Taste the Fucking Rainbow.

A week of meals, prepared and ready to go, super healthy as per request. Lunches consisting of salad assortments with hummus and homemade pita chips, a few soups, and some meat dishes for dinner.

Items as shown, left column to right:

1. Shredded carrot salad, orange juice, lemon juice, golden raisins

2. Roasted beet salad, beet greens, orange segments, olive oil, lemon juice, S & P (to be topped with goat cheese...mmm)

3. Steamed green bean salad, fresh corn, shaved shallot, olive oil, S & P

4. Bruschetta (Tomato, garlic, basil, olive oil, dash of balsamic, S & P

5. Tri-Tip Chili (dinner item), onion, celery, carrot, bell pepper, fire roasted serrano and jalapeno peppers, pinto beans, black beans, mom's canned tomatoes (from their prime in the summer) tomato paste, cumin, oregano, S & P

6. Hummus! Self explanitory.

7. Red coconut curry with roasted eggplant, super duper baby bok and pak choi from mom's garden, and tofu

8. White bean salad, capers, shallot, parsley, olive oil, S & P

9. Quinoa and Black bean salad, cilantro, bell pepper, lime juice, cumin, olive oil, S & P

10. Split pea soup (dinner item), chicken broth, ham hock, split peas, onion, celery, carrot, bay leaf

And in the ziploc baggies:

-Marinated portobello mushrooms (olive oil, balsamic, garlic, chopped parsley, cilantro, basil S & P) to be grilled for burgers.

- Marinated free range chicken breasts (cumin, paprika, onion and garlic powders, lime juice, olive oil, S & P for fajitas

- Homemade pita chips

-Oven roasted potatoes (to be served with portobello burgers)

And the convenience of only having to reheat your food if desired, dishes done, counters wiped, no shopping necessary, and a fully loaded fridge with all items labeled with directions for use:

Fucking Priceless.








****I give full credit to Goodland Kitchen for the salad assortment with hummus and pita chips. It's the best place to get lunch in town by far. GO THERE NOW!****

What to do with your godamn chicken:

Hey! In case you followed my video "Cooking a Damn Chicken," here's what you can do with the leftovers.

The night you cook your chicken, put the carcass/pan drippings/leftover garlic tidbits into a pot, lid on, and put it in the fridge.

NEVER THROW AWAY PAN DRIPPINGS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

Cool, now the next time you're lazy, ideally within the next three days, all you have to do is pull out that pot, add enough water to cover, toss in:

-1 bay leaf

-1 chopped onion

-2 chopped carrots

-3 chopped stalks of carrots

Nobody cares how you cut them. If they can fit in your mouth you did a good job. Bring that shit to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. The longer you cook it the better it will be, but since you used pan drippings you're cheating the system (yaaaay) and it'll taste good within an hour.

Now, pull out the chicken carcass, man up your fingers you ladygirl and pull off any useable meat, put meat in the soup, discard the carcass and bones.

Super! Add whatever vegetables you want to your soup...I added shredded cabbage and chopped kale to my soup. What will you put in yours?

If I like you a lot, I'll make you an 8 course sushi dinner.

I LOVE SUSHI.  People fuck it up constantly, and tend to really not appreciate it at all. I mean come on! The exquisite artistic presentation?! The small plates?! The freshness of ingredients?! Years of Technique and training?!

APPRECIATE IT! 

Godamnit I'm flustered. You don't go get cheap sushi. That's gross. You eat it occasionally and relish it with great appreciation. If you eat sushi all the time YOU. ARE. AN. ASSHOLE. Furthermore: you don't walk into a sushi restaurant and order a mountain of food at once. You also don't hork down your meal in a half an hour. How embarrassingly American.

No. You do your fucking research on locations, you go to sushi, you sit the fuck down at the fucking sushi BAR, you order one thing at a time, you take like 3 fucking hours, you buy the chefs lots of sake, and you tip ludicrously well. Do it right. 

I don't have a car. I live cheaply in an rv on a farm. I don't buy fancy clothes, shoes or electronics. My diet is my highest priority, and with that interest in mind I give Japanese cuisine the highest respect. I mean look, I actually got angry. weird. I digress, it was Jim's Birthday and I made him this for his dinner. It's not necessarily sushi at all....more like Japanese Italian fusion

 Course #1

Prawn Miso with Enoki Mushrooms

 Course #2

Local Oysters with Secret Mignonette, Wasabi Tobiko

 

Course #3:

Seared Local Scallops, Shiso Pesto,  Roasted Pear Tomatoes and Garlic

 

Course #4

Local Halibut Ceviche, Jalapeno, Tangerine, Garlic Chips, Cilantro-Yuzu Vinagrette

Course #5

Channel Islands Uni, Qual Egg, Ikura

Course #6

Ahi Poke, Mango, Macadamia Nuts

Course #7

Snow Crab Roll, Haphazardly Wrapped in Avocado

Course # 8

Mixed Sashimi, Philadelphia Roll (Because it's Jim's Favorite "Dessert Roll")

Episode 1: Cooking a godamn chicken.

In case you couldn't decipher my pathetic drunken slur of a cooking show (Watch it!), here are some CRUCIAL elements to remember as far as ingredients and cooking times:

Oven Temperature: 425 Degrees

-Put potatoes in the oven while preheating, don't take them out until ready to serve. Don't forget the fucking holes or they will explode into a million pieces just like all of your hopes and dreams.

-Remove chicken from its illustrious blood bag. 

-Remove and discard organ packet at your liesure

-Separate garlic cloves and place around chickenbeast in some sort of appropriate cooking dish.

