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.

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!

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.

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.

 

Twice cooked pork

Tomatillo braised pork loin obsession continues. I makes again tonight. And again and again and again and again...

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.

Shrunken wood

I couldn't resist mini ciabatta rolls at the store. Irresistibly cute baby sammiches. I totally fall for all the tiny cute sized marketing hype. Cocktail wieners. White Castle sliders. Mini-M&M's. Mini gold fish crackers. Mini muffins. Tiny cornishon pickles. Airline sized bottles of booze. If you shrink them, I will buy them.

Idle hands means anything and everything will be getting the wood grain treatment. I'm currently working on miniature wood grained puppies.

Wood grained fake guitar turned out to be less dork-tastic than I thought.

Pig latin

It's been ages since I've seen one of my favorite Sachi's. We will catch up and reminisce with the aid of pork dishes. Sachi brings gifts of beautiful irises. Are irises edible?

A bit of wine, some manchego, and a nibble or two of salame while I finish up the other courses.

We will be guinea pigs* to my new invention. Interactive caesar salad. Slightly grilled romaine lettuce for a bit of smokey flavor. And the components of a traditional caesar dressing broken out and treated as their own individual side dishes of fried eggs and warm bagna cauda. Just mix everything together however you wish when you eat it. This was a bit too interactive for my tastes. I'm essentially lazy, so I'd rather not play with my food on the plate and would prefer something pre-tossed. Sometimes, it can be too much work to eat something. But I have to admit it looks nice on a plate.

But the old standby of tomatillo braised pork loin never fails. It's doubly wonderful today because pork is cheap this week due to the Jewish holidays. I have 18 lbs of pork in the refrigerator.

I kleenz krumms auf u.

*there was no lipstick on the above mentioned guinea pigs

1up

As part of a cock-a-may-me daydream about opening a neighborhood sandwich shop/ brew pub, I present to you the Luigi sandwich. Named after Mario and Luigi of Nintendo fame. Seared trumpet mushroom, brie, romaine, and some basil spread. Toasted baguette rubbed with garlic. Next time, I will reorder the layers so the cheese melts into the baguette instead of messily dripping out between the mushrooms and lettuce.

The Sarah Palin lipstick on a pig sandwich would be a mound of vinegary pulled pork with strawberry rhubarb compote on top. The bun will be served on the side so that there is no meat inside when presented to you. Depending upon what happens in November, the Sarah Palin sandwich may be accompanied by sour grapes.

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.

Energy stores

Tiny champagne grapes require much too much effort to eat. I was tired eating just this one bunch. Why did I get the 4 pound carton of champagne grapes from Costco? But champagne grapes may be a good way to tire out sugar frosted bomb enhanced ADHD children.

Increasing the thai yellow curry stockpile. It pays to have curry rice stockpiles lying around- a life saver for when one is too tired to make a meal from scratch. Too tired from eating tiny bunches of champagne grapes. Or too tired from chasing after ADHD children.

Some pig

Coffee spiced braised Wilbur with jus. Like they said in Charlotte's Web. That's "Some Pig." Pork belly so tender it's essentially pig jello.

And for suppers #2 and #3, I roast cornish game hens. One rubbed with olive oil, lemon, and thyme. The other bourbon barbeque over caramelized onions. Game hens are great because they're the perfect size to eat an entire bird in one sitting. My stomach was very greedy tonight, so I roasted two.

Since the oven was already on, it never hurts to throw a few heads of garlic in to roast alongside the chickens. One can always use roasted garlic. The kohlrabi lump in the center is an experimental technique I'm trying to invent. The thought was to lightly "smoke" the kohlrabi with roasted garlic color and aroma while it cooks. I think the technique is solid, I will try this with some form of squash or root vegetable in the fall. The texture of cooked kohlrabi was a bit too fibrous for me.

I still had space in the oven, so we make balsamic glazed cipollini onions. Toss some peeled onions with a smidge of salt, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar. Bung it into an oven until luscious onion candy emerges.

Shelf #3 in the oven housed salt crust assorted items.

Salt crust beets, daikon, and kohlrabi. The beets turned out tender soft. The daikon and kohlrabi could have used some sort of barrier so as not to soak up too much salt. Perhaps wrapped in a lotus leaf before baking in salt.

Cherry tree produced only two tiny cherries this year. Less than one bite. Disappointing harvest. Still hungry.