One Local Snickersnack

Our first Anaheim pepper from the garden!
It was about seven inches long, not counting the stem. It had a little heat in it. It was really, really slender.
But we wanted to stuff it anyway.
We figured the best way would be to slice it completely in half, and each of us would get a little boat filled with good things.
Everything except the avocado drizzle was local (and the avocado drizzle had loads of local items, including homegrown onions, tomatillos and peppers from the farmers market, and Marin County rain-reservoirs tap water — avocados and tomatillos contain a lot of pectin, and can take the addition of a splash of H2O).
Purty little black beans are from Full Belly Farms. The feta is made with goat's milk, by a local company. I don't know where they get their goat's milk (and they have no Web presence), but I'm happy to have it because it's not made from cow's milk, which I'm avoiding.
It wasn't enough food for a full meal, so we had to (had to!) eat fresh corn on the cob, also.
Very New World.
I'm changing my name to Stands with a Fist. (Hey, she was mad, too!)

Please Don't Buy BBQ Sauce

OK, let's be fair. There are some pretty awesome commercial barbecue sauces for sale. Arthur Bryant's comes to mind. And that special Alabama blend given to me by a good old boy.
But you're not going to find them at Safeway. Megamarkets carry sugary glop, and the sugar is high-fructose corn shit. (Shut my mouth!) They are oddly flavored with artificial smoke, bourbon, peaches, and all manner of stuff that doesn't belong in there.
Don't even get me started on ketchup.
I've always liked brewing my own barbecue sauce, and as recently as the most recent decade ago, I squirted ketchup into the mess for a sweet, tomatoey tang.
Ugh. All you taste is oil of clove.
I don't even have ketchup in my house anymore. I have homemade tomato sauce, frozen in little plastic bags.
So. How I do it: Marinate your pork spareribs in a good home-concocted marinade. (We are talking about ribs, right?) Then save the marinade, boil it down (to eliminate possible pathogens, to concentrate it, and to let the scum rise to be skimmed). At this point you should add tomato sauce or even tomato paste (I use both). A spoonful of honey. Tinker with the flavors. No mustard. I don't even bother with garlic. Let it cook into a beautiful, soupy slop.
You will love it.
Do not apply the barbecue sauce to the ribs until after they're cooked. You don't want blackened, bitter flakes. Ew. Just cook the meat lovingly, and then pass the sauce at the table.
Here's a rough approximation of my marinade: Equal portions of distilled white vinegar (hey, we're going the hick route, aren't we?) and — ohgod, I'm embarrassing myself here — vermouth. I used a highly botanical vermouth, and it adds tons of flavor. A little tomato sauce, but not too much because the sugars will burn in the grill (but meat loves to be tenderized in tomato). A terrific sploosh of Tapatío hot sauce (which reminds me of the Arthur Bryant's sauce). A drizzle of Worcestershire sauce, and an equal drizzle of soy sauce. Put this in a sealable plastic bag with the ribs, overnight in the fridge.
Next day, pull out the meat, save the juice, and follow the above guidelines.
It's good.

UPDATE: There is some discussion in the comments about whether this is a safe method for making sauce. I stand by my recipe, but I totally understand the concern. Use your discretion.

My Karl Malden Story

Almost ten years ago, I had the privilege of joining a cast of the nipped, tucked and plucked for an evening of fawning gratitude to Michael Douglas.
I so don't belong to this set, but I had an "in." I sucked in my tummy, put on a slinky black dress, and pretended to belong.
Well.
There we were in the lobby of San Francisco's City Hall, when a publicist ran up to me and Cranky and whispered, "No one is talking to Karl Malden!"
Cookiecrumb and Co. to the rescue.
He was marvelous! And his wife, Mona... Well, I fantasized that we were going to be BFFs.
We chatted. Turns out Malden's Serbian uncle left Chicago and moved to San Francisco, the day before the Great Earthquake. He returned home the next day. Damn ground won't hold still!
Karl looked up the grand marble staircase in City Hall, recalling his days on "The Streets of San Francisco."
He said, "God, I can't tell you how tired I got of running up those stairs, take after take." And he was in his 60s during the filming of the show. Jeez.
I really didn't know how old he was as we stood there getting to know one another.
All of a sudden, though, the conversation came to a halt. Karl looked briefly flustered, and patted his pockets.
He fished out a little plastic card, pulled something out of his ear, and transferred a fresh battery to his hearing aid.
The conversation resumed.
It was a very nice evening.
Oh, and the photo. There are at least a thousand pears on the tree in our backyard, ready to start jumping within weeks. Yay, I think.

