Melt

(This photo is here solely so you know this blog post has a happy ending. Consider it a spoiler.)

The existence of hot chocolate has always bothered me.
The premise is simple really, drinkable chocolate, and I am all over that like melted candy bar on my face after a gluttonous binge of untold levels of sugary decadence. But hot chocolate is a promise that isn't kept.
Maybe the wrong people are promising me though. Maybe if it was, say, Willy Wonka and not a hometown diner, offering up the promised delights of hot chocolate, it would live up to it's name. But so far it's been nothing. A dark, vaguely chocolate related, steaming hot mug of nothing.
I take my sweet treats seriously. VERY seriously. I have to battle away tears if I ladle hot fudge sauce onto ice cream and there is ANY delay in me enjoying that dessert immediately, before the warm gooey sauce to cold ice cream temperature window of good eatin' opportunity closes. Should anything delay me and the ice cream turns soupy and the fudge sauce is in turn diluted by the ice cream I am in untold agonies. I mean, don't get me wrong I'll still eat it, but mourning the lost perfection of what could have been the most amazing sundae ever the whole time I shovel it into my mouth. Plus every one knows tears and ice cream don't mix, it messes up the salt ratio.
So hot chocolate disappoints me. To the point where I shun it's existence. No longer being duped by decadent descriptions on menus and packages claiming dark, creamy chocolate heaven in a cup. HA! Ha, I say!
When I was a kid and given the choice of a beverage at a restaurant of course I'm going to order hot chocolate. When you're a kid your memory banks work differently. The part of your brain that controls the desire for sweetness overrides any bad experiences one might have had previously with watered down boiling hot brown water passing itself off as hot chocolate. It clobbers the rational side of the brain and grabs the grey lump that is chocolate desire and whispers sweet nothings in it's non-existent brain ear about the promise of how goooood the hot chocolate will be, much better than stinky ol' orange juice. I love a good orange but even as a kid, side by side, orange or chocolate? HA, again HA! Like there's even a choice?
But hot chocolate has broken my heart so many times that even the ever hopeful, puppy-dog-like, resilient, sweet treat lovin' part of my brain has at last learned it's lesson. We turned our backs on it, sneering at it on menus. It was deleted from our top foods menu of the mind and was never heard from again. We shoved hot chocolate so far away in side our brains that we almost forgot about it's pale unflavored existence, accidently making it on occasional hoping....hoping.....*sigh*
Do not weep for me though. I have had a break through.
Hot chocolate.
Hot chocolate and I have been reunited, we have done things to work on our relationship. It's become better quality chocolate now, none of this dried processed powdered stuff, and I have learned to treat it with a delicacy and restraint that can only come from experience and age. It's delivered a velvety rich chocolate experience that enrobes each one of my taste buds individually in warm luscious chocolate and I have come to accept that proper hot chocolate doesn't come in a mug. It comes in a shot glass.
I think that's what was wrong in our relationship all those years. I wanted hot chocolate to physically be more than it could be and fill a whole mug to boot.
How could chocolate have ever hoped to live up to that sort of selfish demand? How could it have turned a mug of warm water or milk into pure warm chocolate? It was spread too thin. Once I realized that the only way to have a decent hot chocolate was to give up my greedy notions of a Willy Wonka-esque type never ending river of decadence, harmony returned. Though in all honesty harmony was actually ACHIEVED as both hot chocolate and I can freely admit now, from the happy comforts of our newly renewed relationship, that what we had in the past was NEVER harmonious.
But, as I said that's in the past.
Because I know there are others out there who may have suffered similar torments as a child, being handed steaming mugs of brown liquid that broke our hearts more then quench our taste buds I shall share the secret to perfect hot chocolate.
It's not a measuring thing but a common sense thing.
Take a hunk of dark, good quality chocolate. The size of which you'd actually sit down and nibble on in one go. Be honest with yourself, it's gonna be a decent sized hunk. Now double it, after all hot chocolate is better if you share it with your sweetie. (see how much I've grown, when I was a kid I'd have been all "sweetie shmeetie, it's all MINE MINE MINE!")
Now break it up on a plate into smaller hunks with a knife.
Transfer these to a pot. Turn the burner on but keep it medium.
Let the chocolate melt slowly, stir it and as it's melting add a small splash of coffee liqueur and a dollop of organic milk. Not enough to dilute the chocolate to the watery stuff of hot chocolate by gone days, but just enough to thin it so that it pours and can be sipped before it re-solidifies into hard chocolate.
Now having stirred it into a gorgeously dark, creamy smooth, mouth wateringly perfect hot chocolate, prepare a plate of necessary side flavor essentials like fresh raspberries, lady fingers, cocoa beans and MORE chocolate if you're feeling ultra decadent.
Pour the liquid glory into the shot glasses and enjoy.
The shot glasses are the perfect size to fool the brain into thinking it's getting a whole glass full, plus they're pretty and the smooth column of warm chocolate between the fingers just adds to the whole experience.
Be prepared to jam your fingers down in the glass to wipe out every last chocolate drip.
I considered serving the chocolate on a plate for better lickability but I do draw the line. I am a lady, I have manners. There'll be no chocolate plate licking here, just finger licking and shot glass slurping, thank-you very much.

Eh!

It had been 8 years since I'd walked through that particular patch of woody area and I was a little annoyed.
The trees had grown while I was gone, the path, worn by my very own feet, had been reclaimed by grass and roots. Branches had the sheer audacity to block the way! Mother nature made no bones about who was in charge. I may have had delightful, unrestricted access, to that area for a large part of my childhood, but it was never really mine. Life's a bitch, eh.
Briefly I contemplated a face off with ol' Mother Nature, just to show her I was no pushover, even after years away from that particular patch of woods.
I was being woodswomanly you see, showing off my Nova Scotia outdoorsy type skills that are put to little use in Southern California. If you get lost down here it's most likely in a parking lot and if you hug a tree the palm police will haul you away for molesting a trunk in public.
On our recent Nova Scotia trip I happily led my husband through the knee high weeds and skeletal branches, still bare of spring's green. Trudging through a path that was now more memory than trail. Pointing out fascinating things like pine cones and thorns and swamp grass and birch bark and keeping a sharp eye peeled for spruce gum because every one should get to chew it at least once in their life. But just traveling along the path unscathed, unscratched was demanding enough, my bout with Mother Nature would have to wait.
Tempting though it was to voice my disapproval to her, I just smiled, politely, and batted branches out of my face, giving up on the idea of arguing this overgrown path nonsense and forged ahead.
Keeping a careful but cautious grip on my burr ball.
When planning our trip home we made lists. Things to do to prepare for the trip, things to take on the trip and things to do ON the trip. The third list was my favorite as it involved mostly Canadian foods. Ah Caramels, Tim Horton's coffee, Coffee Crisps, Wunder Bars, A&W poutine, and pizza donairs...let me just say that last one again. PIZZA DONAIRS.
But smack dab in the middle of the list was make a burr ball from the prickly little clingy balls that grow on the weedy burdocks plants all around the property where my Mom lives.
Let me just say that as far as lists go, you can considered that one dominated. I kicked list ass. I stuffed myself on every thing I had planned to and to top it all off, I made that burdock ball! It was a work of burdock art. My husband gamely trudged along with me as I sussed out dried brown little prickly things from the weeds, calling out "I found some more! And more, ohhhhh MORE over here!!!!"
When we were kids my brothers and I would gather burdocks, sometimes even voluntarily. It was not unusual to come in from the bushes with the little buggers clinging all over our pant legs and socks, making a mess of our shoe laces. Alan said he's had similar but less enjoyable experiences when he was a child with things he almost dare not speak of aloud because they are THAT evil.
Foxtails....ohhhhh.
Apparently as clingy as burdocks but more evil and in absolutely no way fun. But burdocks are cool, the most fun was had gathering them on purpose and sticking them together to make a MEGA BURR BALL.
Why? Well....we were kids, we lived in the country, did we really need a reason why? And if we do then I'll admit we may have thrown them at each other. Burr balls are the warmer weather equivalent of snow balls, plus they stick.
Apparently Fox tails can't be made in to a mega foxtail ball, apparently they just stab your socks and itch your skin and annoy the heck out of you when all you tried to do was take a shortcut home from school across a hill and you end up with stickers in your ankles and a pocketful of regret and a lifelong loathing for a weed you'd as soon obliterate from the planet as ever have to see it again.
Umm, but look husband. BURRS, round, cute, NOT evil!
It was a lovely moment in life for me, introducing my husband to non-evil stickery burrs, dragging him through the wild rose bushes, under the birch trees, through the dense fir tree branches and into the little swampy clearing I remembered so well, burr ball in hand.
I was like a tour guide, the spiel spilling out of me un-bidden.
"And over there is where the pitcher plant is, back there is where mushrooms grew, down there is where the stream is, up there is the tree I climbed, that hill over yonder was a good leaf sliding hill, these denser weed lumps are for standing on, the best moss is over that away, these trees grow berries and did you see the burr ball I made?"
A satisfying, free verse sort of description of my childhood that I was finally able to show my husband in person. I mean one can only describe the apple tree one used to sit in and chuck apples from into a bucket for the pigs for so long. Eventually one needs to drag one's husband through the field and point at it and say "THERE it is!" Then one wonders if said apple tree could still hold one's weight, plus one's husband's weight....
After making it through the overgrown bit of woods that once was a path I was pleased I hadn't picked a fight with Mother Nature after all. She's a strange sort of woman she is. So much had changed and yet so much hadn't. The natural playground beneath the trees where a tiny stream traveled was exactly the same. The trees in the area have always been tall enough to provide a natural sort of branch roof. The ground below a wide open place to play with smooth tree trunks like the pillars of a woodsy palace. 8 years later it looked the same. Now I have to wonder if Mother Nature was really blocking the path or just hugging the little area tight, protecting it with bushy arms and tangled limbs.
I took a few moments to bond with her, flinging myself on to a tree branch, whispered soft apologies to the lichens that clung there.
I think she heard me.
It was a wonderful trip, power packed.

(Tim Hortons is the lifeblood of Pictou County, Nova Scotia!)

A chaotic whirlwind of coffee, friends, coffee, family and more coffee, interspersed with perfect little pockets of nature. Deer sightings, river visits and trips down memory lane. The only down side was I forgot to throw..er...I mean GIVE my MEGA BURR BALL to my brother. The upside is I did remember, just barely, to take it out of my pocket before going through security at the airport.
Though I have to admit I am curious as to what customs would have thought of it. You can just never tell by looking at a person if they are a secret mega burr ball lover or not.

A is for Absolutely Adoring Asparagus....

It wasn't love at first sight.
In fact, if truth be told when I first laid my eyes upon it I was skeptical. Asparagus did not sweep me off my feet with passionate promises of what it could do to my taste buds. Instead it lay in unassuming piles, a little snootier than the rest of the vegetables, a little pricier, and it knew it.
I think that's what put me off for so many years, regular folks like myself didn't eat asparagus, fancy pants folks who served "h'ordeuves" instead of snacks ate asparagus. People who thought they were too good for broccoli ate asparagus next to their piles of caviar smoking illegal cigars that cost more than my entire wardrobe and sipping on a brand of whiskey that only rich people's tongues can palate.
I have an imagination, it's true, imagination does not equal accuracy.
In fact my wild and rampant mind wanderings in the exotic and exclusive world of asparagus had left me blinded to the simple tastiness of this vegetable for YEARS now. There are family feuds that have resolved quicker than my asparagus skepticism.
I am embarrassed to now admit, humbly so, that it was not asparagus who was being snobby but me....
But I have made up for it in spades and have consumed so much asparagus in the last 3 weeks that I am sure the asparagus Over Lords, sitting on their piles of asparagus money are wondering why they suddenly need an extra truck load of asparagus delivered to my local store. They are right this minute with their noses buried in lists and numbers and facts and trying to figure out what has changed.
It's me.
I like asparagus. In fact, it may be more than that. I might have a wee bit of a crush on my new best, edible, friend. First thing into the cart at the grocery store and first veggy that pops into my mind when preparing a meal these days.
There is no need to ask what's for supper in this household, at least for a little while, because the answer, always said with the same breathy laugh that is so indicative of new love that's still in the honeymoon stages, will always be the same, "Asparagus."
I'm like that.
It's a damn good thing there are no children, besides the plastic 5 dollar cheapy toy kind that we haul out for holiday photos to make the parents feel *grand*, in this house. Because I am guilty of playing favorites. If I like something, like say a fancy schmancy veggy that had never crossed my lips for the first 30 years of my life, then so long broccoli, screw you squash you can kiss my Ass-paragus goodbye. When I am with a vegetable I am only with that vegetable for the duration my interest lasts. And even when the weight of nutritional facts starts weighing heavy on my conscience, poking and prodding reminding me that vegetables are good but one shouldn't eat only one vegetable from now until eternity runs outta tape, I cheat.
My husband, who loves asparagus too but perhaps not to the all inclusive 3 week binge of it that I do breathes an obvious sigh of relief after tentatively inquiring as to what I had in mind for supper, and I promptly answer, "French Fries!"
His relief is palpable, one can only wax poetic about stalks of green for so long and listen to one's wife moan about 30 years lost in a haze of anti-vegetable ignorance for so long.
What? Have I gone crazy you ask? Did I not just wear my fingers to the nubbins tippity tapping away about how awesome asparagus is and now I'm gonna prance off with the lowly potato? Am I that easily swayed? While I do tend towards the "love 'em and leave 'em" favoritism queen-esque attitude in the food world, let me let you in on a little secret.
I had asparagus WITH my french fries.
I have married the two and they are living happily ever after in oven frizzled, slightly roasted, salty bliss. Are they a match made in heaven these two vegetables? No they were a match made in my kitchen as a way to sneak some more asparagus into the meal because it is as yet still my favorite of the week.
We have tried them long length like fries themselves, divine. We have chopped them smaller in to little chunks which my husband actually prefers, divine-er. All the sauces that go so lovely with french fries goes just fine with asparagus. Which in our home means, bar-b-q sauce, vegenaise and lots of salt! MmmmMMMmmmMmmmmm.
The way that I go about cooking the 2 together is I start a batch of oven fries the way I normally would, only about 5 to 10 minutes away from being done I pull the pan of oily fries out of the oven and sprinkle my chopped up asparagus all over it, returning it to bake for another 5 to 10 minutes until everything is golden and delicious and making one hop about anxiously in front of the oven door with a rumbling belly and a desperate *must have it* gleam in one's eye. A sprinkle of garlic, pile it all high on a plate, supper is served and once again asparagus steals the lime light away as I shove french fries aside to get at the golden tinged nuggets of green goodness.
And is that all?
HA!
Ha I say, stomach full of one of the best salads I have ever had the pleasure to devour, this month at least. Next month I may be eying up squash or getting the skinny on string beans but while my asparagus lust is still sizzling I have also been making creamy lemon dill asparagus salads. HOT salad, as in temperature not spice.
I enjoy the textures and temperatures of pouring hot saucy vegetables over a really hearty lettuce like endive. Yummmm. Not only yummmm, but easssssssy.
Frizzle up chopped asparagus and olive oil with salt and black pepper in a pan until tender and bright green and they're cooked just to the point where you start risking burned finger tips so you can nip pieces of asparagus out and pop them into your mouth to the dual delight and horror of your tongue. It's worth the burn.
Add a dollop of sour cream and another of vegenaise, turn the heat off and add chopped garlic and fresh dill, sprinkle some fresh lemon zest in there too. Stir it up with a couple of healthy squeezes of lemon juice and and ohhhhhhhhh you have no idea how happy it makes your asparagus. A few chopped heirloom tomatoes not only add flavor but pretty color as well.
Chop a little cheese of your choice and sprinkle it over a bowl of hearty endive and then pour the steaming, oh so dilly fragrant and creamy, lemony asparagus over top. You will hear a sigh, that's to be expected, endive enjoys a warm bath as much as the rest of us. Then you will hear another sigh, that's most likely you.
I do not know how long my love affair with asparagus will last, though I suppose it will never really end, it will just move to the side as I meet a new vegetable or fruit who will grab all of my attention for a while as asparagus becomes part of the background of my meals. Playing favorites is a delicious way to live life, exploring the possibilities of a particular food item.
And if the others, past favorite foods, get jealous....you can eat 'em to shut them up.

Nutella or Sanity

The year rolled by with the ominous weight of time. Thundering just beyond our edges of hearing until it clicked, another notch, another year, another 366 days without Nutella under my belt.
Nutella.....
Which is why I probably still fit INto my belt.
I shuddered with relief when I saw the calendar and realized I had made it, had not cracked beneath the awful pressure of desperate cravings that no single jar of Nutella could assuage.
That there had been no dark and creamy void of unconsciousness starting when I had swept my arm through tidily arranged jars on Nutella on the super market shelf, innocently waiting to have their lids turned, their seals cracked and contents devoured in a sweet haze of ecstasy, spilling them in a clunking rain of beautiful music into my eagerly awaiting shopping cart. Had not filled my trunk to near bursting, had not driven with one hand on the steering wheel and one slathered in the physical incarnation of pure edible pleasure itself. There were no moments of confusion, no waking to the clatter of empty plastic jars tumbling from the bed to the floor. No plaintive cries from the cats because 2 days had gone by in a blink of an eye and surreal interaction between myself and it.
Nutella......
I whisper it's name, the very feel of it's syllables on my tongue has my taste buds aching, individually crying out in silent screams for fulfillment.
I close my mouth tightly, squeeze my eyes shut but the image that is forever burned on my retina haunts me. A single jar, the subtle curve, the provocative white lid..... I whimper, I struggle. I wrestle with the craving, grappling with it, a war inside my very own brain wages behind my hazel eyes that stare unseeingly. Looking inwards at the fight between common sense and craving, wondering who will win. Hoping it's a satisfying victory, wondering if while my brain is busy if my body could suss out one last hidden jar of it.
Nutella......
I shudder.
I had kept the dark temptress at bay. Had not hidden jars in the shower to indulge myself in a hot soak and palm full of chocolate hazelnut glory. Had not concocted elaborate plans to build myself a bunker from the empty jars, their contents emptied into the neighbor's swimming pool I had secretly drained at night so that I might truly become one with Nutella.
I did not scream in fury when relatives opened the closet that should not be opened and they did not turn and stare at me with bewildered eyes in the shadow of the mountain of Nutella jars. They did not recognize how close to glory they stood.
Nutella......
You are perfection, this I do not deny. In fact I would have your sweet name tattooed across my left shoulder, right ankle and one side of my buttock if there was not a grocery store next to the tattoo parlor.
I would marry you, entering willingly into polygamy with my Nutella covered husband at my side if it were legal.
I am not ashamed to say I'd do it anyways, shrugging the law from my shoulders, embracing the subtle hazel flavor and chocolate overtones, if I did not fear the very passions you incite in me. If I did not worry for my sanity, if I could afford the amount of you I'd need to keep me satisfied.
Nutella....
You are not a treat to be savored.
I am not the lady from the chocolate commercials.
I can not take a tiny taste and lean back, carried away in apparent spasms of delight. A tiny taste would be lost amongst my intense desire for you, it would be but a drip when my thirst requires an ocean to sate it.
Another year Nutella and I have been apart...for the greater good.
Nutella......
I love you, I hate you.....I love you....

Parking Lot Picnics.....

We have dueling bellies. When they get hungry the low threatening growls that emanate from our stomachs is enough to drain the blood from the faces of those unfortunate enough to stand near.
GRRRRRRROWWWWWWwwwLLL!
The poor souls, caught in the back and forth hunger pains of our stomachs, gasp and sputter. There's the familiar tell tale sound of panic, similar to that of water circling down the drain, but it's the blood fleeing their heads!
It's not a wild cougar under our shirts, we don't do that any more. It's our tummies rumbling, Pooh style, as in Whinnie the, and as my husband likes to say "My belly button is rubbing a blister against my backbone."
So fine, eat. We do. But occasionally when we are out on one of those multiple store shopping sprees, hopping from place to place, trunk filling with loot we find ourselves stranded. Stuck in the middle of a sea of fast food, which we pretty much NEVER eat any more, and our bellies are growling at each other. People walk a wary distance from us, lest something horror movie-esque should happen, like demented alien creatures ripping forth to lunge at each other in a disgusting and completely un-holiday like brawl in the parking lot.
We can't help it. We're hunnnnnnngry!
Fast food whispers, the sly little devil in our ear. The voice that sounds suspiciously like a Carl's Jr commercial. And though it is tempting, so tempting to slip quietly into the masses lined up in one of those joints a vein of of something un-masses like runs through us. When we are hungry we are like 2 year olds, wants it NOW, but 2 year olds in adult bodies with debit cards in our pockets, fast food devils in our ears and a hankering for cheese that isn't so neon yellow it makes the sun look pale.
Before we are reduced to licking the odd stain on the car door that we are at least 96 % sure is a soda from 4 years ago, that vein of adult-ness throbs. It quiets the beast of our bellies for a moment with the promise of food. Food fast. But NOT Fast food.
The lights of the Trader Joes spill across the parking lot, illuminating the glistening Southern California cars that are polished to a high shine. It gilds the hair of the pedestrians loaded down with bulging sacks of goodness. Our nostrils flare as we pass the sweet Grandma-esque lady with the loaf of french bread sticking out the top of her bag and my belly growls and she glances warily at me and I flash my teeth and try not to look like a vampire in need of a fix.
We're on a mission.
FOOD!
We do not stroll into the store but we barrel through the crowd, wielding our little basket like a machete, cutting a path through the shopper's dazed crowds.
My husband and I are a well oiled, food procuring machine. Words need not be spoken, just the occasional soft grunt of satisfaction as wedge after wedge of good cheese bounces into the bottom of our basket. Aged Vermont cheddar, garlic herb gouda...I try not to cry when Alan picks up the Gruyere.
I try not to.
But the glistening shine isn't all from the holiday music piped in over the speakers. It's the desire for cheese kick boxing the hold on my hunger restraints.
We hurry through the store, we nab two containers of hummus, double back for a bag of mixed arugula salad greens and our grins are fierce as we near the finish line. Perhaps the other shoppers see it as well because they part, a wave of humanity as we zero in on the freshly made bread at the other end of the store.
Is there a clock ticking? There must be. Time is a factor, perhaps the gnawing aches in our belly really is a beast that will be unleashed at the stroke of absolute famish-ness if we do not hurry.
Every thing is going well, going perfectly until the bread display looms before us. Maybe it's because we are delirious with hunger or maybe it's because the multiple store trips is putting us into a catatonic like state but deciding on what bread to get suddenly seems monumental.
Garlic or olive? Garlic or olive? Garlic or olive?
The words do not just replay over and over on a loop in my head but we are muttering them out loud, clutching our little basket to our chest and staring with un-blinking eyes at the damnably delicious bread choices. Damn Trader Joes, why did there have to be so many choices? We want bread. Any bread, we are hunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnngry, and the devil in our ear chuckles. Thinking it is close to winning, pointing an invisible finger at the closest Del Taco.
What happened next....was it a Christmas miracle? Maybe. It was amazing. Our control was crumbling, our fingers trembling, our mouths watering and our brains locked in the impossible decision of Garlic or olive bread when it happened.
IT happened.
It couldn't have been any more amazing of a moment if a fricking angel had swooped down on a beam of golden light and pointed a glowing finger in the right direction for us.
Rosemary.
We sighed, together, synchronized and our smiles were genuine and relieved. Rosemary bread. Peeking out from behind the garlic, of course. Rosemary bread. The world made sense once more and our bodies kicked back into gear.
I don't remember standing in line, paying for our purchases or carting them out to the car. My next conscious memory is with a mouth full of cilantro pepper hummus, a hunk of rosemary bread in one hand, a ripped open bag of lettuce cradled between my knees and the whimpering of our cravings dying down to mere purrs of delight.
I am sure we paid for our goods, no Trader Joes' store cops beat on our windows and demanded we give the cheese back.
We traded the wedge of garlic herb back and forth eating it in the most satisfying way possible, gnawing off hunks of it with our teeth. The hummus we of course attack with our car spoons. The ever present pair of cheap metal spoons that we store in the dash for when we buy pints of ice cream or cases such as this when hummus is around and it's a food needin' emergency. For a while, nothing but companionable silence and intense chewing filled the car.
There was no need to talk, nothing to say and words would just take up valuable mouth space we were reserving for bread.
Cars came and went around us in the parking lot. We watched with mild interest as some one came by rolling away all the abandoned shopping carts. The lights of the neighboring store cast a red glow over the hood of the car and it was lovely.
Almost romantic.
A parking lot picnic.

