Nothin’ says happy like a girl and her magnum….

Okay so getting personal will sometimes throw you. And sometimes bring out the best! Or maybe it was just my passion for a Zin. Anyway. A friend on the Delectable app has “more wine than we could ever drink” and sent a vintage my way. A magnum no less!

Holy cow 2006 Martinelli Jackass Vineyard Russian River Valley Zinfandel !

I am over bowled by the generosity of the wine community sometimes. Really. I’ve been dwelling in heartbreak half the time of the last month. And the bolstering of the people who love wine like I do has kept me going. And my friends willing to come to my support in person…!

I mean granted I had bottles to pour but they also were willing to stop by just for hugs or to take me to a new fave wine bar where we ordered wines and pretzels with spicy mustard. What the fuck would I do without these people, both online and not?

Not sure.

Let’s talk about this wine. I think mayyyyybe it may have been a smidge past its time. But honestly. I looked. This was a garnet wine. That signifies either nebbiolo or age. I took a whiff: it was all jam and…spice and also…animal? Not being a meat eater I am never sure. But then on the tongue. Jam…but not in a cloying way. Allspice, pepper and nutmeg speak up, as does leather with a VENGEANCE once decanted. Yeah the more time I gave this baby to relax the more it said come chill on my leather sofa and I said fine since it is wine not a sofa. There is a mincemeat quality to this but it is just…RIPE enough I know it is not, say, a grenache. Plus the tannins fuck the tannins are developed and velvety as can be.

This is zin. Fresh zin is all blackberries, jam and cloves with slightly more biting acid and alcohol. This Zin is elderly in a way that has softened the bit. I am taking this zin out to play shuffleboard. I dunno.

So grateful. As were my friends that don’t delve into 11 year old wine every day, much less out of a magnum.

Gonna drink this Zin right outa my wine fridge…

I edited like justttttt close enough although why oh why is there not nipple freedom for all?

But back to the title of this post: forgetting. Fuck. Am I being too personal? I’m trying to get rid of the wines that remind me of love lost. Which right now is Zin. FML. In the future I plan to stop educating my romances in wine. If they become fond of my faves suddenly all those former faves make me sad.

So I thought “I’ll drink up all those and focus on learning new ones”.

But the problem is I stock exemplary er…examples of Zin. So I can’t get over the wine. But maybe the wine is gonna be so good I’ll get over the lost romance? Maybe life is not so bad?

SO FUCK IT WITH THIS BOTTLE I RECLAIM MY LOVE OF THIS WINE AS MY OWN!!!!!!!! And my life.

Or something. In other words I’m my own goddamned lady.

Let’s talk wine. The glorious thing of this example is that it encompasses all your senses, including emotions. And it surrounds you with voluptuous joy. So:

2015 Dutcher Crossing Proprietor’s Reserve Dry Creek Valley Zinfandel

I discovered Dutcher Crossing from one of the wines my SF Wine Contest friend (he does their graphic design and such) brought back. It was good one year. Even better the next. So I bought some of my own.

Like I said it is a heady joy inducing wine. Like love you forget your woes in its presence. DO I NEED TO SAY MORE?!! Perhaps it is the tannic and aggressive aggressive 13% petite sirah that makes this wine give me wings.

In case you want tech notes I’ll get technical.

To your eyeholes: It is deep ruby with thick jambs. That’s legs sweet babies.

To the nostril-holes: It creeps out of the glass and assaults you with a kiss of dried cherries. There is more but that is the most important.

In your mouth hole/tastebuds/throat/nchest this is dry, medium plus acid, with medium tannins that have been to sex-ed, medium plus alcohol, and all the blueberries, blackberries, dried red cherries and super duper dried vanilla beans you could wish for which I am guessing are the love children of the 35% new american oak used.

Anyway this wine will take you for a ride. Dang it. My old love is no longer. Boys come and go.

Zinfandel is my life partner.

food separation from a heart sick person

  
For years this recipe stared me in the face. I’d open the Bon Appetit issue to it and put it in my little cookbook holder stand thinking if I saw it, some day I’d get inspired early enough to get all components made and chilled in due time.

