It started with a small round tip roast, which I tried to murder horribly with a fork before dredging in flour, onion powder, and garlic powder. Then, I heated a 10-inch calphalon pan with a small amount of canola and added a pinch of cumin seed and three cloves of garlic. I browned the tip roast quickly, then just as quickly burned off a shot of cognac.

After this, I added one can of chicken broth, a pound of celery hearts (halved), and a can of tomato sauce; one dash of hot sauce and a pinch of freshly ground chiles and it was ready to go in the oven at 350 degrees.

An hour later, I pulled out the roast and celery and covered them with foil; added a little more flour to thicken as well as a shot of soy sauce and a dash of worcestershire. I whisked this down, mounted the sauce with half a stick of butter (for shine), and then served it over the sliced roast and the celery.

It turned out pretty fantastic. I used a very small roast, so there was an overabundance of sauce this time around; I think I'll make a little more next time.

Now I have to take you back to last summer.  I live in Vegas, so it gets hot, and yes, it really does get hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk.  My sisters and I tested that theory as kids when we used to spend the summers here visiting relatives.  Well, the heat does strange things to my appetite, aside from sometimes just killing it completely.  Last summer, I suddenly had the oddest craving for an egg salad sandwich.  This was completely out of the blue, as I have already explained that I had written them off as unpalatable.  Alas, I know that if I don't give in to one of my spontaneous food cravings, it will haunt me until I do, even going on for months, so I knew that I had to try an egg salad sandwich as an adult.

I try to completely avoid red and white onions in food, although I love them, but I'm allergic and it took me years to really figure it out.  Because of that, I thought it was going to be hard to find egg salad sandwiches premade at the store without onions in them, since I thought that they were usually made with onions or onion salt for flavoring.  I guess I might have been confusing the mixture with potato salad, because I found a sandwich all wrapped and ready to go at the local supermarket that was sans onion products.  I got home and hesitatingly took the first bite, not sure what to expect.  Well, this particular sandwich had basically no flavor at all.  No salt or anything.  Sure, I could add salt, but the bread was already fused to the egg salad.  I ate the whole sandwich anyway.  It did nothing for my craving.  it just so happens that my cravings are not just for a certain dish, but for the ULTIMATE version of that dish.

There was only one thing I could do.  I had to make my own egg salad sandwiches at home from scratch.  I got out two of my many general cookbooks and decided to try each version at the same time.  I made both batches and found that neither one was all that great, but definitely better than the grocery store deli version.  After storing the mixtures in the fridge in their separate bowls, and telling one of my sisters to have at them, a day later we had a little of each left, but still in bowls much too large for the new portions.  I thought, "to heck with it", and tossed them in a bowl together.  I later decided to finish off my egg salad experiments, now combined, and it turned out that when mixed together, I actually had my ULTIMATE EGG SALAD SANDWICH that I had somehow daydreamed of.  I have since started craving this occasionally, so I have made it several times.  The amount of salt you use, which is the case for any food product, is up to your own taste buds.  A helpful hint for you, though, is that the mixture will taste saltier after it is allowed to sit for awhile.  I guess that's more of a warning, as you may think you've salted it to perfection, only to find that it is much too salty after 6 hours in the fridge. 

Ultimate Egg Salad Sandwiches

Ingredients:

10 eggs

5 tablespoons mayonnaise

1/4 cup drained pickle relish (or chop up some pickles yourself)

1/3 cup celery (I think celery is nutritionally useless; although it does add a fun crunch, I usually omit it)

2 tablespoons finely chopped green onion

1 tablespoon diced pimiento

1 tablespoon mustard (yellow, dijon, etc. - whatever you'd like best)

1/2 teaspoon salt

Loaf of sliced bread (the heartier the better - adds more variety to the texture)

Instructions:

Place whole eggs (shells intact) in a large saucepan with enough cold water to completely cover them.  Bring to boil on stove.  After boiling starts, continue to boil for 15-20 minutes.  When time is up, run cold water over them until cool enough to handle.  Crack each egg and peel off the shells (I believe that I read somewhere that egg shells make excellent fertilizer for some plants, but you'll have to research that one yourself).  On a cutting board, use your favorite knife to chop the eggs up.  I prefer the egg whites to be as big as quarter-inch cubes, but it all depends on how smooth you want to mixture.  Really, this sandwich is all about you and your preferences.  How else could it be the ULTIMATE for you as well as me?  Toss the chopped eggs into a medium-sized bowl and add all of the other ingredients, in whichever order you please.  Stir well.  Spread between two slices of bread, preferably toasted first.  Cut diagonally, and enjoy.  Refrigerate the leftover mixture immediately - never take your chances with heat and anything containing mayo.  Makes about 6 sandwiches.

The more I time I spend on her site the more little gems of insight I find. Reading her site has inspired me to make some wiser choices with my own food budget.  I am looking forward to eating healthier for less money.

1. Saute an almost-mirepoix of shallots, celery, and carrots in olive oil; add three cubed chicken thighs and chicken stock.

2. Mix 1 1/4 cup flour with 1 tsp salt, 1 tbsp baking powder, and one egg; slowly add milk until it becomes a dough and loses its stickiness.

3. Season your chicken with pepper, tarragon, onion powder, garlic powder, soy sauce, and worcestershire. Add one can cream of celery soup and a bay leaf.

4. Add the dough in teaspoonfuls; cover. After five minutes, remove cover and flip.

Simple, no? This turned out really, really awesome.

I started with some canola oil and about four cloves of garlic, minced. To this I added about two tablespoons of ground chiles (dried red, ancho, and california pods), paprika, chili powder (a lot), cumin, and onion powder. After this started to smell like enchiladas, I browned two chicken thighs on both sides, then poured in two cups of chicken broth and put on the cover for about fifteen minutes (on medium high).

After the chicken was cooked, I shredded it with a fork while the chicken broth reduced on high. Then I pulled the tortillas out of the oven (what? Where did the tortillas come from? I forgot to mention, I put some in the oven at 170 so they wouldn't break when I tried to roll them) and rolled them around the chicken before I put them in a square glass baking dish.

By the time I filled the dish and set the oven for 350 degrees, the chicken broth was reduced to the point where I could start making a sauce. I added two cans of tomato sauce, some garlic powder, some more chili powder, some dried parsley, about two tablespoons of cocoa powder (heck yes), and a little pepper. The chicken broth was salty enough so that I didn't need to add any salt.

After the sauce all came together, I poured it into the baking dish, covered the top with cheddar, and put it into the oven for half an hour. This is awesome. Eat enchiladas. Every day, until you die.

• 1 pkg of stew meat, browned.
• 2 california chile pods
• 6-10 small red peppers.
• 2 pasilla (dried ancho) chile pods.
• 6-10 small arbol chili pods.
• 3 jalapenos
• 1 can tomato sauce
• white pepper, to taste
• 1 tbsp chili powder
• garlic salt
• onion powder
• celery seed
• cumin
• 2 cans beef consomme
• 1 can chicken broth
• 1 bottle newcastle
• 1 cup ground tortilla strips

Software:
1/2 lb. Ground Beef
1/2 yellow onion, diced.
1 med. Red Bell Pepper diced (this is a chile too, btw)
3 Habanero Chiles diced fine (fresh)
3 Thai Chiles diced fine (fresh)
1 Random Chile diced fine (Seriously. I bought a fresh "Hungarian" Chile from Vons. 
                                       Who the hell knows what subspecies of capsicum it is.)
2 Jalapenos diced fine (fresh)
3 tsp. Cayenne Chile (powder)
4 tsp. Naga Jolokia Chile (powder)
1 can Chipotles in Adobo (only use 5 of the chiles or so, diced)
1 14.5oz can Ranch Style beans
5 tsp. chili powder (I use homemade, store bought is sawdust)
1 cup beer (I used Peroni, because thats what I had)
Garlic Salt
Salt and Pepper

1. Brown the ground beef in a skillet, once browned, throw in onion and bell pepper. Season with Garlic Salt and Pepper to taste.
2. Done! (just kidding.)
3. Or am I?
4. No, I am. Drain the fat from the skillet. Throw in all diced chiles except the Chipotles. Soften.
5. In a soup pot, stock pot, pot of some kind, combine meat mixture, and rest of the ingredients.
6. Cook until it tastes good. Or until you can't taste anything because the chiles have beaten your
    tastebuds into submission/mass suicide.

On a side note: I wish the preview pane hadn't gone away, but I do like the new post editor Tele.

So I went to Sunflower Market, since they sell local produce, and bought twelve of every vegetable they had. If you could screw up minestrone, I was going to figure out how. I came home, got a big stock pot out, and started my soffrito- a fancy word to say I rendered the fat out of some bacon and then threw in some onions, leeks, and shallots.

I also didn't have pig trotters or marrow bones or anything like that, so for thickening I waited until my 'soffrito' was pretty much sweated, then threw in some flour, like a roux. Then I spent TWO. HOURS. cutting up vegetables and throwing them in. I cubed the turnips. I chopped up the zucchini, summer squash, celery root, spinach leaves, potatoes, and carrots. It looked like I was carving up the grisly aftermath of a war against the vegetables, a war which I handily won. All of it drowning in six cans of chicken broth and a pitcher of water, with a sprig of rosemary (I fished that out after everything started smelling like rosemary), a bay leaf, and a parmesan crust. Then, because I was pretty much throwing in everything I had, I put in two cans of kidney beans and a cup of orzo. By this point I was in such a rut that I might have diced my children and thrown them in, had they wandered into the kitchen.

It cooked for HOURS. Three and a half hours. I felt like a witch, sitting there and stirring my massive cauldron of stuff. And then something magical happened. It started to smell like delicious.

So, basically, you'd have to try way harder than I did to screw up minestrone.

It was Indian night, and I've never so much as had a curry.

Nevertheless, I had a great evil plan in the works: I was going to cook Indian food pretty much the same way as I cook all food, by sort of looking at a recipe on the internet and then adapting it for my own evil purposes. I was going to do this because I had zero idea what kind of spices I was going to be using, what the end result was supposed to be, and whether or not what I cooked could be considered as poison in the right jurisdictions.

The recipe starts with a cup of masoor daal, which the internet tells me is some magical, rare variety of lentil. Since I wasn't about to go on a Fancy Steve style treasure hunt just to find a lentil that probably tastes exactly the same as normal lentils, I used mealworms. Okay. Fine. I used lentils. But if the original dish was supposed to be all squirmy, everybody was going to be totally disappointed.

The instructions were to wash the lentils. I sighed heavily and hoped somebody would notice how I was pretty much martyring myself just so I could cook food invented by people who don't even eat prime rib. Unfortunately, there really wasn't anybody paying attention to me, not even me, so I finally gave up and washed the lentils. The tremendous sacrifices I make for these parties, right?

The next instructions from the supreme commander, aka The Interwebtubes, was to mix the lentils with water, cooking oil, turmeric, red chili powder, salt, onion, and tomato in some sort of pot. Whoa. That's a lot to process all at once. I'd be posting the amount of the ingredients here, but I wasn't really paying attention anyways. I finely chopped a massive onion and three tomatoes (I was making a triple-size recipe, for the gathering) and added these to the pot. Turmeric? I had that, because everything indian ever apparently needs it. For those of you wondering, it tastes yellow. The mexitexans probably say it tastes amarillo, which is a gay Texan way to say yellow. And what's this "red chili powder"? I judiciously decided this meant both red pepper and chili powder, both of which I have, because I am a man. So I dumped a lot of those in there.

Basically, after that point, I let everything cook for an hour and a half. Then I went and played video games. When the smoke alarm went off, I looked for a save point, saved my totally awesome robot ninja, and then went back to the kitchen. I was supposed to melt some ghee, which is Indian for "butter of the gods". I am not kidding. It smelled like delicious, and it comes in what looks like a Folger's can. After it was melted, I threw in some cumin seeds ("Hiss," said the seeds). In went a gallon of garlic and a metric buttload of dried chilies, which I crushed in my hands like beer cans. After everything smelled fried enough, I threw it into the lentils, mixed them all up, and was done with it.

I should mention that I was supposed to add something called asafoetida, which kills unborn babies, smells horrible, and attracts wolves. Since I know some unborn babies and not many wolves, I was going to add it, but that would have involved wandering around the smelly part of the international market, so I refrained. Instead I added saffron, which is expensive, in the hopes that it would make all the food taste like magic. Instead, it made everything smell like flowers.

Okay, I gave it a taste. But after I spit that out and gargled with bleach, I figured everything was alright. I put it in a bowl, drove over to Fancy's, and pre-dialed the ambulance. 

• 3 leeks, chopped fine
• 6 red potatoes, cut thinly
• 2 cans of chicken broth
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped fine
• 4 pieces bacon
• 1 pint cream
• garlic salt
• pepper to taste
• 1/4 tsp celery seed
• 1/4 cup mild cheddar, shredded
• 1/2 cup romano, grated
• 1/4 cup portobello mushrooms, chopped
• 1/4 cup butter

For my dish I chose Butter Mochi.  I love mochi ice cream balls. (Oooh! I just found a recipe for making your own at home.  I so have to try this. Sorry, back to this post now.)  So I thought that baked Mochi would probably be just as yummy.  The first hurdle to hop over was what recipe to use for Butter Mochi.  There are about 100 different ways to make Baked Mochi including recipes that add  flaked coconut or chocolate, not to mention the varying versions of just a Butter Mochi recipe.  Some recipes were calling for blocks of butter while others were only calling for 1 stick (or 1/2 cup butter).  I have only this evening come to conclude that when these people wrote their recipes they really weren't speaking of 1lb blocks of butter but simply 1/4lb sticks.  This is where being specific in writing a recipe comes in handy :)

And now for the recipe I choose after many, many hours of reading recipe after recipe.   Sumocat's Butter Mochi.  I did not stray from his recipe except in the pan I baked it in which means the temperature had to be adjusted accordingly. I used a glass baking dish and not a metal pan so I reduced the oven temperature to 325 degrees.  I chose to use a high quality butter (vs choosing a store brand) since butter is playing a star role in this recipe.    

I loved the end result this produced.  It has a wonderful butter flavor to it.  I was worried about over cooking.  I could have left it in the oven for about 5 minutes longer allowing the center to cook more without any threat of burning.  

The interesting part of this dish is that everyone bites into it expecting something completely different than what it is.  Mochi is a chewy product. People think it is going to be cakey or brownie like and it is not that at all.  So many will be confused by the texture and then be turned off of the dish all together, which really is a shame because I find it to be super delicious.  Ah well, more for me!

Actual people who have lived in Hawaii tell me it's not the chicken, but the sauce that makes things work. The recipe I was using has a pretty complicated sauce, and of course I added random amounts of everything instead of paying attention and got something a little too clovey.

Why did I use a recipe and not invent something myself? This time, it was because I have absolutely no clue about what the Hawaiians eat. But make the chicken part. It's fantastic. Next time, I'm eating it with barbecue sauce.

The Queen of Tarts is always acting all high and mighty, baking bread and cookies and I think probably even people every night. She'll casually pull out some flour and other stuff, get a bowl or something, and in twenty minutes she'll be yanking a tray of golden brown tastiness out of the oven. Her demeanor seems to say, what, bread? Oh look, here it is. Easiest thing in the world.

So, for Russian night, I decided to make a mushroom pastry. I'd show her. I'd whip up a huge plate of tasty mushroom foods and then I'd be the one who shrugs modestly. Oh yeah, those pastries? Totally easy.

I started the night before with:

• 3 cups flour
• 1 cup sour cream
• 2 sticks of butter

The recipe I was following told me to cut the whole thing together with a wide knife. Not knowing what the heck it was talking about, I got a butter knife and cut the mixture together while watching Bob the Builder. By the end of it, my shoulders were totally and completely sore.

The next day, I sauteed:

• 1 lb minced mushrooms
• 1 minced large onion

I added some pepper and tarragon during the cooking process, then set it aside to cool down while I pulled out the dough.

Of course, the dough didn't look right. It kept falling apart. It was impossible to roll. So I got out the pastry knife (yeah, I didn't know we had one the night before) and cut in an additional half stick of softened butter. The dough formed a nifty ball immediately. Victory for me.

I started rolling the dough out, but it was pretty sticky, and it kept tearing in places. In fact, it took me an hour to roll out, but I learned one vital fact you'll need if you ever work with dough: flour is your friend. If your dough even begins to give you lip, cover it (and your rolling surface) with flour. You cannot have enough flour on hand. It's mathematically impossible.

