I made some excellent salsa yesterday. Really, I think it’s my best yet. At least in terms of the cooked salsa. I was so sure it was only going to be “meh” that I didn’t really pay attention to what I was putting in it. Damn it!

The main thing I did differently was that I used lemon juice instead of lime. I wonder if that simple switch was what made the difference. I used ReaLemon, not noticing that Ryan had bought about twelve limes earlier in the day. Perhaps not seeing three feet in front of me made this salsa excellent. Woo for myopia, I suppose.

Ryan’s garden is going gangbusters. I used some of her chile peppers in the salsa. She planted four different kinds- jalapenos, serranos, Thai dragons, and what was named on the tag as “Super Chiles,” or words to that effect. I wanted to use them all in the salsa, but the serrano and Super Chiles got incinerated beyond help during the roasting phase. It’s probably a good thing, because otherwise it might have been too hot to eat.

Jon and Ryan have crazy mad herbs. The best ones seem to be the mint, basil, and oregano. The only herbs that are not living up to their end of the bargain are the dill and cilantro. Apparently, if the soil in which these are planted gets too hot, they start bolting. On the other hand, soon we’ll have coriander.

I’ll try and reconstruct the salsa recipe. I was not going for texture in this, so I just whizzed it up in the food processor until smooth.

Salsa Attempt No. 5

6 tomatoes

8 tomatillos

1 onion

5 cloves of garlic (I was using up a bulb, so it was all those wee ones in the center)

4 Tbsp lemon juice

1 chipotle in adobo

2 jalapenos, seeded

1 Thai dragon chile

Handful of cilantro

Salt and pepper

Turn on the broiler and move the oven rack to the second to the top position. On a broiling pan, arrange the tomatoes, tomatillos, onion pieces, Thai dragon chile, and one jalapeno pepper. Place under the broiler and cook until pretty well browned or blackened, turning vegetables to cook evenly, probably 10 to 20 minutes.

Seed and de-membrane-ify the other jalapeno pepper. Put this pepper, the garlic, chipotle pepper, lemon juice, and cilantro in a food processor.

Take the vegetables out from under the broiler. Cover for about five minutes. Take the skins off of the tomatoes, tomatillos, and chile peppers. Seed the pepper as well as you can, and then put everything in the food processor. Puree until it reaches a consistency you like. Add salt and pepper to taste. Chill before serving.

If you do a Google search on “sandra lee television without pity,” Braisin’ Hussy is the fourth site listed. It’s before the actual forum thread on Television Without Pity about Semi-Homemade Cooking with Sandra Lee. That seems kind of wrong to me.

Taking a quick nap is not cool if you have a quick dream about an iguana chomping on your feet.

Lydia, you’re awesome. Thanks for the link to McMurray Hatchery. You’re right, those baby chicks are way cute. I’m still too much of a wimp to do it now. But someday, oh yes. (And the pictures from Zack’s birthday party cracked me up. Even if the pictures of Link put me in mind of that guy who dresses like Peter Pan. Scary!)

D&D Notes



(You’re all so excited, I can tell.)

In case you’re curious, our party was comprised of:

Mynnyd, a dwarven barbarian,

Cooper, a human fighter/ranger/devoted defender,

Merreck, a human illusionist with a penchant for dragons (his familiar is a wee red dragon named Kethend),

Joanna, a human cleric of Durann (formerly a paladin of Tiphaneron- she lied and lost her powers),

Sagittarius, a pointy-eared human (he’s been surgically altered) bard/rogue/ranger/archane archer, and

Phaedra, a human sorceress (I’m not sure if she’s anything else- I only played two sessions with her before her player became DM)

Why do I say “was”? Well, we wrapped up our latest campaign last week, and our DM (Phaedra when a PC) left the area for a while. So we switched DMs (Sagittarius) and now have to get used to a party of four instead of five.

Anyway, the whole point of this post is for me to say that I’m terribly sorry, Joanna, for getting you killed. It did not occur to Mynnyd that the red dragon or its rider might actually want to talk to us. He’s more of the “shoot first and ask questions later” type of guy. (We did kill the dragon eventually, but the rider escaped.)

