I cracked open my skull, and all this oozed out....

• 10:25 is perpelexed by the high pitched whine coming from the router. My brain is melting. Kaela' s is already gone. #governmentconspiracies #
• 14:24 Poison in my face. Yay. #
• 23:11 Project mayhem tied the penetraitors tonight. I had two great chances and I blew both of them. We should have won. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

The Holidays are coming up, which ones? All of them, well the good ones at least. I'm sorry, Earth day keeps letting me down, what can I say? And so that means a few things for those of you who like me, work in an office enviromnment. The short list is greeting cards that nobody reads, holiday baskets of which only 15% is edible, big tins of flavored popcorn that just appear out of nowhere, and depression I mean Holiday Office Potlucks.
This season my office is providing a turkey and we are bringing sides and desserts. I am doing a dessert so good I will not eat any. But that reminds me of many years past with the same types of Office Holiday feasts. The good ones and the bad ones.

Good one. One year when I worked in my first tech support job in an office making real money and living on my own, I volunteerd to do a side dish. I brought some good old yams. When we got to the meal, apparently somebody took the easy way out and just ordered a bunch of sides from Dickies BBQ. Well they had yams as well and so they were set next to mine. At the end of the feasting, my container was empty, and the store bought Dickies was barely touched. I felt pretty good, as well as bloated from ham and turkey.

Bad one. A few years back after the wonderful dot com failures I took a job at a smaller company doing data entry. My team was mainly angry young guys who hated kitchens yet loved Limp Bizkit (hmmm there must be a correlation there somwhere). Again, this company provided a turkey and we brought sides. Well like I said, mostly young guys who didnt know how to cook. So most people went to the Krogers next door and grabbed a tray of cupcakes on the way in to work that night. So we had 1 huge turkey, a huge dish of mac and cheese I made, about three cans of canned cranberry sauce and 7 or 8 trays of store bakery cupcakes with neon orange nuclear frosting and sick candy turkeys. Easily 100 nasty cupcakes. Yeah, we tried to make a turkey breast and cupcake sandwich with expected results.

So Food Porn stars, I know you have some good ones.
Come on and share some good or bad tales of Holiday Potlucks.
It could be at church or at work or at school, wherever. Just tales of how the celebration was a success or failure from Holiday potlucks.

I have been thinking about making these and planning them for weeks. Today I finally managed to make them. I thought that they made a suitable subject for my first post here, I can't help but salivate looking at this pic knowing that beneath the buttercream there's a gooey cherry centre surrounded by chocolate. Black Forest Gateaux may be one of my favourite things but the cupcake incarnation is fast gaining on it!



More pics and the recipe over at AnnaInTheKitchen.

oh yeah, and roast beef, too. And gravy, and peas, and roasted carrots, and garlic mashed potatoes. But most importantly, YORKSHIRE PUDDING.


This was my first attempt at this grand and most favourite meal. I did overcook the meat, which I think is a common issue, but it was still so so tasty. I am currently enjoying cold roast beef sandwiches with mustard.



Brought to you by The Cast-Iron Darling!

My bread fanaticism began when publishers sent me a copy of Andrew Whitley’s new book, Bread Matters: The State of Modern Bread and a Definitive Guide to Baking Your Own. The book makes the case for bread activism -- avoiding possibly harmful and certainly less wholesome mass-produced bread in favor of making your own. Apart from just a political stance, though, Whitley presents breadmaking as an artform -- and one that doesn't have to be too time-consuming, at that. He calculates that a loaf of bread takes about 30-40 minutes of active work punctuated by periods of waiting.

This was my first experience with letting a sponge ferment for days and baking it into a loaf of delicious bread -- and I'm hooked on the experience, from mixing, to kneading, to proofing, to baking, to eating! My boyfriend and I ate our cheese bread with chicken and dumplings, and then used the leftovers for something decidedly more sinister . . . :)




( recipe and photos, including a picture of the PERFECT USE for leftover cheese bread )


To read my review of the book Bread Matters, listen to me waxing poetic about bread, see a photo of how entertaining kneading can be, or just to see more pictures of that amazing breakfast sandwich, please head over to my baking blog, Willow Bird Baking!

x posted to food_porn, bakebakebake, and cooking

I cracked open my skull, and all this oozed out....

• 13:21 Idiotic clock management. Wtf. Let's get some halftime adjustments! #
• 14:23 Thank you for waking up offense, now if our defense will step up and get a pick 6, the rams will shall be broken. #
• 14:29 Shockey smash! #
• 14:46 We made entirely too much food. #
• 14:51 Our secondary is hurting bad. #
• 15:15 Painfully obvious how much our defense is injured right now. #
• 21:11 @aphrodite187 see? you should have stayed! #
• 22:44 This rivalry is simply insane. I love football so much. Hats off to indy. Never say die. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

The spread...

I usually only come here to complain about something or (more often) someone and I think that I need to stop being so negative when it comes to everything in my life.