Once I had the dough rolled out to about a quarter inch, I cut it into squares. I mixed a cup of grated parmesan into the mushroom mixture, put teaspoonfuls of it into the squares, and folded them diagonally. After all the little triangley things were made, they were brushed with egg yolk, sprinkled with caraway seeds, and put into a 350-degree oven for twenty minutes.

Were they good? Yeah. They were good. They were pretty darn good. But I couldn't shrug and be all modest, because my shoulders might have fallen off.

The recipe is easy to follow and the ingredients are all quite common. My only suggestion would be to chop the onion super fine, maybe even in a food processor or Magic Bullet. I hand chopped mine and they were a bit chunky.

Thanks to chef2mom and her professional chef skills I learned the proper way to Quenelle the egg mixture and place it in the egg. You could also use a small melon baller to fill the eggs.

This recipe was interesting as it has a mayo and sour cream sauce to go with it. I ate the eggs with and without the sauce and the sauce definitely adds to the whole flavor.

Another amazing EU Night down. Hawaiian Night will be coming next month. So, stay tuned!

I did hesitate in purchasing them at first because the idea of not boiling the noodles before baking is just odd. But, I needed a recipe in addition to noodles and these noodles had the best back of the box recipe. So I decided to go for it.

It was really neat to not have to prepare the noodles. You just throw down the sauce, add on a few noodles, spread out some ricotta cheese mixture, sprinkle on cheese and repeat. Then you throw it all in the oven and out comes a really yummy lasagna.

The only tip I would give is make extra sure that you cover each noodle completely to the edge with ricotta and sauce because if you miss any of the noodle it does come out crunchy in that area. Otherwise, it is a remarkably good noodle.

It was one of those nights a few weeks ago. The wind was crazy Tele, Baby Girl and I were hungry and pizza was the food of choice. So we went to Dominos.com to place our order. Everything was as usual until I finished the order and it gave me the option to track our order.

At first I thought that it was a pretty silly idea, but I tried it out anyhow. I found out that it is totally cool. You actually get to see the names of the people who are preparing your pizza and delivering it. You get update statuses as the pizza goes from one step to the next. It even tells you when it is being boxed up for delivery.

This tracking of the pizza order detail has made Dominos our favorite pizza delivery company.

Go Dominos!

Update: make that butter and flour (79 recipes).

Just last week, we were running a little short in the food department, so it came time to try and scrounge what we could out of what was sitting around in the house. To that end, I collected the following ingredients:

• 2 cans evaporated milk (heavy cream would be better...)
• 1/8 lb. Parmigiano-Reggiano, shredded
• Lots of black pepper
• 1 stick butter
• Garlic salt
• 1 bag egg noodles

I melted the butter while the pasta started boiling. Once completely melted, I added the milk and whisked it all together, then whisked in the pepper and garlic salt. After the egg noodles were done, I drained them thoroughly, put them in the milk mixture, and began to fold in the cheese.

That's it. The best recipes are disgustingly simple. Although, after I ate the noodles, I felt like my heart was going to explode. This is some heavy stuff, friends. Don't get addicted.

In making clam chowder you have a very important decision to make...canned or fresh clams. I read both types of recipes. I was a little scared of the whole shucking of clams, but that wasn't going to stop me from using fresh clams. The idea of canned clams in kind of creepy too. Alton Brown suggests using both clams, fresh in the soup itself and then topping the bowl with a few fresh clams. I don't like the idea of a shelled clam sitting upon my bowl of soup though. So that was definitely not the solution. Ohh, what to do? The decision was made for me when the meat counter guy at Smith's explained that he didn't stock fresh clams regularly, but only by special order. Alright, so there we go. Canned clams it is (even though I still found canned clams to be a strange thing).

Now to find the ultimate recipe. I started out my research in cookbooks around the house, but they just didn't have what I was looking for. I then moved to the internet and finally decided on Michael Chu's Clam Chowder New England Style on Cooking for Engineers. I love how this guy thinks. The recipes have so much wonderful detail. I have decided that it is the engineering part of my brain that leads me into doing my crazy photo journal recipes on EU. But, anyway, I digress.

Now that I was armed with the recipe and ingredients it was just time to wait for EU Night to roll around.

In true EU Night fashion I did not perform a test run of any kind on this recipe. It was either going to be good or bad, but we would all find out together. I am happy to report that it came out very good. There is an amazing amount of clams in this wonderfully creamy soup. I will say that you must not skimp on the salt. The salt is certainly a key ingredient in balancing the flavors.

The one thing that I will add to the recipe next time I make it is a rib or two of celery. I didn't think I would miss the celery that Progresso's Rich and Hearty New England Clam Chowder has in it, but I really did.

Also, note that the cut of beef required (suggested) for these is a mysterious cut known to few as "Eye of Round" Roast. In my earlier, uncertain years, I worked at a Smiths Food and Drug in the Meat department. I know quite a bit of beef from my Father and Grandfather as well, but I had never heard of this cut. I dont know why. Ask your butcher, or use a Rib-Eye steak or comparable marbled cut of beef. You can't tell the difference. Except in price, maybe, the Eye of Round is very cheap, $11 for 2.5 lbs or so. (Note: 2.5 lbs is enough to make 10 sandwiches, and thats just meat and cheese.)

2lb.      Eye of Round roast, 
          or comparable portion of 
          meat to stick in sandwiches.

8-10      Dutch style sandwich rolls (very flaky crust).

16-20     Slices of provolone cheese

?         Frenched onions, chopped bell peppers, mushrooms
          sweet cherry peppers, anything you want on there.

1         Spray bottle or mustard bottle filled with        
          clean water.

1         Bottle of Steak/Grill seasoning (optional)

Start by putting the roast, or other meat in the freezer for an hour or two. You want it frozen, but still pliable. Rock hard would be bad, and hard to cut. While its freezing, cut the vegetables, watch TV, do something.

Frozen enough? ok, get a serrated blade, yes, the type you cut bread with. What you're looking for here is to shave very thin slices of beef off of the roast. Since the beef is frozen, it should be easier to cut without tearing. After you've sliced all of the beef very thin, set it aside in a bowl. I would suggest you get a two burner cast iron griddle for this, they're good for pancakes, eggs, pretty much anything, but great for this. Lay it across one front burner and one back burner, and turn the heat on the front burner to high, and the back burner to low.

Throw a cup or so of your veggies on the front part of the griddle, and saute until desired done-ness. While this is cooking, preheat the oven to 175 degrees. If the vegetables begin to stick to the griddle, hit them with a squirt of water from the mustard bottle, it will prevent them from sticking. Once they're cooked to your liking, move them to the back of the griddle. Throw a cup of the sliced beef on there, and cook to desired doneness and again, hit with a squirt of water if it starts to stick. Once this is cooked to your liking, combine the cooked vegetables and the beef together and cook for a minute or two, blasting with water when you need to. With the spatula, form the mixture into an oval shape, and then put two slices of provolone on the oval, almost covering the meat but try to keep it off of the grill. Hit the top of the cheese with two or three squirts of water, and the steam from this will melt the cheese very very quickly.

Get one of your sandwich rolls, and cut lengthwise along one side, in the typical hot dog bun fashion. Lay the bun open side down onto the meat, and then slide the spatula underneath the entire mass. In one motion, flip the whole mess over, and you should have a Philly Cheesesteak! Yay!

I know it seems like quite a bit of work, but they are mighty tasty.

• About a pound of broccoli, stems included
• 8-10 slices deli ham
• Parmesan and cheddar cheese for topping
• Breadcrumbs
• 2 cups of milk
• 1 stick of butter
• 4 tbls flour
• Dried sage
• Black pepper
• Dry mustard

After cutting the broccoli down (including stems) to florets and small discs, I put them on to boil. After they'd softened slightly, I spread them across the bottom of the baking dish. Next, I mixed up a bechamel (melted the butter, mixed in the flour, then took off the heat and mixed in the milk). After putting the milk back on the heat and whisking heavily, I added a dash of sage and mustard, then ground in some pepper.

After tearing the ham into shreds and laying it across the top of the broccoli, I added the bechamel, covered the top with cheese and breadcrumbs, and put it into the oven at 350 degrees for half an hour.

Unfortunately, I let it cook a little longer, and I really shouldn't have; the broccoli dried up a bit. I'm looking forward to trying this one again sometime soon, however.

My Criteria:

• Must not be dry (I hate eating a biscuit that makes me choke and I have a drink with each bite) 
  
• A mild buttery taste to it 
  
• A tender sort of fluffy finished product (not overly thick and dense)
  

I spent many months trying every biscuit recipe I could get my hands on. Most of them were all to dry. One day Tele decided he wanted to make Biscuits and Gravy. When he was searching for a gravy recipe he found one that also included a biscuit recipe. We used both recipes and both were great. The biscuit recipe became my favorite, for a limited time. The search for the best biscuit recipe finally came to an end the day I realized that there was a biscuit recipe on the back of my SaCo Buttermilk Powder container. I am so happy with this recipe. I have been using this recipe for a few months now and I don't even look at other biscuit recipes anymore. The SaCo Buttermilk Biscuits meet all of my requirements. They are moist, tender and have a wonderful buttery taste.

I try to limit the amount of hydrogenated oils I cook with so I have been substituting butter for the shortening called for. Either way the biscuits come out wonderful.

The little packets are nigh impossible to open; using the combined powers of my fork and teeth I managed to sever the ironclad baggie of sundried tomatoes, which have to be the most potent and wonderful tomato flavor I have ever purchased; the little baggie of real, cooked bacon bits, which smelled kind of like human waste but tasted pretty fantastic overall; the parmesan-romano-asiago packet; and the caesar dressing. Overall, it was pretty darn fantastic for what I expected to come from a bagged salad. I wouldn't mind eating it regularly. But do yourself a favor and do not open the bacon bits with your teeth, or bring the baggie close to your face after it is opened.

Argg! I want doughnuts now, not in 4 hours. (Yes, I was a little impatient. Sometimes instant gratification is a good thing.)

Well, the search continued until I found this recipe for Cake Doughnuts. I set to work right away. This recipe is so easy to make and the flavor of the doughnuts plain is great. After frying and cooling for a bit I coated half of the doughnuts with powdered sugar and the other half with cinnamon sugar (3/4 to 1 cup sugar + 1 tablespoon cinnamon).

The recipe makes 2 dozen doughnuts which meant we had a lot of leftovers. After the extra doughnuts cooled I put them away in an airtight container. This morning I ate one and I am not sure, but I think they are even better today then they were yesterday. Either way, this is a super easy recipe with great flavor and I will be using it in the future. Happy doughnutting!

After slicing a half-pound sirloin steak into small strips, I dredged them in flour, garlic salt, and pepper, then sauteed them in butter along with a quarter onion (diced). I added a couple dashes of Worcestershire and soy sauce (that combo is my secret weapon for meat dishes). After the onion was transparent, I added some sliced mushrooms, a shot of apple cognac (any brandy would be fine), and half a can of chicken broth. Once the whole mixture thickened, I added half a cup of sour cream, reduced the heat to medium, and let the sauce thicken.

Over buttered egg noodles, this one was pretty fantastic. There was just a hint of the apple flavor from the cognac. If I do this again, I will wait to add the steak until after the onions are done; it certainly wasn't overcooked, but I would have liked it to be a little less cooked anyways.

The particular recipe I tried did not suit my fancy, but I am excited to try many other recipes off of their site. With over 6,000 recipes listed I am sure to find several new recipes to add to my favorites.

Here is the problem. Once the fish is cut and put on to a piece of rolled up rice, it all looks the same to me; except for Tai which looks extremely different from the tuna.

So all I know is that I ate a lot of raw fish. Included in that line up was at least 4 pieces of Tai (Red Snapper), some Toro (Fatty Tuna), probably some Maguro (Tuna) and Albacore (White Fish), and one order of Hotategai (Scallops wrapped in Nori). I also had some Philadelphia and Cucumber Rolls and an order of Tomago (Egg Nigiri).

As you can see I ate a lot. I could have sat there longer and eaten more, but that would get mighty expensive.

After we left Kobe we went to the Orange Pearl Yogurt Store where I got a Strawberry Mango Smoothie. That helped to finish filling me up.

I have to say that Kobe is where I first fell in love with Tai. I had liked sushi before the Tai, but I did not yet have a love for it. Then I decided to order Tai. It came out looking different from the other fish. It is white with a slight red color to one side of it. And a slice of lemon tops it. Tai has a sweetness to it that is remarkable. If you aren't sure about sushi or have not yet fallen in love with it I must suggest trying Tai. It may convert you for life (I'm talking to you too Mrs. Savory!).

Kobe I love you and your Tai! I'll be back soon.

And so today's recipe comes into play. I'd been browsing the chicken recipes in the wikibooks cookbook, and found my way to a recipe for Garlic Lemon Chicken. The thing that drew my attention was a Lebanese sauce named toum. So, after glancing at both recipes for about half a second, I was off.

The first goal was to make the toum. I knew that it involved garlic, olive oil, salt, and lemon juice; it was only about halfway through the recipe that I realized it required the oil and lemon juice to be added to the macerated garlic-salt mixture in small doses, to increase the volume. I'd also added cayenne to the recipe; the first taste, before I thinned it out with the garlic and oil, was like a garlic nuclear bomb.

I started by shucking two full bulbs of garlic and running them through the processor, then adding salt, pepper, cayenne, sesame oil (I was out of olive), and lemon juice, until I had a mighty bowl of deadly garlic paste. At this point in the recipe, my plan was to saute the chicken breasts, slather them with this liquid kryptonite, and then braise them for a scary long time.

Things changed when I noticed that the original chicken recipe called for a completely different marinade, and for the toum to be used as a dipping sauce for something else entirely. Funny how the little details kick in at the last minute. To make up for the lack of moisture (I doubted that the toum would keep the chicken moist during a long cooking time), I deglazed the skillet I cooked the chicken in with a can of chicken broth and some gin. I didn't bother reducing because (1) I needed moisture, and (2) I wanted to find a way to weaken the gargantuan garlic heat in the toum. In order to justify my decision, I found a recipe online labeled Shish Taouk Toum, which involves making chicken kebabs after marinating in a liquid that included (a tiny amount of) toum. Alright. Somebody made chicken and let it touch the Garlic Death. I was treading in somewhat charted territory. Onwards.

I put the chicken breasts into the oven, slathered with toum, and poured in my deglazing liquid, setting the temperature to 250 degrees. My plan was to make the chicken, taste it, and see if it was too strong to eat. At this point, if it were indeed too strong, I'm pretty sure my plans to fix it involved making rice.

After a couple hours on low heat, I opened the oven. The house smelled like garlic for three days. We eventually served it over orzo. Not the best garlic chicken ever, but not bad either.

Also, no one go to the strip tonight, there be monsters there.

This year for Christmas I ordered the Alpha-Bakery and Rainbow Bakery Children's Cookbooks from Gold Medal Flour for a lot of the kids. When they arrived I took a peek through them and found something very surprising, these aren't recipes just for kids. They are great, simple baking recipes for people of all ages.

We have made several recipes from the books already.

From Rainbow Bakery
Twisters Biscuit Sticks- a versatile and easy breadstick recipe
You Can Dough It! Baked Dough Creations- a salt dough recipe to make keepsake ornaments, decorations, or beads

From Alpha-Bakery
T is for Turtle Bread-This bread is really fun to make. I had never made a fun shaped bread before. It could also be shaped into an oval or round loaf or baked in a loaf pan.

If you are looking for a great gift for some kids in your life or you just want to get your hands on some simple, yet wonderful recipes then you may want to order the Gold Medal Flour Children's Cookbooks.

The problem, however, is as much as I love sushi, I can almost never eat enough of it. I can eat .. well.. quite a bit more than I logically should be able to eat, and I fear that it's my voracious appetite that will condemn me to a) not eat enough at a sushi bar, b) eat so much at a sushi bar that the itamae and I have to battle in hand to hand combat because they have nothing left in the restaurant to eat, or c) I've eaten so much sushi that the Pacific ocean is declared devoid of life. A good example, is what I had to eat today. I had the following to eat:

• 4 cups of coffee
• 1 cup of tea
• 5 bottles of water (16 oz)
• 4 sandwiches
• 1 cup cheese popcorn
• 2 truffles
• 1 pear
• 1 stuffed pork chop
• 1 baked potato
• 1 bowl of cinnamon apples
• 1 bowl of coffee icecream

At the sushi place, if I recall correctly, I had:

• 5 pc cucumber roll
• 5 pc philadelphia roll
• 4 hamachi (yellow tail)
• 2 red snapper
• 2 crab roll
• 3 cups green tea
• 1 16oz sake

and we went out for frozen yogurt afterwards, in which I had a 16oz plain with pomegranate seeds.

