Pass The Sushi!

My father likes new and shiny things. When things no longer shine (or one comes along with shinier but­tons), he wants new ‘shinies’. This is a good thing and a bad thing for me. It makes the man a royal pain to shop for. He wants it — he owns it. How­ever, it means that next sum­mer I get a ‘new’ grill and that just recently we got a ‘new’ smoker. A year old and a lit­tle used, yeah, that’s still new to me.

Today I smoked my first chicken (my first ever any­thing smoked) and already my head is filled with ideas of what I can do with this new baby. I fig­ured start small (and cheap) in case it was a total bust so a 6 lb chicken it was. I named it Todd, which is kind of some­thing my fam­ily has always done. Appar­ently nam­ing your poul­try is not nor­mal accord­ing to Hand­some. Who’da guessed?

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I <3 Thai food. It’s amaz­ing — sim­ple, clean and deli­cious. Each and every com­po­nent is dis­tinct and yet not one taste over­whelms the other.

I wasn’t intro­duced to Thai until my 20’s (heck, I wasn’t intro­duced to any Asian cui­sine until my 20’s), but ever since I love every chance I get to try Thai dishes, dif­fer­ent cur­ries and any­thing of the sort. I hadn’t pre­pared any Thai at home though. Why? Because I am a giant wuss and the sim­plic­ity of the fla­vors seemed like too big a chal­lenge for me.  Dumb, I know.

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Ever real­ize how impor­tant a sim­ple gar­nish is? Where I don’t often gar­ish our din­ner plates in my own home, I expect when going out to a restau­rant that there will be some type of pre­sen­ta­tion. It brings the dish together, can add color, and over­all makes the final prod­uct look more professional.

We tried a new place that just opened last Wednes­day, that I won’t name quite yet in hopes that on the sec­ond try they pull me in, the other night. It adver­tises a Cajun menu and a rock-and-roll themed atmos­phere. The build­ing has been a long­stand­ing dive bar in my local com­mu­nity and it went under ear­lier this year. When it was pur­chased by the new own­ers and the theme and menu style were announced I was very excited (I do love me some Cajun) just to be very under­whelmed at our first din­ing expe­ri­ence there.

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Mother Nature <3’s me. Hates the rest of the east coast today but <3’s me. Its over­cast, not a bil­lion degrees, and gen­er­ally speak­ing a nice day. Do I feel like an ass for writ­ing this as the weather is only due to a hur­ri­cane some­where off of the east coast, yep. But today is my kind of weather. I’ll just sit back, enjoy this weather and wait to be smit­ten by the Mother Nature for being a big jerk-face.

I hope the weather is some­what like this again tomor­row as I will be help­ing out my boyfriends mom at an out­door art fes­ti­val. I’m excited for the change of envi­ron­ment for the day and can’t wait to see what some of the other ven­dors offer. Not to men­tion, take my new cam­era lens for a spin on some­thing other then food (poor thing prob­a­bly thinks Im a bor­ing date and we just started to get to know one another). If I post no pic­tures from the event, well, I guess you’ll know how the cam­era lens and I worked out.

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My cat is a foodie. He loves veg­eta­bles. Snap the end of aspara­gus or green beans — he comes run­ning, shuck corn — he’s at your feet, peel pota­toes — he’s meow­ing at the top of his lungs. Every time I’m work­ing with veg­eta­bles, my cat is there. Throw him a piece and he wants noth­ing to do with it. Unless its canned tuna, the cat really does not care what I am doing in the kitchen and he doesn’t get table scraps, so I can’t even blame his bizarre veg­etable attrac­tion on bad par­ent­ing and gluttony.

So what is it about veg­etable prep work that gets him all riled up? Is there some kitchen kitty hor­mone that is acti­vated only by veg­gies? Is my local mar­ket rolling the pro­duce in cat­nip before putting it out for dis­play? Any thoughts or opin­ions on this mat­ter are appre­ci­ated. Its adorable, but it really has me perplexed.

Rose­mary Fries

Ingre­di­ents:

• 2lbs rus­set potatoes
• 1 teas freshly chopped rosemary
• 2 teas salt

Prepa­ra­tion:

Pre­heat oven to 450°. Line back­ing sheet with alu­minum foil and spray with non­stick cook­ing spray.

Peel pota­toes and dice into fry shape about 1/4″ thick. Lay pota­toes and bak­ing sheet and sprin­kle with rose­mary and salt. Bake for 40 to 45 min­utes turn­ing halfway through (add more salt at this time if you pre­fer more).

Serve with the meat-off-the-grill of your choice.

PS I blame the insane heat on every­one who said “sum­mer is over” just because kids went back to school. It’s your fault. Now go find a goat because mother nature requires her sacrafice so that she can build and bridge and pick a tem­per­a­ture that doesn’t com­pare to hell.