Rolly Food, and a Couple New Things

Really, it was just leftover risotto.
But there's this neat dish you can make from it: Roll it into balls, dredge the balls in egg and flour, and then fry.
I used garbanzo flour because it fries so nicely, and because we might have to talk about wheat flour sometime soon. It tastes a little beany, so I'll be experimenting with mixtures of "alternative" flours next time.
And I fried the balls in butter, rather than inches of hot oil. I don't deep fry. They came out... cute, not precisely round.
This is called arancini in Italian, but mine were much, much smaller than little oranges.
First time I've ever tried this preparation, and it was easy. If I have leftover risotto in the future, I will definitely do this again.
Oh, and the other thing I tried for the first time? That arty smoodge across the plate. It's basil-arugula pesto applied with a rubber spatula in just the perfect quantity.
I know. Arty smoodges are probably already passé.

My Michael Jackson Story

It was 1983 or '84. The Jackson Five was doing a reunion tour.
Cranky and I lived in Florida at the time, and I had a freelance job as a rock video reviewer for the local paper. Really. I was totally attuned to the MTVideos, 24/7. Michael Jackson was huge then, and I was not going to miss this show, even if we had to drive up to Jacksonville. ("Jacksonville!" Cute.)
The show was great. Michael got star billing, and he did a wicked moonwalk.
When it ended, they set off fireworks. Ooh. That meant as soon as the fireworks were over, there'd be an encore! You'd think.
We didn't think.
Cranky and I bolted out of our seats and dashed out into the completely deserted streets, on our way back to where we had parked.
Just then, a big van careened around a corner, Hollywood movie style, all tilty and weavy and speedy.
We were doomed.
But it missed us, by inches. Zoom.
You know what? We believe, to this day, it was carrying the Jacksons away from the arena, before the fans figured out they had Left The Building.
And we also believe that if the van had hit us, it would never have stopped.
Oh, and the picture? Lobster risotto for our 28th anniversary lunch today.

Nothing New Under the Sunnyside Up

This is an old, old dish from my childhood. I thought I'd make some, and trot it out to jog your memory.
These are eggs cooked in bread that you cut (or tear) a yolk-sized hole out of. Did you eat these as a kid? What did you call them? I can't even remember what we called ours, but at some later point I learned the name Cowboy Eggs, and it stuck.
Any time you do something silly with food, like putting faces on it, or chopping the green beans into inch-long segments, kids are supposed to get over their usual avoidance, and give it a fair and square try. Especially if you give it a cool name.
And then you outgrow it. You eat beans at their natural length, and your toast intact.
But I wanted Cowboy Eggs. Cranky was not treated to this non-novelty growing up. Never encountered it. So the first time he tried to make some on his own, he cut a hole in the bread large enough to hold the entire egg.
Wrong, wrong, wrong! Unless, of course, that is they way you always had it. Results may vary.
This time he attained perfection, including the use of clever grown-up bread instead of those soggy white squares from the plastic bag.
The secret, we believe, was that the pan was a leetle hot, and the butter browned a bit. The bread toasted right in the pan, melding with the butter. Toast the first side, flip, drop the egg in the hole, and wait until the bottom of the bread gets toasty.
This was nothing like what you'd get from using a toaster and smearing the results with butter. Nope, you want that fusion in the pan. Intimate artistry.
And toast the pieces you tore out of the bread. You can pop them on top of the cooked eggs like a... cowboy hat!

Grilling, Indoors

We've been meaning to make this smashed potatoes dish since the recipe ran in the NYTimes last month.
You can cook the potatoes on a grill outdoors, but even so, you're supposed to use a griddle over the heat.
Instead of wasting charcoal (is it ever really a waste?) we cooked indoors, using an antique griddle that just keeps getting better and better the more we use it. (I think it used to belong on top of an old stove, one with a cut-out you can set the griddle into. I'll photo it some time.)
Basically these are boiled potatoes that you squash slightly, and then smear olive tapenade on them. Over to the hot-hot griddle you go, where you sear the bottoms of the taters for a while, and finally you flip them and sear the tapenade side.
They tasted smoky! Like they'd been cooked outdoors.
Turns out the tapenade burned a little, in a very good way. This might be part of the plan; I don't know. But I wouldn't do it any different from now on.