I think I have a tapeworm. He and I understand each other.

Savory, Tarthead, and I, brave adventurers all, decided to brave the rapids there. Savory was my secret weapon, my revenge for getting the you no eat sushi very often look. In the course of a typical workday, I've seen Savory pack away four donuts, two submarine sandwiches, and a plate of pad thai. Like most men with the capability to ingest several times their own mass in meat, he's freakishly small.

After dropping off the kids with a random stranger, we converged upon the restaurant and were presented with one of those sushi tick mark sheets.

I hate those sheets. First of all, I'm perfectly capable of ordering sushi in Japanese (I don't speak Japanese, but I do speak sushi). Second of all, with three people, two tick marks can be easily mistaken for an eleven. I've seen people mow through eleven orders of hamachi nigiri before, so that is totally not an uncommon scenario. And thirdly, yes, please, let us all handle a piece of random paper and then hand it to the guy who touches the uncooked belly meats that go in your mouth.

All of this has nothing to do with this particular sushi restaurant. I just need to rant sometimes. And it's going to be freaky in the future when you have to ICQ your itamae just to get your maguro pronto.

Anyways, having been given the paper bullet, we had to plan ahead. No problem; by the time we all had one order of something to eat, we had a traffic pile-up of little plates. This is a situation that the Japanese call frickin awesome.

And the fish? Yeah. The fish was great. I wouldn't say they're particularly above par on the fish I like to eat (for instance, the closer Hikari sushi bar has the best, butteriest yellowtail ever invented). The unagi was pretty standard, the tuna, delicious. Of course, I didn't order what the others ordered, and I can tell you they both have a pretty hefty recommendation for you. When they get around to posting...

So, it is sad to admit, but all of our creative resources have been being poured into the site on the design end and not on the posting end. We do apologize for this situation.

All of the site design should be done shortly and then we can start bringing you the wacky and crazy food insight we know that you have come to expect from us here at EU. Please stick with us as we get this behind the scenes code stuff out of the way.

Feel free to let us know what you think of the new looks, functionality, etc. We want you to feel at ease on the site. It should all work/flow seamlessly. If you feel it isn't there is a chance we will agree with you and change it up.

Please welcome Chef 2 Mom!

So please join me in welcoming our newest addition! Glad to have you on board Home Cookin.

As it is, I hope you'll be pleased at the features that have been added, and don't hesitate to ask for new functionality or certain recipe types on the blog.

PS: The photos from the old site will be moved over as soon as possible. It's just a side effect of changing systems.

Also, we are going to be announcing 3 new EU writers shortly. We can't wait to get them posting. There are some great new recipes on the way.

And lastly, we have an RSS feed. This is a great way to make sure you don't miss a post. If you haven't added us to your RSS reader yet, get busy dragging and dropping then you can stay on top of all the craziness here at EU.

Happy cooking,
Queen of Tarts

The recipe I am going to share with you has been in my family for over 20 years. My aunt Kathy received the recipe from a co-worker. Kathy then gave the recipe to my mom. It has since become a tradition that each year at Easter and Christmas my mom makes 6 double batches of cookies. We spend many hours baking and frosting, but it is always a lot of fun and wouldn't be the same without them.

I had never made these cookies on my own, but this past week that all changed. LittleRoq had a Christmas party to go to and I volunteered to make the sugar cookies (so as to save the children from the horrible store bought ones!). LittleRoq joined in on the cutting out of the shapes. And then he frosted the cookies reserved for our house while I frosted the ones for the party. It was really neat to make a recipe with my son that I have been making at my mom's side for many years.

Over the years we have learned a few things about making sugar cookies.

• First: Make way more cookies than you think you will need because no one can get enough of these.
• Second: If you are going to ship them, use small shapes rather than large ones because the small ones are more likely to survive the trip intact.
• Third: Do not roll the dough into large balls and then refrigerate. This creates a lot of hard work for you later on. The best thing to do is separate the dough and flatten it into a few small slabs, wrap in plastic wrap and then refrigerate. This makes rolling the dough out much easier.
• Fourth: Use powdered sugar rather than flour to dust your rolling surface so as to not add too much flour taste to the cookies.

For many cookie pointers read the transcript of the Good Eats episode The Cookie Clause. Alton Brown has many great tips on cookie making in that episode. It is where I learned about the slabs of dough. Can you believe we never thought of that?

And FINALLY the recipe:

Kathleen's (Mary's) Sugar Cookies

1 1/2 c sifted powder sugar
1 c butter softened
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
2 1/2 c flour, sifted
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cream of tartar

Cream the sugar and butter. Mix in the egg, vanilla, and almond extract. Blend dry ingredients, stir into butter mixture. Refrigerate at least 3 hours.

Heat oven to 375 degrees.

Roll out dough a little at a time (if it gets too warm it gets sticky) to about 1/4 inch thick. Use cookie cutters to cut out.
Bake on un-greased baking sheets for 8 minutes or until lightly golden. Cool on wire racks. Frost with butter cream frosting.

Butter Cream Frosting

1 lb Powder Sugar (4 cups)
1/4 c milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 c butter softened
Food coloring

In a bowl combine sugar, milk, vanilla and butter. If a little thick add milk a few drops at a time until thin enough to frost with. Divide into bowls and mix in the food coloring.

Frost the cookies. Allow frosting to harden on the cookies then store in air-tight containers. (Place a piece of bread in with the cookies to keep them soft. When the piece becomes hard and dried out replace it with a fresh piece.)

In most of the western world, poultry is defined as turkey. However, children in Japan apparently wait in long lines outside of their local KFC in order to get a bucket of fried chicken. Ukraine families celebrate with a gigantic, twelve course meal in the name of the twelve apostles, devoid of any meat except for fish, while children wait for Father Frost to visit their homes. In the United Kingdom, duck or goose may replace roast turkey, depending on the number of guests.

Before the turkey was introduced to the UK in the 1700s, the traditional medieval dish was either peacock or boar. In modern Hawaii, it isn't uncommon to see Japanese influences such as turkey teriyaki. The Christmas chook, meaning chicken or fowl, is a common sight in Australia.

Obviously, one of the things we're going to have to delve into during this month is the preparation of poultry dishes, in celebration of Christmas tradition and fantastic cuisine. We're looking forward to it.

The Scoville scale measures how much burny you're going to get on your tongue from eating said chile. Yes burny is a word! Why not?

Since I love me some code tags, I'm going to put our version of the Scoville scale in them. Take that, Web 2.0!

15,000,000–17,000,000 Pure capsaicin
9,100,000             Nordihydrocapsaicin
2,000,000–5,300,000     Standard U.S. Grade pepper spray
855,000–1,041,427   Naga Jolokia 
350,000–577,000         Red Savina Habanero
100,000–350,000         Habanero chili, Scotch Bonnet
100,000–200,000         Rocoto, Jamaican Hot Pepper, African Birdseye
50,000–100,000      Thai Pepper, Malagueta Pepper, Chiltepin Pepper, Pequin Pepper
30,000–50,000       Cayenne Pepper, Ají pepper, Tabasco pepper
10,000–23,000       Serrano Pepper
7,000–8,000             Tabasco Sauce (Habanero)
5,000–10,000        Wax Pepper
4,500–5,000         New Mexican varieties of Anaheim pepper
2,500–8,000         Jalapeño Pepper
2,500–5,000         Tabasco Sauce (Tabasco pepper) 
1,500–2,500         Rocotillo Pepper, Sriracha
1,000–1,500         Poblano Pepper, Texas Pete sauce
600–800         Jalapeno Tabasco sauce
500–2500        Anaheim pepper
100–500         Pimento, Pepperoncini
0               No heat, Bell pepper

Scale courtesy of Wikipedia

Now, anyone who's never heard of the Scoville scale is wondering what the heck those numbers are up there. Well, basically thats the rating that Wilbur assigned each of the corresponding chiles using the Scoville Organoleptic Test. You'll never believe me if I tell you what the Organoleptic Test consisted of. Ready? Here it is. That's right, good old fashioned human test subjects. Ahh. The good old days. What peppers have I tried?

Everything on there with the exception of the Ají and the Naga Jolokia. I can't find them anywhere. But now I'm seriously considering spraying some pepper spray on my pizza at some point in the future.

I forgot to take pre-eating pictures of the Thanksgiving table, but I did get you the after pics.

The left side of the table in clockwise order: mashed potatoes, Praline Yams, Whole Cranberry Sauce, Cranberry Relish, StoveTop Cornbread Stuffing, and HoneyBaked Ham.

The right side of the table starting from the back of the table and moving forward: Dutch Apple Pie with Never-Fail Pie Crust, Sweet Corn Muffins, Cranberry Salad, CornBread, Honey Maid Cinnamon Sticks and Bees for the fluff, Fluff with fresh strawberries, PineCone Spread with Original Triscuits.

Not pictured but included in the food lineup of the evening: Corn on the cob roasted under the broiler and Chatham Village Cranberry Herb Stuffing.

The only thing I didn't get to make was my grandma's Pumpkin Cookies. But the apple pie was so yummy it was okay that the cookies were missing.

For the rolls I made:

• one batch of Buttery Rolls shaped as crescents
• one double batch of Cornbread baked in my Pampered Chef Rectangular Baker
• one batch of Susan's Farm House White Bread shaped into 36 rolls and baked on two cookie sheets

It seems like a lot of work, but it wasn't. Both cranberry dishes are make-ahead, so no pressure there. I made the Farm House White Rolls the day before. The dough for the Buttery Rolls was put in the fridge the afternoon before so they could be shaped, risen and baked the morning of. And I made the Cornbread the night before. So there you have it. Five different dishes all made in a day and a half with low stress!

Whole Cranberry Sauce

• 1 (12 oz) bag or 3 cups cranberries (fresh or frozen)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup cold water

Place all ingredients in a sauce pan. Boil rapidly until berries pop open (approximately 5 minutes). Cool.
Yield: 3-4 cups.

The solution is a yeast dough that you make the night before and put into the fridge. Yes, you heard right. The mixing of the dough is done the day before.

So are you with me now? You can do this. There is lots of time between now and Thanksgiving. Mix up a batch and give dinner an extra special touch this week. You deserve some fresh baked dinner rolls.

I am presenting two buttery roll options for you two choose from. Each dough can be made a day ahead. One can just be plopped into muffin tins and baked, the other needs a little shaping and then rise time.

Spoon Rolls

Southern Spoon Rolls are super easy to make. I always make them with salted butter (never margarine). The recipe link calls for self rising flour, but you need not go and purchase it. For each cup of self rising flour needed use: 1 cup of all purpose flour, 1 tsp baking powder and 1 /2 tsp salt. You can make this dough the day you are going to use it if you wish or you can make it ahead of time as the dough will last for up to one week in the fridge.

Buttery Rolls

• 1 package (1/4 ounce) active dry yeast
• 1 cup warm water (110 to 115 degrees)
• 1 cup butter, melted
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4-4 1/2 cups all purpose flour

In a small bowl dissolve the yeast in warm water. In a mixing bowl, combine the butter and sugar. Add in the eggs, salt and yeast mixture. Stir in enough flour until the dough leaves the sides of the bowl and is soft (do not knead). Cover and refrigerate overnight.

Punch the dough down. Turn onto a floured surface and divide in half (follow shaping procedure for each half or refrigerate the 2nd half for later use).

For CloverLeaf Rolls (This is easy to do and they look so nice. This is my favorite shape for this recipe.): Roll into a long rope about 1 1/2 inches thick. Fold into thirds and cut, leaving you w/three equal length ropes. Divide each rope into 12 equal size pieces (36 total pieces). Roll each piece into a ball. Drop 3 balls into each cup of a greased muffin tin.

For Crescent Rolls: Roll into a 12 inch circle. Cut into 12 wedges. Roll up the wedges from the wide and and place with the pointed end down on a greased baking sheet. Curve the ends to form crescents.

Cover and let rise in a warm place for about 1 1/2 hours or until doubled. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or until golden brown.

Note: I have found that this recipe is best when used within 3 days of making the dough. On the forth day it is just not as flavorful. (example:If you make the dough on Monday, finish it up on Wednesday.)

Start this dish the evening before you are serving it. In the morning stir in the remaining ingredients and the dish will be ready when you need it. A great make-ahead dish.

Be sure to buy cranberries in November and store them in your freezer (they keep for 1 year that way). Cranberries are not available the rest of the year.

Cranberry Salad

• 1 bag (12 oz) cranberries
• 2 cups sugar

Grind the cranberries using a food processor. Put into a bowl and combine with the sugar. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

• 1 1/2 cups walnuts
• 1 bag (10.5 oz) marshmallows
• 1 pint whipping cream
• 1 can (20 oz) crushed pineapple, drained

In a large bowl, add the remaining ingredients to the cranberry mixture, stir. Refrigerate for at least one our before serving.

If, however, you must make Candied Yams with marshmallows on top, I leave you with one warning. Do not leave the oven unattended. One evening, my mom was making candied yams to go with dinner and suddenly there were flames shooting out of the oven. She had forgotten about the yams and the marshmallows caught on fire. My dad grabbed the fire extinguisher and put the fire out. Needless to say, we had no candied yams that night, but we did have a large mess to clean up.

See you next week with more recipes for your Thanksgiving dinner.

Pumpkin Cookies

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 cup canned pumpkin
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup vegetable shortening
• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup raisins
• 1 cup walnuts

Cream sugar and egg, pumpkin, vanilla, and shortening. Add dry ingredients. Stir in raisins and walnuts. Drop by teaspoonfuls on greased baking sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes in a 350 degree oven.

Creamy Spinach

• 2 package (10 oz each) frozen chopped spinach
• 1 package (8 oz) cream cheese, softened
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Topping

• 2 tablespoons butter, melted
• 1 cup small bits of torn up bread (about 2 slices)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• seasonings of your choice. (I use 2-3 tsp Italian Seasoning).

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cook the spinach according to the package directions and drain well. Combine the spinach, cream cheese, butter, and salt. Pour into a greased or buttered 8in by 8in baking dish.

Topping: Pour the melted butter over the top of bread crumbs. Use a fork to stir well making sure to moisten all of the crumbs. Add in the salt, pepper and seasonings. Spread out evenly over the top of the spinach mixture.

Bake uncovered for 30 minutes or until lightly browned and heated through.

(Note: If you double this recipe, bake it in a 9 in by 13 in dish following the same cooking time.)

I will however throw you a few of my absolute favorite recipes over the next couple of weeks. These are recipes that I have made many times and also look forward to eating each holiday season. I hope you enjoy them too.

The night before grocery day is always a bit of a scrounge for miscible ingredients, since there's not much to plan a main course around. While the Tart was telling me the same three ingredients she'd been mentioning every night for a week - eggs, bacon, and potatoes - I used my fantastic powers of looking at things and discovered a bag of thin egg noodles.

Since we stock about twenty billion cans of broth just in case we need one, I salvaged two cans of chicken stock and set both of these out. Now, I needed something interesting, something that would keep this from turning into a generic chicken noodle soup.

After poking around in the fridge, I found a third of a ham steak in a tupperware container. Now, I remembered this ham steak. Sort of. Kind of. You see, we'd had it for quite a while. I might have named it had I remembered it existed.

I lifted the lid and sniffed. Okay, this smells bad. Or does it? I remembered something I heard a teacher say in high school- if you accidentally switch sodas with someone else, the first sip always tastes like the soda you were expecting. Human suggestibility is prominent in our sensory awareness, being the point. So I sniffed again and convinced myself that what I felt was the florid odor of decay was, in fact, just the inscrutable hamminess of... well, ham.

I mean, back during the Great Depression they threw rashers of bacon out in the streets, right? Bacon lasts forever by dint of its high salt and low moisture content. Isn't ham cured pretty much the same way? Waste not, want not. With all those things I convinced myself to cook.

So, I diced the ham steak and fried it with some butter in a large skillet, then added the broth and noodles. Nice and simple. Nobody would suspect that this was Hindenberg ham. Would they?

Figuring that if we were all going to die from some ungodly taint, I'd rather be hung as a sheep than as a lamb, I made sure to add extra chunks to my serving. I couldn't get the thought that I was serving this to small children out of my head.

You know what? It turned out pretty good. I didn't get sick. The ham was kind of tangy though. Nah. It's all in my head.

