Celebrate!

You might not be aware of this but the Saturday before Labor Day is perhaps the most underappreciated holiday of the entire year...International Bacon Day!

So in honor of this very special day (and of all the delicious hogs who die to give us this very special meat) I've decided to have bacon with every meal, maybe even dessert.

For breakfast, I'm having a large coffee and a bacon cheese wrap from Dunkin'. I'll keep you updated.

What bacony delights do you have planned for your day?

And as requested, here's the link to my famous pig candy post. I might use it as a topping for vanilla bean ice cream today.

- Posted from my iPhone

Smokin' hot butts

We've gone full redneck.


Mike got a smoker for his birthday.

(sides mostly by Heart 'N Soul Restaurant).

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better than octodogs

Since everyone and their (Say)Uncle has sent me this , I thought I'd pass it on. (I had to be reassured that they weren't real turtles before I'd click the link. )

tool users

Marko and Tam's recent discussion on the essential usefulness of having a good blade on your person proved to be quite timely...

Seems scientists found that we hominids have been using the sharp & stabbies much longer than previously believed - like almost one million years longer. Naturally, this early tool use was all about obtaining delicious and nutrient-packed animal flesh, which is said to have been an important factor in the development of the modern human brain. (Hooray!)

To celebrate this wonderful, yet not-so-surprising discovery, perhaps we should all do something primal and carnivorous - like roast up some marrow bones and buy ourselves a new pocketknife.

This one holds a prominent spot on my wishlist:

Today's harvest

...and eggplants, hanging from their plant like glossy plump amethysts, which aren't quite ready for my sauté pan.

- Posted from my iPhone

oh, nuts.

Around these parts, peanuts usually come in a limited number of flavors: dry roasted and honey roasted. Oh, and peanut butter. I was shocked to learn that a certain portion of the country likes to boil their goobers...while still in their shells. Seriously.

But since I'm always up for a culinary adventure, SayUncle was kind enough to send me some green peanuts so that I could try his recipe.

First of all, I'd like to say that green peanuts smell weird, like dirt and raw potato. This combined with the description of boiled peanuts as "hot, salty snot and boogers inside a soaked, soggy, used-to-be-crunchy shell" and needless to say, I was a bit skeptical.

Undaunted, I gathered the ingredients and set about boiling my peanuts...for hours. I left the house with the peanuts still bubbling away on the stovetop only to return and find them...looking exactly the same. (I don't think it's a coincidence that every Southern recipe I've ever tried took a long time to cook.) After three and a half hours I gave up, declared them done...


...and really liked them. (with beer!)

for flavor

A number of years ago, after reading Anthony Bourdain's memoir Kitchen Confidential, I decided to incorporate shallots into my cooking. Bourdain wrote that shallots were even more essential than butter if you wanted to learn to make your food taste professional. Subtler than onion, more complex than garlic and yet as versatile as both, they've been a staple in my pantry ever since.

It also didn't hurt that my first shallot experience required me to sauté them with diced bacon.

Recently though, during a trip to Penzey's I noticed they were selling shallot salt. I read the ingredients on the label.

Dried shallots. Salt.

"Oooh," I thought. "I could make this!"

I bought a bag of shallots from the wholesale club and minced them very finely in the food processor. Shortly thereafter, between coughing and wiping the burning tears from my eyes, I realized I had probably just invented a weapons-grade chemical agent. Proper ventilation, and perhaps goggles, are required.

I spread the shallot paste on the parchment I had cut to fit the trays of my food dehydrator, sprinkled some sea salt on top and let it all dry for 24-48 hours. I can't remember exactly how long or at what temperature, but I don't think you can really over dry this. After a couple days, I put the mixture back into the food processor with even more sea salt and a little dried homegrown parsley. I whizzed it all together until it seemed done, and ended up making almost 6 cups of shallot salt for far less than what I might have spent in a gourmet store.

The aroma coming from those little jars is absolutely divine, by the way - I keep opening them to have another sniff. And I could tell you all about how it makes a humble strip steak something so deliciously good that you close your eyes in ecstasy and murmur, "Oh. my. God." between bites...but that would just be cruel.

lazy baker

Did you know you could use a pie plate filled with fruit, a few tablespoons of butter and 3 packets of instant oatmeal to make an easy dessert?


- Posted from my iPhone

Cuke madness

The smell of cucumber always reminds me summer - probably because everyone who gardens ends up with a surplus. After a few weeks of salads and pawning them off on the neighbors, you start searching for exciting new recipes, like cucumber popsicles and my mom's spicy Thai pickles, inspired by a lovely relish served at one of our favorite restaurants.



Ellen's Thai pickle
1/2 c. rice wine vinegar
1/4 boiling water
1tsp. salt
1/2 c. finely chopped red onion
3 Tbsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. dried red chile flakes
4 medium-sized cucumbers, sliced thin
Dash garlic powder

Mix the chile flakes, sugar, garlic powder and salt with the hot water and add to vinegar. Pour over cucumbers and onions and refrigerate overnight. Enjoy!

