Pyromaniacal tendencies

Despite never being in the Boy Scouts, I do enjoy fire, which is why I pulled out the old torch. My friend Narae has returned for the year and we went to Costco, where she got some strawberries. I had some left in my fridge, and since these were kind of the sour ones, so I had an idea. First I set up a little suspended cooling rack contraption to hold strawberries with toothpicks stuck in them. I rolled the strawberries in sugar then torched 'em. Then I added a second coat of sugar and torched them again. This results in a little shell of just about the best tasting strawberry hard candy you'll ever taste.


I then decided to use some of the leftover chocolate from the 1 pound bar I used for the cookies. I melted this up with a bit of balsamic vinegar, ginger juice, and a bit of oil (so that it would actually melt) to dip the strawberries.

Cookie Monster

I made a batch of some dark chocolate chunk cookies. Only slightly sweet, buttery and a tiny bit salty on the crispy edge, soft in the middle. After baking two batches of 6, I had more batter than two cookies, but not enough for three. The solution? One gigantic cookie as an affront to God.

I've included a quarter for scale comparison...

I can't even palm it.

Ahh the sweet smell of deep fried (sort of) success

Mmm...cast iron skillet fried chicken. So it's not technically deep fried, but it certainly was mostly submerged in...wait for it...shortening. That's right...shortening...the abomination against nature of the frying fats. But damn it makes for some delicious fried chicken.

Hmm...

So, do you think I can turn this thing into fried chicken tomorrow? We'll see.

Butchering a chicken is really pretty tough...especially if your knife is duller than you thought it'd be. Also it doesn't help to have warm hands. Is there any part of cooking that doesn't punish you for having good circulation?

Stuff

So I took the plunge and bought a chimney starter for my meager little grill, and I tested it out by grilling up some pork loin, which i basically threw a bunch of stuff in my pantry on and grilled up. It was pretty good, especially with rosemary roasted potatoes and avocado butter (ah Good Eats, permanent resident of my DVR).


With that cast iron pan I got, I made some cornbread, with bacon, chives, and chipotle peper. The bottom is fried in rendered bacon fat! The first batch I made was horribly dry (very unfortunate since it was for guests). But I fixed that problem by adding half a stick of melted butter. Melted butter pretty much fixes everything that duct tape can't.


And yes...here it is...the legendary Global fluted Santoku knife. I never thought I'd hold this box in my hands, but here it is. Actually I'm selling it to my sister, for the price of 1 penny. Korean superstition forbids giving knives or blades of any kind as gifts, because it means your cutting off all ties/relations with that person so I have to sell it to her.

The benefits of living alone

Rice krispies treats anytime.
The fluffernutter sandwich seems to be the official food of Massachusetts, so marshmallow creme is available everywhere. So why not have rice krispies treats all the time?
Other things in my fridge/pantry that wouldn't normally be at home:
Ice cream
Oreos
Carbs...delicious carbs

I also got some new kitchen toys including a microplane, a mini food processor, a probe thermometer, a propane torch (on sale at ACE hardware), and a 12" cast iron pan, which I'm not sure why we don't have at home, because it was only 15 bucks on Amazon.com