Kitty Kaga, dusted off and ready to report for duty, says…

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!)

Yes, in the immortal words of Froderick von Frankenstein, It. Could. Work.

“It” being this fantabulous bowl of Lucky Soup Chopper produced last night at about 25 minutes till midnight. We’re told (now that we’ve finally caught on to such things, being sequestered in the Northwest and all) that black eyed peas will change our luck if eaten on New Year’s Day. And, since our luck is in dire need of changing (see yesterday’s post, and the day before’s and well, you get the idea), and since we are all about the Cheap Eats these days, how can we possibly resist a meal that not only brings good luck but figures out to about fifty cents a bowl?

Yup, just get a half pound of bacon ends from the butcher (New Seasons Meat counter at a buck a pound), three cups of black eyed peas (a buck thirty nine for a bag), a bunch of collard greens for two bucks, throw in three quarts of that duck stock you made from those two duck carcasses you’ve got sitting in the freezer — you know, from those ducks that only cost a buck sixty seven a pound at the Asian market; those ducks that already gave you meals from their breasts, legs and thighs — then add garlic powder, salt and pepper, smoked paprika, and a teaspoon and a half of Valentina salsa picante extra hot sauce for that extra kick, and you are set, baby. So set.

In fact, better yet, eat just a little on the first day, then forget about it. Hell, leave it on the stove because you haven’t cleaned out fridge. Pop a bowl in the microwave while you’re watching football. Take a bite —

And oh my lord if it was damn good on New Year’s Day, on the second day of the year it’s transcendent. The soup of gods.

And it WILL work.

(Steamy-lensed photo taken with “Loaner,” Belly Timber’s unofficial temporary camera, with many thanks to our dear friend of the ginger chocolate chip cookies… cookies which would make for a fine dessert after this soup, I should add.)

I know, I know, stuffing the turkey could kill ya. Take it up with the in-laws. We tried.

On this Thanksgiving, we are grateful to be back in our own little house, grateful to be back in the big city, grateful to be around good friends, and — when we have a spare moment to cook — grateful for good food.

But today, most of all, we are grateful to Google Cache because it saved my butt last night getting our posts back up after that server crash!

(This year’s turkey, brined for 48 hours in salt water and maple syrup, barded with bacon, and tented under tin foil. Current thigh temperature, 140F and rising. Stuffing make you nervous? In-laws insist on cooking it the old-fashioned way? Get the temp up to 165F and when you’re done feasting, don’t forget to scoop it all out of the turkey and refrigerate it separately!)

I’m one of those picky eaters who never grew out of her childhood hatred of peas. I’m fine with peas in things. Peas in Chinese style fried rice. Peas on lamb vindaloo pizza. Peas in chicken pot pie. But just plain peas? Unless they’re fresh from the garden and inside a pod, forget about it.

Then Chopper made me peas with onions and garlic. And they were almost extremely tasty. Almost. To anyone who loves peas, they’d be ambrosia. For me, maybe just a bit more garlic to completely cover up that pea taste and I’m there. But still, I ate my peas. Which is more than I can say for any moment of my entire childhood.

And the moral of this? Well, it’s my round about way of saying that sometimes life gives you a yucky little bowl of peas and you’ve got to make the best of it by adding garlic and onions.

Like this weekend.

The second weekend in a row wherein we lost our internet connection.

I kid you not.

Last weekend it was all about a billing screw-up.

This weekend? Two hour island-wide power outage, followed by a complete pooching of all of our local ISP’s DSL accounts. Follow that up with multiple attempts to reconnect and a rather unfortunate phone conversation with the Worst Tech Support Person Known to Computerkind (courtesy of our local ISP’s farming out of weekend tech support to one of those call centers halfway across the planet), and we end up with 48 hours’ down time and an ISP administrator who’s scratching her head Monday morning because someone in Bangalor or Beaverton or wherever canceled our repair request and changed our account password without our permission.

So, did I sit at home and eat yucky little bowls of peas all weekend?

