Mid East Meets Southwest

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Chili Shakshuka. Shakshuka is eggs simmered as you please in a good, spicy tomato sauce. This is eggs simmered in chili, sort of a deconstructed chili omelet. It was for my wife... the closer pan was simmering garlic, parsely, fine chopped young celery in butter and a little beer in anticipation of a handful of littlenecks.

Bahn Yourself!

Barbecue Beef Bahn Mi from Vietnam Sandwich on Harrison Ave in Chinatown. My favorite cold sandwich (except for an MLT, when the mutton is nice and lean...). Some kind of sweet mayonnaise, veggies, and chopped prik kee noo if you get it spicy. Only three bucks, too. Go get one.

Mouthful of Nori

It called me from the fridge while I was doing dishes. A sprinkle of salt, three minutes of chewing. Green speckled teeth that I wouldn't bring on a date. Good thing I'm married.

The Whole Thing?!

Yeah. This fried hot pepper in oil, they used to have it in the restaurant in the stalls that was right across from you as you went in. It's not quite hot enough to hurt; I ate the whole jar plain. Same thing with the pickled mango and whole lime...killed the jar with a pair of chopsticks, little nibbles over the course of several weeks.

It's Like Buttah!

Fresh Iggy's Baguette. Room temperature sweet cream butter. No one watching. A simple pleasure as good as anything else here. Or anywhere.

Chicken Chips

I abhor the waste of throwing out food. The occasional bit of leftover chicken -- which in a better world we'd be accustomed to feed to *someone* instead of throwing away -- is frozen until I've accumulated enough to be worth saving.

When I have enough, it's marinated soy sauce and palm sugar, and then dried in a 250 oven for a few hours. They're actually kind of addictive, as long as you don't think about what they are (or that the oldest of the lot was from somewhere well back in 2009).

Fish cakes, fish cakes, roly poly fish cakes

Eat Them Up, Yum. This, actually, is the very tail end (so to speak) of the cod back in 'devolution'. Leftover baked potato, an egg to hold it together. Frozen until this morning, fried into vigor and served with two over easy, yolks broken, and plenty of hot sauce. Yes, good enough that I finished it with a rubber spatula (in Hebrew, btw, that's called a 'licker').

smore or less

Slumber party food for the Pokemon set: s'mores with mini-marshmallows toasted over a gas stove burner. Small flat Hershey bars (please), and graham crackers. Better than potato chips for morale, and less dangerous than fluffy bunny.

Applied Soup Theory

Speaking of hadda, I made a rich beef, barley, and vegetable soup. For the first time, mind, but it's the textbook example applied soup theory. Beef (first time I've bought beef in I can't remember when) browned in three small batches with a little soy sauce to help it along, each batch deglazed with red wine, set aside. Three large onions caramelized to jelly in the same pot. Everything simmered with coarsley chopped onion, carrot, and parsnip, 'bout a cup of barley. Adjust flavor with salt, pepper, a touch of beef bouillion. Better the next day. Blond version, by wife's request, started with a kosher chicken, bones cracked and skins simmered twice for a richer broth. When cold, you could stand a metal spoon in it.

Hadda do it. Hadda.

I had to indulge myself. It's supposed to be clever, not advocating any particular practice or preference. If you've read this far, I trust you understand, and it makes you smile. T-shirts available if you want.