BUZZ BEANS

I think caffeine makes me a better person. When I was working in Seattle, my meals were paid for and there was a Tully's one floor below my desk... so, naturally, I drank a little more coffee than usual. I was working longer hours than I normally do, but I was doing things at twice my normal speed, and was feeling pretty okay by the end of most days. When I came home and went back to my usual routine, I felt sluggish and less alert. I go home at night feeling tired and foggy headed.... I've held out at one cup of joe a day for about 5 years now, but I'm seriously considering graduating myself to the next level.

For the next couple of weeks, I'm going to try adding a cup of coffee to the later half of my day, and see if that makes a difference in how I feel. I'm a little bit scared of acclimating myself to higher and higher levels of caffeine addiction, but I'm hoping I'll be able to hold steady at 2 cups a day for at least another 5 years...

This blog is really wearing me down today... I'm gonna go grab a cup of coffee....

FEASTENTINE'S DAY

Well, I'm finally back home! After two weeks of working long hours and going home to an empty hotel room, I can finally get back to living my life. I've been eating at restaurants for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for too long, so my wife and I decided to cook our own special valentine's day feast. It was supposed to just be dinner, but it turned into an entire day of cooking and feasting....

It all started with breakfast. While we cooked, we drank fresh apple watermelon juice with a squeeze of lemon (about 1/3 apple juice to 2/3 watermelon).We made baked egg cups with homemade bacon, thin sliced ham, and spinach, topped off with hollandaise sauce and some finishing salt. Needless to say, these were gone so fast that we didn't get any pictures.

For our next meal, we made some very delicious Manila clams. Again, the excitement over the finished dish did not allow for any photos, but I'm sure you can imagine how delicious it looked. The clams were steamed in a butter, garlic, lemon, and wine sauce, then we added coarse mustard, cream, and a few too many slices of crusty bread. I think this is our new favorite meal of all time.... soooooo good. Lisa even found a tiny purple pearl in one of her clams, so I was let off the hook for not buying her any jewelry this year!! The perfect lunch!

Then the serious cooking started. We made prosciutto chips by baking slices of Parma Prosciutto at 450 for about 20 minutes. These things were like bacon on steroids, and will definitely be added to the repertoire for future meals. Here's a picture of our crispy little heaven chips...

 

We turned our prosciutto chips into four different samples of crostini. My favorite was the semi melted tallegio cheese, topped with chives and a prosciutto chip. The consensus for next time was more prosciutto and a slightly stronger cheese.

And then, there were potatoes.... not just any potatoes either, these puppies were cooked in duck fat. Oh yeah. I got this recipe from the Wrightfood blog, and it is incredible. They were the crispiest, tastiest potatoes I've had in a long time. Just for good measure, we mixed some parsnips and carrots in with the potatoes (which were almost as good as the potatoes themselves), and made some sauce gribiche, which was pretty tasty. To top it all off, it turns out that duck fat is actually less bad for you than butter, so, happy valentine's day to me!

By the time the potatoes were ready, we were pretty tired. We barbecued our dry aged New York steak, seared some scallops in peanut oil on a cast iron skillet, and tucked in to the best meal I've had in weeks. We finished the steak off with garlic butter, and topped each scallop with a different finishing salt. Our unanimous favorite was guava smoked volcanic salt...mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.....

And here is the end result .The only reason there is so much left on the plate is that we ate too much bread with the clams... We had such a good time spending the whole day cooking and tasting together, This was the best Valentine's day EVER! I love you wifey!!