The picture you see above is just one reconfiguration of this Deconstructed Black Forest Cake. Much as I adore various pairings of sandwich material, I also love the idea that each bite of this cake can be a different combo of the cake, chocolate pudding, whipped cream, red wine cherries, and…all kept properly hydrated by the shot of kirsch:

  
Making this became a fantasy. One of those “some day” things I didn’t think I’d ever actually get around to.
Then I was dating someone and I knew I was into him because I started fantasizing about what I’d cook him. This was a likely suspect for pleasing what I knew of his tastebuds.
And then that prospect didn’t work out. As in, I never even got the chance to ply him with my womanly cake wiles. 
In a spate of “fuck that I don’t need ANYONE to cook FOR” the fantasy of making this became reality one Friday night when I got home earlier than expected.
I am all I need.
Except for sex. I could use a male for that but he isn’t here (as in doesn’t exist) at the moment.
But fuck it. I have cake and wine and a career (my true lover) not to mention my family and friends and stuff so I shall survive. And I have cake.

I cut my cake with a star cookie cutter because I am a superstar. Hehehe. As in “don’t you remember you told me you love me baby”. Except I was not that fond of the fellow. It never came even remotely close to the L word. Cause that is REAL scary. Hell, I have a hard time giving someone a second date.
Problem is, it is rare I start to think anyone is worth a romantic thought so when I do start to be even remotely interested in someone I take things too hard when they don’t turn out as I’d wish.

UGH.
And UGH.
And UGH FUCK!
And someday my cake and wine loving prince will come.

I’m gonna get a cat.

Fuck this cake is worth it. 

Also no more writing recipes when high on no sleep/sugar/wine.

Enjoy.

Deconstructed Black Forest Cake adapted from this Bon Appetit recipe

For cake:
1/4 cup butter
6 Tbsp. light brown sugar
1/2 beaten egg
1 1/2 Tbsp. natural cocoa powder
scant 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/16 tsp salt
1/4 tsp. vanilla
6 Tbsp. sifted cake flour
2 Tbsp. and 2 tsp. yogurt (origial recipe calls for sour cream
3 Tbsp. hot coffee
For chocolate fudge pots:
1 oz. bittersweet chocolate (I used Ghiradelli’s)
1 cup 1/2 and 1/2 (recipe calls for heavy whipping cream)
pinch salt
1 1/2 egg yolks
2 Tbsp. sugar
For sauce:
1 cup frozen dark sweet cherries
2 Tbsp. + 2 tsp. sugarplus a pinch more
2 Tbsp. + 2 tsp. dry red wine (I had a pinot noir on hand)
To finish:
whipped cream (I used Reddi-whip_
A shot of kirsch
For cake:
Preheat oven to 350 F. Create an approximately 35-square inch baking pan. I did this by taking foil and pressing it into half an 8X8 pan. Butter or use nonstick spray to grease. Beat the butter in an electric mixer until smooth. Toss in the sugar and egg and beat until light and fluffy. Hurl in the cocoa, baking soda, salt and vanilla and incorporate. Blend in the half the flour then half the yogurt and repeat. Gradually blend in coffee until smooth. Add to the pan and bake about 25 minutes, until you put a toothpick in the middle and it comes out clean. Let cool on rack and then chill until cold. Bon Appetit says 4 hours but I sped this up with my freezer.
For fudge pots:
Preheat oven to 325 F. Put the chocolate in a bowl. Bring half and half and salt just to a oil then pour over chocolate and whisk it until all is nice and smooth. In another bowl whisk the yolks and sugar. Slowly whisk in the chocolate mixture. Put back into pot over medium-low heat and cook, stirring constantly until somewhat thickened, about 5 minutes. Don’t let it boil. Distribute into 5 ramekins (1/4 cup each) and put ramekins into a deep pan. Add water to into deep pan halfway up the sides of ramekins. Cover the whole shebang with foil and bake until set, between 35 and 40 minutes. Take ramekins out of pot. Cool 15 minutes then let chill in fridge, uncovered until cold (3 hours?).
For sauce:
Put cherries (unthawed) and sugar in a small pan and stir over medium heat for 2 minutes. Add wine and stir and simmer until ever so slightly thickened. Strain over a bowl. Pour juices back into pot and put cherries in a bowl. Boil the juices until reduced to about 2 Tbsp. then pour over cherries and chill.
To serve, slice (or get fancy with cookie cutters) the cake. Each person gets some cake, a pudding, a spoonful of cherries n sauce, a bit of whipped cream and a shot of kirsch. Whee! Yah. Since I made this for me I ate a huge portion of cake and sauce, one pudding, a whole container of whipped cream and, well, a shot of kirsch was enough. But then I had also indulged on extra wine.

