Photo Catch Up Day!!

I pretty much did nothing this weekend except rotate between hanging out in the sun and cooking.

I could live pretty happily like this for a long time.

I have way way way too many pictures to try to make a post for each of these dishes, so I'm just going to do another long catch-up post with several dishes vaguely described. (I don't have recipes developed for any of this anyway.)

Plus I'm making lamb pho tonight so i want to make a proper recipe post for that one.

Anyway here we go!

We'll start off with round two of Thai Shenanigans and Tom Yummery™. I'm really enjoying Thai flavors lately, but I'm not really using any recipes or even keeping track of what I'm using enough to be able to recreate any of this exactly.  I'm just loving the basic sets of flavors and learning about how they work together.

Thai stir-fry or soup is quickly becoming something I just throw together on autopilot when I don't feel like cooking anything new.

This one was coconut milk and green curry, with peas, bamboo, zucchini, and eggplant.  Pretty Tasty.


Also this day I found some ridiculous prawns.  These seem to be at my local store quite a bit recently.  Those blue legs are making my normal boring bag of shrimp shells that I keep for stock look pretty exciting.

I threw these prawns in my third attempt at Tom Yum...

The second batch I made was still by far the best, but this was still pretty good.

From left to right:
minced ginger/garlic/lemongrass
fresh red chilis
fresh shiitake mushroom
limes in back (duh)

To this i added a chopped chayote, which is a Central American thing really, but it works awesome with Southeast Asian food.

I also added straw mushrooms, baby corn, cilantro, and some squid... it just seemed right.

This all happened the day that i made kimchi, by the way. I was on a roll that day.

Ok what's next... 

Oh! Mike made a big farmer's breakfast, which i didn't document very well, but I ate it very happily.

You know that spot that people are always referring to? This totally hit it.

I also attempted a breakfast item, but after doing the prep work, and then eating what Mike had made, I decided to save it for later. It didn't end up working out, but I do love my new mandoline nonetheless.

Finally, we have today's ad hoc lunch. This is all stuff I happened to have on-hand, which makes me feel like I'm beginning to be a pretty good predictive grocery shopper.

That's Italian style smoked chicken and turkey sausage, artichoke, onion, dried basil and oregano, and crushed red pepper.

Add stock, reduce.

Add crème fraiche, reduce again, serve on noodles!



Ok that's it for today, I'm off to make the biggest batch of lamb Pho ever.
I'll take some pictures :)