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zoodles with veggie sauce. Here’s the veggies ( with a little ham and ground chicken), then the sauce. No pics of the zoodles.

The italian restaurant that replaced Cafe for All Seasons, West portal, Sf:

shared squash blossoms appetizer
lasagna (multi layered - the layering looks like that crepe cake in nyc (not Dominique Ansel but Madame Z or whatever it’s called; maybe it is Dom Ansel!)

I was planning to cook fish tacos and we ended up having supper with another family from this week’s summer camp.


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Tonight - sliced grilled chicken over pasta with a homemade pesto sauce. That should put a good dent in our basil. Neither of us have made pesto before, but since my wife likes it and I'm indifferent, she'll be running the experiment tonight. I'll grill the chicken :).

As a side note but related, it looks like my business travel is slowly restarting...2 trips booked in the next 5 weeks and I'm expecting a couple more soon. Should be interesting to see how that impacts the weeknight dinners we make. The first two I have booked will mean I miss 3 dinners for each.

This Thursday, Mastercard is hosting a cooking class for pasta and sauce. One of the ingredients is basil.

Fish tacos


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Last night was chili cheese dogs. I used Nathan’s. Publix cole slaw and red potato salad on the side. The fridge is starting to look empty. Three more days until we shut it down.

I have a top round roast, which I think is the cut for London Broil (?), in the sous vide after a 2 hour marinade. Cooking for tonight, with a finishing sear on the grill or maybe a cast iron pan. If I have time, a cauliflower puree as a side.

First time sous vide for this cut. In researching, I found suggestions ranging from 6 hours to 2 days. I'm going with about 9 hours for a medium rare, we'll see how it turns out.

I think the most important thing is to slice it very thin as is is a very tough cut of beef and you could be chewing for days otherwise.

I do most of my sous vide beef for 24-36 hours. Of course this is mostly chuck roasts which have a good amount of fat. Most of the London broils I’ve run into don’t seem to have much fat.

Yep, I think I did a chuck roast for about 29 hours. I had read that because top round is leaner, it's tender enough after about 8 hours. Yet several blogs still went for 24+. The piece I'm cooking had a layer of fat on the outside, maybe covering 20% of the meat. Almost zero marbling inside. And as Corky says, I plan to slice it thin. In any case, it's not a big investment. Two pounds for less than I pay for a cocktail at most restaurants. If it turns out tough, I'll watch for chuck roast sales again :).

I’d certainly cook it with the fat attached.

Cooking it to 135 degrees? Let us know how it turns out.

“ Travelled “ during dinner , 3 of various dishes / dessert shown below .

Been trying take outs from various which we have not been too in awhile besides homemade meals .

Had Gyudon from NOKKEDON ‘ s at Bar a Vin .. Slow cooked beef short plate with thick cut smooth soft onions in gyu-dashi braising sauce served on rice with an onsen egg .

Selar ( fish ) with chilli stuffing , kang kong with sambal - Singapore Peranakan , old cucumber soup with pork ribs ( Cantonese ) .. some leftover quiche

Healthy finish : Fuji apples , lychees from Thailand , huge green grapes from US , papaya from Malaysia , Packham pears from Australia
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What was left of NOKKEDON 's Gyudon (のっけ丼⽜丼 )
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Forest fern from Dancing Fish ( Indonesian )


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Cherry crumble from Tarte

Roti, Sf

vegetable samosas
papadoms

rice
cherry naan
my beloved Gobi cauliflower
chicken tikka M
palak paneer
Dal lentils


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Paul Bocuse's boiled beef tenderloin with carrots, parsnip, leek, garlic and onion. Fast, easy, and tasty.

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Indonesian bubur ayam, or chicken congee served with dough fritters and century egg

A kind of comfort food in Indonesia.

Made a sort of yeeros thing. BBQ chicken thigh with a cucumber, onion (salted in a strainer for an hour), mint and coriander, topped with a mint yogurt and sumac sauce. Pretty healthy and pretty tasty.

