Everyone Likes a Good Stuffed Pepper! or Women of Exceptional Health and Beauty

[Edit below]

[Yet ANOTHER edit below -- I was remiss]

Well, I think my obsession lust respect for the skills of Wentworth Miller has been addressed ad nauseum. It's time for a little sumptin' sumptin' for the lovers of lady bits! (H/T, SFL!)

Many appreciate Women of Exceptional Health and Beauty (heya, Chainsaw!), so we're not going to go all ani here. Let's get to the pictures, shall we?

First we have The True Queen of England. (Most links NSFW.) Dame Mirren (thanks, Bloggie) is a Woman of Exceptional Health and Beauty with incredible poise and self-assurance. I mean, damn! The woman is what, sixty something, and she proves that age is just a fucking number. That makes me have hope for my future.

Another kickass Woman of Exceptional Health and Beauty is Kathy Bates. I'm sorry, but if you went "ewww" when you saw her nude scene in About Schmidt, there is no hope for you. None. If Jack Nicholson can gallivant around showing his attributes while continuing to cover for fucking Roman Polanski, then Kathy not only has a right but a duty to show what a Woman of Exceptional Health and Beauty has to offer. Kathy, you are my idol! And thanks for writing, directing and appearing in Six Feet Under with other Women of Exceptional Health and Beauty.

Which leads us to pre-Hollywood-pressure-to-stop-eating Lauren Ambrose (heya, Chainsaw! Ginger!). Sure, she played a teen in The Best Series Ever, but she was legal at the time, so, don't feel pervy. We all wanted to be Claire: to have the freedom to rant at strangers and to drive a neon-green hearse to school. We wanted to throw brilliant tantrums about pantyhose and temping, and we all wanted to follow our dreams. Claire lives in all of us, and only Lauren Ambrose could have brought that character to scintillating life. I'm just so sad I can't find her green-sequined dress dance routine! Ugh.

The Supreme Goddess of Exceptional Health and Beauty is Chaka Khan. Chakra Khan™ will open your third eye and tell you something good. She'll set your stuff on fire, but no worries! She feels for you, and yes she loves you. We all want to rock her hard or yearn to be rocked Chaka-Style. Life is too short to live any other way. She makes you want to celebrate Rare Earth like, so let's put on our faux fur bras, tube tops and kneel at The Altar of Chaka. She is a sweet thing.

So, yeah. We're all beautiful!






Important Edit: Try substituting Garam Masala for basil and fresh mozzarella for smoked moz. It's a party in your mouth!

Everything Goes Better with Bacon (even pork chops!)

Please, please believe me: Bacon is not a staple of our diet. Truly. When I went food shopping last week, I chose recipes that consisted of similar ingredients just to save money. Period. While bacon on pork chops might seem like oink overload, fat is fat, and a garnish is a garnish, even if it's bacon.

Here's an almost step-by-step pictorial of the thing I made last night (at like 10 PM)

First you make the roux/sauce.

I fried 1/4" pieces of bacon in this here pot until the bacon was crisp. I removed the bacon and then used the fat as the base for this here apple cider sauce. I mean, is there really a difference between using butter or bacon in a roux? No. It's all animal fat, and we all know that pork is The Other White Meat, so, yeah. I'm thinking the bacon fat is healthier than butter. At least that's what I tell myself. Oh, and those little floaties in the picture? They're some pieces of bacon I was too lazy to couldn't scoop out with the bamboo strainer doo dad.

Hokay, I finished with that floaty stuff and moved to the other pork. Here are bone-in pork chops frying in waaaaaaay too much oil. Problem is, my apt floor isn't nearly level and a tablespoon of oil hangs out in the corner of the pan. I can't shim the back of the stove to make it level, so I compensate by drowning food in oil...



Yay! Pork chops are browned, moved to a warm plate, and it's time to cook the onions, apples, garlic, thyme, and whatever else in the oil + pork chop fat...


Onions soften and brown some (really -- shitty camera and shitty lighting), and it's time to put the chops back in the greasy greasy pan, cover them with the onions, etc. and get ready to add the sauce...


Okay -- it's smelling great, but it's looking like the Gulf of Mexico in that pan...


After cooking the chops (covered) for 30 minutes or so, I took them out and reduced the sauce which also meant using a shitton of paper towels to try to soak up some of that oil slick...


And here it is garnished with the bacon that started it all. It really, really pisses my kid off when I take pictures of his food before or while he's trying to eat it, hence the presence of the fork and the Prison Break Buttermilk Cornbread (I think the cornbread is eight or nine days old now). Anything I can do to piss Steve off pleases me, so it was a good night. Oh, and this stuff actually tasted pretty good according to The One Who Hates Onions.


Vegetable of the Day: Onions (do they count?), dried thyme and dried parsley, because I was not in the mood to be chopping herbs or whatever. And, look, we had apples in there. Fruit is a move in the right direction...

Whatever Gets You Through the Night...

It's alright, it's alright. Picture's blurry from The Coffee Shakes or Xanax withdrawal or poor photography. Apologies. I just finished cooking dinner an hour ago, so we'll have more ugly food tomorrow. Steve liked it, so I guess it turned out okay.

Have some music until we meet again:

A Penne for Your Thoughts on What the Hell This Might Be

Good Chakra Khan™! What the hell is that? Well, that's cold penne, sweet Italian sausage, baby spinach, sun-dried tomatoes and some old other shit in a plastic container. Let's see if it looks better plated...



Nope. Not really. How did it taste? Wellllll, it was pretty good but a little on the salty side. I'm thinking I should have rinsed off the sun-dried tomatoes and shelled out the extra cash for some fresh Parmesan instead of this crap from BJ's. (Get your mind outta the gutter - BJ's is our Costco or Sam's club here in Bum Fuck, PA.) Problem is BJ's sells megasizes of this, er, cheese thing, so we'll use the "cheese" as a fail safe for The Prison Break Buttermilk Cornbread in case of zombie attack. Speaking of zombies, log onto the Stinque Zombie Bible, pick a passage and start translating. If you need a good jumping off point, read Job. The Job chapter is a winner. Speaking of fail safes, how's that BP oil spill going? Still killing us harshly? Yes indeedy.

We ate it all; we wanted more, so I guess this was a success.