Meal No. 3885: A Popover Breakfast

As we entered the blistering summer-starting heatwave the weekend before last, I utilized that Sunday afternoon indoors time to whip up an odd supper. Blame the dice roll game that we use to get me digging back into the recipes magazine archive, which pointed me to a limited set of options from Cook’s Illustrated and a simple recipe for popovers.

I’d tried these over 13 years ago without finding much to crow about, and I was not expecting much better this time. But were they ever some gorgeous popovers when I pulled them from the oven!

With no way to predict success or failure, I went ahead and compensated with chile-rubbed bacon and some Gruyère cheesy scrambled eggs, though. Two popovers proved too much and the plates were not quite cleaned…but there was just enough satisfaction to deem the night a success.

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”No-Fail Popovers,” by Andrea Geary. In Cook’s Illustrated, Number 168 [January & February 2021], p. 14-15.

"Chile-Rubbed Bacon," by Rick Martinez. In "D.I.Y. B.L.T. O.M.G.: Bake Better Bacon (Upgrade Idea No. 1)," Bon Appétit, July 2016, p. 44.

Meal No. 3884: Patty Melts

Saturday a week ago, as we moved into the front end of an oppressive early summer heatwave, I put aside ideas of grilling and instead put together a scrumptious and quite filling meal of patty melts. The sweet onions were slow sautéed in butter to a succulent tenderness, and the beef patties were well-flattened before earning their crowns of American cheese. A short spell of buttered griddling for the bread slices and the schmears of homemade burger sauce made it all rather delicious.

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"Beef & Cheddar Melts Sauce," a Roediger House creation. [Published 14 October 2022]

Simple burger seasoning pulled from "Simple Smashburgers," from the Roediger House. [Published 04 September 2024]

Dense, Chewy New England-Style Vanilla Ice Cream

If one batch can be amazing, there's all the more reason to double it, and that's how I handled the oversupply of separated egg yolks back in the middle of the month after using all the egg whites for the super epic rainbow layer cake. That's right: I had no choice but to make delicious ice cream, in abundance, and it was freakin' awesome. This meant pulling out the chest-style ice cream freezer, with the churning motor and all the ice and rock salt, and letting it hum away in the utility sink in the laundry room for a while. The first bowl of it served as dessert Friday night a week ago, and then other scoops made their way into evening affairs on subsequent days.

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"Dense, Chewy, and Rich New England-Style Ice Cream," from Max Falkowitz, former senior features editor of SeriousEats.com. [Updated 26 July 2022]

Meal No. 3883: Caesar-Dressed Power Greens with Herbed Chicken

Last Friday night was right for salads again, with homemade Caesar dressing and herbed chicken breasts pulled from the freezer and dropped into the sous vide immersion circulator that afternoon. Roasted sunflower seeds are essential and this simple meal brought a fine end to a pretty pleasant first day of summer.

Meal No. 3882: Toasted Bacon Sandwich

Last Thursday’s dinner option got reduced down to something quick yet again, and I had been unable to shake a mental fascination with a toasted bacon sandwich in all its small-plate simplicity. The chile-rubbed bacon that I recently discovered also has proven tough to shake and that’s the route I chose yet again.

The co-incidence of Juneteenth and the final official day of spring offered up a dish of stormy intensity just as dinnertime approached. A couple of flickers of the lights without a loss of power allowed dinner to hit the table on schedule nonetheless, but many other parts of the city were not so fortunate. Above is a photo from just up the street, where a tree has caused a power pole to crack but still hang taut on the tension of the lines.

But our neighbors a few streets over on Poplar were not quite so lucky: the huge limbs that came crashing down took out power lines.

That also was the case at the intersection of Glade and Clover just down from the house, in the West End neighborhood.

A couple of lanes of Marshall Street were blocked by the portion of a large tree across from the Benton Convention Center:

Here on our happy quarter acre, it was instead a ton of tiny branches mostly, and a few larger limbs that were easy to manage. The trash cans blew around, and a shingle or two landed on the driveway, and there was more washing of the soil in The Grove and along the line of azaleas on the south side of the driveway.

Once the rains stopped, I donned gloves and work boots and did as much cleanup as I could in the evening dusk light. Since that Thursday was a holiday, I was glad that the yard cart pickup occurred the following morning, since I’d stuffed it full of all that detritus.

