So...whats for dinner?

Happy, happy birthday, Eric.  The time really DOEs fly, right?  Thanks for the rice chicken salad link- that is in my near future!

Cherry- that dish looks delicious!  Wow!

Have never tried Pizzelle but have seen it....guessing you gals recommend it?

Oh Special - so sorry to hear about the loss of your MIL. It's never easy but this time of year is particularly hard. Will there be a service? Or just a memorial later?

Special, I'm so sorry about your MIL. (((Hugs))) to you and your family.

SpecialK, so sorry to hear about your MIL,

(((Special K))). May your MIL's memory be for a blessing.

Happy belated birthday, and many happy returns, Eric--you young whippersnapper, you! (I remember 57...I think...)

Wine tasting tonight w/a holiday buffet, including two carving stations (turkey & prime rib). Will also be a good girl and hit the salads, avoiding the desserts. (I usually taste so thoroughly, taking careful notes, that the best desserts are gone by the time I'm ready for them). Had three potato latkes (hey, it's Hanukkah) and a couple eggs as late breakfast. Gonna skip lunch & opt for a nap instead. Big day tomorrow--drive up to Madison, WI to do a Christmas show, then drive home.

I was very tired tonight but tradition is tradition and the youngest DD and I baked special buns everybody in Sweden eats on Dec 13th that here is called Lucia. This is when girls and boys dressed in white go in processions with candles singing carols and Santa Lucia song. Yesterday the youngest had late skating class and we baked them tonight instead. They have special form and I am usually going with some adult art touch, here comes the picture, this year I hesitated thinking what if she gets it, I have to do it when she goes to sleep, but she still doesn’t so according to the family tradition DH will take some at work to feed and entertain his female co-workers, they get it)

Salmon and sole mineure baked with parsley and garlic butter with potatoes, kale sallad and a sallad with tomatoes, avocado, onions and mozzarella with sherry vinaigaer

Cherry

Oh, Special...hugs to you and prayers for you and your family.  SO very sorry about the loss of you MIL.

ChiSandy, I did not know there was a considerate population of Swedes in Chicago, in school they often mention Minnesota but now I googled and found there were Swedish cities in Illinois. Lucia tradition is so vast here that nearby schools arrange processions singing at nursing homes, hospitals and company offices and everywhere people eat Lucia buns aka "lussekatter". The usual shape is an S-shape but different areas in the country did their own traditional variations. So, in home we bake all possible. I also forget to mention that Nobel prize laureates get woken up by the procession at their hotel rooms at like 4-5 AM, it is a tradition too.

SpecialK, these are raisins, you cannot find black currants berries or products here at the stores. Well, there are black currant jelly that is used to make stews sweeter and a black currant syrup that you mix with water and get a drink, this is it. There are some bushes of black currant near where I live, only us and people from Russian embassy residence located nearby pick those, there are also two smaller trees of sour cherries. Before we use to wait and see who gets to them first. Those summers I picked everything the Russians complained to my husband that they wanted those for themselves but someone picked those up even though they always pick those and this is unfair. To them it is always unfair when they did not get anything and when they do they never complain) I told my husband to tell them that the cherries by a children playground are exclusively for the tax-payers. This summer I was not out much, so no cherries for me.

Interesting that the kids in school are telling my youngest that the Lucia buns shall not contain raisins. Lately I see the tendency of raisins disappearing from these sold at the stores. I personally like raisins in pastry but younger people do not. I told my youngest to tell her friends that in the recipe from Swedish cooking book we have at home, the one that contains traditional recipies, Lucia buns both have raisins in their dough and are decorated with those. The buns are also yellow because of saffron you add to the dough, the stores are selling those that have turmeric instead. Our homemade are delicious, I ate them directly from the oven last night, dough being so hot you choke. My husband has already texted me that everybody at his work place went head ove heels with laughter.

Dinner today will be pasta and this type of thick large sausage we have in Sweden that comes from a town called Falun, you can either slice it and sizzle it in the pan or bake it in the oven with the slices of tomatoes and bell pepper stuck in it. I usually have an organic one at home in case I cannot cook and my family have to fix their own dinner, but today I decided I will use the one I already have andbuy a new fresher one before my chemo, besides my youngest loves it as any other type of junk.

