Talked Jefe into letting me make him some latkes for brekkie a few weeks back – forgot I’d taken a snap of it.  Smoked salmon, sour cream, green onions, capers (only on mine), some applesauce and fresh sliced nectarines.  Heck of a way to start a beautiful Sunday.

Cocktails of Desperation is a series of cocktails invented by Joshua, because he has a basement full of liquor that no one wants to order, so he has to come up with ways to pour it off and still make money.

Last night my staff was whining that it had been a long night, and they wanted to have a staff drink. Ashley says that every night, but this particular night i was feeling kind, so i decided to give in. However, being of the frugal sort, i decided to concoct something using stuff that never sells. Have to get rid of it some how. And thus was born “Grape Expectations”.

• 1 oz. Manischewitz Concord Grape Wine
• 1/2 oz. Bacardi Razz
• 1/2 oz. Bacardi Grand Melon
• 1/4 oz. of that godawful Limoncello from Iowa that you bought just to get the sales guy off your back for a couple weeks
• 3 oz. Fresh lemon juice*
• 1 oz. Simple syrup*

*You can substitute 4 oz. premade lemonade if you’re feelin’ it.

Shake that stuff up with some ice, and pour it into a cup with some other ice. You’ve got yourself a nice sweet ‘n’ tart drink for sippin’.

A good roast beef hash sure fills the soul. Sometimes it is a bit of work to roast a beef, and Theresa would rather use the leavings for hot beef sammiches instead of hash when we make roast. I figured I would try a fast way to make some hash and chose between this prepackaged Hormel roast beef over a couple nice slices of roast beef from the deli.

Went with the plain in au jus one. The roast was flavorful, but was covered in a super beefy goop. When you have been working for years to perfect roasts, this is just not up to snuff.

The goop was just too much. The beef tasted awesome, but the goop made it have that flavor and it was just not up to par for us. Did two roasts over the weekend, in one pot. So we are going to have roast for day 3 tonight hash style. Will post.

Watched the most recent episode of Good Eats and at the end the Chicken Biscuit Pot Pie Alton made looked delicious. After the show was over and we looked at each other and communicated via brain talk that we would be eating that. Headed to our new secret Russeses and got some supplies. They did not have chicken sausage, but they had turkey and I grabbed it. I asked an older gentleman if vitamin A milk is whole milk, he thought it prob was, but prarieland sold whole milk so I was good. Then I spoke with 3 older ladies about aluminum free baking powder, none of them knew what it was and Russeses did not have it. Seems some folkk do not like the aluminum being in there for safety reasons, but it does not make a difference while baking.

We had roasted a chicken the day before and the recipe was pretty simple. Sage cost a lot, but I think it helped or something. We did not use the thyme. We are just not fans of thyme.

A couple weeks ago I finally remembered to mention ham steaks to Theresa as a new meat to work into our meal rotation. It has been in my head from Split Lip Rayfield singing about how many biscuits can you eat this morning? 49 and a ham of meat of course. We picked up a Cooks ham steak from our new top secret Russeses grocery with a box of scalloped potatoes. We are working on simpler meals for weekdays and I do not have to make everything from scratch I have realized. The ham steaks have been a hit and we only made it through 1/2 of one Tues night and I suggested making a hash with the ham leavings and Theresa agreed.

I used the mandoline of death to dice the potatoes really small. Cooked the bacon, wiped the skillet, threw the potatoes in there with some clarified butter and veg oil and started browning them. Onions were added about 5 minutes later, then the pepper, bacon, and ham. A bit of salad and garlic bread and that was one tasty meal in under 30 minutes. take that TV lady who makes sex sounds when she eats.

While washing some dishes this weekend I caught a little bit of Barefoot Contessa. I am not that much of a fan, but my hands were wet and the lemon chicken breast dish she was making looked pretty good. We have not had much luck with lemon and chicken on our own, so I figured BFC would know her stuff and we tried it.

It is pretty simple. Olive oil, garlic, lemon zest and juice, plus a little white wine. I went with chicken breasts with the rib cage still attached. She had the bones removed. I figured it would not make that much of a difference. It smelled great while cooking. The breasts did not brown as much as I would of liked, even after some broiling. The flavor was barely noticeable in the chicken and the sauce was meh over the rice. At least we tried something new.

