No, seriously, bear with me for a moment.

First of all, it means there’s less than a month left in the year and you’ve got to scramble to get done everything you should have been doing in the last eleven months, and on top of that, organize and participate in holiday activities, and then on top of that you’ve got WINTER WEATHER.

Here in Portland, we were caught in the Worst! Snowstorm! In! Forty! Years! Oh sure, it was nothing compared to what you Midwesterners and New Englanders put up with, but we think you’re all crazy anyway. Besides, have pity. We don’t even own snow shovels.

So yeah, what with all this snow and angst there was something fishy (or was that shrimpy) about this year’s December. All this chaos and on top of that, only four entries for Paper Chef!

Judging just four entries, especially when they all look tasty and are all somewhat similar (what, no crabs? No barnacles? No wood lice?) can be a difficult endeavor. For this outing, it came down to favorite details – an ingredient here, a method there.

The four entries were:

Terry from Taste Adventures with her “blood” orange risotto cake, with “drunken” Mexican white shrimp in a blood orange vinaigrette. We were especially impressed with those lip-smackingly large head-on shrimp.

Lori Ann from Lip Smacking Goodness with her double-entry of Shrimp and Rice Empanadas and Spring rolls. Being big fans of stretching that food dollar, we’re always up for extra ingredients and double entries. Also, that sauce sounds delectable!

Sara from Culturally Confused brought us Shrimp in Brandy Cream Sauce. This looked like a perfect meal for a cold December night, and easily adaptable.

Mike from Spikey Mikeys made Blood Orange & Brandy marinated Prawns with Coconut Rice. We’ll forgive him the minor difficulty with shrimp shells (Chopper always cooks shell-on) and admire the Asian influence and attention to detail within the ingredients of the marinade.

In the end, it was that detail and the elegant presentation that won us over, and so the December Paper Chef winner is…

Mike from Spikey Mikeys!

Congratulations, Mike!

And now, gratuitous Shrimp-related content: Our favorite new NBA T-Mobile commercial. Say it with me because it is the tastiest part: “YAO SAYS EAT THE HEAD!”

It’s Paper Chef time!

Since Chopper and I were the lucky winners of last month’s challenge (thanks, Magnus!), we have been given the great privilege of announcing the ingredient list for the December edition of Paper Chef.

What’s Paper Chef? Think Iron Chef without Kitchen Stadium or without judges that include pop stars and members of parliament. Also, you don’t get to taste everyone’s creation. Sorry. No trout ice cream for you!

All the rules and regulations are on the Paper Chef blog, but here’s our super-short version:

The four ingredients are announced on the first Wednesday of the month.

You must use all four of these ingredients* (plus any others you require) to make a dish and then write about it. You may make more than one dish if you’re feeling inspired.

Your deadline is midday the following Tuesday: For this month, that’s Tuesday, December 9th at noon, Pacific Standard Time.

After that, roundup and judging!

(*reasonable substitutions for food allergies or dietary restrictions are allowed.)

Now, on to the ingredients. Using our high-tech, icosahedronal randomizing device (pictured at right), we selected three ingredients from the Paper Chef nomination list:

Rice
Brandy
Blood Oranges

The fourth ingredient is always judges’ discretion, so for this month we’ve decided to take a dip into the nearest body of water and see what pinches. That’s right:

Crustacean.

And by crustacean, we mean any member of that crusty little subphylum: crab, lobster, crayfish, shrimp, barnacle, woodlice, tongue worm… okay maybe not those last two, but you get the picture!

So, have at it, have fun, and we look forward to see you all at the round up!

(Post links to your Paper Chef entries here, and don’t forget to email a link to your entry to paperchef@gmail.com!)

"This is the best Indian curry I’ve ever made," Chopper announced after devouring several bites in rapid succession. "Of course my specialty is Thai curry, but still…"

"Om nom nom," I said.

"Yes," Chopper agreed, "Om nom nom."

We weren’t certain if we were ever going to make it back. After all, a year is an eternity in Internet Time, and during that year, Belly Timber just sat, gathering dust, taunting us with rapidly aging posts.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, it vanished completely. Internal Server Error, our home page announced. I thought: crap. I need to do something about this, pronto… and proceeded to get excessively busy on six other projects. What finally got the ball rolling was Chopper’s incessant chomping at the bit every time anyone would bring up the name "Paper Chef."

"It’s this weekend," I told him. "The ingredients are turkey, Anaheim peppers, winter squash, and lentils."

Within three nanoseconds he was making a shopping list and planning recipes.

And me? I was battling the dreaded Internal Server Error.

