end of the year.

so i think this list of the 19 must-watch food videos of 2012 is amazeballs. i haven't seen them all yet, but i have faith in the list.

i have seen this one:

and this one:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

yes, i built that.

i made chocolate peanut butter cups at home a la a beautiful mess. they were a bit large, as i only had cupcake liners for big muffin tins, rather than the baby size, but that did not stop anyone from eating too much or cutting them in half.

sadly, i took no photos of this delicious + easy-to-make treat, so here's my dog in a sweater. it's a hand-me-down from houston and might be worn for christmas.

that mariah carey christmas song is still stuck in my head.

so, this year, i baked christmas cookies for the neighbors (the one who my dog has a HUGE crush on, the one who loans me sugar, the one who rakes my yard, and the one who lets me use his internet) and the mail man (who chloe relentlessly barks at, fulfilling a stereotype).

given that i didn't grow up with christmas, i also don't have an arsenal of christmas cookie recipes. but i was ready to cook the cover of the december 2012 bon appetit. it also allowed alex and i to take a trip to southern season for fancy sprinkles and taste the bounty of the shop.

some notes on the recipe:

• i left out nutmeg because i didn't have any, but added in all-spice instead.
• this is a 3-step cookie which means you should plan ahead. do one step each day and it's not a big deal at all. each part is about 30 minutes.
• dusting sugar is stupid expensive, so i rolled the dough in non-pareils and raw cane sugar. 
• it said it would make 90, but mine made 70 and they aren't huge. this is totally fine, but if you are cooking for a big group, i'd make extra.
• i made half the amount of icing and had plenty. 
• they smush a little (the icing) when you bag them up so if you are giving them as gifts, be careful if you want them to look just so. they would be amazing at a party as they'd make even an ugly dish look delicious.

let's have a party; we'll all dance the hora.

i abandoned the great latke recipe of my mother's best friend, marsha, for that of adam rapoport. i am really trying to get the most of the bon appetit these days--i've been in a bean-pasta-carborific food rut for quite a while. the latke recipe did not really change that rut, just the way i intake the carbs. 

but, i digress. 

i followed this recipe to a T, minus the schmaltz, which i might have used if i actually had some. yes, even though i have been a vegetarian for a zillion years at this point.

the entire recipe is at the above link, so i won't repost it, but adam has us put all the grated onions and potatoes into a towel and wring them out. not a terrible idea. 

yep, i mixed all the wet things with the fancy anthropologie kitchen gear of last christmas. 

i made them in the cast iron, with canola oil, because that's what i had (the oil and the pan), but i don't think it really matters. 

this recipe is specfically for crispy latkes, which i actually don't think are my favorite, but they were certainly delicious.

with sour cream AND applesauce. (and a salad so we get some nutrients).

poached birthday.

happy birthday to my dad, farrell, who showed me how to make a perfectly poached egg over thanksgiving. it is his specialty these days.

it's time.

we've got to save the dinner party.

bless her heart.

the pup has been sick. like, REALLY sick. i did manage to eat a few meals and make A LOT of beans on the stove, given that i was home (or in the vet hospital) for what seemed like a million days straight. poor girl.

she is on the mend. back to being the pup she was before her spleen infection. (and yes, a spleen is the organ that is supposed to fight infection. good job, spleen.)

back to, back to.

headed back to DC. with chloe. i bet she'd love a sheep in a window.

conversely.

while not food-related, y'all should know that i adopted a dog. her name is chloe. yes.

oh, the fair. the fair.

are you ready for this? alex and i judged everything in this photograph plus two more rounds for the food preservation section at the north carolina state fair.

it was incredible; we tasted jams, preserves, juices, jellies, and pickles. you only judge strawberry jam against strawberry jam, for example, and each category's size depends on its number of entrants. the bread and butter pickle category had 20-25 jars. it was insane.

but, more importantly, we also were able to nominate mind-blowing items for "best of show." we were quite choosey about this process; we didn't want to send just anything. in the end, we nominated a pineapple jelly (i know. it doesn't sound amazeballs, but it is.) and raspberry-jalapeno preserves, both of which won. yes. we are so influential. 

