Pommes Frites

Marty and Elaine

Ed loves having his pictures taken...he told me so.
We went to The Dresden together and drank Blood and Sands while we listened to Marty and Elaine work their musical magic.
I've heard rumor the Ed has found the recipe for a Blood and Sand. Hmmmm, if he sent it to me, I would surely post it.

When I say sake, you say bomb!

You haven't really lived until you've had a sake bomb. Hot sake, cold beer...it ends up being kind of a luke warm surprise. I've been assured that they don't really do sake bombs in Japan...maybe they don't know what they're missing.

Ed loves Waffles...

He often refers to waffles as "the sirens of the breakfast menu."

I DON'T FEEL LIKE DANCING

Allow me to begin by saying that Scissor Sister is the best band ever.
That being said, let me continue by saying that I hate carrots...but I love carrot soup. I know that doesn't seem like it makes sense...like when Al says that he hates cheese but his favorite food is pizza. Hello? Pizza is all about the cheese. Not to mention that he also claims not to like tomatoes, another integral part of pizza. Well, I guess I have now discovered that we are perfectly matched freaks, cause I am digging this carrot soup. It's a texture thing. I hate crunchy. I don't like crackers or croutons, but I do love tortilla chips, only because they are the vehicle that brings guacomole and salsa to my mouth, and for that I thank them. I don't even like cereal if its still crunchy. I put milk on it and then go finish getting ready so that it can get nice and soggy before I eat it.
So, I made a huge pot of this carrot soup, not realizing that Al is opposed to any soup that doesn't come from a can or a box, so I've been stuck eating the whole pot of soup by myself, which normally I wouldn't mind, but I think I'm starting to turn yellow. This is no joke. It's a huge pot of soup, and I'm down to the last bowl. I better have the best freaking eye sight in the world after this.
The recipe can be found at Slashfood. (I doubled it because I'm silly)

They say the teeth are the first thing to go.
Actually, they might not say that at all, but this year for my 25th birthday, the first signs of old age set in. My teeth rebelled against me. Stupid teeth. A day after getting a bridge where my front 4 teeth should be (those front teeth had been looking to jump ship ever since I took a face plant and nearly knocked them out when I was 10) I was struck with the worst mouth pain of my entire life. It was terrible. I was like that crazy woman in labor who grabs the doctor by the throat and demands more drugs...only I demanded them via the phone, and my pain was in my mouth, so my annunciation probably wasn't as good. Anywhoo, after my face swelled up like a balloon just in time for my Elvis-themed birthday party I seem to be pretty much back to normal. I am just here to confess that my lack of cooking-goodness is all due to the fact that I have been drugged up for the past two weeks on pain meds. Anything I did try to cook probably wouldn't go so well...and writing about what I cooked...well that would have been impossible and probably incoherent.
Some good things came out of my fiasco of a birthday:
Al Dressed like Elvis. John and Corrine gave me an Elvis wine bottle holder. And we made a new addition to my kitchen gadget family.

Roasted Red Pepper Tart

Khan I have some more?

It sucks to grow up in a semi-small suburb just 45 minutes north of Hollywood. It's like having fun so close, but just out of your reach. Any good Camarillo parent won't let their kid go to "the city" that often...and if they let you go, they never let you go at night. Living just outside LA is like being "almost cool." After junior college, I vowed to never live there again. Now I only want to live in the places that sounded glamorous to me as a child, but which turn out to not actually be that glamarous.
I will say one thing for Camarillo, they have two things that are better there than anywhere else...sushi and Mongolian BBQ. How can it be? I don't know. It's a mystery. There are plenty of other sushi and Mongolian BBQ places in the world, but it seems like the ones I grew up next to happen to be the best. This could just be a silly sentimental thing.
On a recent trip to visit my parents I demanded that we go BBQ it. It was delicious.

Peach and Ricotta Tart

Okay, so sometimes I don't exactly follow recipes. I got this recipe from Epicurious, but I didn't have any plums, I only had peaches. I thought it turned out pretty well, considering that in my brilliance, and laziness, I decided to make a graham cracker and pecan crust instead, only to realize that I didn't have enought graham crackers to make an entire shell, and really it was just more of a flat base on which to pile cheese and fruit. It tasted good though, and it looked pretty, and really, that's all that matters.