You would think that 3 years of pretzel shop experience would give me some insight into this process, but unfortunately it hasn't. When you work in that type of environment you just put a big package into a huge mixer turn the timer on and walk away. Then throw the dough into a bowl for a rise time, roll 'em out, and bake. We did not hand knead anything or adjust flour amounts per the air's humidity. The pretzels were what they were and always came out excellent. I guess maybe that tells me that bread recipes are more forgiving than some make them out to be.

So far all of the breads I have tried have come out well. There have been no major disasters as of yet. I did have one loaf come out a little doughy in the center, but if I would have just left it in the oven for 5 minutes more it would have been fine. I hope to have some bread making tips for you all some time in the future, but for right now we will just refer to a few great sites out there.

Baking Success by Red Star Yeast-There are some great basic tips on this site. Especially useful it how to tell if you have kneaded your dough long enough.

How to Bake Bread at Fabulous Foods-Super information about yeast and so much more can be found here.

Farmgirl Fare's Ten Tips for Better Bread-She has some wonderful tips on how to get great bread. I have to go out and get a wooden bread bowl now!

Step-by-Step Instructions from Fleischmann's Yeast-Great tips on the proper way to knead dough.

I am sure as time goes on I will find many more great sites, but for now these are a good start. I hope you have some fun making bread from scratch at home too!

For the last year when I have buying bread from Sunflower Market. No other commercially available bread compares. This bread is made in a small baker and they use only a few ingredients, none of which are preservatives or corn syrup (you wouldn't believe how many 100% whole wheat breads have corn syrup in the list of ingredients). In fact before my homemade bread extravaganza I refused to buy any bread that wasn't Sunflower Market bread.

Yesterday I was out of homemade bread and happened to be at Sam's Club for a few items. LittleRoq, BabyGirl and I stood at the massive rows of "factory made" commercially available bread at Sam's Club. I looked at it all and thought, "Ugg, I can't eat this nasty stuff. It is going to be all light weight and full of additives. Let me see what the boy thinks." So I ask LittleRoq "Would you like to get bread from here or should I make bread at home?" He gives me an extremely firm "Make the bread at home."

So there we have it. No nasty factory bread in our house. I have to keep homemade bread in the house from now on. No substitute will do. (Well except in a crunch and then I would definitely still be all over Sunflower Market bread, but no other.)

Oh. My. God.

The cupcakes. Oh, they were good. The first one I had was the equivalent of a red velvet cake. The cake was soft and moist, the frosting was cream cheese frosting of the highest caliber, and I actually was saddened when I finished it (which took all of a minute). It was fantastic.

FANTASTIC.

F-A-N, TASTIC!

If I had to recommend a cupcake place while you're in Vegas, GO TO THE CUPCAKERY. YOU WILL LOVE IT. IF YOU DON'T YOU MAY HAVE MENTAL PROBLEMS.

Now I hate all sweets except cupcakes. Booyah.

• 1 lb angel-hair pasta
• 5-6 strips of bacon
• 1/4 stick butter
• 1 bulb garlic
• 1/2 cup grated romano
• 1 egg
• olive oil

While boiling the pasta, I baked the garlic at 350 degrees and shredded the bacon into small pieces. Then, I put the bacon and butter on medium-high heat until crispy. After taking the garlic out and mashing it, I mixed it, the butter and bacon, the egg (beaten heavily), and the romano into the pasta. Pretty fantastic stuff, and less work than it seems from the description.

Note that the egg is not cooked before adding, which probably freaks out the salmonella gang. I think it got pretty well cooked by the hot pasta and butter, and none of us got sick, so that's par for the course.

One evening at 10pm I decided that I just had to make the Pop-Tarts I had seen good 'ol AB make on Good Eats. This is a super easy recipe and comes out tasting great.

To see the recipe in its original form please refer to The Food Network.

Here is how I work the recipe:

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt

Add the flour, baking powder and salt to a medium bowl. Stir with a fork (or if you would like you may sift them together).

Next add in 6 tablespoons shortening and combine until crumbly (as shown in photo). Now stir in 3/4 cup milk.

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead until elastic.

Note: I find that this dough works best when it has just left the sticky stage. So, you may need to add in an extra 1/4 - 1/2 cup flour during the kneading process.

Divide the dough into two equal halves.

Roll each half into a 12 inch by 12 inch square. Cut each square into 12 rectangles measuring 3 inches by 4 inches.

Bottoms: Place about 1 tablespoon of your favorite jam, jelly, or preserves into the center of half of the rectangles.

Tops: With a fork dock the other half of the rectangles.

Dip your finger or pastry brush in water and run it around the edge of the bottom. Now add the top gently pushing out any air from the center. Use a fork to gently seal all the way around the edge.

Place the tarts on a baking sheet and bake in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes. These tarts do not brown on the top.

Eat them hot from the oven or allow to cool and place into an airtight container. If you want a hot one just pop it in the toaster!

The kids and I have been talking about different flavors. All the early batches were strawberry, but today we used a greek jam that was sour cherry. I would like to try putting a bit of cream cheese inside with the jelly.

I did try out a frosting recipe, but the thought of Pop-Tart Blow-Torches has scared me away from pre-frosting the tarts. I would like to come up with a sweetened cream cheese frosting that I can keep in the freezer and then just squeeze on to the tarts after they have been toasted. Something like what Pillsbury does with their Toaster Strudels.

This recipe really is super simple and the kids all love them. I love them because they taste way better then a box of Pop-Tarts and they have none of the additives. The most unhealthy part would be the shortening, but Crisco just made that trans-fat free. If that is still a concern though you could try substituting Smart Balance Shortening. If you do try that let me know how it works out. I haven't bought a can yet, but it has been tempting especially with how often I have been making these tarts.

One final note. If you looked at the original recipe you may have noted that AB uses an egg wash around the edges of the tarts to seal them. After making the recipe several times and having to discard the remaining egg wash I decided that I wanted to find an alternative. I have found that simply using water is enough of sealant. No more wasted eggs!

Sure, I could run to the store and grab some hamburger buns. But, you know that would involve getting in a van that is about 130 degrees inside, driving down the street, going in a store, waiting in line to pay, climbing back into the 130 degree van, and driving home. Ugg, to much time and money for some hamburger buns. Those thoughts led to "let's make some from scratch".

I found a recipe that looked simple enough and yet yummy. We had all the ingredients needed so I went for it. Homemade hamburger buns here we come!

Tele asked for some small square or rectangle buns like those you get with a White Castle. So I made some round and some square per his request.

When the buns first came out of the oven they had a regular yeast roll taste to them. Also, they were looking a little dry on the top so I took a stick of butter and rubbed it over the top of the buns to give them a little shine and butter flavor. After cooling they were a nice dense hamburger bun that could soak up lots of the BBQ sauce Tele made. I will certainly be making these in the future.

Why buy buns when you can make them better yourself?

Barbecue sauce was the first part of the equation, and it's so easy to make that I make it every other weekend or so. I do cheat a little by using ketchup, but only because the tomato paste and vinegar and seasonings I'd be using would essentially be making ketchup in the first place.

Steps to make barbecue sauce:

1. Pour some ketchup into a saucepan. The ketchup will be about a third the mass of the entire finished result.
2. Pour half that volume of brown sugar in.
3. Add a few shots of worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, and if you have it, liquid smoke.
4. Pour in enough apple cider vinegar to make the whole thing liquid.

By cooking this over medium and tasting it frequently, you can adjust the taste with those ingredients until you get your base sauce at the perfect level between savory and acidic. (I usually do my red pepper at this point too, so I can also adjust for heat).

There are tons of things you can add to this to make your own special barbecue sauce. For our pulled pork, I used Newcastle Brown Ale, cayenne, and onion powder. Because that's how I roll.

The barbecue sauce in this instance went with some pork ribs into a slow cooker for 4 hours, got pulled, and got stirred back in. Tart-head made the hamburger buns, and excellent they were- but you'll have to wait for her update, because I have no idea how she made them.

Well, for the pie crust I went with my trusted Pampered Chef recipe. Simply known as Perfect Pie Crust. Really any pie crust recipe would do for a chicken pot pie as long as it is not on the sweet side.

Fluff

1 7oz jar Marshmallow Cream
1 8oz Strawberry Cream Cheese Spread

Combine the ingredients and serve with fresh fruit or graham cracker sticks.

While verifying the sizes of containers for you I found this site with an entire list of different ways to make a "cream cheese fruit dip". Here are two of them that I will have to try. They sound so good! (Note: The recipes below did not originally have names, these are just the names I have assigned them. Thanks.)

Coconut Fluff
8 oz. cream cheese
1 sm. jar marshmallow cream
1/2 can cream of coconut

Blend cream cheese until fluffy; add cream of coconut (be sure and stir the can up well before using). Beat in marshmallow cream.

Pineapple Fluff 1 8oz pkg cream cheese
1 small can crushed pineapple w/juice
1 small jar marshmallow fluff

Mix all and chill.

First to determine the ingredients at hand. I found eggs and cheese. Sure, I could scramble some eggs up (that is really the only kind of stove top egg I can make). Nah, we need something new, something more adventurous. So off to Google I ran. Immediately I located a cookbook site that had an entire section of Egg and Cheese recipes. On this page I saw a recipe titled Baked Omelet Roll. That's it! This is definitely the recipe.

This recipe was a hit with all the kids and myself. I even made it the following week for lunch. Maybe one of these days I will actually make it for breakfast, but you know breakfast for dinner is just so yummy.

This recipe is super simple. Throw eggs, milk, flour and pepper into a blender (you could whip them by hand with a whisk or hand mixer). Pour into a greased pan and bake. Your done. Really a child can make this dish.

Now lets not let symantics get in the way. I have read on other sites that have this recipe posted that it really isn't an omelette at all as it is not cooked on the stove. This is the way I see it, call it what ever you like as long as you make it.

This recipe is very flexible. You may use whatever cheese you have on hand (Sharp Cheddar, Romano, PepperJack, etc.), throw in some sauteed mushrooms, or what ever other omelette ingredient you desire.

And now I will allow the photo's walk you through the easy steps.

We have the ingredients.

The blended mixture in the greased 9 by 13 dish ready to hit the oven.

Hot out of the oven.

The cheese has been added. Be sure to sprinkle the cheese all the way to the edges.

I use a large spatula to help start the rolling process and then use my hands to get it rolled up tightly.

And the rolling continues.

The completed Omelette Roll. Note the specks of pepper throughout.

Slice, serve, and eat up!

Note: PP == Pain Perdu. That is all.

• Fluffy banana stuffed PP @Astray
• PP with poached apricots @Epicurious
• PP @FoodNetwork

And the one I am probably going to make, when I make it:

• Bananas Foster PP @Astray

And yes, I'm well aware that Pain Perdu is basically French Toast. WHY MUST YOU TAKE THIS AWAY FROM ME!?!?

I've long lusted over this section, as it seems to have the most concentrated stink of adventure in the entire grocery. Seriously, even more than the cultural foods. On one weekend, our curiosity was so potent that we had to take the dive and grab ourselves a hefty chunk of diversity.

As Americans, we tend to be less curious about cheeses than our friends overseas. I'm guessing a few too many folks who watched Pepé Le Pew get mistaken for limburger as children grew up frightful about the entire variety cheese concept. Wake up, America. You're missing out.

In the center of the cracker tray above is a container of Greek-style hummus, a Middle-Eastern favorite made of garbanzo beans and tahini (which is essentially sesame-seed butter). Hummus is fantastic. If you're not eating it, you're missing out. This particular variety was strongly flavored of pepper, garlic, and lemon juice.

The triangular wedge on its own platter is Brie, a relatively familiar French cheese. The white coating on the outside is mold, but don't let that put you off- soft, spreadable Brie is fantastic with or without this part, but definitely has a bit more zest if you take it altogether. Brie is a cow's-milk cheese, and is nutty-flavored and delicious.

The other plate has a few pieces of summer sausage, as well as some folded pieces of Italian salami, cured in oil. Off these meats, we played a few different cheeses.

In staying with our American/British roots, there were some slices of hickory-smoked cheddar, probably the most familiar cheese in the States. Cheddar is named for the process by which it is made- stacking the cheeses until the bottom ones are pressed firm. As a result, it is a sturdy and strongly flavored cheese.

The small white-yellow strips of cheese are Gruyere, a Swiss cheese (but not 'the' Swiss cheese, which is known as Emmenthaler). Like Emmenthaler, it is a bit waxy, and is very delicately flavored- I was a bit put off by it, because the flavor was not apparent when combined with other ingredients.

Possibly not showing in the photo above were some slices of Havarti, a Danish cheese often impregnated with dill. This tasted almost exactly like Emmenthaler, but with a much more pleasing texture. It's enough to make me swear off the Swiss cheese for good.

Finally, there is a small container of goat's cheese, or chevre. This has a very strong flavor that is somewhat gamey; we ended up not eating very much of it. But I did use it later in the Greek night lamb recipe.

Don't let fear get you down. Eat the cheese. Learn to experiment. Live a little. You only get to do it once, after all.

First, a little background info. We bought some Omaha steaks from some wholesaler for pennies on the peso, and as a sort of celebration, we decided to have them with a pan sauce.

I get home, throw the cast iron 12 in the oven at 500 degrees, wait until its rocket hot, and start searing my steaks. While it's sizzling along, I start to look for things for my pan sauce. Button mushrooms, sure, those will work, butter, got that, garlic salt, check, white wine.... crap. There wasn't any white wine in the house. I did, however, find an old bottle of Nigori Sake, so I decided to give that a shot. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, Sake-wise, go here.

Anyway, I finish up the steaks, a la Alton Brown style, and throw the cast iron back on the stove. I put two tablespoons of butter in the pan, and waited for it to melt completely before adding the mushrooms. I know, some of you are screaming "YOU SHOULD'VE DEGLAZED FIRST!@#!#!". The reason I didn't? Sake is acidic, acid + nicely seasoned cast iron = bad. Editor's note: You wuss. It's cast iron. Just do it.

So, I started with the mushrooms to provide some cover for my nicely seasoned pan. I digress. I garlic salted and peppered the mushrooms while they were doing the saute mambo. Then, carefully, I added about 4 tablespoons sake, and deglazed the pan with that.

<

p>After deglazing was finished and the kitchen was filled with a smell not unlike a Japanese bath house, I added 2 tablespoons (approximately) of heavy whipping cream and combined. All in all, the sake made a fantastic substitute for white wine. It had a subtle sweet sake flavor, paired with the earthiness of the mushrooms and creaminess of the, well, cream. It just goes to show that necessity is the mother of.. something.

Here is the second tray waiting to go into the oven.

I wanted to make this recipe version as it has the absolute best-looking cookies of any of the recipes that I looked at, also Tele loved the name of the chef that made it, "Yiayia". Editor's Note: Haha. Yiayia. It still cracks me up.

However, it requires cinnamon oil and for some reason that seems to be about impossible to find in the entire Greater Las Vegas Valley. Luckily, I am the queen of procrastination, so if I had thought of finding this ingredient earlier (I have known since July 11th that I was making these!) then I would have known how hard it was to locate and would have ordered it online from Amazon. Unfortunately, I wasn't thinking that far ahead. Anyhow, I will be trying this version as soon as I get a hold of the cinnamon oil.

That being said I went with a different version of the recipe that I had located on my original recipe search. It has some variations and doesn't include the cinnamon oil, which for now is a good thing. So we were off to making Greek Butter Cookies.

This cookie is easy enough to make. It follows the basics of all cookie making and can be whipped out in about 20 minutes total. I did learn not to skimp on the flour though. This dough does need to be pretty stiff to hold it's shape. I didn't add in the last 3/4 cups of flour and I should have as my cookies sort of mushed down rather than holding the pretty shape of the cinnamon oil recipe's pics. But hey that is what this site is about, what did we learn while we made these recipes and how can we help you to have success with the same/similar recipe.

I was satisfied with the outcome of these cookies, but something tells me that Yiayia's cookies are probably better. Also I think I made them a bit large, but they were yummy and that is all that matters.

These cookies were super easy to make. A little expensive, if you don't have a cognac drinker in the house as a bottle of Hennessy is $24 and you only need 1 1/2 tablespoons. As luck has it, Tele likes to drink a little Hennessy on occasion, so it all worked out. Now, it seems to me that most Greek recipes were designed to feed an entire army, so I had to halve this recipe. If I knew how to split an egg in half I would have sized it down further, but since I don't have a laser egg yolk/white splitter, I stuck to just half the recipe, which still produced 30 large Kourabiethes.

Apart from sizing the recipe down I did not make any other changes to the recipe except omitting the rose water as it was optional anyhow.

Now a photo journey of the process of making Kourabiethes.

Creamed butter and sugar.