I have been dating Kristi on and off for nearly 3 years now. While it's not the longest relationship I have been in, it has been the only one where I felt like I absolutely felt like I have been putting my all into it. I have sacrificed a lot when it has come to this relationship and I did it out of the love I have for her. She has meant the world to me and opened my eyes and more importantly my opinions on life, love and how people should be treated.

I am, without a shadow of a doubt, a selfish person. My parents would call me a mercenary growing up because for the right amount of money, I was willing to do anything. Being with Kristi has shown me how selfish I could be when it comes to my decisions and feelings on damn near everything. I can be a snide and cruel person when I am feeling that way and Kristi has never held her tongue when it comes to my actions. I love and adore her raw emotional honesty even though I will admit it has frustrated me to no end.

As a logical and precise person, it is difficult being with an emotional person. While the investment looks risky from the outside, and well even when you're the person investing in it it seems damn near overwhelming, the payout gives me an amazing sense of closeness and education. I love seeing the complete opposite of what I would do, I love watching her freak out on what I would consider non-trivial and pointless, and when it's just us shut in away from the world I feel as though we're the last two people on the earth.

We have our faults, but what she brings to my life is why I love her as much as I do. Her raw emotional energy, her bluntness (which is one of my weakest points), the adoration she has for me and her loyalty (no matter what my irrational side may tell me). I will leave the sexual stuff out here to keep the nausea level down. ;)

I didn't expect to feel this way about her much less anyone who is like her. She is damn near the complete opposite of me and I love her because of that. I thought that maybe it was because I didn't like myself that much, but I've come to realize is that she's a unique in my life and the fact that she has allowed me to get as close as we are is just something I am grateful for.

Three years later, this is still a learning experience for me. I still fuck up, I still disregard her feelings on some subjects and I still make her cry more often than I should. That is on me and it is something I am working on. I like the idea that I am still growing as a person but I do feel guilty that it is at the expense of making a lovely person hurt occasionally.

I am not perfect, but I do think that I can be perfect for her.

I cracked open my skull, and all this oozed out....

• 15:52 Whew! This is exhausting! #
• 16:58 I love helping friends. now, time to go dress up like a pirate. #
• 19:10 Is wearing his pirate garb. Just another Saturday night! #
• 21:04 Open bars that serve new Orleans rum are dangerous. #
• 23:28 is really quite inebriated. Yay free RUm. They gave us a bottle too. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

Sorry, no pictures, and not even that great a recipe - but it was really good!

3 carrots
9 baby dill pickles
1 clove garlic
1" of raw horseradish root
1 can of tuna
mayonnaise

Toss the carrots and garlic in your food processor - process until the carrots are about half broken up. Toss in the pickles, process until fine (about 1-2mm chunks?). Remove the outside of the horseradish, use your microplane to grate it into the bowl. Drain and add the tunafish. Break up the tunafish, mix well. Add mayonnaise until it's the consistency you like (I like mine dryish, I use about 2T.)

I cracked open my skull, and all this oozed out....

• 01:41 Room is like 55 degrees. This feels wonderful. Sleep time! Zzzzzzzzzz #
• 14:07 Is kind of goofy smiling right now. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

To keep this post on-topic, here's a photo of my "lethal" cranberry sauce:



Recipe is quite simple: cranberries and cranberry-flavored Jell-O made with the traditional Jell-O shot method. I buy a fifth of vodka and then enough Jell-O mix and cranberries to make a couple batches. Sometimes I will add a little sugar. It makes holiday gatherings with the family much more tolerable!

Anyway, on to my real point of making a post tonight: has anyone successfully done a fried turducken??? I have googled it but I am sure some of us food pornstars have some great advice. I also welcome advice on preparing an oven-cooked turducken but I really want to try deep frying it. Thanks.

Japanese Noodles with Butternut Squash, Chanterelle Mushrooms and Brussels Sprouts in a Beef and Sriracha Broth

I cracked open my skull, and all this oozed out....

• 15:44 When I am productive, I sure do get covered from head to toe in dirt. :) #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

I just found this community and I am hoping that this will help me in becoming more of a connisuer about wine. I've only even had cheapy cheap stuff.

Anyway, I would like some assistance in picking out a wine for a date night this week. We will be have garlic infused cod, homemade mashed potatoes with garlic, romaine salad, and most likely a chocolatey dessert...

a wine or two of the relatively inexpensive side would be appreciated. He likes a dryer wine, while I like a "juicy" wine.

Thank you so much,

Alyssa

Tonight I made brisket for dinner. It braised for a few hours to get to that falling apart stage. When it was done, I used a large pan and poured in about 2 cups of blueberry pomegranate juice. On a high flame, I started to make the sauce reduction. To the juice I added dried cranberries and currants. I spiced it with black pepper, chili powder, garlic and onion. I sliced up the brisket and added the pieces to the reducing sauce to let it sink in to the meat. When it was ready, I served it over a sping greens mix with some carrots and roasted garlic mashed potatoes.