This shingle above was flung from the roof with such force that it put a huge scrape on the trunk lid of my old Volkswagen CC. Better that than my new car, of course!

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"Chile-Rubbed Bacon," by Rick Martinez. In "D.I.Y. B.L.T. O.M.G.: Bake Better Bacon (Upgrade Idea No. 1)," Bon Appétit, July 2016, p. 44.

Meal No. 3881: Grilled Glazed Pork Kebabs

Ah, the advent of summertime! In spite of the remaining drizzles from a squall that passed quickly over us late afternoon last Wednesday, I stuck fast to my plan for grilling for three of us that night, featuring barbecue-glazed pork kebabs. Pretty perfectly cooked and nicely flavored with that homemade sauce, brushed on at the right intervals, these tender morsels went well with a heap of yellow rice and roasted herbed whole green beans. We were back to full sunshine by the time dinner was served, and it was a pretty nice June night.

On Thursday, as the final hours of spring expired, we spotted our first shed exoskeleton from a recently-emerged cicada nymph, another happy sign of summer. Alas, because I'd left the camp chairs on the porch through the winter, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that one of them became a nesting spot. I hope I didn't ruin their temporary homestead when I started to grab the chair so I could clean it up. Both the mother bird and I were very surprised by one another.

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"Grilled Pork Kebabs with Barbecue Glaze," by Andrea Geary. Recipe was an online extra from Cook's Illustrated and based on "The Best Way to Grill Pork Tenderloin," Issue No. 134, May & June 2015, p. 6.

King Arthur Baking's Original Cake Pan Cake

Last Tuesday I tried the recipe for King Arthur Baking's original cake pan cake. I'd tried the vanilla version a while back but this was the inaugural cocoa-based single round layer, all so that I could put to use the trial run of a white chocolate whipped ganache. When I'd made the super epic rainbow cake the weekend before, I was unsure how the quantity of Swiss buttercream would work out, and I had to have a back-up ready to go since there were six for our dinner gathering. Anyway: I didn't need the ganache base I'd prepared and didn't want to let it go, so here's the cake I made to go under it.

Probably because of all that good cake, I felt compelled to make my Tuesday evening downtown stroll a bit longer and somewhat aggressive, clocking in at just over 4.5 miles. Once again, that left me kind of soaked. But as I cooled down out in the side yard, I was exceptionally happy to hear the first cicada love song of the summer season, for me a most joyful noise.

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Based on "Original Cake Pan Cake," from PJ Hamel of King Arthur Baking Company. [Published 01 October 2015]

"Vanilla Whipped Ganache," from Christina Marsigliese of ScientificallySweet.com. [Published 12 August 2024 / Modified 12 June 2025]

Meal No. 3880: Salmon Caesar Salad

If it's not roasted and spiced just so, it's not the salmon of my dreams. Perhaps this helps explain why I take such joy in the kitchen endeavors here: I can make what I like just the way I like it. Such was the case last Tuesday evening, when I prepped and roasted salmon fillets but also whipped up a fresh batch of creamy Caesar dressing, all in service to a salad on power greens, adorned with a fair shake or so of roasted sunflower seeds.

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Based on "Easy Lemon Caesar Salad Dressing," by Kim Hardesty of lowcarbmaven.com.

Meal No. 3879: Salad & Broccoli

Last Monday was a fridge clean-out meal, suitable in part because I really did need it to just be light and uncomplicated. There was a smattering of salad and a few drizzles of Thousand Island to use up, and a few crowns of broccoli whose date of arrival at the house might have been hard to pin down with certainty. So: not broccoli salad but salad and broccoli (which I'd roasted and spiced and herbed...just the way I like it!).

From the pseudo-bunkbed positioning of Sumner and Scarlett on the previous morning, you'd think it was a very lazy Sunday around here. But they were happily napping and I was awkwardly working on my laptop so as not to disturb them too much.

That Sunday was also a chance to snag a few more photos of lovely blooms in the yard, so here ya go...

Squirrel No. 13

One might suggest that the above photo captures Sumner's triumphant application of war paint, of a sorts. And yes: it's a testament to his predatory cunning while patroling the yard for the always-present and regularly invasive squirrel horde.

