Love is...

Remember those old cartoons? Well for me, love is gutting and cleaning fish so that the husband doesn't have to deal with it. It's more a matter of self preservation; I don't want to listen to him gagging over fish guts and blood. Actually gutting the fish was the easy part, my father in law came over to help (he gutted 4, I gutted 3) and he got one to take home for his efforts. And really, cleaning fish is nothing compared to eviscerating chickens. The more difficult part was actually determining how to cut them up.

Our kitchen reminds me a little of Kitchen Stadium, but only in that the husband and I are always battling for supremacy, although neither of us are master chefs. He likes to remind me that he's worked in restaurants before, including one fine dining restaurant. I refrain from reminding him that that was many years ago and he was a bus boy at the upscale place. My experience on the other hand, is based on watching my mother cook, reading cookbooks (or more to the point, drooling over the pictures) and watching Food Network like it's going to save my life. So we both bring something to the (kitchen)table; he's more into beautiful presentations, I'm more inclined to have a main ingredient or theme running through each dish in the meal. If we could only learn to work together in the kitchen, we'd make beautiful meals together.

Love at first bite

Thanks to my sister, I got hooked on making bread. Not by hand so much, but with a bread machine where you throw everything in and walk off and let it do its thing. Hubby bought me a breadmaker a couple of years ago and despite what his co-worker said to him ("she'll use it once or twice and then not use it again), it's been put to very good use making loaves of bread and lots of pizza dough.

More recently however, my sister turned me onto artisan bread using the bread machine. I finally made a biga, and made a loaf of Italian bread. Hubby had a slice, toasted and he thought it was manna from heaven. It will be hard to go back to regular bread after this.

Thanks sis, for inspiration yet again.

Things that go bump in the night

Call me old fashioned, but to me, tattoos are for Japanese warriors who fight to the death. Tattoos are not supposed to be cutesy permanent marks on a person's body that's going to look like goodness knows what when everything starts to sag.

A friend of ours used to date a gal who was into tattoos, a lovely gal actually but I just couldn't relate to her because I can't understand using your body as a canvas. Unlike a normal canvas, your body does not stay taut and tight forever.

If I met this gal in a dark alley late at night, I'd be looking for a quick exit. In broad daylight, I know I could take her with one arm tied behind my back because she's such a tiny thing, but at night, I'd be worried her tattoos would come to life and beat the living crap outta me.

And now back to your regularly scheduled program

I'm currently reading a book called Sex and Bacon (not the only thing I'm reading; another book is about an undertaker who solves murders, and the third book is about a sea monster terrorizing a small town who's sheriff is a pothead), written by a former porn actress. it wasn't the sex part that got me interested, but rather, what is this person writing about in terms of food and why did she get published?

I picked up the book because I needed something else to read that was non-fiction, other than cookbooks and it was there staring me in the face. This book is great in that each chapter is like a new story and so for someone like me with ADD it's possible to read it when I feel like it and not have to keep yet another storyline straight in my head.

Her writing style is like Anthony Bourdain in some sense, so not for everyone. She's blunt, swears and of course reveals things from her past life that are funny, poignant, and sometimes, for a chickenshit like me, even gross. But hey, that's what makes the world go round right?

I figured after all my whining and complaining and feeling sorry for myself for the last while, it's time I wrote something that was in some ways semi-related to the title of my blog.