I heart pork

The last of the old sprinkler valves are at the end of their useful life. Well, one of them is still good. But my anal retentiveness has been bothered by the non-matchy matchy valves for years now. And the PVC work is really just haphazard.

And now I have updated virtually the entire irrigation system. We now have matching valves, and pipes that are less spaghetti-like. And it only took one trip to the hardware store. I may have a future as a surgeon.

Twice cooked pork lettuce wraps. The chili peanut sauce... whoowhee... packs a whallop. My own valves and pipes are totally going to need some work too if I keep eating like this. But my sinuses are clear.

Fire in the hole

Now THIS is an individual sized turkey pot pie.

Brussel sprouts are mind numbingly labor intensive to clean and prep. But delicious. I could use a sous chef and a prep cook to make my life easier. And my own bacon pig.

What do they say about ashes to ashes? Preston went all Dalmation on me and tried to save my life from the self cleaning oven. The oven was filthy. Filthy!

Pie pigs

In some strange Twilight-Zoney twist that is my life, I'm having turkey leftovers on the morning of Thanksgiving. Nothing like turkey to build up an appetite for more turkey.

Individual turkey pot pies. Though, I'm not sure I can call them individual pot pies if I eat more than one at a time.

And for Ben's tonight, I will be testing the newest refinement to my apple fennel salad with grapefruit. I matched my tie to the grapefruit.

And the best iteration of key lime pie so far. This time with coconut flavored whipped cream. The coconut whipped cream is a keeper, but the crust needs some more tweaking. I will be needing volunteers to be guinea pigs for the next key lime pie.

Put a fork in it

Tonight, I'm taking a break from turkey leftovers. We attempt to make fried rice. And then I am reminded that I never learned how to use chopsticks correctly. I am such an embarrassment to my grandma. But fried rice is still tasty with a fork.

Second to last session of wheel throwing class tonight. Overworked Junzo finally fired some of my plates and lumpy vessels. There's some ugly ass plates this go round, probably because I've been in an ugly mood a lot lately. If I send you one of the ugly ass plates as a gift this year, it means you're on my shit list. Carol the instructor wanted to steal the spotted dimply vase. I guess nobody else does the spotted glazing waxing techniques like I do. It's not that hard at all. I thought it would be an obvious thing to do.

My favorite plate so far. I was going for a rustic kind of mid-century type of feel. The blue grey glaze came out really deep and rich. And the shape is exactly how I envisioned it. Very happy with this one.

And I did multiple color glazes on the bottom. Which is also something nobody else thinks to do. Even if you don't see the bottom all the time, why wouldn't you put in the effort to make it interesting also? I'm very happy with the yellow brown leathery looking glaze. And the combination with the shiny blue grey is nice.

PTSD

Christmas decorations have been up in the stores since before Halloween. I'm way behind this year. And with early Thanksgiving this year, I have all my holidays screwed up.

In the post-early turkey day aftermath (Does that even make sense?) we start a week of processing turkey leftovers. Because of this year's early gobble gobble festivities, I might actually be eating leftover turkey on Thanksgiving day.

Turkey mushroom stock is what you get when you juice a Thanksgiving turkey. I let down my ancestors by not throwing in a handful of MSG.

Bacon for more

Great turn out for 2008's Early Turkey Day / Reunion / Job Fair. There was gobble. There was booze. There was merriment. There was bacon. Thanks Dan for getting the ball rolling. Great to see old and new faces. Those of you who didn't make the party, we totally made fun of you behind your defenseless backs. Let that be a lesson to you.

This year's spread gets even more impressive than years past. Deliciousness from everybody. Turkeys and squash and nuts and greens and fennel and sweet potato and ravioli and pasta salad and chocolate cake and crab rangoon.

I contributed a flight of bacon courses. We begin with bacon chocolate chip cookies. Next time, I'd double the amount of bacon bits. Bacon doesn't lend itself well to subtlety.

Bacon toffee. If you like salted caramels, bacon toffee is even better. Bacon candy!

And we close with bacon ice cream with bacon salt. Best ice cream ever! We now have definitive proof that bacon DOES make everything taste better. There will sonnets written for bacon ice cream. Ships will be launched for bacon ice cream. Hillary might be Secretary of State for bacon ice cream. And even Brangelina might get married for bacon ice cream.

Gobble de gook

The living room sofa has entered the Duck Tape stage of it's life-cycle. Lately, my own stuffing has been spilling out of my pants too, so I can empathize. Sadly, using duct tape to keep my pants up may have painful consequences. Luckily, human ingenuity has invented solutions just for this issue.

Some early prep work for tomorrow's Early Thanksgiving 2008. Cranberry persimmon relish. Because we have oodles of jiggly hachiya persimmons this week. I have to admit, I have a gooey soft spot in my heart for the ridged cranberry tube that comes out of a can. And how awesome is that "splort" sound when you dump out the cranberry tube?

Rum spiced pecans. Warm salty nuts. Heh heh heh.

It's quince tarte tatine season again. This year's quinces have been much less fragrant than last year's. I will go yell at them next time at the farmer's market. Farmer Fix it!

Birthday highlights

The best things today:

* Uncle Jason in Taiwan tries to time my birthday email at exactly 12:00 Midnight California time. So he can be the first to say Happy Birthday to me.

* Pomegranate Pinkberry is in season.

* Hannah attempts to sing "Happy Birthday" using only 4 words and tells me she is saving a Dora the Explorer tattoo for me.

* Kung Fu Panda is still entertaining after 5 times.

* The facebook alerts on the phone kept ping ping pinging all day from all the birthday chatter.

* Preston is fluffy.

* The house still has lingering delicious pork smells from last night.

