Yep. Not bad cookware for a dumb redneck, non?

Mm. Cast iron's greater mass will hold heat longer than aluminum pieces do. The downside is it also takes more energy in to bring the cast iron to temp.

There's a variety of waterless cookware out there that uses an iron core for its conductive layer. A sideline in my business is I sell one of its competitors -- an aluminum-cored variety under the Cutco brand. You burn less fuel getting it up to temp, and the lids are made same as the pans, so the heat quickly conducts right around the whole pan, surrounding the food in even heat top and bottom, which makes the pan pretty much nonstick -- hot spots stick your food; ever notice food stuck and burned on the pan is almost always on the bottom? Waterless has a couple of admirable tricks -- to take full advantage of its nonstick convenience, you always use low heat, except for a burst of medium power to get it warm, after which you go very low indeed. This also causes well-made waterless cookware to develop a vacuum seal between pan and lid. Whatever's gently cooking inside keeps all its juices and flavors completely inside the pan, so they end up staying in the food. Mighty tasty; I've spent most of my life disliking carrots. Cooked waterless, carrots actually taste good. :shock: Who knew? Not this kid.

We used to demonstrate what these pans could do by boiling an egg without using water. Okay, it was more like baking the egg in the shell. We stopped because we kept having the eggs explode in the pan and blow the pan lid at the kitchen ceiling. Exciting, but it didn't sell a lot of cookware sets.

Classic spinach lasagna with homemade marinara & whole wheat noodles, romaine salad with red peppers, walnuts and buttermilk dressing...

Fuck. That sounds gooood.

My mom is visiting. She's vegetarian; this is my version of rolling out the red carpet.

Italian beef on soft french bread. (Easy and tasty dinner for after 6pm mass) For dessert we had blizzards from DQ.

[darlet #2 had a school project that required getting marketing materials from Dairy Queen (soft serve ice cream franchise for you far-off folk). We felt obligated to buy something. At least, that's going to be my story.]

Learning to like cilantro (coriander)
 

Made Mexican Eggs today from my low fat recipe book (so don't expect to see cheese or tortilla chips!). It called for 3 tablespoons of cilantro. WHAT? So I halved that, and all in all I have to say I really enjoyed it! I had been tempted to leave it out altogether, but given that it was such a large amount I figured I needed at least some.

Next time I will keep the same amount, halve the chilli flakes (slightly too hot for Mum, who has to avoid spicy food) and reduce cooking time by about 5 minutes to get a runnier yolk.

But it was delicious.

Oh - second photo shows sliced boiled potatoes on the side. There is a yolk in the second dish, it just slipped under the white.

yummy!

Were you using dried cilantro, SG? The recipe may have been specifying fresh, three tablespoons of fresh cilantro isn't that much... Looks good!

Those are pretty. I love how you can see the steam coming off them in the second pic.

Huh! I suppose it's theoretically possible to overdo on the cilantro. Yeah. I've never seen it offered dried.

But just chop the fresh stuff, about two passes through the pile with the knife, and put it in a little bowl on the table. Sprinkle it on your food with your fingers, to taste. About the kind of coverage you'd use with grated Parmesan and other shaker cheese. Sort of a bright green condiment... that isn't mint sauce. Though cilantro might work on roast lamb... I say, I say, hmm.

Mexican Eggs -- looks like Huevos Rancheros, not so? (Freely translated, Eggs Rancho Style) Chop tomatoes, onions, peppers both hot and bell, maybe add some herbal seasonings, a bit of red pepper flakes to bring the heat to the proper level, all mixed, heated in a frying pan (a/k/a the infamous "skillet") with the eggs poached in the middle of everything?

It didn't specify one way or the other. I used cheaty stuff in suspension from a jar - not precisely fresh, but not dried either.

Shrug - the recipe called for it to be added at the beginning, and it was cooked for 1hr 15 mins in total, so I figure sprinkling it on top would get a different flavour effect. I enjoyed at as it was, it surprised me.
That pretty much sounds like the recipe, except no hot peppers, only chilli flakes. I figured Huevos Rancheros might be something slightly different - I've certainly had it with cheese - as the recipe book just called this dish Mexican Eggs. Still, they might figure Brits wouldn't know what they meant otherwise ;)

Beans on toast tonight - we're going to see my neice's school production of West Side Story (she's crew not cast, sadly) so we have to eat early.