stickers and ponies and rainbows and my poop

Okay first of all, I’m totally over the whole Weight Watchers thing. I don’t follow recipes unless I’m baking and I hate dieting. I was trying to lose some weight before my wedding so I bought two of those cookbooks. Some of the stuff was actually good – casseroles, mostly – but overall it was a pretty stupid endeavor. I don’t need a recipe to make soup, and I’m not going to substitute real ingredients with weirdness and chemicals just to get the points down. And besides, points are gay.

I’m not making such a fuss these days. I’m watching what I eat, but I also indulge in the odd distinctive milano cookie when it suits my mood (the orange ones dipped in tea are excellent). My hubs has recently decided he wants to watch his cholesterol, which helps me a bunch because he will finally eat chicken without complaint. So I’m laying off the beef, making vegetarian more often, and also trying to just get over it. Not very successfully. But all this adds up to entirely uninteresting food blogging fodder. So sorry.

The other day I made some effing yumtastic nettle-walnut pesto, which I mixed with caramelized onions and honey chevre from Trader Joe’s, then slathered the concoction onto broiled chicken breast and pappardelle noodles for some good eatin’. Last night I did the same thing, but also added a can of stewed tomatoes and used shrimp instead of chicken. Damn fine, damn fine. By the way, honey chevre....I need to make that into a cheesecake pronto.

Another goodness of spring bounty-type food that has me all excited is a soup that CK absolutely will not touch, so I usually make it on Sunday nights and box it up for lunches throughout the week. It’s beet, onion and asparagus, chunked up and simmered with vegetable broth. It is magically delicious, and cooks up to a lovely, homogenous shade of magenta. As a bonus, it also makes a fun color show out of your peeps and poops (not to mention the usual asparagus pee-stink). After having it three days in a row for lunch, I made unicorn poo. No joke. Purple poo with bright pink pee water. How terrific is that. The soup inserts a mythical creature directly into your bum. There are probably plenty of other nutritional benefits, but unicorn poo is just rad.


Here’s a recipe for unicorn poo soup, by me:

1 onion, chopped (whole pearl onions are also a treat in this)
2-3 fresh beets (depending on size), peeled and cut into ½” cubes
1 quart vegetable broth
Appx. 1# fresh asparagus, cut to ½”

I’ve found that the fewer ingredients the better with this soup, so keep it simple and let the natural flavors do their bidness.

Sweat the onion in a tablespoon of olive oil. Add the beet after about a minute and saute on medium for 5 minutes or so. Add the vegetable broth, bring to a simmer. Allow to cook for 10-15 minutes before adding the asparagus, then season with a smidgeon of salt & pepper. Simmer for about an hour.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Enjoy three days in a row then sit on the toilet.

Cracktastical Salted Peanut Cookies

Look you guys! It's a recipe. A post of substance.

You have to admire my restraint, as the MTV movie awards were last night and there is SOOOO much to make fun of. Most of it involving my two favorite targets: TommyGay Cruise and The Twi-Hards.

I'm going to be a big girl and refrain from going there because:

a. I did promise a recipe now and then, even though I am pretty much completely over the bullshit that is attached to food blogging.

(I, of course, still love to frequent my beloved sites. You guys know who you are, you geniuses, you. I just don't want to take/upload/edit pictures, type out recipes, give/receive any more comments about how "I'm drooling all over my keyboard", and so on.)

#2. I've had so much on my plate real-world-wise, that all I've had time to post in the last month is a picture of Kristen Stewart being a bitch. Unacceptable. You deserve better.

#c. These cookies are really good. Especially with beer.

I came up with these cookies for a Beermaker's dinner we had at Crow in May. We teamed up with The Pike Brewing Company and served a 4 course meal that was as delicious and thoughtful as any winemaker's dinner we'd ever done. We just had a little more fun with the dishes. Less pretension, more jolly. I'd still rather drink wine with my food, but a beer fan would've had a chubby throughout this entire evening.

My dessert was to be pared with the XXX Stout. Like Guinness, only much more of a kick in the balls. I made a riff on a brown cow, calling it a "malted chocolate and stout fizz". I reduced the stout with sugar to make a syrup, then added some sparking water to make a soda. Poured it over malted milk chocolate ice cream and dolloped with coco nib chantilly. I served it with an assortment of cookies that had the salty/caramely/bitter flavor profiles.
(I was too busy plating to even consider taking pictures.)

This is my favorite of the assortment. I've made them twice since and can't stop eating them with a frosty cold one.

They're really easy to make, so make them.

Hey, maybe that lazy slut Brookie will knit something or whoop up a little morsel from her weight watchers cookbook. Anything to keep the next post from being about Chace Crawford's pot bust. Can you believe that shit? One measly joint? It's an outrage.



Salted Peanut Cookies

1/2 lb unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 Tb creamy peanut butter, Adams is my preferred brand for baking
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup roasted peanuts, coarsely chopped
2 cups all purpose flour
coarse sea salt for sprinkling

Combine the butter, peanut butter, sugars and salt together in the bowl of a standing mixer. Using the paddle attachment cream until fluffy, about 3 minutes, scraping the bowl as needed. Add the vanilla and mix until combined. Add the flour and peanuts. Mix on low speed just until dough forms.

Dump out onto a work surface and form into a log. Wrap in plastic. Freeze or refrigerate until firm. Slice off 1/4 inch thick cookies and place on a parchment lined sheet pan. Sprinkle each cookie liberally with coarse sea salt. Bake at 350 for 12 minutes, rotating halfway though.