Leaf me

This week's farmer's market bounty is very colorful. And all for less than $15. Cheep cheeps!

Nancy made a big mess, and then left me to clean up after her. Bad Nancy!

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.

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.

Tart tart

The last of the king trumpet mushrooms, smeared with a basil pesto. I'm feeling the effects of pizza fatigue.

And one more roasted vegetable pizza. This is getting predictable now. But I must say, the pizza doughs lately have been very well behaved and great to work with.

This cranberry polenta tart was filled with a custard of leftover Thanksgiving cranberry sauce. Nothing really wrong with this cranberry tart, I'm sure lots of people would love it. But for me, meh. So as of today, I officially declare my dislike of cranberries. Bah! Cranberries. But ridged cranberry tube from a can is still on the good list.

Happy tree friends

My Baby Trees of the National Parks are doing well enough to move into larger pots. We did lose the coast redwood sapling over the hot dry summer. We will have a moment of silence, mourn, and then send the dried out redwood carcass into the wood chipper.

Super deformed lemon. The limoncello tree is so silly sometimes. It's been super happy this year. So glad I didn't send it through the wood chipper years ago.

And once again, I call upon the services of pizza to help deal with meat cake party leftovers. The salame was once part of the antipasto plate and the cheeses from meat cake.

Leftover mushrooms from mushroom cake.

And leftover roasted vegetables from veggie cake and beef cake. Still, not much of a noticeable dent in the refrigerator. I might be eating leftovers for the rest of the month. Aie-ya!

Meat block(er)

Every once in a while, the refrigerator is so tightly packed with food and leftovers that it is impossible to see the items at the back. When that happens, we concoct strange combinations with whatever is easiest to grab from the front. We need to eat a path to access the things towards the rear. It's like playing a refrigerator version of Tetris. Today, sausage and chrysanthemum greens (tung ho) were most accessible in the refrigerator.

Candied bacon. Because I just can't stop.

Meat cake party leftovers get turned into garlic bread and bacon wrapped dates stuffed with gorgonzola. I would be a truly happy man if all my dates come wrapped in bacon...

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.

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.

Door ajar

Hunger often strikes when the refrigerator runs bare. So every once in a while, I make a meal consisting solely of items plucked from the refrigerator door.

Capellini with sun dried tomatoes, capers, and artichokes.

The last pot of 2008. This one is Smurfy.

That's a wrap

The very last of the Thanksgiving turkey holidays get used up. Rather than the usual turkey sammiches at this time of the year, we go Southeast Asian with rice paper. If the pilgrims had GM's corporate jets, they would have made these too.

Worlds collide

My efforts to attract pandas to my backyard may be working. I have spotted some pandas in the neighborhood. Shhh... be very very quiet...

One pot back from the kiln this week. I almost didn't find it because it shrank so much from when I plucked it from the wheel. I got all excited because I'm starting to make bigger pots, and then the pots keep shrinking at each step of the process. Damn you laws of clay chemistry! I was going for Ancient Mayan meets 80's Tron with this pot.