Fancy That

You thought I locafailed yesterday? Look at this. And I did it on purpose.
If you haven't already figured it out, I'm an outlaw. I love breaking rules. I will go deep dirtbag for the thrill of it, and to get a reaction out of you.
So there we were with a big can of Deviled Ham. I love that stuff: greasy, smooth-grainy, salty, baking spices flavoring the meat. We recently ate D. Ham on Saltines. But everybody knows you gotta use Ritz. Ritz is salty, greasy, with baking spices. (And it's a little sweet.)
Well, I was all ready to snarf up my divine devils, but I got a thought. Snazz it up! Make it a Canna-Pay!
Without veering from my lowbrow food sourcing, I grabbed a jar of cocktail olives. Salty! Even a little greasy. (Sadly, those pimientos don't taste like they used to, and you can see they're "chopped and formed.")
Quite the Hor Doover.

Locafail

Cranky can't resist certain food urges. Especially if I talk out loud about something good to eat.
Me, I'm just thinking and planning and doing a mental taste experiment. Out loud. Cranky is an epistemologist, and he wants the food in his mouth if he's going to make a judgment. Now.
He can't wait.
We had some fantastic sliced ham in the fridge the other day (from Fra' Mani, it was rosemary scented), and I blurted (perhaps it's my fault; I should just keep quiet) how nice an asparagus spear would be, rolled up in some of this ham.
Asparagus is out of season, obviously, so this was strictly conjecture.
Nope. Cranky came home with a bunch of asparagus grown in Calexico, which is about as far from me as you can get and still be in California. (At least it came from California!)
The two of us decided it would be a nicer nosh served on a plank of buttered toast.
The wheat, not local. The pork, probably not local. The asparagus was the local-est thing!
And? No regrets.

'Tis the Nibblies Season

The holidays entail a lot of feasting, but sometimes you just want a savory nibble with your glass of champagne.
This is what we snacked on before Thanksgiving dinner. It was our lunch, actually. Spiced walnuts. Salt, dried oregano and cayenne, stirred with olive oil and roasted for 10 minutes at 350º. Really easy. But kind of filling. It was a while before we could face the gravy.
Walnuts are fresh, right now. I'm loading up on a few more bags at the farmers market, because I'll be throwing them into everything, from salads to pasta, all winter.
Winter. Oh, hey, it's egg nog season too! Cranky just brought home a bottle.
Yeah, I think I'll get through this just fine.

I'll Have the White Meat, Please

You can't even think (out loud) about food without Cranky offering to buy the ingredients and get that salad/soup/steak/whatever on the table as soon as possible. He is not a food theoretician. If food gets mentioned, it must get eaten, and soon. He's so terribly suggestible. (Good thing he doesn't read cooking magazines.)
And so it was, yesterday, that I found myself thinking (out loud) about a childhood dish I loved, pork chops and rice cooked in the same pan. Cranky offered to get the pork chops ASAP.
"Silly!" I said. "We have to save up our meat appetite because Thanksgiving is Thursday."
Um, no, he reminded me. We are not eating meat for Thanksgiving. (We are making turkey gravy from turkey necks, backs and wings, however.)
Oh! Well, then.
Without further discussion, Cranky went off on his usual morning rounds (coffee, library, bank) today and returned with one huge pork chop, to share. He wasn't going to wait any longer.
We just now ate it.
Is that soon enough, Cranky?

A Sort of Wind in the Willows Meal

Yesterday it was storming something awful. Rain, huge winds, and lightning. Cold and nasty.
It might have been a good day for a lentil stew or a potato potage, but we needed lunch, now.
Besides, we've been planning on having Welsh Rarebit. Had the good cheese in the fridge.
OK, it was a slap-dash job. The egg wasn't beaten well enough, and not blended into the cheese-and-ale mix well enough. So what? It tasted perfect. Really, really filling, too.
Ms. Mole and Mr. Toad needed a nap.

Crabo Loading

First day of the Dungeness crab season. I can't recall if I've ever had fresh crab on the first day...
But we decided to pay homage today. At first, we tormented ourselves with how we would prepare the crab. When we were close to not agreeing, we almost decided to punt the crab for another day.
But then I decided not only to pay homage to the crab, but to honor its purity. No muckety-muck. Purity! With tweaks.
What we did, then, was to take the fresh picked lump meat and warm it in a little saucepot of butter and garlic (the garlic had been merely swiped over the sides and bottom of the pot). Lots of butter. I added more.
Put your warm, buttery crab meat into bowls and shower ever so lightly with truffle salt.
That parsley leaf? Way too strong for this delicate delicacy. Way too strong.
Eat with buttered bread and collapse into a crustacean coma. Somebody (not saying) is horizontal on the couch right now.