All Fired Up!

I have more than a chip on my shoulder.....
You know how a person can rant and rave about how inanimate objects defy them and how the Universe is testing their patience, their will and their sanity?
And how if a person keeps blathering about things like coat hangers that nearly cracked the fragile and tenuous hold some one has on their mighty reservoir of frustrated anger how other people start to raise their eyebrow, just the one ala Spock?
And how it's pretty damn hard to gather evidence of these inanimate objects etc to bring before one's peers to shine the light of truth upon their evil little ways?
Because throwing a handful of coat hangers, carpet tacks and miscellaneous spilled trash before one's friends doesn't prove that they did you wrong. The stuff not the friends, they didn't do me wrong yet but I keep a careful eye on them. If the old adage "keep your friends close and your enemies uncomfortably closer" is true then doesn't it stand to reason that some of the people I consider to be my closest friends must actually be my enemy, or at least I theirs?
It's something to ponder when life hands you small moments to reflect on the weirdness of the world...
But anyways I was rambling on about the defiance of things I face. People with kids think they have it tough? Ha!
Finally I have proof that either the fates are in cahoots with the Universe, or the Universe is in cahoots with the inanimate objects or perhaps I have an alter ego type personality that is constantly trying to undermine my smooth sailing through the day or.....and this isn't just the conspiracy crazed voice of fear just talking here, maybe they're alllllllllll in it together......
How else can I, or you for that matter explain THIS?
(Please read that last word "this" as dramatically as you can ala your favorite mystery movie when the culprit is revealed with much dramatic finger pointing, British accents and Shakespearean flair. Thanks)
These are my corn chips....or they WERE....
Let me take us on a slight detour from my point.
Corn chips are a staple in our household. In fact if there could be some sort of blended cornchip coffee concotion I am pretty sure my husband and I would drink it and enjoy it and never have to eat another thing but said concotion. (I exaggerate for the purposes of expressing how important corn chips really are. We don't like name them and treat them like salty members of our family but we do panic when there is only 2/3 of a 1 lb bag of the delicious lil devils left. They call the 1 lb bag "family size", we call it "barely big enough to get us through the week-end." I'm not going to tell you if I was exaggerating that time.)
So about corn chips and me.
I like em warm and toasty. This is actually a fairly recent discovery on my part. That if you take store bought corn chips and spread them out on a cookie sheet and stick them under your broiler for a few seconds then magical corn chip deliciousness happens. Your home starts to smell like your favorite Mexican restaurant, the chips gets toasty brown and they are so crispy and delicious you will actually risk burning your lips to nibble a few right away.
Well............I am here to confess that in the eyes of every one who is not in the *know* about defiant inanimate objects and Universe ploys to trip me up, I have carbonized our favorite salty snack. Reduced those pretty little golden chips to a fiery pile of ashes. Literally FIRE. It was quite exciting, you can't eat flaming chips by the way....bad, bad BAD idea.
Accident?
Forgetfulness?
Just leave them chips under the broiling hot broiler for a little too long?
Perhaps......
BUT If this is so then explain to me THIS!
(You can apply the same dramatic reading of the last usage of the word "this" as you did to the afore mentioned dramatic "this". Thanks)
NOT ONCE BUT TWICE in one week have I completely destroyed a beautiful pile of corn chips. Watching them burn, burn away their corny goodness and salty exterior as my own face is salted from my tears.
I might accidently set fire to a cookie sheet full of corn chips once....but not twice. AHA! J'accuse you Universe! I accuse the stove, the cookie sheet and...dang it, even those chips if I have to because I know dang well I am not responsible for carbonizing TWO batches of corn chips. I'm just not. The Universe slipped up there, now I have more than two useless piles of inedible corn chips (I tried them they taste like ash...darn it).....Now I have proof.

*****Corn chips really are tasty when they've been lightly toasted....LIGHTLY being the key word here. Do NOT turn you back on these guys under the broiler, they are just waiting to burst in to flame and make you cry. In fact if you do this do not walk away from the stove and check them literally every 5 or 10 seconds for *done-ness*. Seconds make the difference between a "happy meal" and a "muttering bitter infused obscenities at the Universe" meal........

They should call them Mmmmmmmargaritas...

(a little sprinkle of a really fruity dried chili pepper is a nice little spicy twist to the margarita.)

Dear Self,
Last night you had a gorgeous plate of homemade mexican food?

Yes.

A layer of homemade, slow cooked mexican beans that were heavily flavoured with garlic, peppers and spices. Topped with 3 fried masa dough balls that encased spicy jack cheese, accompanied by green epazote salsa, a sprinkle of cilantro and tomato.

Mmmmm yes indeed.

And self, were there also watermelon margaritas so delicious and flavorful it felt like you were sinking your teeth into some exotic fruit only found in paradise every time you took a sip (of which there were many)?

Yes, yes there were.

And you enjoyed this luxurious meal at home, in the comfy coziness of your own sofa with your sweetie pie husband watching the new Stargate movie?

You bet your gate dialing, wormhole traveling, Samantha Carter lovin' ass I did.

Damn, you know if you weren't me...I'd hate you right about now.

Yeah...I get that a lot.

Heretical Chips...

The Kettle chip company has made a grave error, they keep titling their super crispy crunchy salt and black pepper kettle chips wrong, they're NOT salt and fresh ground pepper they're "Alan's chips", "His Chips" or if he's the one talking about them "My chips"
I don't know if they fully realize that we must be at least 30% of their sales. The least they can do is properly name them.
We popped over to Henry's earlier this evening to get some nutritional (raw milk) and Alan's chips. As we wandered down the chip aisle Alan was overjoyed to discover they were on sale. Score!
Grabbing a bag to put in our basket he paused half way, a small line of concentration appeared between his eyes, "I noticed you haven't been eating my chips as much as me."
"Oh well they're a little hard and crunchy. They're good though." I explain.
"O.k.," he continued putting the bag in the basket, relieved I wasn't secretly hating his chips and sweetly offered, "you should get some other chips. Something you want."
I scanned the options, I'm not as big a potato chip fan as Alan but one of the bags by the Boulder brand caught my eye. I laughed and grabbed one off the shelf.
"Artichoke and spinach? That's so strange. Ok I gotta try these." I start to put them in the basket, pause and look down at the bag.
The small line of concentration has leapt straight off of Alan's forehead to my own, digging in between my eyes as I re-examine the chip bag.
"Wait. Do these go against what we believe in?" I peruse the list of ingredients making sure there's no weird dyes to turn them green or strange ingredients like cat tongue from the planet zenon's 4th quadrant.
Alan understands what I'm asking and we both examine the bag another moment.
"They look ok." He pronounces and I happily stuff my bag of chips in to the basket, decision made.
Turning to go I finally notice the woman on the same aisle. As we walk by she bobbles her basket and presses up a little harder than I think is necessary against the corn chips.
Out on the main aisle a slow dawning of realization sweeps over me...my feet slow....my brain clicks in to what just happened...
"Was she on the aisle the whole time?" I ask Alan.
He's grinning and starts to laugh, a laugh that just like the line between our eyes is quite contagious and fully infects me before I can finish my whole thought. We sputter and snicker our way past the tomatoes to the milk aisle.
"So, so...." I try to catch my breath. "So she was there and all she heard me say was 'do these chips go against what we believe in?'...ohmygawwwwwwd."
The cold floor of the super market and the piercing stares of strangers, not to mention my husband's arm is the only thing that kept me upright and from completely falling down in a puddle of guffaws and potato chips.
Our funny bone was thoroughly tickled.
By the by, the chips were tasty, in case you were curious. With strong garlic and Parmesan flavours and not only that they haven't mounted any snack-food rebellions against my beliefs even once since we've had them home.

The evolution of me n' beans.

Beans and me go waaaaay back.
Back to childhood when my nose turned up at the idea of any vegetable that wasn't a potato or corn on the cob. What a sophisticated palette I had. Only verrrrrry occasionally stepping boldly beyond my gastronomical comfort zone by eating an iceberg lettuce leaf with bottled, creamy cucumber dressing. This was as gourmet as I got.
I've mentioned being a picky eater before but unless you had witnessed the full scale archeological type dig I could do to a plate of food, mining for hidden vegetables and other nasty bits adults were always gunking up good grub with, you can't fully understand how far I've come.
My first recollection of beans was at my Grandma Prest's house. I'm not sure how she managed to do it, but she could get me to eat food, that if any other parental type unit had stuck it before me I'd have thrown a fit.
Maybe she never tried to MAKE me eat beans, and hence my curiosity. Parents, you're good people. God knows I couldn't handle the job you all take upon yourselves but here's a new flash from a former kid...MAKING some one eat their peas causes a years long rift between said kid and peas.....I'm just sayin'.....Kids are are not just young people, they're mini adults. I remember being told I HAD to eat my peas when I was 7 or 8, I'm 30 years old and it still pisses me off. I understand the logic behind it, health, nutrition, wasting food...blah blah blah....but me and peas had us a real long acrimonious relationship for a damn long time because of that.
Here's where I balance my Karma and say thanks to the universe for parents who provided me with food when lots of kids had none...they could have given my peas to those kids though...I wouldn't have minded.
So a visit with Grandma, meal time rolls around and out of a can comes this brown sludge that was not only beans BUT sweet.....how odd. Baked beans.....beans are a vegetable and I had a war on vegetables, but they had brown sugar or molasses in them lending not only a lovely shade of brown but a definite sweetness that was whole heartily approved by my childish taste buds. It was like some adult some where had screwed up and made a meal that was more like dessert. It was perfect!
I became a fan of baked beans.
Then the universe laughed in my face and caused me great pain one day after I'd become a fan of baked beans. It was when asked, by some distant relative whose house I was having lunch at "What do you want to eat?"
Ahh....the glory of a question like that, no slapping some food down on the table and saying "eat it" I was being given a CHOICE. THE POWER...SUCH DELICIOUS POWER.
"I'll have beans." I say.
*sigh* You can probably guess where this train wreck of a childhood moment is going......I didn't realize I'd have to specify what sort of beans. I didn't realize the bean manufacturer type peoples would waste their time canning anything OTHER than sweet delicious baked beans.
A few moments later a bowl of something horrible, a wet pile of nasty red giant THINGS that were most definitely not flavored with brown sugar, was placed before me.
"What is this?" I asked, hardly daring to breathe, hardly daring to believe that I was expected to EAT this stuff, hardly daring to believe any one would even BUY cans of disgusting red lumps.
"Kidney beans." I was told.
Well hell.
I didn't say that then, I probably didn't even think it, as I was too busy trying not to bawl, such was my disappointment. I could be a brat at times when I was a kid, I can admit it, but I didn't throw a fit THIS time, realizing this was IT, this was lunch. I was stuck. I pushed them around my bowl, as miserable as a kid can be, before heading back to school. Too depressed to be hungry. I can still remember the disappointment, the horror.....I think those kidney beans scarred me for life.
Fast forward a few years. I've learned a valuable lesson, always specify what sort of beans you want, lest some crazy adult thinks a 7 year old kid would enjoy a bowl of kidney beans for lunch. I learned something else.
My mother can MAKE baked beans, the RIGHT kind. The sweet, delicious, smokey from a bit of bacon, and dark from molasses kind. She just whips up a batch one day as if it was the most normal thing in the world.
Didn't I stand there and watch in awe and amazement as she made them? Didn't I taste them myself and realize that HOMEMADE baked beans kicked canned baked bean's tin can ass?
How gourmet I felt. Helping dump the brown sugar in with the beans after they soaked all night. MAKING baked beans. Making them...imagine that.
I always made mine a little MORE gourmet by dumping extra brown sugar on my bowl of beans after they dished up. Hmmmmm......just had an epiphany.....a bittersweet one...childhood sweet tooth equals adult root canals, methinks.
Me and baked beans enjoyed a companionable relationship for many years. They accompanied me through adolescence into adult-hood until I'm all grown up, I meet the love of my life online.
I move to California, and he proudly takes me out for his favorite meal. Something completely foreign to my Maritime taste-buds. The enchilada combo plate from an Alberto's drive through.
I can still remember when I opened my Styrofoam container and beheld the strange mass of brown and bright red that my husband was salivating over.
Refried beans, enchiladas and rice.
I hadn't a clue what an enchilada was, why any one would eat rice without soy sauce and why beans would be RE-fried???? What sort of world had I tumbled in to. And get this...these beans were NOT sweet!
I ate most of the enchilada, discovered the rice wasn't too bad but steered clear of the beans....for a while. Something happened though.
Pop, pop, pop went my taste buds. I think it was new ones growing. They can grow anything down here, it's all the sun.
Pop, pop, pop.
And anyone who has had a take-out combination plate knows there's no force on earth that can keep the refried beans from getting friendly with the enchilada. They softly cuddle up with the red sauce, they ooze under the tortilla, they embrace the cheese and find mysterious refried bean ways of getting on your fork when you only meant to get rice.
My taste buds grew, new refried bean taste buds that were inhabiting my tongue for the sole purpose of tasting salty, creamy, delicious refried beans.
I thought I was pretty hot stuff.
Willingly sucking down tons of refried beans from combo plates from every Mexican food place with in our neighborhood. I was on a stomach and brain awakening journey. The little kid who cowered from peas and onions was willingly buying them to cook up veggie delights of all sorts, most of it inspired by Mexican food.
Mexican food was like nothing I'd had back home in rural Nova Scotia. I bragged about the refried beans to the folks back there. I took pictures and sent them off, pointing out to my Mom how mature I'd become, eating non-sweet beans, willingly, loving every creamy bite.
I found out the stores around here carried cans of these marvelous beans, you could walk right in and have yourself a can of refried beans for a buck.
I cast less and less a wary eye at new foods my husband introduced me to. My palette expanded even more, my world was flavored with cilantro, chipotle and sour cream.
I made my own enchiladas, something that seemed so exotic and foreign 7 years ago became an easy meal to make in a hurry. Burritos a cinch, I started making my own tortillas and chili gravy was it's crown. It seems like the speeding train of expanding taste buds whizzes by faster every day. New food discoveries enlighten my tongue.
AND the bean evolution continues!!!
I went from refried beans to cans of whole beans, that I could flavour and mash myself. My husband's eyes rolled in ecstasy the first time I threw handfuls of spices in with a can of pinto beans and mashed it up. Beans are now a staple of our diet. Where once I raised an eyebrow over a bowl of beans for a meal I now willingly and greedily accept beans for my breakfast, my lunch and my supper. Not a drop of sugar in sight. No desert-like mash masquerading as beans for me...well.....not often anyways....maybe occasionally I doctor up a pot of pinto beans with brown sugar and onion for a little childhood reminiscence.
Then, just when I thought I'd reached the height of bean brilliance, I went higher.
Dried beans, that I slow cooked all day with spices, turned out to be the most brilliant, mouth watering beans you could ever imagine. I'm not just honking my own horn here. (honk honk honk honk honk honk!) In fact maybe you already know this and are scoffing at my innocence, but let me tell you the veil has been lifted.
Beans I cooked myself kick the ass of canned beans. There's a lot of ass-kicking in my kitchen. Including my own because why didn't I have this realization sooner?
All I can do is live in the now, and raise a spoon to the kid I used to be. The one who only ate potatoes and corn on the cob. Wouldn't I freak if I could see me now from the eyes of the me I was then? How far me and my beans have come.

I have been playing with more beans than just pinto, most recently black beans.
My favorite usage of dried beans is as follows:

This is a method not a recipe per se.

POT-O-BEANS

• Rinse a big bunch of beans in water and then put them in a big old pot. Your biggest one so that you can make a vat of beans and eat beans for a week. They get better every day.

• Cover with lots of water, and put on the stove. I start mine on high and then turn it down to simmer once they get boiling.

• I throw in a few tablespoons each of cumin, Mexican oregano and chili powder. Do not be stingy with the chili powder. Lately I've been toasting dried chilies in the oven for a few minutes and grinding them up in the blender to make my own chili powder. I use a lot of spices. I don't actually measure but it's a lot. I also will add about 3 dried peppers in there as well, ones that haven't been toasted. They'll get soft and disintegrate and you can pick the skins out later. Or leave them floating in there and call it a garnish. Don't think I haven't noticed that's how fancy pants cooks operate, anything inedible is labeled a "garnish".....sometimes I garnish my plates with my one and only barbie doll.
  
• She adds a lot of class to a bowl of beans...o.k., I kid. She's not classy at all.

• I let the pot of dried beans, spices and water boil and bubble all day until the beans are soft and tender, adding more water to it when ever it gets low. I like them soupy the first day, it's almost like a bean soup. (As they cool, and days go by they will thicken up, the beans, as well as me, absorbing more of the liquid.)

• When they are cooked enough I put a big dollop of oil in my cast iron frying pan. Maybe as much as half a cup. I chop up half an onion (give or take), two pasilla peppers and about 6 or 8 cloves of garlic and frizzle it all up in the oil with some salt. Softening the peppers and onion, infusing the oil with garlic, yummmmers. This part smells soooooooo good.

• Once the pepper mix has been cooked I dump all of it in to my pot of beans, and hopefully I've left enough room for the oil and peppers. ( Sometimes, an emergency "come help me find a place to put some beans" call is hollared to my husband as I realize physics is causing my addition of peppers/oil/garlic/onions to the beans is making the beans overflow in a very unpleasent, stove messing way. Wouldn't be the first time physics pissed me off.) I stir it all up, add more salt to the whole mix and then...step back.

• They're done. All they need now are a spoon and an appetite. (Though they're mind blowingly good with cheese, sour cream, cilantro, corn chips etc.)

Cravings assuaged poetically

Oh where art
My butter tart
In these United States?
The sticky treat
I long to eat,
and my desire sate.
Look everywhere
the shelves are bare
people's brows are raisin'
Yes that's right
Raisin delight,
Is the tart I'm praisin'.
I've been known
to make my own
When a craving surges!
A bit of crust,
sugar's a must,
A butter tart emerges.

(Heaven is located just under this raisin)

It's Bloody Delicious.

Alan says we have a dark side.
What? Just cause we were merrily juicing up some veggies for a potent, power packed supremely healthful drink he thinks we have a dark side?
Is it my fault that raw beets ooze red, blood like juice all over heck and back when you chop them up?
Nooooo.
Is it my fault that juicing a beet yields a delicious, nutritious albeit damn bloody looking drink?
Heccccckkkk No.
Is it my fault that for the 3.2 seconds he had his back turned I paused mid-juicing so that I could carve the core of the beet into a rat like body that would do any horror movie gross-out scene proud?
Ummmm.........maybe?
I'll admit to that being my own idea but it's not my fault the beet had such a long rat like tail, and that when I chopped it up to fit in our juicer that fate handed me a deliciously disgusting opportunity.
It's fate's fault! A ha!!!
Usually if I babble on long enough I can find some one else to blame for anything and everything, I am much relieved this time is no different.
Fate stepped in and provided this afternoon's grotesque entertainment. My muse screeched in my ear that I should pull out my carving knife and..NOT not cut off it's tail but be a good wife and smooth out the core of the beet into a rat like form...I supposed a skinned and de-legged rat like form to be accurate.
How does one go about plating a bloody rat for their husband? A virginal white dish to show off the wet, darkly oozing rodent/vegetable is best. Flick your fingers a la Emeril in a deliciously dark home version of "BAM" to splatter excess beet juice/blood all over the plate. Be mindful of your flicking as you'll have to clean up the splatters that will....er...COULD make it on to you, the floor, the cupboards, the counters...the ceilings...if you get too enthusiastic. And unfortunately I've never suffered from a lack of enthusiasm.
Present the plate to your loved one with all the pride you can muster and rejoice in their chuckle, their appreciation of a terribly good joke.
If you think carving a bloody rat was fun you should try juicing one, held by it's tail as you lower it in to the grinding mechanism of your juicer, you'll never look at your veggie juice the same way again!
Usually when we drink beet juice we just pretend we're vampires and cackle over every sip and bare our teeth at each other and sigh over the many months away that Halloween is.
But this time we giggled like mad scientists, twitching our whiskers and slurping our ridiculously red rodent juice with mephistophelian glee.
Mmmmmmmmmmmm beets make a bloody good drink.
p.s. I don't really have to state the obvious do I? That beet juice is as close as I wanna come to eating or drinking any rat or related product..right????

The Beauty of the Big Biscuit...