While opinions may differ, in this household, we have no issue with the dogs operating on their well-developed instincts and appreciate that the natural order of things leads to moments like this one, from last Saturday.

Faithfully supported and cheered on by his younger sister, Sumner has now scored his 13th squirrel kill here. The little guy did not know what hit him and his own sense of self-preservation was mighty in the face of the larger, and more empowered, foe. Sumner's victory would not be denied, even if it proved to be a more fully engaged battle. The triumph left him well-marked as a champion, and we are more than happy to see a subtraction from the yard rodent census.

Super Epic Rainbow Cake

The middle of June brought a lot of activity to downtown Winston-Salem, and Saturday June 14th was really packed. It started with the Winston-Salem Pride parade, and tagged onto the end of it was the March for No Kings anti-Trump/anti-immigration round-ups protest ("Deportation: Literally Biting the Hands that Feed You"). The Winston-Salem Dash had an evening game and the Summer on Fourth concert series took place around the corner from the house. The typical quiet of Spring Street was happily put aside while the throngs massed and the calls were responded to and the colors waved and the people danced.

Let's throw in a few pictures here from the gathering for the No Kings protest while we're at it. Above is what I was watching emerge from the kitchen, looking out toward Fourth Street, so I went upstairs to grab a better angle on it. Then I walked the half-block to the intersection of Fourth and Spring and snagged a few more photos:

These are not good days in America, and the damage is far-reaching and unfathomable. I regret that an infantile obsession with the price of eggs triumphed over the good of our nation in the last election. The stakes were incredibly high and too many people thought it didn't matter.

In honor of Pride, I was once more ready to tackle the interesting endeavor of a super epic rainbow cake. It is always pleasing, both on the eyes and on the tongue.

I'd let almost four years pass since the last one. And it's a bit of a production but also really do-able.

I do really like the base white cake batter, and getting the right range of colors from the gel is a fun and imperfect science.

Frosting and icing are not universally loved among our regular crew, so I thought I'd see if I could get away with just the one batch of lemony Swiss meringue buttercream. That way I kept the filling thinner and the outer decoration almost skimpy. Still, it all seemed to work quite well. Then again: it's a striking cake.

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"Say It With Cake: Super Epic Rainbow Cake," from Kaitlin Flannery of the Whisk Kid blog. [Published 19 August 2009]

Meal No. 3878: Juicy Burgers on the Grill

The latest happy gathering of the six most regular regulars occurrred last Saturday night, in the midst of all the buzz and activity of a very happening downtown weekend. This is such a great crew, though, and all the time we get to spend together is treasured. In the spirit of the approaching summertime, we seemed content enough for it to be a night of bacon cheeseburgers, hot off the grill, with our special sauce and the extra treat of that bacon being the chile spice-rubbed version. With choice of chips to go alongside, we dug in deeply to our two-handed suppers and reveled in community and fellowship.

The oldest daylilies in the yard are those that had been planted before I bought the house, running along the left side of the front porch steps coming up from the street. And 22 years after I bought the place, they continue to impress with their golden yellow color and reddish-orange accents. Here's the blooming frontrunner of the season.

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Adapted from "Grilled Juicy Burgers," originally from Pillsbury Classic Cookbooks recipe magazine, July 2003, p. 52-53. After Pillsbury was purchased in 2001 by General Mills, home of Betty Crocker (founded in 1921, mind you!), it basically ceased to exist as a company and lives on just as a brand. I guess that's why a Pillsbury cookbook recipe from 2003 is now only found on the Betty Crocker website.

"Chile-Rubbed Bacon," by Rick Martinez. In "D.I.Y. B.L.T. O.M.G.: Bake Better Bacon (Upgrade Idea No. 1)," Bon Appétit, July 2016, p. 44.

Meal No. 3877: Herbed Chicken on Salad Greens

With the trusty sous vide immersion circulator and the ongoing frustration of discouraging morning weigh-ins, it was a salad kind of night last Thursday evening. I put together a refreshed batch of Thousand Island dressing, my own tinkered take on a recipe I'd snagged quite a few years ago. It's thick and creamy and has great flavors in a concerted balance.

In the ongoing late spring updates on the yard, let's note the first blooming of a lily, where I've planted them across the front of the house. A moth even helpfully appeared in frame when I snapped a shot, giving us an interesting visual variation.

