Papel Chiltepin: March 2012

Some recent food experiments

Copper Fox Cooler: Sage lemonade, muddled black berries, bourbon

We made three of these no-knead pizzas. Toppings included a variety of: crushed tomatoes, moz, goat cheese, chopped red onion, garlic, dried herbs, red pepper flakes, sun dried tomatoes, wild chives, sea salt, olive oil

Fresh apple, ginger and lemon juice

Roasted vegetable torte and turnip green, butternut squash, and prosciutto salad

Buttermilk buckwheat pancakes with fig jam and fresh berries

Carrot soup and homemade pita bread

Homemade pita bread with garbanzo bean salad and homemade tzatziki

Three pea chicken salad

Parmesan, fennel seed and sea salt shortbread; perfect with coffee, or vanilla ice cream, à la Javier

The best part of St.Patrick's Day yesterday was the perfect spring weather. Sunshine, high 70 degree temperatures: forsythia, pussy willows, and daffodils bloomed in the light-drenched hours between my morning and evening walks with Paco. The air hummed with the frenetic energy of people spilling outside after four months of winter. All too attuned to this, I was a restless mess for much of the day.

The air was also charged with the near (and then later, all too real) delirious energy of undergrads rambling along the sidewalks of BG in green t-shirts and clutching red plastic cups. Their bellows of anticipatory revelry began at 9 in the morning and by early afternoon our neighbors' yard looked like an installation piece: caution tape marked off a lawn littered with those red plastic cups, strewn kegs, and a dilapidated beer pong stage.

The university sent out a "St. Patrick's Day" safety email on Friday and though we hadn't any plans to go pub crawling, this email made crystal clear the BG shamrock holiday culture; Javier and I hunkered down at home.

We did celebrate in our own way, of course. Javier read an LA Times article which illuminated little known facts about St. Patrick, such as he was Scottish and made a slave by Irish pirates, and that driving the snakes out of Ireland is symbolic of ridding the green isle of its pagans and druids who used images of snakes for worship.I listened to a poem my friend M.G. posted which was composed for NPR and discussed all the negative stereotypes that are popularly practiced on this holiday.

Not that Javier and I were much better in avoiding stereotypes with our actions, but at least we kept it too ourselves (until now, I suppose). Javier single-handedly made an IPA which is sitting in a closet fermenting for the next two weeks. I made a delicious cabbage soup from 101cookbooks that is loaded with garlic, onion, white beans, potatoes and not-over boiled green stuff.

We then made car bomb cupcakes and though the name isn't politically correct, the cupcakes are delicious! Instead of Guinness I used Left Hand Brewery's Milk Stout (so good! they use milk sugar in the brew) for the cake batter, my bacon bourbon for the ganache, and Bailey's Irish Cream for the butter frosting.

A thunderstorm blew through town around midnight, bringing (thankfully) a relatively early end to the carousing and washing away the many sins I'm sure were committed in a hop-induced haze throughout the day.