Simply red

Trying to cook simply, so we makes a basic beet ravioli with brown butter sauce tonight. Though I probably hurled any notion of "simple" out the window when I made my own pasta sheets. The sage was flowering today, so I threw some of the flowers in there too.

There were a few bursticated beet ravioli, so I recycled them back into the pasta dough to make Hello Kitty pink parpedelle.

So my attempt to cook simply tonight gets completely fo'cocked when I remembered it's day 2 of Yule Log 2008. I'm veering off the recipe completely when it comes to assembly and decorating the yule log. The yule log recipe writers have obviously snorted way too much cocoa powder and have never seen a fallen log in real life. Their bark is all wrong, and the branches would never grow that way in nature. If you're going to be inspired by a fallen log, you need to either do an artistic impressionist interpretation, or go for realism. None of this half-assed melted elephant poo lump that Cooks Illustrated showed in the book. So me, being me, I'm going to make anatomically correct yule logs.

Davy 1. Cook's Illustrated 0. Take that Cook's Illustrated beeyotches!

Butt but

Garlic roasted potatoes. With rosemary. I miss Ro.

Simple herbed roast chicken, enema style. I didn't have any beer cans, so I threw herbs and wine into a IKEA stainless steel pencil cup and shoved it up the chicken's ass. Twas definitely one of the more flavorful and moist roast chickens I've made. But the skin not as golden as I would like. Perhaps I need to play with the oven temperatures a bit and coke up the herb rub with sugar. But definitely tasty. The chicken should be like Donatella Versace. Crispy golden skin with herbs and booze flavor running throughout. 

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.

High on sugar

I made an airplane flying above clouds at a gingerbread house making party. I'm easily distracted and I don't follow directions well.

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.

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.