Sunday, August 30, 2009

Five Pounds (mostly butter fat.)

Is how much weight I probably gained this weekend. Good Lord. We have been doing some professional eating up in here. We started off Friday night after work heading over to The Railyard for a send off party for one of my co-workers Shayna and her husband Jack who left today to move to Austin, Texas. Most all of the peeps I work with were there (we were missing Beth and Kate.) I ate mushroom gnocchi with truffle oil (ummm and some onion rings.) Very filling and pretty good.

Here's a shot (albeit a bad shot) of the group at the table....



I had a table mate named Quinn... he is the owner's (Jeff and Kari) little guy. We got along just fine. I cheered him on while he was concocting crayon cocktails. And he helped me demolish the onion ring appetizer.


I'll miss Shayna... she was such a great help training me as a chocolatier. Bon Voyage sister! Good luck in Texas!

Saturday is of course the farmer's market and so we went and loaded up on good stuff again. And we have been cooking our asses off and fattening our asses up ever since. Yesterday we made a tomato and corn pie. What could be more perfect this time of the year? The recipe is from Smitten Kitchen's blog. It was fun to make and turned out really delicious. I would totally make it again.







After we pigged out on that pie I made a cold dessert soup from this month's Vegetarian Times magazine that is a coconut milk base with tapioca and fresh honeydew melon. Dudes. It was mighty fine... and again, really pretty food.





Sheesh. We went to bed full last night. Billy claimed to still be full when he woke up this morning (not me, I am apparently a pig.)

So we polished off the rest of that tomato pie today with a nice simple salad of peppery arugula from the market. Yes, we ate a whole pie between the two of us in exactly 24 hours. Sick. And here's where it gets really good... Billy bought these sweet little tiny pears at the market Saturday with the plan of baking them in a tart. People... what a tart it turned out to be. Allow me to demonstrate...




See how cute those little pears are nestled in to their tart pan?

Little pears... meet your new friends shortbread crust and almond cream filling.



After baking for an hour...



To make matters even worse he poured on a honey-pear glaze...




Digging in...



Uhhhh, yeah.




So there you have it. The five pounds. Billy was making the argument tonight that Julia Child lived to be in her 90's eating this sort of shit her whole life long. She was also like 12 feet tall and a giant of a kick ass woman. I'm 5'2 and kind of a dweeby, sickly kid. I haven't got a chance. Billy has been wielding a stick of butter a day ever since he got hooked on French cooking. Wish me luck.

Ok... so in closing here are a few more random pics from the past few days hanging out at home. Have a great week y'all!

This one goes out to Karen... Rudy in his sexiest pose....



This is a shot from a moment when cheddar cheese was being shredded for the tomato pie.



Market flowers.



Rudy at his usual post... growling at the world at large. Too bad we are on the second floor and no one out in the world cares.







3 comments:

april said...

Sounds like an excellent way to gain five pounds! YUUUUMMMMM!

Karen/Small Earth Vintage said...

You made the corn pie! I saw when Smitten Kitchen Tweeted the recipe and got all drooly. Now I'll have to make it. Or make Andy make it. And that tart looked gorgeous! Yum, I love pears. I've never seen cute little baby pears like that.

THANK YOU for the Rudy shots! omg, I so love the outstretched front and back legs--how do they *do* that? Dogs are little yogis. And I know that "awaiting the shredded cheesefall" look well. Actually, Lucy has learned that if either of us is in the kitchen and says "Oops!" something good fell.

Rudy's such a good boy, protecting you guys! Lucy would totally high five his growling at the world.

Keep 'em coming, Bethany. Food and Rudy--nothing better! :) xo

Bethany said...

Karen... I just came from Etsy's front page where your squirrels are invading the scene. It is a really cute treasury. I hope you get to see it.

Yeah... you should make the tomato tart for sure. It was well worth it.

I am off to clean up ten pounds of stuffy fluff from the living room floor. Rudy finally started degutting his big lion. Sigh. SO sad. Lion was my favorite.