Zeemanb

Shelby- LOL...oh man, we love him too. As far as food goes with that crew, THERE is a fine example of excessive fast food dining. It always cracks me up to see any kind of celebrity who I assume to be too rich or above such things just chowing down on some Taco Bell. And when you find out the guilty pleasures of your favorite local James Beard award chefs...you don't feel so bad about your yearly journey to Red Lobster. Chefs eat real garbage, and I love that with all my heart. johnnyd- It's The Matrix red pill decision here man...if you start roasting your own, it is the end your coffee reality. An Extinction Level Event resides in that popcorn popper. And thanks very much for the compliments, it is genuinely appreciated.

Pierogi- Good point, apathy and ease are big traps. I know a lot of people who simply cut out sugar sodas and lost a lot of weight. I don't know what it's like in the rest of the country or the world, but it's pretty shocking what people (including myself prior to the stapling) consider a portion size. We've got some home cookin' type restaurants that are just wild, and of course The Cheesecake Factory has more than one location. The scariest thing....people walking out WITHOUT to-go containers, lol. Quantity equals quality....you know how that goes. I'm torn, but I probably should attempt something other than just the chicken on Sunday. I have a tri-tip and a slab of beef ribs in the freezer. May consult the sous vide gods and give it some thought....

Had a great lunch earlier today. I had to fit Lidia's in at some point because other than the great food and service, it's pretty much where I began the part time job of serious dining over ten years ago. Feels weird to realize I've been eating there for that long. It was the first place where I became a "regular" and began my habit of having a go-to server, and usually a backup go-to server for anyplace that has entered my "rotation". Lidia's will always be in the rotation. Way before I was married and still had a couple of Manhattans before dinner and however much wine I could afford with dinner, I really took it to the wall eating there almost every weekend. Awesome credit card debt seed money. After I had gastric bypass I didn't go back for a long time, and by the time I had dinner there again I'd also quit drinking. I figured, oh great, they will have forgotten me and I'll be a pariah now that I'm not plunking down the wine money. Open arms, a warm welcome back from many familiar faces, like I'd still been there every weekend, great table on a weekend evening. Gracious and fun folks. Probably the best memory I have is from the night my grandfather got to meet his all-time, numero uno food hero of all time...Mario Batali. Mario was in town for a promotional dinner and we took him down there for Father's Day. Grandpa passed away a couple of years ago, and that story still comes up when the family gets together. Way more heartwarming but not nearly as funny as the first time I met Mario....it was back in the Po days, and I remember saying to him "Yeah, I think my mom is still in there", when he was trying to force the bathroom door open because he didn't think anyone was in there. A very distant second greatest Lidia's memory was a meal my mom and I had up in the loft, hosted by the queen herself. Lidia told a funny story about sneakng a very large stash of fresh white truffles into the country that morning. Then she took those same truffles around the room to show everyone as the servers sat a plate of risotto in front of each of us. After the risotto was in place she walked around to every diner and shaved the white truffles down onto the warm rice. She used an obscenely decadent amount of truffles on each dish, and it pretty much ruined me for truffles for life. The all-encompassing funk, like a wild rotting carcass in the very best way possible, it was sooooo far over the top. And the smell freaked my mom out. So I got to eat hers too. And I also got to eat her foie gras. Big points for mom. Mario kicking in the door on her, and ending up minus two courses in Lidia's loft. I probably don't have to say much as far as explaining who Lidia Bastianich is, or the ties that she and her unlikable son Joe have to Mario and a good sized New York restaurant empire. Lidia's Kansas City is modeled after Becco. Upscale casual, and it is located in an old freighthouse building in the crossroads art district. In all the years I've been dining at Lidia's, I've probably eaten lunch there less than ten times. Solid menu. Met a friend to catch up over some grub and maximize the number of photos.... Bread service- all made in-house... Their famous Caesar Salad, truly my favorite version ever... Most pointless photo ever, but very tasty potato leek soup with saffron broth... The pasta trio...servers roam the floors with big pans of this all you can eat Lidia's favorite. The housemade filled pasta today was beef, pork and chicken agnolotti, cavatappi with heirloom tomatoes, and housemade fettucine with one of the cured Italian meats I'm not remembering and some other stuff.... The lunch entree special of the day was this beautiful piece of barramundi over an heirloom tomato and cucumber salad... I'm not a big dessert person, and to be honest, for long time the desserts at Lidia's were JUST okay. With Danica Pollard in the pastry kitchen now, the desserts are dynamite. A perfect mix of tradition and creativity. When it's available, her basil ice cream is just the best stuff. Dessert today was a lemon cake (texture more like a biscuit) with blueberry jam in the middle, fresh blueberries, orange blossom ice cream and cardamom streusel... And that is IT for Tuesday. Hoping to pull off a fieldtrip of sorts tomorrow afternoon if we can both skip out of the office and are emotionally prepared to handle one of my favorite stretches of KC.