How delightful are biscuits?
Very, is the answer in case you had a momentary brain lapse and were fumbling through your mind desperately looking for a response that won't enrage this blogger. The answer is very.
A hearty, buttery, flakey bread type product that you can whip up at a moment's notice and be enjoying a bite of, albeit a steaming bite in about 11 minutes.
That's 10 minutes baking time and 1 minute preparation time, I will admit that if you're not a fan of dust clouds of flour, smacking your shins in to cats that get in the way as you dash at reckless speeds across the kitchen gathering ingredients, splattering globs of biscuit dough all over the kitchen, your self and your husband then perhaps a more reasonable (which I'm not, reasonable that is) estimation of total time for everyone else would be around 13 or 14 minutes. Any more than that and I gotta wonder what it is you're doing with your flour that I'm not doing with mine. *insert raised eyebrow look here, the sort Laura Holt is always giving Remington Steele, also guess who has discovered Remington Steele and has been watching back-to-back episodes on Hulu? The answer is meeeee.*
I have very fond memories of biscuits.
They were always the dainty, little, round, perfectly cut sort that made me think of baby showers and women's something or other meetings......sorry the name of that community group escapes me, all I can remember was the table laden with pot luck food, luck indeed, as there were always biscuits, pre buttered with a wee little square of cheddar cheese already adorning the golden beauties like a wee jewel in the crown of...oh God I'm hungry. How many minutes has it been? I've a biscuit in the oven you know.
A biscuit, as in singular.
Because that is my brilliance, my time saving, get a bit of biscuit to my gullet faster than you can say "Beam me up Scotty".
The....BIG...biscuit.
What's with all this rolling the dough out and cutting it in to wee circles anyways? That's like saying you're only going to eat one biscuit and nobody eats just one biscuit. My Grandmother when she lived at home was always in to weight watchers and health and calorie counting and scales and losing weight and this that and the next thing and even she did not sit down to eat ONE biscuit, she ate a whole bunch of biscuits in one go. The tub of Country Crock margarine spread between us, the molasses already loaded into a squeezable tipped bottle so we could ooze out the perfect amount on each beautiful bite of baked biscuit. Perhaps this was why she seemed so aware of her calorie intake every where else I am just now realizing, because when it came to biscuits and molasses we were *good biscuit eaters*. As if consuming a small truck load of biscuits in one sitting was a skill to be proud of.
The Big Biscuit is brilliant.
A batch of biscuit dough pressed out lightly onto a greased cookie sheet (maybe yours doesn't have to be greased but mine does or else there's a kitchen full of broken biscuit dreams, tears and curses when the big biscuit sticks to the sheet and refuses to give you the all important big biscuit bottom layer that's slightly crispy and golden and MINE! NOT the cookie sheet's but MINE. Not that I hold grudges against inanimate objects or anything...for long...it's just I don't like non-sentient things to defy me and my will, is that so wrong?)
Then you pop your big doughy biscuit in the oven for it's allotted time and within 10 or 11 minutes....ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.....a biscuit, warm and steaming and just ready to be plopped on your plate..er.....I mean divided up for you and your husband who is now the one giving you the raised eyebrow look but instead of Laura Holt's eyebrow routine it's Remington Steele's cause he's on to me and my Big Biscuit and wants in on the action.
Sometimes we just have buttered biscuit, some times the all important biscuit and molasses routine, though I warn you this is a routine that is impossible to stop. Butter a bit of big biscuit, drip a drop of molasses, munch away, repeat..and repeat..and repeat..and repeat.
You will hear a distant groan of protest that is your stomach but you will also find your molasses addled brain will ignore it and keep eating bite after perfect bite of BIG biscuit and molasses. It's just the unfortunate reality of something so dang simple and delicious.
Sometimes we dig out our cheeses and sit trading hunks of gruyere and cheddar and fontina back and forth over our plates.
Other times we plop a chunk of Big Biscuit on a salad, like a mega crouton.
Sometimes we have it with marmalade or cinnamon sugar or.....like today....fresh strawberries.
A little trick I do, if you like your biscuits extra golden on top, pop em under the broiler in the oven for a few seconds after they are baked. Another little trick I do, forget it's under the broiler, walk away, distracted by shiny objects and bits of fluff and then wonder why the kitchen smells like smoke.
I can only in good conscience recommend the first trick unless you're into charred biscuit.
A ha, which reminds me. A third trick, take your big biscuit while it's still in it's soft, warm dough form and.....pop it on your Bar-B-Q grill. Holy mama, that's a gooooood biscuit and it can get a wee bit of char but the good kind, not the stomach turning, we can use it as a piece of charcoal to draw a picture of our deceased Big Biscuit, kind. I usually dust my big biscuit with lots of flour so it wont stick to the grill when ever I've done this trick.
By the way for those of you with husbands who look at your biscuits with a dark gleam of greed in their eye I want to set the record straight that biscuits, big or otherwise..do..NOT EVAPORATE. Even a little, so should any biscuit disappear while it's cooling and the BIG Biscuit Baker is outside watering the plants then we'll all know it wasn't a natural phenomenon..... I do give him points for originality, and cuteness....so he can have as much of the dang biscuit as he wants if he continues to be my hand model.

How to Enjoy a Big Biscuit:

1. Break it in to hunks, use your hands just like the caveman biscuit makers did.
2. Prepare a little love for the biscuit with some sliced strawberries, a touch of sugar and a drip of Amaretto, let the mixture combine in an almost carnal like way until it coaxes the blushing strawberries in to releasing it's juices at which point introduce the whole thing to it's betrothed...the BIG BISCUIT!
3. Clean the table like mad in a frenzy of energy because you realize that as the sun sets it's highlighting every bit of dust on the surface and making you look like a bad house keeper, which you might very well be but there's no need to photograph the evidence now is there?
4. Raw...HEAVY....cream......thick and luscious and much more adult than the whipped gelatinous-y type stuff that masquerades as whipped cream in the freezer section of the store. If you have the patience you could whip it up, if you don't..like me, just pour a dollop over the sweetened berries and bit of Big Biscuit and try not to let your hands shake cause it looks too impossibly good to have come together that fast.
5. Lure your husband out on to the patio with promises of telling him where you hid the spoons if he'll hold the plates of strawberry shortcake type cousins in the dying rays of the sun.
6. Eat.

p.s. The recipe I use for my Big Biscuit is adapted from Bob's Red Mill
However I use only 100% whole wheat flour in my recipe, omit the sugar, and replace the shortening with coconut oil. Oh and....um depending on what's closer the fridge or the sink I'll replace the milk with water.

A Slice Of Life.....

We accidently ate the whole pizza.
Some days are like that.
The sort of day where an entire pizza seems like a perfectly acceptable meal for a couple of starved people in desperate need of their television fix and some nourishment.
The sort of day where the afore mentioned couple have to gobble down not one but two brownies before they can even start cooking the pizza, just to appease the beast of hunger that growls ominously in the pit of their stomachs. Well, in all honesty, the first brownie was for the beast the second was for fun.
It was the sort of day where salads are left tucked cozily in their chilly beds in the bottom of the fridge because opening the door and bending over that far seems like a hell of a lot of work, no matter how good the salad.
The sort of day where the last dribbles of energy went into slicing the fresh basil for the pizza, chopping the pasilla peppers and giving them a quick fry so they'll be soft and melt in our mouth delicious with a light coating of garlic infused coconut oil.
Dicing the red onion is almost the straw that brings this camel's back crashing down in an un-lady like chocolate smeared heap on the kitchen floor. Licking at her own savory fingers that have flecks of oregano and a few rather alarming looking blotches of tomato sauce dotting the backs of her hands.
The distant mournful cry of her husband echoes her own..
"I'm hunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnngry!"
The kitchen fills with scent of baking bread, compliments of the whole wheat crust that's even now rising and puffing under it's crown of sauce and toppings. The fresh mozzarella is finally relaxing, tense little shivering balls of cold are basking in the heat, spreading their arms and oozing in delight and what has to be near ecstasy in the warmth that's enveloping them. Some of them even begin a tan. Golden colour tinges the occasional little pool of mozzarella that now embraces the tomato sauce, hugs it to itself in a lovely little union of gastronomic delight.
From my semi-starved induced comatose state slumped against the kitchen table I think I hear bells.
Wedding bells perhaps? Signaling the completeness of what was once a handful of separate ingredients merging into a single, whole unit of pizza. The perfect marriage.
I shake myself awake, and realize it's not wedding bells but the timer, the pizza is done. We start to shovel slices of it straight into our greedy mouths but decide a little more torture is in order. Pizza ALWAYS tastes best after a little pain and suffering. So we moan and groan and drag out the camera and quickly snap a few mouth watering photos that has us dangerously close to drooling all over it. (The pizza and the camera)
With aching feet, that scream in it's foot language for me to sit the hell down before they snap themselves off from my legs and beat me with my own heels, we grab plates of pizza, bottles of hot sauce and sink into near oblivion on the sofa.
Our feet sigh, we sigh and turn on the t.v.
Maybe it's not an intellectually stimulating night of clay sculpting and philosophical discussions and writing reams of code for a website but it was damn near perfection.
Homemade pizza, plus me plus my husband plus the t.v. equals an experience you can NEVER get anywhere but in your slouchiest clothes at home.

An edible state of intoxication.......

Consolation du chocolat avec crème glacé.

Once upon a time a lonnnnnnnng time ago my father moved us from Nova Scotia to Manitoba, which, if you're not up to date on your Canadian provinces, is from one end of the North American continent to about the middle of fricking nowhere.
I mean I joke about my Mom living in the middle of nowhere but Gillam Manitoba really WAS the middle of fricking no where.
The sort of place that has -40 degree C temps during the winter, the sort of place with enough scary sharp toothed dogs tied in every yard to give any kid nightmares for years to come and the sort of place where big ass brown bears wander past your bedroom window.
As if that's normal, as if glancing outside and a giant hulking beast of an animal that would just as likely eat you for dinner as...well...what ever it is bears eat. Honey I guess...if Disney is to believed. Which is a little weird now that I think about it, a blood spurting human or a pot of honey..? Come on now it can't be both. I hate to be getting off track so soon in to a long winded run on sentences rant but now I can't help but wonder what was really going on between Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh...I think Winnie might have just been waiting for Robin to fatten up and become more of a meal....ewwww.......that's the forbidden story of the hundred acre woods that no one ever talks about, the LAST story actually.....if it were to be told I'm sure Piglet and Roo would be all "He seemed like such a nice guy, real quiet. Cuddly, always on the look out for some honey." Yep, it's always the ones we least suspect.
Well back to childhood memories that forever warped my addled brain into the shape it is today, which is vaguely walnut-y from what I've heard.
Some where between N.S. and the middle of fricking nowhere Dad stopped at a restaurant for some much needed food and we all gathered round the table and chowed down. I'm pretty sure I had a grilled cheese because after all they are the perfect diner food, simple, basic and pretty non-evil. You never have to poke about a grilled cheese when you're a child to see if some one slipped some pickled beef tongue or burnt onions or worse yet CANNED PEAS in to it. (young version of me=picky picky eater)
Anyways Dad must have finished a lot faster than us kids as he was already on to dessert and he ordered something called..BAKED ALASKA.
I in all childish innocence queried "what is baked Alaska?" and was about to have my little grey matter cells blown away.
"baked ice cream"
Huh whahhhhhhhh? Say whaaaaaahhh?
You're joshing me Dad, you're trying pull a fast one over ol' red here. I might have been only 7 but I knew that sounded insane. Ice cream plus heat equals tears from me on a hot summer day when the ice cream melts too fast to keep up. Dad's trying to tell me they deliberately melt ice cream here and he was about to pay for some????????
Dad went on to explain as he placed his order already for a Baked Alaska that I could have one too when I finished my grilled cheese and that the ice cream wouldn't be melted. It would be covered in stuff and baked, yadda yadda. I was 7, my little grilled cheese infused mind could only latch on to the words ice cream. Some sort of magical ice cream that didn't melt and would be baked and would be mine if I could just hurry the hell up and finished this now worthless, annoying stomach filling bit of fried bread and cheese. Like any child the notion of dessert filled me with a shining sparkling hope for the full glory of sticky, ooey, gooey sweet sugar anything and like any child had the immediate and clever rationale that if I eat this grilled cheese I will not have as much room for the afore mentioned dessert of my dreams to fit in my stomach. Parents burn out a little part of their brains when they have kids, it's ok. I can say this cause I don't have any kids and I can see the difference. I'm thinking it's the indignities of giving birth and raising a pooping, peeing, squalling child for the next..ohhh 20 years that deadens a tiny part of their brains, and a good thing too, cause otherwise how can they put up with a whining 7 year old at a diner restaurant with a plate of barely touched grilled cheese that will go to waste if not eaten, still has to be paid for and is now desperately wanting to change her dinner order to just a Baked Alaska.
I say thank God for what ever it is that happens in parent's brains cause if it didn't happen there'd be no worries about over population of the earth ever again if it should suddenly turn off, or on depending on your view point. People would just never have kids again if they didn't experience the mind numbing euphoria that I suppose is creating another human life. Eventually we'd just die out, all of us playing video games and drinking margaritas on Tuesdays and going to incredibly quiet movie theater premieres run by the elderly, starring the elderly and watched by the elderly.
But I was 7, and Dad was a Dad so he didn't explode and cram grilled cheese down my throat like I'd be tempted to do if I could go back in time and meet my childhood self.
I pick at my now cold, non oozing grilled cheese. As miraculous as a hot freshly grilled cheese sandwich is it loses a bit of something as it cools. It;s kind of like the reverse of ice cream. There is a definite window of good eating opportunity for both things. With ice cream it's before it melts, with a grilled cheese it's before the fat it was fried in starts solidifying, the melting processed cheese starts siezing up and the inside of your moth becomes coated with cold nasty grease that clings to gums like a second skin.
Dad has his baked Alaska by now, as I'm now going through the agonies of trying to finish the damn endless grilled cheese sandwich from hell. A grilled cheese sandwich that is clearly out to get me and kep me from getting any dessert. I'm pretty sure the cook at the diner just took a full loaf of bread, sliced it in half and jammed a block of velveeta cheese in the middle and deep fried the whole thing before slapping it on a plate and giving it to me. I'm pretty sure that sandwich was like the world's biggest fricking grilled cheese sandwich ever.
I can't recall what my Dad's Baked Alaska looked like, as I was so distracted by the G.C.S.F.H. (grilled cheese sandwich from hell). I remember it was brown, and unbelievably like it had actually been in an oven just as Dad had said. Turned out a parent wasn't lying in this instance, sure there's no Santa, Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy but that ball of ice cream had CLEARLY BEEN IN AN OVEN!!!!!!!!
Hallelujah
Suddenly a wave of greyness washes over me.....time slowed down in the horrifying about to have a train wreck kind of way it does and Dad's face is anything but blissfully happy as he sets down his spoon.
I feel like I'm speaking in slow motion, under water as I ask "Whhhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaattttttttt'sssss wwwwrrrrrrrrrrrrooonnnnnnnggg?"
Dad raises his hand and in a surprisingly authoritative and enviable way snaps his fingers that has a waiter rushing over at break neck speeds. Perhaps he felt the wave of grey awash over him too and knew that hell was pushing against the doors and about to break loose.
I can't remember all that was said, I remember my Dad's dark scowl, the waiter's slightly appalled frightened face, the finger pointing down at his dessert and then......I remember something small and black in the pool of creamy melting ice cream. Something that most definitely should NOT have been there. Some kind of bug, or worm or insect. I can't recall, it was too horrifying to even reconcile in my 7 year old brain.
The waiter apologizes all over the place, I think the manager was called out, I remember they offered to bring out a new Baked Alaska and I remember my Father's look of incredulity of "Yeah right."
I remember the slowly dawning realization that we were now leaving, meals abandoned, and that we were getting in to the van and headed back out on to the road to the middle of fricking no where.
Wait a second......I'm not getting a Baked Alaska? I mean I know that Dad's had some critter crawling around his but my 7 year old mind couldn't quite except the fact I wasn't getting a Baked Alaska. Not today....not ever.
I never saw Baked Alaska on a menu again.
I looked at photos of them in cook books as I grew older, I read about how they were made and always, surprisingly it remains on a gleaming pedestal, untainted and unspoiled in my mind. Despite it's one and only appearance in my life, as an infested dessert the Baked Alaska remains to this day a dessert of indulgence and mystery. Hot and cold at the same time, ice cream from an oven.
I kind of wonder if I have built it up to the level in my head that no actual Baked Alaska could be as good as what I imagine it to be. I almost never want to try one, not for fear of experiencing the gut twisting stomach churning reaction my father had but because worse than that...what if it's....o.k. Just....o.k., not food of the Gods, not ambrosia or sweet fairy like fluffy confections delivered by other worldly chefs in to my eagerly awaiting hands. What if it sucks?
I just don't know.
Do not fret though inner child, for we are off to console ourselves with homemade chocolate pudding, fresh strawberries, salted pecans, chocolate shavings and a dollop of vanilla ice cream. It aint a Baked Alaska but it aint bad.

Bulking up.

If something is good as a few ounces than I'm going to love it on the pound scale. Seriously, a cup of grey sea salt? Pashaw, a measly ounce or 2 of smoked paprika? HA! Candied ginger.....one bag? One tiny little 16 ounce bag.....I don't think so. I'll take 8 pounds please.
Nothing makes us shudder with delight more than buying our most used goods in bulk.
I think perhaps we were mountain folk in another life. The sort who only *git* to town once a year and who have to milk goats and stuff like that. The sort who call each other Ma and Pa and sit on the veranda spittin' at bears. We don't do those things but I feel like we're kissin' cousins next door to doing them.
I just can't explain it but my heart beats a little faster when I buy 48 rolls of toilet paper. My lungs gotta work extra hard when I can get...wait for it...25 POUNDS of coarse grey sea salt...oh mama. I get smoked paprika, cinnamon, oregano and cumin by the pound also. BY THE POUND!
Coconut oil in a bucket so big it's both thrilling and oddly disturbing to imagine eating that much oil, coconut or other wise. I buy the natural zero calorie sweetener stevia by the pound too as well as concentrated soap in great big containers that would make you think we're gonna hole up in the house till the end of the world.
Who the heck are we?
I mean really, some sort of hermit people wanna-bes I suspect.
Earlier we sat at our kitchen table enjoying a lovely meal of nachos (with tortilla chips we bought in a pound size bag of course) and it was sooo quiet. The windows were wide open to let the lazy summerish heat blow hot kisses over our sweaty legs but it was sooooo quiet. No neighborly noises, hardly any traffic, no military booms, no helicopter fly bys, no dogs barking or lizard foot steps across the walls of the house. I'm not even sure I heard any birds so I looked at Alan and remarked on how silent it was, for a Saturday and all. Alan cocked his head in that way he does, as he's fully aware that cocking your head lets you hear better and finally agreed, it was VERY quiet.
"Perhaps everyone in the world is gone?" He finally ponders.
After all how would we know? We don't watch the news, we don't hardly talk to any one but each other, how long would it take before we noticed an absence of humans around us?
We share a small look of what was supposed to be horror but ended up more as lip twitching suppressed smirks...
Oh we're terrible, we know it, since our first thought was, "absence of humans...that doesn't sound so bad" and then of course the overwhelming crushing beast called guilt laid it's heavy hand upon our backs and pushed our greedy souls a little bit closer to hell as of course we don't really want every one gone...but we are hermits.....and we like it.
When we finally did hear some sound it was just a book falling off a shelf in the bathroom, so quiet it had been that the muted crash startled the bejeesies out of us and we are now completely bejeesies free. Alan wondered if perhaps it was zombies. He always wonders if it's zombies, I love the man but he is always just a little too delighted over the idea of the dead rising and attacking us.
Although I can't say I'm overly concerned about it, because at least we can arm ourselves with our 25 pounds of salt and deep fry them in our giant 5 gallon bucket of coconut oil. See, buying in bulk would be a total asset come the day every one in the world disappears and zombies take their place.
There just doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day for each other so how can we make friends with the zillion and a half people out there? We barely scrape together the time to say howdy do to our families once a century.
At least I have the perfect best friend, some one named Linda23JJPharmaCeutiCALs, she writes me almost every day telling me how she's seen my profile pic and wants to chat and also how I can buy meds online real cheap and that if I let her transfer a zillion dollars to my account I can keep 25% of it and also how she's super sXXXXy hot (her words not mine). Oh Linda23JJPharmaCeutiCALs, she just cracks me up. She doesn't seem to mind that I never invite her over, never take her up on any of her offers to view her XXXtra special photos, buy some of her cheap pharmaceuticals, she's a feisty little terrier of a friend that Linda23JJPharmaCeutiCALs.
Alan made a good point about the general population of the world though, he said that eventually we'd run out of internet if there weren't people out there constantly contributing to it. So, I guess I would miss the human race if it disappeared, I mean in at least 10 years, 15 tops. (my estimate of when I'd run out of internet to browse)

A Chocolate Pardon...

Dear Mr.Bunny.
I suppose you suck ass a lot less than I had thought. Because this Easter you finally came through for me. Mind you I do not know yet if I can completely turn a blind eye to your mysterious absence all these years, after all I know it wasn't some horribly crippling illness that kept you away. Too bad. Didn't all the youngins in my family strut their never ending parade of eggs, toys, chocolate and Easter Bunny related goodies past my face time and time again, year after fricking year? Further rubbing salt into the deep and festering wound that was your absence in my life? I can answer that, yes, they DID!
But this year, something changed. What was that?
Seriously, was it the pink sneakers cause I'll wear them every day if that's what made the difference. Was it my constant whining for the entire month of March about the lack of YOU shaped chocolate in my life any more? Wait, it wasn't the fact that I'm finally learning how to drive is it...did that scare you Mr.Bunny? Did you see how challenging it is to apply the brakes at night time when one of your fluffy little kin crosses the road....was it the fear of me possibly having my driver's license by this time next year that finally broke your silence? A little road rage goes a long way huh?
Well what ever it was I suppose I should thank-you, grudgingly of course. Upon waking on Easter morning......o.k. it was Easter afternoon, I pried open my sleep crusted eyes and looked blearily into my husband's and rasped with out much hope, "Did the Easter Bunny come?"
Blue eyes widened, darted wildly about for a moment like crazed blueberries trapped in a bowl of white milk until finally settling back in to place. My sweetie looked straight in to my eyes and finally, the answer I've been waiting 10 years to hear, 10 long torturously Easter chocolate deprived years...he says..."Yes."
I bolt upright in bed looking wildly around, the Rabbit wouldn't just visit and not leave a treat, not after 10 years of candy-less Easters, 10 years of accumulated anger and frustration and dark mysterious plans to exact my revenge upon him.....
"Where's the chocolate?" I demand.
Alan haltingly, strangely stutteringly explains "Well you see, um, I heard the Easter Bunny calling for me to come outside to get the chocolate from him but I was sooo tired. I told him I couldn't come down and he could leave it. But the Easter Bunny didn't want to leave chocolate out in the hot sun so he said he'd leave it inside the coolness of a local store. We just had to go pick it up and pay a small handling fee to the employees for holding it for us."
I stare deep in to my husband's eyes, completely awake now.
He seems to be holding his breath.
I tilt my head absorbing this...this strange twist of events. This non standard Easter Bunny practice....
For 10 years I've been harboring ill will and confused emotions towards this rabbit, for 10 years I've waited and wondered how I'd react if I ever saw or heard tell from him again.
I smile.
Alan expels an oddly long breath of what almost sounds like relief. I suppose he was as worried about the Easter Bunny as I was.
Turns out, a little chocolate goes a long way towards repairing a damaged relationship. Come to think of it I know a few people who could use a pound or two to sweeten their complicated interactions.
And what lovely little goodie did the Easter Bunny leave for me at the local store? Imagine my surprise when my sweetie tells me it's Godiva chocolates!
SCORE!
Looks like some one is trying to suck up, looks like you-know-who has quite the brown nose this year. Sorry to all you kiddies who got .99 cent chocolate that feels, tastes and smells like wax. SURE maybe the Easter Bunny ignored some of us to the point of risking some of us having a small mental break down but when he made a come back he did it with style. And with fancy pants chocolates that some of us had only read about in Nora Robert's novels and seen on trashy female sitcoms.
Ya know, revenge is pretty sweet....but I gotta admit a box of high falutin Godiva chocolates is a hell of a lot sweeter. (and legal)
Love from me
p.s. I only sign off with love in a completely normal amount of affection a woman should have for a giant rabbit, plus I'm married so don't go getting any ideas, my husband has seen enough karate movies to lay a good whooping down on your furry behind should you ever bring me anything more than chocolate.

The rabbit shaped hole in my heart.......

