Squirrel pizza

Old family recipe.

Nutty taste

Preston caught a new toy for himself. He was all besides himself and running around like a puppy all day. Preston put the squirrel next to the toy one. Such an organized dog. Such carnage.



The fruits of last night's PestoFesto. Mexican quesa-pizza.



And a traditional basil pesto proscuitto pizza. As much as I try, I can't seem to stray away from Italian food. Why?

Pesto festo

Time to clean out all the leftover greens in the fridge. 3 kinds of pesto!

1) AruGalaApple pesto, made from last night's leftover movie night salad.
2) Cilantro pumpkin seed pesto, with wimpy habaneros. (I managed to grow non-spicy habenero peppers. Phooey!)
3) Traditional Pesto pine nut pesto.



Penne pesto with procuitto. I wanted to add peas for extra alliteration, but I was too hungry to wait the 5 minutes for peas to defrost.

Why can't I cook Chinese food?

A rude gala movie night

Dinner and a Movie night at the Monroe's. Napoleon Dynamite and assorted bad 50's educational films. I'm in charge of salad. Yay.



Packing up the catering cart. This recipe is inspired by pork chops and apple sauce.



Wilted arugala, walnut, pancetta, and apple salad with shallot mustard vinaigrette. I chose gala apples because arugala has the same letters in the name.

I think I'll have salad

Lunch involved a bunny head. This is not the strangest lunch I've had.

Trying to turn Japanese

Starting a couple new consulting projects today. Whoring makes one tired. I wish I could spend the entire day in the kitchen instead. But I still have to pay for the kitchen. Sigh. This also means no more pottery class for a while. Double sigh.



I saved a couple pounds of picnic mussels for myself. This all began as an attempt to make something Asian. I started out with some sake, mirin, and miso paste. But somehow before I realized what I was doing, it turned into an Italian dish. Dammit! Good though. Very very good.

Fettucine, mussels, garlic, half an onion, basil, two anchovies, splash of red wine vinegar, can of Costco diced tomatos. Sprinkle of red pepper flakes. And miso paste. And mirin. And sake.



Papaya gelato.



Oh Lordy! Ick! Ick! Ick! I somehow made all natural ingredients taste like plastic. An utter failure. How could this have been part of the same papaya that was in the incredible tart over the weekend? I might as well have eaten the plastic container this was frozen in. Ick! Ick! Ick! And it even has an aftertaste that I can't get out with beer or soda or giant glasses of water. Ugh. What did I do wrong?

I hate clowns

$1 polyester shirt from the thrift store. Hours and hours of entertainment. Much bang for the buck.



Impromptu picnic at Griffith Park with the old work folks. I brought my little folding camp stove.



And made mussels steamed in wine and butter. So much easier and faster to prepare than the usual barbeque fare. Bonus points for being all fancy schmancy, but took less than 5 minutes total prep time. De-beard mussels. Throw in pot with wine and butter. Pluck a lemon from the tree. Chop some parsley. Chuck it all into the cooler. Plonk it on the camp stove. Turn it on. Easy peesy yummy.



BAH! This nature thing.



What do you mean there's a $25 cover charge?



Drug dealing behind the tables at Griffith Park.



Dueling marshmallow roasting.



S'more please.



Henie had a cocktail party tonight. I invented a dessert for her. Honey Papaya Brulee Tart. It turned out exactly like how I imagined it. Texture was somewhere in between a creme brulee and a soufle. With just enough toasted pistachios for crunch, color, and aroma. This was absolutely incredible. Incredible. Just a hint of honey and lime. And the papaya curd became complex, smooth, and mellow. Crispy blow torched sugar top. Incredible I tell ya! Incredible. But alas, I have no clue how to make this again. I didn't measure anything and I've forgotten what ingredients I used. I must start writing these things down as I'm making them.

Bananas hanging over toilet

Funky retro banana leaf wallpaper once again graces my bathroom walls. I've missed it. I rescued a smidgen of wallpaper from the dumpster during the renovation. I was the only one that liked it. Now it's back. And now my life will be happy again.



Remember? It was awesome. I loved it.

Pot roast

Embryonic pots. The cone shaped one was kind of ho-hum. So I gave it a handle. A special ear shaped handle. Like that freaky mouse with the human ear growing out of it's back. The brown one came out lopsided and all melty. So I turned it into a pot inspired by dinosaur eggs being excavated by the Field Museum. And I made the round one while thinking about cantalopes. Sometimes, one just thinks about melons behind a potter's wheel.



First batch came back from the glaze kiln. I like this one the best.



I accidentally created purple. Everybody at the studio was asking me how I did it. They've been trying to get purple for ages. I have no clue how I made purple.



The first of my Jetsons series. The inside came out great, it's hard to see though.



