Project Runway

Set your DVR. Thursday, September 1, 9 PM, Lifetime. Watch it.

 "The Art of the Matter" The seamsters union try to make the grade as pupils when they join forces with art students to create artwork that will lend inspiration to garments.

Normally, I wouldn't write about Project Runway. Or really even consider watching it. I gave it a try last week weeks ago to get a little background for this Thursday's episode and couldn't sit through 10 minutes of it. So why would I recommend this Thursday's episode? My cousin's step daughter will be one of the young artists working with a designer. Her name is AJ. I have no idea what she has done on the show, but I'm pretty confident you'll be impressed by her. I can't say the same for the designers participating in the contest. But watch out for AJ. She'll be taking over the world in 10 to 15 years.


UPDATE: AJ was on the show for all of 11 seconds. The designer she was teamed with fell somewhere in the middle of the pack. As for the rest of the show...Project Runway, you're out.

Live Free Or Die

Spent last week in New Hampshire. We shared a house with three other families. I went to high school with the father in each family. This is the squalor I had to live in for a week.

Somehow, we managed. Here's the view from the deck. It was a littl foggy this particular morning. The view is better than the picture.

On the ride out to Lake Winnipesaukee, there was no good time to stop for lunch since the kids were taking turns sleeping. By about 1:45, everyone was getting hungry, but the signs on the highway were not very helpful. We had to get off I-89 in a few more miles and decided we'd stop at the first place we saw.

That place turned out to be The Flying Goose Brew Pub. We got a table, the wife and I started looking over the menu and the kids got busy coloring on their place mats. Off to my left I heard a voice say, "Jon and Amy?!?!" It was Jeanie and her kids. Jeanie was in our dorm freshman year at Northeastern. They were also heading to Lake Winnipesaukee for the week. Holy Small World, Batman! We exchanged cell phone numbers and managed to get together on the following Friday.  Made for a very nice day.
The kids loved the trip. I think the adults had a pretty good time too. Here's the group photo of the vacation house taken just before heading home.

Charcutepalooza Project #8

Going to get this one in a little early. We leave for a week in New Hampshire tomorrow. Been a little crazy around here but I managed some time to get this made. The project is country style pate (I don't know how to get the proper accents in type). I had always wanted to make my own for Thanksgiving and this was a good opportunity to give it a whirl before showday.

Made a stop at Dean's Whole Foods on Central to get the spices. Their bulk spices rule. Fresh Market only had veal liver but I was able to find some pork liver at the Asian Market on Central. Grabbed some pork at Roma's and picked up a itty bitty bottle of cognac at Newton Wines. The rest of the ingredients were pretty basic. And away we went...

Made a batch of the Charcuterie Pate Spice. It smelled pretty good which surprised me a little since it has cloves in it and I don't really like cloves.

I started weighing out the ingredients. Isn't that the cutest bottle of cognac?

 

Got the panade ingredients together...

Little bowl of spices. I bought these little bowls the one time I was in an Ikea. The kids still use them, but once they are in bed, the bowls work great for mis-en-place.

You run the pork through the coarse grinder with the coarse disk. Then combine onions, parsley, the spices and the liver with about a third of the ground pork and push that through the finer grinder disk. I was well on my way to making to truly spectacular mess in the kitchen.

Everything goes into the bowl and gets whipped up with the paddle attachment.

Then, I put the mixture into two small loaf pans. Pressed it all in. Put it in a water bath and off to a 300 degree oven. After about 40 minutes, I got a temperature reading on 150. I put the loaf pans on a rack and weighted the pate down with small pieces of scrap steel. Once the pate was at room temperature, I moved the pate to a fridge and added two cans of soda for additional weight.

The next day, I had a baguette and small yet over priced cornichons  ready to go. I cut into the pate and....

failure. This is the second loaf, the first one actually looked better but I didn't take a picture. It was a little pinker than I thought it would be in the middle. Kind of medium rare. And the cooked outer portion was pretty unattractive. But I knew I had seen a internal temperature of 150 degrees, with carryover heat it should have gone a little higher and that is a safe temperature to eat pork. So I had a taste. I did say failure, didn't I? Not good. Having already disliked the appearance, I was able to add disliking the texture and taste to the list. It was inedible, it just wasn't good. Never even opened that overprice bottle of cornichons.

If this wasn't part of a yearlong project, I doubt this post would exist. Plenty could have gone wrong - I made half a recipe. I used small loaf pans. Keeping everything so cold and going directly into the oven could be the cause of the nasty gray exterior. I was a little rushed, could have screwed something up too. The real problem is that I didn't like the flavor combinations.Someday, I'll try again...If you ever find yourself in Zabar's, their pate is significantly better than this. At least it was about 10 years.

