ness

...Leviticus...Numbers...I hope the action picks up soon!

Sounds like an excellent novel. It's now on the wish list.

Last Saturday did another couples cook thing at the KC Culinary Center. On the menu: mesclun salad with raspberry-champagne vinaigrette, speghetti-style vegetable saute, pea orzo with Parmesan cheese, pan-seared chicken with sherry, mushroom and grain mustard cream sauce and bananas Foster. Again, this was a lot of fun and the food was great. The orzo and chicken were my favorite. Bananas Foster was a little different than the version I've made -- which is butter, brown sugar and rum. Theirs had orange and lemon juice and zest, banana liqueur, cinnamon and 151. Too sweet for my tastes -- but I ate it. Fun again, here's a few pics. Chef: One of the couples in our group of 6: The group: Flambe'-ing some bananas: Playing with fire: Bananas Foster:

I'm a member/fan of Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, IA. They preserve heirloom varieties, and also host an exchange through which you can trade/buy seeds with/from other members. I've always liked the Brandywine tomato, and for a few years now I've been reading about a couple different strains of them that are supposed to be really good. So, I found a member in Michigan who had them both and for the princely sum of $4 I've got a few seeds of each. They're Cowlick Brandywine and Glick's Brandywine. Cowlick originates from a plant purchased by a guy at a nursery (called Cowlick) in PA. He noticed it performed very well, so he isolated the seeds and grew it for a number of years. It has since made its way to SSE and is offered by a couple members. Glick's came from a seed company of that name in Lancaster, PA, and in sorta the same story, it stood out and has been preserved as a strain by a couple families for decades. It, too, is now offered on the exchange. Brandywine tomato originated in southeastern Pennsylvania and has appeared in seed catalogs since the 1880s. And, if this isn't too much info yet Brandywine Creek was the site of an important Revolutionary War battle. Here's one of a different strain (Sudduth's) I grew in 2010: These have really good flavor, but they are a little hard to grow. None of the disease resistance you can get in the hybrids, but the flavor (and maybe the fun of the backstory) means they've always got a spot in the garden. We now return you to our regular programming.

Miscellaneous stuff in cells, onions and leeks in cups for now. Marty -- see those Cubanelles front and center?? I saw somebody on a cooking show ( I think it was America's Test Kitchen or Cook's Country) last weekend using Cubanelles.

I think I could eat that.

Wow. That sounds great. Googled kraut and rotel and didn't see anything. We were at a party with lots of good chow. I did meatballs with a chili sauce, grape jelly and mustard sauce. There were smoked wings, a Reuben dip (kraut, corned beef etc.) on marbled eye, queso with sausage, bunch of appetizer type stuff. Didn't hear a second of the game or any of the commercials. Just a talkative bunch. Bailed at halftime for a quiter, less cigar smokey place. ? Spaghetti squash with olive oil and Romano cheese for dinner. Loaf of sourdough going in the oven right now.

Wow! That sounds great. Pouch onions are new to me. Lotsa good stuff in there. I can imagine it's great. I need to try that.

Excellent! Homemade bread isn't easy to do right. When you nail it, there's nothing better.

Yeah, good shortcut. I got it off Amazon. There's also jarred roux.

'Salad bar gumbo' last night. Totally winging it. Stopped by the store on the way home. Go some chopped onion, celery, bell pepper, chicken and ham from the salad bar. Picked up a bag of frozen shrimp. Sautéed the veggies in some oil, added herbs and spices then some broth. Simmered a while then added a slurry of Tony Cachere's instant roux -- good stuff to have on hand for this Cajun food lover. Added in the meat and some cooked rice. Really good!

Joe, buddy, I think we'd get along famously in the right circumstances.

Get rid of the smokes for starters

I had leftover shepherd's pie for breakfast.

It was how to filet a bass. Pretty harmless I thought, but I don't have the delete button. (If I did, this thread would be about 10 posts shorter )

I would bet your likelihood of 'getting into an altercation' would be pretty low to start with.

So I was with a couple old high school buddies last weekend. The two of them get to talking about guns and when we get back to the house the one whips out a Smith and Wesson something-or-other and hands it to the other guy and says there's nothing in the chamber. Second guy lays is in his palm, looks down at it -- the gun is pointed directly at me sitting on the couch across the room so I mentioned that and got up and moved. The guy holding it is very experienced with guns, but to my thinking he has gotten complacent. He didn't even notice what I'd said or that I'd moved. Fools with guns scare the crap outta me. Oh, brother. Citation please.

This caught my eye -- easy potstickers http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/8185-fast-pot-stickers?WT.mc_id=2016-FEBRUARY-FB-MC7-AUD_DEV-0201-0229&WT.mc_ev=click&ad-keywords=AUDDEVREMARK

Man, looking at those ingredients: fresh jalapenos, jarred jalapenos, pepper jack, habernero jack. I don't think my lightweight tongue and tummy could handle that. But I like the idea!

Anchor California Lager and shepherd's pie. That's just ground beef browned slightly, then add a little water, brown gravy from the deli counter at the store, rosemary, thyme, salt, pepper and some frozen carrots. Let that simmer and thicken for about 10-15 minutes. Then add corn and peas, transfer to a baking dish then cover with deli mashed potatoes and toss a hot oven for a few minutes to tighten it up. I've used the brown gravy packets too. I think the herbs really make it into something that doesn't taste like it's from a can.

Joe, I think this is the most popular thread by posts on OAF. You've made it clear you don't like it, and maybe you're just trying to be funny. Either way, why don't you just mosey on along and leave it to the people that do enjoy it?

I think that goes for anything -- cold numbs the taste buds, but there's something good about a cold lager. I love Guinness draft, but if it's too cold I'm gonna let it warm a bit. I've got one more can of this in the fridge. Good, very malty stuff: It's at 37 degrees and will need to warm up.

I think I'm gonna stop by the store and pick up some ground beef and deli mashed potatoes and gravy. Make me a quick-and-easy shepherd's pie. Just like we ate at good old Three Trails Elementary School in the 60s. Instead of a 3¢ carton of whole milk, I believe I'll stop at Gomer's and get me a sixer of something good to drink with it.

I drink a little beer, a little wine and a little of the spirits. I really like to try out different stuff. There is a really rich selection of beers available now. Too many, I'd argue. I prefer to get them on tap, then maybe out of a bottle and lastly in a can. I lean toward less-hoppy and more malty beers in general. Probably my favorite beer is a Boulevard Unfiltered Wheat. Fairly light but with a lot of good flavor. A friend who knows I don't like hops said I had to try Boulevard Calling. It's a highly-hopped IPA beer (a whopping 75 IBUs versus 30 for their standard Pale Ale or 12 for their wheat). Turns out I love the stuff -- the hop comes through as a strong citrus flavor, not a mouth-puckering bitter. That really opened my eyes. I never drank Budweiser. It was always Coors, just because. Maybe because I like the mountains. Was in StL a few years back and toured the brewery and even did a little beer tasting class. I got the free samples at the end the plain-old Budweiser blew my socks off. Honest. Of course it was as fresh as you can get, but it was also very cold. Colder than the 45 Chief mentioned. So, I occasionally buy the King of Beers. I guess the point of all this is, sometimes it pays to try stuff that's a little outside your box.

Huh? It all goes through StL, bro.