Right Brain Feed

 Pro tip: when a friend asks if I want her excess basil harvest, the answer is YES!    Especially when she offers an armload of it.  Today I made pesto for this winter, perfect way to spend a rainy afternoon. 

 We recently realized that spending all summer squirreled away at home was giving us a nasty taste of cabin fever, and a long winter is just around the corner. Yikes!  We went in search of a cabin fever cure, and found it.... in a cabin. We snagged a few days in a sweet pet friendly AirBnB at Lake Lure, packed up the fur balls for a trip, and enjoyed a few days of much needed scenery change.  I prepped and packed up all our meals, so we could just hang out and enjoy the cabin. The cats pretty much dozed in their bed in the sun all day. We did venture out on a few easy hikes, and packed our lunch to eat with a nice lake view.  We also did the Lake Lure Flower bridge, which had surprisingly decent flowers for mid September.  Didn't take many pictures, but here's a few more:  Lake Lure Photo Album

 I frequently try shortcuts in cooking just to see if I can get away with it, and make cooking a dish I make frequently more efficient. Today I wanted to make hummus...and decided to see if I could get away with not dragging the heavy Cuisinart up from the bottom shelf.  I thought since I use a stick blender all the time to puree soups rather than a proper blender, maybe a similar shortcut would work for hummus.  So I kept the chickpeas in the stockpot they cooked in, and tried using the stick blender. While it did make hummus, it was kinda a  lengthy pain in the backside to blend them, and the end result wasn't as creamy as the properly Cuized hummus.  We'll still eat it, I froze some of it.... labeled "Crappy hummus" just to make sure I don't accidentally whip it out to serve to guests (not that there are a bazillion guests these pandemic days). 

Even awesome cookbooks have some recipes that don’t really work for me. And that’s ok. We did eat it, but doubt I’ll try to again. Having some things fail helps brighten successes. Salt and Pepper shrimp, bye bye. 

 Continuing with the "well duh,Suzy" photography rules  , another photography truth is that photos don't come find you if you hide in your office fussing with photo editing/organizing all the time. While a lot of folks thrive on using mad editing skillz to come up with wildly teased photos, for me the joy is in the seeking and finding of photos.  I enjoy capturing the moment.  I realized recently that I was getting in too deep with trying to rework/reorganize all my photos that have piled up over 15 years ago.... I needed a break, needed to go have fun back in the real world.  So I went for a quick hike, I wasn't really focused on photography at all, but still managed to find and capture a few  nice ones on a foggy day up at Craggy Gardens. Corollary to Go Find Photos: Sometimes photos don't need the $2k body with super fast Zeiss glass shot in raw using a tripod. These were all captured with my cell phone. I wanted the photo gearicity to be on the minimal ...

 I can own up to it: before tonight I’d never really wanted to cook with or consume anchovies. But I decided to go for it since a Milk Street recipe I wanted to try used the scary anchovies creatures. I made a Venetian inspired dish of pasta with carmelized onions, shrimp, mushrooms and a buttery white wine garlic sauce , sprinkled with toasted breadcrumbs and lemon juice. Came out really well.  Translation: Italian comfort food. 

 I grill a lot, and will grill just about anything to see if it works. I’ve even grilled cheese ravioli (it works!). I recently got a new cookbook ( Milk Street Tuesday Nights), and it looks reeeeally good. This week I tried a recipe from it, and did some adaptation to it. The recipe was for beef kabobs broiled  with a thick paste of spices and ground peanuts coating it, but the recipe photo caption also said it works with chicken, so we did boneless skinless thighs. I also grilled it instead of broil, because I quest to grill anything. and just did it on a veggie tray in the grill, vs all that skewering. It....was....really....good. I love finding a new technique or style of dish. Sarah said I definitely need to make it again... and soon. Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

 A recent pottery class assignment was to make a citrus juicer. Our teacher had brought one she got years ago that we weren’t sure exactly what carving tool or method was used to make the juicy part. So we all tried various methods to make them. It was challenging, innovative, frustrating, but I learned a lot.... in other words, the perfect assignment! First the perfecto example. One thing that happened with this project was re-discovering tools I had forgotten about. I went thru my whole studio picking possible tools to try, and gave them a whirl. It was fun trying bizarre tools and seeing what worked. I ended up settling on a triangular sharp trim tool that comes to a point. The other thing I had to sort was realizing that I’d never be able to have perfectly precise lines of grooves, so I decided a swirly non-uniform style would work for me. Here’s a pic of it in progress.  Another thing I learned after trying to use one is that super rounded cones don’t work as well as narr...

 Z’Tejas was an awesome restaurant we frequented in Austin... between their catfish tacos, grilled trout salad, shrimp tostada bites, and stuffed pork tenderloin there was always something I was craving from Z’Tejas. And of course I always wanted to wash it down with a yummy jalapeño margarita.  Last night I made a similar version of their decadent pork tenderloin... with a new twist. Instead of poblano I slathered on plenty of Milk Street harissa  before stuffing the tenderloin (stuffed with cooked chorizo, cheddar, onion), and also added harissa to the cream sauce. It was yummy.

  From 2005-2007 we lived in Paris, it was the time of our lives.  I blogged during that time, and wanted to make sure to preserve the memories and photos from that wild ride. With the Coronavirus goop clamping down on anything new Travel related, I thought it would be good to republish and re-live them here. It also matches well with me reworking all my photo albums, since most of the original photo links on my original blog from 2005-7 are now dead as I've shuffled photos around.  I've created some links on the left side (or in the page menu on mobile)  to help folks navigate around.  Enjoy! Paris Fun  I tried to focus blogging on things about living in Paris that were off the beaten tourist path. Many weekends we'd start without a plan, and just head off to walk in a random direction from the apartment. We'd always find something interesting.  All the Paris Fun posts Two year Travel Frenzy We went wild with traveling. I was given the choice to keep ...

 I made a new kind of pizza last night, and my Italian ancestors might just disown me for it.... roast chicken BBQ pizza with smoked gouda, red onion, and cilantro. It was really good.  I cooked it on a pizza stone on the grill so the oven didn’t heat up the house. Here’s the crust recipe I used, it worked well.  https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/bobby-flay/pizza-dough-recipe-1921714  

 I retried a peach upside down cake with some tweaks.  First what didn’t really work....I skipped making the caramel, and tried maple syrup. Turns out I missed caramel color in final result, check out the photos. I also tried using loaf pans, but missed the nice pattern of the peach slices on a round cake. I also added waaaay too many peaches, and sliced them too thick. It took 50 minutes to cook (not 30) Here’s what did work.... adding tons of fresh ginger with the peaches, and the excess cranberry sauce was nice. Garam masala is also a fun addition  Original: Overly tweaked: It’s also kinda a good idea not to have decadent peach upside down cake super easy to make.... because then I’d be eating it alllll the time. I think I’ll go back to the original method Original NYT recipe