Nope. I went all onions and garlic on my (now belated) entry for End of the Month Eggs on Toast and wrote a 2500 word hard boiled tale of passion, puns, and poultry, which I will be posting quite soon. As soon as I scour the pantry for something other than pea soup to eat for supper.

It’s like this. Chopper leaves for work and I say goodbye with a quick acknowledgement that I’ll get a post up tonight. And then I stare at the words. All those words. All those messy, messy words in half-written posts in the bursting Post-in-Progress folder. That Post-in-Progress folder that’s beginning to look like a curse rather than a blessing.

(It taunts me, it does. Gives me nightmares. You know the kind; the kind where you’re back in school and it’s the final exam and it dawns on you that you never attended a single day of class and you haven’t the first clue about the mating habits of the English stoat and their impact on allegorical portraiture of the latter 16th century.)

(Oh, and you’re naked. Always with the naked, those dreams.)

So, I close the folder. Later, I tell it. Go away.

I’ll dig through it when I’m in the mood, but for now, submitted for your approval, a gratuitous fish wrapper on a lightbox and a brief expression of longing for more seafood. We are on an island and we long for seafood. So much so, that I am sorely tempted to sign up for the San Juan Nature Institute’s Sea Urchin Lab (”in which you will see the process of fertilization and the early development of sea urchins”), just so I can raise my hand halfway through and say “that’s all good, but when do we get to eat them?”

(Triple Chocolate Mousse Cake, served up by Chopper on this fine Valentine’s Eve.)

(Recipe available to the highest bidder.)

(Just kidding. We’ll post it later.)

For me, New Year’s Day has always been the one day a year specifically dedicated toward complete and utter laziness. All other holidays have activities — hell, even Saint Paddy’s Day involves the technicalities of green food coloring — but New Year’s Day?

Wake up late. Make leisurely breakfast. Watch TV. Veg out. Watch movie. Go to bed. End of day.

That’s it.

Of course, sometimes we cook. A few years back, down in Portland, we had friends over and made a killer spread of dim sum we devoured during the Food Network’s Iron Chef marathon.

This year we kept things simple. Chopper’d worked late the night before (no holiday rest for employees of the hotel industry), and we hadn’t had time to pick up more than a few essentials at the grocery store, so for our New Year’s Day?

Football, and the perfect lazy breakfast utility food: the tortilla española.

For our version, Chopper included:*

And you know what? I’m still in lazy New Year’s Day mode, so I’m not even going to post the procedure. (And I call myself a food blogger. Hah.) Just go over here and read all about these simple-to-make, tasty puppies.

Oh, do I dare point out that I’m writing about New Year’s Day a day late? How much more lazy can I get?

Well…

I’ve got one of those ubiquitous end-of-year, looking back/looking ahead posts half-finished and lazing about in Word.

I totally blew off cat, dog, and herb blogging this last weekend — though I did entertain the brief notion of throwing both pets into the rosemary bush, snapping a quick pic, and covering all three activities at once.

Oh, and hey, because I’m a bum, a lazy bum (if just for one more day, I promise), I’m going to send everyone elsewhere for yet another activity: Paper Chef Ingredient Nominations, now open over at Tomatilla!

We’ll be back in gear shortly, if only because Kitty Kaga’s eying us from her favorite pillow and sharpening her claws.

December 24th,

12 am, PST.

Hey you!

Yes, you!

See that deadline up there? The one just 32 or so hours away? That’s the deadline for this year’s Menu For Hope campaign. So… whaddya waiting for?

The food blogging community’s lined up some seriously cool gifts (including our own Belly Timber Island Insanity Package) to make this far more than just your every day fundraiser, and don’t forget — all of the donations go to Unicef and are specifically earmarked for Kashmir earthquake relief. So… if you haven’t had a chance to check out the gifts and donate… go! (Cracks whip!)

Ah, I wish we could be around to watch the total climb up to $15,000 (and I think it will), but alas, we’re on the road for two days, hauling our exhausted asses down Interstate 5 to visit relatives in Portland, and then hauling our exhausted asses back up here — bright and early on the 25th so Chopper can cook dinner at the restaurant for silly people who want to eat out on Christmas Day.