The Grocery Store....
Most people hate going to the grocery store. They dread it. The lines, the people, the elevator music, the screaming children. I am the complete opposite. I love the grocery store. Some people do yoga, some clean, but for me, there is nothing that clears my mind like a good trip to the grocery store. Grocery shopping for me can be broken into two distinct categories:
1. I have my coupons and I am ready to take you for all you are worth, store! This has become very limited lately, since everyone in California besides Ralphs did away with double coupons. Damn them. Now I go to the Ralph's on Lincoln. Which one, you might ask, since there are three in a row? Well, there is a "fresh fair" meaning the high-end one, then there is a ghetto one by the bowling alley, and the middle of the road one. I go to the middle of the road one. Not to many haughty housewives buying Pinot at 1 in the afternoon and sipping coffee from the built-in Coffee Bean, but not too many children running up and down the aisles and disturbing my zen-like time with Kenny G. It is perfect. Young professionals, college kids, the occasional beach bum, and me. Double coupons are my life. I plan, I save, and I attack. I love it when Al and I go coupon shopping together. It truly takes me back to the hunter-gatherer days. I meander down the aisles slowly, comparing my savings on this to my savings on that and I get to send Al out on the "expeditions" for the things I know we need. "Here is a coupon for toilet paper. Make sure you get the 12-pack. That is the only one the coupon is good for." While I tend the cart he hunts down the Charmin 12-pack and brings it back triumphantly. When we finally make our way to the check-out, we hold our breath in anticipation of the savings. I hand the checker my large pile of coupons. The game is to see if I can save more than I spend. I usually win. It's my little way of getting back at the man. It is supversion and anarchy of the most benign kind...and really, that's all I'm up for. Peace rallys and marches aren't really my thing...but sticking it to the supermarket, that's the stuff.
2. The second kind of shopping is the truly relaxing kind. I walk in the door, open a soda, grab a snack, and walk aimlessly up and down the aisles. "Oh, I love this song." "I don't think I've had cauliflower in ages." "I wonder what these crackers taste like." "Which shampoo smells better." This kind of shopping serves as a reward for a hard week of work. I don't take any coupons, I buy what I want, and the trip itself can take up to 3 hours. What can I say, I love food, I love elevator music, you put the two together and you have just about the perfect combination for me.

I used to shop at Vons, back when they were cool and had double coupons. I used to shop at the one in Camarillo with my parents too, but my dad broke me of that habit the day he decided to pretent that an innocent summer squash was a grenade. He bit the top off, looked at me and said, "uh-oh," then he spit the top at me, threw the rest of the squash across the produce department and dove under one of the bins of apples. Then he yelled for everyone to hit the deck. Needless to say that my enthusiasm to go back to that store waned after that day. But thus far nothing has ruined my wonderful Ralphs on Linconln for me. I can only pray it stays that way.

Michael and I are going to hell

It all started innocently enough. My father and I set off to go to the nursery by this house. On the way back he decided to "take a short cut" through the fields by his house. There we saw row after row of beautiful red peppers. Before I knew what was happening we had a car full fo red peppers.

Thankfully my mom had just returned from church. I hope she remembered to pray for us.

September
The best month of the year has arrived. We can all start mentally preparing to celebrate my birthday on the 22nd. I know I already started.
In celebration of me, I took myself to Sur La Table and bought some fun kitchen stuff.

1. another loaf pan....because really, who can live with only one loaf pan? Almost every recipe I have seen for bread makes to loaves. My single loaf pan was getting awfully lonely.
2. A French Press. My coffe maker took a dive. Instead of buying another one, I decided to be very European about the whole thing. Coffee will be better from now on.
3. A biscuit ring. I could use this someday. Not today. In fact, I have never made biscuts before in my life.
4. A wine stopper. Because putting the cork back in is for barbarians.

I also took myself to ther Farmer's market by the Promenade.


Then I did something that no one would have ever expected. I bought myself a pair of shorts. I don't think I have voluntarily worn shorts since 1998, but everyone was on to my game of wearing nothing but pants. Time to shake things up a little. Whoops, I almost type "shank" things up a little...which is either a lamb joke or a prison joke.

Sucker!

Somone surprised me at work on Friday with these lovely flowers. What a wonderful surprise. Sometimes nice surprises turn out to be bribes. Saturday I agreed with Al that we should start shopping for big screen T.V.'s. This agreement was clearly the result of the skid-greasing done by those flowers. Damn it! I am such a sucker.
Thankfully, our search for a big screen took us to Costco...land of wonderful frozen yogurt. Frozen yogurt, or "fro-yo" as the cool kids like to call it, is something of an obsession of mine. I am in love with it. It is easily the most justifiable treat, as most forms of fro-yo tout themselves as "fat-free" or "sugar-free" or "low-carb." My suspicion is that, like they proved on Seinfeld, most of these claims are false, but as long as the signs that claim these things still stand, then I can claim ignorance.
I am always in search of the perfect fro-yo texture. Some are too icy, some are too runny. Very few places can capture the perfectly lightly whipped texture that I believe fro-yo was meant to have. My brother and I once had a 30 minute conversation about perfect fro-yo texture. We concluded that any two people who could talk for so long about fro-yo were clearly fatties.
Costco has achieved perfect fro-yo texture. While Al was distracted by the big-screens I seized the opportunity to eat a big cup of it all by myself. Who's the sucker now?????