Man, when they expect you to work at work, that is just outrageous. Very long day learning an antiquated mainframe system from someone who retires next Friday. We were planning on BLT's with some nice heirloom tomatoes I got at the market this weekend, but we realized...no thawed bacon. Yeah, we could have done a quick thaw, but then...who wants to fry that stuff in this heat? Sooooo...here is some reality dining for you tonight. And later I'll come back and post everything from lunch today. Perfectly ripe Crum's heirloom tomato and Farm to Market Grains Galore sandwiches, and a "fresh from the freezer" bowl of chickpea and kale soup. The soup is fantastic, it has whole wheat shell pasta and ground turkey in it as well. Huge contender for precious freezer space We have eaten a ton of fresh kale this season, I just love it. Hey, I'll bet a little dollop of bacon jam on top of some slow cooked kale wouldn't suck. Hanging out in the cool basement, watching the best of what Bravo Network has to offer after a long day. I want to star on a Bravo show where I live with Jeff Lewis from Flipping Out and all we do is try to think of something to say that makes the other person cry. That would be the most brutal show ever. Back in a little while with some Lidia's. I have to go sit under a tree like Hazel from Cannery Row, and think about what direction to take with an evening meal to come. I can either do a REALISTIC Friday dinner where we jockey for position on who is choosing and pickng up the carryout, OR I could cook something I've never tried before.

Yeah, I actually started by using an offset configuration on the same Weber Kettle I still own. Good BBQ is definitely possible on a Kettle...and you can probably figure out by using one if BBQ is enjoyable enough for you personally to take the leap get a smoker. I just tell EVERYONE to get a smoker right out of the chute, because when garage sale season starts....boy....my collection grows exponentially, .

Oh, no problem at all sharing some BBQ info. You just know how it can go around here...far less involved conversations can result in a “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin” free for all, lol. So everything from this point forward is just in MY experience and opinion, disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer, caveat, caveat, caveat.... Basically, everyone has to answer questions about how much will I cook, how often will I cook, and how much do I want to spend, for themselves. I know there are tons and tons of BBQ discussions on eGullet, but I can absolutely give you a brief synopsis of how I do it and have done it for about ten or so years. I own three Weber Smokey Mountain bullet smokers. I rarely ever have to fire up more than one to accomplish what I need for the groups I feed (if necessary I’ll prepare longer cooking meats like brisket and pork butt the day before, and then do ribs, chicken, sausage, etc. the day of). I know people with $2000 Hasty Bakes who only fire them up once or twice per year, but they look awfully cool out on the patio, so again, the sky is the limit if you’re wanting to get a cool rig. If I were going to go all out and buy a larger rig it would probably be a Good One “Rodeo”. If I were going to tell you “hey, buy this one”, I’d recommend the newer 22.5 inch Weber Smokey Mountain. More space, same principle. You can get them for around $350 on Amazon, and with virtualweberbullet.com you’ve got a massive amount of tested and trustworthy information specific to Weber bullets. I don’t grill very often, but I do have the Weber 22.5 inch grill which I’ve enjoyed when I’ve needed it. I don’t use gas grills, probably never will, just the stubborn curmudgeon in me. When you start smoking meat, go with chicken and country style ribs (thickly sliced Boston butt/pork shoulder)...play around with rubs, burn it, under cook it, destroy it, just take time to learn about how your specific smoker retains heat, how often you need to add coals, whether you like water in the water pan or do like a lot of us and just fill it with sand (there’s an angels/head of a pin topic). Use more wood, less wood, see which wood you like...most of the time I just use a combo of hickory and either apple or cherry. Once you get comfortable with how it all works and start cooking edible meat, practice on ribs when you find them on sale for your short cooks, and pork butt for the longer cooks. Leave brisket alone for a while, that is just my advice. It’s way easier to make a horrible brisket than it is a moderately just-okay pork butt. Berkshire pork butt is a favorite thing of mine to smoke, and now that my butcher will get brisket points for me I only cook burnt ends...no sliced brisket. In my opinion, a proper burnt end is the height of bbq, so I don’t want to use smoker space on brisket flats. I’m happy to cook ribs, but I don’t like to buy ribs. I’m pretty anti-sauce with my bbq, and I know I’m in a pretty small minority there. And if what I cooked was ever only as good as the best restaurant at this point...I would be absolutely inconsolable. With bbq, it’s all about your personal taste and it takes a ton of practice to dial it in. But once you get used to it, it’s remedial-level easy. Total muscle memory. No clue if all of that even approaches valuable info for you, but if you ever have any general or specific questions I’m always happy to share how I do it.

patti- Thanks for the encouragement, what I'll probably end up doing after the carpal tunnel dies down next week, is spoof myself over on my blog by writing one of the same food reviews in my native tongue. gfweb- It's actually pretty amazing, and I'm assuming not limited to the midwest...a ton of bad food that costs less than eight bucks makes it great food. And I obviously LOVE trashy, fatty food, but geez.... Oh man, it is hot out today. Normally the only thing that would get me out of the office in this crap is if our new Trader Joe's was running a two for one special on jars of Toffee Coated Human Souls. BUUUTTT due diligence beckons....off to Lidia's in a minute...come on Blazer, I know you have it in you.