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"Thousand Island Dressing," which was based on a version from Graybert on GeniusKitchen.com.

White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Toffee Cookies

When the morning rolled around for the delightful extended stay of my brother-in-law to conclude, I didn't want him to hit the road empty-handed. His favorable remarks about our new recipe for white chocolate macadamia nut cookies, to which I like to add some crumbled toffee pieces, led me to some late-night kitchen duties Monday a week ago. This time the larger cookie scoop gave bakery-style kinda big 'uns, slightly crisped around the edges with soft chewy centers and a sugar kick straight to the tongue.

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"THE BEST White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies," from Christina Marsigliese of ScientificallySweet.com. [Published 19 February 2025]

Meal No. 3876: Biscuits 'N Gravy

Once more a diner's dinner request determined our menu this past Monday evening, a long overdue return to shallow bowls brimming with biscuits and sausage gravy. We like ours to have a bit of kick, so it's always the hot breakfast sausage that gets crumbled and browned before the rest of the gravying occurs. The biscuits were storebought, which saved some time, letting me get supper on the table in about 45 minutes from start to finish.

That morning I also spotted an early bloomer amongst the daylilies along the front steps, a promise of some gorgeous colors to follow as we head further into June.

Tres Leches Cake

For our gathering of the four good guys last Sunday night, the dessert selection was that wonderful treat of tres leches cake. I've got a few recipes that I bounce around for this particular goodie, and the one chosen for last weekend could be tackled with confidence because it comes from those smart folks at America's Test Kitchen and Cook's Country. Once more, it came through in glorious goodness, richly milked and fully sweet, a really nice whipped cream topping enhanced with vanilla powder, and not so heavy following our full servings of baked spaghetti earlier in the evening. I should have plotted for myself a much longer downtown stroll before bedtime, though.

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Adapted from "Tres Leches Cake," by Cali Rich in Cook's Country, August-September 2007, p. 26. [Online version revised in July 2021.] I also referred to an adaptation from Danae, the Busty Baker: "Tres Leches with Dulce de Leche and Whipped Cream." [Published 21 February 2009].

Meal No. 3875: Baked Spaghetti

Last Sunday night was a bonus visit from the smart and skilled cinematographer who's just graduated from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts School of Filmmaking. We got to know Grant back in November when The Last Peaceful Year was shot on location here at the house, and as previous blog posts have noted, we really loved getting to know the students involved in these various productions this year. This was a free final week for him before loading up the U-Haul to head home to Colorado, and it was perfect for a night of baked spaghetti and a side salad with Caesar dressing. We also really enjoyed some fresh-baked focaccia, using a shortcut King Arthur mix that was a gift of dear Virginia friend and colleague Donna (and let's also note that the olive oil she also gifted us with was put to multiple good uses that night). It was a fine supper gathering, followed by quite a few rounds of pool up on the third floor. Grant's a great guy and a pleasure to be around, so that final evening to hang out was much appreciated.

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"Baked Spaghetti," by Margaret Coalson via Stick Coulson, 13 July 1997.

National Donut Day

It's been a while since I managed to meet the moment of a "National Day of..." But last Friday was National Donut Day, observed the first Friday of June, and I had a recipe that looked perfect for how my time was working out late that afternoon. Take a gander at these marvelous glazed yeast doughnuts, with an Amish spin, that turned out just about perfect. Fresh and hot, well-coated in a sweet vanilla glaze, I'd consumed two in short order and then spent the evening knowing I'm a weak man.

The storm that blew up on us just after I'd passed two doughnuts over to our neighbors was anything but weak: the rush of water down the street, the flashes of lightning, the roll of thunder, the ominous darkness that beat the dusk into submission: while technically we are still in late spring, let's call it the first great storm of the summer.

Lots of water came down, but not as much as my college roommate Jimmy endured the day before in Sanford, when his office parking lot flooded after about 4 inches of rain fell and his Honda CRV ended up submerged.

Our radar here shows it was small in scope but intense in packed punch:

And good lord: what a bald spot this old man is sporting nowadays:

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"Amish Donuts," from Julie Clark. From Tastes of Lizzy T. [Published 01 June 2024]