Which kinda sorta explains why this entry is so excessively late. (And why you might be reading this on a generic WordPress Template.)

What follows (now that we’ve finally got this blog working again) are three of Chopper’s creations inspired by this month’s set of four ingredients: Meatloaf, Turkey Galantine, and Indian curry. A galantine is a French dish that’s typically made of boned meat wrapped around forcemeat. It is poached, coated in aspic, and served cold. Surprisingly (for us) we skipped the aspic.

The best part about joining in this month: three of these ingredients are large quantity ingredients by default, so we’ve got delicious leftovers for days!

What did I have for breakfast this morning? Ah, yes! Meatloaf again!

And lookie! Here’s the full round-up of November’s Paper Chef from this month’s host, Magnus!

The happiest recent news in Gastroblogia is that Owen of Tomatilla has revived Paper Chef after a six-month hiatus. Paper Chef was our introduction to the food blogging world, and it’s always been Chopper’s favorite event. He loves the excuse to play.

Now, the irony isn’t lost on us that Owen picked “home” for this month’s theme. Over the past months we’ve rarely ever had time to do much cooking at home. For a while this summer, Chopper was working six days a week with most of those days on shifts that lasted through the dinner hour. “Home” meant “where we crash at the end of a long day” and not much else.

This fall, things are finally looking up in that department, and — quite amazingly — this Paper Chef coincided with two days off wherein we weren’t booked solid with errands and social obligations. Of course those two days were yesterday and Monday so we still ran smack up against (and fell over) today’s deadline. So what else is new?

Given this rare opportunity to play, Chopper gave himself the challenge of creating three dishes: a canapé, a soup, and a main. We picked up a sampling of eggplants and chiles at our favorite Asian market, and for the fish — since smoked swordfish is unheard of in these parts (and I’m not a swordfish fan to begin with) — Chopper found a nice big slab of cod, coated it in spices and threw it on the smoker.

My (ongoing) challenge, in addition to my usual sous chef duties, is to put together a photo post of the day using my old, borrowed camera and Chopper’s computer, which lacks my usual photo editing software. Why that, you ask? Well, remember that computer that needed fixing? Ahhahahah, yup. It’s dead again. Soon as I’m done with this post, I’m constructing a shrine to Saint Isidore.

But first, photos…

Nothing cries home (or rather, messy yard) to us more than sawing up yet another branch of the dead cherry tree to use in the smoker.

Here’s the slab of true cod, freshly spiced.

Stand by for infusion of cherry wood smoke. Mmmmm…

Two and a half hours later, give or take.

Now, to prep some ingredients indoors.

Hey! We can try out that slicer we bought at the neighbors’ yard sale three months ago!

Looking good.

Meanwhile, in a dark corner of the kitchen, Chopper roasts a bell pepper.

Oh, crap. I have to search the yard for our “something from home” ingredients. Nope, those aren’t ready yet.

Hmmm. Tasty, but I’d kind of like to know what it’s going to look like when it grows up.

Ah, there’s herbs somewhere in that mess that used to be a pretty yard.

One herb platter, coming up.

Back in the kitchen, Chopper has peeled and oven-roasted two Chinese eggplants. These are headed for a bowl and an appointment with an immersion blender.

Moments later, the soup is ready, and it’s got a great kick to it. And yes, you can eat the flowers of your rangy, going-to-seed oregano!

Soup before appetizer? Um, we forgot. Probably a good thing as well. These little babies were, well… let’s just say, odd. Very, very odd.

Meanwhile, Chopper has this crazy idea to make his version of a tagine. Trouble is, we don’t own a tagine. Here, back in that dark corner of the kitchen, he forces an earthenware roaster into tagine duty.

Kitchen’s getting messy. Wait a sec. What’s with those hollowed out Indian eggplants? Turns out Chopper’s just thought of a fourth dish, and he’s now tossing ingredients into the food processor.

The ‘tagine’ is ready, and it is delicious. Smoked cod and couscous make a great match.

But… damn. Note for future reference: earthenware roaster + open flame = ex-earthenware roaster. Good thing this was a thrift store find.

One final dish. A simple afterthought. Oven-roasted Indian eggplants filled with a paste made from the extras on hand: bell pepper, garlic, chives, Thai chiles, and more of that delicious cherry-smoked cod. And… wow. This was the best of them all. The paste on top baked to a crust, the eggplant’s innards, baked to mushy goodness, and for the first time, all our featured ingredients perfectly balanced in a single bite.

A simple and exquisite end to a perfect day at home.

Oh. Well, except for that cleaning up the kitchen bit.

