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 After several gray days, I’m sitting in my sunny kitchen this afternoon recalling the delicious meal my husband and I had last night. I had recently come across The New York Times food contributor Ali Slagle’s recipe for Pork Chops with Kale and Dates. After reading comments from other cooks, this sounded like a good recipe. I still had a few remaining dates in my pantry from date nut bread that I made for a friend, pork chops in the freezer and rosemary sprigs left from the pasta the other evening; all I needed was kale. For the recipe you’ll also need salt, pepper, neutral oil, butter, fresh rosemary springs or sage leaves, either red wine or sherry vinegar and fresh garlic.
 Life would be uninteresting without a weekly serving of pasta. Between the shapes, fillings and sauces, there are limitless possibilities for a bowl of pasta. I have approximately 40 pasta recipes under this category on my website. This doesn’t include the one pot or one pan recipes for gnocchi.
Last week in The New York Times, food writer and cook book author, Melissa Clark, had a recipe for Buttery Lemon Pasta with Almonds and Arugula. My husband adores pasta in any shape or sauce for that matter. For this week’s pasta meal, I was intrigued by Melissa’s recipe. The combination of arugula, sliced almonds in a simple sauce made with pasta water infused with lemon juice and zest sounded enticing.  Comfort food for my husband and I can mean a bowl of homemade soup, a dish of pasta or meatloaf. I normally make an all-beef meatloaf, but recently Kay Chun from The New York Times had a recipe that used, what else, a meatloaf blend.
When I was shopping the meat case at my local food stores I noticed one store’s meatloaf blend was a combination of ground beef and ground pork; the other used beef, pork and veal. What are the pros and cons of using just one type of ground meat versus a blend of either two or three. I visited the “Serious Eats” website and read an article by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, “The Food Lab's All-American Meatloaf Recipe,” with the following takeaway:  I love to both cook and eat! My morning breakfast consists of low-fat Greek yogurt, fresh strawberries or blueberries and granola. Sometimes I munch on the granola when I’m hungry; this isn’t good. I store my Christmas cookies in our front storage attic where its dry and cold, thereby keeping them fresh longer. If you want a cookie, you’ll have to work for it. As of this week, I finished the granola. Breakfast will either be cereal or yogurt with fruit. I have reduced my cookie intake to one, or sometimes two cookies per day. I snacking on Honeycrisp apples when I desire something sweet.
 This past weekend I had a craving for risotto and recently caught an episode of America’s Test Kitchen where Elle Simone Scott demonstrated an easier method for making shrimp risotto; constant stirring wasn’t required.
For the recipe you’ll need 1-pound extra-large shrimp, table salt, vegetable oil, water, whole black peppercorns, bay leaves, unsalted butter, an onion, a fennel bulb, baking soda, minced fresh garlic, Arborio rice, dry white wine, Parmesan cheese, minced fresh chives, lemon zest and lemon juice.  A few weeks ago on public broadcasting, 177 Milk Street aired an episode on focaccia. What is focaccia? In Italy it’s considered a street food, a flat bread made with a dough similar to pizza. Focaccia can either be sweet or savory. The version Milk Street demonstrated was savory. The focaccia was topped with green Castelvetrano and grape tomatoes. The dough has a high ratio of water to flour, which makes the focaccia light and airy.
For the recipe you will need bread flour, yeast, granulated sugar, water, olive oil, grape tomatoes, Castelvetrano olives, dried oregano, kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper. You will also need an extra-large bowl in which the dough will rise.
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