Coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee

Coffee is the reason I got up today. For those who know me, you know mornings are hard. Like really hard. Zooey Deschanel sums it up:

"In an ideal world no one would talk before 10am. People would just hug, because waking up is really hard."

Coffee gave me my hug this morning. Hot, dark, creamy. Yes. Yes. Yes. Reason for prying my eyelids open.

Since we've had this heat wave though, it's been rather tough to get a hot cup of coffee down every morning. I'll do it, but sunbathing on my deck with steamy coffee isn't ideal. I prefer to be the only thing with steam rising off it while sunbathing.

Like my Peach?

Peaches. I'm gonna say it again. Peaches.

Could be a stripper name, but it also could be the Best. Damn. Fruit. Ever. [Ed: 2nd Best]

I'm slightly obsessed with them lately. I realize I should be writing about something in season, but I'm not.

Again, slightly obsessed with these juicy fruits lately, so save this for when they are actually in season (late July). I just ordered a HUGE box of them and I've been making everything with peaches.

Tarts, pies, crumbles, cobbler. Eat peaches people.

Not only are they like one of The. Sexiest. Fruits. Ever (tell me you can't bite into a juicy, wet peach and not get just a little turned on).

We're called Cooking and Drinking: Gin Edition

Let me say this: I love Gin.

It is the nectar of the gods.

It is my favourite drink and it tastes unlike anything else.

I drink three types of Gin, Tanqueray, Bombay Sapphire and Hendrick's.

Each has earned a different mood.

Unlike the "Gin and Tonic is a Summer drink people" I drink my Gin and Tonics year round.

Because I'm cool like that and because nothing else competes.

Nora Roberts knows her sex and sauce.

Some years ago I stumbled across this recipe in a Nora Roberts book. Feel free to judge me. It wasn't a new Nora Roberts book like "The Witness" or "The Collector" with a catching mystery and a fast paced story, it was an old one from the early 80s.

You know the type of book, where people still smoked in doctors offices and men still slapped women's asses freely.

Not that I'm not down with a little ass slapping.

Anywho, it's the climax of the book. The lovers finally meet up in a small cottage on the lake. The author paints a picture of sexual tension you can cut with a knife. The female character seduces the male with her…

Sous-Vide T-Bone Steak

I recently purchased a new cook book.

Modernist Cuisine at Home for around $100 from the internets.

It includes two books, the proper cook book, and a waterproof Kitchen Manual that has all of the recipes found in the main book without the pictures and extra discussion.

Never before have a read a cook book front to back like a novel.

It has given me so many simple ideas to make cooking better.

One of the things that the book endorses is sous-vide cooking. Which is using a water bath to bring meat upto temperature.

By putting your food, spices and sauces into a vacuum sealed ziplock bag and then putting the bag into warm-hot water to precook the food.

Below is how to do it with steak.

T-Bone Steak is what I used.

Gluten Free Breakfast

Apparently Gluten free is a buzzword being adopted by tons and tons of people who aren't tragically cursed to be unable to enjoy gluten.

I call this Egg Crepes

Mothers Day Breakfast

Mothers day is a sham of a holiday.

Ruined like Christmas, like Black Friday, and Tuesday.

But Mothers deserve things.

Well the not fucked ones.

So the ones who are deserving are allowed to benefit from this recipe.

And by recipe I mean general guidelines for cooking.

If you want specifics read Portia's writing. I generalize.

Unlike Mother

In honour of Mothers Day I'm sending this one out to my mom.

My Mom……who hates cooking. 

My mother, my determined mother, had to face my multiple childhood allergies to anything processed head on. And she did it with style. So much style that I grew up loving cooking/baking and the versatility surrounding the food she taught me how to cook. Can't eat this, well substitute in this. 

So, thanks Mom, for grinding your teeth through multiple recipes and in doing so instilling in me a life long love of food. 

Today I'm passing on one of her no fail recipes. The first recipe I ever memorized. I'll do two versions in this post. The first is the one my mom passed down to me, the second I modified for you vegan folks or folks with allergies. Here we go!

THE EASIEST FREAKEN CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES EVER…………..ever

Don't be a such a chicken

This one is to all my friends who are afraid of food. Cooking it, that is. See, I have a hard time relating to you. I love food. I love cooking, baking, freezing, canning. I'm the person in the kitchen at 10pm making a cake from scratch because she feels like it. I'm the girl who meal plans, trying out a new recipe or two every week.

Having said that, I'm also the girl who fairly consistently sets off the smoke alarm, tends not to measure most of her ingredients resulting in salty cookies, and who drops the f-bomb regularly while in my kitchen.

So listen up all my friends who are afraid of their kitchen. You can do this. Set things on fire, forget the sugar sometimes, call those noodles mother fuckers when they come out in a big gooey mess. It happens. You'll make mistakes. I've been cooking/baking for the better part of 20 years and I still fuck up. Cut yourself some slack. 

But start please. I cannot tell you the immeasurable amount of pleasure I get from pulling that roast out of the oven. Or making "dump chicken" in the crockpot. Or smelling apple sauce cooking on the stove top. So read on dear friends. I'm going to ease you into this. 

Awesome Lentil Soup

I have always had a love hate relationship with lentils.

When I was a kid my mother and her mother (both German) would make lentil soup and it would be bland and carrot filled.

I'm sure it had other stuff in it. But young me remembers the fucking carrot chunks.

Now I love lentil soup, because I make it my way.

The Ingredients you need are as follows:

Two packs of that hot Italian ground sausage, pictured at left.

Two cans of crushed tomatoes. The big ones.

A bag (450g) of Red Lentils and a bag of Green Lentils also 450g.

Both are pictured below.

You also need four 900ml cartons of chicken stock.

I get the low salt ones because there is a lot of salt in the sausage.

The instructions are pretty simple.

Fry the sausage in the pot. Add a bit of water to keep it from burning.

Also take the opportunity to break the sausage up into bits with a spatula, spoon or hammer.

Once the sausage is all cooked add the chicken stock and the lentils.

boil the shit out of it.

An hour or two later add the crushed tomatoes. Both cans.

Turn the heat down to a lower setting.

Otherwise the fucker will burn and you might as well dump the whole vat of soup out.

When the soup starts to boil make sure you stir it.

A lot otherwise the fucker will burn and you might as well dump the whole vat of soup out.

After five or ten but not fifteen minutes of stirring it'll be ready.

Let the soup cool and thicken for about half an hour before serving.

Then eat three to five bowls of it.

This soup is high protein and nutritious and stuff and it is probably gluten free depending on the ground sausage you buy.

It is also amazing.

The meal should cost:

• $8-$10 for the sausage
• $12 for the chicken stock
• $4 for the tomatoes
• $4-$6 for the lentils

So around $30 for enough soup to feed a family of four for 3 or 4 days.

Longer if you don't like your kids.

That's all for now.

William

Entry: Negative One

It is time to start 2014, this is a blog.


A blog about food.

A blog about drinking.

A blog about sharing ideas.

And something different for everyone.

Entry zero will introduce the cooks.

Entry one will be a gluten free meal that can be hammered together in under 40 minutes.


This is all,

William