A Summer Birthday

Look at all this food! No surprise this party was for a certain cook who makes the most delicious staff meals!

Fortune and FAME!

I was interviewed during the Portland Pie-Off by Leslie Cole, a food writer for Oregon Live, and guess what. The article has been posted!! Click here to read all of my flattering quotes that proclaim my love of pie for breakfast and for every other meal too. She also posted my recipe with a link to my blog. So if you are here because you read my recipe, read on. I will be featuring recipes for things like fried candy bars and funnel cake tomorrow after my big trip to the Oregon State Fair.

Kidding about the candy bar recipe. Wouldn't that just add to my already questionable reputation as a lover of fats.

Sweet and Salty Cake

The salty caramel:




The Ganache:


The Cake:









The recipe for this cake is from the Baked bakery in Brooklyn. They call it the Sweet and Salty Cake, and I'll call it The Cake That Dirties Every Dish, and also A Cake I Actually Like. Admittedly, I don't like cake very much. It's usually dry, usually has dreadful buttercream frosting, and often commits sins like putting chocolate with raspberry or lemon with raspberry or anything with raspberry. Give me a well made red velvet cake and you know I'll be happy. And every so often a really good chocolate cake is really good. Heck- I love angel food! But those are all exceptions to the rule.

Anyway, the sweet and salty cake is not like other cakes. It's dark and chocolaty, moist and somehow light (light only referring to texture of course- this little number includes a pound of butter and a pound of chocolate just in the frosting. Then there are the 3 layers of salted caramel and the cake itself... It's really intense and I recommend eating it for a breakfast of regret).

You can read the recipe here because I am not going to retype it. The S&S already took one (be it really fun) day of my life, but I'm not giving it another hour of my life by typing up it's memoirs. Ok- honestly I'm making it again today. I just don't want to copy the recipe when it's all over the internets already.

Make it on a day that you have literally all day. I so often make things that don't have recipes- or I just ignore the recipes and do it my way- that I really enjoyed such a complicated and specific task. The one ingredient that I changed up was exchanging vegetable shortening for lard. I can't help myself- vegetable shortening gives me the creeps! Plus, why not put a little pork in your cake? It only compliments the nature of this sweet and salty creation.

A Beautiful Gift

Pickled Trash.

Thanks for thinking that I'm "the only person who would understand" Nic. Let's just hope I don't act like pickled trash myself and try to eat it some night.

Rock and Roll

Guess who I'm going to see tonight???

Eating Cooking Loving

Yesterday ended up being a lot more than just tomatoes.

It was roasted chicken with leeks and fingerling potatoes, zucchini fritters with feta, and lemon and tzatziki sauce, roasted tomatoes and garlic, and an apricot tart with cream.
It was babysitting for our friends 2 year old twins, and watching dolphin movies.
It was sitting in our trailer in the back yard after dark, playing cards and drinking manhattans.
It was another long and excellent day.

Today, I am canning MORE tomato sauce, and making stock with the chicken bones from last night.
Luckily for me, there was lots of chicken left over. I got to make the most perfect lunch of all time because of it! I recommend that you go home and roast a chicken in a dutch oven with a splash of water, some butter, 2 leeks and a couple handfuls of fingerling potatoes (delicious dinner!), and then tomorrow you can have the best lunch eva too!

Zippy Chicken Salad

2 cups pulled chicken meat
4 small fingerling potatoes, cooked then chilled
1/4 cup tzatziki sauce
4 sprigs of parsley, chopped
3 tablespoons french feta

Crumble potatoes and feta over the chicken. Sprinkle parsley on top, and stir in the sauce. Salt and pepper to taste. This shit is good. Share it with the ones you love (I did not share any).

If you also want to make zucchini fritters, you might want to experiment with Martha Stewart's recipe. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

PS Sorry for the crappy photo of the apricot tart I made last night. It was so easy to make that I forgot to treat it with respect and photograph it carefully! Apricots. Sugar. Salt. Put it in a tart crust. Bake it. Eat it.

Canning

My aunt and I realized our fears of canning by trying canning (she in Oakland, I in Portland, but still together in our hearts and fears). We each canned roasted tomatoes. Who will get struck down by botulism first?? Only time will tell. I'm voting for me.
For real though- canning is not that hard and you get to feel like a pioneer or something for the day. I am anticipating a rush of joy in the middle of a deep wintery depression when we open these summery jewels. SUMMER FOOD! I also canned the rest of the peaches that I did not use for my blue ribbon pie, and I think those will be hard not to open later on today.

This week at work was long and grueling. Whips were cracked, tears were shed, the restaurant was packed. I think the wires in my brain crossed after talking to one to many tables. They might have said something like, "Can we have some bread?" and that was it. BREAD? NO! I mean... yes! NO. I mean... of course. Wait. What did you want again? NO!

Of course, I meant yes. But that was it. The waitress part of my brain died last night. I can no longer take requests or offer to fill water glasses. Isn't it sad that I lost such an important part of my brain function over such a fair request? One plate of bread and it's all over?

I can only roast tomatoes. To think I was imagining a long hike in central Oregon today! Not going to happen.

Tomatoes. That's it.