P.s. Mom's been talking about starting a recipe blog. I think it'd be great, don't you?

- Posted from my iPhone

Gosh.

I really hope that this is a shiitake.


No matter. It's going in my omelette anyway.

- Posted from my iPhone

UPDATE: delicious!! sliced and sauteed in bacon grease, and added to eggs with parsley and chives from the garden and grated Parmesan and asiago.

'shroom sprout!

After a week's worth of waiting and hoping, the scary looking log on my kitchen counter finally did something...


See it? Here's a closer look...


That, folks, is a baby shiitake mushroom. We noticed the bud yesterday and decided it was time to finish the instructions. When you receive the log, you have to rinse it off under cold water, put it in a plastic bag with some ventilation and then...wait. A week to 12 days later, buds are supposed to appear. When this happens, you submerge the log in icy cold water to "shock" the other mushrooms into growing. Then you put it it on a damp sponge, tent it with perforated plastic, keep it out of direct sunlight and wait some more...

Wakey wakey, little mushrooms! I need to fry you up with some bacon grease and onions!

Summer is delicious

Market fresh berries, soft, sweet nectarines and spicy grated gingerroot...




I'm baking a cobbler.

- Posted from my iPhone

'shrooms

Back in March, one of my Facebook friends sent me a link to this video:



Naturally, it was something of a revelation. Mushroom umami! Pseudobacon! I've been wanting to try this technique ever since, but the price of shiitakes at the grocery store was a bit prohibitive.

Then I realized, hey! I could grow my own mushrooms, right? I was up for a little experiment. So off I went aGoogle-ing to research shiitake kits and discovered that mushrooms grown on logs are far superior in taste to those grown on those sawdust blocks. A bit more hunting and I found this place. I ordered myself a kit, envisioning a cute little log I could keep on my countertop in a porcelain saucer while I patiently waited for the little shroomies to sprout. Instead I got this...

It looks like a turd.

I'll keep you updated.

my distraction

I could spend all day blogging about how horrible the news is, our failure of a president, or guns and shooting but really? I look out the window of my back porch, see this

and it's all over. All I want to do is get outside, get my hands dirty, and feel the sun on my neck. We've got our little garden planted - a few tomatoes (even a delightfully odd heirloom purple), lots of peppers (hot and not), and the usual wide variety of herbs. I put in a few sweet peas, some tomatillos for my salsa, and what I call the great eggplant experiment. I've never attempted to grow them before but the varieties, which produce a black and a white fruit, were called Hansel and Gretel - how could I resist?

We also have a squash type thing growing. Or it could be a cucumber. Or maybe even pumpkin! The seed snuck in from the compost pile and found a happy home in amongst the jalapenos. It's like the mystery grab bag plant - we're excited to see what we get.

I've planted a few flowers, too, just for the pretty.

Check out the planter I made out of a section of old hollow tree trunk. (It's the best kind of clever & lovely - free.)

And just for fun, here's a bonus photo of two naughty boy tabbies surveying their domain from the bay window.
(all photos can be enlarged by clicking on them)

come on, admit it.

It really is the best part.

ok, I'll byte*

Bacon tots, an idea that turned into a culinary wonder - proof that sometimes kitchen experiments don't end in grease fires and clouds of billowing smoke.

(* since everyone else is linking to it, I suppose I will too.)

grow a pair...

...and eat some balls. With mustard.

Ted & Tony

I have quite a few reservations about Ted Nugent, but I have to admit this is pretty cool.

heaven

Three words: chocolate bacon cheesecake.

Being sponsored by an award winning brewery doesn't hurt either.

Saturday snowday cookies

For this week's new recipe I was going to write about these tropical porkchops but while the sauce was really delicious - a little spicy with a tang of pineapple* - the chops themselves turned out dry and disappointing. We ended up dicing up the remains of the pork and using it in a stirfry with some of the leftover sauce. Good, but not what I was aiming for - the recipe would be fabulous with a juicy little pork tenderloin or perhaps boneless, skinless chicken thighs (my new meat discovery, I cannot sing their praises enough.)

Anyway, I wanted cookies today but didn't want to leave the house. We didn't quite get the snowpocalypse everyone else has been fretting about but it was bitterly cold - far too cold to venture out just for cookies. Plus at 4PM I was still debating on getting dressed.

I pulled out Mike's mom's recipe binder, hoping to discover a recipe that called for things I had in the pantry, which really wasn't much. I found the perfect thing...chewy brown sugar cookies, the easiest cookie I've ever made.

Mix one well beaten egg with 1 cup packed brown sugar and 1 tsp. vanilla. Add one half cup unsifted flour, one quarter tsp. each of salt and baking soda and one and a half cups chopped nuts. Drop spoonfuls on cookie sheet and bake @ 350°F for 7-9 minutes.

Perfect on a winter's afternoon with a cup of tea. Enjoy.

_______________________
*just the thing (I thought) for celebrating our first ever Netflix delivery, a Burn Notice disc. The show is set in Miami and I had a taste for something thematic.