Guess what this is. No really, guess. 25 Jun 08

If you look at the categories or URL then you are a FILTHY CHEATER.

It’s refreshing, light, fruity but tart, utterly irresistible. It looks so civilized, doesn’t it? Like something you would serve to the ladies who lunch when they come over for the garden party benefiting the foundation one of them started to purchase wheeled carts for paralyzed needy dachshunds. I almost don’t want to tell you what it really is, because I don’t want to damage my reputation as ONE CLASSY BITCH.

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The Snozzberries Taste Like Snozzberries! 22 Jun 08

Tiny martini glasses: cute presentation, or painfully twee?*

A few weeks ago, The Kitchn highlighted an old Bon Appetit recipe for wine-marinated grapes. Because while fruit is tasty on its own, it is almost always improved by being soaked in booze.

I was immediately drawn to this recipe - if you can call it that, it’s so simple I don’t know if it rises to the level of “recipe” - because frozen grapes have always been one of my favorite summer snacks. And if I love frozen grapes, and soaking grapes in booze will make them better, then Newton’s 5th Transitive Rule of Snacks dictates that wine-soaked, frozen grapes should be fan-fucking-tastic. Newton’s actual words.

*Even though I took these photos, I’m going to have to go with “twee.”

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Ice Cream for a Dead Man 15 Jun 08

Passionfruit, to be specific. But dead people don’t eat ice cream, so it just means more for me.

I just wrote a whole post about this ice cream and my dad. It was really good, filled with humor, pathos, and brilliant photography.

And then Wordpress ate it.

Father’s Day is rough enough as it is and I can’t bring myself to sit here and re-write it, but I don’t want to deprive anyone of delicious, delicious ice cream. So recipe after the jump, and my apologies for the lack of real post.

ETA: Okay, okay, here’s a tidbit. So I have my dad’s high school yearbook from 1951, and each graduate’s photo is accompanied by a painfully wholesome description: “Jimmy is sure to be a great asset to the Army,” “Susan always has a ready smile and a helping hand.” My dad’s? “Rudy is a treat for all the ladies.”

Awww, yeah.

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Cheap Ass Monday: Hot as Hell Cucumber Salad 09 Jun 08

Pretty.

Apparently, I don’t spend ENOUGH time on the internet, because I’m adding a new feature to TNS: Cheap Ass Monday. My grocery bills have, uh, been nudging ever so slightly upward for the past few months; I have no idea why that might be. No matter the reason, I need to figure out a way to offset some of the more obscene Smackdown costs, and I know lots of us are looking for quick, less expensive meals so we can save our money for blowout trips to the French Laundry. Or, you know, to pay the mortgage or utility bill (thanks a lot, heat wave).

So Monday will no longer merely be “Monday” but “Cheap Ass Monday,” where we endeavor to make a tasty dinner for two gluttonous adults for $5 or less. Play along at home! The rules are:

• You (me) have to actually MAKE dinner out of actual whole, fresh ingredients. The Wendy’s 99-cent menu does not a Cheap Ass Monday make. I mean, technically it does, but that’s not gonna fly around here.

• Normal pantry items that right-thinking people should have in their homes (salt, sugar, olive oil, etc) do not count toward the $5 limit.

• I am the arbiter of what constitutes a “normal pantry item” and reserve the right to stretch the definition thereof in order to meet my self-imposed dollar limit.

• Some Mondays may be skipped without prior notice if I am feeling lazy.

Cheap Ass Monday kicks off with a refreshing, raw cucumber and peanut salad. Not only is it too hot in New York to even think about entertaining the idea of considering turning on the oven, it is also too hot for humans to effectively digest complex foods. Also, the knobs on the stove may well be too hot from the ambient temperature to touch; I can’t say for sure because I didn’t want to chance it.

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In which people get the animal fats they want and deserve. 07 Jun 08

All cow fat, all the time.

Let everyone’s collective panties be unbunched: tofu doesn’t live here any more.

I’m not giving up on integrating more vegetarian or vegan meals into my repertoire, but I am giving up on frankenfoods like tofu. It’s still not in the same category as truly unearthly “foods” like quorn, but my kitchen doesn’t need it. Healthy vegetarian foods are easily assembled using whole, fresh ingredients.

That’s not what this is about, though. Well, at least the “healthy” part: this is real deal mac and cheese, the kind made with a classic butter-and-flour roux, milk that has been expelled from a real live cow and not extruded from a bean of some kind, and a shit-ton of cheese. And it feels GOOD, SO GOOD, right up to and including the moment that the final particle of arterial plaque settles in your carotid artery, stopping all bloodflow to the brain.

