My Martini Recipe - the Goobertini

Art by Keith Weesner

Speaking of martinis, here’s how I like mine:

(Dirty of course.)

Tasty business there. Remember, although a good martini is stiff, don’t sip and nurse it. Nothing ruins a martini faster than letting it get too warm. I also think they taste better whilst wearing a silk robe Heffner-style. :) read more »

Amish Friendship Bread

Someone gave me a bag of goop the other day with a set of instructions. “Um, thanks?” I thought at the time. But I was willing to give it a shot.

Amish Friendship Bread straight from the oven.

The bag was the starter mixture for a fermented bread called Amish Friendship Bread, something akin to sourdough.

The instructions indicated mushing up the bag each day for 10 days and then adding the rest of the ingredients before baking. Alrighty then — I’ll give it a go. I faithfully mushed my bag each day and added ingredients to quadruple the mixture half way through as indicated. Later research confirmed that you can skip this step if you don’t want to end up with three more bags of starter at the end of the process. read more »

Albino Chili Recipe

Betsy and Angelo have a great tradition of hosting an annual Super Bowl Party that includes lots of food and adult beverages. Part of the fun is there’s always a few chili varieties and guests are invited to bring their own to share. I’ve done this a couple of times and although Angelo’s standard steak chili is always sublime, and Stacy has her award winning vegetarian chili — I like to try weird styles that usually turn out to be a bit of an experiment.

Two years ago I brought green chili (with tomatillos and lots of green chilis). This year I went with white chili, or as I’ve appropriately dubbed it: Albino Chili. :) I found the recipe online and adjusted to what I thought might be better. It still turned out kinda soupy, so I’ve adjusted the following recipe. (The original called for almost twice as much stock.) I learned it’s important to add the cheese just before serving, too — it keeps it from burning. And it’s a lot of cheese! And even more beans — if your tummy is inclined to do gastro-intestinal somersaults over legumes, you’d better steer clear of this one.

Recipe after the jump… read more »

Zojirushi makes happy rice and more!

I’m lovin’ my new rice maker. I eat a lot of it, so it’s more than handy to have a little machine in the corner that does all the work for me while I prepare other edibles.

The first job I gave it didn’t even involve rice — instead couscous was on the menu and I thought I’d see how it would fair with the wee pasta. While stew was brewing in the crockpot, I set up the new cooker with the following: read more »

Best Mojito Recipe

I was recently put on the spot for my version of a Mojito. Given my, ahem, experience with this delight — I was horrified to find I couldn’t spout off the drink recipe instantly. Of course this must be fixed, so here’s the behind the curtains look at the drink.

A mojito is generically rum, soda, mint and lime. People add various sugars to liven it up a bit or make it their own. Here’s mine:

And damn that stuff is good. We used to keep a pitcher of it in the fridge during the summer and always served at parties. Case in point:

• Mojito Party 1
• Mojito Party 2