Fluffy bunnies

I'm just not a salad person, but once in a blue moon, bunny food graces my kitchen. For me, salad greens are very inefficient in it's fluffiness and low energy density. I need calories to get through my ADHD days. On the rare occasions I do make a green salad, I tend to skew heavier on the denser vegetables and fatty proteins. Baby arugula, yellow beets, dragon carrots, red peppers, and chevre goat cheese. Dressed with roasted garlic chervil vinaigrette. Walnuts optional.

Thai peanuts

Red curry and yellow curry with chicken thighs, purple dragon carrots, and potatos. Trader Joe's curry bases were made for delicate white people taste buds, so I'm zinging them up with hot chilies, galangal, and kaffir lime leaves from my sad looking kaffir lime tree (twiggy shrub.) If Charlie Brown was born Thai, he'd adopt this tree.

Delayed gratification

Beef roast with porcini braised overnight with Pinot Noir at 220 degrees rather than 3 hours at 350. Instead of waking up in the middle of the night to deal with the roast, wafting porcini smells flavored my sweet dreams.

Camarones ala chimichurri. I used the shrimp liquid from last night to make the rice. When I took the first bite, I realized that I ate pretty much this exact dish a few years ago at the El Avion restaurant in Costa Rica. Mine might be better, though less scenic.

Crimini mushroom ragu. Has potential to be delicious. We'll know for sure at some future time.

Prep school

This year's entire loquat harvest was consumed within an hour of picking. Very juicy and fresh. But all gone. No more delicious loquats until next year.

I'm practicing my Top Chef skills by cutting roasted beets into centimeter cubes. The ugly ones went into my stomach. At some point in my life I'd like to go to cooking school and learn these things for real instead of watching TV and making things up as I go along.

Searing a roast for stracoto with porcini mushrooms. A little care in the beginning yields a lot of delicious later.

Extracting flavor from the peeled shrimp shells. The broth may wind up in a sauce, mayhaps. Or the beginnings of a bisque, perhaps. Maybe a poaching liquid of some sort, possibly. But certainly, I'm getting my money's worth from this handful of shrimps. I'm skipping composting the spent shells after I'm done. For they be super stinky for long time.

Shrimps will marinate overnight in a chimichurri.

And for even more Top Chef fun, I will be breaking down two Costco chickens tonight.

Chicken building blocks sorted and organized for dishes yet to be imagined.

I may have gone overboard with the food prep and pyrex containers.

Laying it on thick

Sunchoke gratin. Late spring and summer produce are about to show up at the markets. Fall and winter items must be cleared out of the refrigerator to make room for the new seasons.

Carrot apple ginger soup. With a smidgen of cilantro. The idea is to take advantage of pectin locked away in unpeeled apples to help give the soup an unctuous texture without muddling up the plant flavors with dairy or gelatinous meat broths. The texture turned out great, but I'm not really sure I can credit the apples. I didn't make a batch without the apples to compare. And pectin's jelling effect probably doesn't do much at warm soup temperatures. Tastes good though, so no matter. These would be great with some toasted pumpkin seeds sprinkled on top, but I didn't want to wash another pan.

Roasted orange beets and garlic- possibly for a salad later in the week, or some sort of marinade or sauce. Orange beets don't stain fingers and cutting boards and clothes and walls and napkins and dog noses like the more common red beets. I think orange ones are also slightly milder and more subtle in flavor, but that may be psychological. I'm easily swayed by pretty colors.

Today's bounty from the Super H Mart includes items such as Ca Ca flavored glazed chip snacks. Assorted shaped and filled mochi. Traditional Chen Pee plum candies, and coffee drinks named "Let's Be Bitter." In addition to being swayed by pretty colors, I am easily tempted by entertainingly named things. I will also be conducting comparison tests on cans of coconut milk.

And I couldn't resist trying the little crabs at the giant kimchee bar. Cute little itty bitty crabs! I'm such a sucker for little kawaii things.

A sucker for things like mini-me bananas. These mini bananas sliced and served with melon baller scooped ice cream would make great banana split sundaes for toddlers and dieters. I would top it with a tiny swedish lingonberry instead of a full sized maraschino cherry.

Sambal grilled corn. And Davy sauced ribs. Sometimes, there's nothing better on a weekend than grilled corn and a frosty beer. I had forgotten how good grilled corn can be. We will aim to grill more corn this summer. The pork ribs were so tender that it fell apart like pulled pork. Messy and delicious. This batch of Kentucky Davy Bourbon sauce included dried mangos and oregano. Now that I've realized bbq sauces are incredibly easy to make, there's really no reason to buy sauces and marinades that include xanthum gum and lecithin.