Vacation and other randomness

The first of two summer vacations starts with an early morning with a flight to Tampa. Alarm clocks should not be able to go off at 5 AM. It's just wrong. Once we get to Tampa, we are getting on a boat (that is apparently as long as the street we live on and more than 12 stories tall) and hitting some spots in the western Caribbean. We have some snorkeling planned, a trip to a Mayan pyramid (really want to see that), and an island tour featuring big turtles. Try explaining to a 5 year old that we won't have a kitchen or fridge but can get food whenever we want. "Even after bedtime?" Her eyes lit up when I told her there was a 24 hour pizza place. "Even in the middle of the night?" I can be prone to answering questions with a questions, "Why are you worried about eating in your sleep?" Although according to the cruise brochure, calories consumed at late night buffets don't count. This morning I was down almost 20 pounds from my starting weight, hopefully the cruise won't set me back too far.

When we get back, I've got a pate or terrine to make for Charcutepalooza. Not sure which direction I'll go with this one. There is a recipe for a grilled vegetable terrine that sounds really good, but I have always been a sucker for pate. I need to get back to a farmer's market too. Haven't had a chance on weekends lately.

And since it is so hot this week, here's a temperature related kid quote from the same girl that wants to go on a 4 AM pizza bender. Whenever Casey's legs get hot, she says "my knee pits are sweaty."

I went to The Book Barn in Latham to pick up a few paperbacks for the trip. The clerk was very helpful and pointed out a few selections the wife and I might like. Sadly, I don't think I have read a book that isn't food or work related in a year or too. Got a few super spy espionage type books. I'd give you more details, but they are packed and I don't remember the names. The kids picked out a few books too. A few years ago, I picked up "Roasting" by Barbara Kafka for $5. This time around I spied "The Art of Charcuterie" by Jane Grigson published in 1968. It is interesting to flip through. The recipes would need a little updating (the cures often call for "A pinch of saltpeter.") I paid $5.95 for it. Back in 1968 when there was no Amazon.com, the list price was $7.95. If you find yourself in the area and like books, the shop is worth stopping by. I got this cookbook, two barely read paperbacks, and 5 kids books for just under $18. The address is 200 Troy-Schenectady Road, right across the street from the K-mart.

Kipu Falls

Eleven years ago, almost to the day, I was enjoying my honeymoon on the island of Kauai. If you ever get the chance to go to Hawaii, take it. I was entrenched in the mindset "put it on the credit card and we'll deal with it later." The trip was awesome.

We were directed to a swimming hole by a guide book. I believe it was "The Insider's Guide to Kauai." The place sounded great. A freshwater waterfall and swimming hole. You have to find it and do a little bit of trespassing to find it. With the help of a man that barely spoke English, we found the gate we had to hop. You could pretty much walk around it. There was no actually attempt to secure the field on the other side of the gate. We followed a path and heard some voices and the waterfall. We followed the sound to a stream and a spot I would call paradise. It was beautiful. (the video in the yahoo report doesn't do it justice)

The water fall looked 25 to 30 feet high. People were jumping off and having the time of their lives. There was a rope that would take you off a cliff into the water below. Usually, I am not that adventurous. I had to jump. For some reason, I felt like not jumping would be something I regretted the rest of my life. I took the leap off of the rock making sure I pushed off to put some distance between me an the falls. The amount of time in free fall was long enough for you to think, "Hey, I've been falling awhile. I should probably be hitting the water soon. Where's the" SPLAAAASH. And then you go deep into the water. I never touched the bottom. I kicked my way up and swam to a rope hanging aver the water so you could hold it and catch your breath. It was exhilarating. My wife jumped too. We talked about it the rest of the trip. In 20/20 hindsight, we were glad it happened toward the end of the trip because everything else would have had to live up to Kipu Falls. The next day we bought a water color painting of the falls and had it framed in local koa wood. The picture is in our front hall. It was fantastic. A memory to last a lifetime.

I did a double take when I saw the headline "Popular Kauai Swimming Hole Gets Deadly Reputation" on Yahoo today. Could it be? Yes, it can.  Turns out that people get injured there regularly and 5 have died in the last 5 years. I guess I'll stop telling people planning a Hawaiian vacation to go there.

More Kickstarter

Here's one of the food related Kickstarter projects I am backing. I like the idea, the people look nicer than nice, and their creativity and love of what they do really shows in their pitch video.

Kickstarter

Ever hear of Kickstarter? It is a very neat idea. Basically people pitch ideas that need a little starter money to get off the ground. If you like the idea you can help "kickstart" the project by pledging a donation. If the project's goal is not met, the money you have pledged does not get donated. If the project goal is met, you make the donation and usually receive something from the project. Typically, what you receive varies based on the amount of your donation. Hopefully, that makes sense.

I first heard about the website a few months ago when I read about a old school grain mill trying to get up and running. Since then, I've bumped into a few Kickstart projects here and there. My interests typically lie in the food category, but a friend of mine recently put up a project. He has created a magnetic gadget mount system. It looks pretty cool. And if there is a better way to set up my GPS in the car, I want it.

If you are interested in my buddy Geoff's invention, you can check it out here and make a pledge. He is trying to raise $7000 by August 1st.