I took leftover ciabatta, cut on a bias and made sandwiches with pastrami, Swiss & provolone cheese, thinly sliced pepperoncinis and a garlic and olive tapenade for dinner tonight.
Guess what garlic and Kalamata olive tapenade smells like? Central Market’s Caesar salad dressing. Blend in egg and little more olive oil and I’ll bet I finally have my recipe.
While driving home from work yesterday I was among traffic that was slowed down and funneled to one lane as we all slowly drove by a fatal accident.
I could see inside the driver’s side of the car. The airbag was clearly visable as was a body. The paramedics were working on the driver. I could feel death in the air and I shivered.
Just this past December two off duty police officers, husband and wife were killed in a motorcycle accident on Hwy 71.
The accident I drove by yesterday was 50 yards away from the site where the husband and wife died four months ago. I drive by the two wreaths every day. Now there will be two more wreaths.
Hwy 71 is a bitch. Those two wrecks happened on a 50 mph curve that I hate. I think most people who know that road hate it as well. I think a seasoned NASCAR driver would hate it too. Those who don’t know it are the ones who barrel through it and cause tension and accidents. Hwy 71 is four lanes with no median and for the most part posted 70 mph. Most drive 75-80 mph. Imagine 80 mph next to a 18-wheeler against oncoming traffic with a 20 inch comfort zone between you and another vehicle traveling 80 mph to your left.
It’s such a nice, quiet, peaceful commute to and from work.
I took leftover ciabatta, cut on a bias and made sandwiches with pastrami, Swiss & provolone cheese, thinly sliced pepperoncinis and a garlic and olive tapenade for dinner tonight.
Guess what garlic and Kalamata olive tapenade smells like? Central Market’s Caesar salad dressing. Blend in egg and little more olive oil and I’ll bet I finally have my recipe.
I wrote her back, sent a few photos, briefly explained how my life has unfolded thus far and said thanks. It was a cool feeling to find and hear back from one of my first public educators.
On Friday night we went all out. We had the party of all parties. We lived it up like there was going to be no Saturday morning.
We sat at the kitchen table, blanched and shelled fava beans.
We woke up Saturday morning and I tested for my third star for my black belt. I think I did really well. Usually I’m nervous as hell. When I get nervous, I forget to breath. This time I concentrated on my breathing and not the people watching me. I nailed all of my patterns and sparred okay. The only part I botched was my board breaking. I tried a down kick, back kick, reverse hook kick combo. The first two kicks were dead on. I had to try the reverse hook kick a few times before the boards brokes.
After the test ten of us went to Chili’s for lunch. After lunch Elise and I spent four hours at Lucy in Disguise so Elise could get a costume for the Dudley & Bob Pimpalicious Ho-Tastic Flashback Prom.
We arrived at the Hyatt on Town Lake at 9:30 and stayed at the prom long enough to see other peoples’ costumes and listen to a few songs by the Scabs. We left after an hour or so. This prom, like most proms, was pretty boring.
We then headed south and met up with Adrian at his friend’s house for a couple beers. Elise and I then went home and called it a night.
We woke up early on Sunday and had an early lunch at Central Market. I’d been craving CM’s Caesar salad for a few weeks and had to get my fix. While there, we did a little shopping so I could get duck breasts for my pizza recipe, to get Elise an heirloom tomato (she’s vowed to not eat any other variety) and to price some fresh rattlesnake meat.
We ran some errands, grocery shopped and returned our costumes to Lucy in Disguise. I cooked dinner, we watched a little TV and went to bed.
Here are a few photos from the prom.
After a little inspiration from last week’s cooking class, I decided to cook duck. I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel, so came up with a new pizza recipe.
I made a smoked duck breast, mango and jalapeno pizza on ciabatta with a homemade garden fresh pizza sauce, Kalamata tapenade, smoked provolone and topped with feta.
I have to admit… that was the best pizza I’ve ever had. For dessert I made a silky coffee creme brulée.
I had another weird dream this morning. Jessica Sanchez, a 4.5′, 90lb. girl I attended high school with stole my cell phone. I grabbed her by the hair, lifted her off her feet, swung her around and dragged her across the ground.
All of this is happening outside. The scene reminds me of a more airy version of my elementary school in Houston.
“What the hell did you do with my cell phone you &$%#$%? What’s wrong with you?!?!”
Then we cut to the next scene were Mrs. Housely, my 7th grade history teacher is trying to reprimand me for my actions. We’re sitting outside on some sort of deck in plastic grade school chairs. I couldn’t hear what Mrs. Housely was saying because we both had garbage disposals mounted under our chairs that were running on full blast.
I’m quickly distracted by a Camaro in the distance. Michelle is driving and Elise is in the passenger seat. They’re both wearing yellow bikinis and cruising around the trailer park across the street.
How ’bout that for white trash dream? Git-r-done.
This is too funny. I wrote this five years ago for my multimedia class project, complete with a bad website.
It makes me wonder what I’ll be up to five years from now…
Allow myself to talk about …. myself. I was born at a very early age and raised by a family who enjoyed hearty steaks cooked on the cast iron barbeque pit in the backyard. I consider both of my parents excellent cooks. My father introduced me to hunting when I was but a
wee lad, and with that he taught me the basics on how to prepare meat. My mother was more of the kitchen expert. Both of them educated me on how to essentially make a meal for myself. With these combined influences, I later in life rather enjoyed cooking for myself.
During my 6 year tenure at the university, I landed a job at a country club. Here I was exposed to finer foods. This is when my interest in the culinary arts began to peak. Though I was but a mere staff manager for the banquet department, I took advantage of all the knowledge I could get my hands on. So please, browse around, try these recipes for yourself, and feel free to contact me with any questions or comments.