1 1/2 tablespoons Hennessy.

Here is the Hennessy after the baking powder was added.

I had sliced almonds in the fridge so I just chopped them up and roasted them in the oven on 350 degrees until they just started to darken in color.

The almonds have been added into the creamed butter and sugar along with the cognac/baking powder mixture, eggs and vanilla.

The dough after about 1/2 of the flour has been mixed in and another bit has been added.

One more addition of flour to go.

The dough is now ready to be formed into little domes.

Start by scooping out a small mound of dough, such as this.

Then begin pressing the dough together into a ball.

Now use your palm to form the top into a dome shape and flatten the bottom of the cookie.

I found that for me the base of the cookie need to be about the size of the middle of my palm.

And that 2 of my fingers was about 3/4 of an inch tall so I used my fingers as a guide to get the proper dome height.

The cookies waiting to go into the oven.

Now that the cookies have come out of the oven, it is time to start coating them in powdered sugar. Up till this point the kids have only helped me out by being my photographer (and they did a great job of that, if I do say so myself), but now they are ready to get busy.

LittleRoq is the first one to jump on the chair and start the sugar coating process (this was of course after he thoroughly washed his hands. I am quite a stickler about this important kitchen rule. CLEAN HANDS always!).

Now it was time for JoieGirl to get in on the action. She ended up putting the first coating of powdered sugar on almost all the cookies. Such great cooking assistants!

And finally we have all 30 cookies coated in powdered sugar twice and put away in a container waiting for Greek Night.

So far, the ingredients look something like this:

• 3 Tbl Olive Oil (oregano flavored)
• 3 Tbl Tahini
• 1/2 container spreadable goat cheese
• 1 tsp fresh thyme
• 1 stripped twig rosemary
• Onion powder (to replace 1/4 onion)
• Garlic powder
• Black pepper
• Paprika (just a dash)
• Soy sauce (just a dash)
• 1 tsp fresh dill
• Lemon juice

So far, it tastes rather strongly of tahini... but a lot of the flavors that come after come in notes. The goal, of course, is to augment lamb and maybe obscure the slight mutton taste, not to become the flavor of the dish. So the lamb won't be very thickly covered.

The thin coating is the reason I decided to experiment so much with this dish. I haven't seen any recipes online that suggest coating lamb with either tahini or goat cheese, so I may be well on my way to a tremendous flop.

Stay tuned.

I'm pretty notorious around here for my habitual overuse of black pepper, a trait which comes from my German ancestry. I'm thinking a lot of pepper could do a lot for a tzatziki; I sort of wish I could harvest some of the medieval European herbs that were used in place of pepper before true piper nigrum came into common use.

The lamb? I'm not quite sure- everyone I'm serving it for hates lamb, so I have to magically transform it into something else- but I think, even through the hate, that I'll let the lamb flavor shine through. It's too delicate to waste.

Stir Fry!

For Asian night that occurred centuries ago, I made chicken stir fry. The recipe came from here. The biggest ordeal I had to go through was finding the Stir Fry mixed vegetables. There are close to no stores in the greater Las Vegas area that carry frozen water chestnuts, red bell pepper, and whatever those other two things are in the same bag. Except Walmart. Next time I am most certainly going to just buy those things and cut them myself. It probably would turn out better. For a bit of insanity, I soaked some Soba noodles in water while I was frying and threw them in. Unfortunately, they came out a bit clumpy and didnt really lend itself at all to the stir fry. The sauce itself was great though and I will definitely keep that morsel stashed away for my next Iron chef appearance. Or asian night. Whatever.

There! it has been posted! you've read it! you can't un-read it!

I mean, he probably has a "Send 'Greek Night!' to ViRaLeLiXiR" script installed on his box, or else he's just prodding me like a ritalin-deprived child with a stick, but geez.

Where is he? Probably at this adult cake store. Seriously. I heard him mumbling something about hot buttercream the other night. Or thought that's what he said after his "special" mushroom pizza.

Dear Savory: Post.

Think about that steam curling up from the crust.

Chicken Freaking Pot Pie.

The Pennsylvania Dutch enslaved an entire nation with this rustic dish, which is one of the few meat pies enjoyed this side of the Atlantic (I KNOW YOU'RE THERE, NATCHITOCHES MEAT PIE. I will find the filthy, forbidden love that is deep fried meat pie some day).

The PD's (like they call them back in the hood) also brought us pretzels, apple butter, and funnel cakes, because they are sheer butter-encrusted evil. Their plan is to fatten all of humanity and use their disgusting man-fat to grease the largest slip-n-slide in history. But, you're not cleared for that information.

Her Tartness did the crust for this one, so I'll let her add that one.

1. I cut up two chicken breasts (p.s. - they liked it) and half a white onion (small cubes for the chicken, finely chopped for the onion). Utterly confused by what I was going to do to make these chunks into some sort of pie, I sweated the onion in a stick of butter.

WHAT? Butter comes by the stick. It's how I measure. We are a very skinny family. Bite me.

1. The chicken went in after the onion was clear, along with some soy sauce, pepper, paprika, finely chopped celery (2 sticks) and garlic powder.

2. Double barrel action after the chicken was thoroughly cooked as I unceremoniously plopped one can of cream of chicken and one can of cream of mushroom into the skillet. It sat there, jellied, like some disgusting panna cotta. I stirred it all in anyways.

3. Once it was less... upright, I threw in some mixed vegetables (frozen). What goes with mushroom and chicken? The T herbs! In went some fresh thyme (man, what I would have given for a marijuana smoker to break down those two twigs) and dried tarragon. When things thinned out a bit too much I added a tablespoon of cornstarch and stirred it in.

4. Tasting... what do I need? More soy sauce. A dab of worcestershire. Meanwhile, Tart-on was making some kind of dough as I simmered everything on low.

Magically, all those ingredients with the crust fit perfectly in a circular 9-inch baker. Turned oven to 400. Docked the crust with a fork and brushed it with one beaten egg. Put into the oven. WAITED A HORRIBLY LONG FORTY FIVE MINUTES.

1. Littleroq asked for chicken pot pie for BREAKFAST the next day. Take that, Marie Callender. I have evaded your charms.

Note: Why do I add soy sauce to so many things? Because the MSG in soy sauce makes everything taste like store-bought.

1. Got one of those $2 bags of large dried red chiles. The ones I tried tonight were Californian; we've also got some New Mexican ones on backup.

2. Removed just the stems and tossed them into a blender (I like hot sauces). Blended them into a fine powder (break them in half and blend them in phases).

3. Added all my powder to a can of diced tomatoes and half a clove of garlic (peeled). Back to the blender, to make a thick slurry.

4. Melted some butter over the stove (1 stick), added some salt, onion powder, and cornstarch.

5. Poured the mixture on top, cut heat, added chicken broth and a little soy sauce, and whisked furiously to integrate. Added more cornstarch at this phase.

I ended up with a dark red, slightly hot paste. I can't wait for those enchiladas.

I started the tzatziki last night, draining some plain yogurt, grating a cucumber into it, and mixing in some dill, grated garlic, red wine vinegar, and pepper. It has been sitting in the fridge for a full day, but not without several inquisitive spoonfuls being borrowed...

Tonight, I mixed a stick of melted butter, some fresh thyme and mint, a couple squirts of dijon mustard, a quarter of an onion (chopped), some cayenne, and some black pepper and dill into a mess, then dipped the lamb chops in it and rolled them into breadcrumbs (pouring the rest of the mess in between them).

After broiling on both sides for five minutes apiece, I put a baguette from a local bakery on the bottom rack and turned the oven onto three-fifty. Give me a second to check on it...

Alright. The lamb is going to come out pretty soon; pictures (hopefully) at eleven.

...

Update: Rare is definitely the way to do lamb; it got barely any oven time after its broiling and I wouldn't have had it any other way.

The tzatziki had a little too much red wine vinegar; I'd suggest tasting it regularly and adding the vinegar (especially) at a slower pace. Remember that the tzatziki is going to be a bunch of separate flavors before it goes to the fridge, and taste accordingly.

Lamb is an interesting ingredient. It plays better with those obscure herbs in your spice rack than the standard American meats do; lamb with a little tzatziki is certainly a complex and wonderful experience.

Just a note: before tonight, I've had lamb three times and hated it each time.

• I am speechless. Look at this. Yes, I'd like to teach my kids to eat out of the litter box. I can't imagine how this could be fun.

• Some of the comments for this recipe on Food Network's site are too good to pass up.

• Food Network has the best complaints ever. I swear.

• Paula Deen's heart is going to explode one of these days.

• A satire on how not to write a recipe.

• This can't be real.

• It takes a lot of Google page views to find the really good failures at foodtv.

• This looks like something James Lileks might own.

• What in tarnation might this be?

• Mmm, fish just oozing with goodness.

• Yes, I know some people like animelles. Via Look At This.

• Some commenters can be so ungrateful.

• Even the name sounds good.

• The recipe might be just fine, but the first commenter acts as if though the very existence of the recipe ruined CHRISTMAS.

• Trying to imagine what this tastes like is like the whole Mary's Room thought experiment- very difficult. I wonder if Sandra Lee has a grassroots rating-inflater/dumper society; her recipes seem to polarize the food network bunch.

• WHAT. IS. THIS?

• Read the comment entitled "the best chicken mini pot pies ever!". Poor Sandra.

• Number 3 is throwing up? I thought it was "alone time".

• Tele: So Savory wants to do Asian night
• me: Asian night? What would we be eating on Asian night?
• Tele: I don't know. He just wanted Asian food.
• me: I don't know any Asian dishes though.
• Tele: Stickybuns!
• me: Stickybuns are Asian? (Thinking to myself-"A stickybun is something warm and gooey with cinnamon and sometimes covered in a thick frosting and nuts. You get that at a bakery. This is so not Asian. What is my husband speaking of?")
• Tele:Char Siu Bao
• me: Stickybuns & porkbuns are so not the same thing.
• Tele: sticky pork buns
  

June 27th

• Savory: Has Tele talked you into making Cha Siu Bao for Sunday yet?
• me: He sent me a recipe link yesterday. I didn't realize that was his way of asking me to make. Then he came home and said that you were both thinking of asking me to make the pork buns.
• Savory: lol

And so be began my journey. I have never eaten a pork bun. I have never seen a pork bun. I have never been to Dim Sum. So I had to do research. No time to go eat this Asain food so the research must all be done on the internet and via further chats with Tele and Savory. I found that Savory prefered his steamed with a little honey baked in. Tele prefered his baked. Well alright, we are off to a start. Baked, I can do baked (I worked at a pretzel shop for 3 years). Steamed, I do not know a thing about steaming. (Tele apparantly did. Whew, one less thing I have to worry about. He can teach me on cooking day.)

I ended up combining 3 seperate recipes to make my one dish. I found a food blog with a recipe that I felt would work well, but I needed a dough that could be seamed and baked. I was not sure that her dough recipe would work well both ways however she had other elements that I would definately use. Her site was extremely detailed and that was a bonus (remember I do not know what this item is that I am making). I do believe that she made her life a little more complicated than necessary by cutting out individual little wax paper squares to set the buns on, I chose to just set mine on one large wax paper sheet. I used her site for the details and the filling as well as how to bake the Pork Buns. She didn't have a recipe for how to roast the meat either as she bought hers pre-roasted. The next order of business was to find a versatile dough recipe that would work well both steamed and baked. I found just such a dough recipe. This recipe ended up being an extreamly simple recipe to make. The dough did work well both steamed and baked. The dough was sweet to the smell, but not to the taste. I then found the Chinese barbeque pork recipe on the same site as the dough.

This dish came out very well. Tele and Savory seemed to enjoy them very much. I absolutely loved them. Both the steamed ones and the baked ones were excellent. My 1 year old baby loved the roasted meat and was eating as I was shredding it! There were a lot of seperate steps to get the dish done, but over all it was actually all very simple to do. You must think ahead however as the meat needs to marinate over night first, then get roasted, cool, shredded and then heated on the stove with the rest of the filling ingredients. I felt like the dish was well worth the work put into it and am glad that these two silly guys talked me into making it.

Because this was all a bit confusing, here is a list of the links I used for the different parts.

• Roasted Meat I did not use any variations, just the Basic Steps 1-5 replacing 6 with shredding the meat rather than cutting into bite sized pieces. I did end up using Pork Tenderloin because it was all my Sam's Club had available 30 minutes before closing.
• Dough and How to Steam Buns
• Meat Filling and How to Bake Buns

You already know that Tele owned up to cheating by making Egg Drop Soup (Thank you, it was excellent!). But what you didn't know is that Savory made Stir Fry (Also, thank you. It was tasty). So now what I want to know is how did I end up cooking for 2 days while they ended up cooking for 15 minutes! I think I shall be much more suspicious next time they "assign" me a dish to cook.

Okay, maybe not.

Anyways, after the huge derailment that was trying to get a bunch of simultaneous dishes done for Tapasgeddon, we were all considering doing much smaller dishes. In my corner, I decided to make egg drop soup.

If you've never made egg drop soup, let me inform you that it was basically cheating. The mode of cooking is so simple, it's like you never cooked anything at all.

Boil some chicken broth- I used about 4 cans, with 2 cans of water added in- and add some miso. [I used about a quarter cup of white miso]. Throw in chopped green onions, bring to boil. Add a little black and red pepper and some onion powder to taste.

When it comes to a rolling boil, back down on the temperature and beat the heck out of some eggs. The point is to pour a thin, slow stream of egg into the soup, and for that you need to make sure it's pretty well beaten.

That's it. Almost no work, almost no counter space taken.

This article is part of a series that I will eventually finish entitled "Good Eats Tribute". Basically, I'll be going through every episode of Good Eats to date and reporting my successes and failures at mimicking sir Alton Browns unique (and lets face it, downright awesome) cooking technique. It should be noted that I have no formal culinary education whatsoever.

The first article in the series, well of course it could be none other than "Steak your claim", which features a pan-seared ribeye. Not being a particular rib-eye person myself, I found a couple of tasty, well marbled New York strips at my local Vons.

Recipe is here.

I have to say, that this is by far the best New York I've ever had, no contest. It was juicy and full of flavor, and best of all I didn't have to dirty up the grill. Nice.

Or do there? Southeast Asian cooking styles have been around for a long time, balancing capsaicin-induced heat with sweetness.

First, I chopped up a couple of center-cut pork chops into long strips, and seasoned them with black pepper and red pepper. While those sauteed in butter, I put approximately two cups of cranberry juice and one cup of white wine in a saucepan to reduce. Finally, I pulled out the frozen california mix (broccoli, cauliflower, and carrot) and steamed it.

Once the pork got going, I poured some sirracha on it, browned it, and set it off to the side. Then, I cooked the steamed vegetables (with a little more pepper and sirracha) in the same skillet. Finally, I reintroduced the pork, and poured the cranberry reduction (now about 2/3 its original volume) back over the top.

It was like a Taiwanese Thanksgiving. I wholeheartedly endorse this type of cooking- just make sure not to go over the top with either sweet or spicy.

Oh, my, gosh.

I'd forgotten how fantastically good crab is. Now that I know that it doesn't take any work to prepare, it's probably safe to say that I've got an expensive (though not as expensive as sushi) new addiction.

PS. Mario Batali is the man. That is all.

While I'm certain that if ever there were a recipe which required us to write a Unix shell script in time with our food, we'd be shuddering in (separate) orgasmic delight, there is something to be said for the simple. In fact, sometimes the simple is the most wonderful thing one can have.

Case and point: oven-roasted corn on the cob. I grew up in a family with both Southern American and German roots, and corn on the cob was something one boiled, slathered in butter, then consumed with those little pokey ceramic things suspending it like some sort of corn spit before our mouths. And of course, the butter ended up all over everything- kind of like inviting the Tasmanian Devil to an all-you-can-eat crab restaurant.

If you've got a gas broiler, you can come darn close to barbecue-level corn on the cob by:

1. Strip the corn on the cob of silk and husk.
2. Put half a stick of butter in the bottom of a pyrex baking dish, and set your broiler on high over it.
3. When the butter is melted, put in your corn on the cob (4 cobs).
4. Check every few minutes. When the top of the corn is dotted with roasted kernels in punch-card fashion, rotate your corn, grind on a little pepper, and sprinkle on a little salt.

Once the whole thing is pretty much roasted, you'll have the most amazing corn ever produced from an oven. In four ingredients.

Of course, now I need other methods to deplete my spice rack. Lest it grow, gain sentience, and claim sovereignty over my newly annexed kitchen. Gotta go.