Addicted to love

I’m actually not addicted to love, but I do become addicted to stuff I love. And when it comes to rehab I say No. No. No.

I am addicted to cooking from kinky-or-not(?)Chocolate Covered Katie’s eponymous blog.
I’ve made more things from her site than any other blog. I’ll give a little rundown at the end of this post.

An actual substance I legitimately love with addictive qualities happens to be cookie dough. So Katie’s Cookie Dough Dip had been on the to-make list for far too long.

I love her, I love dough. What else am I currently in love with? The cast of my play. My trifecta is complete. Crap, I thought trifecta just described a union of three great things but looked it up and found that it is a bet where you bet on the first three winners in exact order. I stand corrected.

Katie, cookie dough and the cast are not a trifecta. They are a triumvirate. That IS correct. A set of three. Specificly they are a triumphal triumvirate. The hat trick of addictive loves.

Katie’s recipe was naturally gluten-free, as are many of my castmates. Geez, these loves were meant to be. And the Midsummer(tickets here!) cast most certainly would need feeding for our sold out Sunday matinee, oui? That is where I served this up.

We are a sordid group, us thespians.
Here’s the green room evidence:

I think I’m in love with them. Oh yes. Meow.
Perhaps I have kinky-ness to rival that which potentially resides in Katie my chocolate covered vegan blog-writer-love? I do make use of a whip in the play. You make the call.

First make Katie’s Cookie Dough Dip.

I served these with sea salt dusted crackers for the salty-sweet goodness and made mine with peanut butter as the nut butter, brown sugar as the sweetener, and added just a pinch of love. That was cheesy. But it’s the truth.

The Katie round-up. Not obsessed, just in love:

Pumpkin Bread in a Bowl
Baked Pumpkin Oatmeal(boatmeal)
Cookie Dough Balls
Vegan Crustless Quiche
Pumpkin Bars
Singleton Muffin and Cinnamon Baked Oatmeal
Cake Batter Ice Cream
Beautiful Blueberry Concoction aka soy-free love potion
Healthy Ranch Dressing

Artiste-ic

What is Napoli? From Naples? Did Fannie Farmer ever go to Naples? Or is this her 1896 vision of what she would consume there? Then again this edition of The Fannie Farmer Cookbook was published in the sixties so it may not have even been in the original.

That Frances Farmer, what an enigma.

The week in which I blithely posted pre-written waffle posts, and prepped to play an artiste, I also made this soufflee.

Firstly, you must know rarely is this blog written in real time. I backlog posts when I have more free time for busy times like these.

Second. You’ll must agree that artistes make soufflés. Because we have lofty ideals. Thus lofty foods. Yup. Our lives are one massive metaphor. This blog is a bit of my brain matter laid out for you to consume.

That metaphor sucked.

Artistes also make film. Artistes make pie. Artistes make love.
Often to their reflection in the mirror.
With pie.
I guess I’m an artist of sorts, and I decided to make Napoli.

Random note of interest: My reviewing job’s latest here. Another here.