Back in december I ate down at Sultan’s Kite for a SCS luncheon. They have gyros, chicken schwarma, and other delicious items. I love gyros, but it is usually after being downtown to see a show and much drinking. I strap the foam box on my bike and head home and feast. The next day I have horrible gyro burps and severely regret my late night fooding.

The chicken schwarma at Sultan’s Kite was basically a chicken gyro and it was absolutely delicious. I did not get the gyro burps and had been craving it since my last visit. I explained the dish to Theresa and she said she would be willing to try it. She loves cucumbers and the rest is not too far out there. I offered to pick one up and split it, but figured it would be cooler for me to try and make it at home.

Thanks to Lexi’s encouragement, I ventured into the realm of homemade liqueurs for Valentine’s Day.  I followed her suggested recipe from Instructables, with only a few changes.  I did not add the cinnamon, and I used a pretty inexpensive Skol vodka.  Otherwise, I followed closely, not wanting to waste either the material cost nor my time.  I ended up with enough to make some little Valentine gifts for friends and still have some left for Jefe and I to have a delicious drink ourselves.  Good with just some club soda, but I think it would also probably be delicious with, say, a cranberry/lime sparkling water or something of the sort.  Even a cola maybe, and some vanilla – along the lines of a vanilla cherry coke.

As with several other, formerly inexpensive (honestly, downright CHEAP) and aesthetically unappealing fish varieties, there’s some current thought being given to how to market Asian (silver and bighead, specifically) carp as desirable – and palatable.  The primary goal is to get them on the hook as a trendy food fish, and get them the heck out of U.S. waterways, where they’ve become invasive and noxious.

And lest you think it’s just a mere annoyance, consider that the new Attorney General of Michigan has named it his Number One priority.  With a $7 billion sport fishing industry on the line, it’s no wonder.  Or imagine being Marcy Poplett, idling on the river on her jet ski to look at the fall colors, and waking up minutes later, bleeding and floating face down after being hit in the face by a leaping silver carp.

So getting them from the water to the plate in order to make a dent in the population (which has no natural predators in the areas it’s invading) seems like a wise plan, in conjunction with all other efforts.  I mean, Americans may argue endlessly over whether to spend public funding on the control, but if you can make it taste good – heck yeah…we’ll eat it to extinction, right?

Foss's Crisp Paupiette of Asian Carp in Barolo Sauce

The first step toward getting chow-hounds on board is going to have to be new name – we all know what the word “carp” brings to mind, in terms of a gustatory experience – muddy, bottom-feeding, boney, and better left to catch-and-release programs.  Branding Strategy Insider found these previous attempts at new nomenclature, which met with varying degrees of success:

I got a big kick out of the break-down on Chow:  ”A Chicago restaurant tried Shanghai Bass (sounds like a sex act, let’s be honest), Kentuckians called it Kentucky Tuna (also sort of sounds … well, I don’t know, I just know I don’t want to eat “Kentucky Tuna”), and in Louisiana, wildlife officials came up with Silverfin, which is just two precious consonants away from being “Silverfish,” something you never, ever want to look at, let alone put in your mouth.”

But Bob on Idea Peep Show (Fast Horse Marketing blawg) came up with what may be the most viable alternative – Cyprinia, a riff on the scientific name.

Pretty brilliant, and he’s got a logo ready to boot!  We’re such interesting creatures, we humans, that we place so much stock in what something is called, rather than evaluating it for its inherent properties.  No wonder people actually get paid to tell us what to buy.

I’ve had a hankering for pasta for weeks now and finally caved.  Decided to make some baked manicotti and break in the new casserole dish.  Russ’s had no manicotti, no giant shells, nothing stuffable.  So I ended up going to SunMart and was actually very pleasantly surprised by both the selection of items I needed and the prices.  I know I complain about them, but really – I was impressed.  Used this recipe but omitted the butter.  Made enough for all of the shells, but I had 3 that didn’t fit into the pan, so I think I’ll just freeze the filling for something else when I need some grub in a hurry.

Stuffed and ready for the saucing.

Tomatoey goodness

Combination of Mozz and Parm.

Oven Ready!

Finished with some fresh flat-leaf parsley, and served with some garlicky cheese bread.

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