Also, the kind of really good mashed potatoes you make for the holidays (so lots o’ butter and half & half in this house) freeze well in small portions.

‘Tis the season for mashed potatoes chockful o’ butter, half & half, and salt.

This just happened in Minneapolis, too! Though it looks like the smoker was just damaged, not stripped.

In Japanese week, he made Lottie and Mark mess with the filling for their hamburger-themed buns because he doesn’t like gherkins.

About 3,700 miles to Edinburgh for this venison and wild mushroom with brown sauce over some sort of lovely slice of grilled bread.

I haven’t watched it yet, but I follow a few UK Twitter accounts, and they were NOT happy about Hermine.

True on the grill. We just lived on top of one of the biggest hills in town in Western Wisconsin. If it was cold and windy, then you couldn’t get that nice heat buildup. Straight cold was okay, though.

I only have four cut-crystal glasses - a family friend gave my husband and I a set of 4 of the Waterford Millennium Old Fashioned Glasses for our wedding, totally out of the blue. They have each of the symbols from the 5 different “Toast” patterns, and they are so, so pretty when you put a colored liquid in them. They…

And if it’s not totally freezing where you are, throwing it on the grill is also an option.

First, good wishes for your munchkins, and I’m glad they’re going home!

I was surprised no one went for a sweetened bean paste, but I think making it from scratch just takes too much time.  Ditto for mochi.  But the shape of mochi would have been great for decorating some of their cakes!

My special weekend breakfast is going to the restaurant around the corner for pancakes with maple-bacon butter. Divine.

I laughed when pasties were announced, because I’d actually made crab pasties earlier this week - I am still mourning the loss of my trip to Dorset/Devon we had pushed from Spring 2020 to Spring 2021, and these are pasties you get on the Isle of Wight. (Also, it’s getting chilly, so they seemed like a good thing to…

Oh, no! I mean, I like watching it. (I also recommend The Repair Shop, if you enjoy GBBO. It is similarly soothing. The first two seasons are on Netflix, at least they were the last time I checked.)

I’ve spent the majority of my adult life as a professional baker, and seriously, you couldn’t pay me to be on this show.

Jealous! Though we have United Noodles in the Twin Cities, which is fab.

I got mine on Amazon, though I bet you have a decent Asian grocery somewhere where you can pick one up!

I mean, unless you’re doing super-duper thin eggs - or your kitchen is unreasonably large - it’s not that hard to take a few steps to throw the egg bowl in the sink.

I used to be a Vertebrate Paleontologist - i.e., I dug up dinosaurs - until I got waylaid by injury. But, for a while, I persisted by doing digs with the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta. (If you are a dinosaur/fossil nerd and haven’t been, plan a trip post-pandemic.) While they have since discontinued…

What kills me about Carrey’s Biden?  When he’s not going manic, it’s a good Biden.  Early on in the debate sketch last week, you could remember he’s a decent impressionist - the voice, the gestures, the expressions were all there.  Then he just goes off the rails and it immediately becomes annoying.