All Things Culinary (sort of)

Sorry it's been so long since we've spoken, some times I just need an extra 25th blog hour in the day. Not a whole heckofa lot to report here, just repeating the daily grind over and over. Do have some some cool foodie notes though - for one, I bought a few new knives for work. A Global Slicer and Global Bird's Beak, which are really nice and just glide through anything they touch. Although they look pretty cool, they aren't my favorite knives. Work great, very light, look funky... but don't fit my hand as nicely as the old Wusthof. On the other hand, I bought a Chroma Type 301 10" Chef's Knife and Chroma 301 Filet Knife... and let me tell you, I'm in heaven. Really... drooling, wetting myself, heaven. Ordinarily, I wouldn't blog about something as boring to the rest of you as my knife purchases, but let me just say - holy shit. I actually try to think up dishes that have more stuff to prep just so I can use them more often. A few days ago I brushed the tip of my filet knife against my finger by accident, and didn't even know that I did it until I saw the blood pooling up on my steel table... awesome.... I'm so in love I'd sleep with them if they weren't so damn pointy.

Plus, I finally got around to sending in my membership dues to Slow Food USA yesterday. I'm what you might call an 'afterthought' member. Love the idea of it, and I really do want to be involved, but I join and then get swallowed up by life, and things like Slow Food just sort of hang around the edges of me... I found a Slow Food book at the library book sale a week or so ago, and walked back into our house where we are in the middle of curing some green olives, have a fridge of homemade jams and sauces, drink espresso from beans I roast myself, etc, etc... and I thought, "oh yeah... membership dues..." Anyway, inspired by foodie type stuff in general, I made some grilled frog legs with a jalapeno peach sauce to put on the salad bar at work today... which were lovely, but I got some evil looks from a group of third graders and their vegetarian teacher after my offhand "if I can catch it, I'm gonna eat it" remark. Plus I threw together some little almond tuille napoleons with cardamom cream and raspberries to snack on (don't get too excited, all of the bits and pieces were left over from some catering stuff - I didn't spend my morning constructing dessert instead of actually working).

And to top off a kickass day, while we were finishing up dinner tonight Sara taught Sam the words to Bob Marley's 'Three Little Birds' as it blasted out of iTunes while Lily danced to it in the background... and I thought to myself - man, if I could just bottle them up right now, give up everything else in life to keep them right here, right now, I would do it without a moment of hesitation. As long as I could bring my knives, of course... that goes without saying...