Saying that something is an acquired taste usually means that it is disgusting. Such it is with dates. First of all, a dried date looks like a cockroach. Second of all, it tastes like rotten sugar. But take that same nasty date and blend it with vanilla ice cream, and you come out with something magical. Ah, Hadley's, home of the date shake.
I must admit that when my Gammi (my dad's mom) took me there when I was a kid and told me she was going to buy me a date shake, I was less than pleased. Not being one to turn down food though, I reluctantly tried it. Then I asked for a large. Then I asked for another.
I have probably only had three date shakes in my entire life...probably because Hadley's is out in the middle of nowhere. I had one on Sunday when Al and I were on our way back from the Palm Springs Film Festival. After going to Hadley's for a date shake, we went to A&W for burgers and root beer floats, because my logic tells me that the only thing to do is follow ice cream up with more ice cream. My logic is incorrect. My logic next tellls me that Tums are my best friend. It was correct on that account.

This blog was not made possible by funding from the Al foundation



After deciding to start a food blog....well, let me go further back. After discovering food blogs existed, and starting down a cycle of addiction where I no longer worked at work, I took the advice of a wonderful foodblogger at The Delicious Life and took the next step...I started my own food blog. I had a blog blog before this, and it was funny, and I even had a couple of fans. I thought that combining my two loves, food and speaking (that includes writing) incessently, I would achieve a new level of comedic genius. Alas, no. I was re-reading my blog posts today and I have to say, the whole thing is very unfunny.
Perhaps this is because I have limited myself to the subject of food, and there really aren't that many funny things to say about food.
I consulted my old blog for answers. Let's see here....a post about Pop Tarts, a post about dinner with my parents, a post about dinner with Al....
Damn! The idea that food was limiting my funny potential was completely crushed by the fact that most of my posts on my old blog are about food.
Well, there must be an answer. I'm sure it is that I have been working too much. I'm totally drained by the time I get home...there is no funny left. I guess I'll just have to quit my job.
"Al, you have to pay all the rent and all the bills!" I'm guessing from the look on his face that's a no. Damn.
Well, I guess everyone will have to deal with an unfunny blog...and you all have Al to thank for it.

Best Experiment Ever!

The chocolate-covered mint Oreos at the store are almost $5 a box! So for much more than $5 we made our own. It started as an experiment in saving money, but we quickly ditched the whole "saving money" issue when we saw the mint Ghiardelli chocolate bars. Al's reasoning was that if we were going to make something, why not use the best chocolate available. For almost $13 we made our own damn chocolate-covered mint oreos, and they were delicious.

Oh Bread....I'd be in trouble if you left me now

Bread is good. Homemade bread is great. Need I say more?

INGREDIENTS:

* 1 1/8 cups warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
* 3 tablespoons honey
* 1/3 teaspoon salt
* 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
* 1 1/2 cups bread flour
* 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
* 1 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast


DIRECTIONS:

1. In a large bowl, mix warm water, yeast, and 1/3 cup honey. Let set for 10 minutes, or until bubbly.
2. Mix in 2 tablespoons vegetable oil and salt. Pour that mixture into Kitchenaid standing mixer with dough hook attachment. Stir in foour 1/2 cup at a time until the dough sticks to itself and pulls away from the sides of the bowl. Place in a greased bowl, turning once to coat the surface of the dough. Cover with a dishtowel. Let rise in a warm place until doubled.
3. Punch down, and divide into 3 loaves. Place in greased 9 x 5 inch loaf pans, and allow to rise until dough has topped the pans by one inch.
4. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 25 to 30 minutes; do not overbake. Lightly brush the tops of loaves with 2 tablespoons melted butter or margarine when done to prevent crust from getting hard. Cool completely

I have only ever eaten rhubarb once before today, it was in a strawberry-rhubarb pie, and I hated it. At the farmer’s market yesterday I decided to buy a bunch of rhubarb on a whim. For some reason, even though the outside wasn’t that red, I expected the inside to be….because I’m silly and I expect things like that. Needless to say it wasn’t red like I had expected it to be, so I dyed it to meet my rhubarb expectations.
The muffins are actually pretty good.
Al refused to try them at first because he asked me what rhubarb was, and not being able to think of an answer right away I just said, “I don’t know, but it looks like celery.”
“Well,” he answered, “I don’t want to eat muffins made with celery.”
I was forced to use the “would I ever give you something bad” line, which inevitably always backfires on me, because according to Al I eat many awful and horrible things that people have no business eating, which is sometimes true, but we can’t take Al’s judgment at face value since he also puts zucchini and olives in the “gross and inedible” category and I believe those items to be of the gods.

