Leftovers be over

Leftover sweet potato puree transforms into the filling for tortellini. Individually quick frozen for future consumption. I learned IQF from watching Top Chef. In our recessionary times, I shall endeavor not to throw away food.

And celery root puree similarly makes its way into pierogi. Pizza red sauce get combined with meatballs for a home made version of Chef Boyardee. And I also learned from television that Chef Boyardee was an actual person. Ettore (Hector) Boiardi (Boyardee) dumbed down his Italian name so the dumb ass Americans can pronounce his name phonetically.

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.

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!

Beet with pretty stick

A pilgrimage to the ceramics store mecca yields items such as sponge on a stick. $2.65. I spent many minutes at the shop inappropriately fondling the pottery wheel I've been lusting after. Alas, I can not afford the thousand dollars to buy it. Pottery wheel! How you tease me! My attempts at marrying wealthy have so far failed miserably. Marry me please? I'll feed you.

So like most of America, I drown my sorrows by eating an entire rack of baby back ribs. This time, hickory smoked with a cilantro bourbon molasses glaze.

And roasted beet, radish, and gorgonzola salad. My current kitchen gadget obsession is the mandolin slicer. So far, I've managed to keep my fingertips. But it's only a matter of time before I slice off something important.

And for healthy-like snacking- Jewel toned beet chips! These turned out very beautifully translucent. I might not have sliced off my finger tips going overboard with the mandolin slicer, but my hands still wound up bloody beet red.

And then I made an empanada for dinner #2. Because I felt peckish.

Project layaway

There is only one habanero pepper in this year's pitiful harvest. Mucho Pitiful. My thumb is not so green this year. But it's the first year tromboncino squash and basil were fruitful. So I count my blessings and save my cursing and ill thoughts for Dick Cheney and Proposition 8.

Because a clean and fluffy Preston is such a rare occasion, I will document each occurrence. This time, Preston models a fierce new safety orange dog collar for that early 2000's state penitentiary look. Heidi Klum and PetSmart would approve. Work it for your bitches Preston!

My poor planning requires that I make some curried cous cous to tide me over because ratpatootie will take over 4 hours to make. Hunger and ratpatootie don't go together well. Why do I attempt time consuming recipes late at night? I wonder how the French do it?

Ratpatootie ala Pixar is delicious, but painstakingly slow to make without interns and sous chefs. Costco needs to sell interns and sous chefs.

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.

Pop wrecks

Hannah doing her best Britney on a Starbucks run. Bring on he papparazzi!

Lullaby Bunny plays Rock-A-Bye baby, vibrates, then puts you to sleep when you tug on the handle between the legs. I practiced some self restraint and did not point out some of the disturbing connotations of Lullaby Bunny to the harried father.

A rare quiet moment for Naomi. The camera does not capture her devil child tendencies. How could something so small be so loud?

Hannah and I got tattoos like drunken sailors on shore leave. Though I doubt drunken sailors would specify Finding Nemo tattoos. Britney might though.

Slow Fasting

Bakeries remind me of my failures with all things yeast. But I will not give up! I will learn to bake yeast breads in my lifetime!

Hurry Up Slow Food! Waiting in line with Jenne and Aaron for the Slow Food Nation festival makes me impatient for the deliciousness inside. The food may be slow, but I want it now now now!

I wonder if I'd get kicked out if I took a bite.

The charcuterie pavilion. The bunny and pig feet terrine was surprisingly good. Mmmm... Pork. If I was a pig, this is how I would want to end up. Sadly, the line was insanely long the rest of the day, one can never have enough cured meats. There is such a thing as slow food that is too slow. Now now now!

The honey tasting section! Coffee infused honey was very interesting. Would be great with ice cream. I spent many minutes commiserating with the bee keepers about bee colony collapse disorder. But then ADHD distracted me with fishies.