Cherry

Tried another Japanese restaurant today with a neighbor. Excellent teppanyaki shrimp, 'sauteed' veggies and some of the best fried rice I've had in years. Cold in Houston today so I was glad for the bowl of Miso soup to start. I hope to visit again soon & have a bento box that comes with main meat or fish (like tempura shrimp), fried rice, both soup and salad, 3 pcs California roll, egg roll & 2 crab puffs Both meals are $10-12 dollars and enough to bring half home.

Tomorrow I will have to cook the Rib Eye steaks I bought earlier this week or freeze them.

Minus, I’m always looking out for good fried rice, what was the name of this place, please.

Special, steak in the over sounds wrong but you make it sound good, I’ll give it a try.

J Kenji López-Alt, in "The Food Lab" cookbook, recommends the sear at the end of cooking method.

The reason given is that to sear meat, the meat surface needs to be above 310F, but this can't happen until the water on the roast surface has boiled away. And while the water boils away, the meat just under the roast surface is (over) cooking.

By roasting first and searing second, the roast surface has been dried before exposure to to the searing heat.

SprcialK, I saw it on FB but did not fry myself. It does sound like a good idea to try because I usually fry the surface of the bigger steak like rostbiff and then put it into the oven with a thermometer until a certain inner temperature. When it comes to Swedish Jule ham, I first cook it because it is brined and then put it into the oven. The way Eric described the process it totally make sense.

Have no idea what we are going to eat today, we are going to the youngest's Christmas skating show, DH who is an over-active dad in her skating group will be doing headlamp work and me and eldest DD will have separate seats on a balcony reserved for the photographer, in this way I will not be in the crowd beacause I want to avoid both infection and socializing. Later DD1 and me are going to the grocery store and we will decide what we will eat for dinner. She used to be very spoiled before my diagnosis in the way that we did everything at home but she follows with me to the grocery and cooks sometimes. Yesterday she cooked a sausage-stroganoff, a Swedish variation of stroganoff, the one I usually fervently mock to Swedes but our children love it and I had a little too, what can I say, it is good but they just have should chosen another name for this dish Cherry

MinusTwo, I was thinking about you when I baked my lussekatter-buns, the smell of butter was all around the house) and today I prepared aromatic butter for the Christmas turkey in advance since I have my second EC on Monday and even though I am getting a new anti-nausea schedule with Emend and Aloxi I am not sure I will be able to stay in the kitchen cooking for hours. I processed two shallots, five solo garlic, a few ansjovis, a hot pepper, fresh cilantro and parsley in a kitchen machine and mixed it with butter, which I put in the freezer until next week.

There is no sour cream in sausage-stroganoff, they use cream, half of Swedish recipies contain cream. Have you tasted Hungarian Paprikash? Lots of sour cream)

DD1 and I were sitting on the separate balcony above the crowd, I wore make-up and my Doctor Zhivago fur hat, people could see me but the we were sitting in the restricted area nobody could enter and from the distance with the hat covering the space where eyebrows used to be and the glasses disguising my eyes I looked almost normal. Later DD and me just sneaked out and went home. I am very glad I went I did not want to miss it, the show was very good, they did their version of Frozen on ice). Our little sweet pea did a really good job.

Dinner tonight were sushi, I baked chocolate chip, peanut-butter... cookies and now doing my first batch of kale chips.

Ilona, I thought you may have some Hungarian ancestry because of the name) It has been ages I had any paprikash but I stumbled across a great and easy, like a four ingredients, recipe on Seriouse eats and I promised myself to cook it one day. You can post your grandmother's recipe here, I would like to try an authentic one.

Kale chips turned out really great, where has kale been all my life, I mixed kale with cavolo nero and cale chips turned out much much better than cavolo's.

I’ll try to get DH or my mom to write the recipe down, DH cooks by memory and instinct mostly.

I ended up having French onion soup in the “stonewave” (as seen on TV) cooker, it works very well actually with two mini grilled cheese (provolone and cheddar) sandwiches.