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I was standing in the coffee room at work, waiting for my asparagus to finish nuking, and wishing for a ham and cheese sandwich. I was really trying to convince myself that I was being good by eating my veggies and I didn’t need to walk down to the cafeteria and spend money on a grilled ham and cheese sandwich when the cafeteria food nearly always leaves my with a faintly upset tummy anyway. Then, a pretty woman in a brown dress brought in a box of leftovers from somebody’s meeting. Ham! Yay!
I’m faintly tempted to walk around my floor and see who my new fairy godmother is, but I fear it might make me look like a weirdo.

Christmas was nice. GM and I went to visit my parents in SoCal, so on Christmas day we went to the San Diego wildlife park to say hello to the rhinos and condors. On boxing day, we went to see the Adams Family Musical. Like most musicals it was charming, if a little thin on plot Then we came back home and lay around the house in utter sloth for a few days before New Year’s. I made a black eyed pea salad for New Year’s, and used the remaining peas to bulk out some red beans and rice. I’d never cooked with black eyed peas before, although I was vaguely aware that it’s a traditional new year’s dish in many parts of the US. I have a suspicion that it is one of those traditions that is making merit of necessity.

Diet: I’m either up 8.3 or down 40 pounds depending on which end you start from. GM and I are thinking about doing the 5/2 diet together over lent, and then I’ll (as necessary) do the final round of the crazystupiddiet in April or August.

Art: I spent most of 12^th night in the arts display room, where GM and I had a display on tableware. We had some interesting talks with people about making vs. buying stuff, and about how we had come to the conclusions we had about the sizing of plates. I didn’t do any of the bread carving demos I was prepared for, but that’s ok. I had some every interesting talks about the fruit trencher project, and I really need to get my abstract written. Perhaps this weekend. The Duchess’s Ball at 12^th night was fun. There was a lot of people I hadn’t seen before, which always makes the dance ball more of an adventure. Having Brocc be MC was wonderful.

Dance: The Crosston dance ball is scheduled for 9Feb2013, and I would strongly recommend coming and taking the day-time classes for anyone who is planning on attending the Perfectly Period Feast III in March. (Tickets for PPF III can be purchased here) he Crosston Dance Ball will give you a head start on dances that would be cool to know for the PPF after-dinner party. Wednesday Dance Practice will be focused on 16^th century dances for the next few weeks, please write for times/directions.

gormflaith s home and resting comfortably after her (expected) surgery. I talked to her a little yesterday when she was still a big groggy on pain meds. I'll call again later today.

Someone was recently telling me about a good tapas place in San Mateo. Unfortunately, I can't remember who or the name of the restaurant.

Help, please? 

Just leaving a note for myself so I won't forget: http://www.antir.sca.org/Upcoming/?Event_ID=2727
Is anybody else planning on going? It's the weekend between Mists Coronet and Prova Dura.

kiria_dk was recently telling me about her Brownies of Win, I promptly and pompously told her that anything made with raisins just had to be better with dried cherries. I finally had an excuse to try her recipe last night and OMG they were good.

Fudge Cherry Brownies, based on recipe in the Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home (p. 317).
1/2 cup (one stick) salted butter, extra butter for pan
3 oz unsweetened chocolate (I used Ghirardelli's 60%)
1 cup (7.5 oz) lightly packed brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs (I used the last two duck eggs from Rosie and Jed)
1/2 cup King Arthur's unbleached white flour
1/2 cup Dried Pitted Tart Montmorency Cherries 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees (F).
Butter an 8x8 square baking pan
In a microwaveable bowl, melt the butter and chocolate together, stirring occasionally. When the butter and chocolate have melted, add all remaining ingredients (except cherries)  and beat with an electric mixer until the batter is thoroughly blended and smooth. Add cherries and stir briefly.
Pour the batter into the pan and bake for about 20 minutes, until the brownies are just beginning to pull away from the sides of the pan and are fudgy in the center. For more cakelike brownies, bake an additional 5 minutes.
GM thought the brownies didn't look done at 20 mins, so we went for the extra five.
Served 4.

