Wow. I’d never considered that paté was something you could make at home! That recipe sounds pretty easy too!

Wooo a food post! I love the idea of adding sesame seeds to the banana & almond butter snack, I will definitely try it. If you ever come across chicken livers at a supermarket (I buy them at the Asian grocery store), I definitely recommend making your own pate. I’ve used this recipe as a base - https://www.foodandwine.com/chicken-liver-pate-6423034 but I skipped Cognac and I think I halved the butter and it came out really good. I do wash the liver in cold water beforehand.

Yeah. It’s not quite as nice as normal pasta, but if normal pasta isn’t an option for someone then lentil pasta is a decent substitute. I don’t think it’s as filling though, so it doesn’t quite tick all the boxes.

Not a fan of lentil pasta. I found it just like bad pasta but guess there’s a market

I’m so happy to taste things again. I have a lot of photos I need to turn into another food post when I get time (which might be in a couple of weeks). So there will be more coming!

Yay for being able to taste things and thank you for spelling Kyiv correctly! :)

❤️

Thank you for coming with me on this ten year journey!

The shallot grating is not the proudest moment in my life. But we live and learn. We live and learn.

Good work, Janine! Obviously my 10 year highlight is the shallot grating. Although sounds like the mango came close!

Not at all! But lots of recipes out there are vegan now and I like trying some out because I’m always intrigued as to how vegan recipes will taste.

Are you going flexatarian, Bab?

Glad you like the new font!

I’d love to go to Anne Frank’s house. I remember seeing massive queues when we went past, so I can understand that booking is a must. Next time I’m in the Dam we’ll do it.

Shame the book is not called Sadako-San, Sadako-Tran.

If you fancy visiting Anne Frank’s house when you’re next in the Dam, let me know! You have to book the tickets a few weeks in advance though!

P.s. like the new font

Whoa that recipe. I didn’t know you could get cheese-crusted roast potatoes! I am intrigued.

Sugar in tomato dishes sounds like a really good idea to combat the acidity. I am beginning to realise (mostly thanks to “Chicken Leg") that a bit of sugar in a lot of dishes can really improve things, so I’ve started adding it occasionally. Apparently my Nan (who was a cook) used to recommend it too, but then she did get diabetes, so I think I’ll reserve it only for the dishes that really need it!

I’m glad the Vietnamese cookbook is going well! Vietnamese cuisine is something I haven’t delved into at all, but I bet it’s delicious.

Hi! I have a favorite recipe for roasted potatoes that I’ve made it quite a few times and it’s always a hit. Of course, parmesan and butter help pretty much anything they touch. :) Here’s the link: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1020633-extra-crispy-parmesan-crusted-roasted-potatoes. Let me know if you have any issues accessing it as I also have the NYT Cooking subscription so I can send it from there. I didn’t realize you weren’t a fan of shakshuka, it’s one of my favorite brunch dishes but it is certainly very tomato-ey. I always put a pinch of sugar when I cook tomato dishes, you don’t end up tasting it but it tones down the acidity and makes the dishes more balanced. I’ve been trying new dishes from my vietnamese cookbook, so far I’ve done noodle dish and an eggplant dish and both were quite good.

Secondly, all these recipes look like cookbook photos. I am just in awe.
Thank you! I have realised that for me 70% of the joy of making a food post is the cooking and eating, but the other 30% is the food photography. So comments like this give me life.

(I understand that entire national cuisines are built around the concept of savory peanuts, but while I wish these national cuisines well and admire their ingenuity, I Simply Cannot.)
I think we may have talked about this before, but I am the complete opposite. I grew up with peanuts and peanut butter being seen as a savoury thing, and the thought of including them in sweet things still squicks me a little. I mean, I am growing used to it now and will happily choose a peanut cookie or peanut granola bar, but I still always think “Sweet peanuts?? Brave choice!” (I can remember watching with horror when my Dad first bought a Reese’s peanut butter cup from some speciality shop and ate it. I was like “ewwww how could you!” Several years later I ate one myself and understanding blossomed.)

I am so sorry that you had an avocado drought recently. The trials of 2021 have truly touched us all. (No really. That must have been annoying. I’m glad things are getting back to normal now.)