Who are these silly people, anyway?

Well, never mind them.

Oh, and about these holidays…

I finally figured out what’s bugging me so much about being around food bloggers during the holiday season.

It’s the dairy products. They’re everywhere. Puddings, cream-filled pastries, cheeses, egg nogs… no, no, please, not egg nogs!! Aaaaaauughhhh. It’s enough to make me want to throw my hands over my ears and sing lalalalalalalala I can’t hear you till January.

Seriously, you’re all wonderful people, I’m sure, but you’re killing me with these dairy products.

(Yes, the Holiday Season is the worst time of year for the lactose intolerant. In the summer, we’ve always got sorbet. Now? We just stare longingly at platter after platter of scrumptious, untouchable food and drown our sorrows in mulled wine.)

Mmmmm…. mulled wine….

So, just ‘cuz, here’s a gratuitous food photo of sushi. Neener, neener.

Honestly now, was there any chance we could resist this one?

I mean, we’ve already just graced our pages with the most unappetizing plate of mashed potatoes ever (and trust me, that was the prettiest food of the week), and our regular readers all know we have no qualms whatsoever about showing off our Messy Kitchen.

Bad food photos? We’re all over it.

When Rachael of Fresh Approach Cooking put out the call with her My Blog Went Up in Flames competition, I dove into our photo archives like Platelicker diving into the five-day-old dried chicken remains that fell behind The Cat’s dining counter. Okay, maybe not. Ick.

Anyway.

Now, I could tell long, agonizing stories of food photos gone horribly wrong, but instead I think I’ll just let the photos tell their story. A story (with brief, out-of-focus interludes) of what it’s like to be the photographer when someone else is doing the cooking…

For this delicious meal, we focus on…. furniture!

Hey, honey, could you move your hand? I’m trying to get a shot here.

Yes, this would be the ass end of the chicken…

Honey, your hand is in the way again!

I’ve no idea what this is.

Oh, that’s right. It went inside this rather attractive lasagna.

Ahem. Hand.

Ah, always nice to photograph the duck fat before it’s rendered for confit.

Honey, what part of move your hand before I take the picture did you not understand?

Well, apparently that was tasty.

Hey! I didn’t say move the food too!

Poetry, even if I can’t find anything that rhymes.

Meanwhile…

6,652 / 50,000 (13.3%)

Today’s word meter advancement brought to you by Ghirardelli’s 60% Cocoa Bittersweet Chocolate Chips. On sale, so I can eat more without feeling guilty.

Panko pan-fried moon fish with sake piccata sauce and orzo salad stuffed artichoke.

So I was thinking about having a petulant little “August sucked rocks” temper tantrum and ask for do-overs, but then I remembered that time doesn’t work that way and I’m stuck in mid-September with no hope of ever accomplishing everything I wanted to accomplish during the August Eat Local Challenge. At least not in August.

So, I’m declaring the next (let’s see, how long will it take for me to truly get my ass in gear?) year… yeah, that’s it, year… as Mrs. D’s Eat Local Challenge, a.k.a. Mrs. D now gives herself a year to figure out how to do a better job of eating local.

It’s not that we completely sucked in August. Okay, well, we sort of did on some fronts ::cough:: Kellogg’s Raisin Bran ::cough:: but in some areas — produce, meat, fish — we did quite well. Well, except for those moments when someone offered us free fish that wasn’t local. We never turn down free fish.

Free ahi sashimi from, would you believe, Sysco?

Anyway, too many things interfered with our ability to visit farms, bake bread, pick crops, spear our own sea cucumbers… oh, wait, we never said we’d do that last one… but that doesn’t mean we can’t do it now. Or soon. Or, well, within the next year at least. Except maybe the sea cucumber bit.

Cuz here’s the thing: I really liked what we were able to accomplish. The local food was delicious. I found local manufacturers of items I never expected, and I learned — or at least started learning — what all grows right here in San Juan County. I mean, kiwifruit. Who would’ve thunk it?