In closing, I would like to give thanks to El and Ronnie for their input and inspiration. Without them, I would have probably devoted this page to methods in which to fully cook a DiGiorno pizza (which is next to impossible). “
I think this is the best part: “…will call for ingredients and temperatures that were not documented…” That’s the way I like to cook.
My herbs section is not me nowadays, although I do use cilantro as much as possible.
It’s really cool to look back and think about how hard I was trying back then – how many meals I botched, how much blood poured into the sink from a slipped knife, stovetop fires, singed arm hair, grease burns and broken plates.
Cooking is so much fun. If it didn’t cost so much to go to culinary arts school, I’d do it in a heartbeat just for the fun of it.
I had a weird dream this morning. With pit crew speed someone pulled a trailer up to the driveway and stole our truck. I ran inside, grabbed my keys and hauled ass after my stolen truck. I was driving the truck that had just been stolen after the truck that had just been stolen.
What the hell is that supposed to mean? Does that mean I’m schizophrenic?
I volunteered Elise and myself to babysit Jack over the Memorial Day weekend while John and Christine travel to Mexico to smuggle black market DVD copies of Kevin Costner’s “Waterworld” and small children who sell Chicklets.
We thought nothing of it when we offered to babysit over the long weekend. Much to our surprise, John and Christine gave both of us a gift certificate to the April 17th Hudson’s on the Bend cooking class.
The class was fun and informative. Elise took notes and I retained new information in the cabeza.
An interesting bit of information that I picked up was that cilantro is excellent in reducing heavy metal (lead, mercury, aluminum, cadmium and arsenic) toxicity. Heavy metals are often found in our drinking water, fruits, vegetables, fish and shellfish. Luckily cilantro is one my favorite herbs and I can eat it by the handful.
Elise was able to see a mandolin in action and wrote that down on what I would guess was a “need to purchase” list.
Watching Jeff and Robert prepare the meal was amazing, as always. For this class we all sat outside in Jeff’s backyard. I was sitting there thinking: “Wow – in the past few months, I’ve been cooking a lot like this”. I had never eaten any of the days’ menu items, but all of the ingredients are now mainstays in my kitchen – big, pungent, local and spicy flavors.
There was one change in the original menu. Instead of smoked buffalo quail, they made Duck Diablos – a medallion of smoked duck breast wrapped in smoked bacon with a thick slice of jicama, jalepeno and a mission fig soaked in balsamic vinegar. The appetizers were served with a fantastic red chile glaze.
Lunch at the restaurant was fantastic. We sat across from a family who had treated their dad to a Hudson’s cooking class for his 70th birthday. We had a great conversation with them.
The salad, main course and dessert were all great, but we still couldn’t get over those Duck Diablos – those things are so awesome (yes, I’m going to Central Market this weekend and picking up some duck breasts if anyone wants to come over for some gourmet southwestern cuisine!)
We came home completely stuffed with knowledge and food. It was a great time that has left us both very inspired.
Here are some photos from the afternoon.
Elise and I were exhausted from an all-nighter benefit for the Lone Star Classic Foundation on Thursday but with fists pumping, had another all nighter with Motley Crue and thousands of their other fans in San Antonio on Friday night.
The concert started out somewhat slow. It didn’t help that we were elbow-to-elbow in the nosebleed section of the SBC Center. Great for Motley Crue, bad for the fans. I like a concert where I can be somewhat comfortable and not feel like I’m in a sardine can.
Every arena concert that I’ve been to in San Antonio has been a let down. This one was pretty close to not being an acception. The accoustics were horrible and being on the upper deck probably didn’t help much either.
After a few beers and some serious enthusiasm from the crowd, the Crue got rowdy. There was a semi-amusing circus theme complete with custom choppers, ribbon-dangling strippers and fire breathing little people. Vince Neil still has an amazing voice (actually, I think it’s gotten much better with age), Tommy Lee was the life of the party, Mick Mars still wails on the guitar but also still looks like he’s fighting off death and I now officially have a man crush on Nikki Sixx – if you look up ‘cool’ in the dictionary, you’ll find a picture of Nikki. He was the ring leader on Friday night, pumping up the crowd and making the night a personal experience for everyone in attendance.
Tommy Lee had an awesome drum solo… there was an intermission where he walked from behind his kit and approached the audience. A few strippers actresses came out from behind the curtains and handed him a bottle of champagne (and secretly harnessed him to a pulley). Tommy ‘shared’ the bottle and suddenly rocketed fifty feet into the air and landed on a suspended drum kit where he started off an amazing digital drum solo. After a minute or so, the harness rocketed him across the stage (still fifty feet above the stage) to another drum kit where he continued his solo. He was then lowered back down the the stage and did an interesting little ditty with a digital video camera…
The concert was great aside from the accoustics and the price of tickets. It was one of those shows you have to see at least once in your lifetime if you grew up with Motley Crue.
On Thursday I met Elise at El Arroyo for Bill and Gail Engvall’s Lone Star Classic kick off party. The food and fun went on until the early morning and made it tough waking up on Friday morning, but it was all for a fantastic cause. I put a bid in on one auction and was excited when I heard “Going once! Going twice!…” and then some guy outbid me by walking up with $1000 cash. I’m glad I kept pushing my bid or otherwise the Lone Star Paralysis Foundation wouldn’t have that $1000.
Elise had told me what the party was for but because of the whirl wind of caterings she’s been doing lately, I had forgotten what the Lone Star Classic was until I showed up and she explained it to me again. It is a great foundation and I’m glad that I was able to show up and provide some support and, more importantly, that Elise fed those who’ve donated a lot of time and money to the foundation.
We were also lucky to meet Gail and Bill Engvall and Doug English, among others. It was really a great night.
