Eat dust

Fennel, romaine salad. With parmegianno reggiano shavings and anchovy balsamic vinaigrette. Beautiful fennel bulbs with wet dirt still on them, $1 each at the farmers market. The nice kid offered to cut off the fronds at the stand. Since I'm paying for the fronds too, I'm going to bring them home for the compost bin. I left the stalks sticking out of the grandma cart for extra style points while trundling along exploring strange varieties of vegatables.

Artichoke caponata with sourdough croutons. Caponata is a traditional eggplant and tomato stew dish hailing from Sicily. Note the colors of the Italian flag in the dish. I normally use frozen artichoke hearts. Those pesky artichokes are time consuming to dissect. But the texture of fresh artichokes made a big difference tonight. I eat my share of crappy convenience foods, but sometimes only fresh will do.


Kiwi creme brulée. This carton of eggs was surprisingly flavorful. Made the creme brulée extra rich, decadent, and nearly saffron colored. I love my blow torch. I will find a way to brulée bacon. Mmmm... bacon...


The stirrings of persimmon gelato for tomorrow night. "PersimmonFest 2006 (tm)" and "Thar He Blow(Torched) 2006 (sm)" are happening concurrently. Confusing, but with all the craziness in my life right now, what's a little more chaos?


A string of bad luck in the drink department lately. Sucked into gimmicky jalepeno beer. Yuck. Banished to Bad Drink Limbo, next to the turkey and gravy soda. Got sucked into buying aronia berry juice at Trader Joe's today.

The label says, "Yup, you read that correctly. Aronia Berry Juice. (that's ah-roh-knee-ah) And just what is an aronia berry? We're glad you asked. Aronia berries are dark pigmented berries that extremely high in antioxidents. Higher than blueberries, higher than cranberries, higher, even, than pomegranites. This juice is a terrific mixer-with everything from sparkling water to lemonade to vodka. Give it a try-just for the health of it."

The woman at the register warned me that it tastes like dirt. But adventurous Davy still wanted to try it. Afterall, I did like Cynar artichoke liquer. Mais Oui! Aronia berry juice DOES taste like dirt. "Terrific mixer" means that it tastes like crap by itself. I think they need to print in bold letters like the surgeon general's warning. "WARNING: TASTES LIKE DIRT. DRINK HAIR DYE INSTEAD."