(Recipes to follow. Chopper’s at work and my notes are almost as messy as the kitchen.)

One computer overhaul, one banking disaster, one hosting nightmare, and one canine prison-break later… (Phew!)

It was the event that almost wasn’t. The event that re-emerged from the abyss, from the long lost annals of Gastroblogian history, stifled by photographic traumas, by the death cries of a computer far past its prime, and by the evils of a creature known only by the minacious name Blogger BETA.

No. We refuse to believe it. And why? Because this meal was just too damned good.

It’s true, I confess it. We haven’t finished unpacking our kitchen. We’ve got reasons, many of which I’ll explain another day, but in brief, we’re still using our picnic basket plasticware, and we’ve no idea where we put our favorite can opener. Not that this will stop us.

It’s also true: Our camera is broken, my computer’s throwing tantrums (Lappy jealousy, I’m certain of it), and we’ve yet to figure out where we can set up a reasonable spot for food (or for that matter, craft) photos. Not that we’re deterred by this either, dang it all.

Nope. We’re determined. We’ve been away from our favorite food blogging event far too long. We’ve had too many months without proper kitchen access at all.

And so, Paper Chef Weekend, we took to the store, and subsequently armed with a bag of cranberries, a bottle of sweet vermouth, and a glug of cheap champagne, we embarked upon our search for something wild. And cheap. Cheap is good. We’re on a scary budget these days. And with that in mind, first stop: the freezer and that chunk of wild Alaskan salmon we snagged from the in-laws while we were house sitting.

Second stop? The yard. Yard? Wild? Come again?

Trust me on this. The yard is wild. At least we haven’t had anything to do with it for our two years away, and since then? We chopped a few branches off the fig tree so the satellite dish would (ostensibly) work, but yes, the yard is wild. Weeds gone wild, herbs gone wild, and most of all, apple tree gone wild. As in, it’s been two years plus since it met a pair of pruning shears.

Result? Rosemary, sage, and thyme to gather by the bunch, and apples, apples, everywhere. Most of our apples hit the ground before we could get to them, but even so, we managed a partial harvest — enough for several treats, including this Paper Chef’s dessert.

A note about the apples. I believe they’re Granny Smiths, but in all honesty, I haven’t a clue. All I know is this: they are green, they are sour, they are crisp and they are damn good.

Here’s our makeshift studio. It’s a tiny end table atop a coffee table, with a TV tray table to the side to hold the desk lamp. Both desk lamp and the bridge lamp above have full-spectrum daylight bulbs to help with the color balance, and behind the setup, I’ve got an old curtain rod and one of our freshly unpacked curtains, which I think might belong on a window around here somewhere. I’ll figure that one out someday soon.

After we’re settled in (ha ha, in our distant future), I’ll build my first true photo set-up. See, up on the island, we had a luxury — a luxury in summer at least — of an enormous bank of west-facing windows. We were in daylight heaven. Here, well… we’re in a bungalow, a tiny bungalow with tiny windows and tall trees. (My S.A.D. is sad, I tell you.) Photos in natural light will be a rare occurrence this time of year. Or, I should rephrase, considering the current condition of the camera: photos will be a rare occurrence this time of year.

But enough of that. On with the food!

For dinner: Butter and herb poached salmon with yellow pepper and sweet vermouth coulis, fried, beer-simmered polenta, and cranberried sugar snap peas.

For dessert: Apple champagne gelée, and cranberry gelée parfait with sweet vermouth caramel.

A few short tasting notes:

Here’s the thing about butter poached salmon: It is moist. Scrumptiously, perfectly moist. So moist, that it falls off your fork, and in the end, you’ve got a coulis-slopped plate with flaky, tender bits of salmon all over it (this after you’ve devoured everything else) and you do what makes perfect sense: You roll up the lettuce that was, at the start, intended to be more a decorative bed than a necessary dinner element, and you scoop every last scrap of salmon up, creating one mighty fine salmon salad roll in the process.

And here’s the thing about our rosemary polenta points: I can’t quite explain it, but the rosemary bush in the backyard is beyond this world. This is not your everyday rosemary. This is the most phenomenal, fragrant, tasty rosemary I’ve ever encountered. This is the beluga caviar of rosemary. To kidnap a phrase from a favorite FBI boss of mine, someday I’m going to write an epic poem about this gorgeous rosemary. (But first, I’m going to propagate it!)

And the gelée? A funny thing happened on the way back from the island. We left our crappy old juicer behind because we thought we’d never use it again. So, Chopper didn’t quite have the right tools for the job, and he wasn’t able to get quite enough of the pulp out of the apple juice for the gelée to gel. It was still refreshing, even if the overall effect was unbalanced, and Chopper more than made up for it with his garnish. Yes, what is that crazy thing, anyway?

