What's for dinner?

Chicken Parm! I'm on a roll today.

Anxiety,

Yum!

I feel like a salad. I am going to order this Mediterranean salad with shrimp that I like. I love to cook but I am taking the day off!

My daughters are coming over later on after work.

We all need breaks!!

Must be bread pudding season! My hubs made that this week too!

Pam,

I love bread pudding! I make it the way my mom and grandma did. They were excellent southern cooks!

Regional cooking is interesting. We are known for our bread pudding. We are huge rice growers in Louisiana but rice pudding isn’t a thing here.

It makes sense though that we are great at making bread pudding because we make delicious French bread and that is what we make with our leftover bread.

We have a fine dining restaurant here, in an uptown neighborhood called Commander’s Palace. It’s one of the Brennan’s restaurants that makes a bread pudding soufflé that is to die for!

Many of our restaurants serve excellent bread pudding and everyone’s mom and grandma makes wonderful bread pudding!

My daughter had to travel to Iowa for business and she came home and said that their food was awful! LOL 😆, no offense to any Iowa posters.

Anyway, there are definitely regional differences in food. One day I decided to look up cities and states with the best and worst food. Iowa made the list for having boring food!

Sorry to the wonderful people of Scotland.. but the worst meal I ever had was on route to the commedy festival in Edinburgh.

A fast food place was open. I order a cheese burger. Figured it couldn't JUST be a patty (as I had experienced with ordering a plain 'burger' before).

Picturing a burger, you know? Bun, meat patty, cheese all melty, onion, salad, maybe tomato sause.. 😋
DH ordered ribs.

Paid, collected order, went outside to eat in the street (no tables). In the cold. Unwrapped our newspapered & greaseproof paper parcels.

DH had what appeared go be a brown-grey small rib-shaped blob of processed sausage meat. Shock & disappointment was an understandment.. but his hunger took over & he ate it.

My 'burger' was a processed meat patty with a slice of processed cheese in the middle of it. Most of it was hot enough to have the grease slide down my arms, but the middle was still a bit frozen.

If we succumb to 'mad cow disease' in the future, my money would be on that meal.

Beatty,

Ooooooh, gross 🤮!

Beatty,

Oh that sounds nasty.. I don't drink but I think I'd grad a shot of something strong to hopefully kill the germs.

One of my favorite shows is outlander, I would love to go to Scotland and Edinburgh and the high lands!

Needs help, a friend of mine, brought back , sweet corn flavored Pringles from Iowa. They were interesting anyways.

A night out with me wife to Alexander Steakhouse! With phone on silent and only TRULY emergency calls from facility would be answered!

I made a big pot of cabbage beef soup on this rainy day. It is delish! And hubs is brining a 8 lb pork butt to smoke tomorrow. He plans to feed the painters on Monday ( hooray its the last day of this mess), and DD and sig other will be over in the evening to get some, and it freezes well. Some of the soup will go to our neighbor at the river. DD and I have a baby shower for my bonus DD at lunch, should be a good food day! And I'll get some ideas for DDs baby shower, luckily 3 of her friends are helping me. I am hoping this means I just pass out cash and they do the work.. LOL

Pam - I love cabbage beef soup!!! Have fun with the shower.

Tonight was buffalo hamburger steaks with mushroom onion gravy, roasted carrots and onions, and baby potatoes.

Please share your favorite ways to eat avocados.

I am not usually an impulsive shopper.

I am careful about not buying more than we need, but I bought five avocados in a bag because the price was great! They were cheaper than buying two of them individually.

Avocados have gone up in price a lot, and I was excited to get Hass avocados at a good price.

NHWM,, in a salad, sliced on a sammy, turn it into guacamole,, I love them!!

Who here cooks big batches of stuff and freezes it?

Best thing we did in pandemic times was get a small freezer. It's on the back porch and I love that thing. Gone are the days I have to stand in T-Joe's wondering if I have room for one of two frozen tilapias.