And here is today’s breakfast...the last of the pork from Port Fonda. I was thinking last night on the way home that it may seem crazy if it looks like I’m eating a ton of food if I’ve had gastric bypass. To put things in perspective, one of those pork tacos is definitely enough for my meal…protein is key once you’ve had surgery because with your limited capacity, it processes very slowly and provides the satiety that carbs won’t. I’m still a big guy, but at my lowest weight I’d taken off about 150-160 pounds. It has bumped up about 20 pounds in the last 2 years, which is definitely a concern, but can be corrected almost immediately when I reduce carbs and just get off of my sedentary butt. You lose a bunch of weight, start feeling good, shopping at “normal” clothing stores, and you get comfortable...which is very dangerous. And carbs are what we refer to as “slider foods”, because when you eat them they go through the new stomach almost immediately and you can just keep on eating. In a nutshell, that is how people who have had surgery put so much weight back on. The surgery is just a tool, it’s not a magic bullet, you still have to work like a fiend at staying healthy…you can just get full quicker and stay full longer than everyone else. Some bypass patients can’t eat certain things...spicy foods, rice, bread, etc. I can eat pretty much anything, but MY special little superpower is how my body processes large amounts of fat. It does NOT like excessive fat intake in a short period of time. That is a good thing, in my opinion, because it puts the brakes on in a very intense way when I’m chowing down on things I shouldn’t…potato chips, fries, ice cream. Frozen custard should have a skull and crossbones on it….three bites and “it” happens. “It” is an almost immediate blanket of sweat, flushed face, and a feeling like a very bad, nauseous hangover has been dropped on me. Lasts for about ten minutes. Ten crappy, crappy minutes. The cool thing is, if you’re ever curious about the fat content of different restaurant foods, I’m like the canary in the mineshaft. The first time I met my wife’s dad, he took us all to Outback Steakhouse (now we all know each other well enough where I can just say “MAN! You know I’m not going to Outback!). One bite of an Awesome Blossom and two bites of my burger, and my wife looks over at me and my face is white as cigarette ash and I’m just drenched in sweat. Good times. Okay, THAT was not the tangent I was looking for...on the way into work I was thinking about that pork, which made me think about what MANY of us must experience in the workplace. Chances are, your perspective on food and dining makes you an alien. I’m not a preachy evangelist at all...to each his own foodwise, I know my priorities are skewed. I’m rockin’ the 2000 Chevy Blazer that has been paid off forever, and I didn’t fall for it when my realtor told me I could afford a bigger house than the one I bought...so I can enjoy a decent meal from time to time. Granted, if you want to get into a really good food discussion with me at the office, you’re signing on for a decent sized task. I’ll wear you down. And then word gets around, and it’s always “Oh, ask Jerry where to eat, he’s the food guy”. Which is fine, I mean, if it’s food, movies or making fun of Westboro Baptist Church which is just fifty miles down the road, I am IN as far as sharing what I know. But there is that very fine line. Recommending restaurants to co-workers...it may have already been chronicled on this site, no idea, but for me it’s a sticky predicament. I don’t ever want to come off as snobbish, because I hate those people...they don’t really enjoy food, dining out is just another way they can feel the control they crave. BUT I also don’t want to screw over one of my favorite restaurants by sending over a doofus. OR, have them come back saying the food was a rip-off because it didn’t fill them up, or it sucked because they can’t believe three scallops cost them twenty bucks. I generally try to gauge who the person is foodwise, and at the very least point them to a place that is local and dependable. It’s usually not the place they heard me raving to a friend about, which can also raise questions or hurt feelings (because people treat work too much like life, and you are their spouse or sibling...another topic entirely). I’m just protective of the places I love...I want the people I send there to be the type of folks who like to build relationships with restaurants like I do, and when you work someplace where a “normal” lunch outing is gorging at the local Chinese Buffet or the 5.99 salad and breadsticks at Olive Garden, those people are rare. Again, to each his own, General Tso’s chicken is awesome, I love Red Lobster, but the bottom line is “value” is important to everyone but it also happens to have one of the most subjective definitions on earth. I “value” bringing my lunch to work 99% of the time and having one really nice weekend dinner at one of my favorite joints a couple of times per month, vs. an array of $5-$8 lunchtime chowfests that probably end up costing about as much as my one dinner. Anyway, just throwing all of that out there. Rambling to impress myself at how I’ve written this much without letting Profanity Jerry off the chain...

They serve steak at Cheddar's? OH! In your FACE! Yeah, we both know our pork and that thing was just....indescribable. When you are in town, a stop by the Port Fonda trailer for tacos will be at the top of the list.

So, so true! Jerry- I am enjoying your blog tremendously. I love your exuberant style and endless enthusiasm. And your writing is just great. Thanks for sharing your week with us, I can't wait to read what's next! Thank you! I really enjoyed reading your blog as well...it gave me some good homework- my therapist has been helping me not to view people who have immediate access to fresh seafood as evil step-siblings, . My wife and I were both dying over the Bali Hai photos....if I say we are "sushi people", what I really mean is we live for biggest, most non-traditional and fully loaded rolls we can find.