Why, it’s a boing!

I had a small challenge tracking this puppy down. Google "boing" and "caramel" and you get all sorts of Boing Boing posts and references to "the blogosphere’s yummy, caramel-filled core." (Cool! It’s caramel-filled, like a Cadbury Egg! I never knew!) Add an "s" to the boing’s end, and ah, there it is: Caramel Boings from chef Gale Grand. No pictures though, so we’ll just have to assume that Chopper’s boing is up to boingy par.

A final note, this time having to do with wine: Somewhere around halfway through the preparation, or perhaps it was after we’d tasted the first bit of rosemary and polenta, Chopper asked about wine. Now here’s the thing. Back in early October, we took a trip up to Washington wine country (an unblogged trip, I should add, due to a misbehaving digital camera and a collection of 35mm film rolls not yet sent to the processor) and we accumulated a modest but adventurous collection of wine. Six bottles, I think, and I’d been so resistant to drinking them all up, I’d consistently say "no, maybe later" every time Chopper asked.

Not this time. How about the Pasek Passion Fruit wine, he said. Oh, hell yes. I mean, I’m a sucker for a good sweet wine anyway, but this was genius. By the way, Pasek bills this one as a delicious summer sipper, but who are they kidding? Here’s a secret: tropical wine and tart cranberries? An unexpected match made in heaven.

And as for the curse? Well, it took quite a while to get this post done – we’re down to one fully functioning computer between the two of us – and the evil Blogger BETA is still mucking with our Paper Chef founder and host’s blogging efforts, but we hope Christmas will come just a wee bit early and all will be resolved soon. And Owen, give us a holler if you need a non-Blogger hand. Viva le Chef Papier! Oh, yikes. I spoke French.

This is our last Paper Chef in this house.

In two and a half weeks, we’ll be moving back to Portland after 20 months of camping out and caregiving on an island we only occasionally called home. I can’t say that we’ll miss this disastrously tiny and ill-equipped kitchen, but we will have fond memories of a few small miracles we were able to pull out of the chaos.

At long last, this Fall, we’ll be back in our own home sweet home and our own kitchen. Sure it’s in serious need of updating — the linoleum floor has divots you could hide a mouse in, the drawer faces have a habit of falling off at inconvenient times, and there’s no dishwasher — but it’s ours, ALL ours, and that’s what counts!

But, because we’re here and because it’s Paper Chef time once again, we had to create just one last bit of chaos before we ramble on, and this time we had a grand bit of help from the annals of Paper Chef history and our bloggy neighbors from Down Under.

This month’s ingredients? Peaches, cherries, something hot & spicy, and a “new herb.” Now, by “new,” our Paper Chef host, Owen (welcome back, Owen!) means something we’ve not tried before. Not an easy command for Chopper to follow, as he’s used just about every herb on the island and then some.

But wait! What about that scrumptious and heady prize we received from Noodle Cook for Paper Chef 13? Aussie herbs and spices, the likes of which we’d never seen before? Perfect!

For this challenge we bent the rules a tiny bit to include spices (though by strict definition, two out of our three selections are ground leaves and should be considered herbs) and chose one for each of Chopper’s dishes. For his Tandoori Style Chicken with Stone Fruit Chutney, Chopper used Mountain Pepper Leaf, for the Chile Rellenos with Stone Fruit Salsa, Lemon Myrtle, and for the Spicy Braised Short Ribs with Dueling Gastriques, Wattle Seed. All three of these spices came from the Oz Tukka “A Taste of Australia” gift pack, part of our wonderful gift from Noodle Cook and his fellow Paper Chef 13 judges.

The gift pack includes five spices (ours has Mountain Pepper Berries and Bush Tomatoes in addition to the three we used for this adventure), and a helpful flyer with spice information on one side and recipes on the other. Not that Chopper used any of those recipes. For him it’s all about sample and invent first, read what others do later.

About the spices:

Mountain Pepper Leaves: This one is the most difficult to describe. It’s a dried leaf, and looks like just about every other ground leaf herb, but the smell and flavor is quite unique. The closest comparison I can make is that it reminds me of a more subtle and slightly lemony version of Israeli Zahtar (a blend of thyme, sumac, and toasted sesame seeds). It’s got a small but noticeable peppery kick to it, which, according to the Oz Tukka write-up reduces with cooking time, so don’t add it too soon. Mountain Pepper Leaf, Oz Tukka says, comes from a small tree that grows in the alpine rainforests of Tasmania.

