As you can see, I made enough for everybody!

As a dinosaur-crazed kid, I thought asparagus looked like the vegetable most likely to be dinosaur food, so it was the most fun.

[But hold your nose when you pee afterwards.]

Tostinos pizza and a coke

Sunday brunch. Blueberry pancakes. First beans of season and new taters.
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In a literary/ culinary crossover, I'm reading a book set in Nigeria - Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Mentioned more than once is Pepper Soup. When I was in my local Afro-Caribbean shop today I noticed Lickie - meat pepper soup in the freezer.

So I asked the proprietor who confirmed it's a Nigerian dish. I'm about to try it. He warned my slyly that it's very spicy. I expect my bot will regret this tomorrow! But hey, how often do you get to taste the book you're reading :)

I will report back.

I made my first beer can chicken yesterday. A few months back, they were having a super clearance and I bought a whole bunch of foldable beer can chicken racks as stocking stuffers and in case I wanted to make more than one at a time. Yesterday I cooked a 6 pound bird and it came out great.

Well, Rich. The photo?

Oh an update for you on my Pepper Soup.
When it said Meat Pepper Soup I assumed it would have shreds of meat in it. Like oxtail or mulligatawny.

Nope. Great big bits of kidney, tripe and unidentified chewy meat (beef, just no idea what part). And when I say big, I mean BIG. Too big to comfortably eat in one go. It was frozen when I bought it, hence my surprise on thawing.

I'm not averse to offal, as I've said on this board before, but even I am daunted by chunks that ideally need to be cut into three or four appearing in my soup.

So after trying to pull the first piece of beef apart with my spoon I went to get a fork and a steak knife. With all three implements I got on very nicely. The tripe melted in my mouth and I'd forgotten how much I like kidney. The soup itself was thin but very flavoursome and acted as a good background taste to the meat. I left two pieces of beef in the end. A shame, but the cutting and chewing were onerous.

I felt doubly guilty because the book I am reading deals with the short lived Biafran nation and how they were starved into submission, and there I am scraping two big bits of meat away with barely a thought. The other guilt comes from throwing away any meat - doesn't fit with my ideals of respecting animals.

Interesting experiment. I would like to try stright pepper soup next time, with plenty of pitta bread or similar to soak it up and some yoghurt on the side to cool my mouth.

Father's day. Eggplant, chicken thighs, and a flat iron steak
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JUST saw this on Good Eats and want to try! A quick vegie curry using frozen vegetables. Reviews are great.

Alton Brown's quick vegie curry

Seared tuna with wassabi-hollandaise sauce, mango and purple onion, steamed white rice, and...asparagus. (we like asparagus)

Crap in a pan. Seriously.

We're taking off on vacation tomorrow morning, so tonight I cleared out every fresh veggie, all the unidentified leftovers in little tupperware containers, put it all in a pan on high heat, added some butter and ground beef, three scrambled eggs, and smothered it in cheeze.

We called it "hash", but my daughter wasn't buying it.

fish cakes.

I make them using bream, a little potato, coriander, onion, salt, pepper, egg, flour. Coat them in crumbs and shallow fry just till the crumbs go golden.

Yummy with sweet chilli sauce.

This might set a reasonable benchmark above which virtually any other dish would sit - anyone disagree?