Tele was hard at work on his new job, we had little food in the house and I was left in charge of dinner. This is not a good thing, I make desserts not dinner. I decided to give it a go. First things first what ingredients do we have available? I found: eggs, potatoes, and a block of medium cheddar. Sounded like a frittata waiting to happen. So I checked out some frittata recipes. All of which had a miriad of ingredients that I did not have available. I found a recipe at Epicurious that I felt I could modify to fit my on hand ingredients. And so the frittata experiment began. FYI: a frittata is sort of a quiche without a crust.

Potato & Cheese Frittata

6 large eggs 1 to 1 1/2 cups cheddar 3/4 teaspoon salt (I used sea salt) 1/2 teaspoon black pepper 1/4 of a white onion, chopped 4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced 3 tablespoons olive oil, divided (well, bummer we are out of that too. I had to settle for vegtable oil) 1/2 lb boiling potatoes, peeled and chopped into 1/4 inch chunks (I used 3 small russets)

Whisk the eggs in a large bowl. Add in the cheddar, salt, and pepper.

Preheat broiler.

Cook onions & garlic in 1 tablespoon olive oil in a 10 inch heavy skillet (cast iron is preferable, but oven proof is necessary). Stir over medium heat for about 1 minute until golden. Using a slotted spatula or spoon transfer the onion & garlic to a small bowl.

Put the potatoes with 1 tablespoon olive oil into the skillet. Cook over medium/high heat for about 6 minutes or until they are tender.

Add to the potates in the skillet the final tablespoon of olive oil and the onions & garlic. Spread out evenly.

Pour the egg mixture over the potatoes, onions, & garlic. Cook over medium/high heat for approximately 3 minutes, lifting up the cooked egg around the edges to allow the uncooked egg flow underneath. Reduce the heat to medium and cover, cook for 5 minutes. (center will still be liquidy)

Uncover and transfer the entire pan to the oven. Broil 5 to 7 inches away from the heat for approximately 5 minutes. Frittata is finished when knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Be careful not to overcook or it will be a bit dry.

Slice into wedges and serve. Yield: 2-4 servings

The verdict: Everyone liked it lots. Yeah! I cooked an edible dinner. The boy and I ate ours with catsup, the Tele with some added pepper. If I can make this one, so can you. Do yourself a favor and try it some time. Let me know how your house likes it.

Usually, we here at EU are pretty religion agnostic when it comes to our articles. Mainly I think because we don't want to offend anyone or misrepresent anyones holidays. However, I figure I'd touch a bit on Slava, since it has so much to do with food.

Basically, Slava is a feast that's held for the patron saint of the family in Orthodox Christian homes.

When I say feast, I mean FEAST.

The wife and I went the other day to some of our Serbian friends' Slava. With the exception of eating until I thought I was going to die, it was pretty cool.

First, there's soup. Then, stuffed cabbage. Then, sliced Pork loin, Chicken, Lamb, country ham, and salami. And cheese. and then there's dessert. Baklava, cakes, cookies, something I can't remember.

Did I mention there was drinking? Oh probably not.

At the hosts request, we drank. alot. I drank 5 heinekens, and 2 glasses of cognac, along with 3 shots of plum brandy. I was smashed.

Plum brandy is good.

I digress. There should be plenty more holidays where you eat until gluttony no longer applies and it turns into some new word that hasn't been made up yet.

I had four great tastes that I figured would taste great together- spinach, salt pork, artichoke hearts, and mushrooms. Unfortunately, my quantites were a bit off, and the cumin I added really didn't help the dish much; in addition, the artichokes were marinated in a bit saltier liquid than I'd hoped for.

Were I to do it again, my next recipe would look more like this:

• 1 lb bacon, cooked on low until all the fat is gone
• 2 cups chopped mushrooms, cooked in the bacon grease
• 1 lb sauteed spinach, seasoned with garlic and onion powder
• 1 can of artichoke hearts

Ham and Cheese Toast

Serves 4

• 1 small French stick, sliced into 12 rounds (we used a sourdough baguette)
• 50g/2 oz/ ½ cup grated cheese, such as Manchego or Cheddar. (We used Cheddar, damn albertsons and lack of Manchego. Parmesan cheese would be grrreat here too.)
• 1 large garlic glove, peeled
• 3 slices of salt-cured ham (prosciutto), quartered
• Coarse black pepper

Toast the bread under a hot grill until both sides are golden brown. Cut the garlic glove in half and rub the cut surfaces over one side of each piece of toast. Put the ham on top of the garlic-flavoured toast. Wrinkle the ham so that it fits loosely on the toast round. Top each toast with grated cheese, then sprinkle with the pepper. Get back to the grill and cook for about 1-2 minutes until the cheese is melted.

We used a Pizza oven that Tele had laying around his living room for this, but a toaster oven would work just as well.

Serve hot.

Vinaigrette: * 1/2 cup pomegranate juice * 1 teaspoon finely minced shallot * 1 tablespoon champagne vinegar or white wine vinegar * 2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice * 1/4 teaspoon sugar * 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil * 2 tablespoons walnut oil

Salad: * 4 ounces Earthbound Farm Organic Mixed Baby Greens * 1 Fuyu persimmon or ripe pear, thinly sliced * 1/4 cup toasted or candied walnuts * 1/3 cup pomegranate seeds

To make the vinaigrette, place the pomegranate juice in a small pan and reduce to 2 tablespoons over medium high heat. Combine the juice and the remaining vinaigrette ingredients in a small glass jar and shake vigorously to combine.

Place the mixed greens in a large bowl and add half of the vinaigrette, tossing to coat the leaves. Add more dressing as desired.

Divide the salad between 4 chilled plates and decoratively arrange slices of persimmons or pears atop the greens. Sprinkle each serving with walnuts and pomegranate seeds and serve immediately.

Thats the cut and paste version from the website. I'm probably going to mangle it a bit, because of time, money, and treasure hunting reasons. I'm going to omit the walnut oil, at least.

• 3 Pears, cubed
• 2 Apples, cubed
• 2 Pinot Grigio
• 2 Ginger Beers
• 1 oz. Mint, lightly chopped and macerated
• 2 Tbsp. Lime Juice
• 1 Tbsp. Lemon Juice

In true slacker fashion, I basically chopped stuff up and threw it all together.

So far, it's good. I can't wait to taste it after it mellows a bit.

Teleolurian It must have been a busy night.

When we got to the Macaroni Grill, we faced the usual line-out-the-door setting that you get when you decide to go to a popular restaurant on the spur of the moment. Since I wanted to review the food, I decided to forego showing off my crayoned press pass and instead settled in for the half-hour wait.

In recent years, the Grill has gotten quite the menu facelift. Dining here is now more in the vein of classical Italian signature dishes and less of an upscale Olive Garden; however, the prices are still decent, with most dishes in the $10-$20 range.

Upon reaching our table, the server informed us that they were out of bread dishes and wine glasses, finding us some tumblers for drinking the house Red. Luckily, I'm not a bouquet snob, so I used the wine for fuel as I wrote scathing commentary ("she's just using you for your bed") on the paper tablecloth. With a communal bread plate, oil and balsamic vinegar, and an unspoken no-double-dipping rule, we sat around and chatted while our dishes came out.

For me, it was chicken scallopine ($9.49)- a bit heavy, but absolutely superb. The lemon-butter sauce didn't wimp out on the lemons, and the capers were heavily drenched and therefore delicious. Tender was the chicken, and tasty; the leftovers were even rather tender the next day (something you don't get in, say, a country steakhouse).

Tele's Ratings
Taste	7/10
Value	6.5/10
Service	4.5/10

Savory Masochist

Ding dong the traditional dish is dead. Wait. no. I just didn't get one.

After we got our red wine in tumblers and tore off a few chunks of bread, I decided to go with a build-your-own pasta deal. Macaroni Grill offers these little checklists that you insidiously mark as if you were building your own Frankenstein. I decided on a Penne, with Tomato Cream sauce, and Sun Dried Tomatoes, Roasted Red Peppers, Pine Nuts, and Chicken. It was pretty good, although I can't say as I would get it again. It's my own fault really, for just hitting rand when I was looking at the menu. Oh well. The company was good and we hadn't had a date night in near a decade, so it made up for my pasta. After that, we wrote some generally strange things on the table paper, and we were off! to another crazy adventure.

Oh, I would write a longer review, however Tele pegged most of it in his.

Savory Masochist's Ratings
Taste	5/10
Value	7/10
Service	3.5/10

Queen of Tarts
Okay, so when Macaroni Grill opened they had food that was so-so. In recent years the flavors had been stepped up and they redeemed themselves, until...that fateful night. If we offered to do the dishes I think they might have allowed us to do so. They were obviously understaffed being the day after Christmas, but no bread plates and no wine glasses wasn't the end of it. When the SM put in his original order it included artichokes. The waiter had to come back and let us know that they were out of those too. Apparantly not only did we need to do our own dishes, but we needed to go do our own grocery shopping for the ingredients before arriving at the resturaunt. Crazy!

Usually if I am at an Italian place I automatically order manicotti (if its Mexican then it is a bean and cheese burrito enchilada style), but I am trying to branch out a bit. So, on this evening I ordered Chicken Cannelloni (Hand-rolled pasta stuffed with oven-roasted chicken, melted cheese and spinach, then baked in an Asiago cream sauce. Topped with tomato sauce) for $9.99. The dish smelled and looked wonderful. I immediatly dug in and ate one out of the three stuffed pastas. Half way through the second shell I started to wonder "Where is the chicken?" I am a "recovering vegitarian" (as Tele calls it) so it really didn't bother me that I couldn't taste it or find it until I realized I am paying for chicken I can't find. Must find the chicken. So I tore apart the third shell in search for chicken. I eventually found a small sliver of shredded chicken. If this was Iron Chef the plate wouldn't have gotten high marks for the "theme ingredient" being the dominant flavor. Overall the taste of my dish was excellent, but I was dissapointed that with the name Chicken Cannelloni the chicken was not easy to find in the dish.

I have not given up on the Macaroni Grill yet because I must say that there bread rocks (mmm, bread), but I hope to never have the lack of service that we had that night again.

Queen of Tarts Ratings
Taste	8/10
Value	7/10
Service	4/10

With indeterminate origins shrouded in the mists of time, French Toast (known colloquially in some American regions as 'Fried Eggy Bread', to the sounds of every dead Frenchman spinning violently in his grave) is known by several names throughout the world, including Bombay Toast, arme riddere ('poor knights'), and the term en francais, pain perdu.

Regardless of its origin, I got up this morning determined to eat something other than cereal or pork chops in hot sauce, so I started poking through the pantry looking for things that I might have, at one point in time, heard of as a potential ingredient in french toast. Unfortunately, her Tartiness immediately sensed the twinging of directionless fumbling resonating from deep within my Y chromosome, and hauled out her favorite french toast recipe.

As I reluctantly set down the Clabber Girl (we might have had an interesting breakfast indeed) and perused the recipe, my inherent fiddliness blossomed into full-on transmogrification mode. I mean, the recipe she gave me had six ingredients. Six! I believe in simplicity for simplicity's sake as much as the next man, but this morning I was feeling much more Da Vinci than Kazimir Malevich, and ornery besides. I glanced longingly at the Clabber Girl. Her disturbingly large Victorian eyes seemed to be pleading with me to ignore the pragmatic whims of my wife and instead follow her down a psychedelic yellow brick road of chaos, pestilence, and creative breads.

Unfortunately, looking at the bread and thinking 'yellow brick' inspired in me an unsettling urge to return to simplicity.

In a Pyrex baking dish, I added the two eggs, mixed in brown sugar (take that, recipe), and mixed in the rest of the ingredients in old-school eyeballing fashion. Since it was French toast that I was making, I used half a stick of butter and made sure to scorch each piece slightly.

The result was delicious- but heavy. Brown sugar and butter with a particularly absorbent bread do indeed yellow bricks make. Though they were pleasantly crunchy in a waffle-like fashion, they weren't too sweet, and didn't mind being dusted with confectioner's sugar (I think it was confectioners sugar, but where did little miss Clabber go?), nor did they mind a little pure maple in the tradition of the great French Toast Eating Lumberjacks that used their mighty axes to pave the way to our modern landscape of McDonalds and california rolls. I only managed to eat one piece, but the other slices quickly disappeared due to guerilla action from the other family members. Let freedom ring.

Make me a sammich!

Cucumbers aren't exactly my favorite sushi ingredient, mostly because the fresh taste and crispness seems somehow wrong inside something made of raw fish; it tends to make me think I just bit willingly into a bone left in by some sadistic itamae, getting revenge for me not pointing my chopsticks towards magnetic north when I put them down on my plate. But in cucumber salads or sunemono, they come into their own.

Looking at online recipes, I saw an awful lot of recipes that include sake and rice wine vinegar. Since I'm too lazy to drive to Chinatown for one ingredient, and my children don't really need any extra sake in their diet (says the woman; personally, I believe that drunk children are sleepy children), I decided to play with the recipe a bit. And by 'play', I mean get retardedly creative.

I like rice wine vinegar, and I use it in an awful lot of foods. In fact, it's my second favorite vinegar upon God's slightly fermented green earth. However, I do hold true to the belief that the Japanese would have never invented rice wine vinegar if they'd had the miracle that is balsamic vinegar. I'd gush and all, but I believe the Masochist detailed his unending love for the purple here.

Now, people who know stuff about cooking, like to complain, and have way too much time on their hands to search the internet for blogs may interject that "balsamic vinegar is nothing like rice wine vinegar", on the basis that the first is sweeter, thicker, and much more complex. Thanks. Gee, I didn't know that. Of course balsamic and rice wine vinegar are different. Read the previous paragraph.

However, there is a very important factor here- the differences mean that you can't adulterate balsamic vinegar with salt and sugar in the same proportions as rice wine vinegar and end up with a similar salad topping. In fact, Italian cuisine purists might even argue that to adulterate balsamic with anything at all is akin to blasphemy, like some massive malediction called down upon Vatican City.

Luckily, I'm Protestant.

After cubing two cucumbers and mixing them with alfalfa sprouts (no mung beans... darn), I contemplated the balsamic like some sort of scrying pool. And the oracle revealed to me that mixing the vinegar with one third its volume in sugar and microwaving to combine was, as it were, All Good. And there was a tiny amount of salting and peppering, but not enough so as to offend the NeoRomans.

For a final flavor kick, I put about two tablespoons of sesame seeds on foil and put it under the broiler on high for about four minutes, just to toast them for salad purposes. And you know what? I thought it was superawesome. Our resident Tartologist thought it even better the next day (today).

So maybe I'm crossing roads that aren't meant to be crossed. The point is, make do with what you have, be aware of subtle (or blatant) differences, and always smile like a killer when someone else takes their first bite.

The first recipe I have for you is a family tradition. My aunts got the recipe in 4H club while in elementary school. They require no baking and are great for kids to make. I took the recipe while I was in high school and modified it just a tad. I eat only white chocolate and so I found a way to still enjoy Eskimo cookies. I love these cookies rock hard straight from the fridge, others prefer them softened out on a tray for a while. It's a personal preference thing. Either way everyone will love these and be asking you for the recipe. Enjoy!

Eskimo Cookies

• 4 cups oatmeal (quick cooking oats provide the best consistency)
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 2 tsp water
• 2 oz Ghiradelli White Chocolate Baking Bar (or Baker's Unsweetened Baking Chocolate, for the chocolate lovers)
• Powdered sugar

Combine oatmeal, sugar, butter, vanilla and water until mixed thoroughly.
Melt the baking chocolate in the microwave.
Pour over the oatmeal mixture and mix until the chocolate has been distributed evenly.
Roll into small balls and then roll in powdered sugar to coat.

Refrigerate for 2 -3 hrs before serving.

(Note: Sticking to the original recipe and making it easier for young children to make and mix you use 6 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder instead of the 2 oz of baking bar.)

First, I sweated a mirepoix (carrots, celery, and onions chopped thin) in butter over low heat while I halved some chicken tenders and flattened them (with a plastic potato masher). After giving them a once-over in pepper, kosher salt, a crushed red pepper, and some garlic and onion powder, I spread them evenly around the skillet (where the onions had gone clear).

Since the tenders had been flattened, I was afraid to lose moisture, so I covered them and let each side cook on low for about seven minutes apiece (until white). Finally, I got out the bear of honey and spread a thin glaze across the tops of the chicken, raised the heat to high, and scorched the honey on both sides. It came out tasty, with a good balance between spicy and sweet; it was a little too spicy for LittleRoq (I actually used three crushed red peppers in my initial run) but can be toned down without losing much flavor.