Lemon Myrtle: The lemon scent of this east coast Australian spice is simply astounding. It’s super-lemony, and not in a cloying way, but in a crisp, fresh way that was absolutely perfect for our cherry and peach salsa. Like the previous spice, our Lemon Myrtle came in the form of dried, ground leaves, and is best added toward the end of a recipe. Uncooked, Oz Tukka says Lemon Myrtle should be left to infuse for a day or two. Unfortunately, we ate all the salsa far too quickly to find out how intense that result would be!

Wattle Seed: The last time Chopper and I were able to spend any time at Pike Place Market, we wandered through World Spice Merchants, inhaling deeply in the direction of every untried spice and blend we could find. And though we found many glorious new things — including the aforementioned Zahtar and a most excellent Kashmiri Curry — nothing came even remotely close to Wattle Seed. Now, if we’d gone to an exotic coffee merchant, on the other hand… Wattle Seed, from the Outback, dried, roasted, and ground, conjures up eccentric nutty coffees, mixed with unsweetened chocolate. It’s a spice that can go sweet or savory, and for our dish, we went both. Savory on the short ribs, and sweet — oh my — the moment of spicy perfection: the chocolate/coffee of Wattle Seed with the sweet cherry gastrique. I don’t think I’ve ever had a cherry cordial near that good.

Chopper Sez: The best part about this entry for me, was that I was able to get all the ingredients I needed for all three recipes (and a soup made from the leftovers, not pictured) for less than $30! I’d also like to give a special shout out to Noodle, for introducing us to the amazing herbs and spices from his corner of the blue marble.

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So, Independence Day, yet again.

You probably thought we Yanks were done with those pesky Brits back in 1776. Wrong. ‘Round these parts, sovereignty didn’t get settled till almost a hundred years later. We blame the pig.

The roots of our story can be traced back to Article III of the Treaty of 1818: the joint occupation of Oregon Country by the United States and Great Britain. How the treaty signers thought two countries vying for land claims and navigation rights would resolve any boundary issues is anyone’s guess, but nevertheless, the increasingly tumultuous Oregon Country free-for-all continued for 28 years, until, in 1846, the two sides determined they’d had enough. They signed the Oregon Treaty on June 15th, set the border between the US and Canada at the 49th Parallel (excepting lower Vancouver Island), and that was that.

Or so they thought.

Trouble is, the folks signing the treaty were, to put it bluntly, cartographically inept. The border between Canada’s Vancouver Island and the US mainland, they said, should lie down the middle of the “major channel” through the islands. Easy to say if there’s one major channel.

Not so easy if there are two.

And not at all easy if both Yanks and Brits are enjoying the resources of the group of islands that lie in the middle.

And so, while politicians squabbled over maps and over which strait was “major” — Haro to the west or Rosario to the east — settlers arrived from other parts of the continent and soon American “squatters” (as the British preferred to call them), had laid claim to land just a stone’s throw from the sheep runs of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Belle Vue Farm at the southern end of San Juan Island.

And for the most part, the sheep ran along their runs, and the handful of Americans eked out a living on their tiny parcels of land (which the British insisted were most decidedly not theirs), and all was, if not calm, at least not explosively tense.

Until the pig entered the picture.

For sheep will trot right past a farmer’s potato patch, even if there’s nothing much for fencing in their way, but pigs, or more specifically Berkshire boars? They’re born for rooting, and when they sense potatoes, they have at it.

And having at it was just what one particular Hudson’s Bay Company pig was doing in Lyman Cutlar’s potato patch on the morning of June 15th, 1859. And Cutlar had had enough. He grabbed his rifle and shot it.

Charles Griffin, Belle Vue Farm’s manager, was not pleased in the least. He demanded exorbitant compensation. Cutlar, being an obstinate sort, refused. Griffin, being equally obstinate, demanded Cutlar’s arrest. A blink of an eye later, the American settlers on San Juan Island (all 18 of them or so) had armed themselves and were demanding military protection.

In July, the first American soldiers arrived. In August, British war ships. By the end of the summer, the count was Americans: 461, British 2,140, and — most happily for all involved — not a single casualty of war.

Except, of course, for the pig.

This peaceful standoff — so peaceful that troops from both sides celebrated holidays together and held sporting events on the prairie at American Camp — continued for 13 years. In November of 1872, the Royal Marines withdrew from English Camp at the north end of the island, not because they’d been defeated in battle, or even because the Crown had called it quits. No, in fact, the American and British governments did what governments do so well in border disputes such as this: they passed the buck. They turned to Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany and said, excuse me, could you figure this one out for us?