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135 degrees for about 9 hours, and then a quick sear in cast iron. Good flavor but a little dry (even though I marinated for about 2 hours first), the pan sauce I made helped some. I don't know that cooking it longer would have helped, it was just too lean. Maybe longer at 132 or 133? For a similar price, I think I'll stick with chuck roast in the future.

Down to the last few days of fridge clean-out.

Breakfast for dinner:

Scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese
Ham steak
Toasted Puerto Rican bread with raspberry jam
OJ

I’d agree. The chuck roast just turns out way more flavor filled for me. Our local Kroger has it for under $3 a pound for choice boneless every 2-3 weeks, so I stock up on it then. Usually buy a few packages, and sous vide them at the same time.

I started making scrambled eggs with creme fraiche in a double boiler, and now that's the only way I'll do it.

...and no shame in eggs for dinner. The aversion to it is an American-ism that I'll never fully understand.

It's always strange to me when people use terms like "American-ism" in a negative way. All countries and cultures have their food traditions. I've always thought that British beans for breakfast is odd (yet delicious). By the way, couldn't eggs for breakfast be a "British-ism"? A currywurst in Germany doesn't make much sense to me at any time. And a wonderfully simple French omelette with chives and a side salad certainly makes a nice light dinner. I'm sure each of those countries would find certain foods inappropriate at certain times too.

But I agree, there's no shame in eggs for dinner or a currywurst for breakfast...eating what I want when I want is my favorite American-ism! :)

Cherry naan sounds peculiar and unappetizing. How was it?

Agreed! It's the artificial limitation of what's proper that bothers me.

I have loved Cherry naan since a friend introduced it to me in 2002. So great. I love these flavored naans. I don’t eat much naan because I prefer rice.

HOW?
I only know to make scrambled eggs in my muji omelette pan after first whisking the eggs and milk. Then I’ll use a silicon spatula to scramble them on the pan. I don’t use the whisk in the pan. Actually it’s a half-whisk.

I've never heard of it before. Is it eaten with your entree or is it dessert?

I improvise a double boiler with a metal mixing bowl seated snugly over a saucepan. In the saucepan, I place boiling water from an electric kettle to save time, then I take down the gas so its at a simmer before placing the mixing bowl on top. Wait till the mixing bowl is warm--I always use an oven mitt--and then lightly coat the bottom 1/3 of the mixing bowl with butter. Separately, gently mix the eggs (2-3) with a pinch salt and incorporate ~teaspoon of creme fraiche. Add the egg mixture to the warmed mixing bowl. Stir occasionally with a wooden spoon. When eggs show the *first sign* of setting (4-5 minutes) begin to stir the eggs continuously for 2 minutes to 'fight' the setting. Plate and add pepper or parsley or, for added protein, fingernail-sized bits of lox. Serve hot.

To clean, immediately after plating the eggs remove the mixing bowl and fill it to the brim with hot tap water. If you let the mixing bowl remain over the saucepan while you eat, it'll be a pain to clean.

I eat it with the entree. I doubt it’s intended to be dessert.

I love this. Thank you!

A modification of what can be found in Paul Bocuse's Simply Delicious.

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Brick & Barrel restaurant for dinner. I had a blackened mahi-mahi sandwich with fries and 2 beers: the Show Pigeon and the Jon Boat Coastal Ale (pictured). Mrs BV had mahi tacos and Cabernet and her dad ordered a NY strip and a Tanqueray martini (straight up, dry, twist, glass of ice chips on the side). Happy hour prices: wine $3, martini $7.50. I wouldn’t touch their happy hour beer (domestic draft).

You made me google IBU.

Thanks. I know exactly what it is but have long forgotten about it. Just haven't lived in the part of the world for decades so it's something I have long forgotten about (and the Chinese community where I am is decidedly not Hokkien). Sad to say too is that kueh of any sort can be exceedingly hard to find in Malaysia unless you know where to look. I watched a Martin Yan show about food in Malaysia and learned about Babar Charlie's in Meleka/Malacca but it a trek off the highway.