(This rabbit is hollow and empty, just like me on Easter Morning)

We were heathen hillbillies. So forgive me but when I think of Easter my first and only thought is "Why the hell did the Easter bunny stop bringing me chocolate?"
Seriously?
What's up with that? Did I do something to piss the E.B. off? It's not like I was enjoying rabbit stew or pie every other day, its not like I ate his kin or something.
For many a year this freakishly large but painfully shy rabbit hopped his way through our neighborhood leaving treats for all the kids. I never saw him but I'm no idiot, I saw the evidence of his visit. Chocolate rabbits, chocolate eggs and jelly beans don't just manifest themselves you know.
I mean there's a lot of things in this world we're expected to believe based on heresay and faith but the rabbit...he left some evidence. A little "I wuz here" in an edible form, occasionally he'd even display a sense of humour and leave a few non-edible treats. Pink rubber boots one year, a stuffed bunny toy (perhaps in his own likeness???), another year he left me a Star Trek:The Next Generation Collector's plate with Data's face on the front...my God, it's like he was looking right in to my soul. Chocolate AND Star Trek??
Maybe the Easter Bunny was in kahoots with Santa. Maybe he was paying the old guy off with pastel coloured candies in return for the dirt on all us kids. But unlike Santa who's all judgey judgey about whether we've been good or bad the Easter Bunny just wants to know what kind of candy you'd like, what size boots you wear and which Star Trek: The Next Generation character was your favorite.
Until he stops coming.
Parents are pretty sadistic if you think about it. When you're a kid it's all Easter Bunny this, the Tooth Fairy that, Santa Clause every Christmas and then....they wait...until your eyes have reached the soft doe eyed expression of a true believer, your world is full of magic and make-believe and sweet candy and Star Trek: The Next Generation collector plates....they wait until they have you just where they want you. Expecting the Easter Bunny to make his yearly deposit of sugary goodness in a pretty little basket and hop away to the next place and then.......
He doesn't come.
The parents stay in their room snickering at the bewildered howls of the 20 year old in the kitchen who is sweeping her busted illusions off the linoleum floor. There's no taste of cheap rabbit shaped chocolate for her any more, just the salty bitter tears of reality.
Oh yeah.
No one ever explains AWAY the Easter Bunny.
The adults take great pride in their skill of weaving the reality of old dudes in red coats who have magic powers that let him fit down any chimney. They craft incredibly detailed accounts of what the tooth fairy shall do with the tooth she collected under your pillow, and they lure you with sweet promises of a giant rabbit who for no apparent reason at all in the dull tail end of winter, when spring is still a distant promise of green away, will sneak in to the house at night and bring you.......CANDY.
Just like that, free candy and you don't even need to slather an inch of makeup on your face and go begging at the neighbors for it all night like on Halloween. FREE candy from a GIANT Rabbit.
Until......it stops.
There's no funeral to go to, no graduation ceremony, no party wishing a giant, grizzled old hare a happy retirement. Nothing, zip, nada, zilch...no more......the end.
I never give up hope though, perhaps the Easter Bunny lost my address. Maybe he and Santa were using the same database and it crashed, these things happen you know, and would conveniently explain away old Saint Nick's lack of appearance these last few years. And of course I have a moved a few times.....that could have muddied the waters.....
I'm not quite ready to set any snares in my yard just yet. I'd give the hairy old hare a chance to explain he and his lack of chocolate away for a least a full minute before I had me one hell of a pet rabbit chained up in my garage.
So I sit, and I wait, one on eye on the clock and one eye on my growling, barely restrained craving for bunny shaped chocolate, trying to hold my stomach and emotions in check.
Sure I can buy it in a day or two for 90% less than it's price right now but it's not the same.
I don't want store bought chocolate, I want it from HIM...
Every year I wait........fingers drumming on my desk....until sleep knocks me unconscious for refusing to go to bed. And every year I awake to bright morning sunshine, a new day and a decidedly depressing lack of any rabbit deposited chocolate.
Do I cry?
Maybe a little, till I tuck those tears away in to a hard little ball of revenge that resides under my heart. Where I will harbor and nurture and grow my anger like a dark and lovely plant that's riddled with thorns and poisonous berries and one of these years....one of these years...... I won't be waiting by the door for a damn rabbit and his crappy chocolate.
I'll be out there.....he won't need to come find me cause I'll be looking for him.
And in the immortal words of our beloved Elmer Fudd..
"It's Wabbit season, and I'm hunting wabbits, so be vewy, vewy quiet!"

Why we carry 200 granola bars in the car.....

I snapped the photo of this handsome lizard when he was sunning himself out on the patio the other day. I think we had a moment, I looked in to his eyes, he in to mine and suddenly I remembered something....

Once upon a time, a few years back, my husband and I drove through the desert. And no it wasn't on a horse with no name, and anyways you don't drive a horse you steer it...ride it???
What ever.
We rolled along through seemingly endless desert. Great seas of sandy rock and scrub brush. ACTUAL tumbleweeds were seen. Blackened stone that looked like it was more than done, baked under the heat of the sun.
Why is the desert hotter than other places anyways? Is it because there are no trees? If you added up all those little scrabbly brush things shouldn't those equal a few trees? Maybe the desert is being punished, or maybe we are. Maybe there's something really ultra cool in the desert if we just had the stamina to withstand the insane heat during the day and freezing temps at night. (Damn.....I wish I had me some desert stamina right about now so I could get me hands on what ever it's hiding out there........)
Anyways driving through the desert does weird things to one's mind. You start wondering how you'd survive if the car suddenly broke down, the bottles of water in the back seat suddenly evaporated and the cell phone ran away with to make sweet cell phone love with a signal it picked up in a sleazy cell phone bar......
See, desert makes a person think strange things!!!!!!!
How would we survive?
Food and water and shelter are the obvious things to be concerned with. Being found quickly is all well and good but if you're all dried up like those tumbleweeds I mentioned, drifting across the road, a dehydrated version of yourself...that's not gonna be good.
Shelter seems the easiest. I swear I could build a decent shelter better than most. Having the woods as your playground when you're a kid means a) you can curse a lot and not get in trouble cause no one's gonna hear and b) you build a lot of *cabins*.
Maybe some kids were swimming in pools, riding horses and coloring in useless coloring books (probably even staying inside the lines), but my brothers and I built cabins. Sure they were made from fallen branches and twigs but show me an adult who knows his way around a twig cabin the way we did and I'll show you the copyright paperwork on twig cabins...oh ha ha, o.k. we didn't invent making cabins out of twigs. Every one we knew did the same thing. Kids in the boonies make cabins, kids in town make gangs.
Sure I might be bragging it up now how I could survive in the desert in my lovely 3 bedroom tumbleweed cabin I could probably construct in half an hour but I'd probably be disastrous at starting a gang. Like first off I'd ask my mom to join and I'm pretty damn sure that's a gang *no no*.
Alan said we'd have to worry about food and water as well.
And that I could decorate the hell out of my multi level 3 car garage tumbleweed home all I want but if we didn't have food and water.....well........I'm basically making a kick ass tumbleweed mausoleum right? (By the way did you notice how my tumbleweed 3 bedroom cabin turned in to a multi level, 3 car garage tumbleweed home by the next paragraph? That's how expert at twig cabins I am. By the time I get through my ramblings here I'll have built a twig city and named it Ralphie the Third.)
We considered all the possible nutrition available to us in the desert. How much protein is in a rock anyways? Is it measured in ounces or grains?
Now I don't hunt, unless it's mushrooms and then it's not really hunting it's just sneaking up on unsuspecting shrooms in the woods and popping them off their little stems. I guess that makes me a mushroom mass murderer. Does it help if I say they were chanterelles, it's been at least 8 years since I went on a spree and they were soooooooo tasty? It does? Good.
Anyways I don't hunt and neither does Alan but we both agreed that if we HAD to we could do it. We could catch some wild game and make a meal, and start a fire by rubbing sticks together (I'm sure we could do this, we've watched so many episodes of survivor I could probably rub sticks together in my sleep and create a cozy fire. I've also watched politicians so I can be both president of the united states as well as Prime Minister of Canada and once I saw this dude on a motorcycle jump over a canyon so I can probably do that too. I have a PHD in watching TV.)
After miles of desert scenery whizzing by in a dully coloured blur as we both pondered what sort of wildlife lay in wait for us should we need to partake of them Alan announces "A HA!"
"NOT SNAKES!" I say.
"Oh.....oh...o.k." He says.
Silence.
Alan announces again "A HA!"
"what? You found something?"
"Lizards!"
I was impressed, I hadn't thought of them, surely the desert was ripe for picking, bursting at the seams full of ripe juicy lizards. Hey I don't wanna eat a lizard but if you're stuck in the middle of Godforsaken no where in your sprawling 2.3 acre twig mansion with built in twig movie theater and twig bowling alley you'll eat what you can get.
Alan has other plans.
"We wouldn't actually eat the lizard."
"Ummm......so we....name it and raise it as our desert dwelling child?"
"No." he says.
"Oh." I say. "Well what do we do with it then?"
You know those silences that descend like a heavy cloud of expectation? The kind that are so thick you can practically see the silence, the shape and colour. If you were to open your mouth (which you wouldn't cause you're in the desert and you can't be evaporating moisture for no reason) you could even taste the silence? Well one of those silences happened then and I hushed in anticipation.
"We'd suck on it."
Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
But I listened as he was obviously serious and we still had some zillion and a half miles left to go before we passed through the desert back into the populated land of sanity and could get a Starbucks with a side of reality.
So I said "ewwwwwww, but please, elaborate."
"Well if we caught a lizard and popped it in our mouth we could leave the head poking out so it could breathe etc and we could just sort of suck on it. I'm sure we would gain nutrition or at least a little flavor from the skin which would slowly start dissolving a tiny bit from our digestive enzymes in our saliva and instead of consuming our most likely hard to get food supply all at once, it could last for days before we'd need to get a new one. DAYS! Kids suck their thumbs all the time and you never see them with dead thumbs. Think of it, we could survive and so could the lizards!"

• Please note we don't suck on lizards. we don't even eat them. We don't get lost in the desert and we dont build mansions out of twigs....though I could build one so fast your head would spin. Also this is an idea from a former vegan so you know how unlikely lizard sucking really is even if we were stuck in the desert. By the way lizard sucking is copyrighted by me....yeah......uh huh, I keep them papers right next to my imaginary twig cabin copyright papers.

"Alan you're.................." What could I say.........?
"BRILLIANT!"
That's my sweetie, always thinking to the next level. Lizard lolly pops for us as we kick back in our new hometown "Ralphie the Third" waiting for help to arrive as I weave us an espresso machine out of twigs.

(please note that I note that some people might find the fact that I had a mini breakdown....er..rant about gross bacon ice cream sort of conflicting with my whole sucking on a lizard plan should we get stuck in the desert. Some might say, gross is gross right? Well all I have to say is I wouldn't put the lizard in ice cream, cause that would be wrong. It makes sense in my head....Also the circumstances are different, if I was in the desert with nothing to eat I might eat bacon ice cream if it was the only thing available, it might even be preferred over lizard.....depending on the lizard.)

How to Get Fried!

French fries have such a bad rep, poor little oily buggers. Is it their fault they've been turned into fast food dietary demons? Is it their fault that suggesting French fries for a meal is akin to asking if you wanna snort a little whiskey and jump off a bridge into a vat of lard and live there for a week? Becoming little lard fish people that will triple their size in an hour and eventually become one with the lard, where you and the lard will bubble and burp and belch in blubbery bliss forever after.
French fries aint all bad. It's like anything, moderation.
Mod-a-what?
I know, that never sounds fun but trust me I do know about moderation. Just because I don't apply it to coffee, ice cream and chili gravy doesn't mean I don't KNOW about it.
I like to reserve my moderation for the really important things, like bacon, flour and exercise. I'll have a little of each but not too much, I don't want my life to become all about bacon, flour and exercise. Borrrring.
I think French Fries if made with good potatoes and good oil aren't so bad. Not to mention the way I make them uses barely any oil at all. It's pretty dang cool. I start with a half a cup of oil and I end with just barely under a half of a cup of oil, I measured!
I get crispy, yummy French Fries made in healthy coconut oil and I don't have to swallow a load of guilt at the same time with them.
Plus if you're clever (like some people I won't name, ok ...it's ME) you have a big ol' green salad on the side and you end up with a filling meal that's actually pretty good for you!
Some days though we just have a plate of fries. Just so that we can thrill in the complete tastiness of a darn good fry. Saturating our taste buds in salty, crispy, moisty potato delight. And also because we were lazy and too hunnnnngry to wait for anything else and too tirrrrrrrrrrred to whip up a 3 course meal that would fill the belly hole as completely and happily as a plate of fries.
I have my fry making down to a science, I could probably make them blindfolded but I don't want to blog about my experience chopping my finger off and going to a hospital and finding out if cayenne pepper jammed into a bleeding wound really stops it fast. (We read about that and have been curious ever since. It works on wee little cuts but thank goodness we haven't had to try it on any big cuts.)
Anyways I shall share with you my oh so awesome method of preparing perfect fries if you'll promise not to get all up in my face if you use a different oil, different potato or different temperature than I and end up with horrible little carbonized fries instead of golden delicious ones.
Also my disclaimer is that not all ovens are created equal, not all their temperatures the same, use common sense. It's free after all, so use as much as you want.

Perfect French Fries:

• preheat oven to 475 F

• Get a 1/2 cup of coconut oil and put on a big baking pan that has sides so the oil doesn't run off the edge or your potatoes run away.

• melt oil if needed (coconut oil gets solid at cool temps so you might need to pop the pan with oil on it in the oven to de-solidify it. Don't let it get too hot, you're gonna be handling it soon)

• Get 4 or 5 potatoes

• Cut them, ignoring all little potato screams as you gouge their eyes out. I like slightly thick French fries, I haven't tried this method with thinner fries, I imagine the baking time would be shorter.

• Dump the cut fries in to the pan, roll them in the oil, till well coated, spread them out in an even single layer.
  
• sprinkle with sea salt and black pepper
• put on middle rack of oven for 17 minutes (I use a timer that beeps annoyingly and gives me a near heart attack when it suddenly starts beeping cause I forgot I set it)

• The fries will be pale after 17 minutes but will be cooked
• Now to brown them up like a California beach bunny.
• Turn oven to broil and with the fries left in there on the middle rack leave them for exactly 5 minutes or until brown enough to your liking. (yes I realize that sounds funny, exactly 5 or longer...that makes the 5 un-exactly, so what?)
  

• Then remove them from the oven and carefully tip the pan so that the oil pours off into a heat resistant bowl or what ever.

If you want your fries even browner you can put them on a rack closer to the broiler at this point now that the splish splashy oil is gone and give them another minute. Keep a careful eye, some people have been known to start small fires in their oven from forgetting they have something under the broiler, hence the reason SOME people have a timer that beeps when things should be removed.
And voila, perfect French fries with barely any oil left on them!
This recipe makes a nice plateful for 2 people so if you divide the oil that was used between two people it's a ridiculously small amount. See, I start with a half a cup of oil and end up with....
Woohoooooooo, remember the missing oil is divided between two people as well. Alan and I are now jonesing for a measuring device that is heat resistant and more accurate so we can get our geek on in the kitchen and measure stuff more precisely. You don't want to know the amount of time we spent discussing measuring oil.......lets just say it was a revealing amount.....as in it revealed how odd we are. Entire conversations have been had for hours about measuring the oil.......We figured out at the end of it all as conversation dwindled down, silence crept back into the household that it looks like we used approximately 6 or 7 teaspoons of oil. We theorized there was about a teaspoon of oil left in the baking pan, covering the whole thing...we moaned and groaned at our inability to measure that. We sobbed great heaving sobs as we held each other tightly and realized we know the math, we have the oil but just not the means to say 100% for sure how much was used, we decided it was probably 6 teaspoons, that gets divided by 2, so 3 teaspoons per person per giant ol plate of fries......
Psssssst......Sometimes we sneak up on the pretty little French Fries and smother them with chili and cheese and red onions. YUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMY!

A sweet bone to pick.....

(saigon cinnamon)

I have the loveliest memories of crunching on chicken bones.
Gawwwd, I would munch, and suck and crunch to my lil heart's delight. I would smash them bones with my teeth until all but little pink shards remained in my mouth, slurping on the dark innards, letting the whole mass melt away to sweet nothingness on my tongue. Then pop, crunch..... Start all over again.
My tongue would become incredibly sore but I ignored it's plaintive wail.
“Shaddup tongue, it's chicken bone season.”
And it was, I never lied to my tongue. I might lie to my brothers about who had the last chicken bone...but never to my tongue.
Ahhhh chicken bones.
The last time I had the intense cinnamony, chocolate filled delight was when some kind benevolent soul from the Canadian side of the family sent us a bag for Christmas.
I don't see chicken bones very often (if ever?) in California. In fact I am not even sure the American side of the family would know what I was talking about if I said I had me a hankerin for chicken bones. I might end up with a dismantled piece of poultry if I wasn't careful with my words!
In Nova Scotia, chicken bones (the candy not the skeleton of the bird) were readily available during Christmas. Light pink little round tube-ish bits that were was almost a danger to eat, between the *hot sizzling cinnamon shell that splintered like real bones and revealed the dark chocolate within* AND the addictive *can not possibly just eat 9 and leave them be* nature of them.
So I associate chicken bones with the holidays and a sore tongue. Because I seriously did eat a whole bag at a time, the texture and flavours were that addictive. My goodness I was a chicken bone addict...when Christmas passed I'd shake and shiver for a full hour, licking the pink dust from the bottom of the bag and cursing the fool who only bought enough of the good stuff to last us a few days.
Our supplier was some chicken bone pusher in Truro, Nova Scotia.
We used to sell crafts at the Zonta craft fair every November and some how...coincidentally (yeah frickin right) the chicken bone lady was always set up across from us. It was a pretty dang big fair for the area, over 70 booths, and she some how manages to almost always be across from us? I don't believe in coincidences, I believe in the fine art of stalking your customer and knowing their weakness. I mean she probably tailed me, noticed my nefarious and lustful glances at her goodies and then bribed the candle lady to mover over so she'd be in my direct line of sight!
And there I sat, as innocent as the day is long, surrounded by all our crafty goodness, looking directly across at a lady with nothing but a table piled high with candy.
Chicken bone candy.
Sometimes we'd buy a few bags, all friendly like, to keep the peace in the snooty atmosphere of sly looks and whispered words about each others booths. Better a friend then an enemy in the hot and frantic world of a Christmas craft sale put on by a charitable organization. Hoo boy it could get intense, what with the lil old men tottering up and demanding in suspicious tones if we'd actually MADE all this stuff.
“Yes sir we did!”
“You actually MADE it?? (asked suspiciously with enough derision in his voice to have me thinking I can take an old guy down right quick between chomps of my chicken bones.)
“YES!....ahem..yes sir, we made everything ourselves.”
“Hmmm, some people they buy stuff and then pass it off as their own. This here's a lot of stuff.....Yep, lot -o-stuffff.......... What sort of saw blades you use?”
Quick as a snake this old fool would try to trip me up, as if I might suddenly crack under the pressure of his intense questioning and admit that I own and run a small but tasteful sweat shop.
Luckily I was saved from saying something foul and very un-Christmas like by quickly popping a couple of chicken bones in my mouth and crunching like mad, smiling fiercely, teeth exposed in a pink speckled grin of unwavering intensity as I stared the man down and forced him with nothing but the heat of my gaze back to his own booth to whisper to his wife and glare back at me with vindictive eyes.
Good times, good times.
The closest thing to a chicken bone flavour I could replicate till recently was to eat a handful of red hot cinnamon hearts followed quickly by a chunk of chocolate. But I must admit, though that got me like ¾ of the way there, I haven't done that very often because of my deep and abiding fear of food dyes.
Seriously, the more I think about yellow number 47 and Red number 42 the more I shudder. EVEN if I didn't know they make some red dyes from insects, I'd be bothered by it.....it's just so...wrong.....so damn wrong...
But those chicken bones, those succulent, mind numbing, gots to have as many as I can get chicken bones......I have to face facts....I know cinnamon isn't pink so I'm even beginning to think my memories of chicken bones are sweeter then the actual thing....
But cinnamon...cinnamon hasn't let me down...(yet)
In fact if anything cinnamon has only gotten better or have I?
For I have discovered REAL cinnamon. I mean cinnamon that makes the stuff you buy at the grocery store taste like bitter brown nothingness. BLECCCCK! REAL cinnamon actually tastes so good you can dip your finger in and mmmmmm, straight from the jar. NOT that I do that.
Heck no, even though this saigon cinnamon we get is sooo flavorful that it has a sweetness all it's own and can make cinnamon toast with little to no sugar. EVEN though it's as spicy hot as those dastardly little red hearts...I don't stick my finger in the jar. AND if I did.....by accident several times then y'all can just bugger off it's my cinnamon and I'll slug it from a shot glass if I choose....which I did.
Oh dear, If I can pass along one bit of advice from my wise and doddering age of 30 to all the youngins out there...don't slug cinnamon from a shot glass. Even if you've just stuck a chunk of chocolate in your mouth and a wee tip of a teaspoon of cinnamon to follow so that your mouth can become the scene of a chicken bone flavour factory...even when your senses start reeling from the exquisite combination of reallllly good chocolate and reallllly good cinnamon do not, I repeat...DO NOT SLUG CINNAMON FROM A SHOT GLASS.
It may seem like a brilliant idea to just admit you're going to eat more cinnamon and more chocolate in a slightly manic, one bite after another, after another...after another moment that stretches into at least a half a dozen moments so you might think that being mature and admitting this you ought to just sit down and fully commit to your snack of chocolate chunks and cinnamon.....
But let me tell you, sitting down with a plate of chocolate chunks and a little shot glass of cinnamon you can tip back (hypothetically) and have a little taste of doesn't work. What does work is you ending up breathing cinnamon in a choking out puffs of cinnamon, coughing extravaganza, none of which resembles the desired chicken bone flavour experience you were going for.
Waving wildly at your husband in the universal “I'm ok, Im ok, I'm only breathing cinnamon powder and trying to recover from my lungs violent, albeit correct, response to said attempt at breathing something other than air” hand gestures.
I expect in the future I shall whip up some sort of melted chocolate and cinnamon type delight, something a little safer that doesn't have me coughing up a red hot spicy dust storm and causing my husband to think that any normal person knows what a shot glass is for and it's not for a snoot of cinnamon.
Can I get a “DUH” from the crowd?
But do not worry, I don't blame the cinnamon, it's not to fault. No, I blame the Truro, Nova Scotia craft sale chicken bone candy lady for instilling in me a deep and abiding affection for a treat I can't readily get my hands on.
If both my saigon cinnamon and a bag of chicken bone candies were dangling, precariously of course, over the lip of a volcano and I could only save one I think my decision has already been made. As much as I loved the chicken bones, my brain argues with my tastebuds that we don't care for dyes that much any more and hardly ever buy candy, so why not save the cinnamon? The potential in a handful of REALLY kick your ass good cinnamon is much greater than a bag of cinnamon candies.
Hmmmmmm I just had a thought....*runs to the kitchen to check something out*

(very sad but honest to goodness extremely tiny sample of cinnamon coca powder toast made with left over bread crust bits I scrounged from the bread box thingy)

Oh man...cinnamon....cocoa powder.....this is a very very very good combination. I am now in agonies because there is no bread made or else I'd be whipping up some crunchy, buttery cinnamon, coca powder toast and sitting back dreaming of chicken bones.
Instead I'm contemplating a wee tiny shot glass of cinnamon and cocoa mixed together.............
This is also one of those moments where I am severely ticked off at the bread maker for not keeping us well stocked in bread for such cinnamon, cocoa powder testing emergencies. (Never mind that I'm the bread maker, I can be mad at myself can't I?)
But wait, I'm more then just the bread maker...I'm a gull dang biscuit maker when I want to be is what I am........and biscuits can be made in like 30 minutes...I'll be right back.....
(time passes, approximately 30 some minutes if you're picky about such things........)
One batch of biscuit dough, dived in two, one half flattened on a cookie sheet and covered with a mixture of coca powder, cinnamon and brown sugar, second half of dough spread over the top. Baked, one big cinnamon chocolate biscuit sandwich. Taste test...YUM! Second taste test...mmmmm YUM!
It's not a chicken bone.....but it is warm, cinnamony, like a cinnamon roll only flat and with chocolate. A chocolate, cinnamon flat.
Hearty enough for the grownup in me, not a speck of unnatural colour added, and best of all, satisfies the incredibly overpowering chocolate/cinnamon taste I have been craving for the better part of forever now..........