So I cook big batches. Spaghetti and spicy meatballs, chili, lasagna and tuna casserole, my mom's favorite cheese casserole. And since cooking seldom registers high on my to-do list, when the spirit hits I can make huge things of baked beans and bratwurst.

Some things don't freeze, like my Thai Basil Chicken or my Buffalo hot chicken wing pasta sauce. But most do.


Who else does big batches, and of what?

Alva, I cook huge lasagna and large amounts because I had 4 boys.
But I don't freeze it. I delivery them to friends. I give a friend down the road some, then I'm sure this sounds strange, but my x husband stops in , my youngest adult boy lives with him too. My mom of course gets some. It's just what I like to do

During the pandemic though, I took up baking , cheese cake, carrot cake, my favorite was a chocolate bunt cake , with chocolate ganash. Scones muffins.

Problem was when we all started to get out again, everyone I was delivering food too , gained a bit of weight.

I have been cooking less but did just make some good chicken Parm. For all of my peeps

I usually don’t cook big batches . I just can’t always be bothered cutting down a recipe now that it’s just 2 of us in the house. So at times I freeze ….
Lasagna, Italian meatballs , Swedish meatballs , Teriyaki chicken , pot roast , macaroni and cheese , chicken noodle or vegetable beef soup , pulled bbq pork or chicken , mashed potatoes , Garden chicken.
DH is a pill about liking his food fresh. He’s not a leftover lover . However I am pushing to do more cooking ahead and freezing because DH’s appetite is unpredictable from day to day and meal to meal on Trulicity , even though it’s been almost 6 months . It’s caused too much waste of good food .

Tonight is BBQ chicken, Jasmin rice, with lots of butter, and everything bagel seasoning 🤤 and broccoli.

Anxiety, I am coming to your house. I won't be eating a lot of broccoli but you may need to put a lock on the barbeque.

I've been in a much better place in my mind, when I'm in a good place I cook! Tonight is eggs Benedict, and home fries. I know my husband is happy to see my head space is better!!

If I could I'd make y'all something good, as a huge thank you!!

Thank you for providing a pleasant much needed change of pace / focus than what we usually face. Hubs does not care for leftovers so not much point in big batch/freezer…sometimes! Yesterday - fresh blackberries from Costco into cobbler in old black cast iron skillet . A little remained - had it for supper later. This evening - stewed apples and toast - simple.

Black berry cobbler sounds good!! Really good! I use my cast iron all the time, nothing is better than the old ways for somethings.

I started cooking big batches when I worked full time. It was a great way to save time and money. I didn’t want to grab fast food if I didn’t have food prepared.

I didn’t have a lot of extra money when I was younger to eat out often. Very often I would be really tired after work, so taking something out of the freezer was a great solution.

My younger son was asked by the judge to explain why he wanted to be adopted and take my last name. One of his "reasons" was I always had something good to eat and he didn't even know stroganoff and blackberry cobbler existed before he came to live with me.

TN, that is the sweetest story! 😍

TN,

People always said to us, “Your child is so blessed to have been adopted by you.” My response to them was always, ‘We are so very blessed to be her parents.’

We adopted our oldest daughter when she was a month old. Seven years later I had a biological child. I consider both of our daughters to be miracles.

I cook in large batches too and freeze portions - still cooking for 6.

Love blackberry anything.

TN - that's a lovely story!!!

R says he's coming back here with some stuff today. Thinking I'll make him French toast.

I bet that the reason why Hello Fresh and other companies like this sell so much because some people only want to buy what they need for each meal.

They don’t want to freeze or they live in a small apartment without a big enough freezer to keep additional food stored.

They don’t want to buy a larger quantity of food and risk it going bad before they can eat it. They may not want leftovers for a few days. They prefer variety in their meals.

Personally, I love to cook once and eat twice! 😝

People are not going to know how to cook the good ol fashion way, lol a sprinkle is this a dash of that

I'm putting blackberry Cobbler on my list of things I want to make sometime soon,

People really don't make cobbler in the North East. Honestly it's not something that I ever see on a menu, same as grits