This does present some problems, though, since we just lost the person we were counting on to heal us. Damn! Here’s hoping the DM decides to be nice and allow her to return on the Astral Plane (where we are) instead of the Ethereal Plane or back in Manifest.

Tonight, Rob came over for dinner. I am currently in many dinner debts to him. I decided to try a couple of new things.

First, the Saturday Night Vidalia Onions (recipe cribbed from Paula Deen and the Food Network website). These are ridiculously easy. I couldn’t find Vidalias, so I used Walla Walla onions. Paula called for beef boullion cubes, which I didn’t have, but Jon did have Better Than Bouillon in his fridge, so I used a teaspoon of that instead. I thought that some roasted garlic might go well with the onions, so I tossed a clove in on top of the bouillon.

Results? Well, the garlic did not work at all. If I want roasted garlic next time, I’m just going to roast a head next to the onions. The BtB was perhaps a little too salty, but I don’t think that would go away if I used a cube instead. The broth was very tasty. The onion itself tasted a little… watery or something. Probably it was due to the use of Walla Wallas over Vidalias. I would probably make it again. Interesting to have an onion soup you eat with a knife.

The other dish that I made (which I have not posted a recipe for yet) was Oven-Fried Chicken. I used the recipe from The Best Recipe by the Cook’s Illustrated people. But there was a twist! In their recipe, they use melba toast crumbs. I used… Jalapeno Cheddar Cheese Nips. (lovelovelove) However, this in turn caused me some difficulties with the rest of the instructions in the recipe. Should I add salt, or will the Nips cover that? (Answer: Add salt.) Will the Nips alone provide enough flavor? (Answer: Not really.) My final analysis is that it needs work, but could be awesome. I will be trying this again. I’m not going to post a recipe until I feel that it is good enough.

Saturday Night Vidalia Onions

Paula’s Home Cooking – Paula Deen



4 large Vidalia onions

4 beef bouillon cubes

4 tablespoons butter

Freshly ground black pepper

Prepare a fire in a charcoal grill or preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Trim and slice from the top of each onion, and peel the onion without cutting off the root end. Using a potato peeler, cut a small cone shaped section from the center of the onion. Cut the onion into quarters from the top down, stopping within a 1/2-inch of the root end. Place a bouillon cube in the center of each onion, slip slivers of butter between the sections, and sprinkle with pepper. Wrap each onion in heavy duty foil and place the onions directly onto the hot coals. Cook the onions for 45 minutes turning every so often.

To serve, place each onion in individual bowl because the onions will produce a lot of broth, which tastes like French onion soup.

In case you’re wondering why there’s a recipe with just ingredients, it’s because apparently I spent too long typing the recipe out and got logged out of Blogger, losing my post. I am too annoyed right now to rewrite it.

Wahoo! Did a lot of cooking today. In the morning, I made the Sausage-Feta Cream Sauce. It didn’t turn out as well as before. I think I put in less feta cheese than usual. It’s still good, but it’s missing some extra tanginess.

I was looking through my Costco coupons today, and I saw that there was one for chickens- four for two. Awesome! I ended up getting them for forty-five cents a pound. Seven dollars for four chickens. I love a good deal.

I went over to Jon’s house afterwards; he’s got an extra freezer. I walk in, and Jon says, “Cool. Why don’t we make one of those for dinner?” So we did. Jon made an herb butter using sage, thyme, and garlic, and I rubbed it under the skin. I really do enjoy putting rubs under the skin. During the roasting period, we put some sliced potatoes and unpeeled garlic cloves in the pan, where they absorbed the drippings and were fantastic (perhaps even “fantastique”). I’ll post a cobbled-together recipe in a bit.

Someday I’d like to kill a chicken. Does that make me weird?

Something strange happened to my comments for July 24th, so I’m just going to post the mini-conversation Jen and I had.

Jen: Poor thing. Please don’t subject your relatively young, impressionable and generally spot-on tastebuds to such trash again.

Me: I was going to make some more of her “recipes,” but I’m getting tired of it. I’m going to take a break and go back to real food. 🙂