The poppers might take a little practice if you're baking-challenged like me. If you bake much at it should be like making those pre-cut dough Tollhouse cookies, lol. Bacon jam is really, really easy, just takes a whlle. You hit a point where you think it will never get done, but it comes together nicely. As far as Meredith's planning, it's a lifesaver. We both drive about 45 minutes each way to work, and when cooking starts to cut into our Bravo Network tv viewing, things start getting weird. She's great at coming up with ideas, and I don't think she's come up with anything yet I won't eat. The veggie burger experimentation has always paid off. For people who love pork, steak, etc., we manage to work ton of veggie dishes into our diet. Ooooh, another thing- Judy/moosnsqrl got us a panini maker for a wedding gift, and oh my that thing has come in a close third to the freezer and foodsaver as far as overall use. I'm finishing up some coffee roasting, and reading some of Douglas Baldwin's sous vide book....may end up doing something new later in the week, who knows! This heat is just unreal, so sous vide is a pretty smart choice. Plan number one for tomorrow is lunch at Lidia Bastianich's KC outpost.....

As we all know, the real reason anyone ever has people over for dinner is because it forces them to finally clean the house. We are no different. We live by it. Since my gastric bypass almost 4 years ago, my attitudes and emotions connected to food consumption have changed dramatically. I can only eat so much in one sitting, so the bites count for more. ALSO, the darker, food-addiction side of the coin is kept somewhat at bay because the main focus of cooking is no longer “how much can I possibly eat?”. In short, it chilled me out and gave me some breathing room that allowed me to really start cooking good food. The Sopranos Cookbook dinner was my first big event, and since then I’ve had LOTS...I don’t really count bbq’s, but I’ve used cookbooks like Nose to Tail, French Laundry, Ad Hoc, Momofuku, and many other “faincy” books as themes for various dinners. A lot of it has been just to see if I could do it...I think Momofuku stretched me the most. Once “Under Pressure” arrives, we will see how THAT goes. And the mailman just delivered "Sous Vide for the Home Cook", sweeeet! For yesterday’s meal, I wanted to put together something pretty casual (it’s the hottest week of the summer so far), but eGullet-y enough to write about. Solution: something that used my new Sous Vide Supreme. All of the talk about do it yourself immersion circulator kits with all the tubes and wires and whatnot, while incredibly impressive, is just clicks and whistles by the time it reaches my brain. I need simple. I need self-contained. OR I’m never going to use it like I should. The SVS is perfect for my needs. And who doesn’t love fried chicken? Specifically, who doesn’t love Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc fried chicken recipe (BTW, if anyone has favorite additions or tweaking they’ve done to the recipe I would LOVE to hear about it. I want to make this a LOT and would like to personalize it a bit more). I followed it pretty much to the tee, BUT after the chicken came out of the brine it went into the SVS for a couple of hours at 60C. The herb and cheese poppers and bacon jam both made an appearance...and boy are they handy to have on the table when you are running late like I was. I think this combo is absolutely fantastic. Splitting open the layers of that little biscuit and adding a dollop of the jam...hard stuff not to love. I think I spontaneously broke out into "the robot" the first time I tried it. My wife made my favorite cole slaw….I think it’s just a basic creamy slaw recipe but once she started adding chopped candied jalapenos it has been the only slaw allowed in the fridge. Important Note- any of the sweet and hot jalapeno slices we’ve found in the store are not good…for this job you need a jar from some farmer’s market or fair, or one of those little country knick knack shops where they have corn relish and all that. If someone has an easy recipe, let me know. I’d love to can some of my own. I remember my grandmother making sweet pickles by just dumping a ton of sugar into a jar of dill pickles and letting them sit. So that experiment is calling my name. Bowl of mixed cherry tomatoes fresh from our CSA farmers, Crum’s Heirlooms. A little salt, pepper and drizzle of good olive oil. Okay now, the GRITS…these days I just use some locally produced grits from Meinke farms, and I get them through my CSA farmers. I purchase the coarsest grind available. Not sure how well the picture shows it, but you’ve got big chunks of corn all the way down to dust. They take a little longer, you want to cook them a little lower and slower due to the non-uniform structure. Huge flavor. I’ve been cooking them in whole milk, which is what I did yesterday. I’ve always used Shatto Farms milk, but the latest controversy here in town is the way Shatto has been closing some of their smaller accounts and refusing to pick up new customers who can’t put in megamart sized orders. I’m not looking to start trouble with Shatto, but this is something I’ve heard now from several independent sources in the industry who would never say it if it weren’t true, and it is a little disturbing. They are a local company and they create an excellent product…and when I saw that my local Price Chopper started to carry ALL of their products, including the highly sought after cheese curds, I just assumed that it was because local mom and pop stores and restaurants already had what they needed. Not the case. At all. I’m a big believer in dancing with the one that brung ya, and dumping the people who have supported them all along for the convenience of fewer, larger orders is just not good business. END OF SOAPBOX...yesterday when I cooked my grits I grated a ton of good Idiazabal cheese in there. I like the nuttier, slightly more pungent flavor over manchego, and the salt flavor isn’t as pronounced as some good parm. Right at the end I added some farm fresh, picked the day before, corn kernels. Not bad grits, but of course as soon as I started eating them I thought...I bet throwing in some fried okra right at the last second would be good...bacon is always a winner...this train never stops. As I mentioned above, Thomas Keller’s chicken that is served at Ad Hoc is something that is very, very well documented on the web. I made it once before and it turned out great. For those unfamiliar, the short story is the chicken is brined overnight, and it is double dipped in buttermilk and heavily seasoned flour before frying. The addition of sous vide made this damn near foolproof. All you’re really doing is getting the crust as brown as you like it since the chicken is already cooked. If I had to be nitpicky, I’d say that perhaps the texture of the skin closest to the meat comes out a little flabby since you aren’t rendering as much when you fry it for the shorter amount of time. But that is just a non-issue. This chicken KILLS what they serve at places like Stroud’s here in KC. And my wife and I both agree that while it is good right out of the fryer, if you let it sit for a while until it gets to room temperature it’s even better. Feel free to ask if you want any specific details about anything. I figure it’s always easier to add commentary later than ramble until you hit all possible angles. As far as pictures go, normally I'd show more of the prep work because after the first breading you let the chicken sit on a rack for 20 minutes, etc. HOWEVER, I was running behind. Something about misunderestimating the time it took me to ramble on eGullet yesterday morning.... For dessert my wife did a homemade key lime pie. She says it’s super easy…I’ll stick to savory cooking. It’s one of my favorite pies, and she did a great job. There is something about the way the pie filling soaks down into and kind of “candies” the homemade graham cracker crust that makes it a delicious entity unto itself. I THINK that is it for dinner yesterday, we’re pretty proud of the way it turned out and we had no complaints from the guests. That chicken is going to stay in my regular rotation. It's a little bit of tedium, but well worth it. Tonight we’re having Ad Hoc chicken and Port Fonda pork leftovers. It’s early in the evening, if I can think of anything I forgot I’ll add it later.