We Survived the Pancakes....

No seriously, these were Pancakes that didn't kill us. JOY!
I didn't get cutesy and make my valentine's day breakfast for my sweetums and I into heart shapes.
I could have, I made super hearty pancakes with batter so thick I could have formed it into balls if I wanted to.
Maybe I should have made pancake snowmen. 3 dimensional snowmen would have been a cool Valentine's breakfast but I'm thinking it would have been a little too big for one meal. I suppose I could have made just one, one nicely rounded, foot high pancake snowman and we could have shared....but digging into the soft belly of anything, even a pancake snowman isn't the way to start a Valentine's day (or any other for that matter)
I'm quite satisfied with the thick blobby pancakes that we had and that they didn't kill us.
My husband said if it was going to be our last meal that as far as last meals go it was a pretty good one. They were more than good they were delicious, perhaps it was the possibility of getting sick that made them ever the more sweeter...?
Did I not mention yet the questionable ingredient I added to my mix?
Not arsenic or cyanide as my husband guessed. He's funny that way, happily chowing down on his breakfast with thoughtful pauses while he savors a bite and finally announces in a weird little British accent "I do not detect any hints of arsenic."
When I was making breakfast I was on auto pilot, which is never a good thing when you're cooking. Thinking all the thoughts one usually thinks when performing a semi mindless task I've performed many times before. Crack an egg in to the bowl but think about whether aliens are real. Scoop up some flour and a couple of teaspoons of baking powder but the mind is reviewing the proper way to shift gears in a standard transmission. Stirring the whole mass of batter and wondering why on God's green earth they'd keep a show like Battle Star Galactica on the scifi channel BUT NOT the Dresden Files. You know, all the usual mind wanderings a person has.
So when it came time for the liquid portion of the pancakes my eyes spied the jar of raw (un-pasteurized) heavy cream that had been in the fridge longer than I could remember.
It didn't rot!
We'd already had a delightful scientific-esque moment one day a few weeks ago as we marveled at how the heavy cream had gotten heavier. Thicker and sort of cheesy smelling. Both of us bravely stuck a finger in and tried it, both of us remained in perfect health so we just put the jar back in the fridge to see what it would do.
See, that right there, that's the difference between me and the food network cooks. When I'm making something I don't just cook to fill the belly and make a pretty plate, I wanna see what something does. In this case did this elderly heavy cream kill my sweetums and I?
If you've been holding your breath waiting to see how this turns out go ahead and suck in a little oxygen, we didn't die. I made pancakes with questionable heavy cream and not only did we not die, we enjoyed them and didn't even get sick.
You can't ask for a better Valentine's than that now can you?
Oh, wait, actually we can. We toasted the evening, ourselves, and life with almond champagne at the end of the day we survived, having had killer pancakes that turned out to be un-killer!

The pancakes are my standard mix I use around here and occasionally throw something extra in to. Not always something as strange as the cream. You're probably all grossed out now and could care less about the recipe but here it is. My recipe is adapted and modified greatly from one I found on Quaker Oatmeal's website. You can go see the original if my version doesn't float your boat.

Incredibly Heart-y Pancakes
(Good for Valentine's day and the day after.)

1 cup of 100% whole wheat stone ground flour
1/4 cup of ground flax seed
1/2 cup of rolled oats (I usually use a nice heaping 1/2 cup, loves me oats!)
2 teaspoons of baking powder
1/4 teaspoon of grey sea salt
1 1/4 cup of milk, water, kefir or what ever liquid blows your bubbles on the day of making (ie: antique cream thinned with water)

(Optional Add-Ins, please note for me these are not optional they're must haves and all at once)
A handful or more of salted, roasted pecans
a handful of golden raisins
and a nice amount of grated nutmeg, like a teaspoon (I never measure)
Also a sprinkling of poppy seeds until you feel you've got enough.
and one glug of dark rum, (a nice option instead of vanilla)

Mix all together, reveling in the thick hearty batter that you could probably use to spackle any holes you have or glue some bricks together. Fry in a medium heat, lightly greased cast iron skillet. Let them get good and toasty brown, flip and give the same attention to the other side. Be wary of the fact they're so thick that they may need more time then you're used to with pancakes.
Eat with a little dollop of REAL butter, homemade orange marmalade, saigon cinnamon, honey and optional molasses or maple syrup. All of which can be used one at a time or all together.

(I preferred my homemade orange marmalade and cinnamon on my pancakes)

This recipe makes one humongous massive pancake (if you're into the sort of thing and have a skillet big enough) or approximately 5 or 6 medium sized pancakes. Cripes, I hate this sort of thing. Cause what if your medium size and my medium size differ, so maybe it would make 8 medium sized for you cause your medium seized is a 3 inch in diameter pancake.....my brain hurts.
Please note these are very hearty pancakes. They stick to your ribs, fill your belly and will not leave you hungry. I usually can only finish one and a half in a siting cause they're so filling. Yummmmmmmmmm!

(honey drizzled on my husband's pancakes)

Ravishing Radishes...

This one is going to be short and sweet, if you're in the mood for long and bitter then I'll warn you now you won't get it here.
Today was a lovely day, I mean TRULY lovely. Blue sky, birds chirping like crazy, blossoms scenting the air with their perfume and long sunny patches of light sliding across the carpet all afternoon.
Sure there was the one moment of screeching when the cat stuck her paw under the screen door and some how, miraculously, poked a lizard enough to make his tail fall off.
(I did the screeching, girlie yes but do you want me to lie?)

Why the lizard was under the door and hanging out within inches of a cat breathing down it's neck through the screen...I dunno.
How long did I look for a tailless lizard to see if he needed medical assistance...I won't say. Assistance, HA! he needed a tail! Which I had.....but I'm sorry.... as much as I'm all for animal health care I can't be doing lizard surgery on a day as nice as today was...I just can't. Even if I had already picked out the right salve to use and a pretty little lizard appropriate bandage and a tiny thimble of whiskey to ease it's pain.....perhaps he didn't run from the cat but from the screeching woman with visions of Do-It-Yourself lizard repair in her eyes.
Shoot, this was going to be short and sweet.
Well maybe it isn't such a lovely day, failed at providing proper medical attention for my little reptilian friend and now I've lied about the length of this post.
*sticks tongue out*
Life carried on after the whole lizard drama in the afternoon. We petted the cat so she wouldn't be emotionally scarred, then abandoned her to run errands around town.
Later we dined on salad with all sorts of good things in it. Radishes, celery, garlic, vegenaise, red onion, cheese, carrot, broccoli, the kitchen sink, sour cream, red wine vinegar, sea salt, black pepper and rice.
It was delicious but my favorite part was the radishes...as you may have already guessed by now...and if you haven't then I bet you're one of those “long and bitter” people I mentioned earlier..hmmmm?
I wonder if there's a world record for longest radish tail...ohhhhh Gawwwd, did I say tail? I think I just had a Freudian moment here.........
Well what else do you call the long skinny part of a radish? A root? Today I'm thinking tail seems appropriate, considering I whacked them off with my knife.......much as the farmer's wife did to the 3 blind mice.....it's a day for physically challenged critters I am beginning to realize.
But these radish tails, they were marvelous, I mean each was a real work of art. I couldn't have improved upon them in any way at all....or could I?
You know how some times your own crafty nature crosses the line into just plain weirdness?
How you find yourself braiding radish tails and thinking it's just about the prettiest thing you ever saw?
You “short and sweet” people understand, I know you do.
If radish braiding becomes a sport or an art form or something I want full credit, my name in lights and a fully equipped medic response team for lizards at my disposal 24 hours a day. Plus I'd also like a shrink for my cat, cause what was she thinking trying to catch a lizard??? For fun or food? Either way it's disturbing.

Mama Marmalade....

I have been making orange marmalade.
Then eating orange marmalade.
Then rapidly realizing my eating orange marmalade to making orange marmalade ratio is way off.
The appalling facts are that if I continue at the same rate of chowing down on sweet, citrusy goodness with just the right amount of bitter and NOT producing more of this sunshine in bottle, at the current rate of speed...it means....KABOOOOOOMMMYYYYYY
Marmalade melt down.
This is allllwaaaays the problem with making something yourself that's waaaay better then what you get at the store. Once you have mastered (I can be called a master after 2 batches...right?) some new and secret technique that house wives and gourmet cooks and jam makers have already been doing for years, breaking open the barrier of silence around something as exotic as ORANGE Marmalade....you can't go back. But....unfortunately you're too lazy to get off yer ass and make some more.
Damn it, why did I have to be so awesome at making orange marmalade? Why does a recipe for it only make a pitiful few bottles that some of us, in a haze of orangey goodness, already promised out for their Mother. Damn Mom for being so good to me, for sharing homemade wild strawberry jam, if she'd been more of a bee-otch then I could hoard my precious stash of orangey delight all to myself.
But no, my Mother has to be all sweet and caring and sharing with her only daughter....damn it.
So here I sit, orange tree loaded, mocking me with it's silent but fruit filled presence. My orange Marmalade supply rapidly depleting, feeling secure in trying my hands at a new technique but oddly guilty over casting a lustful eye on the promised out bottle.
I'll crack. Oh it's no secret, I'd eat me own dear mother's orange marmalade before giving up this goodness for good.
*sigh*
It shall not come to this though as I have a plan. One that involves launching my self physically from this trap that is my computer chair and in to a frenzy of jam making that shall provide me with at LEAST a few bottles more of what is quite possibly elixir of the Gods.
You think I'm exaggerating? No jam could be that good? HA! Ha, I say! My sweetie pie says it's the BEST orange marmalade he's ever had and confirms that it is indeed elixir of the Gods, would both of us say that if it were not true? If I was going to lie I can guarantee you it would be about something a hell of a lot more useful like an alibi for when the last scrapings of homemade birthday ice cream disappeared completely with out so much as a "would you like some?" for any one...muaahhh ahhh ahhh (by the way I was out picking oranges when that happened....I swear)
I'm not looking for an excuse to keep the bottle of jam that's ear marked for my Mother though. I mean if I did need one the obvious would be that orange marmalade is the longest jam making process I have ever participated in. I mean no offense mom but what did you do? Go out and pick a few handfuls of wild strawberries that are so itsy bitsy you have to practically crawl through the grass to find them and risk getting bit by mosquitos and God knows what else and risk swelling up the way you do when you do get bit by God knows what else...ummmmm.........this isn't heading the direction I had intended which was a comparison of my extremely labor intensive marmalade making process to my Mother's easy squeezy strawberry jam making process.
On a completely unrelated note my Mother once beaned me in the head with a soup ladle, it was by accident but I think now I deserve it.
*sigh again*
O.k., O.k., you'll get your Marmalade, that you never even asked for and I'll make some more for me so I can have some too and we'll all be satisfied in a very sticky sweet way.

(please note that the spoon in the photo is one I stole from my Mom so I think I might have to send her two jars of m-m-m-y Marmalade. Damn it.)

Why Some People Can't Have Nutella.....

Celebrate all that is Nutella on February 5th!

Once upon a time a young woman lost her Nutella innocence in the parking lot of a Trader Joe's.

Logically this woman knew what she was in for, logically.
That Nutella was a chocolate hazelnut type spread, it said so right on the jar did it not? Said young woman liked chocolate and coincidentally hazelnuts so she decided what the heck, I'll give this Nutella a whirl.
What was the harm? (insert ominous, foreboding music here)
She threw a jar of the Nutella into her basket this one fine shopping day and moved on towards the more mundane things on her list, candied ginger, coffee beans and tortilla chips.
Now it might come as surprise to some people exactly all the things this woman was known to get into whilst in a parked car. Whilst in a parked car in front of a Trader Joe's on a sunny day.
She'd sample cheddar cheese right off the block, who needs a knife just bite off a hunk and enjoy. She'd scoop into ice cream with her emergency ice cream spoons always kept in the glove compartment of the car. She'd nibble on bits of bread ripped from the loaf, on handfuls of nuts and occasionally a gourmet soda.
She was a car snacker.
But it's ok, so was her husband.
So they basked in sinful car snacking glory together. Sitting under the hot California sun, with the air conditioning running and harried shoppers giving them the evil eye as they'd yet to give up their parking spot.
So this one day, happily sampling the goodies they'd bought. Sitting in piles of crumbs and grinning toothily at each other over their respective snacks of choice. (He salty, she sweet) The woman glances coyly under her eyelashes at her husband, cranks the air conditioning up another notch and breathily asks her sweettie..."Care to try something........different?"
He pauses, handful of tortilla chips clutched in his hands and slides his wicked blue eyes towards her. "What did you have in mind?"
This was the moment.
The moment before everything changed.
The silence stretched out, thin and sweet in the summer heat as she drew the jar of Nutella from her bag. Triumphantly showed it to her husband, cooed over the colour, the shape of the jar and pointed out that since it was both nuts AND chocolate that it covered both of their craving preferences.
"Let's do it." her husband purred, grabbing the emergency ice cream spoons from the glove compartment, silver glinting in the bright sun, smiling contentedly they popped open the lid.
Can you see it?
The way time slowed to a crawl?
The way they dug their spoons into the Nutella, unknowing of what they were about to unleash?
The drifting laughter from a child passing by the car with their mother. The music on the cd player fades to the background of the moment. The way the light caught the dull glossy spoonful of chocolate nut spread just so, ahhhh just so, as it traveled, for what seemed like an eternity to their mouths?
Nostrils flaring as the rich scent leaps ahead of the spoon, eager to greet their noses. The fading smiles, the open mouths, eyes widening first in shock and pleasure, then narrowing. Darting towards the still open jar that one of them holds.
Which one?
Does it really matter?
There is a small moment of recollection in the woman's memories, of the intensity of flavor and lush silky texture that greeted her unsuspecting tongue. Of the unbridled lust for something she'd barely begun to taste. Of hearts beating faster, breaths quickening and suddenly the air conditioning can not keep the car cool enough.
There's an intense flash point of taste, lust and greed rolled together in one amazing Nutella sized ball.
Two spoons descend in perfect harmony towards the jar, they clash, metal rings brightly, impossibly the spoons tangle together like lovers, unable to part. Each vying for the open jar, each desperately trying to dive into the new heavenly delight that has been discovered, right here on earth.
Everything grows dark as greed takes over.
She doesn't know what happened. There are days of darkness that will never be regained, sweet chocolate scented memories that flit away into nothingness. Some how they got home.
It's as if it never happened, though the inside of the car is suspiciously clean, all but for an empty jar. It too oddly clean, as sparkly spit shined up like a new penny.
As she stands there, dizzy for a moment, memories burrowing deeper into her subconscious, as if hiding from the light, she recalls the moment of revelation.
The one conscious, full memory of glory that was Nutella on her tongue for the first time. Then nothing more till this moment.
She doesn't wonder what happened.
It's best to leave some things be.
She buries the jar in the recycling bin, and even with out memory she knows...some things are so powerful, some things are so intense that they are not for human minds, hands or tongues.
Life goes on for she and he.....
Though occasionally, when walking through Trader Joe's their footsteps falter as they pass the Nutella.
Hands unconsciously reach, in perfect synchronistic movements towards the jars at the same time, they hover, shaking over the closest one. Hers bumping his, his bumping hers. Fingers finally curling into fists, retracting....the moment passes and they get peanut butter instead. Faithful, trusty old peanutbutter.
They can be trusted with peanut butter.

(on a completely un-related to the dark, sinful Nutella ways, note.....if you think you can handle something so freaking good it will blow your mind then I invite you to partake of the rich decadent flavours of Nutella. If you're like me...er...um.....that is....I mean.....if you're like SOME people who choose to remain anonymous and can not be trusted around delicious goodies and have a will power that is so non-existent it actually registers as a negative number then...beware...beware.)

An Edible Kick-Butt-er.

If my sandwich and your sandwich got in a fight...my sandwich would totally kick your sandwich's butt. If a sandwich had a butt, which it wouldn't...unless it was maybe some sort of roast something or other type sandwich. That'll turn you off of meat in a hurry, here's a nice bit of shredded pig butt between two slices of bread.
Life is weird eh? Some times I feel that odd waffling sensation of falling into the category of being a vegetarian. (dairy loving, fine with fish, vegetarian if any)
But we have not fallen yet, who needs a label, we just generally don't eat a lot of meat save for seafood and in all honestly that's not so very often as we'd like. (Mostly because we have the combined patience level of a 2 by 4 and if the fish guy isn't at the counter within 3.7 seconds of us arriving, then we're on to bigger and better things, like pasilla peppers.) Maybe it's good to only be passionate about things like coffee and ice cream and port and whole wheat bread, that way you don't cause a lot of ripples in your social life at family Bar-B-Q's and buffet style all you can eat fried one of every animal part you can imagine type suppers. We get the best of both worlds, a satisfying and filling dinner of shredded beef enchiladas with the in-laws and a satisfying mostly veggies and occasionally fish meals at home.
I'm often amused at how little effort it takes, or more accurately NO effort at all to not eat meat. We just rarely get it any more. I don't know when it happened. It started with just buying the boneless, skinless chicken breasts and ground buffalo and the very very rare (as in occurrence not cookedness) t-bone steak. Our meals were occasionally punctuated with a tasty buffalo burger or chicken something or other. Then I started using less punctuation.....it just happened. We reached for garbanzo beans, black beans, refried beans and pinto beans a hell of a lot faster then meat. Cheese is our constant companion. We walked by the meat sections of the grocery store with out even slowing down.
Can you understand that?
We just didn't even THINK of buying it, so it wasn't some big moral/dietary lifestyle change, we just kept forgetting to buy and pretty soon it was months and months since the last big meat at home moment! I double checked myself here to make sure I'm not inadvertently perpetrating some big fat juicy lie and I am pretty sure the last time we bought meaty meat for our household was back in March or maybe April of last year. The last time I blogged, showing off my super delicious Bar-B-Q buffalo burgers was March 28 last year. If we bought meat after that it was only once or twice or maybe even not at all. Occasionally we've bought a frozen pizza that had salami on it, or had meat dishes at other people's homes but it's been on the very very rare occasion.
Why is it so easy for us to start forgetting to buy meat and and eat it? Why start leaning on meals that are almost considered vegetarian. I'll tell you why. Have you ever ate a bit of meat, a roast, a sandwich or what ever and felt something in your mouth that didn't belong? Some bit of something extra that got included with the meat, like gristle, bone or some other equally icky bit of God knows what? It's the little bit of something that quickly, with a speed that's terrifying, reminds you that what you're eating isn't a fillet, a steak, a t-bone or burger. It was an animal, with bits and pieces I don't care ever pass through my lips ever! Now, we got a bit tired of Russian Roulette with meat. The nasty bit extra every once in a blue moon is a nasty surprise we can do with out, it's an uncomfortable reminder of what it is you're actually ingesting. A salad...a salad starts tasting pretty damn amazing after that. A salad never let me down by including a bit of carrot guts..see the beauty of that? Carrots don't have nasty bits, heck you can eat the green tops, the whole dang thing!
Soon you find you're enjoying all your favorite foods and not missing the meat at all, perhaps there's even a little relief, no more poking the steak to see if it bleeds, no more yanking the chicken apart to see if it's raw and will make you sick. Nope, don't miss it. Though like I said we're not fanatical about it, we can chow down on a fully loaded pizza with the best of them.
It's just been quite strange though. Becoming aware of our meatless diet. I have one lonely, pathetic boneless, skinless, chicken breast in the freezer that I have yet to throw out (even though I try damn hard not to waste food, and it's a zillion days past expiration and is so completely encased with nasty freezer ice it's like my own little ice age prehistoric creature) the thing is meat has so sneakily and completely slipped from my recipes that I can't even remember to throw it in the garbage.
So we're not meat snobs, or firm veggy lovers, or against meat, what we are is forgetful, and happily so, about the former bad experiences with meat we've had. We're some how easily satisfied with the lack of it in our lives. It could be interesting to point out that my husband is a former Vegan, so maybe he's been slowly brainwashing me these past years into converting to a completely animal product free lifestyle.............hahahaha ( first off that's impossible...we have cats) Actually if he was weaving a master plan of dietary lifestyle around me it's completely balanced and counteracted by my addicting him to frozen dairy food of the *oh la la* kind, coffee and any home baked bit of goodness I pull from my oven. So...vegans we shall not be. Plus if I recall correctly cheese is made of milk and milk comes from an animal...sooooooo...if there's such thing as cheese-a-holics we're it. Cheese is like our second family, it's always always invited to dinner.
But all of this meandering down the meatless path of our meals has distracted me from my amazing sandwich that is so flavorful and amazing it does that mouth squirt thing when you go to take a bite. You know what I mean right? Your taste buds are so geared up for the tongue-blowing phenomenon about to be unleashed upon their wee little pink existence and some how your mouth squirts saliva like you're a wee fountain in a park. No one is ever gonna eat with us again are they..? *sigh*
But this sandwich is a thing of beauty, no photo will ever do it justice. It's consistently the tastiest thing you can make in a few minutes that is filling and satisfies all your cravings. It's creaminess balances out the sourness, the greens offsets it's richness. It's hearty and full of crunch and chew and oh good golly...you just KNOW what I'm going to go make for supper as soon as I'm through here.
So here's my sandwich:

• Two thin slices of homemade 100% whole wheat bread.
• Slathered with praise and a good dollop of vegenaise on each slice. Vegenaise is the most amazing mayonnaise type spread I have ever met. It's so good I swear you could use it by it's self as a dip.
  
• Dotted with little splotches of good mustard, in this particular case I used grey poupon.
• Then one slice (usually the mustard/vegenaise side if you're particular about such things) is sprinkled with chopped red onion.
• Next, the cheese of the day, and on this day it was an aged Vermont cheddar is cut up in to wee slices. Not extravagantly big slices, wouldn't want to over power the entire sandwich, this isn't a cheese sandwich after all.
• Then, the star of the sandwich, a nice big heap of homemade sauerkraut, icy cold from the fridge. So dang flavorful that I can't even begin to appreciate the miracle that is aged, fermented cabbage with a bit of salt.
• On top of that I place a healthy handful of chopped red lettuce.
• THEN......the other slice of vegenaise slathered bread, joining all the parts to complete the whole, the sandwich that can kick your sandwich's ass.
• Slice, take outside for a quick picture or two, hope the neighbors aren't peering at you through their blinds wondering why you always walk your lunch around the patio before taking it back inside to devour.

I think I need an official name for this sandwich, so that I can refer to it snootily as something people should be in the know about. Like the "Hammer" or the "Kick-Butter". You know, something catchy and elegant, what do ya think?

p.s. this sandwich originally developed as a wrap, it's equally delicious be it whole wheat bread or whole wheat tortilla wrapped around the glorious delights within.

I won't Mince words here....only pies....