Rhubarb Muffins
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 large egg
1 cup sugar
4 tbsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
1 1/4 cups sour cream
1 1/2 cups rhubarb, sliced

Preheat oven to 350. grease muffin tins.
whisk together flour, baking powder and salt and set aside. Whisk egg until combined. Add sugar and whisk vigorously until thick. Add melted butter in three batches, whisking after each addition. Add sour cream in two additions, whisking just until combined. Now, this is the part where if you are me, you put the rhubarb on the stove and cook it for just a couple of minutes with some sugar and red food coloring. I didn't measure either, cause I'm a rebel.
Whisk the dry ingredients into the wet until smooth. Fold in technicolor rhubarb. Spoon into muffin tins. Bake 20-30 mins.

Heaven?

If I died tomorrow I can only hope that I have lived a good life and deserve to go on to a better place.....a place with every kind of sugar I can think of.
I was in New York over the weekend with Al and his friends and family.
I should preface this story by saying my family doesn't go on vacations, we go on eating adventures. The agenda of the day isn't "what can I see here that I haven't seen before" it is "what can I eat here that I haven't eaten before?"
This trip, the never-before-eaten item was a frozen hot chocolate from Dylan's Candy Bar. Oh, sure, I ate a lot of thing there that I had eaten before...indeed I ate my way through New York City...but the culinary highlight of the trip was the frozen hot chocolate.
I had been planning my trip to Dylan's before I even got on the plane. I had tried to go there once before, but didn't make it until after closing. Us West-Coasters like to truly imagine that nothing in New York ever closes, so when something actually does close it kind of shatters my whole perception of the city.
After dinner my boyfriend, his parents, his friend Ed, Ed's girlfriend Chris and I all started the several-block hike to Dylan's. With complete disregard for the fact that I was completely full, I walked briskly toward it. It was then that I heard, "Gee, we better hurry, it's 10:45 and they close at 11." Without a moment of hesitation, Chris and I broke out into a full run. We ran the rest of the way there (did I mention it was really hot outside?). We saw the promised land, and it's name was Dylan's. We ran inside and took our place in line, sweating profusely.
I took the liberty of ordering for everyone, despite what they had actually asked me to order for them.
My dad always told me, "Honey, don't go to a steak place and get fish." The same must be true for all places. You get what they specialize in...and I wasn't about to go to one of the only two places on earth that I know of that serves frozen hot chocolate and get something besides that...and I wasn't going to let anyone else do it either.
Turns out that frozen hot chocolate is just like a thin chocolate shake, but that wasn't the point....the point was that I had never had it before and now I have, plus they had this crazy looking candy sundae that I'm really going to need to try next time I'm in town.

Apologies, as the picture above is not mine. I was far too busy sucking down my frozen hot chocolate to worry about pictures.
The picture below, however, is mine. The caption should read, "Last night I watched my girlfriend run the farthest she has ever run in her life in the pursuit of dessert. Well, at least the girl has her priorities. Her belly is touching me. I'm pretending that's cute."

SOUP

I would like to take a few minutes to talk about soup.
My dad said the best thing to me. He told me that love is like soup…and he was right.
Everyone has their own kind of soup, or their own idea of love. If you are chicken noodle, and someone else is clam chowder, they will keep giving you clam chowder, thinking that they are making you feel loved, but all you really want is chicken noodle. It all boils down to either one of two things, either you find someone else who is also digging on the chicken noodle, or find someone who cares you enough to take a step back and be like, “Hey, I keep giving you this awesome clam chowder and you’re not happy. Well hell, what kind of soup would you like?” From there they can either say, “Oh, all I have to do is give you chicken noodle and you will feel loved? That’s easy.” OR “Ewww, chicken noddle. I could never give anyone chicken noodle.”
And then you know.
I think I might be French onion. My boyfriend thinks I’m soup-du-jour. I’m sure I’m not lobster bisque…too heavy. I wouldn’t like to be baked potato soup either, because all you can taste is the bacon after a while. He might be alphabet soup.

I would like to give everyone the opportunity to show me some love, and send me some soup. (okay, not actual soup, but a favorite soup recipe..and yes, I realize that it is nearly 1,000 degrees outside)