And, after a year of meetings by his three-man commission in Geneva, Kaiser Wilhelm did just that, and ruled in favor of the United States.

These days, the Pig War is serious business. We’ve got our two National Parks, the 4th of July Pig War Barbecue, the Pig War Museum, Encampment, over a dozen books about the subject, and no doubt a good forty other things I’ve forgotten. Truly, there’s a bit of a porcine glut in these parts.

Even so, when it came time to commemorate Independence Day (or rather the San Juan Island version with all its local piggy trappings) we couldn’t resist adding our own culinary homage to the mix. And, because we are (as I mentioned in the intro) only 400 yards from where this all happened, I took said homage on a field trip.

Piggy, the Pig War Scotch Goose Egg,
Takes a Field Trip

Here’s Piggy in the car. Are we there yet, he asks. Of course, I tell him, it’s only a quarter mile drive up the county road!

Piggy arrives at the main trail marker for the American Camp interpretive trail. Silly Piggy, blocking our view of the image on the sign. Oh, wait, here it is.

Piggy poses in front of the Officer’s Quarters. The camp’s commander, Captain George E. Pickett, lived there. Yes, that Pickett.

What, they named a fence after him, too?

Piggy checks out the prairie. According to the sign (stop blocking the signs, Piggy!), Pickett’s horse bolted during one of those joint sporting events and all the British soldiers cheered.

Uh oh. Piggy’s rooting radar is on high alert. What’s that beyond the fence?

It’s a potato! (Careful, there, Piggy.) Piggy’s found a meal on the bluff above Griffin Bay. Have at it, Piggy, the H.M.S. Satellite’s got your back!

Not everyone is so lucky to have their own commemorative rock! Here’s Piggy, checking out the rock named for Henry Martyn Robert, the military engineer who built American Camp’s fortifications. Piggy says behave yourselves, or he’ll go after you with a copy of Robert’s Rules of Order!

Ah, Piggy had a grand time at the park! So grand that now he wants to head up to the north side of the island and check out Garrison Bay and the British fortifications!

No, Piggy, I’m afraid that won’t be on our plate this afternoon, because, well…

You are.

So, because we’re contrary sorts, we’ve got two entries into this month’s Paper Chef and neither of them have anything to do with July 4th.

Oh sure, we had a billion Independence Day ideas: Grit Cakes with Boston Harbor Tea (pre-dumping, of course), Firecracker Popcorn, The Most Frightening Apple Pie Ever, Pine Nut and Coriander Encrusted Corn Dogs, but truthfully, I think the onslaught of holiday tourists to our tiny island was just too much for us to bear, and by midweek we were ready to step out into the middle of Spring Street with a bull horn and direct all traffic off the docks and into the harbor.

In short, we are over the whole 4th of July celebration thing. So very, very over it.

So, for our first entry, we declare ourselves Citizens of the World (or at least of North America), and as such we are celebrating El Grito de Independencia, Mexican Independence Day.

Which is not, some may be surprised to learn, Cinco de Mayo!

El Grito de Independencia (the cry of independence) is a festival that begins on the night of September 16th with a reenactment by Mexico’s current president of the famous Grito de Dolores of Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, the priest who, in 1810, changed the course of Mexican history with a ring of his village church bell and a cry to his countrymen to rise up against Spanish rule. And though Hildalgo himself was captured and executed in 1811, the fight for independence continued and was eventually won in February of 1821.

Now, Chopper’s the lucky one. He’s been to Mexico, eaten the fabulous food (and no doubt consumed more tequila than he’d care to tell me). Someday soon, he hopes to return and bring me with him and we’ll take the tour, Rick Bayless style.

Meanwhile, for our El Grito de Independencia Paper Chef entry, we’ve got a list of Mexican ingredients a mile long, all worthy of the number 4 spot on our Paper Chef ingredient list, but in the spirit of competition, I’m going to pick the one that makes this Chopper invention unique: Nopales — prickly pear cactus pads.

What I love most about Chopper’s exploration of Mexican cuisine is the closer and closer he gets to the authentic, the further and further he moves from the horrid, cheese-laden Americanized crap we find at so many poor excuses for Mexican restaurants in these parts. Not that he ever cooked horrid, cheese-laden crap, mind you. I think of it more as an ongoing discovery on my part of just how good Mexican food can be. And, I should add, how good it can be for my poor, lactose-intolerant digestion! Swap out the quesa fresca with a little goat cheese and I’m set. Can’t get that sort of goodness at Chevy’s!

