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!)

First of all, I prepare for the relatives.

Then Chopper starts… HEY! What the…?

That’s right. He’s leaving for work. No rest for the wicked as they say. Also, no rest for workers in the hospitality industry. On the bright side, he’s earning time and a half.

Meanwhile, I decide to entertain myself by digging up Thanksgiving photos from years’ past. Here’s our bird from 2006:

Mmmmmm… bacon.

We do have one thing to be quite thankful for today: Chopper gets done with work at 7pm. Since we figure most folks aren’t packing everything in till nine, that gives us two whole hours to house hop from one relative to the next and pig out on leftovers!

Best of all, we won’t have a pile of dirty dishes at home.

Er, that is, except for all those dishes we left out on the counter last night.

"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!