What's za'at?

Purple cauliflower retained it's colors after roasting. With za'atar spices. I just like saying za'atar! Za'atar! The spice-lings were not all that amused when last I visited the Spice House. Za'atar!

Holy crap delicious. It was about time I made something Spanish after watching hours upon hours of Spanish cooking shows. Migas, a Spanish peasant dish composed of fried breadcrumbs and "whatever" ingredients you may have present. I made mine with apples and hen of the woods mushrooms. Holy crap delicious. I doubled the recipe that served 4. And then I ate the entire batch by myself in one sitting. 8 servings my ass! I would wager that Spanish peasants didn't eat like waifish coked up supermodels.

Dinosaur kale with almonds and cauliflower hearts. I didn't want to open a new bottle of white wine, so we'll use red. Now we're color coordinated with the roasted purple cauliflower.

Calamari fritto. Delicious! I bought the squid off the back of a truck at the farmer's market. They gave me extra tentacle bits because we agree'd those were the best parts. (And I was doing my best flirty flirty with everyone that day.)

Still hungry late at night, so for dinner #3, I fried up some of the frozen Thanksgiving celery root ravioli.

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. 

Mini Me(eat)

I love meat cake so much that we will make a cute Mini Meat Cake tonight.

With turkey deli meat rose. The sprinkles are red Hawaiian sea salt. Isn't baby meat cake just darling?

Today's adorable meat cake is made with a triumvirate of P's. Pork, pistachios, and pimentón. (And a ton of leftover ingredients.) I've been watching a lot of Spanish cooking shows lately.

El perro loco

After the crippled dog incident and resulting doggie physical, the vet suggested putting Preston on a low impact poached chicken and rice diet. So now I'm cooking arroz con pollo for the dog. Aie-ya! The things you do for the ones you love. So much more work than kibble. Preston picks out the chicken and doesn't like rice. He probably learned that from me. As our eating habits are gradually swapping places, I will be eating cereal out of the dog bowls soon.

Cous cous with the figs and pistachios. I've been putting handfuls of pistachios into everything lately. I must be nuts.

And since I was still hungry, supper #2 is baked stuffed quince. Just like they do in the ancient olden days. Also with pistachios.

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.

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!

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.

 

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.