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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

Assembly required

Ramen schmamen. For not much more time to make a 15 cent bag of cheap ramen, a bowl of udon noodles with assorted items can fill your belly. All the bits and doodads are either pre-cooked or take only seconds to be ready. Just boil everything in broth and in a shake and a shimmy, you have supper.

Celery root (celeriac) is one of my favorite vegetables (and also hideously ugly.) It's the Gerard Depardieu of the root vegetable world. People think I'm crazy because I leap for joy whenever I see one of these celeriac monstrosities at the market. We will be blitzing these with butter and a sploosh of half and half.

Salting veggies does many things. Goodbye sponginess and waterlogged flavors.

And some pre-party assembly means extra opportunities to procrastinate tomorrow. We'll put on the last two layers and heat these up tomorrow. If I wasn't so lazy and easily distracted, I'd make a good caterer.

Texas toast

I was going to get some cheap ass vodka for pie baking and other nefarious purposes. But I was suckered by marketing yet again. How could anyone resist vodka made in Texas?

This week's Dinner with Davy guest is Flip. Tonight, we have rosemary garlic potatoes. Half baked bread with roasted garlic spread.

And stracoto with porcini mushrooms. The sprig of rosemary counts towards our green veggie requirement for this meal.

Sadly, Flip wasn't under the influence of Tito's Texas Vodka. He's normally like this.

Preston thinks licking fingers does not count as begging for food.

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

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.

Thai peanuts

Red curry and yellow curry with chicken thighs, purple dragon carrots, and potatos. Trader Joe's curry bases were made for delicate white people taste buds, so I'm zinging them up with hot chilies, galangal, and kaffir lime leaves from my sad looking kaffir lime tree (twiggy shrub.) If Charlie Brown was born Thai, he'd adopt this tree.

Foot in mouth

While in the area, I drop by Hannah's for a visit. Her shoe collection is very pink. I'm a bit jealous as I do not own any pink shoes.

Awesome booth upholstery at the Apricot Tree Restaurant.

Corn beef hash, eggs over easy, hash browns, and their signature apricot muffin. Breakfast was um.... well, the vintage lunchboxes hanging from the ceilings are nice.

Bottling moonshine

Original recipe Kentucky Davy bourbon rib sauce. Reconstructed based upon the ingredients list on a bottle of bourbon sauce at the distillery gift shop. The profit margins on these sauces are incredible. The basic ingredients are relatively cheap. And virtually no labor costs. My blender full of sauce would retail for $50. Mine sauce is even more delicious than store bought bourbon sauce because it's made with Davy Lurve. Lurve!

And delicious ribs ensue. Roasted garlic potatoes are bonus items. Dog sitter Terry says, "Yum."

Absent minded cooking

More simmering things. I got bored of meat sauce, so I'm transforming a batch into Bolognese sauce with the addition of procuitto, carrots, celery, and cream. I like simmering things because they require virtually no attention, and it makes the house smell great while I do something else productive. And at the end of it, there are delicious things to eat.



Delicious things like quince jam.



And delicious things like sweet potatoes and chipotle lime butter. One of the bonuses of baking pies is that I get to throw in other things to bake and roast alongside the pies. And then I have more ingredients to play with over the next few days.



Embiggened by the stretchy success of the last batch of pizza dough, I attempt a rye flour flavored one this time.



Bolognese sauce done. Somehow I ended up with more than I started with. I don't remember what I did.

Sing songs of quince

Oh how I love the quince. It fills the air with delicious fragrance when warmed by the morning sun. I want to carry quinces in my pockets just so I can smell like quinces all day. I want cologne that smells like quinces so I don't have to walk around in public with strange bulges in my pockets. As a bonus, nobody knows what to do with quinces, so they're only $1.50/lb vs $2.50/lb for apples at the farmer's market.


New England clam chowder. Fresh clams, bacon, cream, and potatoes. What's not to like? Instead of raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, Julie Andrews needs to sing about Littleneck clams and hickory smoked bacon. Now those are a few of my favorite things.