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.

Smokin' Hot

Every now and then we get a hankerin' for some wickedly hot, spicy food. Today was one of those days. I scored three old issues of Vegetarian Times at the thrift today for free and it just so happened that one of them had a recipe for Chipotle-Bean Burgers with Cilantro Sauce in it. We whipped them up for dinner tonight along with some fresh salsa and served them on corn tortillas. They were kind of a pain in the ass to make in the trailer because it is one of those meals that requires little bowls of prep stuff to be made in small batches and set aside and stuff has to chill in the fridge, etc. so it got kind of ridiculous in here for about an hour. But in the end it was worth it. They were SO GOOD! And they were also SO FLIPPING HOT! It was the hottest food I have eaten since leaving New Mexico a year ago. HERE is the recipe from the Veg Times website. I modified the cilantro sauce a bit by using a jalapeno cheddar bread and a red pepper in mine. So my sauce was orangey red instead of green. We had a hunk of smoked sharp cheddar that was a perfect compliment to the chipotle flavor in the burgers.

Billy cooked the burgers out on the grill....




I supervised... (but don't tell Billy I said so) whoever is wearing the apron is the boss in my book.



The only thing I would say to someone making these is make sure you cook the burger mixture down til it's good and dry and then don't skimp on the time in the fridge to set the patties. They are tough to flip on the grill if they are too wet or not chilled well enough.




I don't know if we ran in to a particularly rare and fierce batch of chipotle but holy hell it was hot.
It's a good thing we had bought a bottle of Sailor Jerry's Spiced Rum to make Pina Colada's with otherwise dinner could have been tragic. Instead it was deeeelicious.



I am now impatiently waiting for a new tray of ice cubes to freeze so I can have another pina colada. Dammit. It's gonna take a lot longer than I am happy to wait.

For anyone following the Rudy Foxy Foot Saga (outside of the blog) he is doing OK. I neglected to post that there indeed WAS and possibly still IS a foxtail in his paw. The day after the initial vet visit everything went downhill and his foot developed a big blister on top of it so back to the vet we went. It was an awful experience... Rudy got "probed" and I nearly passed out as a result. They found nothing and put him on an antibiotic and sent us home to watch and wait. A few days later his foot seems to be getting a bit better. We have no idea if the intruding grass seed has come out or if it is still in there. I spoke to the vet and she agreed to wait a few days to see what developed before we bring him back in for a check up. Meanwhile we have to soak his paw in Epsom salts and he hates it. I wish I could soak my damn paws in Epsom salts. The little dude just needs to realize he is getting a sort of spa treatment and then maybe his attitude could change. I guess a gaping, sore, open wound may not feel as neat in salty water as what I am talking about though. Hmm. Anyway... we took his little ass to the dog park today and he caroused with three other dogs there for awhile without a problem so I would say he is on the mend for sure. Thanks to all who have sent him get well soon wishes.

Now... to go check on those ice cubes.

In Communist Russia Bread Bakes YOU!

Behold Billy... the proud father of a brand new wee loaf of Russian style black bread. This is the first time he has ever made bread from scratch. The little loaf came out of the oven at like ten o'clock last night and we promptly devoured half of it before it even had a chance to see the light of day. And of course now that it has seen the light of day... it's a goner. It was really, really good heavy bread made with molasses, coffee, cocoa powder, 9 grains and rye and wheat flour. The recipe came out of Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian Cookbook. It is an awesome resource book. And of course please note that Billy is wearing his "Communist Party" t-shirt for the complete Iron Curtain baking experience.

Yesterday was one of those days that we spent fiddling around in the kitchen for most of the day. I was craving fresh and crunchy at dinner time so I created a variation on a salad we had tried while visiting with my parents. The original recipe came out of The Veganomicon (another favorite)and was a raw beet and parsnip salad in a pineapple vinaigrette. Last night I made it a bit more complicated using chopped raw beets, jicama, celery, carrots and fennel. I also added in roughly chopped almonds. I made the dressing from pineapple juice, red wine vinegar, olive oil, kosher sea salt and one clove of fresh garlic shaved on a microplane grater. You toss chopped fresh mint into the salad at the end of prep and holy crap is it good. We paired it with a single baked falafel patty and a simple corn tortilla quesadilla with nothing but good provolone inside.