I'm going to brag about my fried pies here but don't ask me for the recipe...no really. I'm not being coy. I'm not clinging to some tiny bit of home maker glory to make myself feel superior to you. I'm certainly not trying to hide it in an attempt to make that scrunched up whiny look appear on your face. Heavens no, that's just a bonus. The truth is I don't have a recipe.
Did these lovely little morsels of fried pie goodness just appear in my kitchen of their own accord, unaccompanied by earthly means?
Well...noooooooo...not exactly.
It's just that so often (and really it's more like more often then not) I do not follow a recipe. Or if I am following a recipe I am changing so many things in it during the first trial run that what I end up with can not possibly be anything but a distant cousin to the original recipe, heck maybe not even a cousin, maybe more like the person your distant cousin dated for 3 days when they were 17.
If I were to give you the recipe of something I made that you 'd sampled and liked and you tried making it yourself you might be tempted to shake your fist at me and call me a cheat. Why? Oh did I forget to mention I changed the butter to coconut oil when I made it, I added cinnamon and dark rum instead of vanilla....oh hmmm well are you saying you didn't guess I would leave the water out and replace it with Kefir? And ummm...shall I confess that I can't remember the last time I baked with white flour....suppose I should have mentioned that I changed it to stone ground whole wheat........
See what I mean?
It's first time out alterations like those that make sharing a recipe hard. I probably should have tried to remember to write every thing down that I was changing as I went....snoooooooooooooooooze... Sorry I was boring myself already. If I can't even finish the thought I'm hardly likely to do the actual work of recording my alterations. And that's just the recipes I'm sort of actually following.
What about the made up as I go along, completely pulled from my own brain kind? The taste as you go and see what it needs a pinch more of kind?
Perhaps it's not even fair to brag about those.....
Well hell who ever said sweets are fair??? The fact that they're loaded with little nasties called...(psssttttt cover your eyes if you're sensitive to reality) ahem, as I was saying sweets are loaded with...(deep breath) CALORIES.
Cripes I hate calories.
I remember the exact moment I learned of the existence of calories. When I was a kid every one was yakking about fat this, full fat that, half fat the next thing. I was no dummy, fat was the big bad scary wolf of the dessert world. I munched my way through bags of gummi bears in smug delight. I scoffed at the fat fear-ers as I delighted in my boldly emblazoned bag of "NO-FAT" gummi bears. What's that saying about all good things....? I bragged one too many times to the wrong person...or the right person depending on how you see your glass. I'm seeing this one half empty till I get over the horror.
"Look" I say, "They're fat free."
"Yeah but they have sugar...." he says.
At this point I was hovering in the nicely padded, cushioned zone of ignorance is bliss. Little did I know my world was about to change for ever.
"yeah but, they're fat free, so you can eat as many as you want." I was so confident, so much that if I didn't vocally add a "DUH!" at the end of those words I'm sure a "DUH!" was written all over my face.
"Yessssss but..." (has there EVER been a good but?) "they have sugar, so they're full of calories."
Insert that perfectly appropriate sound of a *record player needle being dragged across the record ending the harmonious beauty of my calorie innocence* right here.
*sigh*
They say life changes when you hit puberty, pbbbbbbbbbtttt, big frigging deal it's not puberty that messes us up it's calories and the knowledge of their existence.
I have a theory about this too. Physicists say there are actually particles that behave differently just because of the fact some one looks at them, acknowledges their existence.
That's...mind blowing...BUT I've known this for years, calories only start having their evil little caloric effect on people AFTER they become aware of them.
That's why kids run around in glorious sugar highs asking for candy for breakfast, donuts for lunch and ice cream for supper. They don't KNOW yet......but they will.......Some one will burst their strawberry flavoured bubble. Some one always does.
Sweets just aren't fair. They're mind numbingly delicious, life changingly scrumptious, make-you-sneak-out-to-the-fridge-for-one-last-nibble addictive it's true.....but they aint fair.
So that's why I can brag about what I made and how tasty it was and not even give you a recipe for it. Suffer. It's ok, it's just the sweet life.
O.k.....now I feel guilty and I can feel your giant puppy dog like eyes staring at me with shock, blinking back tears as you sniffle and hiccup unbecomingly.
So just for you cry babies, a quick run down of my spur of the moment mince fruit fried pie.
A quick and delicious filling made from a blob of coconut oil, frozen cranberries, half an orange, the juice of an orange, raisins, salted pecans, one red delicious apple chopped up, the zest of one orange cut into satisfying little strips, cinnamon, ground cloves, nutmeg, a sploosh of molasses, a splash of dark rum and a wee tiny bit of cornstarch to thicken the whole lot. Cooked up till it was thick and dark and smelling like Christmas in a pot. (which is a good thing)
When it was cool I rolled heaping spoonfuls of it in eggroll wrappers, sealed it with a bit of beaten egg and fried it in coconut oil till golden and crisp. Sprinkle with more cinnamon and...yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmm.
Actually if I recall the exact words of my husband when he bit in to his first friend mince fruit pie they were and I quote. "Ohhh, oh yum....." Then a breathy silence as his tongue absorbs the flavours followed by "Oh man, that's good, that's really good. Yummm. Wow what's in this?"
So, that's why I'm bragging up my fried mince fruit pies and not even giving you an exact recipe. Because I don't have one and sweets aint fair.

The Universe, Baklava and Me.....

(A simmering pot of sugar, water, honey and vanilla.)

There is always the possibility that the universe is conspiring against me.
Case in point, when I lived at home my Mother NEVER told me about baklava. I never heard the word mentioned, we never ate it, it literally did not exist for me. (I suppose one could argue that was my Mother conspiring against me and not the universe though...hmmmm)
Then I meet my darling husband and he rips the fabric of my known universe wide open with a casual name dropping one day. "We should go eat at that Mediterranean place, ohhh and we should remember to have Baklava for desert."
"Bakla-what? Who? Is that a friend? Do I know this Bakla-whosit? Why are we inviting them for desert?"
Turns out Baklava was a treat that Alan said was divine and that we most definitely had to get it, even more so now then before seeing as how I'd never had it.
Enter the universe, screwing me over once more.
Turns out the Mediterranean restaurant no longer had Baklava on it's menu. So no Baklava for me. I suspect, though have yet to prove, that the restaurant on a universe inspired whim decided to stop serving the rich, honey nut desert 5 minutes before I walked through the door.
Universe - 2, Me - zip
(not that I'm keeping score.)
Well time goes by and eventually I do get to have a taste of Baklava from a neat little road side diner type place. I suspect that it wasn't anything to write home about as I can not remember any epiphanies, light bulbs going off in my head, angelic choirs of angels singing or even a return visit to the diner place for more. I remember there was baklava and that's it. It was good but not enough to confirm the descriptions I had read online though. Mouth watering tales of honey oozing, flaky pastry layered, rich, buttery nut filled baklava.
Universe - 2, Me - .5
Well years go by, I mean literally YEARS go by and suddenly it's last year. And right out of the clear blue my husband's relatives give him a GIANT platter of baklava for his birthday! I mean wow, did they have a psychic moment? Did they know how high a pedestal we'd placed this mysterious desert on? Did they know my husband considered this one of his all time favorite sweet treats? Did they know I'd had pitifully limited exposure to this honeyed treasure? Had I whined one too many times in their presence that evvvvvvvvvery one in the fricking universe got baklava but me. Maybe.

(Pouring the hot syrup over the freshly baked Baklava. Mmmm)

Anyways imagine our shock and pleasure to see this golden platter of goodness. We immediately consumed multiple pieces (I wont say how many, a lady never reveals a number) on the spot. That night after carefully carting our beauteous platter of sticky sweets back home we consumed more. Ohhhhhhhh the pleasure, finally unlimited access to a wealth of delicious, buttttttery sweeeeeeeeeeeet, flakkkkkky layers of pastry and nuts. It was so goooood.
Universe - 2, Me - 7.5
Take that Universe, in your face Universe. How do ya like me now Universe?
Then I got covered with spots. Lots of spots. Like a rash. Huh..
Ewwwww I know, who wants to go from buttery rich to a rash.
I didn't think anything of it. Who would suspect the Baklava? Not me. The Universe wasn't reallllllllllllllly conspiring against me...right? So we ate more...the rash remained. Eventually, in a Sherlock Holmes like intuitive moment, as I was serving us up yet another piece of Baklava from the never ending platter I had a notion. What the heck was causing this rash? Why was the Universe suddenly blessing me with such a pile of unsolicited Baklava after all this time? I had a thought, a horrible thought, a sneaky quick sliding, a quick fear that'd been hiding, flip to the forefront of my frontal lobe type thought.
What was IN Baklava? Exactly? I always assumed it was a super, uber complicated thing to make so never even looked at the list of ingredients. So I looked, curiosity doesn't always kill the cat, in this case it killed the rash.
CASHEWS!
DAMN YOU UNIVERSE!!!! *shakes fist at the fabric of reality*
There were cashews in the lovely platter of Birthday Baklava from last year. I unfortunately am sort of allergic to cashews. I quit eating the Baklava, rash goes away and.....
Universe - 274856, Me - 7.5
Well fine, what do I care anyways. I decide to boycott the universe and Baklava and forget about the whole damn thing. Then another year rolls around, THIS year. Another platter of birthday Baklava! Alan's joy was contagious, he really loves this stuff. We'd almost forgotten about last year...about the cashews. But my paranoid nature saved me once again as I looked at the ingredients BEFORE consuming any Baklava. Cashews again....grrrrrrrr. So Alan got Baklava and I got zip, nada, none. I had to make do with homemade chocolate chip peanut butter cookies, ice cream and iced coffee. Pbbbbtttt! Sure it was great but it wasn't Baklava.
Universe - 749739057503, Me - 7.5
I'm starting to get pretty pissed off at the Universe then. I'm also starting to think up long, complicated revenge fantasies against the Universe. But it's hard to concentrate when Alan's delighting in yet MORE birthday Baklava and I'm trying to wrap my brain around quantum mechanics so as to really be able to stick it to the Universe.
When my inner Sherlock Holmes siren went off again I almost ignored it, so wrapped up was I in sub atomic particles and string theory. But then I said to myself "No, self pay attention here. If your inner Sherlock Holmes has something to say the least you can do is pay attention."
I like to try and do as I say so I did.
Inner Sherlock Holmes whispered sweetly in my mind that I ought to look up a recipe for Baklava.
What the heck, why not.
HALLLLLLLLLLLLLELUJJJJJJAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Baklava didn't have 5 million mysterious ingredients. It didn't have a complicated preparation and cooking procedure. Hell a Baklava recipe made quantum mechanics look like....er....well...quantum mechanics.
Sugar, honey, nuts, butter, vanilla, water, cinnamon and phyllo dough.
I was in shock. I found a recipe on a site I go to often because of all it's reviews for recipes so I knew at least a few hundred people had already tried this particular Baklava recipe and had deemed worthy of 5 out of 5 stars. Baklava recipe here.
And quicker then you can build a sub atomic universe ass kicker I had homemade Baklava sitting on my kitchen counter, cooling down from it's time in the oven. Filling the air with warm fragrant honey scents.
Was it good.
*laughs softly* Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh yessssssssssssssssssssss, it was good. It was better then good. It was "where have you been all my life?" good. It was "take that, you conspiracizing Universe good"
It was gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood.

Universe - 749739057503, Me - INFINITE to the 7th degree

I win.

( A slice of homemade Baklava.....ohhhhh...oh my...)

Because I can't leave well enough alone I am already tailoring the Baklava recipe to our own tastes. Using coconut oil instead of butter, no sugar but more honey etc. A healthier treat that will still taste decadent and be easy to make. I will add my own custom recipe on here when I've got it hammered out. It might mean making endless batches of Baklava and tasting them over and over, one right after another but...I can do it. For the good of the recipe and sharing it with friends I can end my life long dry spell of no Baklava and embrace the never ending slice of golden flaky heaven.

Feeling Raw....

If I told you I find raw cow's milk and cream udderly delicious (come on, like I could pass that up?) would you care? I mean, it's not as peculiarly earth shattering as a desire to eat only green coloured foods or drink only out of clear unfrosted glass. But it's interesting don't you think?
We live in a world where things have become over processed, over thought and over ridiculous and we hardly even notice any more. When was the last time you blinked an eye at yet another commercial for a *wonder drug* that you don't even NEED your doctor to suggest, if it looks good to you then they expect YOU to tell the person who's had years and years of experience in the medical field to order you up some.
Some times I feel weird cause I don't even get commercial whip lash any more. Another commercial for Viagra and warnings of erections that could last for over 4 hours, big deal.
I am though occasionally still shocked to find myself living in a time when the world is tipping into the insanity of the overly processed.
The most processed of it all are us humans. Dye your hair, tan your skin, wear perfume, deodorant, your teeth aren't white enough unless they could blind a small child at 20 paces, your skin isn't soft enough unless you sit on a couch and slither off if you don't brace your body. The body of course that's well toned and doesn't have an ounce of fat and God forbid you don't get your jollies off running round in circles wasting time but gaining muscle well then we can just suck the fat right out of you. Got a wrinkle? We got creams and lasers and scalpels and drugs for that. And once you have your body exactly the right amount of processed......if you're a female slather an inch of make-up on it.....bleck! It's weird. Kind of scary, what will the future people look like? I shudder at the idea. The great great grandkids of today's people might only be a quarter of an inch thick so they can run themselves through a human printer every morning to get that freshly printed, new toner smell and look that all the kids are wearing those days. Wouldn't that be lovely? Now instead of having to try so hard to keep up with every one we could just download a program and be printed out like every one else and avoid anything that even remotely seems natural. Wow............... I've heard theories before that maybe hell is actually EARTH...doesn't sound so crazy at times.
Sorry to interrupt but could you grab that little shiny thing up there, thanks. What is it? Oh that's my point, it got a little out of reach for a moment.
See my point of all this is when you become desensitized to the wackiness of the world you can actually start to see simple ordinary things as weird or even wrong. It's a world that wants unnaturally white teeth, a world that pushes drugs over a natural and usually cheaper solution like diet change, they push so many antibacterial things now a days that I suspect many people are freaked out by the idea of ANY bacterias. A toilet bowl brush you can throw away after each use is considered CLEVER (Do not get me started on those, germs my ass, who cares about the germs on your toilet bowl brush, are you going to use it to clean your teeth? No one expects you to cuddle up to it at night but just because it's a toilet bowl brush and God forbid touches the INSIDE of the toilet doesn't suddenly make it as dangerous as a ticking bomb. Those commercials lead you to believe it's BETTER to throw away needless trash and run up the expense of buying new toilet bowl brush heads over and over and over instead of using one cheapo brush that will last you forever and gets the job done and hasn't made any one sick that I know of so far?!!!?! And if some one did get sick from a toilet bowl brush they were probably sucking on it and got what they deserve. Cripes, who needs friends and relatives for turmoil I get all I can handle from the damn commercials.)
But like I was saying in a world where all those sorts of things are not only acceptable but the NORM something as innocent and pure and sweet as unpasteurized milk can cause a few heads to turn, perhaps even a lady like gasp or two out of the crowd. Or how about this, be BANNED in some places because it's Dannngerrrooussssssssss. Drugs that get injected into your face to smooth out an itty bitty wrinkle are ok....but unpasteurized milk straight from a grass loving cow is not.
Now I'm not a science-tastic person, I enjoy StarGate Atlantis just like every one else but the facts and figures tend to fall out of my head. There's a lot of information out there on this subject though and the people at Organic Pastures can fill you in on all the wonderful health benefits of milk that isn't cooked to death. Not to mention inform you about the possibility of people no longer being able to legally buy RAW milk. Guns you can buy, cigarettes you can buy, alcohol you can buy, a drug store full of dubious medicines with scary side effects you can buy, RAW milk in some states (as in units of America not like in altered states of consciousness) you can't.
Doesn't that seem weird? You can not buy raw, unpasteurized milk that still has all it's living enzymes and healthful friendly bacterias, but you CAN buy what is essentially DEAD milk. Ya gotta wonder you know, if RAW milk gets the boot what's to stop them from outlawing Mother's from breast feeding their babies? It's raw milk after all....... This day and age a cow probably eats better then the average woman if it's part of an organic dairy farm.
All I know is this stuff tastes yumalicious. Seriously, I am a former Starbucks coffee frappuccino stalker. This is different then an addict as I admit to loving (at one time) the sweet caffeinated milkshake like drink but once I looked up the freaky deaky calorie info on one I was able to curb my frappuccino desires pretty darn quickly. Nothing like more then half your daily calorie intake in ONE beverage to cool the flames of desire. Anyways now I just stare at other peoples who have them and feel superior and smug whilst sipping a pure-er coffee beverage like an iced one (minus 10 lbs of sugar). Anyways my incredibly long winded point is the best part of a frappuccino was at the bottom of the glass when the milky coffee drink settled below the frozen slush, one sip of that and wooooooooooo you were in heaven. Turns out I can replicate that flavor, that intense creamy icy coffee sensation at home for 1/zillionth of the calories and 5 zillion times the flavor! I take my standard french roast coffee, sweetened with our friendly zero calorie stevia and after the ice has been added I add a dollop of heavy cream. Not just any cream but RAW heavy cream. This stuff is so thick it doesn't even mix in when I make it. It just sits there, a buttery blob of loveliness in my glass of coffee waiting for me to release it freely into the embrace of my iced coffee arms!

Also, the flavor is soooo rich and creamy it takes literally just a tablespoon or so to turn your entire beverage into that intense creamy flavor I used to get from the you know whats at the you know where!
Since we read so much neat information about the health benefits of truly RAW milk my sweetie pie doesn't even call it milk any more, he calls it nutritional. We're walking through the store and as we pass the dairy aisle he's all like "Oh darn do we need more nutritional?" heads swivel but he just grins and grabs a jug of raw whole milk and a container of raw heavy cream.
Heating the RAW milk would defeat the purpose of getting raw milk as it destroys some of the health benefits so we only enjoy our RAW milk cold, hence adding ice to the coffee first.
The world is messed up, they cancel the Dresden Files tv show and Viva Laughlin and give us more teen drama crapola. *shakes head* Some things you can't control. So many great things are just ripped away without our input and apparently RAW milk could be one of those things. It's weird, we're not the type of people to throw money around left and right for every charity that we see. Not because we're cold but cause we're not rich and chances are we know some one personally who could use a few extra bucks more then an impersonal charity. However we did donate a few dollars to the cause that will try and fight an amendment to the food and agriculture code that could mean no more sales of RAW milk. We really enjoy this stuff and I'd hate to go to the store some day and it would just be gone.
The public I'm sure would hate to see a grown couple sobbing in the dairy section getting snot and slobber all over the containers of un-RAW milk so it's really in every one's best interest to hope they don't ban RAW milk sales.
It seems pretty fricking simple to me, look at all the crazy ass stuff you can buy and then look at what they might say you can't, RAW milk.
And you know what, I'm gonna go one step further....
I'm gonna say it.
RAW MILK...........I love you.
(pssst, I love you too coffee.)

Forgiveness in a Jar....

Dear Mom,
Remember how I had that beautiful Correlle plate when I was younger? Remember how amazing it was? The glassy beauty, the translucent qualities that made my heart pitter pat. The slick, shiny surface that resisted food sticking to it and actually made it a pleasure to wash. Remember how I'd only eat on that plate because it had been a birthday gift and was the ONLY plate I had like that? Remember?
Remember how you said they were supposed to be unbreakable? Right before you slammed it against the table edge.....
Remember then you broke it?
And do you remember how I have rubbed your face in that little fact for *coughs* maybe 15 years?
Well....I forgive you.
Turns out it only took 3 bottles of homemade jam and 15 years of bringing that little story up at every available moment.
*breathes a heavy sigh of contentment*
Well I feel better, how bout you? Nothing like a wild strawberry jam haze of fruit, sugar infused contentment to soothe out the rough edges of history and to make one conveniently forget all the things they did and focus only what was did to them and make them feel in a delirium of homemadey goodness like they could forgive anything and write run on sentences. Ahhhh the power of jam.
Love me
P.S. I can not be held responsible for what happens when the 3 bottles are empty...I'm just saying is all.

A Recipe for Confessing....

Confession is good for the soul....
So they say, though I doubt it's as good for the soul as chocolate or coffee....or...(hang on to yer britches people) Coffee AND Chocolate...hummina hummina
So anyways believe it or not I wasn't a rebellious teenager. *gasp* are you shocked? Or perhaps not so much. The only two times I've been grounded in my life were for wearing mascara when I was 13 and for lighting a match in my bedroom. Ohhhhhhh what a rebel eh? Anyways my point being I didn't do any horrendous teenage acts of rebellion that had my parents chasing me round the country side, that involved authority figures (except for getting kicked out of school, one time for a fight I barely participated in) never went cow tipping, parking or soaped any windows. I never smoked, except when I was 4 and I took a drag off my father's girlfriend's cigarette and it was NASTY. I never stole (cookies, ice cream and chocolate and chocolate related paraphernalia do not count.) And the only deliberately malicious thing I ever did was start a rumor that 2 guys in my class who I detested in grade 9 were having a secret love affair with each other. That was pretty satisfying, though now I feel a little bad because what if they really were secretly gay and I destroyed them emotionally by starting the rumor, and also I don't think there's anything wrong with being gay so I've felt a little guilt over that one for a long time. Anyways the rumor didn't really take off but I felt satisfied that I'd done something to express in a creative way my dislike of these two, macho idiotic jerks. I can't remember why I thought they were jerks but I must have had a good reason. Like maybe they were breathing the same air as me, when you're a teenage girl in the 9th grade that's reason enough. Oh shoot, while I'm confessing I used to kick this one other guy in high school, I'm a tad passive aggressive I am now realizing. Him and his buddies all sat in a hall way and stuck their legs straight out as if they owned the place, as if they had the bloody right to be quietly rude to every one who walked by making them have to step over their legs. Funny thing is, I always *tripped* on his legs....*snicker* oh my how clumsy of me to always accidentally kick him. I quit doing that though when one day he *accidentally* raised his leg higher and *accidentally* tripped me as I was *accidentally* kicking him, wouldn't want an accident to happen would I? So I found a new hobby, er route through the school.
My point?
There is no point, I'm confessing, it's supposed to be good right?
I thought I'd start off with the heavy duty stuff like bruising some poor guy's legs every day at lunch time with my sneakered feet and end with stealing 97% of the delicious, mind blowing squares that were too damn good to share with people at the baby shower I brought them to.
It's my cousin's fault. (hee hee)
She lusted after those squares as much as I did, one little nudge in the direction of greed and gluttony was all it took. Actually I don't remember who suggested it. All I have is a faintly chocolate and coffee infused memory of arriving at a baby shower, hosted at my cousin's house.
People frown upon bringing tequila or twister to a baby shower where I come from so my Mom and I settled on a classic. Super, uber rich Arrowroot squares. (a family favorite recipe)
I had to hold that plate full of sinful goodness on my lap all the way to shower during the car ride...if I accidentally stuck my fingers under the plastic wrap and a bump in the road jostled my arm into hastily flinging a chunk of square into my greedy little mouth, can I be blamed? Hell no.
One taste was all it took to fill my dazzled mind with thoughts of sweet thick coffee frosting layered over chocolatey heaven. Do you really want to know how bad I had it? Do you reallllllllllly? I haven't a fricking clue who's baby shower it was I was going to, not a clue. I was all like "Baby? What Baby?"
I carried that plate of loveliness into my cousin's house with more care then I've ever held a kid, if some kindly relative smiled hello and asked "What ya got there dearie?" I growled, maybe drooled a little.
Thank goodness my cousin was there, she saved me from having to wrestle Auntie so-and-so or other cousin whats-her-face to the kitchen floor. My cousin in all her genius saw the potential of that plate of arrowroot squares to be OURS. And only ours, as arrowroot squares were so obviously meant to be.
With a little diversionary tactic that consisted of loudly saying "I'LL JUST PUT THIS PLATE OF SQUARES ON THE COUNTER OVER HERE!" Then we oh so cleverly slid off one or maybe two of the teensy tiniest squares from the whole batch onto another plate. See how clever that is????? All the relatives would each think the other relatives had gotten to the squares before them! Brilliant! While off we made with the loot, down to my cousin's bedroom, where we shut the door and proceeded to scarf down sickeningly vast amounts of Arrowroot squares. Hummina Hummmina Hummina. Oh man, if one of something is good then you KNOW a dozen of it is heaven.
The baby shower...it's a sugar induced high like blurry memory. I don't even remember going home, I remember when we shut the bedroom door and started in on that plate of stolen sweets and then....nothing.
Hmmm, I feel a sort of tickling sensation on my right foot....is that my soul? Feeling better after all this confessing?
It's not as satisfying a sensation as I expected...damn.
If you have the urge to make your own Arrowroot Squares let me tell you this.....if you can find a way to some how steal them from yourself or deprive others from enjoying them they'll taste ever the more sweeter. I'll have to ask my Mom where we even got the recipe. The original called for Arrowroot cookies to be crumbled up in the base but me dear Ma and I always used chocolate chip cookies. The name Arrowroot Squares has stuck for us though.