also, it's decorative gourd season, motherfuckers. (no, it never gets old.)

biscuits for the pups.

tina sent me a link for dog biscuits some time ago and finally i baked them. truthfully, humans can eat them as well, but i think they are probably pretty bland. however, the recipe is super easy.

not surprisingly, it's from ina garten. i made them smaller (with a flower-shaped cookie cutter) and so there were WAY more than she stated. and, i only made a half recipe! (they are fresh, so i worried they would spoil or mold or just not keep as long as the packaged kind.)

they were a hit with the bee.

washington, dc

washington, DC is slowly becoming my second home. i don't know my way around, but there's a bike i can ride, coffee around the corner from casey's place, and lots of beer in cans.

it's really flat and even the hills aren't so hard. and we are finding the delicious things to eat: fancy coffees, earl grey tea and cherry scones, huevos rancheros, cauliflower gratin, veggie bbq, i don't remember anymore. but DC is growing on me, even though it seems as no one is over age 27.

dream food labels.

mark bittman explains, in the nytimes magazine food issue, his ideas on food labels. they'd incorporate foodness, nutrition, and welfare. foodness is a pretty rad idea. i am kind of warming up to him.

interesting. not gonna happen, but interesting.

oh, salsa.

i've pretty much given up on buying salsa in the grocery store. it's never all that good and it's kinda pricey for mediocre. casey always thinks there is too much vinegar but i think it lacks spice. never packs a punch, if you will.

when i was still living in harlem, one of the few vendors at the farmers' market sold tomatillos and he told me i could easily make salsa with them. at the time, they seemed so foreign with their sticky wrappers and all, though i knew i liked their flavor. and that farmer was right--it's crazy easy.

here's how you do it.
1. take the sticky wrappers of the tomatillos and wash the tomatillos. today, i used six tomatillos and four very small green tomatoes.
2. boil some water and throw in the tomatillos and tomatoes.
3. once they burst through the skin, take them out and put them in a blender. i use one of those mini-choppers and do this twice, but that's because i am lazy and don't want to get out the blender and clean it and all. blend until smoothish.
4. chop up some onion, garlic, and hot peppers. today, i used 3 cloves of garlic, 1/4 of a yellow onion, 1 habanero, and 1/2 large jalapeno.
5. throw it all in the blender. add some lime. i squeezed in the juice of 1/2 lime. add some sea salt (i probably used a 1/2 tbsp) and pepper (maybe 3 twists of the grinder? 4?).
6. blend it all. mine is spicy and delicious.

and yeah, i am sporting navy nail polish. it's fall, kids.

goatober.

do y'all know how much i love goats? i really do. they are adorable. and lovely.

i have this vision that, one day, i'll have a little team of them to provide me with milk and i'll make cheese and they'll eat my lawn (of course, they are lady goats).

but, people have to eat goat to keep the ladies around. it's goatober, kids! eat the man goats. and watch the video to learn more.

so yeah.

after all these years, i did a little redesign. i think it was time. i am not totally certain of it yet, but i am into trying new things.

apparently, you (the reader) can change the way it looks; it's dynamic. i don't really like it in the other formats, so i might change back to something less wobbly. i kinda want to move it away from blogger, but i've just been here SO long, you know? (and how many tumblrs can a girl have? my friend rachel would say A LOT.)

in case you were wondering.

this is what i did with that challah:

it's the baked baked french toast. with blueberry-cherry sugary awesomeness on top. and a veggie sausage. you can make this--it's so crazy easy. 

might be.

this might be my slowest blogging year since i started 5 years ago. i think it's the other things i am up to--like trying to do academic things, and the gardens project, and the bike blog, and twitter, and instagram, and, well, sometimes i am just a little bored and my meals aren't so pretty and so i just don't want to put anything up. 

and cooking for one is not so exciting. but i'll try to be better. 

the best.

you see? this is why i can't have any more roommates. that shira is hard to beat--she sent me a homemade challah IN THE MAIL.