The balance in this one is between red pepper and honey; it would also work well with a bit of smoky sweet paprika in the initial spice mix. I'll have to delve into honey-pepper-paprika more fully in future unrecipes.

I started by sweating some onions and garlic over medium-low heat, then increasing the heat to medium and dumping in:

1. A glazing liquid. (I used half soy sauce and half molasses; you could use honey, or heck, even mango syrup). About 1/2 cup.

2. One green herb. I used a little mexican oregano; thyme and/or rosemary might have been better, but I didn't have any.

3. One egg yolk. Just to make it more glaze-y.

4. Some small additions. For me- pepper, a spritz of lime juice, one crushed dried red pepper, and a little salt (not much- soy sauce, remember?)

After all this, I had a thick brown liquid that smelled like pureed awesome. I folded a long piece of aluminum foil into thirds, dumped in one breast, made a pouch, and slathered it with sauce. (Two breasts total, so I split it among both).

Next, the bake-then-broil. While the pouches of aluminum foil are closed, bake on 350 degrees for about half an hour- then, open the tops and broil on full blast for three-five minutes until the onions start to caramelize.

It was wonderful. The foil kept the chicken from drying out, and the glaze, once broiled in, was enough to make this dish a repeat customer.

(7:22:58 PM) sudor0q: eu!

(7:23:03 PM) sudor0q: !

(7:23:03 PM) ViRaLeLiXiR: "The city gods of Naples were the Dioscures, Castor and Pollux.".

(7:23:28 PM) ViRaLeLiXiR: Elsewhere: "Their names come from poludeukeis, Very Sweet, and kastor, greek for Beaver."

(7:23:31 PM) ViRaLeLiXiR: bahahahhaha

(7:23:49 PM) ViRaLeLiXiR: your city gods are pr0n

You see, I was making dinner, and in lieu of turkey (which I bloody well hate, no matter what Ben Franklin thought) we had this honey-cured ham. Not being in my normal kitchen, I searched around the spice cabinet, which had unfortunately been through a bit of a downsizing (as no-longer fresh spices were removed). So I did what any good person faced with a ham might do- I took a slice, started dumping spices on my hand, and took several taste tests until I came up with a combination I could do well with.

This was a bit of a shotgun Thanksgiving in the sense that the shopping had already been done, and I had not enough time to make anything representing a marinade. After using foil paper, a well-sized crockery, and some water to build a punk-rock dutch oven for the ham, I patted every inch I could with a mixture of allspice, garlic powder, salt, and pepper, then combined more of this in some melted butter (for drenching it halfway through the cooking process).

Another hurdle to overcome was the organic sweet potatoes, which turned out not to be the ordinary orange tubers we are all used to, but instead a starchy, thin, white-flesh job. Starchy as they were, I didn't think straight baking would be enough, so I dismantled some potatoes and put them into a casserole with some water, baked until soft, mashed, then mixed with orange juice, cloves, black pepper, butter, and brown sugar. When the ham was out and the oven set to broil (to roast some corn on the cob), I sprinkled brown sugar across the top of the casserole and let it caramelize.

It wasn't particularly bad, but as often happens with experimental dishes, it was much better once the flavors had time to set. Or so I heard, the next day.

Here's to holiday adventure! See you later, when I'll be discussing how best to cook relatives who overstay their welcome.

First, young potatowan, we must select the right potatoes. The right potato has bright orange flesh with reddish skin. If you're not sure what color the flesh is by the look of the potato, go ahead and take a bite. No one will notice. I promise. If it is indeed orange. Congratulations! Place sweet potatoes into a vegetable bag (about 2 pounds worth). Some grocery stores have scales as to weigh the potatoes. The way these work is you sit on top of one, wait for a grocer to come around and scorn you, slap grocer with bag of potatoes and gauge his injuries. If he's still yelling at you (but slightly pissed off) then you do not in fact have enough potatoes. If he is unconscious, then you most likely have around 2 pounds. If he is dead, you probably want to take a few of the potatoes out, as you have too much. Also, you may want to stuff his lifeless corpse in the corn bin, otherwise by the time you get out of prison your potatoes will have gone bad and thanksgiving will have long been deemed an ancient tradition saluting the once proud indian tribes of North America. The next couple of things you'll need are Heavy whipping cream, bourbon, light brown sugar, sweet sassy molassy, and salt. For the whipping cream, you can visit your local farm and smack around a cow that weighs more than 500 pounds. Then milk. Also, you may want to pasteurize the milk. I'm not quite sure how to do that, but I'm sure it has something to do with Louis Pasteur III and some fairies. Everyone knows that you get Bourbon out of your loco hobos pocket, or your Uncle Henrys hand after he's long since passed out watching badminton. Or maybe it was football. Light brown sugar, well, I can't stop laughing about the whereabouts I was going to put here, so lets just say, you get it at the store. Sweet sassin molassin is a product of the sasquatch and is typically found around or near their dens. If you can't find a sasquatch den, you'll most likely have to omit this ingredient. (Edit: I've just learned you can buy this at the store too, ambiguously named "Molasses"). Oh, don't forget the salt. Since you're probably a homosapien you produce this wonderful seasoning.

To recap, the base ingredients for this dish are: * 1 3/4 to 2 pounds of sweet potatoes * 1/2 cup heavy cream * 1/4 cup bourbon whiskey * 3 tablespoons light brown sugar * 2 tablespoons molasses * 1/8 teaspoon salt

Now for the oh so wonderous topping of magical tastiness +2.

• 1/2 cup all purpose flour
• 1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper (you can use black, white is just prettier)
• one pinch dried thyme (not a handful. a PINCH)
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans (not to be confused with peacocks)
• 5 tablespoons butter, chilled and cut into eency weency cubes.

Now for the actual cookery/sorcery.

1. Preheat your oven/kiln/heating box/toaster oven to 350 degrees.
2. Place potatoes on a foil lined bakery sheet. (cookie sheet will do)
3. Bake until tender, and starting to ooze a syrup, also unicorns. This will take around an hour and 15 minutes, unless you live in Zimbabwe, in which case it will take 75 minutes. If you have mammoth potatoes (the ones that took over the earth there for a brief moment in 1992), then it may take a tad longer.
4. Remove from the oven and let sit until you can touch them without burning a whole in your pasty man flesh.
5. Cut a slit down each potato (not your wrist) and scoop the flesh into a large bowl. Be sure to cackle with glee otherwise the recipe will not come out right.
6. Add the cream, bourbon, brown sugar, molasses and salt, and use one of them new fangled mixing machines to beat the mixture until its as smooth as gator slaw in the springtime.
7. Pour into little casserole dish. Cover with foil so it doesnt go cold.

For the topping: 1. Mix all of the ingredients together thoroughly (except the butter!) in a small bowl. 2. Add the butter and work with your hands until a crumbly mass forms and calls you names. 3. spread evenly atop the potatoes, and bake until the top is nice and brown.

Serve! and hopefully people wont die!

(Note: nothing in here could kill anyone, except the sasquatch)

(Note #2: he wont hurt you because hes spending thanksgiving at my house)

(Note #3: I havent actually made this recipe. I just pulled it out of the nether regions of my brain because it sounds tastastic. I'll update with commentary on flavor later (subnote #1: After I stuff my gullet with turkey))

Now, this doesn't mean your dish HAS to be spicy (unless it's meant for my consumption). Hot sauce comes in two basic varieties- the thick kind you either brush onto food or add in small dabs, and the watery Louisiana style hot sauce which is less about heat and more about flavor. Obviously, I stock both and use the latter for most of my cooking.

Tonight, I took some pork chops (hooray for sales!) and treated both sides with a small amount of hot sauce, cayenne, garlic pepper, and salt. (Other potential additions are: minced garlic, crushed red pepper, chili powder, small amounts of ginger, cumin, or paprika). After melting down a small amount of shortening, I cooked it for about seven minutes per side (until the center was white); had I not been so hungry, I'd have given it the sear treatment before the cooking on medium.

Seeing as how I used about a teaspoon of each ingredient, the taste wasn't as hot as previous variations; instead, the hot sauce imparted its own fresh-vegetables taste that took it out of standard weak-chops fare and placed it somewhere in the upper troposphere.

Not my best shot at this one, by far; but certainly quick, easy, and worth eating on a budget. Viva le hobo!

Hello citizens! CaptainCrumb here with a special treat from the delicious(?) future. That's right, in my hands is a copy of the Official 1978 Star Trek Cooking Manual. Let me explain something: I can't really cook. I could really use a food replicator, so that idealized future seems tantalizing indeed. Unfortunately, this book only covers manual food assembly techniques. I guess that will have to do.

As far as I know, there have been 3 Star Trek cook books attempted. This was the first of them so it seems like a good place to start. The second one was never actually published, so we'll be skipping it for obvious reasons. I'll also probably look into the new Star Trek Cookbook some time in the future.

I don't have any plans for trying to cook something tonight, so we'll have to start with something a little different. This is an old book - it was published a year before I was born. One of the really cool things about it that really shows its age is that it includes a Fortran IV program source listing. That's right - I said IV, not even Fortran 66. Just for the hell of it, I decided to convert it over to ruby, a much more modern language. Be warned, it's still just a conversion of a fortran program so it looks like utter crap.

And now again, in ruby:

food = ' SIHT MARGORP SI' dish = ' NETTIRW NI ATAD' pan = ' LARENEG NARTROF' fryer = ' VI TI YAM NUR N' waffl = ' O KNUJ SENIHCAM'

fmt007 = ' ' * 2 + "n" * 3 + ' ' * 5 + '%2c' * 20 fmt73 = ' ' * 2 + "n" * 3 + ' ' * 5 + '%2c' * 7 + '%12.6f' pad = Array.new(20).fill(20)

puts fmt007 % [ food[1], waffl[3], dish[2], food[12], dish[3], fryer[2], waffl[13], *pad ]

baked = 5 recip = 71.0 / 113 recip *= baked

puts fmt73 % [ waffl[13], food[3], dish[10], waffl[13], waffl[3], pan[6], waffl[4], recip ] puts fmt007 % [ dish[2], pan[5], waffl[6], food[10], fryer[7], waffl[2], dish[10], fryer[4], food[5], waffl[11], dish[1], pan[8], *pad ] puts fmt007 % [ pan[7], waffl[1], pan[14], dish[15], fryer[6], food[3], waffl[9], fryer[8], pan[1], dish[4], waffl[12], *pad ]

May the gods of agile programming spare my tarnished soul. Notice the extra spaces so that we can still use 1-based arrays, fortran style. The *pad is another necessary hack since ruby's C-style sprintf code doesn't like getting too few parameters (oddly enough, it doesn't complain about getting too many).

Next post, I'll actually attempt to cook one of the recipes - the necessary ingredients have already been acquired. Till then...

Edit: I may unleash plague.

Edit: or perhaps pestilence. But we need crops

Edit: How many edits can I edit before I edit edit edit.

Edit: the previous editors responsible for sacking the editors have been sacked.

You can get this stuff after a mere thirty minutes of panhandling, pickpocketing, or rolling drunks in an alley. [Note: I mean with money, from the store. Don't take a drunk man's last bag of mixed vegetables.]

The key behind mixed vegetables, besides conserving valuable hobo calories by avoiding the cutting board, is that you can use them for anything. After all, plain old mixed vegetables have the bland and somehow demeaning taste of grade-school cafeteria hot dogs. That taste that makes you think of crying and stripping for your uncle as soon as your fishing boat is out of sight of the rest of your family.

After cooking the vegetables to the desired tenderness, I mix in a healthy amount of butter/margarine (to tell the truth, I never measure). This is to pump my body full of wholesome and nourishing polyunsaturated fats and lecithin. Some black pepper, salt, and perhaps a spice duo (I'm weird; I like cayenne and a tiny bit of cinnamon) and I have instantaneous nourishment for the modern tramp, even if I pass out from hunger before I can actually get any of it in my mouth.

Sometimes I pretend I'm a Rockefeller and use my uncashable paychecks as napkins.

Hobo fortnight continues, as Vitamin A scrounges around her computer for something of Lost-Ark significance- my Recently Paid Credit Card.

Finding money in my account, through the magic of FINANCIAL ALCHEMY, I quickly ran up my total at the nearest grocery store, buying the cheapest food I could get my grubby insane little hands on. (Editor's Note: Teleolurian has freakishly long fingers. This would be a lot of food.)

Part of my purchase was plantains. I've mentioned them before, in a bananas article. I wanted to make some tostones. So I followed what few instructions I could remember without actually having to follow a recipe. Because I hate recipes with all my cold, Korean heart.

First, I tried to peel them. Ladies and gentlemen, peeling a plantain like a banana is fool's work. Plantain skins are like alligator handbags. They don't just fall apart, you gotta have something sharp to get at the tasty/valuable insides. For this, I used my favorite EXTREMELY SHARP HOLY CRAP chef's knife, which of course went through it like (1) hot butter, (2) cold air, (3) so many tortured screams of joy at my shiny awesome knife.

Once I'd made the incision, the skin came off like a prom dress. Next, I cut the plantain (which NOW finally looks like a banana, and not the Cousin-Itt version of one) into half-inch diagonals. Ladies? Gentlemen? If you spend money on one thing in your house, make it a 10" knife.

Next, I dumped obscene amounts of shortening into the smallest skillet I owned. It looked like Antarctica.

Once that all melted over medium-high, I dumped in just as many plantain chips as would cover the bottom. Now, as we should know from reading this site, tostones are plantain chips that are (1) fried (2) flattened (3) fried again. For your assistance, here is a small MSPaint diagram:

So, I scorched them all brown. Cross reference: chicken.

Next, I 'flattened' them. How I was to do that I wasn't sure, but in the absence of a meat tenderizer I used a fork. Squiggly maggots of white plantain flesh came up between the tines. (Oh, did I ruin your appetite?)

Next, I refried them. Now, I had two options:

Brown Sugar And Orange Juice: After taste testing, I REALLY wanted to candy them. Unfortunately, brown sugar wasn't on my menu.

Lime Juice and Salt: BINGO. I had some wonderful tostone-chips. They tasted like fried superawesomeness. I can't begin to describe them. WHAT ARE YOU DOING SURFING THE WEB? GO BUY PLANTAINS!!!

My personal favorite is to make this custard in ramekins and top with fresh berries, as a breakfast or dessert concoction. Of course, there are hundreds of ways to bastardize this custard, substituting Auslese or other German Eiswein, Sherries, or Ports for the Marsala. you can let your imagination run wild.

(Dammit. Every time I write an article I try to put as much schtick as I can into it, but it always inevitably falls back down to a hum drum cooking article. I could emulate tourrettes and just stick a random obscene word in the sentences somewhere I guess. Maybe I'll write a filter.)

Anyway, back to the custard at hand.

To make Zabaglione, one needs the following stuff from your local grocer (or, if you live in Vegas, your local 7-11):

• 5 egg yolks
• 1 whole egg
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup Marsala

Easy, no?

1. In a batter bowl, whisk the egg yolks and the egg together with the sugar, beating until it turns a lemony yellow color.
2. Whisk in the Marsala, until fully combined.
3. Microwave (?!) for 30 seconds.
4. Whisk
5. Repeat steps 3-4 until it is desired thickness.

But it has raw eggs! I'll die!

If your eggs aren't pasteurized then you just may. But if you're living somewhere that doesn't have pasteurized eggs, you may want to move. Or at least get checked out for tapeworms.

Microwave?! BLASPHEMY!

True, Microwaves are evil. They are the incarnate of Lazy Americans(tm) everywhere, and they usually botch things up like no tomorrow. However. This prevents you from having to make it the old fashioned way, using a double-boiler (or a glass bowl on top of a boiling pot of water, my favorite). You can still make it that way, just be careful it doesn't cook too fast, otherwise you'll have an omelette. And a nasty omelette at that.

It is dark here!

You and your custard have been eaten by a grue.

That about sums up Q&A. I hope I've enlightened you, the viewer, to a world not unlike that of custards. Perhaps someday we will be privy to a custard takeover and have to bow to custard, and when that day comes, you can say you helped birth the enslavement of the human race. Until then, custard will remain our friend as ...

GOOD EATS

swanky music plays

(GOOD EATS is copyrighted somewhere by Food Network or Alton Brown, and because I love them like family, I hope they don't get mad)

But I digress.

I'm not going to tell you how to fry chicken. It's more intuitive than the screwdriver. But there are certain things that should be part of your regular shopping list and they all make our ruthless domestication policies worthwhile.

