What's for Dinner?

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Originally Posted by Limoncello

Egg Salad on a fresh roll, pickles on the side

Sometimes dice up the pickle and mix into the salad.

[lisarea]

I'm making Matlock's favorite, which is mini meatloaves and a huge, enormous thing of potatoes au gratin. With asparagus, which is not his favorite, though.

The PROBLEM is that something happened to me. Partly the pandemic, partly the time change, I guess, but I'm also pretty sure I got abducted by extraterrestrials or just went catatonic for a while, because I was positive it was like 5:30 when I put the potatoes in, but no. 7PM.

We usually eat pretty late like 8 or so, but dinner's going to be ready at like 9:30 if we're lucky. I stay up pretty late (and also don't like that stuff as much), but Matlock is normally at least winding down if not actually asleep by then.

I am trying to see the humor in this, but I am legitimately upset and a little unnerved at losing so much time.

[JoeP]

Obviously you're still adjusting to daylight saving time. Which was probably weeks ago for you guys. Today for us!

[BrotherMan]

Mini meatloaves and taters au gratin are worth the wait.

[vremya]

I made carne guisada, which is a Puerto Rican beef stew, which was yummy but tasted like run of the mill beef stew.

[LarsMac]

Pork Short Ribs and Maine style Baked Beans.
Ummm Mmmm

[Ari]

I had previously made a veggie stew, and ran out of beans for the bean and cheese burrito I was making. Deciding to put veggie stew on a very cheesy burrito was a very good idea!

[Limoncello]

Ari, are you a veggisamaritan?

[Ari]

Yep, I do not eat the flesh of the human or the beast. Going on over a decade now. Well except on occasion when their bones are ground, boiled, skimmed and reshaped into colorful gummy worms or bears.

In the before times when going out the restaurants was a thing, I’d basically accepted animal broth in soups, especially since in some asian cultures “No meat” means no land animal meat, fish is basically a vegetable. At home I make vegi soup base which involves boiling the absolute shit out of some potatoes, celery, carrots and onion, along with a bit of MSG, and then bathing more veggies in their flavorful water.

[Limoncello]

Originally Posted by Ari

when their bones are ground, boiled, skimmed and reshaped into colorful gummy worms or bears.

[Basset Hound]

Wabbit Stew.

[lisarea]

Mabel made prime rib and brought some over, so I made mashed potatoes and sent a bunch of those plus a bunch of canned and pickled vegetables over for her.

[lisarea]

We had sopa de lima, baked potatoes, and brownies.

Because I felt like it, and we don't have an HOA to tell us we can't.

[lisarea]

BABBY'S SECOND BIRYANI.

As Baphomet is my witness, I am going to become minimally competent at making Indian food.

[Limoncello]

Stuffed baked potatoes with green onions, brocolli, cheddar, chili flakes etc...

The Mor-man's had bacon but I am still veggie

[Zehava]

Beef and Broccoli over rice, not exactly as

J. Kenji Lopez-Alt

but inspired by.

Plus an Ace's Pineapple Cider

[Ensign Steve]

Ace's Cider is

[lisarea]

I am making bean soup with mustard greens, and as per usual, I'm making WAY TOO MUCH and am going to have to pawn some off on Mabel at least, maybe some other people too.

I still do not know how to calculate appropriate amounts of beans, and at this point, it's looking unlikely I'll ever learn. Please come to my house and get some bean soup.

[lisarea]

We had falafel with "pita bread," and a big chopped salad.

I hadn't made pita from scratch before, and it didn't puff up correctly, but was still pretty good as a regular flatbread, so that's fine. I'll try again.

And I made more than double the amount of falafel we needed for tonight, so I have a whole big tub left to fry up tomorrow.

But now I'm also wondering if it'd freeze OK. Does anyone know? It'd be pretty cool to be able to make a ton of falafel stuff all at once and just defrost and fry it up whenever.

[JoeP]

I think it would separate a bit, release some water, but taste fine.

So *visualising what would happen* if you then fry it you could get a lot of spitting (water and oil) - but baking should be fine. Or defrost for a long time and pat dry if needed. Or just accept spitting.

I have no experience of freezing falafels, but frozen hummus works, just needs a stir to fix the separation.

The interwebs says to shape your falafel mix into patties / balls before freezing.

[JoeP]

[Ari]

On the America’s Test Kitchen Youtube one of the chefs made a comment that people should stop buying preground pepper, calling it tingly cardboard.

I haven’t been drinking ground coffee and thus have a coffee/herb grinder I can dedicate to grinding small batches of whole pepper corn into powder when needed.

Hahaha! I don’t remember what I first used it on because I immediately used way too much and all I could taste was pepper. Tastey spicy very floral pepper sure, but extreme pepper it was, and I used probably 2/3rds what I would have with the classic pre-ground box.

They were right, I don’t think I’m going back.

[Sock Puppet]

Me either, but I'm so damned lazy that it was the all-in-one pepper grinder that fits on my spice rack that got me.

[JoeP]

I've never considered grinding my own fine pepper powder. I just use a hand grinder that gives coarse ground pepper. And that is the best.

[Ari]

Pepper chunks are similar to garlic chunks, sometimes I want the dish to be obscenely garlicky while also not containing any garlic bits, other times whole chunks are great.

Really fine also disperses better, both in food and air, if you lift the grinder lid too fast.