I've gotten into the habit of making wraps lately. I fry up some chicken strips and put them on a big tortilla, along with some lettuce, grated cheese, mustard, and ground pepper. It's so simple, but so good!

i do the same thing all the time

so good

Totally. I also like that they're pretty healthy. I need to start watching what I eat.

i probably should also, but probably won't

It was my new year's resolution this year, but I totally failed.

what... the FUCK.

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/chocolate- ... etail.aspx

I would totally make those...sounds awesome!

please do, and if they turn out edible I'll help you eat them

for now I'm going to improvise some normal chocolate chip cookies

I just tried this interesting chocolate piece. It's called Maki Praliné. It has coriander hazelnut praline, 100% cocoa black chocolate, preserved ginger, maple sugar, and wrapped up with Nori leaf. It was quite tasty, I thought.

That sounds amazing.

Last night's batch of chocolate chip cookies were for today's secret santa/potluck that my staff were really excited about. Homemade-from-scratch items in the spread included:

- mini quiches with havarti, red onions and spinach
- deviled eggs
- beef patties
- baklava

Tamil food again

i made pasta from scratch a while ago, turned out really good. im glad my grandma taught me how to do it

So frickin simple, and a thousand times better than store-bought dried pastas!! Its surprising more people don't do it.

I'm excited about roasting a duck tomorrow!!

Making an English trifle for Christmas dessert this year...so good!!

i'm thinking of making squid-ink pasta with bacon, peas, and alfredo sauce for my medieval nerd gathering.

would the black pasta look funny with the cream sauce?

inter-racial pasta.

Probably... just put some in the cream sauce.

Why would it look funny?

i'm afraid the alfredo sauce might make the pasta look dirty... i dunno. ive never done this combo before.

* you DARE serve me dirty pasta!!!?? No cooking skills!! No childrens!! What worth ARE you wench???


But seriously, I wouldn't worry about the coloration. Obviously it will look a touch cloudy, but the combination is fine nonetheless. If you want it clean looking, what about doing it as a classic Carbonara styled pasta dish? You have the bacon there already. If you actually served it with the egg unbroken and nested in the pasta you would have some nice color contrast between the yoke, the black pasta, and the peas. I'd love to see how people react to an unbroken, uncooked egg in their pasta never mind the squid ink!

Btw, where does one even get squid ink? I'm not sure I've ever seen it in Chinatown. I'm wondering if you could find it also in a Greek specialty food store.

Duck is half-way done. So excited!! I hope the skin turns out well.

I also boiled an octopus based on an internet recipe to make sashimi-style octopus. I have to leave it overnight in the cooking liquid. I tried boiling with tea bags as some sites suggested was a common practice in Japan. Be curious to see if the Octopus flesh will actually absorb much of the flavor.

Friends of the family came over for Boxing Day. I made the following:

Homemade sage and onion sausage rolls in puff pastry topped with toasted sesame seeds
Brie and cranberry parcels
Prawn, spinach and ginger parcels
Sundried tomato tartlets
Butternut squash and coconut soup
Tomato, mozzarella and pesto towers
Devilled Eggs
Crudite with Horseradish, Hoisin and Marie Rose dips (all made from scratch!)
A whole side of salmon baked in garlic and herbs and topped with a prawn and cream sauce
Roast Winter vegetables - spuds, carrots, parsnips and squash
Grilled babycorn ('cos I like that stuff!)

So good!

Probably too late here, but I would use an oil-based sauce like pesto, which would simultaneously enhance the colour and flavour of the black pasta. Probably a rich protein too, to complement the slight bitterness of the noodles.

What did you do in the end, and how did it turn out?


Anyway, I just bought elk sausage. I will probably pastafy it with much fresh herbage, but do any of you foodies have any suggestions, pasta or otherwise, for elk sausage?