Clay Pot Four Loko

Yes, we are going nuts over the clay pot. We followed a Cooking Channel recipe fairly closely the first two times (though we tinkered with the vegetables). The mixture of sugar, soy sauce, oil and garlic is just simplicity. Tastes so good, when kicked up with black pepper and sesame oil.
Gradually, though, we began to explore. The other day we made our maddest dash toward originality with a clay pot of curried potatoes, onions and cauliflower. No sugar or soy sauce, but the garlic fried in oil was indeed a keeper.
We had recently tasted Trader Joe's Thai green garlic paste. Yeah, it's nice. No idea how authentic it is; we're poking around in "I don't know that yet" territory. I've eaten a lot of Asian food, but I haven't parsed it. I'll tell you, though, it's not very hot. Well, we bought a jar of it anyway. And we also have a jar of Korean gochujang, which is a hot, sweetish red paste that reminds me of spicy ketchup, but it has no tomatoes in it.
Crossing impossible culinary borders, I combined these oozy liquids and came up with a fancy taste, indeed.
And so simple. Curried potatoes and cauliflower, with flavor flav. Listen: FIVE minutes on the stovetop in the presoaked pot (though we had parboiled the potatoes). It adds up to a little time, but it's easy.
I don't have a photo of it, although I am picturing it in my head.
That good. Absolutely no relation to the picture above.

(The photo is staged. One, nobody barfs into their hands. Two, she's holding a wad of spaghetti strings to make the picture look live. If I wanna watch people barf, I watch Tosh.0.)

Yeah, we goin' dirtbag!

It's Not Rocktober Anymore, It's...

Brown Derby Salad

Is it called an earworm if you get an idea for something you absolutely have to eat from somebody's blog? A mouthworm?
Well, Amy cobbled together a Cobb salad that looked spectacular, and she reasoned that it was seasonal. Why not? Lettuce loves cool weather. Had to have it.
I didn't follow her recipe precisely. Just got the idea, and got brave. With ingredients already on hand.
Interestingly, there's no chicken in Amy's version. Nor was there chicken chez moi. The little kick of meat came from bacon crumbles.
I had to leave out a few things, but subbed in slivers of hard-cooked egg. I will say the blue cheese is imperative. I forgot we had avocados, and, so, no avocados.
I chose square dishes for elegant plating, and lined my ingredients in rectilinear rows. It was pretty cute.
Then I went back and looked at Amy's photo. Damn. What a great photo, first of all. And: her rows of ingredients are compact, tight, beautiful.
Cranky wants to make this again, soon. He doesn't even want to make rows; he's just gonna toss it all together.
A lovely vinaigrette is essential; please make your own.

Stock Report

Chilly weather, and Cranky wanted to eat something green. Needed to eat something green.
Too cold for a salad. No Brussels sprouts or broccoli in the house. But there was that cabbage. And potatoes and onions.
Cranky did a quick snoop through the chest freezer and pulled out a most remarkable elixir: A stock made from chicken bones and barbecued rib bones. This was flavor. Smoky, a teensy bit of sweet (from traces of BBQ sauce, I think), meaty and very dark.
So, we're thinking cabbage soup!
Who in their right mind wants cabbage soup?
If you are lucky enough to have a stock like this, I daresay you want cabbage soup.
I seared some onions and chunks of (Savoy) cabbage in oil, for that burned, brown flavor. (That bit in the picture that looks like bacon? Cabbage.) Then tossed it into the soup pot with the rest of the cabbage, the cubed potatoes, some salt, black pepper and (I don't know why, but it was perfect) a dash of ground cumin.
This was the most underseasoned soup in the world, and we couldn't stop drooling and groaning. It was seasoned by its ingredients.
Especially that stock.

Will Be a Food Blog Again Shortly

This is a picture of my hair, right after I washed it. It's really clean, but (alas) uncombed because I didn't know how messy I look. (Those dark patches under the blond are a result of inept highlighting. Or maybe I'm still in my Kajagoogoo phase.)
Here's the neat thing. I washed my hair without shampoo or conditioner. I didn't know it could be done, but I read about it somewhere and gave it a try.
It works! You just keep your head under the shower and massage every inch of your scalp. I took breaks to wash my body and face (also soap-free), and "washed" my hair three times just to be sure (and it was really dirty going in).
My hair felt light and baby-fine. No pollutants, no petroleum.
Why didn't anybody tell us this? All my life I used Janitor in a Drum, followed by a rinse of BP Spill. Never did like the results, so I would put even more products on my hair trying for a little lift, a little swing, a little sumpin fer godssake.
I'm not going all hippie on you, but this is natural. Freedom from plastic bottles!

Sanity Prevails in California

Maybe she can get a job as a housekeeper now. A hundred and forty million for this?
Peace and best wishes to Jerry and Barbara. I got nothing to say about Fiorina.

OhMahGah

That is all.