Shelby- Thank You! Glad to know our cute little story could pull some heartstrings! Yeah, you are right in the frying pan. Over here we at least have tiny bits of terrain that will shield us from the heat from time to time...y'all over in Kansas are COOKED! Okey dokey....eating lunch and typing time.... I was the first male child born into a large family with a mom who is the oldest of five daughters. I am The Chosen One. Aaannnd it has taken me 42 years to begin to realize what a lucky and spoiled schmoe I am...because in many ways I am often paid tribute above and beyond what any son, grandson, or nephew deserves. When The Chosen One finally takes a wife, that rite of passage is celebrated with pomp, ceremony, and wonderful gifts from one and all. And man, greatest wedding gift EVER- a chest freezer! For the first year or so my wife and I had to contend with this tiny, TINY old fridge that belonged to my ex-girlfriend. You had to defrost it, it didn’t stay cold, horrible. So once we had a REAL fridge and that freezer...let the stockpiling begin! I went online and bought a few hundred of those plastic quart containers like the ones they use for carryout egg drop soup, etc. We are big, big fans of just heatin’ and eatin’ in the evenings, and we have many go-to recipes where we’ll make an extra four or five quarts. This would be the perfect topic for my wife to chime in, because she has done a lot of different recipes that take very well to the freezer. Some of our workhorses are things like pozole, chili, KC steak soup, vegetable soup, pretty standard fare. If it wasn’t so hot this week I’d put my pozole on display, because I like to think I could take the Pepsi challenge against almost anyone with that stuff. She did one with our CSA kale recently that really rocked. Oh, and throw in the majesty of another wedding gift...our big Foodsaver, and the freezer gets stocked with my homemade braised oxtail ravioli, bbq, peaches, corn, you guys all know the drill. I always do as much ahead as possible when planning a meal. And I work clean folks...cleaning as I go, driving my wife insane in the process. When I’m cooking, I like it to look like the only thing that exists on the counters and in the sink is whatever I’m doing at that moment in time...I know, I know, having a heart attack when you see caked-on ANYTHING piled up in the sink is BAD...medication MAY be able to help. Anyway, for yesterday’s meal I had already made up a big batch of two tried and true crowd pleasers...herb and cheese poppers from a Bon Appetit recipe, and BACON JAM! When it comes to listing out or linking to actual recipes, you guys just let me know what is standard, preferred or guideline-friendly. I’m easy. Nothing I make is usually that involved, and recipes are just a jumping off point for me most of the time, but I am HAPPY to detail something whenever you need it. Some say bacon has jumped the shark these days, but I don’t know what in the hell their problem is...has oxygen jumped the shark too? Have opposable thumbs jumped the shark? I’m sure bacon jam has been detailed on this site, but if you are not familiar with it, it’s just so delicious and versatile. AND it freezes just great! When you are basically creating a “bacon reduction”, it is very important to work with good ingredients. Our go-to bacon is from Burger’s Smokehouse here in Missouri. Their bacon is solid stuff, good country ham, and some of the meatiest smoked hocks I’ve ever used. My preference is to chop the bacon up first, and then cook it to this level of doneness. You don’t want it crispy, but you also want to get as much fat rendered as possible. The reason is that when you are cooking down the jam, the bacon continues to render and the fat pools up on the top for you to spoon out. I’m not saying bacon jam is healthy, but you really do get more fat rendered in the process than any other bacon vehicle I can think of…and it is so flavorful that a little goes a LONG way. Basically, in my modified recipe you just cook down a pound of bacon (what you’re seeing is double this recipe), sauté one large onion and 6 cloves of garlic in as little of the fat as possible, and then add in a mix of: 1 ¼ cup coffee, ¼ cup maple sugar, 1/3 cup cider vinegar, 3tbsp brown sugar, hot sauce and black pepper to taste. I use my home roasted French press coffee and dark Grade B maple syrup from Whole Foods. You simmer it nice and slow for 3 hours or so, adding a little water as needed. Looks ugly when you start… After about 2 hours… At 3 ½ hours I could have cooked it down even more but wanted to pull it early for comparison purposes. Whiz it in the food processor to a texture you like (does not look beautiful)… Here is what double the recipe above yielded… The herb and cheese poppers are easy, but annoying if you hate to bake like I do. I hate dealing with flour unless it’s for a roux….just hate it. I first saw the recipe in Bon Appetit, but long story short any basic buttermilk biscuit recipe would work. The “official” one includes: 2 3/4 cups all purpose flour 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon sugar 3/4 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, frozen 1 1/2 cups chilled buttermilk Mix the dry ingredients, grate the frozen butter in there and distribute it, mix in the buttermilk, work it a little and you’re ready to go. And then you just get a mixture of grated cheddar cheese and fresh herbs that you like…..I used parsley, rosemary, basil and thyme. Roll it out to an 8x8ish squareish shape and cover 2/3 of it with the herb and cheese mix- Tri-fold it like a letter- Then you flatten it back out to the original size, cover 2/3 with the cheese mixture, fold it, roll it…repeat that three more times and once you have it rolled out you’re ready to cut- Here’s a cross-section- These things freeze just GREAT…single layer in parchment, then wrapped in foil, let them defrost and bake them at 500F until they are a color you like…ten or fifteen minutes. Got some finished product to show when I post the dinner. Oh yeah, here was my exciting lunch I was eating this whole time.... Will be back later with some finished products......

