Hot layers of hell

The final chocolate layers are applied to the 7 layer cookies. The shape and form of the cookie slab reminds me of slab bacon. Mayhaps I will attempt a red, white, and pink version that is maple and smoke flavored. With white chocolate.

Sliced into pieces for holiday visitor parting gifts. These are tasty. Almond flavored layers with apricot filling, sandwiched between dark chocolate. These would be even better if the recipe made any sense to humans. Seriously, that recipe writer needs to die a painful death and rot in hell without bacon.

Leftover meat cake potato frosting get recycled into thrice baked potatoes. It's once more delicious-er than twice baked potatoes.

United colors of bacon

Tonight, I'm attempting to make insanely complicated 7 layer almond apricot cookie recipe. So far so good. Rather than the traditional red, white, and green Italian flag colors normally present in 7 layer cookies, I go for blue, white, and orange. Because those are the colors of Davy World. 

My conclusion is that the cookie itself isn't very hard to make. Some assembly is required, but it's all very straight forward. The main issue here is that the recipe is very poorly written, so you're always lost if you try to follow it exactly. It's not a crazy complicated cookie. It's a stupid recipe writer.

Mmmm... bacon. Bacon is the official food of Davy World. There would be no tax on bacon in Davy World. Because I am a kind and benevolent ruler. At least initially.

Mmm.... saving bacon grease. Bacon grease is delicious. 

Meat block(er)

Every once in a while, the refrigerator is so tightly packed with food and leftovers that it is impossible to see the items at the back. When that happens, we concoct strange combinations with whatever is easiest to grab from the front. We need to eat a path to access the things towards the rear. It's like playing a refrigerator version of Tetris. Today, sausage and chrysanthemum greens (tung ho) were most accessible in the refrigerator.

Candied bacon. Because I just can't stop.

Meat cake party leftovers get turned into garlic bread and bacon wrapped dates stuffed with gorgonzola. I would be a truly happy man if all my dates come wrapped in bacon...

Meat cake

It's meat cake day! No winter birthday celebration is complete without a layer cake in meat form. I formed the patties with a divot in the center, so when meat cake puffs up in the oven, we will end up a flatter top instead of the usual dome that would need to be trimmed off for cake duty.

Ta Da! Meat Cake. Frosted with mashed potatoes. With bacon roses. Thank you sous chef MK for wonderful chopping and shopping skills.

We would have encountered fewer structural issues had we used instant mashed potatoes and a more traditional dry meat loaf recipe. But we wanted a tasty moist meat cake instead of 15 pounds of novelty meat brick. A turkey and mushroom layer on top, a roasted veggie beef layer on bottom. And instead of the usual ketchup, there's a sun dried tomato and olive pesto in between the layers. Delicious meat cake.

And that's not all. Fish in cake form.

And veggie cake. Eggplant and squash with 3 kinds of puree filling. Sweet potato, celeriac, and garlic russet potato. Topped with a parmesan crisp.

And mushroom cake. (I know. stretching it. turn your head sideways.)

And butter in cake form. Thank you Stuart for assorted sodas that don't taste like sodas. Such flavors as cucumber and rose petals and espresso.

Somebody ate a mouthful of butter thinking it was cake! Ha!

Fudgie the Whale Carvel cake makes an appearance. Ice cream in cake form! The fluke and blow hole was especially delicious.

And to finish up Winter Birthday Celebration 2008, Megan brings red velvet cupcakes in entree form. Go Megan! The butter is a starburst candy.

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!

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.

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.

Me-zah

Focacias and pizzas, how I love thee...

I love you so much, I always make three.

The only thing better, would be pizza for free.

Tasty and pretty, I eat them with glee.

Especially because they're are all for me.

Pear, gruyere and gorgonzola dessert pizza. No bacon.

Kitty surprise

In honor of Hello Kitty's 34th birthday, I make beet and walnut dip. Like hummus, but with beets instead of chickpeas. This should make a good sammich spread too. Hello Kitty won't be able to eat this because Hello Kitty has no mouth.

Pretty pink pizza dough results from being too lazy to wash the food processor bowl after making beet dip. Hello Kitty serendipity has gotten me thinking about making a baguette that's pink inside. How awesome would that be? Now that we have pizza dough, we're ready for tonight's pizza flight.

Vegetarian surprise pizza. It only appears to be a gorgeous late summer vegetable pizza. But one bite into it... SURPRISE! A hidden layer of prosciutto! Surprise bacon! Your eyes say it will be delicious, but your tongue tells you it's even more delicious than you first thought. Surprise Bacon!

This one is made with mushroom paste, caramelized onions, artichokes, pecorino and gruyere. Home made pizza crust is so incredibly crispy chewy delicious that I stretched the dough out so each piece has two crusts. This is the most incredible crust I've ever made. I tweaked the dough recipe with rye flour for a more substantial flavor. And of course, I made it pink.

Seriously, this is the bestest most super number one pizza I've ever tasted in the 34 years of Hello Kitty's existence. Perfect thin crispy chewy crust, fresh ripe heirloom tomatoes, pancetta, mozzarella, fontina, and parmesan cheeses. Even tastier than the coal baked pizza I had wandering around the canals of Venice. This is now the new gold standard. The secret is a drizzle of olive oil. Olive oil with a surprise anchovy whisked in.

 

Treats, no tricks

The best part of Halloween is Boo Berry cereal. Since Boo Berry cereal is only available at this time of year, it fits the definition of a seasonal food. And it's made with whole grains now. So it's healthy. And boo berries are a fruit. And boo berry trees also absorb carbon dioxide.

A lovely limoncello risotto. It's pink because I also splashed in some rosé wine.

Preston will always choose treats over tricks.

Wanted: bacon honey

Walking Preston on garbage days gives us a great excuse to snoop on the neighbors. I am totally jealous that someone is getting bacon of the month club.

I wash my bacon sorrows with barbeque. Cilantro honey bourbon glaze. But it's not the same. I want bacon of the month club. Someday... after I marry for money, I will join the bacon of the month club.

Butterflies in my stomach

I filtered out all the fat and solids from bacon infused vodka. When I get my courage up, there will be bacon bloody mary's. Scared. Very very scared.

Once again it's Pesto Festo time. Tonight we make three different kinds- pine nut basil, walnut arugula, and pumpkin seed cilantro. Always good to have pestos around the house as a sauce for pasta, or sandwich spread, or stirred into a soup, or a marinade for seafood, or floor wax and glass cleaner. I am not sure I labeled all the identical looking pestos correctly, so I may be putting together some ill-conceived flavor combinations in the future.

Height of tomato season is upon us. We will be eating a lot of caprese salads over the next month.

This batch of pizza dough is especially perky and eager. It didn't get the memo about me being a failure at yeast things. Sssshhh... nobody tell.

Spinach and sausage farfalle. They don't really look like butterflies to me. There must have been a lot of vino when they invented farfalle.

Embalassed

Simple salt pickles from the Japanese picre press. Cucumbers were a bit bitter, so I will peel them next time. But carrots have a nice bite. Picre presses open up all sorts of opportunities for experimentation. Juniper berries. Pickled onions. Coriander. Pecks of pickled peppers. Eggplant. All sorts of new pickle inventions. And the inevitable failures. Massive massive pickle failures. Pickled bacon anyone? 

Fried rice - peas and bacon and corn. I just can't seem to make Chinese food correctly. One more thing that makes me an embarrassment to my people. The list is getting pretty long.