(In just a bit, I’ll post our second contribution to this month’s Paper Chef. It is, I promise, quite scholarly and historical in nature and entirely lacking in silly content involving a meal dressed as a pig. Okay, I lied about that last part.)

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Not so long ago, I ducked back into our archives to take a peek at the very first comments left on our infant blog, just over a year ago. Turns out, comment #1 was left by Jen of Life Begins at 30, comment #2 by Kevin of Seriously Good, and comment #3 by Owen of Tomatilla!.

How appropriate is that?

See, here we are, launching into the first Paper Chef since our one year Blogiversary, and not only is Kevin hosting (while Owen takes a much-deserved break), but this month’s theme includes local ingredients, in solidarity with the Eat Local Challenge, organized by Jen! It’s The Circle of Knife Life, Paper Chef style!

Now, some of our more observant readers (okay, okay, everyone) will notice that we haven’t been posting much lately. It’s spring fever, I tell you. It’s going around. The garden calls my name, the pooch begs for serious ball time; who am I to ditch that in favor of slouching at the computer?

But, when Chopper read this month’s ingredients and went on an immediate culinary brainstorm binge, I knew my time away had to end. Chopper cooks and I must blog.

And boy oh boy did he cook this time. Seriously. This food is so damn tasty, I want to head to the kitchen for seconds, thirds, and fourths before I type up another paragraph.

Hang on. Just a sec…

Okay, back.

(Dusts crumbs off keyboard.)

Now, where was I?

Ah yes, the ingredients. For this month, Kevin used his fine scientific skills in Haberdasherdivination to produce these pleasing results:

Lavender
Miso
Chickpeas
Something local

And Chopper, because he loves this style of food (and no, not because we’re trendy, dammit! We’re NOT trendy!), immediately announced his decision to produce a four course tapas extravaganza, with a different local ingredient for each course.

For our local ingredients, we hit three places: the Farmers’ Market, Westcott Bay Sea Farms, and, er, our freezer.

Now, here’s the thing about eating local on the island in May: There’s not a heck of a lot available. The San Juan Island Farmers’ Market (in its weekly, outdoor incarnation) has only been running two weeks now, and at last Saturday’s visit, I counted a grand total of 15 stalls, only three of which were actually selling produce. This time of year, local produce means greens, greens, and more greens, with the occasional baby root vegetable thrown in. Lucky for us, greens at the Farmers’ Market are surprisingly cheap — especially compared to later season vegetables (and to the scary-expensive $6.99/lb bucket of “organic mixed greens” at the grocer’s).

In our short jaunt along the thoroughfare (I’d say main thoroughfare, but at this market, there’s only one thoroughfare), we scored green garlic from Blue Moon Produce, and sorrel and a lovely bunch of baby turnips with greens attached from Thousand Flower Farm. (Total cost for the three bunches: $5.50) Both of these farms are located on Waldron Island, a remote island northwest of Orcas that’s known for its amazing produce. (For a great chapter on the farmers of Waldron, I highly recommend Greg Atkinson’s book In Season: Culinary Adventures of a San Juan Chef.)

Next, it was off to Westcott Bay Sea Farms for clams, because as far as Chopper is concerned a tapas spread just isn’t a tapas spread without clams.

Lastly, we took a trip to our freezer where, among all the other oddities that deny us room for ice cubes, Chopper had stashed a pair of lamb’s kidneys. Yes, local lamb’s kidneys. These particular kidneys came from last year’s farmer’s market and from Local Island Meats, a stand run by the fine folks at Z Lazy J Farm & Feed, which is located just a few miles up the road from us. Chopper had been saving them for steak and kidney pie, but this weekend, they just screamed empanada filling.

Now, how close to home did we find these goodies?

Well, inspired by Tana’s Chefs & Farms map over at Small Farms, I’ve launched Island Local, a map for San Juan County growers and producers of culinary products. So far, I’ve just marked the locations listed above, but I’ll be adding more in the weeks to come. (Now, if I can just get Platial to recognize all these wacky island addresses…)

In case you’re wondering, Casa Belly Timber is just south of the map’s visible area, right below the ©2006.

A quick word about our other ingredients:

We discovered, though it wasn’t much of a shock, that neither of the two grocers on the island carry dried chickpeas, so all of our dishes were made with the canned variety. The miso was from a container of shiro miso paste already in our fridge, lucky for us.

