My where’s waldo used to have a lot more choices a few years ago, right now we are down to 2 or locations only 
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First of all, I hope mrs V gets hold of your slanty comments here one of these days 
Second, and I do feel stupid saying this to a bbq guy, but do you think a few drops of liquid smoke might help? (I bought some for homemade ribs and cured salmon I wanted to taste a bit smoked).
Two — the fancy place we usually go to for celebrations (and random dim sum cravings) was the real chinese stuff, the indian / “punjabi” chinese I got from the club (which does a better job than most places, especially in that it’s not unnecessarily oily or overly spicy).
Of course, everyone who said they’re only eating one or the other capitulated and ate everything, because it’s all good, in its own place
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We are short of groceries in our house and thawed a small container of chili and cooked the dregs of a box of elbow macaroni - ate it with the end of a piece of cheddar after cutting the blue fuzzy stuff off it. We need to go shopping tomorrow. Do you plan your meals much in advance? The older we get, the less prepared we seem to be now that the bunker mentality or Covid is over. We never have a plan much past tomorrow. There are some lamb chops in the freezer and I asked him if he would cook those for us. He does a great job with lamb chops. If we don’t get out to the store, we have Near East rice pilaf and a frozen vegetable medley of some sort that’s edible. I don’t like vegetables from the freezer, except for peas.
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Had an assortment of odds and ends in the fridge and they were united in this random recipe I found on The Kitchn
https://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-quinoa-bowl-with-kimchi-miso-mushrooms-and-crispy-broccoli-223094
It was ok.
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There’s a pretty active Weekly Menu Planning thread that moved over from Chowhound.
(I tend to plan ideas for the week rather than day by day, and it does help me better utilize fresh vegetables, leftovers, and freezer stock which otherwise have a high risk of never making it to the table when I’m staring down the fridge in hunger.)
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Tonight’s dinner was creamy herb chicken breasts over brown rice (peas on the side). I went to chop up my last onion for this dish and it was rotten. So I chopped up some celery and doused it with onion powder, I guess it kind of worked.
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That looks really good. Sometime you have to make do with what you have. We’re very short on groceries in our house right now (only 2 of us). We thawed some chili and boiled the short end of a box of elbow macaroni - scraped off some blue fuzzy stuff from a piece of cheddar cheese and shredded it over chili Mac. It will keep us alive until tomorrow…
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There are a lot of grocery delivery services, if you don’t feel like going out.
I’ve been researching them for my mother, as I expect she is going to quit driving in about a year or so. I can click on the stuff she wants/needs and have a weekly order delivered.
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Thank you and @mts!
It’s nice for her to have something happy to celebrate after the train wreck that was last year (and nice for us too).
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That’s kind of you. I’m not feeling very well - and my DH isn’t a plan ahead kind of guy. We’ll get out this week. Our 2 dogs are better supplied than their humans, because Chewy delivers for free lol.
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Red lentil soup with curry powder, cumin and cinnamon. Topped with diced apples, scallions, jalapeno and olive oil
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I like the challenge of a good pantry invention. In this case, my sweet old neighbor randomly brought me a pound of mushrooms, and I had a bunch of gai lan left over from the weekend. Then I just happened to finda recipe that included both!
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I had a slice of pepperoni pizza from “2 Bro’s Pizza” under the el tracks of the Hankyu Railway in Sannomiya. Pizza by the slice isn’t at all common in Japan. In fact, this is only the third or fourth place I’ve ever found it at. But I do know that such places are becoming more common…especially in Tokyo.
They make 5 kinds of pizza and a slice ranges from ¥198 (USD $1.31) for cheese pizza, pepperoni or jalapeño pizza for ¥300 (USD $1.99j and ¥418 (USD $2.77) for buffalo pizza, garlic shrimp pizza or triple cheese & honey pizza (they couldn’t pay me to eat a slice of that!)
Just like in NYC, they had oregano, red chili flakes and garlic powder in shakers on the counter. That’s also uncommon in Japan where the common additional seasoning offered is nearly always Tabasco sauce. They also had coarse black pepper, which I’ve never seen anywhere else before, inside or outside of Japan.
After you order your choice, they throw a slice into the pizza oven to be reheated…just as many places do in NYC.
I did notice that each slice seems to come into the store vacuum packed…a bit disconcerting to me. But my pizza was fine for what it is…a reproduction of the NY “dollar slice”.
It seems they sells whole pizzas, too for ¥2850 (USD $18.92) Which is interesting because they don’t seem to charge extra for the pizzas which aren’t plain cheese if you buy a whole one.
Oh, they also had a tip jar! Most of you likely know that tipping is almost never done in Japan, so seeing a tip jar was a shock! I certainly didn’t leave a tip and hope that most people wouldn’t either. I personally only tip bell staff in hotels, taxi drivers and hairdressers/barbers in Japan. IMHO, Japan doesn’t need to import that aspect of North American culture!
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Love your reports. Never have had the opportunity to travel to Japan so they’re super interesting to me. For what it’s worth, hot honey on pizza is now a thing here in the US. Not so long ago I did try a pizza dressed with it. The pizza had an interesting hot, sweet, spicy zing but the sweetness just wasn’t my thing.
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Hi, sorry for the late reply, but when you smoke in your Dutch oven, what is the heat source? Do you do it on stovetop and run a vent hood? Out on the grill? I’ve never tried smoking in a DO but it sounds (and looks!) like it works well for smaller dishes.
You can smoke in a wok, too, if you have one. I occasionally do tea smoked fish or chicken in it. Same concept can be applied without the tea and those particular flavors.
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That turned out perfect! The recipe is very similar to a loaf-pan gyro type meat, except those usually call for the addition of ground rosemary and marjoram, and minus the coriander.
I’m going to try it your way (Matheson/Kramer) next time to see how the flavor profile changes.
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Nice, Dan. If you can do that, you can do these:
I keep saying that I’m going to make them but never get around to it…
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