this is happiness and merriment and joy and love:

prince's plus.

back to nashville.

i don't know what to say about the hot chicken. but it was hot. and we ordered a whole hot chicken, a nashvillian specialty: medium hot, which is pretty damn hot. of course we went to prince's for this madness. you order, then you scour the place (the size of my apartment, which no one would call big) for a table covered by a plastic tablecloth, and then you wait. for us, it was an hour, and totally worth it (though this is the likely end of my attempts to consume animals on vacation).

 you eat it with white bread and pickles. not half-sours or anything special, just pickles.

so let's imagine how the recipe goes.
1. marinate chicken in oil with lots of cayenne.
2. make a dredge with lots of cayenne.
3. spread cayenne on the chicken?
4. deep-fry the chicken in oil with cayenne.

yeah. that kind of hot. and we did not order the hottest, as we wanted to be able to taste the chicken and just have our lips burn off.

we stopped into the patterson house later in the evening--lovely and beautiful and full of cocktails with spherical ice. i am not certain if this is shira's most favorite bar ever, or meat. it's really a toss-up.

our morning came with a crazy bloody mary bar, where i proceeded to put like 12 different hot sauces into my drink, along with a variety of pickled goodness.

 a lubricated morning for certain.

and is any trip to nashville complete without an overpriced yet super trip to the country music hall of fame? no. especially when it includes a poster-size photograph of dolly parton as the statue of liberty.

 

if we had more time, dollywood would have been on the itinerary. in my future indeed. 

wisCONsin.

 

is there a song about wisconsin? i don't mean about things within in it, like beer or cheese or badgers, but i mean like "oklahoma" or "texas, our texas." 

after a night of deep-dish pizza in chicago, shira and i left for milwaukee, where i was catching a plane to DC (i know, it was a crazy month). wisconsin was another new state for me, not that i have caught up to casey yet. we arrived at the mars cheese castle, which was indeed a castle but not regal. 

yes, at 1130am, we consumed a couple of bottles of new glarus and a pile of cheese curds in a parking lot. a perfect conclusion.

in transit.

 

so, she left. well, i rode with her across the country to her new place of employment: chicago. there are a lot of places from here to there: north carolina, virginia, west virginia, kentucky, indiana, and illinois. we made a little vacation out of it, stopping in louisville. it was at an incredible bar called meat in a neighborhood called butchertown where we drank bourbon cocktails and decided that we should write travel books on cities in the south.

but, alas, we only stayed for the night, leaving for glorious (not really) state of indiana. i had never been and was able to add the thirty-seventh state to my list. we stopped through indianapolis, eating bagels on a corner not far from the state fairgrounds but across the street from a record shop.

 

we also saw the biggest wind farm i have ever seen in my life. and the iphones just could not capture the vastness of the place. 

more importantly, we came upon the albanese candy company: home of the world's best gummi bears. so, of course, we pulled over our dodge grand caravan (which was awesome, for the record) and drove 3 miles down a surprisingly-busy road to the kingdom that this is candy company. we left with about $3 worth of candy, all gummies: 12 flavors. indeed, world's best. at least for gummies.

no. 308.

 

nashville, tennessee: a lovely place that requires two posts. shira, alex, and i spent what seemed like an entire day at no. 308.  we went for a happy hour cocktail and stayed for hours.

yes, it was full of taxidermy. ridiculous, non-nonsensical taxidermy. but also delicious cocktails with housemade syrups and shots that involved pineapple slices and gifted salads and other snacks. we eventually ran off at 10 or 11pm or so, only so we could head to another place for some bluegrass/country/picking of sorts.

these girls. i love these girls. and we all love dolly parton, but that's for another post.

taco extravaganza.

a bit of late july taco madness.

casey and shira and i were on a mini-quest to eat up the goodness that are the tacos in durham. (what is in the water over there? everything is just better, you know?) visits to nantaco and la vaquita were in order. spicy awesome tacos consumed. for the vegetarians, nanataco has more options, including a surprising fried green tomato taco (and all the salsa options above)! but seriously, la vacquita, you have my heart.