Good Morning! Thanks everyone for your kindness, I truly am enjoying myself and I hope to do my town and the eG Food Blog tradition justice. As I have time today I'll do a couple of things- share the Zeeman home tradition of making stuff ahead and freezing, and post all about the chicken dinner from yesterday. If that doesn't thrill you, I will put things in perspective with this morning's breakfast- OATMEAL!! Yep, I just made myself "legit" by showing you a real Monday morning....my wife is pretty awesome when it comes to packing us some food, but the anticipation of Monday morning is bad enough that I don't expect any work out of either of us. Fortunately we have a solid cafeteria downstairs here at the office. Totally unhealthy lunchwise, but tasty....fried catfish, oxtails, greens, banana pudding with 'Nilla wafers...that type of stuff makes frequent appearances on the menu. It's no Aramark! Anyway, good to be here, talk to you soon.....

Well, the PLAN was to have enough leftovers for all day today....but we barely saved enough just to have a dinner tonight, supplemented with a little bit of leftover pork from Port Fonda. Sorry kid, but I WILL say that the Keller chicken is easy enough to make at this point that I'll happily feed you soon...admission fee is tomato water.

Dinner in Port Fonda's "El Comedor" on Saturday night... One of the greatest things about my hometown is that our food community is a food "community". As our evening was winding down last night, I was kind of blown away by the fact that not only did my wife and I get to enjoy what is absolutely one of the best meals happening in KC right now, we got to have that meal right in the midst of some of our greatest chefs and suppliers. At one point in the Airstream, in addition to Chef Patrick Ryan, Dave Crum and Howard Hanna who were hanging out...the other four people in our party were the Fantasma's of Paradise Locker Meat fame. I'm just some dude who likes to eat, so for me it was a big deal...and if you're from here you know what I mean. All fanboy BS aside, the reason some of my personal heroes were all casually assembled is simple....they support each other and love to share their enthusiasm and their success. Again, I'm just some diner, but when you're friendly, emotionally invested in what you are doing, proud of your food and your food is great- I keep coming back, I tip really well, and make sure the people I have personally vetted visit you as well. If you end up moving across town, I start driving across town. ANYWAY- as I mentioned before, Chef Patrick Ryan has created a hell of a lot more than just another taco truck. He spent a lot of time cooking with a lot of great people, and this year he completely rebuilt and customized an Airstream trailer to fit his vision. On paper it's just tacos, tortas, chilaquiles, horchata, nothing really new in this latest food truck craze...in REALITY what he has done is create the kind of spot where local chefs and service folks flock after hours, and where you will find what is arguably one of the hardest tables to book outside of Rao's.... (First of all, apologies to Patrick and I guess all other chefs I'll talk about this week...I can either take pictures or write stuff down, I can't do both. It would make me want to die. This week I'm taking pictures, so I'm totally going to blow it as far as ingedient details and such.....BUT I promise to make up for it in enthusiasm.) Port Fonda is a taco trailer. It's open for lunch a few days per week, and late on weekends. Walkup service and they serve great food with as much attention paid to local products as possible. The length they go to in order to support our local producers is admirable. An example what you may purchase on any given evening is a lengua taco like the one I had last night....slow cooked and grilled beef tongue served over Boulevard beer braised Rancho Gordo hominy "creamed corn", topped with salsa verde. Inside the trailer is a six-person table, "El Comedor", and Patrick books a month in advance...8:30 and 11:30 seatings on Friday and Saturday only. It's not really a reservation "system", it's not really a lottery...I know Patrick puts a lot of thought into the best way to approach it. The fact I've been lucky enough to eat there a couple of times proves he's not catering to hipsters or the wealthy...I know he values those of us who love good food and good times...who take their food, but not themselves, too seriously. Last night was a simple matter of my email hitting his