Canines

Not a rabid angry dog. I captured a happy Preston mid-yawn.

Freaks on a leash

I'm a last minute pinch hitter at this year's Minnie's Moonlit Madness puzzle and scavenger hunt event for the Orange County Food Bank. These are the kinds of pictures you take when one is stumbling around Disneyland at midnight tied to 3 other clumsy people with a short piece of rope. Most of us have imbibed a drink or two right before the event. Puzzles this year involved blowing bubbles at mermaids and drawing cats on paper plates. My crayon cat drawing was judged to lack soul. Beeyotch. Kudos to Holger for the "Alan Menken" question. Out of around 350 teams this year, we came in 13th. Which put us firmly between the scary Disney Freaks and the crazy borderline sociopath Disney Freaks.

Footnote

Sad Mondays call for mindlessly quick and easy meals whipped up from whatever is convenient in the larder. Mushroom tortellini with pesto sauce. Thankfully, I grabbed the basil pesto jar rather than the identical chimichurri jar sitting right next to it.

My OCD has extended to shoes. It was time to replace some worn out black dress shoes. Somehow, in the span of a week, I've gained 8 new pairs of shoes. Definitely on the obsessive side.

Cold feet

It's the start of wedding season. Wedding season pains me because I'm always tempted to open the boxes to play with the toys.

Crazy 95+ weather this weekend. I had a giant list of gardening and household tasks to do, but I'm just going to sit in the pool all weekend and marinate.

So hot even the new fishies are hiding.

And so hot that the fava beans are flowering too early.

And so hot that the angels trumpet flowers aren't so fragrant anymore.

So hot that the shrimp plant has turned completely pink.

Preston trying to cool things down.

Capered crusader

Pan seared red snapper with lemon caper butter pan sauce. Very nice. Very very nice.

Out with the old

These modern GPS days have forced paper based maps into early retirement. I'm hoping that I'll get better gas mileage now that I've lightened the load by a couple of pounds.

Amazon.com gift certificates come in handy to replace all the old worn out tupperware. Here's to hoping pyrex containers last a lot longer.

Sorbet of rhubarb. Quite good flavor. I think some vanilla and orange peel would make this out of this world. And a thinner consistency would be nice. Must remember next time.

Fruit bars

Preserving lemons in salt like they do in Morocco. One must be very resourceful to deal with this year's lemon bounty. I've never tasted preserved lemons before, so I have no clue whether these are done correctly or not. My own dried oregano totally trounces the jar from the Spice House.

My impatience and laziness means the pie crust is too warm and squidgy. But that's okay. It's just messy and ugly.

Ugly crust has no affect on the tastiness of strawberry rhubarb pie.

A lovely pine nut basil pesto. And a killer spicy chimichurri sauce. I've forgotten which is which, so there may be culinary failures in the future.

I'm growing heirloom watermelon radishes in addition to the normal purple and pink ones. How awesome are those colors?

Rhubarb sorbet in the future. I love rhubarb.

Chard stems roasted over piperade, and drizzled with vinaigrette. Similar to the insanely complicated rat-patootie dish from the Pixar movie, but with only 5 minutes of effort instead of 5 hours. A little casserole ugliness is an acceptable tradeoff for 5 hours of my life.

Seeing red

Lilypads! Cross your fingers, maybe the water lily will flower this year. Will it be red? Or yellow? Or white?

Warming temperatures make cannas more colorful. I totally want a necktie with this color scheme. This is one of the few non-edible plants left in the backyard.

This is kind of scary looking.

Chorizo black bean molé chili. I wish there were limes on the tree. This could use a touch of lime juice and queso fresco.

2 lbs of lentils for 50 cents! Some mirepoix, chicken stock, a smoked hamhock, and bay leaves. Lentil soup warms the soul.

Mushroom tops

Mushroom pizza. The mushroom topping was slowly cooked in butter until delicious.

Muddling through

Sexy new camera. It reminds me of a Klondike bar. A sexy Klondike bar.

Some of you may be getting dried herbs in the mail. Please don't get too excited because it actually IS oregano and NOT "oregano."

3 of my most favorite things all on one plate.

In honor of the Kentucky Derby, we celebrate with mint julep. Not only do I get to use Kentucky bourbon, I can smoosh the mint with the drink muddler. Seersucker suit not pictured. (I actually do have seersucker in my wardrobe.)