Menu for El Puerco de Julio

Once again, I’ve surprised myself by how long it’s taken me to post. I have been so busy I can hardly see straight. Somewhere in the chaos of daily life, I’ve come up with the menu for our second annual El Puerco de Julio Fiesta. Here ’tis: Watermelon Cole Slaw Pulled Pork The Man’s World [...]

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The Melon-Eye

When I was a kid, my parents would often take my older sisters, brother, and I back to their small hometown in California’s Central Valley. Think cotton fields, dust, unbelievable heat, drive-in movie theaters, strawberry soda, and the smell of alfalfa everywhere. One of my uncles, whom I’ll call Floyd Owens, was a real character. [...]

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Oxtail Pate

My apologies for taking so long to post once again. I got busy with moving NS and getting the chicken feet. The feet handoff went very smoothly and included freshly picked strawberries and a jalapeno plant from my sister’s garden. The strawberries were spectacular and may have inspired me to actually try planting some myself [...]

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Chicken Feet Text Message

It’s not every day that oldest my sister texts me with this message: “Do you like chicken feet?” Hmmm. Where could this question possibly be leading? I text back: “Maybe?” Her text: “We are slaughtering chickens today. Do you want the feet?” My text, following a mad Web scramble for chicken feet recipes: “Sure!” So [...]

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Seriously Good Crackers

Most of the recipes I post here are pretty good. But these crackers are REALLY good! In fact, I have to stop making them because they are really TOO good (i.e., addictive). The problem is that they are crunchy, which is something one sorely lacks when one is not eating grains. These are a riff [...]

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Lime Ice Cream

Seems like I haven’t posted a recipe in a while, though I have been working on several. Here’s a photo of the very scientific way in which recipes are developed at AFFFG: This lime ice cream was created as a result of the heap of key limes we had leftover after the keylime cheesecake experiment [...]

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Kitchen Gratitude

My Okie father has a saying for when things go wrong, which is, “Things could be a lot worse.” I think this is the Okie way of saying, “Count your blessings,” “Practice gratitude,” etc. So I’m sitting here this Sunday morning practicing Kitchen Gratitude, which goes something like this: I’m grateful for: Key limes, which [...]

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Easter Finale

I think half of my joy in this blog is getting to mess around so much with my digital camera. I bought it last year before I embarked on this blog. Honestly, I think the blog was more how I justified buying the camera. See! I am using my new camera! Easter, which we’re now [...]

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Spit-roasted Lamb, or, Easter Musings

Sitting here this Friday morning feeling: a) grateful that I don’t work on Fridays; b) hungry; c) like I’d really love to rig up a spit in my backyard for Easter. I’ve been reading one of my favorite cookbooks, Rosemary Barron’s Flavors of Greece. She has this fantastic Easter menu, but it mainly consists of [...]

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Pink Eye, Stink Eye

So I’ve been sick the past several days. That’s my latest excuse for not blogging in a while. But seriously, I had yet another bout of pink eye in my right eye, which I’ve battled courageously, only to wake up today with pink eye in both eyes. Not only that, but it brought its nasty [...]

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