Bake and Shake

Love Apples

Last of the Tomatoes, 2009

Well thank you!

Thanks, Not Martha, ReadyMade and DesMoines Register for the tomato soup love. Your kindness embarrassed the soup, and now it is hiding underneath the bed. To anyone who found their way here through the links above, welcome, and I will try to curse in a whisper until it all calms down.

Thank you for the soup love. I know I still have to show you how to turn it into a proper sauce, but I began to feel lame about it because it is so simple, and you're just coating pasta in the soup with a little dash of something else. But when has that ever stopped anyone from releasing a remix?

Britney? Britney.

And then, Naps for All: Deconstructed Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup

"Are those Scallops, Phil?"

Here's a way to eat grilled cheese and tomato soup in today's sodium-paranoid world. Make the soup, and don't make the sandwich. 

Then wonder if life is worth living.

A little bit of this

Tomatoes, varying stages of ripeness, September 2009

Roasted Green Salsa

"Are you photographing vomit?"

That beer was an impulse purchase, one of a few I've made this summer. Not shown, the life-size Lady Gaga wax figure.

Everybody loves Somebody, even if it isn't their own: Salad Days

"I'd prefer this if they replaced the feta with animal fat. Like what you trim off a chicken!"

Let me tell you about the other day, when the coals were burning low and I'd just made cream-cheese stuffed jalapenos which were then wrapped in bacon and baked until they were sputtering bacon fat and the cream cheese had puffed up and the peppers softened, and how we ate them in a chain reaction - people watched as first one, then another, then another put a pepper into his or her mouth and then melted as it dissolved against teeth and gum.

I'd fried up the rest of the bacon, because the gang of us were having burgers and who doesn't like that on top of a burger. And then there were worries that the huge smoked sausages that we'd bought wouldn't cook over the simpering coals, so we brought them inside and fried them in the pan of bacon grease. There were children at this meal.

There's nothing else to say: It is barely the middle of August and I'm enjoying a Post-Winter Holiday body. This has nothing to do with you - you are all beautiful, and I envy everything about you, from your brain to eye sockets to hair follicles. But we're not going to be baking, or talking about it, for awhile. I have a scone recipe to share with you, but it isn't devastating. Mostly, what I post here will be about vegetables. That 'Hunter Souffle" in 'True Blood' made me freak out a little too. I'm taking it as a sign.

Salad Days. Welcome to them. I'm looking forward to them! That's why I'm weeping.

Intimidating Dirt

"In the middle is where we bury the bodies of the night animals who try to steal our livelyhood!"

A garden shouldn't be shameful, but mine was.

Feeding all Continents!

EXPLAIN YOUR SHAMEFUL MOUTH: Blueberry Crostata

"Nobody needs to know what happened in the kitchen. We just got here. We just got here, right? Go back outside and shut the car door again. Hard. Make sure they hear it."

There is never not room for Crostata. You will find it, you will make it, you will lie, because you know you're going to eat it anyway.

Kind of like a classy Potato Skin: Gnocchi and Cheese with Prosciutto and Herbs

"Pro-Activ did nothing for the twins."

This is a story about potato-based pasta, pork and cheese. Gather your loved ones. Lock the children in the cellar.