mailbox within the right five seconds. A newsteam had cancelled or something, but I grabbed it with absolutely no idea who would join me. Long story short, after a little panic, and a not so little miscommunication to some friends, my wife and I ended up dining with the aforementioned rockstars of the KC food community. Paradise Locker Meats....you'll be seeing and hearing more about that place later.... The dining format is a four course meal. It is dinner AND a show. Old school hip hop, Grand Ole Opry....good stuff pumping on the stereo. And during the heat of summer, it is warm in there, but they did just upgrade their AC. Heat is ambience, the weak can go eat at Jose Pepper's or On The Border. I hear the spinach queso dip is to die for. Last night the first course was a refreshing little mix of seasonal vegetables, crumbly queso, and my unforgivable lack of memory. Next we got into more advanced alchemy with this spin on chilaquiles. Tortillas, tomatillo based chile sauce, and some of that insanely tender and rich beef tongue. It was so well received Patrick just went ahead and brought us a little dish of it. On top he put a perfectly fried Campo Lindo egg. This was the stuff. It would be my ultimate "wake up late on Sunday" breakfast dish. Before I deliver the real goods I want to say that I'm a pork guy. Specifically a pork shoulder guy. And I pride myself on acquiring good breeds like Berkshire and properly cooking it on my smoker or roasting it my oven.....rubs, glazes, salt and herb crusts...I love me my pork. Then Patrick Ryan went and did THIS- And he built a halo around it like THIS- Berkshire pork that is dry cured in salt, sugar and chiles for a day, then slow roasted, taken out and caked with brown sugar and chile, and finished at a high temp in order to create what is the pork equivalent of a candy apple. He hands you tongs, fresh tortillas, and you just tear the thing to shreds....fighting each other for the candied skin and trying to decide on condiment combinations.....avocado, pickled red onion, pickled jalapenos, habanero and carrot salsa, a kicked up chile mayo, puree of chipotle and garlic, various salsas and sauces....sucking down horchata, various Mexican and Central American sodas, or BYOB. It is a feast that combines a Bayless-level attention to quality and execution with sense memories of any time you've spent down Mexico way combined with Grandma's house. I think that is about the best I can do to describe it. It is not the worst main course I've ever had. And Patrick knows pastry, so the death blow is ricotta fritters that are infused with the flavors of tres leches and horchata and then they are covered with a tres leches and raspberry sauce. Not the easiest table to get, but there's nothing pretentious about it. Just great food for people who love to eat and want to enjoy the experience. Like I stated before, I'm not in the industry, I'm in no way connected to any business that gives me pull or popularity. And that works to my advantage in one very distinct way....when I have these types of evenings where I'm chatting with very loveable industry people about why THEY live for food, I get to enjoy it more. So there you go....more about some of the supporting characters in the days to come....

heidih- Thanks, and YES, absolutely...one of the greatest things about my wife is the "Bonnie and Clyde" aspect we share when it comes to food. And I will also say, she's the REAL cook in the house....I'm a total fraud. I'll come up with some big menu that takes me 2 weeks to plan and gets ooohs and aahhhs, but if were not for her I'd be eating cold soup out of a can on any given evening. She does the actual work and I run my mouth alot....isn't that basically just a concise definition of being a male???

Quick note- I will start a full write-up in the mornng, but right now I'll just say that the Ad Hoc fried chicken with the pre-cooked sous vide bird is the way to GO! I have a hard time tasting/enjoying my own cooking, but that was some flavorful and juicy chicken. But to Judy's point, even though the AC was cranked and I only had to fry long enough to brown the crust, I am wiped...hot, hot, hot day. We're all hiding out in my basement watching a movie....stuffed full of chicken, grits and key lime pie. Wonderful Sunday evening programming be damned, later I'll get my Port Fonda dinner from last night written up. Saying that Chef Patrick Ryan runs a taco truck, in MY opinion, is kind of like saying David Chang runs a Panda Express, lol...