Arrowroot Squares


Lightly grease an 8"x8" pan and prepare your self mentally for a sweet mind altering experience.

In a bowl:
30 small crunchy chocolate chip cookies (or the cookie of your choice)
crumble these up leaving some dime size pieces and chunks. you don't want them too fine.

In a pot combine the following and cook on medium heat, constantly stirring for 8 minutes:
8 tbs. of white sugar
2 eggs well beaten
1 tsp of vanilla
4 tbs. of cocoa
1/3 cup of butter
1/2 tsp of salt

After 8 minutes dump the mixture over the broken cookies and stir up, then dump it in to the 8" pan and press down firmly.

Icing:
In a bowl combine:
1/3 cup of soft butter
1 1/2 cup of icing sugar
1 tsp of vanilla
1 tbs. of cocoa
Some super strong coffee


Mix this together and add the very strong coffee till you get the right frosting consistency. For the coffee I usually use a couple teaspoons of instant coffee in a bowl with a little bit of water, so its super dark strong. It doesn't take much of this strong coffee liquid to get the frosting smooth and creamy.
Then you frost the squares and enjoy. They get firmer when they cool, yummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmers!

The only other thing I can add to this ramble down memory lane and recipe sharing is that it's seriously a damn yummy square and also I hate calories. (actually make that I F$#%ing hate calories)

Rotten Cabbage????

(innocent organic cabbages awaiting their transformation into sauerkraut!)

If you used to think sauerkraut was just a fancy way of saying rotten cabbage and that it was better off polluting some other poor sap's meal than your own but now you're a sauerkraut fiend then...wow.....cause seriously that's almost exactly what happened to me!(hacking up the cabbage into food processor sized bits)

Sauerkraut used to be a lot like New Zealand for me. I knew it was out there but knew next to zip about it and wasn't too concerned about my lack of knowledge. I still know zip about New Zealand BUT sauerkraut....oh mama......who knew that it was a gastronomical delight?

(shredding organic cabbage in my big fancy food processor)

Seriously now, who can I blame for my lack of sauerkraut knowledge? There has to be somebody! I've been missing out on one of the most fabulously tasty not to mention HEALTHY things that humans have discovered, and this went on for yeeeeeeeaaaaaaars.

(loose, shredded cabbage with sea salt in glass container)

Other people were out there gobbling up great vats of sauerkraut while I was suffering, unbeknownst to me. Oh sure I didn't know about how yummy it was so I can't miss what I don't know of right? WRONG! I ache for every year, every minute every tick tocking second of my past sauerkraut stupidity. That's 852037002 seconds of life I was deprived of sauerkraut. Of course I'm calculating based on discovering sauerkraut as a yummalicious food and not a weapon of mass destruction a couple of years ago. How long I've know about HOMEMADE sauerkraut as the fricking easiest, cheapest of all mega fabulistic foods is more like 15778463 seconds. Which is not long enough if you ask me.
Well lets just let bygones be bygones and not place the blame of my lack of culinary education squarely on the shoulders of all the adults in the life of me as a youngin, lets move past the horrible betrayal of said adults keeping yummy sauerkraut a secret for their own nefarious needs and not cling to silly past wrongs of those again, previously mentioned adults, severely depriving me of tasty sauerkraut. I'm past that..........I think........

(adding sea salt to shredded cabbage, it will bring the juices out of the cabbage and make its own brine)

Alan and I discovered we could make sauerkraut in our very own home after reading about it in a super fabulous book called wild fermentation. Ooodles of interesting recipes and things in there.

(packed down cabbage)

All we needed was salt, cabbage (organic of course) and a big old thingy-ma-jig to store it in, plus some super heavy stuff to weight it down with. They'll sell you sauerkraut making crocks online for a hundred bucks, We bought a gigantic glass cookie jar type container for 15 bucks at the local department store.
Can I get an "oh yeah" for the thrifty people in the house?

So here's how ridiculously simple sauerkraut is....are you ready? Shred a fricking boatload of cabbage, add about 3 tablespoons of sea salt for every 5 pounds of cabbage, weight the whole mess down in an appropriate container....and......you wait....THAT'S IT????? Hell yeah that's it.(bottled sauerkraut, to be kept in the fridge as it's preservative free)

I know, I know I'm as shocked as you but that's seriously it. There's no cooking no sauteing no fancy herbs or oils, vinegars, HA no way and spices don't need em. REAL sauerkraut is just salt and cabbage and time. Ingenious really.
It does take a wee bit more time then the average home maker is perhaps used to...like 3 to 4 weeks BUT if you think about it that's a lot less time then it would take to seriously lay a whoop ass down on the people responsible for your lack of homemade sauerkraut knowledge.

(our homemade sauerkraut is featured here in a feast of homemade Russian black bread, German potato salad, galric-y rapini greens, a pasilla and onion pepper medley and homemade pork sausage patties.....ohGodhelpmeIwantitnow...)

Homemade sauerkraut is zesty, delicious, crunchy, cool and full of all kinds of microscopic probiotic doolies that are good for your insides. Considering that in a way it's alive, it's sort of like a really boring pet you can eat....eww, strike that comparison from your brains please.

Drunken Cookies Update!

Wow, those cookies were so damn good they've been coming to life, getting snookered and going on youtube. I don't know how people manage kids I can't even keep my dang cookies in order.
You can see what I mean at:
http://www.youtube.com/iteacoffee

(Is there a 12 step program for cookies? Perhaps Alan and I need to stage a little intervention, the first step is for those sweet little morsels to admit they're nuts, full of nuts, what ever....)

A little Cheesey...

I used to think cheesecake was some bastardized version of wonderful regular cake with something as odiously disturbing as cheddar cheese added to it. Don't get me wrong , cheddar cheese is a beautiful thing, just not in dessert. I mean come on, CHEESE cake, what was I supposed to think? Plus I was like 6 so give me a break.
Of course when I dared utter these complaints in my childish ignorance I was bitch slapped, metaphorically speaking, in to shape by nobody.
I recall two life altering cheesecake moments from when I was a little girl. Strangely enough each was with a Grandmother. I remember visiting my Grandma Shirley and we'd some times go for jaunts in to town. All I can recall of this one particular jaunt was harsh fluorescent lighting, cafeteria style tables, a lunch counter with glass fronted area, you slid your tray along the counter and pointed at what you wanted.
Grandma got cheesecake, it looked rather ordinary. brown bottom with white stuff on top and brown crumbles to top it off. It wasn't neon red or ice cream so I'm sure I wasn't too impressed. It was a dessert though so I was more then willing to give it a try. My love affair with all things sweets started waaaay back.
Can you see it? A little frizzy red headed girl at a cafeteria table with her Grandma, sliding a fork through a dense, moist layer of cheese cake, scooping up the dark buttery graham crust and having an epiphany. Right there, right there in the middle of the cafeteria at Wool-Co!
It wasn't just good, it was LIFE CHANGING! When you're a little kid cookies are the height of culinary genius for your wee under-developed taste buds. Sometimes pie if you were feeling crazy, always ice cream and anything you could get in a brightly colored packages at the check out counter and had words like Gummi, Fizzy, Gooey or Sour in the title.
If I'd been given my choice of dessert that day, oh how my heart falters at the thought, if I'd been given my choice I might have picked a sundae, an ordinary, uninspiring sundae from a cafeteria. But my Grandma Shirley she picked cheesecake! Oh it was AMAZING! I can't remember much else but the feeling of glorious silky, thick creamy, slightly tangy wonderfulness. Nothing fancy, no fruit or chocolate or anything to muck up the purity of it. JUST cheesecake. I was a changed girl leaving that cafeteria.
Cheesecake wasn't something we had often when I was a kid, actually more like never. For all I know that might have been my first and last bit of cheesecake for a long time to come. But I never forgot it.
The next memory of cheesecake is a little sharper, a little brighter. I suspect it was my second experience with cheesecake, so I was older and ever so slightly more prepared. Of course how prepared can one be when it comes to cheesecake, it's like holding a bright shining star in your mouth and feeling the glory of the universe for an instant. Even if you did that a thousand times could it ever be dimmed, could you ever be truly prepared?
This time I was with my other Grandma, Grandma Prest. Perhaps it was even during the visit when my family were luxuriating in homemade root-beer at home while I was away for a week or two for a summer holiday with Grandma.
I remember it was her birthday and the sun was super bright. I remember that people were coming over, I haven't a clue if it was 2 or 200 but I remember the busy feeling of *company's coming*. Grandma was making dessert in the kitchen. I can see her at the counter putting ruby red slices of fresh strawberries all over a...... glossy white cheesecake. I don't remember the agonies of waiting for a piece, thank goodness things like that do fade in time. I don't remember who the company turned out to be, I don't remember finally getting a piece of the cheesecake. I just remember the tart sweet strawberries and vanilla creamy cheese cake and rich crumbly graham crumbs combination that was even MORE heavenly then the cheesecake from Wool-Co.
I don't think I asked for the recipe. I wish I'd been sophisticated enough to realize I could maybe MAKE this glorious dessert for myself and got the recipe out of my Grandma. I remember going on and on and on and ON to my Mother about this amazing strawberry cheesecake that I got to have at Grandma's. Since our family budget didn't run to cheesecake when ever we wanted I was probably torturing her with descriptions on the cheesecake I got to have and she didn't. Of course...if this WAS during the fateful summer of the best root beer I never got to have then perhaps she got her JUST DESSERTS, so to speak. hahahaha
At some point during my teenage years my Mom got a cookbook from my Grandma Prest. I was well in to my infatuation with desserts then. Some girls save up and buy makeup I bought chocolate chips. Well this one time I was flipping through the cookbook and found a recipe for cheesecake that seemed familiar. The thing that both of these mind blowing childhood cheesecake experiences had in common was the TYPE of cheesecake they were. Unbaked. No eggs, just cream cheese, whip cream and sugar. Oh Mama.
I saved my pennies, and I worked damn hard for them pennies too! House cleaning at a Lady's house every Saturday and I bought myself the ingredients for the cheesecake with some of my earnings. Look I wasn't a total bi-otch about it, I shared, for the most part, with my family.
The first cheese cake I made I topped with slices of bananas. The bananas were pretty good.....but the cheese cake....
HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH!
There were angels singing and the skies opened up bathing in me in golden light when I tried my first bite of that cheesecake. Well, maybe not exactly but I'm pretty sure there was a lot of "MMmmmmmm MMMMMMMmmmmmmmmm MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM"
IT WAS PERFECT! The cheesecake part I mean, you can top it with anything you want but the cheesecake is the essential part. And this recipe was EXACTLY what I was looking for. It was easier to make then I could ever imagine and it started a whole new world of flavors for my family. It was easy to get them addicted to things like that. Sure I spent my hard earned dollars buying cheesecake supplies....ONCE...muahh ahhh ahhh, but after that they WERE addicted, not so subtly hinting "make that cheesecake, what do you need for it?"
A funny thing, this is the only cheesecake recipe I've ever made. It's that good. It's like my husband, why would I stray to another? I hit on the perfect thing first time up to bat so why would I mess with perfection?
Oh, I'm sorry. Were you wanting the recipe? Hmm, all that lead up and nada, zilch, nothing. Just the cold empty cruelty of me denying you your own cheesecake perfection? Don't freak out, I'm not one of those *family secret* kind of gals. Here's the recipe and enjoy. I don't have the name of who originally made this cheesecake but if I ever find it I'll include it here too. I have changed it a wee bit from the original anyways. You can too, sometimes lime pie filling on top, some times lemon, sometimes fresh fruit. Yummers. Customize to your wee precious heart's delight!

Lemon Cheesecake
INGREDIENTS:
For Crust:
1 cup of graham cracker crumbs
2 tbs white sugar
1/4 cup of melted butter
For cheesecake:
1 package of cream cheese (8 oz.)
1/2 cup of white sugar
1/8 tsp of salt
1 tsp of vanilla
1 tsp of lemon juice
1 small container of cool whip
Lemon Topping: 1 package of Jello lemon pie filling, just follow directions on the box.

DIRECTIONS:
Mix graham crumbs, butter and sugar and press in to 9” square pan, bake in pre-heated oven at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. Remove and cool.
Soften cream cheese to room temperature, resisting the urge to just eat it on crackers and skip the whole cheese cake thing...Stir the softened cream cheese with sugar, vanilla, lemon juice and salt in a bowl till well combined. Fold in the whip cream, dont forget to take it out of freezer before hand so it will be soft enough to fold in. Spoon cheesecake mix on to cool crust. Keep in refrigerator while you prepare the lemon pie filling. When the pie filling is ready, pour hot over the cheesecake and let cool. It’s yummiest if you have the will power to leave the whole thing in the fridge a few hours till it’s good and chilled and set up!

This recipe is one I've played a lot with, you can use lower calorie ingredients, you can make homemade lemon or lime pie filling, home made whip cream etc. Replace regular ingredients with organic. You get the drift, it's super simple and super delicious EVERY time I've made it!

Drunken Cookies

Please note that tis not me or my sweetie inebriated in this video but the cookie who came to life. How bizarre. I think it's all fine and well for cookies to talk but I really don't think they ought to be running around getting drunk, it's not seemly you know.

A classic style peanut butter cookie got totally *pimped out* and the results are my uber peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. So good they talk back!

Uber Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
(makes 12 cookies, or 2 really decent cookies)

1/2 cup of salted, smooth, organic peanut butter
1/2 cup of organic coconut oil
2/3 cup of brown sugar
1 organic egg
1/4 tsp of sea salt
1/2 cup of stone ground whole wheat
1/2 cup of spelt flour
1/4 cup of ground flaxseed meal
1/2 tsp of aluminum free baking powder
3/4 tsp of baking soda
a handful of salted roasted pecans
a BIG handful of chocolate chunks from a block of chocolate
We prefer the Scharffen Berger Bittersweet 70% Cacao

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F, Mix the ingredients together adding as much chocolate and nuts as you prefer. This makes a stiff cookie dough that needs to be man handled in to cookie shapes. Bake in the oven for about 11 minutes, don't overbake and ENJOY! Particularily mind blowing when frozen and nibbled on cold with a glass of French Roast iced coffee....

These cookies are not only brain alteringly delicious BUT...take a breath....they're healthy, satisfying and did I mention freaking taste-tastic?
(please note these cookies are so miraculous they can be known to come to life and talk. Just saying, fair warning is fair warning!)

A Threesome with Ben and Jerry

A quiet weekend threesome with me, Ben and Jerry turned into an orgy of cold creamy lovin....
I try to stay strong against those two and their sinfully delicious ways....but how am I supposed to resist temptation with flavors like....creme brule....Oh mercy me..........
I do my damnedest to ignore their enticing good looks but it always ends up the same.
MMmmmmmmmmmmmm....
Me, Ben and Jerry in an orgy of frozen goodness on the kitchen floor.
Slightly full, slightly abashed and slightly apologetic to my husband who doesn't understand why eating a pint of ice cream has to involve thrashing about like a fish outta water.
It was Creme fricking Brule flavored ice cream peoples......
Times like that I wish I smoked.

One Summer......

.......way back when I was just a wee lass no taller then a blade of grass growing on top of an ant hill, (of course combining the two heights together, of A: the ant hill plus B: the grass to equal C: the height of me) my Momma made root beer.
SHE MADE ROOT BEER!
She might as well have called down the sun to do her bidding, whistled up the wind at her command, made animals talk in french.....it was THIS miraculous to me that my very own mother MADE root beer!!!!
In modern times, meaning now, I know that anything and everything can be figured out, made or ordered off the internet. Great gobs of information are just floating around out there in cyber space from "how to please your man in 3.7 seconds" to "making cheese at home, the easy way". So the idea of making root beer or any soda for that matter doesn't seem so crazy, so unattainable, so far beyond my capabilities, not when the internet is at hand and I can google a topic to death within 2 minutes of thinking it up.
BUT this was back in ancient times, meaning BEFORE the internet....
And my Mother just MADE root beer, right out of the blue! Well I mean there were details and a method and ingredients and all that wonderful stuff that I am sure is involved with making root beer. But I don't remember any of that, not with the sweet song of "MOM IS MAKING ROOT BEER" singing in my head. Oh what a tune....it's volume only lessened by the warnings from my Mother that making root beer was NOT an instant gratification type process...it took....TIME.
ack!
TIME, the death knell of any child's enthusiasm. ack, why do things always take TIME when you're a kid. Why even bring up the wonderful possibility of HOMEMADE root beer if it's going to take time???????????? If you mention root beer I want it now, like any normal kid. Patience is for doctors not a young girl in the middle of the summer with root beer lust clouding her brain..
BUT once more the root beer tune wove it's sweet melody through my brain as the details of making root beer were put into action.
Beer bottles were gathered...from where??? I don't even recall, perhaps making root beer involved one great big beer drinking party for the parents...a ha...perhaps this was the motivation behind THEIR root beer making enthusiasm!
New bottle caps were bought. Shiny silver bottle caps that were more precious then any jewelry could be. I was astounded by the brilliance of my Mother. SHE knew where to BUY brand new unused bottle caps, when I hadn't even known a thing like that was possible??????
After that the root beer making process is a blur.....with the only thing standing out in memory being the glowing orange Hires root beer box that contained some magical mysterious ingredients that would be transformed into....root beer. ahhhhhhhhhhh...home made root beer.
Then that nasty downside of the whole process came into play.....time...ack. I remember we had to leave the bottles alone for some length of time. It felt like years, it felt like I was being told I couldn't have any precious home made root beer till I was an old woman. In reality it was probably only a few weeks or so but it might as well have been yeeeeeaaaaaaars.
It was summer and the days were slowly ticking by with school looming ahead in the future. And I was slowly being tortured. I wanted summer to last forever and school to stay a vague distant idea in front of me, forever always 2 WHOLE months away! BUT.....I wanted root beer....homemade root beer.....root beer that could ONLY be had after some miserably long length of time had passed. I believe I may actually have created some sort of rip in the fabric of time and reality with my conflicting prayers that summer. For time to slow down and crawl by so school would never arrive....for time to speed up and pass in a blur so I could get my hands on homemade root beer from a REAL beer bottle........
I'm not sure if I did rip the fabric of reality but I DID get to go on a mini vacation to my Grandma Prest's for a whole week! Going to Grandma's place meant biscuits and molasses, a big Red Dog named Benson and walks down Pembrook road so I was pretty satisfied with those arrangements. What better way to pass the time awaiting for homemade root beer then with your Grandma and a big Red dog??
I don't remember very much about that particular visit with Grandma Prest, it was fun as always...there was indeed biscuits and molasses to be had every day..... but eventually the week passed and I returned home. More anxious to hear news on the root beer then even to see my own Mother.
The way I remember it....and so it must be true......I asked if the root beer was ready yet and could I have some.
I don't know how I can finish this....you do not want to know what the answer to my innocent root beer lusting question was......
They drank it.
I thought it was a joke.
Surely if it had been ready during the week I was GONE they'd have saved me ONE bottle.
Nope.
NO JOKE
and worse....NO HOME MADE ROOT BEER for me......
*sigh*
Oh there were *excuses* and most of them valid I'm sure.....at least that's what I tell myself. One can't disown their own family for enjoying home made root beer with out you and not saving you even a drip...not even a half a drip...can one???
Well I didn't....and I got past the heart breaking disappointment...almost.
But I tell you this.....NO root beer will ever taste as good as that root beer I never got to have.
I'm sure if I'd had a taste of that home made root beer it would have been good...perhaps even GREAT! But I know this for sure, there is NO way that root beer could have been as delicious as I know it was by never having had it....It's aura increases with each passing remembrance of it. The family enjoyed mediocre homemade root beer that NEVER got made again...but for me, I missed out on superbly divine root beer that I am sure tasted like ambrosia and grows in flavor fabulousness with each passing day!
I think perhaps I will go bake a cake now and throw it out. Just so I'll have missed the opportunity of eating the most decadently delicious cake that ever existed, which sounds a lot better then scarfing down semi o.k. cake that was a little dry.

Apple Pie Update

After much whining....er I mean deliberation and contemplation of my Apple Pie Anguish I decided to take matters into my own hands. NO, I did not go make an unsuspecting baker's life a living hell, nor make him eat 7 of his own awful pies (which may not sound like a lot but you try and eat 7 and see how good you feel) I did nothing evil and violent or even slightly twisted like chanting spells not so quietly under my breath, sitting at the table closest to the kitchen of the restaurant and giving all staff the evilest eye I could manage followed up by a wedgie if they wandered too close. Instead I channeled my frustrations in to a homemade apple crisp that could kick the ass of ANY store bought/restaurant made pie ever not to mention leave them crying and begging for mercy whilst I stomped all over their.....................right.............channeling aggression into the crisp. Well anyways don't get all snooty on me now cause you think that an apple crisp is not an apple pie, cause I say it dang well is, just minus the crust.
And how was it? DIVINE!!!!!!!!!!!! FULLY COOKED and so cinnamon-y and delicious it brought tears of happiness to our eyes at our own culinary genius. So there you go, no more ranting about apple pies, I'm over it, done, finished........SATISFIED!!!!!!! Not to mention 17 dollars richer in tips (Alan appreciates apple-y goodness as much as I, only he tips better!)