i don't know how to tell you this,

but this might be the best breakfast i have had in years. this was last week sometime.

the egg was perfectly fried (in butter), the tomatoes were just beyond amazing (i don't know what farm grew them, but an award is warranted), and the crackers were full of seedy amazement (sunflower, sesame, poppy, maybe flax). also, cucumbers and hummus and it was just all the loveliest.

babka-ed.

there's a jar of plum syrup on my counter. and a chocolate babka. it's beyond exciting.

this week, i am the lucky winner from berenbaum's. each week, they send out a little tweet telling the world what is on the menu for saturday and suggest that we "like" the post. then, they choose a random person to go home with some deliciously awesome or awesomely delicious baked goods, and this week, i was chosen. i took my bike on the bus and then rode to the durham market for shopping and prize-getting and coffee-drinking. (don't tell the carrboro market, but i am pretty sure durham is my favorite.) and once i told ari (berenbaum) how i got to the market without a car, he gave me a samosa as well.

essentially, it all rocks.

and then it happened.

vogue covers ice pops (not popsicles, because that's a brand). with recipes. delicious-sounding ones. so it's fashionable to eat them now. (we knew this--i told blake to open a popsicle truck like 3 years ago already and that kid tried to claim that he does not LOVE A POPSICLE.)

my inability to find photographs of pops means it might be time to make a batch.

longest ever.

things i have been doing that do not involve this blog: studying for my core exams, photographing casey's dog, riding my new bike, studying for my core exams, eating junk food, drinking coffee, studying for my core exams, trying to not melt from the heat or the rain.

fired up.

the list for july 4th: peaches and fireworks.

done and done.

in the internets.

you can find me in other parts of the internet these days.
1. a little blog about me and the bf's dog: scoutandthebee.tumblr.com
2. a bigger blog about trading in my car for a bike(!!). this is total insanity: dearbicycle.tumblr.com
3. the gardens project: www.growingsafergardens.com

i haven't given up on smashed goods. there's just a lot happening and it's all online.

**the photograph is of all the "surprise" dum-dums in a multi-pound bag. a small group of us did a serious taste test.

butter lamb.

it's possible that i will never fully understand this phenomenon. but i want a butter lamb every day.

what i am reading in the internet.

•  ice cream picasso trailer. weird. but i like it.
• nytimes magazine and foodie periodicals. big big love to love to remedy quarterly and put a egg on it. totally interested in wilder. not yet committed. 
• the nytimes makes me want to try pelforth beer.
• i am going to attempt to give up my car (which is a pain in the ass) for an incredible bike. video to follow. here's the video:

summer cocktails.

it's hard to drink anything but gin or beer or prosecco in the summer. but we've got a ton of bottles in the bourbon/whiskey/scotch family. and some rum. preparing for our caribbean-themed belmont-stakes-watching party, we consumed a handful of cuba libres. that is, rum + coke + tons of lime. much unlike the ever-popular rum + coke of high school, this one is drinkable and doesn't taste too sweet or leave a sugary feel on your teeth.

however, the drink of summer 2012 is probably bourbon + limonata. i threw a couple of these together (with the oversized ice) the other night for me and casey and they were really delicious. and for all occasions, not just summer.

oh, mexico.

i ran off to mexico with casey for the weekend to see yelena and dominic get married. video (yes, video!) to follow.

and i swear i am going to post more.

the best ice cream on earth.

yeah, we got some blue bell up in here.

a little round-up.

• a history of the taco.
• facebook's valuation in burger king whoppers.
• the veggie burgers i plan to make this week. 
• a space shuttle food truck. and it's for sale!  
• my garden project has a website. 
• i am going to be speaking about said garden project at the farm to cafeteria conference. 
• you should be watching food curated. seriously. every video rocks.
• and for kicks, the beastie boys's sabotage video with kids in their roles (thanks, blake!): 

happy food.

it's a little naughty. 

canned.

we are trying all the beers in cans this summer. over the weekend, it was oskar blues old chub and mother earth sunny haze. and a little hangout on the pallet furniture in the yard.