And finally.... do you like pickles? Pickled stuff? Weird pickled stuff? Because last night I made these.....



What the Hell is that right? It's a Ball jar filled with pickled grapes with cinnamon and black pepper. I got this recipe off Smitten Kitchen (as usual.) I grew up eating pickled stuff out of my Grandma's garden so when I saw this I had to try it. They were super easy to make and wow are they bizarre to eat! As Deb on Smitten suggested they are awesome with a cheese course. If you click over to Deb's site her pics are much better than mine and you can see more so what you are dealin' with.

I will leave you with a few shots from our sunset walk here at Russian Gulch from last night. We have an Indian Paintbrush flower which is native only to the Mendocino coast line which I am in love with...





They are really flourishing out on the headlands in the park right now and they are so visually striking against the spring greens. Another brilliant, gorgeous one is the Scotch Broom....




Hmmmm... but if flowers are not your thing maybe I could satisfy you with a little doggie style Sumo wrestling match?



The above scene caused me to get yelled at by a park ranger. She was trying to drive through and they refused to leave off fighting in the middle of the road where they are technically not supposed to be off lead for obvious reasons. Rudy has some work to do if he wants to catch up with Ranger's totally legit Sumo belly.

Small kitchen BIG FOOD!

Sometimes I really have to hand it to us Airstreamers who are also foodies... whipping up gourmet meals in a kitchen the size of a broom closet is no easy task. You have to utilize space that is really not "utilizable" in a comfortable cooking sense. Our fridge is like an ass backwards game of Jenga. Go ahead and TRY to pull out that carrot without 42 other tubs, bottles and baggies falling out as the lone carrot grudgingly emerges from the puzzle. If your trailer is a 28' or larger you have the luxury of a small amount of counter space in your kitchen. Not true in the 25'ers. We have to use the table top in our booth for a lot of our food prep. It gets crazy in here on nights like tonight when we are both making stuff at the same time and have ingredients strewn out like a produce truck exploded.

Tonight's menu was Baja style tempeh tacos and fresh homemade salsa. I baked sliced tempeh in the oven for about 35 minutes in a marinade of Billy's garlic confit oil, honey, apple juice, a dash of tamari sauce and a pinch of cayenne. Billy made a slaw from chopped green cabbage, carrot, jalapeno, apple cider vinegar, salt and black pepper. He also made a Lime Crema sauce from plain yogurt, lime juice, fresh cilantro leaves, olive oil and salt (put the blender to puree.) We roasted a poblano and sliced it up along with a ripe avocado and I made a fresh salsa. I like to use cherry tomatoes, jalapeno, red onion, raw garlic, cilantro, olive oil, lime juice, salt and pepper. Most of what we made tonight was a variation on a recipe for the Baja tacos in The Veganomicon cookbook which is one of our favorites. If you want innovative, healthy and really tasty recipe ideas it is a killer book to pull from.




Everything was so good. I was missing having a cold beer with dinner but we forgot to grab some at the grocery today. Ahh well, I will more than make up for those missed calories later tonight when I pig out on dessert. I mentioned yesterday that I was going to be making Baking and Books recipe of Cardamom Rose Rice Pudding last night and ohhhh yeah people, I made it.



This stuff is problematic. I can't stop thinking about it. I kept sneaking back into the kitchen last night (well after 11 pm) to eat another spoon full of it. It is so aromatic being made from jasmine rice and of course cardamom. We bought a flat of strawberries today so the plan for tonight is to attempt death by rice pudding and fresh berries. Not a bad way to go out.

Cheers!

Hi folks! I hope everyone had a nice cozy holiday. We sure did. I pretty much spent the entire day cooking. I had not planned on spending so many hours in the kitchen but the frangipane tart I made for dessert was a really time consuming project. I should have made at least the tart crust yesterday. Lesson learned. Anyway... we had one of the best Thanksgiving dinners we have ever made. I am so glad we deviated from the old stand by menu. I am so over the rubbery old Tofurkey thing.

