Some pig

Coffee spiced braised Wilbur with jus. Like they said in Charlotte's Web. That's "Some Pig." Pork belly so tender it's essentially pig jello.

And for suppers #2 and #3, I roast cornish game hens. One rubbed with olive oil, lemon, and thyme. The other bourbon barbeque over caramelized onions. Game hens are great because they're the perfect size to eat an entire bird in one sitting. My stomach was very greedy tonight, so I roasted two.

Since the oven was already on, it never hurts to throw a few heads of garlic in to roast alongside the chickens. One can always use roasted garlic. The kohlrabi lump in the center is an experimental technique I'm trying to invent. The thought was to lightly "smoke" the kohlrabi with roasted garlic color and aroma while it cooks. I think the technique is solid, I will try this with some form of squash or root vegetable in the fall. The texture of cooked kohlrabi was a bit too fibrous for me.

I still had space in the oven, so we make balsamic glazed cipollini onions. Toss some peeled onions with a smidge of salt, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar. Bung it into an oven until luscious onion candy emerges.

Shelf #3 in the oven housed salt crust assorted items.

Salt crust beets, daikon, and kohlrabi. The beets turned out tender soft. The daikon and kohlrabi could have used some sort of barrier so as not to soak up too much salt. Perhaps wrapped in a lotus leaf before baking in salt.

Cherry tree produced only two tiny cherries this year. Less than one bite. Disappointing harvest. Still hungry.

Sweet talk, Babe

Donut peaches from the side yard. Donut nectarines from 99 Ranch Market. I did not know such things like donut nectarines existed. My donut tree peaches were juicy and fragrant. But I still think standard yellow peaches have better flavor.

Lemons out the wazoo again. Wazoo! Can we all say "Wazoo!"

Umami mushroom pasta again. Cheese and mushrooms and green onions. There shall be a haiku about umami in the future.

Coffee spiced pork belly ready to be braised overnight in the oven. Pork is a nice sweet meat. When I watched the movie Babe, the little sheep herding piglet made me hungry rather than vegan. Talking pigs must be even more delicious than non-talking pigs. Babe's guanciale should be very flavorful due to his chattiness.

Making ginger syrup. Good for many uses, and enough syrup for both good and evil purposes.

Bonus candied ginger. These are powerfully intense. Store bought has nothing on home made candied ginger.

Purple people eater

Cool beans! How awesome are purple beans? I know I say that every time I harvest purple beans. But they are AWESOME! And favas too. But fava beans aren't as awesome because they aren't purple.

Mushroom confit and bacon pizzas. Super thin crust this time. 

And classic margarita style pizza. Culinarily, I should probably move away from pizzas in my repertoire and try new things. But pizzas are such a quick and easy standby for mindless school night fare. Faster than you can answer the door for Domino's, I can put a few pizza pies on the table. But creatively, I should try to master other dishes.

Miso nerdy

Miso mustard glazed salmon. With sesame seeds. I used the blow torch to crisp up the exterior.

Attempting to make pig candy. Miso maple candied bacon, Top Chef style. Something went screwy in the execution I think. I will try a higher temperature next time. These came out too salty and rubbery instead of crispy yielding to chewy.

Wintermelon tea. Dong-gua cha! These are awesome because rather than kool-aid type powders, the wintermelon tea comes in hermetically sealed rectangular blocks with perfectly flat sides and 90 degree corners. My OCD loves flatness and 90 degree corners. Just dissolve in water, chill, and imbibe. Makes gallons on the cheap. Wintermelon tea would probably be awesome churned into sorbet, but I usually drink it all before I remember to chill the ice cream machine insert.

Free range ragu

I'm reaching maximum capacity in the freezer again. We'll start working through some of the oxtail ragu to free up some room. This jar was zinged up with artichokes.

Surgical cuts

Flooding and geysers in the front yard means emergency surgery on zone #1 sprinkler valve. Sigh. Required 2 sojourns to the hardware store. The last trip to replace the defective replacement part. What happened to quality control these days? Play time in the kitchen canceled. Phooey.

Canned

Chicken stock bottles cracked and shattered in the freezer. What a mess! The flavors of stock just can not be contained by man made containers. Thankfully, canning jars are cheap at the hardware store.

Brown eye

Trying a new interesting recipe for mushroom olive ragu on linguine with pecorino romano cheese. Basically, you blitz up a bunch of brown mushrooms in the food processor with some olives, cook the mush in red wine, and you're done. How could something so simple be so delicious? The sauce freezes well too.

Chocolate sorbet has a very alien texture. Even straight out of the freezer, it has the consistency of liquid latex. Wrong. It's just wrong. Fail!

Loo pee

Loo'd items: Day 2. Eggs and tofu and lions and tigers and bears. Oh my! Tonight, I added extra star anise and chen pees.

Wheat berry salad with parsley, lemon, and red peppers. Man does not live on loo alone.

And a third batch of loo'd tofu and seaweed and chicken. The sauce is getting darker with each use. That means it's getting extra flavah.

Bottled loo juice, 

Will power

I need adult supervision when I go to grocery stores. It's impossible to practice restraint and self control. I want to try everything I see. It's like I'm five years old.

Crazy soda pop. Rather than the usual screw top cap, pressure generated from carbonation forces a glass marble in the upper chamber to seal tightly against the opening. The pinch in the middle keeps the marble from settling into the bottom after it's been forced down by the bundled punch mechanism. A marvel of pointless physics and engineering.

Anything sporting panda illustrations or panda logos will pretty much guarantee a spot in the shopping cart. 

The first of the string beans this season are ready. I started with an equal number of green, yellow, and purple bean seeds. For some reason, the yellow beans have taken off, followed by purple, and the more common green beans are withering away before producing flowers. A lone strawberry survivor. And it wasn't even all that tasty. Slugs got to all the other ones.

Nowhere near a peck of pickled peppers. But we don't need that much quantity as these peppers are intense enough to strip varnish. The radishes will turn a shade of flattering pink as it pickles.

Looing assorted items. This is the start of a master loo juice sauce base that can be passed down many generations. Each time it's used, you add a little more spice, a little more water, a little more soy sauce. It's supposed to darken with age and bloom with complex flavor like a fine wine. If you treat me right, I will bequeath this sauce to you upon my death.

Loo lo. Loo gee. Loo zhu. Loo hsiang goo. 

Sautéd dandelion greens. My mulching efforts over the past year have cut down the number of weeds growing in the yard. So I actually paid good money at the farmer's market for these weeds.

Chocolate blood orange sorbet refuses to freeze. The flavor is incredible, but WHY WON'T YOU FIRM UP?

Tonight's batch of chicken stock yielded over a gallon and a half. I'm not going to will this to anyone upon my death, so you'll have to make your own.