Our attempt to use local lavender in addition to our other local ingredients was thwarted by two things: our own tiny lavender plant that’s not even close to blooming, and the exorbitant price the local lavender farm charges for their culinary lavender. Don’t get me wrong, there are many things I love about the lavender farm, especially in mid-July when the fields are all in bloom, but nine bucks for a container the size of a tin of shoe polish? That’s not one of ‘em. So, our lavender came from an herb and spice distributor and I haven’t the foggiest idea where it’s grown.

Chopper made all four of these dishes at once so we could have a true tapas spread (and I could go a little nuts with the photography). I garnished everything with herbs from our garden, quickly snapped away, and then we dug in. And oh, was it good.

Now, Chopper’s asked me if I have a favorite (his is the spicy clam dish), but to be honest, I can’t make up my mind. The clams are indeed spicy, but perfectly so; the fritters just amaze me in that I can taste the fermented tofu, the smoked paprika, the green garlic, and the lavender; the spread, with that tang of sorrel in it, is something I want in the fridge for snacktime from now on; and the empanadas, well, I think the highest compliment I can offer Chopper is that I, Mrs. D, an admitted hater of organ meats, could taste the lamb kidney in the filling — and I still loved it!

Good lord. Mrs. D. eats kidney without cringing? I’d say this was a hands down Paper Chef success!

Technorati:online event | Paper Chef | eat local

I wanted to spend the weekend making cheese sandwiches. Trouble is, every time Chopper sees the ingredient list for Paper Chef, his eyes light up like a puppy in a butcher shop. And this time? Beets, lime, pears, and aphrodisiacs, and us a couple blogging together? Ahem. How could we resist?

So, we hit the books. Or rather, the Google, and discovered all sorts of nifty lists and references to dozens of aphrodisiac foods, from the obvious (caviar) to the unexpected (coriander).

Now, I have a personal favorite aphrodisiac. It’s a combination of dark chocolate and Barry White. Gets me every time. But Chopper had other plans (or maybe he’s saving the dark chocolate and Barry White for later). See, he’d recently received a $25 gift certificate to our local grocery, and now he’d found the perfect excuse for some sensuous splurging.

So, to completely knock us out of contention for Paper Chef’s Super Saver category, we picked up three lusty participants for our lusty trio:

Caviar (Okay, black lumpfish roe, close enough for our purposes. Ah, mystical fish eggs, symbol of fertility…)
Truffles (They’re musky. Need we say more?)
Snails (I’m told it has something to do with their shape. What? It’s suggestive?)

Marcus Licinius Crassus: Do you eat oysters?
Antoninus: When I have them, master.
Marcus Licinius Crassus: Do you eat snails?
Antoninus: No, master.
Marcus Licinius Crassus: Do you consider the eating of oysters to be moral and the eating of snails to be immoral?
Antoninus: No, master.
Marcus Licinius Crassus: Of course not. It is all a matter of taste, isn’t it?
Antoninus: Yes, master.
Marcus Licinius Crassus: And taste is not the same as appetite, and therefore not a question of morals.
Antoninus: It could be argued so, master.
Marcus Licinius Crassus: My robe, Antoninus. My taste includes both snails and oysters.

– Sparticus, 1960, Lawrence Olivier as Marcus Licinius Crassius; Tony Curtis as Antonius

Ahem. So, where was I?

Oh, yes, we weren’t done yet. Chopper had other ingredients in mind for our Lusty Trio, and surprisingly, we found that several of them were also included on various lists of aphrodisiacs. Here are six more:

Vanilla (Its powerful scent evokes strong and sensuous emotions.)
White wine (In moderation, of course, or the hot date ends badly.)
Wasabi (Nature’s Cialis, rumor has it.)
Red chiles (Hot, hot, hot.)
Coriander (According to The Arabian Nights, a coriander concoction once saved a merchant from 40 years of infertility!)
Agave nectar (Not fermented agave, like tequila or pulque, but still…)

In Aztec times, pulque was the highly esteemed drink of the elders, priests and warriors, a nectar that according to myth oozed from the 400 breasts of the goddess Mayahuel.
–source: Sign on San Diego

Four hundred???

Okay, I think that should do it for aphrodisiacs. Time for some recipes.

Now, I should note that I neglected to include smoked salmon on my list of nine (nine!) aphrodisiacs, above, but whether documented or not, as far as I’m concerned, in my book the combo of smoked salmon and Peter Gabriel is right up there next to dark chocolate and Barry White. (Follow all that up with a glass of port and Alan Rickman, and I’m done.)

Oh, I could go on, but never mind that. Our Lusty Trio turned out quite delicious and so rich that just the smallest helping did me in for the evening. In fact, the both of us have been in recovery for three days, so it’s a wonder we’ve gotten any blogging done at all!

Tagged with: Paper Chef