Your horror at sardines on toast is amusing me greatly. If it helps, when I was little I knew them as the even more uncool name: pilchards on toast. I’m sure there are lots of British people who wouldn’t be into it, but I am old enough to have grown up with it as a staple. Pilchards come in tomato sauce here, so mostly they taste of tomato with a slight tuna-y fish taste. That mixture of tomato sauce and butter and hot toast is lovely.

Pilchards on toast was one of the few times I ate fish as a child. We just weren’t really fish eaters, especially a few decades ago. Generally fish came in cans. You would have:
Canned tuna - eaten with mayo in a sandwich, and occasionally with tomato sauce (not mayo) and pasta if you’re feeling fancy
Canned salmon - eaten with cucumber in a sandwich (very fancy)
Canned pilchards in tomato sauce - eaten on toast
Cod or haddock - eaten as part of fish and chips only
(I have just realised that most of these are sandwich-based dishes. I don’t know what that says about us.)

Ah. Thank you for all your comments! It has been a joy!!

Thank you! I honestly don’t know what the covid situation is doing right now. In the UK case numbers have been super high since July and have just kind of stayed that way. They’re not really going up and not really going down. I have no idea if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. If I try to think about it too much my head hurts. I hope your pandemic experience is going ok. Please let me send you virtual hugs.

If you do end up reading Ghost Wall I’d love to know what you think! I haven’t read it yet, and your book reviews are always so good and insightful.

Again, everything looks like a cookbook photo.
Gosh. I am just hearteyes over this comment. Thank you.

I’ve only ever had tahini out of a squeeze bottle, also, and mixed with other seasonings in a sauce, so I’m not really too sure what it tastes like by itself.
You might like it a lot by itself! So many people seem to like it that I think I’m an exception to the general rule here.

The vegetable salads seem like things that would be very labor-intensive, which means they are closed doors to my lazy butt
If you do want to try one, the Sweet potato, lentil and feta salad was really easy. You basically just chucked everything in the oven for a bit then dumped it on a plate. (The other recipes weren’t really worth the effort XD)

but I do recommend Magic Erasers just like the other commenter. I use them on the bathtub, and they work like… magic
Oh man I really need to try these.

You’ve not had lamb! Is lamb not that common in the US? Or is it more that you don’t eat it personally? I can easily understand why someone wouldn’t want to eat a cute little baa lamb!

I have been eating lamb since I was a little kid, so the cute associations aren’t really ones that come up for me. It’s actually my favourite meat. It tastes like beef but has a bit more flavour (slightly iron-y maybe?) and is richer and more greasy. It’s also super expensive so I eat it only about five times a year.

You can’t eat soft eggs over here, either, unless you want to take a chance on being hospitalized with food poisoning.
That’s so sad. Does no-one ever eat soft-boiled eggs? I wouldn’t say that our eggs in the UK are super safe. There’s certainly no guarantee that you won’t get food poisoning from them. I know that pregnant women are always advised to never eat the yolk runny. But runny yolks are so nice that I think most non-pregnant people just go ahead and eat them that way anyway. (I just started looking up the difference between UK and US eggs and this is so complicated I am going to close the tab and stop.)

Can’t really imagine how this would taste, either, nor do I understand how a risotto could be achieved in an oven.
Please do not try to imagine it. It is sadness made flesh.

It looks a little like a shipping envelope in the photo, and for some reason that makes me really happy.
This description is cracking me up. I love it.

Your enthusiasm for food posts gives me so much joy! Thank you <3

FOR A PERSON WHO DOESN’T LIKE PEAS YOU SURE COOK THEM A LOT JANINE
I feel called out XD XD XD XD (I have a bag of frozen peas in the freezer as we speak. They’re just quite handy to have as an emergency back-up vegetable.)

I think putting lentils in pasta would be like putting glue in your construction paste.
I have realised that I mentally class lentils as “protein” rather than “carbs” so I have no issue adding them to pasta. And I’ve had super tasty lentil pasta dishes before (my friend makes a mean one). But I was annoyed that this one didn’t include the tastiness that it promised :(