Thank you everyone for the birthday wishes.  My year in review…

It’s been awhile since the last overhaul to this website.  Overall, this is more of face-lift as I’m retaining that reclaimed wood look, but I decided to bust out the 1140 grid and incorporate some HTML5 markup with some CSS3, as well as a blatant disregard for IE.  Fortunately IE9 isn’t having too many issues, but this is all a work in progress.   I am pretty proud of the clipping technique incorporated on the about page, so please check that out.

A couple of fresh websites that I’ve created…

Got this is the mail today…

A quick trip down memory lane…

Thank you everyone for all the laughs and memories…”Stay young and invincible”

A few months back we attempted to plant some herbs, which was mildly successful.  I’m not exactly skilled in the art of producing edible things that grow from dirt, but since we tend to cook with herbs, and we either always have way too much of a particular herb, or we don’t have enough of another – it made sense to try and grow our own.  Basil is one we always never have enough of and fortunately, it grew extremely well for us.  I was able to harvest a nice batch and decided to create some pesto with it…

I threw some dinner together a few weeks ago that turned out completely brilliant. I’m sure it’s not entirely original. More than likely, it’s the aggregate of different recipes from shows and books but mainly, it was the mussels we had at WA Frost in St. Paul, Minnesota that inspired me. The broth the mussels steamed in was amazing. You could eat it alone with bread if you wanted. Here’s the recipe:

• Sauté some onions and garlic in oil and throw some garam masala, black pepper, and salt. I think I threw in some cumin powder as well. At the time I was thinking of Indian and Southeast Asian flavors so I just went for it. You have to add enough spices to start to form a loose paste with the onions and oil.
• Make sure to not burn the garlic so add it in a few minutes after the onions have softened. Then add some Thai green curry paste. I think I did about 3 teaspoons.
• Now add a can of coconut milk and bring to a simmer. I also added some seafood stock that I quickly made from the shrimp shells. About ½ cup maybe. All I did was put the shells in a pan with some water, peppercorns, garlic cloves for 15 minutes and seasoned to taste with some salt right before adding it to the coconut milk mixture. It was all very impromptu, so I didn’t bother cutting up vegetables for the stock. I think it gave the curry sauce an essence or hint of seafood.
• I seasoned the curry with about a tablespoon of fish sauce and some black pepper and let the curry simmer and reduce for 8 minutes or so. Double check the seasoning again to make sure it’s right. Add more fish sauce (or salt), acid, heat, or sweetness as needed, to try and balance the curry so there’s no one thing that overpowers another. My quick fixes typically involve salt, honey, vinegar, siraracha, or water to fix any flavor imbalances.
• Now add the shrimp, which I already had lightly pre-seasoned with salt/pepper. This should only take a few minutes to cook.
• That’s it.

We ate this over jasmine rice and a side of steamed baby broccoli.  Any time you combine curry paste (which is available anywhere now in the Thai section), with coconut milk, it’s really hard to screw up.  Sorry, no photo.