The green part looked like the skins of the beautiful bronze statues I saw in Italy. On the other side of the green, I accidentally created purple again using a different method that I don't remember. The folks at the clay studio were pretty frustrated at this point.

Smutty porking

Circle of life. Preston beat them up even though Oscar and Maisy have weight advantages.



This tomatillo has a penis! So disturbing. So very disturbing.



Spent a lazy sunday in the kitchen. Mike and Chris wanted to have the tomatillo braised pork dish again. Pork with penis sauce. So disturbing.

Affluent yuppie hippie

Spending the day with Bruce and Meridith and Jenne and Aaron in San Francisco. There's this thing called public transportation. Such a strange thing. I must know more about this public transportation.



Bruce and Meridith and Aaron and Jenne.



The old ferry building transformed into affluent yuppie hippie food emporium. So over the top foodie expensive with organic this and rare imported that. Of course, I'm practically peeing in my pants with excitement. The giant celery looking things are called "cardoons." They're related to artichokes, and require hours and hours of peeling and hours and hours of boiling to prepare. Supposed to taste like a mild subtle artichoke. We're lazy and didn't get these. We'll wait until they come out with freeze dried cardoon flakes like instant mashed potatoes. I imagine cardoons would be good tempura fried. And I'll keep imagining because I'm not going to spend an entire day to make a dish with cardoon.

Driving doggie style

Silly dog had that goofy grin the entire car trip. Preston loves to ride in cars. Doggie road trip!



Gazing towards the future. Impromptu visit to Mike and Chris before the baby arrives.

Fried Mexican guinea pigs

Linh came over for dinner tonight. I made her a Mexican feast. I've never tried to make most of these dishes before. I should probably be more conservative and not foist my new culinary experiments upon unsuspecting visitors, but it turned out delicious anyway. Everything was extra flavorful.



Crimini mushroom, serrano, and asadero cheese quesadillas. Quite authentic, I'll have to whip up a lime-y salsa to top the quesadillas next time. It needed a bit of citrus tang to cut the richness.



Tortilla soup. Topped with queso fresco, sprinkled with crunchy toasted ancho and pasilla pepper bits. Diced avocado hidden at the bottom of the bowl. I fried the tortilla strips myself. This is my first attempt at frying anything. I nailed it.



Cornflake encrusted red snapper, fried to golden perfection. With tomatillo chile sauce and roasted corn. Frying makes everything taste good, and much easier and not as messy as I expected. Though, my judgement may have been severly impaired at the time. That was my third margarita in the photo. One of my super strong margaritas made with fresh picked limes from the margarita tree.



The old standby key lime pie. I can make these in less than 20 minutes now. Consistently good.

Volcanic fire

My chile pepper and tomato seedlings arrived from New Jersey this morning. Gotta love the internet. One of the chile pepper seedlings is called "Devil's Tongue." Oooooo... Ironically, today I harvested the very first tiny malformed chocolate habanero pepper- from the seedling I bought from the very same place last year. This year, I hope to avoid the skunk and sprinkler system disasters that plagued my backyard last summer. First mutant chard, now mutant habanero peppers. There's something strange happening back there.



Chicken Vesuvio with artichoke hearts. Charred and firey hot like Mt Vesuvius. I added the entire tiny malformed chocolate habanero pepper. A very distinctive taste. Sweet and pruney in the beginning, building up to a spicy kick at the back of the throat. Eye opening. Such a unique taste. It's spicy that tells a story.

Giggling fools

LA Conservancy Angelino Heights walking tour. Damn bad directions from Yahoo Maps made me miss the first 20 minutes of the tour. Neighborhood full of old Victorian houses in various stages of restoration. Some of these paint jobs cost more than $100,000. The first house is on sale for over 2.5 million dollars. I like the circles in the third house.



OMG! OMG! OMG! This is the house on Charmed! And we get to go inside! Of course, this house was used mostly for the porch and exterior shots. The interior is actually shot in a sound stage, but they did a good job replicating the staircase for TV. I was practically peeing in my pants. Alyssa Milano jiggled around in skimpy clothing right here!

Cute story. The man who owns this house fell in love the woman across the street while they were both restoring their respective houses. They married. Now he lives over in the circle house and rents this one out for filming.



So very not Alyssa Milano.



One of my first attempts at bowl making. It came out lopsided when I skooched it off the wheel, so I played that up by deconstructing the pot and making it asymmetrical, cutting away the boo boo part. I'm good at working with sow's ears.



Sake cup, with handle. We're supposed to put handles on mugs. I couldn't get myself to put a normal handle on the cup. I've got another twenty or so pots waiting to dry out. The rains are putting a damper on my progress. I asked Jim the instructor whether the glazes and clay were dishwasher safe. They are!