Apple Pie Anguish

I am not a violent person by nature.
I do not bitch slap the check out girl for touching my tomatoes.
I do not trip the idiot smoking near the doors to a public place and make him eat his cigarette, nor take pleasure in his sobbing for forgiveness if I SHOULD make him eat it.
I don't flip the finger at morons who must have learned how to drive from a video game.
I don't holler obscenities at strangers for giving me the evil eye just because we were dancing in the middle of a department store aisle. If they don't wanna see it they can dang well look elsewhere.
I hardly ever do anything criminal....
BUT there are days....there are days when I just can't sit back and take it......some injustices are so wrong, so basically evil in their existence that I can not just cringe and turn a blind eye. Some one must pay for the injury they have inflicted upon my person, some one must PAY I tell you for the cruelty and mental anguish they have caused....caused how you might ask...HOW??@@#!@
BY serving me RAW APPLES SURROUNDED BY MUCOUS-Y STUFF AND ALL MASQUERADING AS APPLE PIE.
APPLE PIE!!!!!!
Apple pie my ass...in fact that sounds better then the dutch apple crap I've been subjected to on occasion. Is there a sign on my forehead??? Something I can't see that says "apple pie sucker here" No need to break out the good fully cooked apple pie, just serve up the the stuff the 2 year old in the back baked up in their easy bake oven...no...actually that gives more credit to the pie then I want to give. Something a 2 year old baked up in their easy bake oven would be better then...*shuddddders* canned apple pie filling. My heart can't take it. There is NO bigger betrayal then being served a slab of delicious LOOKING pie, sliding my fork through the flaky crust, the crispy crumbles into.........what in the holy hell??? I don't even know what you can call it...in MY world (which is all that is right and good) apple pie has cinnamon and brown sugar, the inside of an apple pie should be brown..NOT WHITE BORDERING ON FREAKING GREEN!!!!!!!!!! Do I need to ask the waitress to bring the pie out for my visual inspection before I actually commit to ordering a piece.... I don't want to make a fuss but I have to admit perhaps the embarrassment of asking to examine the merchandise before buying would be less then throwing a tantrum in the middle of a restaurant and making the waitress cry. If you have never seen a grown woman throw a tantrum over apple pie then consider yourself lucky. If flying silver ware and sobbing bakers and the full born fury of an enraged and betrayed apple pie connoisseur isn't your cup of tea...then perhaps you'd best steer clear of me when I have the urge to try apple pie from an as yet untried apple pie source.
There IS good apple pie out there, I've had it and it was gooooooood, sell your own mother and tattoo the recipe on your back good. Apple pie that leaves me speechless...YES speechless for WHOLE minutes while I bask in the dreamy cinnamon-y goodness and rightness that is a decent slice of apple pie.
Perhaps this is the problem, perhaps if I'd just been fed apple crap all my life instead of some half decent bordering on exquisite pies I'd not know what I was being subjected to at these.....restaurants...HA! More like apple pie clone sweat shops. And they get away with it??? I mean...I just can not fathom what the heck is going on behind the closed doors of some kitchens.....a little common sense people...like if you slice into the pie and it goes CRUNCH THERE DAMN WELL BETTER BE SOME FREAKING NUTS IN IT!!!!!!!!!!!!! APPLE PIE IS NOT CRUNCHY!!!!!!
That's apple pie 101 people..apples that go crunch are RAW, If people wanted raw apples they'd get a RAW APPLE. Pies are baked...supposedly...pies should be squishy and gooshy and ooooeeey gooey little microcosms of heaven. APPLE PIE IS NOT CRUNCHY. And you know what...fine..fine..say the baker accidently didn't keep an eye on the timer and took the pie out too early...fine..I've done that myself a time or too (meanwhile I damn sure put the pie BACK in the oven when I discovered my error...but that's just me I happen to CARE ABOUT WHAT I AM BAKING)
But anyways say a busy baker at a restaurant is busily baking up a storm for all the unsuspecting suckers...ER..I mean *DINERS*, and say this baker pulls the poor pie outta the oven too early and it mistakenly gets served to the suckers, I mean diners...that's fine...INNOCENT mistake.
BUT, you explain to me, explain to me how a BAKER can in good conscience make an apple pie that has NO brown sugar in it..NO cinnamon to speak of AND some how not bake the pie to doneness....I'll tell you how..THIS BAKER DOESN'T CARE. They could just as easily be whipping up a nice fresh batch of injected molded medical supply parts. This person has NO business being anywhere NEAR innocent apples and virgin pie crusts. Oh the pie crusts, it's pretty hard to mess up a pie crust, who even cares about the pie crust, a pie is NOT about the pie crust, they don't say "would you like some pie crust with some apples?" NOOOOooooooOOOooooo cause it's all about the apples people. And the apples are just one part of the triad of goodness that is a decent apple pie. You gotta have brown sugar, you gotta have cinnamon and you gotta have apples. The crust can go to hell for all I care. It's main function in life is just to surround the apples, and to keep waitresses from getting their grubby fingers all over my apple-y goodness.
So here I am once again feeling the sting of apple pie betrayal. Did they know what they were serving me I wonder?? Have a good laugh over that one from behind closed kitchen doors? Mean while my heart is breaking with the first forkful....I don't even have to take a bite...........I feel my throat aching, my eyes well up. They couldn't have hurt me any more then if they'd taken the very fork they gave me to eat this *stuff* and jabbed it in my back. Betrayal. I can take it. I have before and I will again. But can the apples people??? How long do you think apple pie will let itself be victimized this way????
I for one have learned my painful lesson...yet again. Know your source people, you don't want to get stuck with a bad batch of apple pie.
Let them go on making their apple pies, more like MOCK APPLE PIES, just let them. Let them think that nobody noticed. Maybe I am just a nobody to them......one nobody who noticed....and remembers.
But do not worry dear friends that I have lost all faith in the apple pies of the world. Like I said there are good ones out there......and where there's good apple pie, I'll be there, fork in hand, smile in place, anger in check.
But should you be the unsuspecting diner next to me at a place serving the miserable excuse for a so called apple pie....beware. Better yet move away. Go to another restaurant. For like a mighty volcano my fury will not be contained any longer...should I be denied my good apple pie.
And please remember, bad apple pie is NOT a victim-less crime.....just like bonking a bad baker over the head...some one is going to get hurt in both cases.

A Probiotic Pictorial

Kefir is our latest love.
And recently we discovered how to make it at home with our very own Kefir grains which has started us down the path of probiotic bliss.
Now if I tell you that Kefir is a refreshing, cultured milk beverage you might think I've flipped my lid. But it's true, Kefir is a very satisfying, slightly fizzy, vaguely yogurt-like drink. We find it delicious, and apparently tons of people agree because the internet is loaded with information about it. It's one of those things that once we learned about it feel like "how in the heck could I not have heard of this before?"
Kefir has a long and fascinating history. Apparently Kefir originated in Russia in the Caucasus Mountains where people from that area were reported to have very long life spans. There's even a fantastic legend that says that Kefir grains came from Mohammed as a gift to the Orthodox people in the Caucasian mountains, and that the grains themselves were called "Grains of the Prophet". There's another story that these people guarded their Kefir grains and although they shared the beverage it made they wouldn't give away the grains themselves. People attempted to reproduce Kefir without the grains but to no avail. In the early 1900's an attempt was made by the owners of some cheese factories in the northern caucasus mountains to obtain some of the Kefir grains. It sounds like something from a fairy tale but they sent a female employee to *charm* some grains out of Caucasus Prince. Apparently he was able to resist these charms and wouldn't share the grains so off she went but was kidnapped by the Prince's men and returned to him because he wanted to marry her!!! She was rescued and brought the matter to the Czar's court where she ended up winning her suit against the Prince's kidnapping and her settlement was....you guessed it...KEFIR grains. She is credited with bringing Kefir to the Russian People where it was first used for medicinal purposes.
Despite all the wonderful probiotic health reasons of Kefir we drink it first and foremost cause it's dang tasty!
We ordered our grains off the internet because like I already mentioned you can not make real Kefir without real grains.
Kefir grains added to the appropriate amount of milk (organic of course) produce ready to drink Kefir in about 24 hours. So this is sort of like having a pet that needs taken care of. Every day we feed our grains new milk and enjoy the delicious Kefir the grains produce.
Alan likes to say our Kefir is full of organic nano-bots *grins* because they're microscopic buddies that do good stuff inside your body. (sounds a lot like nano-bots right!) It makes a kind of sense if you think about it.
If you have no interest in our daily process of making Kefir then quit reading now. Though I can't understand how you'd NOT be interested. If YOU wrote a blog about how you get up and prepare oatmeal, or put your socks on, or make coffee or dance to Esthero's "wikked Lil' Grrrls" every day I'd read it.....really I would.
It all starts with these...our wonderful little Kefir grains. As you can see they look more like pieces of Cauliflower then grains of any sort.
They are added to organic milk every day and then hide out under a towel on our kitchen table busily converting plain milk to Kefir. It's not under a towel cause it's camera shy but to keep it out of direct sunlight.
You can really see that the Kefir grains are having an affect on the milk. It thickens up, sometimes even separating into curds and whey.
When we see it has started to do this we stir it up and get ready to exchange the new batch of Kefir for more milk.
After we have stirred the Kefir we start scooping out the Kefir grains, they tend to float at the top. We scoop them out just to help strain the whole batch easier.We strain the Kefir through a big colander into a big bowl. (We learned the hard....VERY messy way that it was easier to dirty an extra bowl just for the sole purpose of straining rather then straining right into the smaller bowl we end up storing the Kefir in.)
The Kefir grains left in the colander plus the little curds they have made in the Kefir plus the slightly thick nature of the the Kefir itself makes it a little difficult to strain and vigorous shaking of the colander is needed to strain off the Kefir completely.

After draining the Kefir off of the grains as best we can we often weigh them to see how much they have grown. The Kefir grains will grow a little bit with every batch and eventually some have to be separated out of the mix or else you need to increase the amount of milk you are using. Our grains have way more then tripled since we first got them. We now have extra grains just sitting in the fridge waiting for some kind soul to make Kefir in their household with them. We never really realized how very few people we know until we started thinking of who we could give our extra Kefir grains to. Perhaps as a VERY surprising gift to the mail man?
After the grains are weighed we add them back to the pitcher we use to make the Kefir.
We pour the appropriate amount of milk into the pitcher over top of the Kefir grains. After adding the milk we cover the pitcher with a lid and cloth and let the Kefir making process begin all over again. We store our finished Kefir in Clara Belle the fridge and prefer to drink it chilled with a bit of stevia for sweetener and vanilla for flavor, occasionally adding fruit to the mix.It is absolutely delicious to us and rather addicting. The slightly fizzy nature of it when I have my Kefir sweetened and vanilla-ized reminds me a bit of a vanilla ice cream float in a lemon/lime soda. The flavor as I mentioned earlier is yogurt like, I'd also compare it a bit to buttermilk flavor. We have quickly filled our Clara Belle fridge with huge amounts of prepared Kefir and have used it in soups, sauces, salad dressings and baked goods. (of course you lose some of the health benefits when you heat it but the flavor adds some nice zing to all the afore mentioned food stuffs)( We have even made batches of cream cheese type cheese called Lebna that I am sure I'll have to blog about eventually........
There is a whole wealth of information on the internet about the vitamins and beneficial bacterias (of which there's a ton, way more then yogurt has) in the Kefir. For now I'm just thrilled with the flavor but there's some interesting reading out there on the health benefits of Kefir.
O.k. I gotta quit blabbing and post this before it turns into the world's longest blab-fest about Kefir. Besides I'm pretty sure it's that time again........time to take over the world you might ask? Not yet.... it's time to add another batch of Kefir to the fridge and start another batch brewing.

A Poetically Perfect Meal...

Ode to Chili Gravy....
to the speckled creaminess that is your very existence
to thy savoriness that doth cling to every bite.
the rich and thick puddles of your steaming self,
a battle with my taste-buds that I do not wish to fight.
where have you been all my life chili gravy?
that it should be now you bring me light
to a previously empty, flavorless Tex-Mex existence...
you fill my heart and plate with chili gravy delight!

Margarita, Margarita how you fill my heart with heat
wildly dancing in my mouth, join me in a bite to eat
how you make my lips pucker for a sweet and tarty kiss
Margarita, Margarita you sweet and sour bit of bliss

Oh... the loaded enchilada
or a wet burrito if you will
the freaking amazingness of you
gives my menu quite a thrill
ooey, gooey and smothered in sauce
of course the chili gravy kind
filled with cheese and peppers
how you blow my culinary mind
cilantro is your purfume
while onions are your date
join me and my tomatoes
it's time that you were ate

Breadhenge

Further explorations into "no knead" bread have proven delicious. A loaf with a lovely spicy layer of raw garlic running through it turned out fantastic, as did a half whole wheat version of the bread. (It was bloomin hard to cut all those little grains of wheat in half but the recipe called for it..half whole wheat, and who am I to argue with a recipe)
To keep the bread moist when freshly cut I turn the loaves up on their cut ends...and..voila!
Breadhenge!
The people in England have it all wrong, it's not rocks but giant petrified bread ruins, obviously from some huge bakery and even huge-er bakers!!!
I will need more no knead bread in my near future as I just bought a new (pre-seasoned) cast iron dutch oven...ohhhhhh yeah! Perhaps this will result in slightly less spread out bread (as I get from my cast iron frying pan) THOUGH I assure you flatter bread is just as delicious as higher bread!

I NEED NO KNEAD.....

I could easily crawl right inside one of those soft, little bread dimples and live happily ever after with my sweetie. We could chew our way through the loaf like ants, make all kinds of soft, squishy rooms to live in....if only.......


Some days I'm a sheep. A happy, fluffy sheep contentedly mingling amongst me fellow fluffy sheeps. (deliberately added the *s* at the end of sheep, aint it more cute that way?)
You know how in the cartoons, the sheep will follow each other right off the edge of a cliff? Well some days it's nice to be the first sheep to make that leap...and others, well I'm contented to just go along for the ride...er free fall and see what all the fuss is about.
Which brings me to bread.
I need no knead bread.
I have read waaaaaay too much about "no knead" bread in the last couple weeks to keep up this false pretense......that I'm indifferent to all me fellow sheep leaping off the cliff into the world of "no knead" breads.
What IS all the fuss about....??? I don't even care that a zillion other sheep have already blogged their first forays into the magical world of no knead breads. So many have done this so why add one more blog to the batch??? BECAUSE.....
Damn it, because you all aren't reading all those other blogs. Blogging is like spreading a virus. Let me infect you me dear family and friends with the joys of "no knead" breads.
So as you can tell from the name it's bread........that you do NOT knead...need yes...knead no.
Actual bread, not knock off biscuits masquerading as bread either. Actual bread.
Apparently this whole sheep, cliff diving, no knead bread craze started with a column by Mark Bittman who adapted the recipe from Jim Lahey of the Sullivan Street Bakery. O.k., covered my posterior well enough here for y'all to understand that give credit where credit is due. Hmm..well maybe just a certain amount of credit cause I don't know where HE got the recipe.....but HE is the one who has ignited this "no knead" craze. Oh yes it's a craze!!! Go ahead and type in "no knead bread" in to the search engine of your choice and become quickly disillusioned in my own genius as you see the umpteen zillion articles and blogs boasting, bragging and baking no knead bread...and *sniff*.....*sniff sniff*.......ALL before me........
wahhhhhhhhhhh.
So I read the recipe (which you can find EVERY where on the internet, but I am too un-sheep like in this one respect, to post it here with out permission first)
But basically you mix up some flour, salt, water and the itty bitty-est bit of yeast and LEAVE alone for 18 hours. Then you fondle it a bit after that period of time (in no way does this fondling resemble kneading either, its just transferring the dough to a flourerd surface, shaping it etc) Let it rise for a couple more hours, bake it up...and........
HOLY FREAKING HANNAH!!!!
BREAD...bread....sweet yeasty Gods I made bread with NO kneading...the same sort of bread I shell out 5 dollars a loaf for at the local stores because it *looks pretty*.
Let me tell you, once I committed myself to making this "no knead" bread the worst part, the most tortuously slow part was the waaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiittttttinnnggggg...
Luckily...or maybe not so luckily I timed my 18 hour dough rise for partly when I was asleep...which meant I had dream after dream after dream of "no knead bread". Images of it in all it's various stages. Was quite odd...can't say as I ever dreamt about bread before. But when morning came I was readyyyyyyyyyyyy....well ready to dump it outta the bowl for it's second but thank heavens mercifully short rise. And ohhhhhhhhhh it baked up so fine and crispy and mouth wateringly golden and I suppose *rustic* is the term.
This loaf of bread was almost too pretty to eat...but no worries we just closed our eyes in homemade bread ecstasy and shoveled it in. YUMMERS! Tasted as good as it looked, faintly sour dough like, moist and chewy with a crackly, crispy crust.

I baked mine up in a cast iron skillet. I had to manufacture a *lid* of sorts out of tinfoil, but it worked out good.


*sigggggggghs*
Unfortunately my sweet and barely blossomed romance with that particular loaf has already come to a delicious end...(translation: we ate it all, but the other way sounds less piggy)
However have no fear as I have 2 more loaves on the go, rising happily on my counter top as I quietly go crazy from the wait...er...I mean wait for a couple more hours to pass and I can bake em up.
So as you can see I have built a fairly good case for why in some occasions it's good to follow the flock, cause some times when that many people are doing something you know it's gotta be good. *snicker* I will reserve this same argument for the future when I think Alan and I will get matching tattoos AS we bungee jump,in the middle of a poker hand, chewing bread and smoking....well smoking anything, followed by a nice round of liposuctioning and spray-on tan. Cause after all if every one else is doing it......
BAAaaaaAAaaaaaaa.
BAAAaaad Sheep.

My Feast For Your Eyes

On days like this, high on the scent of orange blossoms, with the sun warm and the breeze cool I just gotta BBQ. Today's BBQ special was buffalo burger with blue cheese, red pepper, red onion, smoked paprika, chili powder and oregano in the meat mix. I'm gonna brag and say my burgers kick butt. Ground buffalo is fantastic and if you have an opportunity to try some I highly recommend it. Buffalo seems to be very juicy and flavorful and so far superior to any ground beef we have had. The burgers grilled up quick with a nice char aided by some spicy BBQ sauce.


When we BBQ it smells goooooooood unlike SOME people's....you know who you are....you nameless neighbors from previous dwellings. Perhaps I am too harsh...perhaps they didn't have noses, or perhaps they enjoyed the scent of charred tires and caustic chemicals. Perhaps in their world it's not a BBQ till you throw a few cds, some roadkill and nasty ol diapers on to the coals. I myself like to use some hickory wood chips....but that's just me. I learned a great tip for adding an authentic smoke flavor to your BBQ-ing. Soak the wood chips for a while so they smoke up nicely when they hit the coals. To save time you can pre-soak a big batch and freeze them in a container so they're ready to go at a moment's notice.
I'm kind of glad we never attempted BBQ-ing at our last dwelling where the neighbors didn't grill their food so much as choke it to done-ness with chemical infused smoke. Because I am not about to hand out free nose-gasms from my sweet, hickory smoke scented air to persons who think lighter fluid is a condiment.

Don't forget you can click on any photo for a close-up, and in some cases like the pic above an extreme mouth-watering close-up!

We BBQ with coal. But not just any coal. We were so emotionally and nostril-y scarred from the afore mentioned neighbors that we steered VERY clear of lighter fluid, just the sight of instant light briquettes made us weep. So after a wee bit of research on the net I discovered another kind of charcoal called "Lump Charcoal". It's made from real wood and has no chemicals added. In fact the brand we get, called Cowboy Charcoal, actually looks like pieces of wood. And when you light it the scent is mouth watering. Lighting it is very easy by the way. We bought ourselves a charcoal chimney. It's super inexpensive, like 6 bucks at the hardware store. A piece of wadded up newspaper goes in the bottom, in the top goes the lump coal. There are access and ventilation holes through which the paper can be lighted, and within about 10 minutes the coals are glowing red. Then you just dump the hot coals out into your BBQ with the aid of the attached handle on the chimney. Easy Squeezy. Throw a few of them frozen wet wood chips on it and hoooo boy we're ready to grill!

Pictured above in today's feast is a pile of crispy lettuce, some homemade salsa, corn on the cob, sliced avocado, some VERY tasty kalamata olive bread we picked up and.......the star of the meal......GRILLED BUFFALO BURGERS!
You may commence drooling.........now.

Adventures in Tortilla Making!

You might not know from looking at me but this was not my first tortilla making experience. I made them a few years ago for me and my sweetie. And while I don't really remember anything about the experience I can only assume it went well and we enjoyed them. At least I'd like to assume we did because it's either that or it was so hideously scarring to my psyche that I have repressed the terrible tortilla memories....
But here I am again entering the tortilla making world! I got the recipe from AllRecipes.Com
This is my favorite place on the internet to get recipes. I am totally addicted to finding recipes that have a zillion reviews. I mean it just makes good sense! You open a cookbook and a recipe stares coldly back at you giving away none of the hidden dangers and potential awfulness of it's end result to you. But at AllRecipes.Com you can get recipes that have been reviewed and rated by regular people. Some times hundreds of reviews for a single recipe!
So the recipe was simple, flour, water, salt and shortening.
I used all unbleached white flour and coconut oil instead of the flour and shortening they called for in the recipe. No explosions or fires so doesn't seem to have affected the recipe in any negative way!
Below are my beautiful tortilla dough balls. They said it's better to let them rest for an hour, I let mine rest for 2 cause we went out shopping for a nunchuck. (Not the weapon but the game controller accessory for the Nintendo Wii.)
Mine might have dried out slightly as I forgot to cover them with a towel, but it didn't really matter. Sure my tortillas might not have rolled out in to perfectly round circles with no cracked edges. But I can assure you cracked edges doesn't affect the flavor. Don't believe me? Go ahead, rip open the STORE BOUGHT tortillas I'm sure you have in your fridge and rip up the edges......I'll wait.............tasted the same didn't they? You feel silly now don't you. Don't worry I won't tell...(I say feeling superior)
Rolling the dough was fun. It behaved nicely and didn't stick to my counter. I did take the precaution of a little pre-flouring the rolling pin and counter surface though. Nothing makes me feel more chef like then wildly sprinkling things during the course of a recipe. Be it flour, garlic powder, coarse salt...or...red pepper flakes. I can NOT resist the act of sprinkling. Alan can tell you about the freakishly hot pasta dishes I made him when we first lived together. I just couldn't stop sprinkling red pepper flakes. Grab a pinch and sprinkle into the pot..if one is fun then seven is heaven. I'd like to say my pasta was so good it made Alan cry...but it was the red pepper flakes......
Anyways after rolling out the balls into nice thin circle-ish shapes I got my cast iron skillet screaming hot. I am in the first stages of a re-newed relationship with my cast iron skillet. We've had a bit of a rocky past and just recently I've invited it back into my life. So far we're getting along fine. As long as it doesn't betray me and make my food stick to it I'll try to keep it nicely seasoned and oiled.
The Tortillas literally just took a minute to cook, 30 seconds each side. We like ours a little charred so a little charred I let them get.
MMMmmmmmmm Yummy looking huh? But what to do with a yummy home made tortilla? I made wraps for Alan and I. First slathered vegenaise on the warm tortilla. (vegenaise is like mayo only a zillion times tastier and better for you to boot, it's also egg free and the one we used is made with grapeseed oil, good for the heart!) Then I put leftover salsa, some cooked chicken breast with smoked paprika and smoke seasoning and garlic on it followed by a small pile of lettuce. Rolled it up as tight as I could with out ripping the tortilla and....VOILA!
They tasted even better then they look. And the verdict on the tortillas? Easy to make, and delicious! Alan described them as heartier then store bought ones. And he considers heartier a good thing! I'm kind of baffled at myself that it took me this long to make them a second time. I'm definitely not waiting so long to make them a third.