. For once, we both really like the rice cakes. They also aren't so bland, we end up putting too much stuff on them. We watched a show about Japan, years ago, and a chef was saying it's as important to make the food look good, as it is for it to taste good. The best tasting food, that looks yucky, will go uneaten. I can think of so many great uses for all those different colors and textures. All we have are green and yellow. That's what I really like about all the different colored bell peppers. They look great in a simple pasta dish, as would all of those
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Post by Bean on Mar 21, 2021 7:51:23 GMT
I agree in essence, although there are some thing we can make for ourselves that we know taste great so we don't mind if they look like slop!
My veg seedlings are shooting up. I'm keeping them in my mini greenhouse and hopefully in a few weeks the risk of frost will have passed and I can get them planted out. It's too cold at the moment.
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Post by 3piggles on Mar 22, 2021 21:21:32 GMT
Goulash. It tastes great, but is nothing to look at. Still, I think what the Japanese chef meant was, if you were going through a buffet, or a picture menu, you'll pick things that look appetizing, and skip things that don't. As you said, with the exception of something you already know is really good, despite it's appearance.
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Post by bazookagoof on Mar 31, 2021 1:26:01 GMT
I picked up something I haven't had in years; an ice cream sauce called Magic Shell. It sits out unrefrigerated, and once you pour some on you ice cream it hardens into a nice chocolate shell. Delicious!
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Post by Bean on Mar 31, 2021 6:30:38 GMT
We had something like that called Ice Magic, back in the 80s - it fascinated us! I haven't seen it in years, but might just not have looked at those shelves.
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Post by 3piggles on Mar 31, 2021 20:44:24 GMT
Magic Shell has been around for a long time, to the point that the brand name has become the recipe name(how to make Magic Shell). It's cool, in that it gives you a nice, hard coating to crack through Glad you found it, and are enjoying it I had to stop using any kind of sauce on my ice cream, as they all had high fructose corn syrup. Then as if the manufacturers heard me, versions without HFCS started appearing on the shelves. I'm so glad to see manufacturers of a lot of things getting away from HFCS.
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Post by bazookagoof on Apr 2, 2021 1:50:15 GMT
We ran out of vanilla, and the current flavor in the house is French Silk. I haven't tried Magic Shell on it- that might be too chocolatey for me to handle- but I may try it this weekend.
With this work week, I get home later and end up eating a tremendous amount of food so that I am so stuffed, I skip the bowl of ice cream and settle for some gummy fruit snacks.
I find that if I eat too much, it gives me discomfort, so it's best to not overindulge.
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Post by Bean on Apr 2, 2021 7:51:55 GMT
French silk is a flavour? What's that then?!
I always feel better if I stop eating a little before I actually feel full - at the point at which I'm happy to carry on moving around rather than feeling I need to sit down and digest. Sometimes I just accidentally hoover up everything on the table though...
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Post by 3piggles on Apr 2, 2021 16:31:33 GMT
I can't eat large amounts at a time, either, or I have a great deal of digestive discomfort.
Whoa! I googled a recipe for French Silk ice cream, and it is super rich. If anything, I'd put whipped cream on it to tone it down a bit, but definitely skip the added chocolate! Probably tastes fabulous! It has something called Tellicherry pepper in it. It's from pepper corns left on the vine much longer than any other, so its flavor is super developed. Not sure why it has that, maybe to combat all the types of cocoa in the recipe. It also has vanilla salt. I've heard of that, but hadn't heard of Tellicherry pepper.
I'm a fan of mint chocolate chip, but it has to have dark chocolate chips, not milk chocolate. Milk chocolate is too sweet for me.
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Post by bazookagoof on Apr 3, 2021 19:04:53 GMT
French silk is a flavour? What's that then?! I always feel better if I stop eating a little before I actually feel full - at the point at which I'm happy to carry on moving around rather than feeling I need to sit down and digest. Sometimes I just accidentally hoover up everything on the table though... I first knew it to be a flavor of a pie, which was basically rich chocolate covered with whipped cream and a light coat of chocolate shavings. The ice cream seems to be a mixture of vanilla & chocolate with bits of chocolate coating- not quite the same but close enough for me. Before this current job, I tried to stop eating before I got full, but could never quite figure out when that was supposed to be. If I don't eat enough, I tend to get hungry later on- usually when it's time to go to bed and eating is a bad idea. I think I'll take advantage of this job and just eat like I was in my twenties again, since I'm burning calories like crazy five days a week.
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Post by 3piggles on Apr 3, 2021 21:34:35 GMT
The Pizzagaina. Eggs, cubed red bell peppers and red onion, grated parm and cheddar cheeses, mortadella/Genoa salami/P&P loaf/turkey pepperoni/prosciutto, all cubed, and sweet Italian sausage cooked to get rid of the fat. I seasoned the mixture with onion and garlic powders, Italian seasoning, salt and pepper. 350F for 45-60 minutes. I used store bought pie crust that didn't fit the deep dish pie plate, but managed to fold the top layer o to the bottom layer enough for it to hold together. It's really good 🤗 It passed the Hubby test, so stood up to his mom's Pizzagaina 🤗 I served very small wedges with roasted broccoli and cauliflower, for a surprisingly lite dinner. I know what you mean about find just the right amount of food to hold you over, but not to eat too much, Baz, and I hope I found the right amount. Okay, Baz, I totally envy you being able to eat like a 20 year old. I can't even eat like a 50 year old anymore lol 🍽 Wow, now that I see the picture, it really doesn't show the pie. I'll cut a slice and take another photo. That looks like a chicken pot pie, lol
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Post by 3piggles on Apr 3, 2021 23:52:34 GMT
Hopefully a much better picture of the Pizzagaina.
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Post by Bean on Apr 4, 2021 7:53:32 GMT
So it's kind of like a very busy quiche?! It looks good and I bet it's really filling. Can you freeze some or will you just eat it until it's gone?
French silk pie, that sounds so odd but I guess you have red velvet cake, so why not?!
We're having ham for our Easter lunch today (plus some veggie alternative). I was planning to buy pork when I went to the shop, and am wondering if you mentioning you were doing ham, 3piggles, somehow got into my brain?!
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