First, the soufflee cross-section:

Now the recipe.
Tomato Soufflee Napoli adapted from Fannie Farmer
3 Tbsp. butter
2 Tbsp. whole wheat flour
5 T. Tomato paste
1/3 c. Marinara of choice
1/2 c. Plain almond milk
3 slices cheddar, chopped
1/2 c. Pasta
3 eggs
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Melt two tablespoons of the butter. Stir in the flour(it’ll be like a paste), then the milk, tomato paste, and marinara. Bring to a boil then simmer a couple of minutes. Stir in cheese, salt and pepper.
Meanwhile, cook the pasta. When that is done add 1 tablespoon of butter. Resist urge to eat more than a couple of buttery pasta pieces. Contemplate eating buttery pasta with the tomato mixture as sauce. Decide that the beauty of a soufflee and ability to say, “well, last night I whipped up a soufflee,” make doing this not quite worth it. Realize you write really bad run-on sentences sometimes, seriously, Cliffy.
Stir the pasta into the tomato mix.
Beat egg whites until stiff, then beat yolks in a different bowl. It must happen in this order because the whites must have zero contact with the yolks, but a bit of white getting into the yolk will not affect them. Stir the yolks into the tomato mix, then fold into the whites. Turn into a baking dish sprayed with olive oil if you are me. Because I don’t have a soufflee dish and I don’t trust the mixture not to stick. If you are awesome-er than I, bake this in an ungreases soufflee dish. At 300. Forty-five-ish minutes.

Lurve yourself

Warning. If you are a person who is bitter and hates it when people get serious and talk about shit like self-respect don’t read this entry or you may decide you hate me. I probably would have bypassed the following reading at points in my life. I’m about to get a little self-indulgent here. Fair warning. I promise to get back to sarcasm and self deprecating banter soon. I’ll bring back the dark gothiness too. Patience.

We are making a toast and celebrating today. We’re celebrating me and you. You and me. Good stuff has been happening.

I had decided this year I am dating my career. Taking it out, spending quality time with it, dressing it up. It gets lonely at night sometimes, dating one’s career, since it is always working. It’s not too snuggly. But it always comes home at night-except when it has night shoots that is.

My plan has started paying off.

I got a new manager. I have been booking work. I joined the union. I am being An Actor.

On the non-acting front, I’m a writer now too, y’all! My first review evah, that’s eeeevvvvaaahhhh, got published yesterday here.

And now some vocabulary, courtesy of dictionary.com’s word of the day: Eudemonia 1. Happiness; well-being.
2. Aristotelianism. Happiness as the result of an active life governed by reason.

Eudemonia. It’s what I’m feeling.

I’d made my career my raison d’etre, which is a reason I was governing my life by, not straight up reason itself, but it has led to some degree of happiness. So naturally the next step will be to marry it. I’m gonna propose. Keep you posted on how that works.

In the meantime I took me, my career, and my state of eudemonia out. With a friend.

We went that evening to the nearby Rockwell to celebrate. I love their glowing walls you see behind my glass of rose in the main picture.

So if I can wax even more philosophically I think good things are happening because I had enough respect for myself to make me and my career the number one thing for a while.

You should to. Love yourself. Take care of yourself. It’s good for you and it’s good for the world.

Go out and make a toast and a roar to yourself, you deserve it.

If you want to stay in, however. Here is an Ellen-ified traditional. Cause this ain’t no cooking blog without a freakin’ recipe:
Un-totally-classic Martini, the Ellen way
2 ounces vodka
1/2 ounce dry vermouth
Lime twist
The lime makes it Ellen. Stir that mofo. Sip. Don’t swill. Smile to yourself and think “life is on its way”.

Love, pie

I wrote me a guest-blog! Which is good since I am back to being a crazed actor this week.
Audition here!
Interview there!
Don’t be late to class!
Memorize these lines stat! Then be prepared to improv and throw em’ all away.
Not quite time to make pie which is why I am grateful that my beautiful friend Sabrina, whose blog MiBoSo tells us how to balance our lives, posted the article I wrote for her about my pie.
This is the pie someone is probably gonna marry me for.
It’s that good.
Go here and read.

