Dinner tonight - or last night.

Strange coincidence, eoe, just been looking at a picture of a king crab before I read your post. Looks scary. Kind of very spidery. Tasty though?

Just had sushi with my girl. I treated her 'cos she's been to the dentist and got really upset.

Feel hungry again now though.

King crab runs about $17.99 a lb here...but one time when it was on sale for half that...I bought two lbs and turned into an oink-oink

I wanna try. I don't think I've ever had proper crab. Dose it taste like lobster?

yes...it's heavenly dipped in melted butter

There's a place here in town that serves a lb of Queen crab for $5.99 as an appetizer...
then there's stone crabs from Key West...they take one crab claw off and throw the crab back to grow a new one...
Dungeness crab aren't bad..
and then there's blue crab from Chesapeake Bay...
when I lived in Annapolis we'd get a case of beer and 2 bushels of blues...boil them in Old Bay spread some newspaper on the table...and feast for hours.

Hey, k, your package arrived!
Thank you!
(& for the book, too. What a nice surprise!)

So I can now add Chile Chipotles (dried & powdered) to my cooking! When I get well enough to cook, that is, which I hope will be soon! <cough, splutter, aaarchhhhoooo!>

Anyone with any (not too daunting) recipe suggestions for my newly acquired smoked chipotles is most welcome to post them. (Perhaps to the Ask the A2K cooks thread?) I'm checking out my cook books, too.

As for dinners, for the past week: Soup, soup & soup! From the freezer. I had no idea that I'd cooked & frozen so much of the stuff: chicken, beans & greens, spicey red lentil & silverbeet, rice & spinach .... etc, etc, etc ....
To tell the truth, I'm getting a little bored with soup! I can't wait till my taste buds return to normal.

Worked Friday night ,again,so snacked on a cherry muffin;lamb samosa;shop-bought cheese salad sandwich,tarted up with Heinz sandwich spread and Dairylea cheese spread;a Melton Mobary pork pie,dipped in a bar-b-que sauce from the the local KFC :wink: .

What a very strange combination of foods barrythemod!

For lunch I'm having half a black & blue burger with jambalaya on the side.

(The burger is blackened cajun style and topped with blue cheese)

now that's a good burger...we call 'em bruised burgers

Sounds a bit sus to me, Panzade! :wink:


Me, last night: a free range chicken (with couscous stuffing), roasted with potatoes & pumpkin, plus steamed peas.

Tonight: I'm thinking maybe potato & rocket soup.

That sounds good. I looked at watercress at the market today, pffffffft.
I remember a friend bringing a near vat of watercress from a local creek...

thinking, I need to start growing watercress, arugula/rocket, sorrel in buckets.

Veggies/herbs are near as expensive as meat here. Very annoying to moi.

Bought a fat amount of parsley. Wonder how parsley potato soup would be...

The price of fruit & vegetables is going through the ceiling here, osso! I'm quite shocked. Never have they been this costly!

So this means I choose extra carefully now. Whatever is in season is automatically on the menu, not just desirable!

I think parsley & potato soup would work. Maybe with a stock base, or starting with a little sauteed onion. But why am I advising you? You know far more about these things than I ever will! :wink:

What do you do with watercress? I've not used it much, apart from in salads & sandwiches. Always open to new ideas.

Yep, get a herb patch (or the buckets) going! It makes such a difference to have a variety of herbs on hand. (I'd be totally lost without my flat leaf parsley, especially. I've let it self-seed all over the place & use it often!)

Watercress potato soup, of course.

Back in a minute.

Yes?

Now you've got my interest!

On getting stuff going, I'm a basic failure so far on growing stuff in sand.

In my past garden life, I've been quite proscriptive against excess fertilizing...

Pah, I'll have to work out raised beds here.

Anyway,

Jane Grigson, my book veggie mentor, or one of them, on

Watercress and Potato Soup

300 g (10 oz) watercress
350 g (12 oz) potatoes, peeled, cut up (in my case, red potatoes)
1 medium onion, chopped
60 g (2 oz) butter
3/4 litre (1 1/2 pint) water or liquid from green haricot beans
salt, pepper
250 ml (8 fl oz) milk
250 ml (8 fl oz) single or whipping cream
2 egg yolks (optional, see below)
chervil (if possible, otherwise parseley, chopped)

Set aside and chop some of the best watercress leaves. Cut up the rest roughly and put with potato and onion into a pan with the butter. Cook gently for ten minutes, stirring occasionally so that the vegetables become buttery without browning. Add water or bean liquid, salt and pepper, and simmer for about 20 minutes until the potato is cooked. Put through the mouli or blender, and return to the rinsed out pan. If the puree is too thick, add more water along with the milk and the chopped watercress leaves. Bring to just under boiling int and cook for five minutes. Beat the cream and yolks together and stir in. Keep over a low heat for a few seconds, so that the flavors blend together well. Check the seasoning. Add chervil and parsley and serve.

Note - Yolks can be omitted and cream reduced in quantity; if you intend to do this, use a light chicken or veal stock rather than water, to add richness of flavor.

Well, she goes on with Cream of Watercress Soup, various watercress salads (orange and watercress, pear and watercress).




I usually don't add the cream from a recipe as I like whatever soup as it is, but... that's me.

Thank you, osso.

Rather rich, with the cream & the egg yoke version. I think I'd go for the lighter one.
Strange, I have no idea of what cooked watercress would taste like. I've only ever eaten it raw.

Yes, growing anything in sand I would find very daunting, too. (Never having done it before.) That'd take a helluva lot of composting to change. And yes, raised garden beds. (Makes me wonder: how do Diane & dys grow those gorgeous roses in this environment?)
So pots for the herbs? (in the short-term, (for your cooking), I guess.)
Oh & don't forget the chives!

I killed the chives... said she who has had a past chive 'hedge'....

Dys added a lot of amendments and fertilizer - but that tends to be a continuous thing, as stuff filters right on down through the sand. I gather you can win with continued additions, but. amendments and fertilizer are expensive...
I'm starting to work on the compost situation.

On the soup,
I really never add cream, or even half and half, much less egg yolks, but can imagine adding a little, on service, with some freshening butter...

Thus I'm a cream soup failure, but I like the basic ingredients aside from that rich business.

Now I'm feeling nostalgic & missing my chives, osso. It being winter here. I'll have to wait a few months for them to reappear in my garden. I use them all the time in summer & autumn. Love em!
Thank god for parsley!

I wouldn't feel great about using fertilizers often, either ... not the non-organic varieties, anyway. Yeah, go with the compost ... maybe in containers, so they don't escape into the sand so easily. Any good, not too expensive sources of horse/cow/animal manure around?

I like the basic ingredients of the soup, too. Now I'm going to have to think about growing my own cress. Generally not marketed here. Wrong climate, I guess?

Well, the old friend who brought a great swath of it to our house (soup!!), got it in a local stream. It loves water, I would guess... thus my talk of buckets. I don't really know, don't listen to me...

But I do! (listen to you) So there!