Through the magic of transistors and Japanese fuzzy logic, my birthday oatmeal was ready when I woke up this morning. Birthday oatmeal had mix-ins such as goji berries, candied ginger, and lotus seeds. (These would make great Coldstone mix-ins too.)

Birthday Trivia:

* I share my birthday with the Suez Canal, Washington Dulles Airport, Isamu Noguchi, Soichiro Honda, Rock Hudson, Lorne Michaels, Rem Koolhaus, Howard Dean, RuPaul, Daisy Fuentes, and one of the Hansons. The boring one- not the little one, and not the pretty one that looks like a girl.

* Richard Nixon said "I'm not a crook" when I was born.

Pyrex OCD manifests itself inside the refrigerator.

The saddest things today:

* The ash and soot from the fires made it impossible to see the Leonids meteor shower this year. (But it's still totally cool that I get a meteor shower for my birthday every year.)

* I am no longer valuable to advertisers.

* Pottery class is closed today.

* My health insurance premiums are now in the next more expensive bracket.

Coconut Failure Cake. I managed to make a coconut cake with the texture of a dense brownie. I am such a failure at baking. And the burnt shredded coconut makes it more Snuffleupagus than pastry. Such a failure.

The strangest things today:

* Freaky hot weather.

* Birthday phone call from my car insurance agent.

* My Mom getting me a Nintendo Wii Fit. Is she telling me that I'm fat and flabby?

Happy Birthday Doug

Cheap greens, shiitake, and bamboo fungus. Brown sauce. In the pan, the ingredients were beautifully fanned out in concentric circles. But then I realized I don't own a serving platter large enough to serve in. Aie-ya! Food styling be damned, we scoop and plop cafeteria style. I will make a large serving platter the next time I'm in the clay studio.

Hellfire and brimstone in Southern California means I lose my view of the mountains. It also means itchy eyes, hacking coughs, and sooty boogies for a week.

For supper #1, we serve gnocchi with gorgonzola shimeji cream sauce. Luscious unctuous heart attack on a plate. This would instantly kill my dairy avoiding lactose intolerant kin. The fat content would kill my dairy loving friends a day later. If I served this to guests, would this be pre-meditated murder?

For supper #2, we crank up the fat knob to 11 and make pork belly two ways. First, pork belly braised in tamarind habanero cilantro jus. Big pieces of pork belly shrunken into soft porky jiggly jello cubes.

And salt cured pork belly roasted with plum vinegar. With a crispy cap.

Tamarind habanero braised pork belly with hibiscus reduction. You can't eat just one.

And sliced roasted pork belly. These would be awesome in sammiches- perhaps in a baguette. Or Korean style wrapped in a lettuce leaf with shiso and kochujang chili paste. A bit crunchy, a bit soft and squooshy, a bit chewy, and a bit tender. Pork heaven in a bite.

I'm setting myself up for failure by attempting to bake birthday coconut cake. Distracted by eating delicious pork, I've over baked the coconut layer cake and burned the shredded coconut. And I would probably ruin the coconut buttercream tomorrow. I am such a horrible horrible horrible baker. Why do I even try? Perhaps if I tried to make a pork cake, I will have success. We WILL have meat cake in the future! Meat cake!

Sometimes regular

It's almost time for my Sometimes Annual Orphan Thanksgiving Potluck. I'm planning ahead and have started clearing out space in the freezer. Hunk of pork loin frees up a cubic foot. Woo Hoo! Will you be joining us for Early Orphan Thanksgiving this weekend?

Roast pork loin with rosemary prune gastrique. The sprig of parsley means I've attempted to have green vegetables this week. Delicious prune sauce will be awesome paired with duck. We will be having duck in the near future. And maybe bunny.

I heart salt

Tonight, I work on making heirloom quality Loo Juice. A sodium umami bomb to pass onto the next generation. Soy braised chicken wings, tofu, beef shank, shiitake, and eggs. I should probably get one of those home EKG machines. I'd mod it to spit out menu planning advice. And my EKG machine would support RSS.

Souvenirs

Filthy. But we made it back across the border with only minor mishaps to our caravan.

Mexican parking stubs are a lot more charming than the legalese covered ones here.

Farewell to arms

Day 2 of our Mexico adventure brings us to our third family. Jesus welcomes us on our path. Well, not exactly us. Technically, Jesus faces the Tijuana Costco. His outstretched arms welcome value priced plasma tv's and aisles of mayonnaise as far as the eye can see. But that's pretty close to what I imagine heaven would be.

Our travels today take us to the hill country outside of Tijuana proper. Gorgeous views, unpaved roads, overweight car. Freak winds and rain.

Our task today- pouring the concrete roof. 10 tons worth of concrete.

And once again, there's a view of my ass.

Roof poured. Biceps sore. Seeking shelter from the driving wind and rain with a bit of nosh our familia kindly prepared for us. Then back across the border to our own complacency.

Burrow y burro

Across the border in Mexico again. This time, we gringos had the opportunity to support Eduardo's soccer team at their state championships. Go team Tijuana! Watching these kids run around made us realize how tired and out of shape we are. Sigh. Not a good thought to start a weekend of ditch digging and hauling concrete buckets. But we all learned the correct way to say "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL!" Eduardo is the one that looks like Tigger.

The Ditch. Aie! The Ditch. Rocky, compacted, sticky, dense soil. Mucho pick axing chip chip chipping away at the limestone. I could have sworn I hauled out the same boulder multiple times today. My elbows call out for a jackhammer. Where is the jackhammer?

I befriend Preston's Mexican cousin. Su nombre es "Donkey."

Me thinks this rock is following me. Me thinks this may be sun stroke.

Me thinks this may be a dinosaur femur bone. Me thinks me needs to talk to photographer as all me photos are of me ass.

Wendy con familia feliz.