Fishies! We learned about white and marble fleshed salmon being underutilized and generally wasted because people aren't used to the color. But this is totally just a marketing problem. All that is needed is to stop treating it as a genetic anomaly and position it as a rare delicacy. If I was Dictator of the World, I'd hawk marble salmon as a super high-end choice and charge twice what normal pink salmon goes for. Trademark a new made-up vaguely Northwest Indian tribe sounding name for it and before you know it, what was once fertilizer and cat food becomes the new regional specialty. Rather than try to sell it to supermarkets, I'd start evangelizing the high end restaurants to build awareness and set the notion of a high end price in the marketplace. Just need a few PR tricks to get some buzz and awareness in the dining and wine media. Yuppie foodies will totally fall for this ploy. And since traditional grilling and pan searing salmon preparations don't highlight the marbled and mottled coloring, I'd shift the emphasis of the marble salmon recipes towards things like cured and smoked salmon to emphasize the color difference. Marble colored lox would totally be awesome! All it takes is a little bit of imagination. But I'm not Dictator of the World yet, so I won't be able to profit from this. 

Lots of pickled things, but I didn't see any Germans.

Smoked beer. Like combining cigarettes and booze. I can tackle two vices in one!

Native American foods. Bison stew delicious! Now I want to go hunt me some Bison. And by "hunt," I meant getting back in line and getting another helping.

The Ice Cream pavilion. The yogurt and salty caramel ones are my favorite. My little Costco ice cream maker will never make ice cream with this smooth texture. If I was Dictator of the World, I would have a few PacoJet's at my disposal to make ice cream. And I would have Oompa Loompa's to help with labor.

Forbidden fruit

My relationship with the iPhone 3G turned out to be a one night stand. It was sexy. I adored it. I was excited by it. And like a one night stand, I can't make or receive voice calls from it at home. So I go crawling back to Sprint, but the terms of our relationship have changed. It's just not the same anymore. And no matter how reliable that cell signal is... And how utterly functional the Blackberry services are... I've tasted what life can be like. And I pine for that soulful iPhone. It's like herpes. A fleeting moment of happiness. And then a lifetime of regret. Once you catch it, you can't forget it, and it's never the same afterwards.

Brown turkey figs from the backyard. They seem more purple than brown to me. These are great, but I like the elusive green figs better. But apparently, the green fig tree also needs a reliable AT&T signal to bear fruit.

Pining after

The world's best-est limoncello ever! Beautiful chartreuse jewel toned colors from the Aaron method- combined with the delicious piney rosemary flavors of the Ed method. And the super aromatic kick from an armful of Davy lemons. Is good. Is very good.

No minors signage hung outside my bedroom. To help me stay out of trouble.

Woodie wagon is back in action. This time sporting fashionable Korean pine planks.

Cranking wood and pink balls

Still whacked out from jet lag today, but I stayed lucid enough to unpack some Korea loot. There wasn't any time to see the sights and wander and explore. So I visited the 24 hr Target equivalent across the street from the hotel. Random cheap goodies ensue.

At the Home Plus, I found things such as Crunky ball chocolate (Nestle Crunch in centimeter cube form) and Milk Ball candy. I just love saying "Crunky." And who can resist a cow holding a giant strawberry on a pink spotted milk can?

And I found the most awesome super #1 tie. White and grey and pink. With sequins! Pink is the new Black in Korea. All the boys were sporting pink shirts and pink hats and pink phones. The girls, not so much pink. Pink is the manly color of the moment. Wear it. Own it. Love it. Did I mention SEQUINS? Hawt!

And someday, I will be wearing a panda eye mask and a panda face mask. Panda branded cigarettes will hook naive impressionable me into a lifetime addiction to nicotine. But I will look stylish smoking cigarettes through a hole in my panda face mask. Bonus points for irony.

And in the hardware department, I found a hand crank coffee grinder, wooden spoons, no-underage minors signage, and wood panel shelf paper. Yes, I schlepped Korean vinyl shelf paper halfway across the globe and through customs.