1. BUY LARD. Or, if you're one of these health-conscious types, BUY SHORTENING. For the sake of the species, buy SOMETHING that is thick, greasy to the touch, white, and melts into a massive pool of chicken frying goodness. Any neighborhood is likely close to an ethnic or just-plain American store that sells pig kidney fat in huge blocks (love the Manteca). If nothing else, invest in a deep fryer (with which you can cook EVERYTHING) and some peanut oil. Culinary adventurers, buy ambergris. Shark fat. Clarified schmaltz for the ultimate one-upsmanship of the chicken. Or take a note from Fight Club (enough said).

2. Get something to bread chicken in. I use tupperware. Grandma used paper lunch bags. Dump in flour, breadcrumbs, and whatever you want- last night I used basil, thyme, cayenne, pepper, garlic salt, and anything else I could grab from the spice cabinet. Don't get the expensive spice jars full of old, tasteless stuff- buy the cheap little sacks on the sidekick-display at the end of the produce aisle. 99 cent cayenne goes in everything. Even a little cayenne and paprika will make it taste better without appreciably increasing the hotness factor (capsaicin pansy).

3. Have chicken on hand. I've been stalled from frying chicken several times just by not having it around. During Hobo Week, I buy the huge bags of frozen, genetically-engineered Elephant Whale Buffalo chicken breasts. Boneless and skinless = easy cutting. This is an economy based upon ease of attainment and use, people. Get your nearest livejournal self-inflicted injury specialist and a razor blade to cut the meat into strips if all else fails.

4. Insert chicken in choppy chunks into your mixed and shaken flour-crumb-goodness mixture. Raise temperature to medium (for shortening, which otherwise has a slight tendency to EXPLODE) or medium-high (for good old god-given lard) and let it boil into a puddle of clear, fatty goodness. Have a skillet lid, or at least another skillet. Burning fat hurts, which is why they used to dump it from crenellations onto erstwhile castle invaders.

5. Since not everybody appreciates spice like I do, I don't put crushed red pepper into the crumb mixture. Instead, I buy the bag of whole dried peppers and crush them in my fist into the heated lard. I am therefore genetically superior to the red pepper. Don't let the pinks crush the peppers for you- nothing says loving like the horrible imagined screams of chiles while you pulverize them in your opposable-thumb having fist (people without thumbs: you're still superior to them. The chiles aren't going to squeeze YOU into boiling lard).

At first, I was just pouring in the seeds; however, since I know that the heat actually comes from the chile's placenta (which coats the seeds), I just toss the whole mangled pepper corpse in.

And yes, I talk about corpses often while cooking. And eating.

Cook until meat stops being pink, then cover and jack that heat up to high (take THAT, shortening can warnings) so you get a mild scorch on your crumbs. Then reduce heat, flip chicken, and scorch it AGAIN.

Covering the skillet makes for juicier chicken. Minor scorch action makes for crispier outsides. You can do what you want to it- you're BETTER than chicken.

If we weren't meant to eat them, they wouldn't be made of meat.

(10:04:23) synikal: woot

(10:18:34) synikal: give me a description of the blog for technorati, darnit

(10:18:59) 26350698: um

(10:19:09) 26350698: TRANSCENDING THE TYPICAL RECIPE FORMULA!

(10:19:20) synikal: heh

(10:19:23) 26350698: INTERPLANETARY GASTRONOMY FOR THE UP AND COMING HOBO!

(10:19:51) 26350698: THE MATHEMATICS OF FOOD! SANITY AS RELATES TO PASTA AND WINE! FOR GOD AND COUNTRY!

(10:19:54) 26350698: ...that should do it.

(10:21:45) 26350698: THE PIZZA OF BEATIFIC JOY! UNFATHOMABLE DELIGHT IN A GUTTER KITCHEN! A HOMESTYLE BREAD-AND-METH LAB!

(10:21:49) 26350698: i can do this all day.

(10:23:22) 26350698: HERB RUSH KEKEKEKEKEKE

(10:23:43) synikal: hehe, I got it

(10:23:44) synikal: lol

(10:23:55) 26350698: we're on technorati now?

(10:24:08) synikal: yup

(10:24:22) 26350698: IM IN UR KITCHEN COOKING UR F00DZ

(10:24:38) 26350698: ALL YOUR SAUCE AM BELONG!

My approach was simple. After cooking to desired tenderness (at least removing all traces of al dente), I added some butter, milk, pepper, and garlic. Exact quantities? About half a stick of butter and a quarter cup of milk to half a package of pasta. I'm a bit overboard on things like garlic, pepper, and garlic pepper, so feel free to experiment. After draining and adding these ingredients, I put it back over medium heat and moved it. Like a washing machine. Those noodles weren't going to scorch on my watch. When the butter had disappeared, I proclaimed it done. Loudly.

The sauce was perfectly thin and absolutely divine. My only regret was that I only had half a stick of butter; if I could double the quantity of butter and milk I might have generated a bit more sauce. As it was, it was just perfect enough. That's what you get for spending time around italian friends.

I abhor recipes; they teach you to follow rote instructions and not to experiment. Here, however, is something Tele-approved and much more flexible. Allow me to present the UNRecipe (thanks, minipulator) for what I generated:

• X packages angel hair pasta
• X sticks butter
• X/2 cups milk
• Spice Combo In my case, garlic and pepper. Try basil/thyme (tiny amounts), white wine/bouillon powder, or garlic with 2X tablespoons of olive oil replacing X/2 sticks butter.

Mix over medium heat until awesome. Serves {2,4}X.

Now, every red-blooded American child has known one fact since their vagrant mother sent them a cheap Radio Shack science kit (with magnets!!) in the mail: opposites attract. And, in so doing, they change the fundamental properties of the whole. Riddle me this. Hydrogen is 'splodey. So is oxygen. Together, they make water, which under most situations won't ignite no matter how many times you hold a blowtorch to it. So, in the quest to drink myself into a coma until such time as I can afford to buy the food that makes this site exist, can several horrible tasting things that have lurked in the fridge since the ancient ones first founded their aquatic R'lyeh underneath the cruel tides somehow... synergize into something wonderful and tasty? Especially if it contains alcohol? In the name of American Science, I was willing to find out.

Now, the ancient Aztecs did this. They took bitter cocoa, mixed it with pepper, and made a drink. Of course, nobody knows if it was tasty, but I bet anyone who complained turned into the next 'virgin' crop sacrifice. Here's what I had in the fridge that I was willing to sacrifice:

1. A twelve-pack of Vault Zero.

This was a mistake buy. Vault tastes like an energy drink; Vault Zero, which is presumably lacking in calories, fats, tars, nicotine, vitamins, and drinkability, tastes like an extremely diluted septic tank which has, through the miracle of years of decay, begun to produce its own internal bubbliness.

However, on the way home, Vitamin A (ever sensitive to my plight of not having booze to turn my Seroquel 1-2 into a knockout punch) told me that she had some flat Rockstar and vodka in a water bottle.

My interests were noticeably piqued.

Did I dare do it? Did I dare mix two energy drinks with booze? WOULD THE EDIBLE UNKNOWN KITCHEN BURN LIKE GOMORRAH AT THIS UNHOLY CONCOCTION?

Obviously, the perceptive reader can tell from my vomitous prose that the experiment has already taken place.

First, I sampled the mixture. I'm not sure what the origin of this rancid bile was, but at some point in time she'd come home reeking of distilled grain and managed to lose two bottles of liquor in my car (I discovered them today. Joy!)

Apparently, even running off of alcohol combustion, she wouldn't drink it. I don't blame her. The energy drink portion had somehow lost its spirit, soul and essence; it turned normally bitterharsh vodka into something mellow and thoroughly unpalatable, like regurgitated scotch.

In the interests of being a Patriotic Citizen, I forged on.

Upon an equal mixture (the Rockstar/Vodka, by my estimation, was about 70% vodka), I took a sip. Then I immediately poured in more of the R/V mixture, to get rid of the horrid taste of Vault Zero.

Now it's a sippin' whiskey.

UPDATE: I think I just found a chunk in my drink.

UPDATE: Upon closer examination, it was just a really weird bubble.

1. Winchells. They throw out their old donuts in the late hours. This is a good way to get free stale donuts.

2. Starbucks. They throw out their old pastries every night when they close. Since they use better ingredients than Winchells, the food is much better. Also, espresso brownies give you the boost you need to panhandle in front of major grocery stores until late the next morning (hint: look for struggling single women and give them the bus fare schtick. More often than not, this can net you five bucks worth of burritos).

3. Slots-A-Fun. Free popcorn once with each shift change can net you four baggies of intense sodium and some much needed roughage.

With any luck, I'll have money soon and therefore be able to get back to ingredient cookery. Until then, au revoir.

Say what you will about their modern military prowess, the cuisine of France has not only helped modernize the world through a living philosophy of art and cuisine before conflict, but several Enlightenment-era thinkers, as well as two of the most famous military personages of all history (Napoleon Bonaparte and Jeanne D'Arc) were Gallic. It's a bit of a shame on my part that what I know, firsthand, about French cuisine comes primarily to me by accident.

There's a legend about the baguette- that stereotypical French bread often titled as such in the supermarkets. What I do know about a baguette is that, when cooked properly and served fresh (crisp exterior, creamy inside)- it is quite possibly one of the most transcendental base foodstuffs known to man.

Anyhow, the legend states that the baguette was invented during Napoleon's winter campaign against Russia- that the troops, with little room to pack extra belongings, created a foodstuff that could be stored in trouser legs. Right. Interesting story? The truth, to me, is far more interesting, and indicative of the legends behind the food.

Napoleon's troops had no need for storing bread during a winter campaign. The French army at the time apparently included such a thing as a mobile bakery unit. While this isn't particularly devastating (I can imagine seeing America's enemies struck with fear at a rolling Winchell's), it does show the type of artistic pragmatism that makes France an interesting country, at the very least, and provides some clues as to their culinary stylings. Stay tuned.

What kind of things? Well, Any fruit, vegetable, root, or composite meat, for starters.

Plantains, Potatoes, or Apples for making chips, slicing deli meats and cheeses, your imagination is the limit!

Boy, it sounds like I'm selling something here. Sigh.

There are only two true regions where Balsamic vinegar is made today, Modena and Reggio Emilia. If the Balsamic you're buying says its from somewhere else, I wouldn't get it!

Since vinegars are very closely related to wines, their age makes a distinct impact on their flavor and consistency. Younger Balsamics (1-5 yrs) will be very thin and have a light sweet taste with the acidity of a red wine vinegar, whilst more aged Balsamics (12-80+ yrs) will be thicker and have a consistency more akin to a syrup. Also, older Balsamic vinegars usually lose most of their acidity in lieu of a higher sugar content and much sweeter, smoother taste. Some people even consider these as an after dinner finish, they pour a small glass of a usually 12-18yr Balsamic and drink it straight, somewhat like Port wine is used!

Recommended Usages

Balsamic vinegar (depending on the age) can be used for every course of every meal of the day, if you so desire. The younger varieties lend themselves well to breakfast dishes, soups, salads, as a dipping sauce for breads, pastas, chicken, portobello mushrooms... well, you get the idea. The older of the Balsamic family can be used for any of the above, but is also good as a topping for ice cream, desserts (Panna Cotta!), cupcakes, or as an after dinner finish (as above).

Cavendish No More?

Picture a banana in your head. More likely than not, that mental image is of the Cavendish banana, a cultivar bred for durability (and not particularly for taste). The Cavendish is a polyploid breed- it has extra chromosomes in its genetic makeup, making the plant more durable. However, the Cavendish will most likely not be the most common banana in the near future.

In the 1950's, the most common banana export was the Gros Michel; however, a banana-unfriendly fungus known as Panama disease wiped Big Mike off the map. A new strain of Panama disease, called tropical race four, has recently begun to attack the Cavendish cultivar. Since Panama disease is resistant to fungicides, the Cavendish may soon be replaced by a different type of banana in world trade.

Cooking with Plantains

The plantain is starchier and less sweet than your everyday banana, making it less suitable for raw eating (unless very ripe) and much more suitable for use in cooking.

If you've never done yourself the favor of trying Carribean cuisine, you'll be amazed at what can be done with a single ingredient. Plantains can be cooked at any stage of ripeness, and the difference in flavor between a fried green plantain and a fried ripe one is subtle and fantastic.

Preparation is very simple. Tostones are green plantains, cut into one-inch diagonal slices, and fried in oil until brown; then they are flattened and fried again. Without further addition, these are delectable; however, traditional Dominican tostones are topped with sour cream and red or black caviar. The Venezuelan version, called patacones, are treated more like tostadas and are covered with shredded meat, cheese, and chopped lettuce.

Maduros, on the other hand, are very ripe- so ripe that the skin of the plantain is brown to black- and the slices are fried once until golden brown. Traditionally, these are served plain.

You can also slice green plantains very thin and deep-fry them to make chips; I find these superior to potato chips (especially with a little lime juice and salt).

Born in the region of France from whence it gets its name, the Pinot Noir wine known as Burgundy is a rich cooking experience. Perfect as a sauce base for dishes of beef, chicken, or pork, it is a principal ingredient in preparations of escargot and coq au vin. Despite its international heritage, however, a cheap Burgundy can still make an excellent aromatic and flavor addition to a stock-based dish. Broth Reductions

One of the simplest ways to use Burgundy is as a reduction with broth. After flouring and browning the meat of choice, you can add a quart of broth and about 2/3 bottle of wine, along with your herbs for seasoning (bay leaves, in particular, seem to sing in these preparations). Be prepared for at least half an hour (preferably more) of occasional stirring over medium heat; your patience will be rewarded when the liquid reduces to about 1/2 to 1/3rd its original volume and becomes reddish-brown and thick (think beef bourguignon).

Almost any traditional stew ingredient can be incorporated into this dish. For a more gourmet dish, sauteed mushrooms and pearl onions can be added; chives, oregano, garlic, basil, sage, and/or pepper in different combinations are great. (Since I’m a spicy food lover, I also add in about half a teaspoon of cayenne and go rather heavy on the black pepper). Served over noodles (slightly al dente, buttered, peppered, and lightly seasoned with basil), you’ll turn burgundy into a regular part of your pantry.

Does it not make you lust for pie!?

I chose to use Cat Cora's Galaktoboureko recipe for this dish. Her directions were very clear and easy to understand. But I did have to make a few changes. I don't know what kind of baking dish she was specifically referring to, so I chose to use my Pampered Chef Deep Dish Baker. It worked perfectly.

Also, I am not sure where to acquire "thick" phyllo dough. None of the stores I went to had it. So, I just used regular thin sheets of phyllo dough.

I brushed one sheet w/butter and then added another sheet on top and buttered it. I continued this process until the stack was 8 sheets thick. I then laid this over half of the round baking dish, letting it drape over the sides. I repeated this process to cover the other half of the dish. Then for the top I prepared 6 more sheets of phyllo dough in the same manner.

I chose not to cut the top dough to fit the size of the dish as Cat Cora suggested, I just rolled up the little bit of extra dough when I rolled up the sides. The original recipe suggests scoring the top of the phyllo with diagonal cuts, but I must admit that while using the thin phyllo sheets this was almost impossible. So I just gave it some strategically placed small pokes with a sharp knife all around the top.

The pie was very easy to cut once it was cooked. Also, it will seem as if there is not enough room for the pie to "drink up" all of the lemon syrup. Just be patient. Give it as much as it can hold and just wait a minute or two, then start pouring more in slowly. It will eventually take it all. This part really adds a lot of flavor so you want to make sure you get all of the syrup in there.

I wouldn't worry too much about clarifying the butter, it really doesn't make that big of a difference in this case. Editor's Note: Liar. Just because you can't tell...

Just melt the butter and allow it to cool before using a spoon to skim off the fat that has crusted on top. That is really all that is necessary.

Now, to find some semolina. Semolina is a flour used to make pasta. It is sold in clear plastic bags and made by Bob's Red Mill. I was not able to locate it at any of the regular grocery stores in town (well at least not on any of their websites). Truth be told, I avoid the large grocery stores whenever possible. When I ran in to my trusted Sunflower Market they had it available right next to all the other great products by Bob's Red Mill. If you are looking for it in the store I would look for it where ever your store stocks the specialty grains. Editor's Note: What the heck, do they pay you?

This is a moon alien.

Really, once you have gathered all the ingredients to this dish together it is a very simple dish to prepare. It also tastes wonderful cold, so it is a recipe that you can make ahead of time, allow to cool and then refrigerate until needed. I love when I can prepare dishes ahead of time... less stress on party day that way!