-Season the chicken liberally with garlic salt, tarragon, and fresh ground pepper. Don't forget that fresh rosemary butt plug if one is handy. If you cannot find a fresh rosemary butt plug....Whatever. 

You want your chicken to look like this:

-Put the chicken in the oven once it's preheated. Set a timer for one hour. Don't open the fucking oven until that timer goes off, or unless your oven catches on fire because it's incompetent.  

-Make your salad dressing. Remember! One part vinegar to three parts olive oil (changed my mind about that)....and get something nice. Add a heaping spoonful of whole grain mustard and stir it very half-assedly. Who cares. It's all gonna get to know each other in the bowl. 

-Fart out a salad. It's not rocket science...it's....salad.

-When the timer goes off, take your chicken out of the oven and hack that shit up with all the finesse of a blind baby eskimo. Put it on a plate with your potatoes and salad.  Take that plate out to your nearest dinner guest and be like "shit yeah mo'nucka."

- Eat your delicious dinner, chill the fuck out and coerce your manfriend into making you a martini while you put your feet up and come down from your labor intensive evening.

The End.

Eat Ducks.

So a girl walks into a really fancy restaurant. Orders the seared duck. Duck arrives well done. Girl flips the fuck out and kills everyone within a 50 mile radius. Girl squashes entire villages in her scramble to obtain all the ingredients necessary to make a redeeming duck dish. Girl also kills the last animal of a dying species because she just didn't give a fuck. There is no greater quest, no feat more noble, than the quest of forever washing the taste of failure off your tongue...with something much more delicious.

 BEHOLD!

The dish consists of:

A chipolini onion puree, cut with just a lil' bit of po-tater for texture. This puree is easy to make. Offensively easy. You just boil your peeled little onions, however much potato you want (the more potato you add, the thicker the puree...This one in particular has one peeled (and diced) russet tater to about 2 pounds chipolini onions), when they're tender drain them and toss into a food processor. Process till smooth (like 15 seconds) add butter, salt and pepper to taste.

 

Play tic-tac-toe on the skin side of your duck breast with a paring knife (i.e. score the fat for optimal rendering, season with salt, pepper, paprika, honestly I forget what I did. Season it with good stuff.

In a cast iron pan sear the duck breasts presentation side down .

Flip those duck titties over and pop the whole godamned pan in a 500 degree oven for 5 minutes precisely for a perfectly rare duck breast. Let rest at least 5 minutes on a cutting board.

To plate, spoon the onion puree onto your dish, top with steamed veggies of your choice (asparagus and red russian kale pictured) and top with the duck breast.

 Anyone can prepare this meal with about a half hour of effort. Suck it Rachel Ray (the 50's called, it wants to tell you that nobody gives a fuck about fritattas), and all those other people who "just don't have the time to cook."

I win.

A special thanks to Derek Melton of Mimosa Restaurant, who can cook one MEAN duck breast! 
(unaffiliated with the fancy joint that tried to serve me well done duck)

Schweet toof.

Hey! Remember that time when the economy totally sucked and it was impossible to find a job?!?! Oh wait, that's right now. 

 The moral of today's story: When everything blows, make candy.

BEHOLD!! A sheet of delectable caramel (Recipe here) is lovingly transformed into....

...Dark chocolate caramel squares!!! 

Today's flavors:

-Bacon & sea salt
-Walnut & sea salt
-Coconut, Chili & sea salt

And also dark chocolate toffees!!! FUCK YES!

Today's flavors:

-Rosemary Walnut
-Black pepper & Chili
-Cacao nib & date
-S'more style 
-Cocoa dusted


A day of failure?

I think not. More like a day for deliciousness.

The Art of Grilled Artichokes.

This is quite possibly one of the most delicious appetizers on the planet. Everyone should know how to make it because its fucking simple.

Step One: Acquire artichokes using any means necessary (i.e. robbery, prostitution).


Step Two: Toss your artichokes (one choke for two people if you're doing appetizers, or one choke per person if it's the main) into a pot filled half-way with water, the juice of one lemon (you can put the juiced lemon halves in the water), and healthy dose of dried oregano. Bring to a rolling boil for about 45 minutes.


Step Three: While you're waiting for your delicious chokes you can make a godamned sauce for their leaves to dip their toes in.(While you're at it you can start preheating your grilling apparatus because that thing should be smokin' hot by the time yer chokes are done boiling.) Combine the following ingredients in a bowl to make a delicious sauce. If you can't figure out how to make it taste good, you're stupid. Go out to eat. One tip: think thick, not runny.


-2 heaping spoonfuls mayonaise
-Juice of 1/2 lemon
-1 tbs dried tarragon
-1 tbs fresh chopped basil
-At least 6 cloves of finely minced garlic....YEAH
-Fresh ground pepper
-Sea salt
-A few shakes of yer favorite hot sauce. Ideally not Tabasco, because it is an overpowering and unnecessarily vinegary hot sauce that makes delicious things cry bitter tears of unfathomable sorrow. Try Widow Maker instead.


Step 4: 45 minutes are up! Drain your chokes, relocate to a cutting board, stem side up, and cut them all the way in half. Using the curve of a spoon to your advantage, gently remove the choke fuzz from each half. Then you place the artichoke halves in a bowl and toss liberally with olive oil, sea salt and FRESH ground pepper. Now run your little buns out to the grill, slap those suckers on, and grill them until they look delicious. 

Cool.

Serve 'em up on a wooden cutting board and enjoy! Also, you know you made your artichoke sauce right if your face looks like this when you're enjoying a bite: