Yum and Yummer

Spicy Sausage-Filled Pumpkin Roulade with Savory Sage Whipped Cream

October 19, 2011 – 9:51 pm

I suppose I owe some sort of explanation for being so behind in my posts for this (last) week. Not that I have much of one besides the dubious and always inadequate, “oh, life is so BUSY sometimes!” Even Connor is glaring at me as if to say, “what the crap happened to our clean home and why aren’t you doing anything about it?” It’s a low point in my life when my house’s cleanliness is being judged by a cat that proudly brandishes dingleberries like precious heirloom brooches.

Strange how, when at this time of year, the rest of the outdoor world seems to be readying itself for dormancy, I find myself propelled well beyond my usual busy life into absolute chaos. Fortunately I have the company of my beautiful kitchen to keep me sane during these marathon weeks. When I have to suffer through these periods of endless duties, I like to regress to my kitchen, lay on the floor, open my mouth and let the wildest catena of curses billow out from my lungs. I’m talking DISGUSTING, god-awful, reprehensible strings of profanities where, if shared on this forum, I’m positive most of you would do one of two things: 1) discontinue reading my posts for a period as long as an elephant’s penis is girthy or 2) pump your fists and challenge me to do better.

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Recipes Sweet

Beets for Dessert: Golden Beet and White Chocolate Mousse Parfait

October 6, 2011 – 8:30 am

The other morning, as if visited by a Burpee’s Golden demon, I was jarred awake with images of beets orbiting violently within my head. Boiled, charred, sliced, diced, pickled beets became tenants of my brain, and I became a man on a mission. As possession could be the only explanation, I I rubbed my eyes, walked into the kitchen, and pulled out a bag of beets and began to peel them in rapid succession, one after another, salivating over their potential. What’s strange about this scenario is not that I began cooking even before my preliminary daily pee, but I don’t like beets. Like, at all. And I never, ever, never have.

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Recipes Salty

Duck Confit / Duck Rillettes / Duck Ravioli

September 29, 2011 – 9:30 am

You know that phenomena when you hear a word for the first time, and out of nowhere it seems that everyone around you has started using that word from that point forward in everyday conversation? As though you unlocked Pandora’s vocabulary and sent this strange, new word spiraling into the minds of those around you, like the word god you are. We mortals call this oddity of life “perceptual vigilance”, and the phrase that chose itself to be perceptually vigilant in my mind as of late is the word confit.

The first time I came across this term was around 6 months or so ago, and I ticked my head to the side and mouthed, “con-fit?” pronouncing every ugly syllable, not realizing I was ignorantly pronouncing this French word as though I were a backwoods, Uncle-loving hobo. The very idea of confit (which is pronounced con-fee, by the way) is enough to send me into a fit of happy sobs. There are variations of confit to include vegetable and fruit confit, but in this instance we’re speaking of meat, people. Not only meat, but meat that has been lightly cured and then, wait for it… completely submerged and slowly cooked for hours in its own fat until nearly fall-off-the-bone tender. Isn’t that beautiful? Poetry for the tongue, I say.

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Recipes Salty

Acorn Squash & Chorizo Turnovers and Why Fall in Florida is a Hoax

September 20, 2011 – 9:16 pm

A few mornings ago I woke up and walked into my kitchen to an all too familiar and abhorrent smell. I’d forgotten to take the previous night’s trash out, likely because I’d finished off my evening in an energy-deprived cooking stupor, and the stench of chicken carcass was radiating from my trashcan. The smell reminded me a lot of the summers I spent growing up near the Susquehanna River. Have you ever been hear the Susquehanna during the hot months? It’s as though you’re hugged daily by a hobo that’s gone four years without a shower, and whose breath smells like wilted cabbage and bourbon. It’s horrible and the smell lingers. The cats were going crazy over the trash smell, and so was I, but for an entirely different reason altogether

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Recipes Salty

Lambchop Lollipops

September 8, 2011 – 9:00 pm

The first time I ever had lamb I was 13 or 14 or somewhere around that awkward period of my life where I donned a super cool bowl cut and my pimples outnumbered my prospective dates. I was on a school-sponsored trip to the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire with my Social Studies class where many different groups of kids from around the state were congregating at the Renaissance Freak Fest to perform different acts of The Taming of the Shrew to an audience of apathetic passersby. I played Baptista Minola and was sporting a particularly fetching purple felt robe that also moonlighted as a Crypt Keeper cloak the previous Halloween.

While watching the other schools’ kids perform it became increasingly obvious that they all took their roles much more seriously than we did. Though their acting resembled nothing short of cowplop, thus shedding a whole new light on what could be coined Shakespearean bastardization, they more than made up for it with their intricate, homemade fashions with adornments that alluded a guise of Medieval authenticity. And then there was me in my effing Crypt Keeper costume.

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