People... as soon as you can stand the idea of sweet potatoes hitting your palate again hurry and make THESE. They were seriously good shit. My tempeh turned out better than any I have ever made before too. I think the different was in the fact that I marinated it for like three hours then baked it for about 45 minutes in a stoneware dish. It was fabulous.

I snapped just a few quick and messy pics before we sat down to eat. I was so freaking hungry that I did not have it in me to do any better than these...




I have to give cute plate credit to my neighbor Ann... the biscuit plate in the above photo is hers. She delivered it to us yesterday full of freshly baked cupcakes and cookies and after we demolished those (Ann is a seriously amazing baker) I secretly used her plate for my biscuits tonight. The plate will go back to her in the morning with a slab of my tart riding on it in thanks.

I am happy to say that almost half of our dinner ingredients were locally grown. See those toasted nuts on the sweet potatoes up above? Local! So was the chard, the chives, and the green beans. The pecans I made the tart out of were so fresh they were just wonderful. So... on to the tart!



I have to admit this was one of the hardest things I have ever made... mostly because I do not own any of the recommended equipment such as food processors etc to make the thing. And more so because I have crust phobia. I am always fatalistic about crust. Crust in my family is no small thing. Crust matters. Your ability to make kick ass crust is a large part of whether or not you get to keep your star hanging on the family tree. You could tie my Grandma's hands behind her back, squeeze lemon juice in both of her eyes and light her pants on fire and she could still kick out a pie crust that would bring tears to your eyes with it's flaky goodness. So, that being said I have developed a bit of a crust centered fear factor. I may have conquered it (at least on a low level) today with this confection though! It turned out just fine. Delicious even. I felt that I was keeping the torch lit for the women of my family.

I had promised to do a listing of alternative gift ideas for this Christmas in this posting. It is gonna have to wait until tomorrow. I am too tuckered out to think that hard tonight. It's time to slide in to some pj's and lay like a fat old sea lion on the bed. I will post the gift links tomorrow afternoon for sure.

Good night y'all!

Moroccan Night

Apparently for the time being this is going to morph into a food blog. I used to do posts about MY cooking ages ago but now we are talking about Billy's skills in the kitchen. I am not much for following recipes. I usually fly by the seat of my pants and make stuff up. Sometimes it turns out great and sometimes it does not. I love to cook but I have too much of a distracted, scatter brain to do the recipe thing very often. Billy on the other hand is not a distracted scatter brain by any stretch of the imagination. He is a calm, collected, focused brain. A rare gem in this world. Anyway... let us move on from talk of brains and get to the edibles. Tonight Chef Mclane whipped up a chick pea tagine found in this past months Vegetarian Times magazine. He added a fresh minted yogurt sauce and let me tell ya it was mighty fine. You may be asking yourself "What the Hell is a tagine?" Tagines are cooking vessels commonly used in North African countries like Morocco and Algeria. It consists of two pieces - a plate like bottom and a conical shaped lid. The bottom doubles as a serving dish, which comes in handy for nomads (like us.) Heat is retained for hours in a tagine, which is used on the stovetop in kitchens. Too bad we don't actually own a real tagine. They are pretty cool looking and some can be really ornate, like this one...



You can easily complete tagine recipes on the stove top without using an actual vessel. Which is what Billy did. We had a dessert tonight of broiled grapefruit with honey, vanilla and cardamom. It was my fist ever hot grapefruit experience. It was quite good... being all at once sweet, sour and pungent with the addition of the cardamom spice. Here's a pic...



Yes... I know that it looks like a burnt grapefruit. But trust me... it was so much more than that.

We have started to develop an addiction to the store Sur La Table which there is a retail shop for in downtown Carmel. I convince myself that I need all kinds of stuff while in there. Like this fabulous copper fleur de lis cookie cutter.




Or this cast iron $119 Le Creuset skillet that weighs so much you can barely lift it. This thing will still be around when all of us are dead and gone. We have refrained from buying too much so far but we do go in there regularly and drool over the goods and the cooking possibilities they would afford us.



I did grab this cute notepad for Billy while I was poking around at Anthropologie last night. It is a weekly menu planner. He can jot down his grocery list on the back of it for when we do our shopping. It has a magnet on the back so you can stick it on your fridge door. Fun!