I May Have to Change the Blog Name to....

Full Stomachs. For real. It seems like every single time I sit down to write a new post it is about what we have been eating and not much else. And here I am again about to do it again.

So what HAVE we been eating? Some good shit people.... some gooood shit. Last night we had three things made from the September issue of Gourmet magazine. Billy made the Italian parsley and beet salad with fresh ricotta while I made the cold cucumber and cubanelle soup with cashews and chives. They both turned out to be fabulous recipes and I would make both of them again for sure. We lucked out and had a great wine to drink with the meal... 2008 Fetzer Gewurtztraminer. It could not have been a more perfect match up. And it is an inexpensive bottle of wine which makes it even better.





Our third recipe form the Gourmet mag was the indulgent one... the apple pie with cheddar crust. I can't find the exact recipe online to link up to. Anyway, Billy made the crust and I made the filling.... then I assembled the pie. Due to the influence of the Gewurtztraminer and the fact that I was listening to my George Michael/Michael Jackson station on Pandora I neglected to add the 3 tablespoons of flour to the apple filling which resulted in a pretty watery pie in the end. It is still incredibly delicious but I was pissed at myself for flaking out and messing it up. Oh well, it will not stop us from eating it! And allow me to say this... do not be skeptical of adding a half a pound of sharp cheddar to your pie crust. People, it is waaaaayyy better than you can imagine.





What have we been doing other than cooking up a storm and eating? Well... working, that's what. My work at the chocolate shop is insane busy right now. I can't even keep up. The owners are out of town for a few weeks and the whole sale orders just keep rollin' in along with the fact that the walk in traffic is three times as much as what would be traditional for this time of the year. All this adds up to mean one thing... my co-worker Marie and I are getting our butts kicked.

Billy snapped a few shots of what I was working on today. Here I am dipping Spats which are caramel (made by Billy) topped off with tamari roasted pinon nuts and dipped in dark chocolate. I am doin' the dipping here....

And here is a close up to really get your mouth watering...

I am also knee deep in a special order for a couple of hundred turtles. Normally we do a caramel with toasted pecans dipped in chocolate called a Don Juan Pecan but these are amped up a notch to look like an actual turtle. You get more pecans... which is always a good thing.



So there you have it! Food seems to be the dominant theme in our lives of late. I have been missing the Airstream these past few weeks so we are hoping to take a long weekend in October and head up into Northern New Mexico to a lakefront campground with the trailer and kayak and get one more go at it before the real cold weather sets in.

Drop me a quick comment and say HI readers! How is everyone doin'? And thanks for staying with me through these slow posting times... Cheers!

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.