Big Surprise! Pictures of Food!

Lindz and I usually try to pretend to feign frowning on processed food in a box, but this stuff apparently contains crack cocaine. It's Monkey Bread. It comes frozen, you warm it up in the oven, and it's soft and oozing with cinnamon goo. It's so good, you might sell a family member just to have some.
A gooeyness of a different sort is this. Bryan and I nibbled on various things and drank some beers he brought back from Germany. The jar on the right contains home made liverwurst (hausgemacht leberwurst) from Ellen's brother-in-law in Germany. I thought we should have some cheese. I got this Chaource at Costco. It's almost liquid at room temperature. It was unctuous, buttery delight. The liverwurst was rich and luxurious, and it brought back memories of things my parents and grandparents enjoyed. It was marginalized in this shot only because the cheese was more photogenic.

For Thanksgiving, one of the dishes I prepared was a gratin of braised collards. I bought too many collards. What you see here is half of the collards I bought at the farmers' market (4,480 cubic inches of collards, or 73.4 liters, is what fits in this sink). I still haven't decided what to do with the rest. What I did with these was chop them up, braise them with smoked pork hocks and red pepper flakes, and then bake them into a gratin with bechamel sauce. It was well received; I also made it for Thanksgiving two years ago.

Here's an action shot of me chopping mirepoix for the gravy:

Lindz took all of these pictures except the cheese. The majority of the food photography on Thanksgiving was done by Bryan, who will be posting pictures very soon on his blog, I'm quite sure.

Christmas in San Diego

People really enjoyed Lindz's marshmallows:

And people liked my bread. I was very flattered at how big a fuss they made at the Christmas party to which I brought it. It's a shame that people are always so astonished at the idea of someone making bread rather than buying it. I understand that reaction with the marshmallows ("You made marshmallows? How can you do that?"). Anyway, they enjoyed it, which is always the goal.

This is an onion ring at Stone Brewing's restaurant. It is as big as a doughnut. That's their Cali-Belgique ale in the glass there.
And here is the sunset, the last night there. Heartbreakingly perfect. Lindz and I got to feeling pretty emotional about San Diego. We ask ourselves why we don't live there, and it's an ongoing internal struggle.

Yes We Can

IKEA is open in North Carolina

Lindz and I visited the new Charlotte IKEA store. It is grand and glorious, and it was crowded. Not once, not even once, were we out of earshot of a crying child. It was still the IKEA experience, but with the overcrowded amusement-park element added. One child was shrieking as if someone was sawing his arms off.

We got a cabinet for the television, something we had been talking about for a long time. The old wire shelves that housed the tv and stereo are gone, the last vestige of our leftover furniture that looked more appropriate for a college dorm. We're trying to make it look like adults live here.

Speaking of adulthood, why is it so hard to make a living? I'm very thankful to have a job, and particularly thankful to have moved from a lame job to a better job in such uncertain times. But it's sucking the life out of me. It's too bad one has to spend so much of one's life toiling as opposed to enjoying and creating. It's still early days, but this new job is definitely demanding. It's quite a bit better than the alternative.

I hope it gets better soon. Perhaps the U.S.A. will regain a bit of the backbone that it has always bragged about having. Some new roads, bridges and windmills might be a welcome side-effect to all this spending.

But enough about my struggle with the malaise of a broken world. How about some lamb?

This was an end slice. Deeper inside, it was stuffed with pureed dried apricots, rosemary, almonds, garlic, and I can't remember what else.

Dinner on the Deck

I've been busy. Or at least that's the word I choose for whatever I've been. My new (6 months now) job has been challenging, and I have been uncreative, antisocial and lacking in initiative.

That being said, I cooked lamb sirloins, scallops (wrapped in bacon and in smoke salmon), baked bread, and Lindz made a salad. That Pinot Noir was goood. Too bad they only made 750 cases of it.

Ausgezeichnetes Frühstück

I couldn't wait any longer. Bryan brought some home made liver wurst back from Germany, an it is heavenly. I suppose I should have had a nice Berliner-Weisse with it, but it was only 9 in the morning.

Mrs. Cardinal

This cardinal is sitting on two eggs. She is no more than 20 feet from our back door.