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I scream, you scream, we all scream for….pie. 04 Jun 08

Save the fork - there’s pie!

I’ve been seeing pictures of this strawberry pie from the most recent issue of Gourmet all over the place lately, and it calls to me like a siren. The deep ruby filling. The plump berries. The crisp crust. The billowy whipped cream.

PIE.

I finally got around to giving it a go last night, albeit with some alterations. The whole process was quick, easy and painless, leaving me with very little fodder for a post other than pretty pictures of strawberries, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Thus, in the interest of amusement, I present you with the first ever Mad Libs Blog Post. Get out a pen and paper, call your co-workers ’round call your friends ’round during non-work hours only, and write this post! Maybe you’ll get the real answers at the end! Maybe not!

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Smoke-a-Thon 2008: The Porkening 27 May 08

Pictures here courtesy of The Girl Who Ate Everything. Olives and cake courtesy of No Recipes. Meat coma courtesy of 60.21 pounds of pork.*

More pics and recipes coming when we recover from the aftermath. More pix after the jump.

*Which means: Evil Chef Mom, you win! Email me the address where I should send your prize. Everyone else: how big do you think my refrigerator is? You’re all nuts.

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Quick Bites: Ibby’s Falafel 20 May 08

I didn’t eat any of the vegetables, and I don’t feel guilty at all.

We’ve all had those days: you’re stuck at work later than you’d like, you’re tired, you’re not sure what you feel like eating, you don’t have the energy to conjure up that good ol’ pantry juju, and your kitchen still smells like pureed fish.

We all have go-to takeout for those days - pizza, pad Thai, General Tso’s chicken, bean and cheese burrito, whatever. Mine comes from Jersey City’s locally-famed Ibby’s Falafel: lamb shwarma, baba ganouj and a sweet, creamy namoura pastry to top it off.

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A Fuzzy Navel, please - baked, not stirred. 18 May 08

When I’m good, I’m good.

Long before I became fully immured in the foodblogosphere, I was addicted to the archives of Sugar High Friday over at The Domestic Goddess - we’re talking over 3 years worth of sugary, buttery, sticky smooth sweet silky goodness from around the world. Have an excess of figs? Check out #35. Love ginger? Try lucky #19. Wanna get fancy-pants about it? Sugar art, #26. Feeling po-mo? “Desserts in shades of white,” #31.* Dead dentists everywhere are creating elaborate underground tunnels from all the rolling they’re doing in their graves.

When I started the Smackdown, I knew that Sugar High Friday was one of the first events I wanted to participate in. Of course, the first two themes following my crash landing into foodblogland would be pies - which I’m not really into, except for the occasional key lime** - and cooking with candy, which. eh. Ergo, I was excited when Tartelette, the host for this round, announced the theme for #43: citrus.

So to mark this personal blogging milestone, I give you: Fuzzy Navel Upside-Down Cake.

*For the record, I reject food that is extremely po-mo; I prefer my meals to be firmly grounded in the mo.

**To clarify: not into making. But very into eating.

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This post is either about blondies or bipolar disorder. 13 May 08

I took this bandanna off my head because I needed something for the picture and have no cute dishtowels. I’m not sorry if that squicks you out.

Modern science can be a wonderful thing: penicillin, the polio vaccine, tiny cameras that can be inserted into your veins all Innerspace-style, the iPhone. (Of course, I’m still waiting for a cure for AIDS and a rocket car, but I’m sure that modern science is working hard on them.) So I have to give modern science a hand for inventing depakote, a wonderful drug that helps keep me from being crazy. Because the food in psych wards really isn’t up to snuff, so I can’t really see myself going back there. That, and I like my shoelaces.*

An unfortunate side effect of being sane is that I can sometimes be a little tired and don’t always feel like jumping up to make a 7-layer cake for a party I’d promised to bring dessert to, especially when it’s a bucolic spring day and the empty hammock is swinging invitingly in the breeze under the ginkgo trees.** Luckily, that’s what one-bowl blondies are for. They’re dense and chewy and stuffed to the gills with chocolate-y, pecan-y, coconutty goodness, and they pull together in about 3 minutes.***

*I know people have different opinions and different experiences with drugs of the mental health variety, and I deny none of those. Depakote works for me in that it helps keep me from offing myself, which I take to be a plus. As always, if you want to start some kind of Tom Cruise-style argument in the comments? You know what I’m going to tell you: Just say no.

**I acknowledge that this might have less to do with depakote than it does with my excessive love of napping in hammocks.

***Sorry about all the asides lately.

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