Garden: GM and I skipped Beltane for no particular reason other than we were tired and needed a weekend off. I'm a little sorry we missed it, but on the upside I planted all the basil A'isha gave me. I dug a lot of weeds out of the herb garden and some out of the flower bed. I planted some peas, but I need to put some strings out for them to climb on. Perhaps I'll get to that tonight.
Pig: Last week I finally got possession of the pig I'd put a down payment on last January. He (she? who knows?) was 175 pounds of cleaned weight. I met with co-conspirator vittoriosa for a How to Cut Up a Pig Class. Loren, The Rib King and Professor of Mad Knife Skillz, does not have power tools so I discovered an unexpected benefit of home ownership: I can saw things up. Sawing through bone is easier than I thought it would be. While I'm pretty sure The Rib King alone would have taken my pig part in two hours, it took vittoriosa and I four hours to get Mr Pig in pieces, and get those pieces bagged and tagged. We put some effort into saving every piece* and having eaten the risotto madbaker made from the broth of roasted piggy bones, I think it was worth it. I'm not sure I'll want to cut the pig apart myself next year, it was a considerable effort, and kinda freaky. GM and I had pork chops for dinner on Friday, pork shank with sauerkraut for lunch on Saturday, and we're going to have tongue in Madeira sauce for an appetizer tonight. Tuesday dinner is going to be kidneys (or possibly Chinese take-out, we'll see). My parents are coming up in the next week or two for a visit, perhaps we'll have one of the pork roasts then. 
Cool Link: David Wong's How 'The Karate Kid' Ruined The Modern World  
Self-Congratulations: I'm patting myself on the back for remembering to send my grandmother a box of chocolates before mother's day, but I still need to figure out what to get my mom. Perhaps I'll just send her home with a lasagna after her visit. I also need to get various things into the mail. Maybe tomorrow.
Art: GM and I will be teaching "Table Manners and Table Service in Early Modern England" at A&S (June 11-13th at Ed Levin Park in San Jose, CA).

* It just occurred to me: there was no penis, so maybe we had a girl-pig.

Anthony Bourdain's version of a bacon explosion is more of a bacon implosion. Last weekend, I made the Mignons de porc a l'ail from Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook, or at least I would have if I hadn't managed to mess it up on almost every step. Fortunately there's only so wrong you can go with porkloin, bacon, and garlic confit, so GM and I ate it all anyway.

Amusingingly, this foodblogger made some of the same mistakes I did. You can find Mr. B's real recipe on this site, and while I've plagiarized it mercilessly that which follows is what I made.

1 small bottle of Christopher Ranch peeled garlic
lots of leftover bacon fat from the back of the fridge

In a small pan, warm the bacon grease until melted. While it's melting, check over the garlic cloves, removing any questionable bits and the woody brown tops. When the bacon fat is warm carefully dump the cloves in. The fat should cover the cloves by a little bit. Let them cook, stirring occasionally, until the cloves are very soft, about 20 minutes. When soft, remove the cloves from fat and place in two bowls. Save half the cloves whole for the sauce. Mash the other half of the cloves with fork into a paste. Pour the leftover garlic scented bacon fat into a jar, label and place in fridge for some future project. It's worth keeping, trust me.

1 little (about a pound?) pork loin from Trader Joe's.
8-10 slices of Dittmer's bacon

Slice the pork loin long ways, then slice each half in half, also long ways. You now have four long skinny slabs of pork loin. If you really like salt, or made your garlic confit with olive oil, salt the pork loin gently. using clean fingers or the tool of your choice, slather the pieces of pork loin with the garlic paste. Lay out the four pieces of pork loin on a large piece of saran-wrap, flipping the pieces around until it's as even a thickness as you can get. Place one piece of bacon in between each piece of pork loin. Put the remaining slices of bacon longways around the outside of the porkroll.  Roll the pork loin up into a tube shape, using the saran-wrap to get it as tight was possible. Place in fridge for as long as you can. (Mr. Bourdain said overnight, but I was on a deadline and got in an hour or two, I think.)

Remove the FrankenPork from the fridge, and unwrap on a cutting board. Find your kitchen twine. Cut off a piece long enough to tie (like a bracelet) around the FrankenPork. Tie off about 1.5 inches of FrankenPork and slice to separate. Repeat until you run out of FrankenPork. You now have 4-8 little circles of FrankenPork lying like unpressed flowers on your cutting board. They sort of look like celtic crosses.

Pre-heat the oven to 350F. Get out a sheet pan fitted with a rack, like you were going to bake bacon with Alton Brown.

1 tablespoon/14 ml olive oil
2 shallots, thinly sliced
1/4 cup/56 ml white wine, and then another 1/4 cup/56 ml white wine 
1/2 cup Swanson's chicken broth with some demi glacee
1 sprig of flat parsley, finely chopped

Put a skillet on the stove and melt some butter and olive oil in it. When the butter stops foaming, add the little pork bundles to the pan, working in batches so as not to overcrowd the pan. Cook the pork over high heat for about 6-8 minutes per side, after which the meat should be nicely browned. Place the meat in the roasting pan and finish cooking in the oven for about 20 minutes. When cooked through, but still moist in the center, remove from the oven and allow to rest on a plate.

In that pan of bacon grease and garlicy bits, add the wine, and cook down to almost nothing, after you realized you were supposed to put teh shallots in first. Add the shallots and cook for 2 minutes, or until the shallots are soft. Stir in the wine, scraping the bottom to dislodge the fond. Cook over high heat until the wine is reduced to a glaze consistency, then stir in the stock. Cook over high heat until it's reduced by half. Add any drippings from the plate that's holding your cooked pork, as well as whatever's in the bottom of the roasting pan. Add remaining cloves of garlic confit  (I mashed it all together to make it more sauce-like) and the parsley.

With kitchen scissors, snips the twine holding the pork flowers together. Serve. Cover with sauce and eat.

GM thinks we should tie the FrankenPork off with strips of prosciutto next time, instead of using string. Maybe.