Green salad with blue cheese garlic dressing.

Cauliflower gratin (The America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook) with bacon added (I think).

Beans in homemade broth (soaked overnight) with bacon.

Smoked meatloafs (mostly followed The America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook, but smoked on my new Traeger Smoker, three small meatloafs, with one a mustard sauced version, partially cooked bacon on top, mushrooms and cheese cubes added to mix).

Homemade cherry cheesecake ice cream.

Mango cheesecake from Sweet Life.

Green salad with blue cheese garlic and/or thousand island dressing.

Beer-can chicken with lots of sage and rosemary in a salt and pepper rub over charcoal.

Cauliflower gratin (America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook) with bacon and Ritz® instead of breadcrumb topping.

Strawberry pretzel salad (Cook’s Country, Aug/Sept 2013).

Green salad with blue cheese garlic dressing.

Steamed brocolli with lemon juice.

Creamy Spinach and Mushroom Lasagna from The Food Lab (J Kenji Lopez-Alt). We used handmade noodles and added some ground pork with extra herbs and spices.

Adovada chili leftovers from last week with hand made corn tortillas and taco fixings (Chris had a ground beef version).

Asparagus with sauce gribiche (Milk Street Tuesday Nights)

Adovada chili (https://afeastfortheeyes.net/2008/12/new-mexico-pork-chili-carne-adovada.html). This is the old Cook’s Country recipe (Cook’s Country Feb/Mar 2009), not their newer ones which Ben says are not nearly as good. Served with white rice.

Green salad with blue cheese garlic dressing.

And thus was the words we used to describe the great Chicken Nugget Experiment:

There were WinCo chicken breast, sliced against the grain into strips, then salted and allowed to sit two hours or more, until the salt looked fully absorbed.

Elbow macaroni pasta salad with pickles, onions, diced sharp white cheddar, salt and pepper and mayonnaise.

We tried various coatings, all with a pure flour base. Then some had egg white and another flour coating, various ratios of corn starch, flour, potato starch, and rice flour (seasoned with salt and pepper). We also did tempura style. Still using the base flour coating, we mixed Old German beer with the final flour coatings to get some pretty good results. Deep fried hot and served with honey mustard, lemon sweet and sour, Uncle Dan’s Blue Cheese Dressing (an Abby’s white sauce kind of thing), and shrimp sauce.

The best was probably half flour half corn starch with baking soda and baking powder then beer. Maybe more on the corn starch side next time?

Panna Cotta with honey and toasted sliced almonds (and a little cinnamon and powdered ginger).

Green salad with blue cheese garlic dressing and charcoal grilled red bell pepper.

Charcoal grilled asaparagus (oil, salt, pepper, lemon zest) topped with parmesean.

Baked russet potatoes with grated cheese and sour cream (sweet potato for Chris).

Charcoal grilled flank steak with salt and pepper.

Green salad with blue cheese garlic dressing (or thousand island)

Left over mac and cheese from Modernist Cuisine with left over herbed pork

Chicago Deep-Dish Pizza (Cook’s Country, April-May 2023). One standard, one with pepperoni and olives added at the sausage stage, plus extra pepperoni above the sauce, and extra parmesean. It was better.

Celery Salad with dried cherry flavored cranberries instead of currants (Cook’s Country, October-November 2018).

Maple-bacon pork burgers (Cook’s Country, April-May 2019)

Modernist Cuisine mac and cheese

Raisin/chocolate/butterscotch-chip cookies (similar to America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook raisin-oatmeal cookies) with store bought ice cream and whipped cream.

Ben’s chopped green salad with thousand island dressing (or garlic blue cheese).

Crispy sweet potato slices roasted at 450° with spray oil salt and pepper.

­Best herb-crusted pork roast from America’s Test Kitchen (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGw-Y7ubmys).

Tahini Brownies (https://www.177milkstreet.com/recipes/tahini-swirl-brownies), but made in a waffle iron with Umpqua vanilla ice cream.