cooking

It was one of those Clean ALL The Things weekends. (If you've never read the comic that inspired that statement, stop now, go read it, and then come back here.)

After a bench scraper, lots of bleach, elbow grease, and the passage of time, my kitchen is no longer a disaster zone. I had to resist the urge to lie on my countertops, to attempt to cuddle with them.

• Spiced peach butter is in progress. (Currently too much cinnamon. I think it needs more peach.)
• A large quantity — some would say "a mess of" — hot and bell peppers have been purchased, for hot pepper jelly.
• A vat of Jody's black-bean-and-corn salsa was made.

Tenzing's opinion of the weekend is obvious:

Thanks, esmerel! She taunts me from California with cupcakes I can't have unless i make one of these recipes: Smitten Kitchen's "chocolate whiskey and beer cupcakes" or "Chocolate Guinness Stout Cupcakes with Chocolate Ganache and Bailey's Buttercream Swirl"

What's sad is that my brain doesn't know if it wants a beer or a cupcake.

Anthony Bourdain rails against the current crop of TV chefs and names names:

We KNOW she can’t cook. She shrewdly tells us so. So…what is she selling us? Really? She’s selling us satisfaction, the smug reassurance that mediocrity is quite enough. She’s a friendly, familiar face who appears regularly on our screens to tell us that “Even your dumb, lazy ass can cook this!” Wallowing in your own crapulence on your Cheeto-littered couch you watch her and think, “Hell…I could do that. I ain’t gonna…but I could—if I wanted! Now where’s my damn jug a Diet Pepsi?”

Via Jody, of course.

I gave the locals first crack at these, but they’ve had their turn and now it’s yours.

I have large quantities of the following that are free to a good home:

• whole savory
• whole fennel
• whole coriander
• pickling spice
• whole black pepper
• ground cayenne pepper
• whole cumin

If you are interested, speak up.

These are leftovers from a bulk spice order in which we brined a lot of pork.  I’d imagine that a combination of several of these, plus salt and garlic, would make a good brine for just about any kind of meat.

While I wait for today’s Godot — Adobe CS3 — to attempt (yet again) to reinstall Adobe Acrobat CS3 (of which install, I might add, there are several known problems, especially regarding upgrading) … well, guess what, kids, you’re stuck with me for a little while.

If you want to know how to keep a webmaster from getting anything done, deny her access to her email and her web browser. After a few tumultuous minutes of foaming at the mouth, she will subside into quiet, trailing whimpers while she waits for the pain to stop.

Over the past week or so, I’ve been asking myself the question every self-respecting traveler asks well in advance of his/her trip—“What’s gonna go in the bag?” My goal, admirable but perhaps ill-advised, is to make everything except my toiletries bag fit in one bag, which I will check.I will live out of that bag for a day short of two weeks. Thankfully, the vagaries of flight will deposit me in a land known more for sunshine than for snow. It’s far easier to pack for sand and sun than it is for snow and cold. No boots, no sweaters, no scarves.