Lamb lamb and more lamb for the next few days. Earlier in the week I got pork back ribs and dry-rubbed and smoked it with some wood chips I got from Home Depot cheap years ago, with a Luhr-Jensen Li'l Chief smoker a neighbour recently gave to me after finding it in the local scrap metal bin. Not smoked long enough (the fancy grill that would have costed way too much new but I got cheap at a thrift shop smokes at too high a temperature) given the ribs had been brined, they were delicious and tender after cooking in a dutch oven. Wife said it was the first time she didn't even think of BBQ sauce.

Last night was a modified beef straccetti. Instead of sautéing the beef (organic short dated strip loin) that's been cut into strips, I just pan seared them and wilted the arugula in the juice. For the primo, I had spaghetti with basil pesto my wife made last year with all the home-grown basil we had. Needed the calories as I rode 6.6 Km to the local park, swam in the relatively-cold lake for ~500m, and rode back (with a ~100m vertical climb total in the last ~1.6Km).

Found short-dated domestic ground lamb today (~ 750g's worth) so more lamb burgers. Also found 3 racks of short-dated Australian lamb so that's the meal plan for the weekend.

Also made a pizza on Sunday, and first time the dough has been soft and not overworked so it didn't spring back when pulled.


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Tried it with honey I had extracted from 4 of my bee hives the week before but it wasn't piquanted. Can't say the honey does it for me.

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Clearly not a hoppy beer fan!

We have a sushi restaurant that we often eat at before concerts at United Center and City Winery, and we were there tonight for the first time in 23 months. And indoors for a concert! Woo hoo!

My wife prepared the 3rd Sunbasket meal last night. Beef with fresh ramen. Came out pretty nicely. It’s nice having some different meal variety. I don’t think I’d pay the full $20+ price for a two person serving, though.

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Assuming the chinese community you're speaking of is in YVR, I'm guessing it's leaning heavily towards the mainland type. While it might be hard to find, I'm pretty sure there are quite a few over there. Finding good SEA food might be a challenge though.

We've got quite a mix on this side of the mountains. That said, I get a kick out of hearing hokkien/teochew in the supermarkets when the speakers don't think the chinese people around them understand the dialect.

It used to be almost all Cantonese or TaIShan around YVR. I don't think I've heard anything other than those, Mandarin and the odd ShangHai (I'll know Hokkein when hear it, just don't understand it). Yes, SE Asian chinese food is very far and few between around YVR, even worst (non-existent to the point I think I can claim that I may serve the only HaiNan chicken rice in my parts) where I currently am (YYJ)..

I'm curious to know why using a double boiler method is better than using a fry pan with lots of butter? I grew up with my parents mixing milk in with the eggs, but when I started to work at Mc'Donalds as a teen, I reakized that making scrambled eggs sans milk, gave it a different taste, one I liked better. I use a rubber spatula in the pan after mixing the raw eggs in a bowl. I butter a teflon coated pan liberaly and pour the eggs into it at a medium heat level. After it starts to set, I use the spatula to turn the eggs until somewhat hard. I like my eggs a little on the runny side (loose) so I make sure to pull them off as soon as it reaches the consistency I like. But before this, I will either start to toast a bagel or English Muffin so it would be ready near the same time. I will then eat the eggs on top of the bread open faced.

When done, I will wipe the pan with a paper towel to clean the excess residue and wash the pan with other dishes in the DW.

Probably so it doesn't overcook by going over 100C. Something textural and maybe not so greasy either.

On that note, a friend said he made French-style scrambled eggs (yolk and white cooked separately or at least one if cooked longer than the other. Haven't looked up how to make this yet.

This is a perfect way to have creamy eggs but dirties too many dishes for me. It is good though.

Double boiler gives you even and gentle heat.
Was the French style cooked separately or were the whites beaten and folded in?

Not sure. The friend made it for his wife who unfortunately passed days later (BRCA-1).

Anyway, here is the rationale

I think he friend used this recipe for separated eggs.

Oh how sad!
I don't bother with the double boiler but I am for sure a fan of the low & slow on eggs.
I couldn't click on your second link but got the first. Thanks.