Curiouser and curiouser

This recipe made me hella curious as to whether it would be any good:

I really love reading Eden.
She doesn’t always post recipes but she almost always makes me laugh.
Like actually LOL.
I was going to wait until I’d tried a few more variations in this recipe to post it. But I decided to post it today because although I don’t know her personally, I’ve been keeping up with reading her blog and she’s dealing with an illness in her family and could probably use all the good thoughts she can get sent in her direction.
I’m a big believer in the power of positive thought, so check out her blog and send some love to Eden.

Now to those curious beans.

Cranberry Chili Fries? Say what? I love beans, ketchup is good, and cranberries are cool but I was not sure sure if these kids could get along.

Eden made this with pinto beans put it over sweet potato fries. I only had garbanzos, and I hate sweet potatoes(unless they are this kind which are totally different). I had butternut squash though so I cut it into logs, roasted at about Fahrenheit 425 for about a half hour, flipping once. Oh, yeah. Spray your roasting pan first. Add salt if you are so inclined. And these re “fries” so I say do it).
Top with the chili you created using this recipe and eat it up. Be happy. Do a little dance. Make a little love. Or at least tell someone you love them. Tell yourself you love you.

Wow, maybe I should have published this on Valentine’s day, but hopefully all that love stuff happened then too…

Love it. Do.

<img src="https://scrumptiousgruel.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/20121104-012807.jpg" alt="20121104-012807.jpg" class

I love eggs. In all forms. Then I saw this recipe that involved eggs, peppers, crumbs, and my favorite herb(thyme) and it went to the top of my to-make list. Then Thanksgiving came along and it got side-lined.
Hosting 9 people, even if you are not making a turkey, is time intensive.
Those champagne cocktails took blood, sweat and tears, man. Not to mention the fact that I feared my dessert would be piedenfroid.
So that is why it took me until December to cook from the November issue of Bon Appetit. That I received in October.
I’m a working woman, peeps. Lay off.
And my apologies for saying peeps.

I must make this again. I LOVED it. I am craving this as we speak. The real magic in this dish happened when my fork broke the yolk. The gooey-in-a-good-way yolk seeped into the peppers and crumbs so each bite had this creamy, crunchy….je ne sais quoi. Wow, autocorrect does not like it when I try to type French.

How do you like your eggs?

I left out the meat one this, and did not fry in quite the depth of oil of the original recipe. I also reduced the portions to serve just myself-I halved the amount of peppers since I like lots of veggies, and made one egg instead of four. Silly me. I ate the one and realized I wanted at least three.
Here’s my take:
Crumbed Egg on Peppers(adapted from the November 2011 Bon Appetit)
1 egg
1 tbsp. vinegar
Bring a couple of inches of water to a boil. Reduce to a simmer. Add vinegar. Crack egg into a small dish, half-immerge in water then slide your eggy-wegg in and allow to cook til the white looks pretty solid. Use a slotted spoon or spatula to scoop egg out and put it into a bath of iced water. Allow to cool. You can make this part in advance. I’d never poached an egg before this way, having always been a lazy microwave poacher, but I think it was worth the extra effort. And now to the veggies:
1 tsp. chopped garlic(I use jarred)
olive oil spray
1/4 cup jarred roasted red peppers cut into 1/2 inch wide strips
1/4 cup dry sherry
1/2 tsp. dried marjaram
salt
freshly ground pepper
baby spinach
Spray skillet and heat over medium. Saute garlic a little bit then add peppers, sherry and marjaroam. Simmer til almost all liquid evaporates. Add some salt and pepper then place on a bed of baby spinach. Back to eggs!
1/4 cup panko
1/8 tsp. dried thyme
1/4 tsp. salt
1 egg white
Mix the panko, thyme and salt.
Whisk egg white in another bowl.
Take your egg out of it’s bath and pat dry on a kitchen towel. Coat in egg white then bread crumbs.
Spray skillet with olive oil and heat to medium high. Saute your egg until the crumbs are getting goldenish then place on peppers. now the magic: take your folk and cut into the yolk. Dish the hell in. You deserve it. Love it. Do.