Countless peccadilloes aside, I have to say I AM the model of efficiency in the kitchen, so with the time I bought myself by doing as much for today's meal ahead of time as I could.....I'll give you some more photos: We just had our deck redone and decided that we'd plant fewer herbs this year. Due to the slope, drainage, etc. in our backyard we just do all of our herbs in pots....and the last couple of years we planted so many it was ridiculous. Stuck to the basics this time around.... I'll add another one of these with less of the kitchen in it, in case this one gets squishy when it's compressed....but here's where I keep most of the hardware. I had no idea I had a small kitchen until a friend of mine told me! The wall behind the rack is coming out, probably later this year. We're wanting to open up that space and get some more storage in the process. We live in a split-entry home circa 1973, and it would be nice to have one big kitchen/dining room/living room space upstairs. There it is from the other angle. Small but we pack a lot in there. And man is it nice to have a new fridge and a GAS STOVE! How did I use electric for so long.... KNIVES! I don't know what the best cutlery is, but I know what I like. For precision I love Shun and for butchery or hacking away I love all that German steel. And yes, I do find Rachael Ray's Furi to be a pretty handy and well-weighted little sucker. The huge Bowie knife in the upper left is something I included to be funny....kind of. I'm going to use it as a BBQ slicing/ripping knife once I get a razor edge on it, but my father-in-law actually made that knife for me as a bday gift 2 years ago. Yeah, he's basically the coolest dude in the world....crafts period knives and for a long time did firearms as well. The one he made me is purty, but it's also incredibly balanced and made with this very nice piece of Damascus... As far as our library goes, here's the main stash of books. I love READING cookbooks, but when it's time to cook I just go and print a copy of the recipe off of internet and toss it later. I know, tree killer. We do keep several of those giant three ring binders we have filled with recipes too. They're all in sheet protectors and come from either Bon Appetit or printed off of the web. That is definitely the majority of our go-to recipes we tend to make regularly. Grad school ruined me for ever reading another real book for the rest of my life, but I LOVE buying and reading cookbooks. Right now I'm working on Michel Richard's "Happy in the Kitchen", and "Under Pressure" is on its way.... Okay, I guess I should get started on preparing for today's big meal- - Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc Fried Chicken - Local grits with fresh corn and Idiazabal cheese - Homemade herb and cheese biscuits with bacon jam - Candied jalapeno cole slaw - Fresh tomatoes - Homemade Key Lime Pie This week will be kind of feast or famine timewise, but my plan for today is to eat a lot of this food, and then after our guest are gone I'll post our dinner from LAST night. Monday at the fed is pretty slow, so I should have time tomorrow to post all of today's meal and photos. And of course will enter into the discussion fray whenever possible. Back to life on the surface of the sun...

Chicken is resting comfortably at 60C, and about twenty more photos have been loaded onto my desktop.... Now THIS I can actually answer with SOME authority...... You have to use the Poppery II hot air popcorn popper, which you can find on any number of auction sites, but I've gotten great results with one for ten years. That being said, I'm not super picky about evenness of roasts or any of that, so I don't have much interest in investing in a "real" roaster. Sites like sweetmarias.com will have more info than I could ever give you, but essentially you just put some green coffee beans in the popper, turn it on, wait until you hear "first crack", and then there is also a "second crack"....which is where I usually take the beans. There are many levels of roast, and depending upon the bean and your particular preferences, experimentation will be your guid. This is literally one of the easiest and most cost effective food-nerd hobbies you can get into. And once you roast your own, that's it for you. So be warned. Genkinoanna- Point taken....point taken....I wasn't awake yet...a surplus of bacon is always the goal, . **Edited for the fact that this desktop is ancient and spontaneously posts for me before I can type anything, but the chair is comfy....and I wanted to add a picture

Starting to wake up a little. No idea about breakfast. That question doesn't generally enter my mind before I can get some of this coffee in me. We have a couple of friends coming over at 2:30 for fried chicken, so we may just gut it out. And if so, I promise you boring shots of a handful of peanuts or a hard boiled egg at some point this week. COFFEE TALK, and then I'm off to vacuum seal some brined birdy and get it in the Sous Vide Supreme.... Okay, the way I do coffee is going to drive real coffee people nuts. I love the coffee threads, people blow my mind with their knowledge and dedication to the art. BUT people who drink Folgers look at ME like I'm one of YOU...so I've got that going for me. Which is nice. This is where it all begins, I've been home roasting for about ten years or so and have zero plans to upgrade my methods- Here we see my Poppery II hot air popcorn popper (when one starts to take longer roasting, I buy another) and a wide array of green beans from Sweetmarias. As a junky, I have to make sure we will never....EVER...be without beans, and right now I probably have about 40ish pounds out in the garage. My current stockpile includes Ethiopian Nigusie Lemma, Yemen Mokha Ismaili, Bali Natural Monsooned, and Sweetmarias Liquid Amber Espresso Blend. Once I find something I like, I stick with it. My workhorse is usually Ethiopian Harar when a good batch is available. My FAVORITES are the Yemen Mokha Ismaili and Aged Sumatra. My methodology for trying a new bean is very scientific- whenever they post something from Africa or Asia that is listed as "Intensity- Bold", I order some. As far as hardware in the kitchen, I use a good old Bodum French Press, a big Chemex and a 10-cup Bialetti Moka Pot. My grinder is a Capresso Infinity. On the weekend when we're not necessarily wanting to see through walls, I'll break out the Chemex. During the WEEK, well, I make it strong....I get up and get the Moka pot and the French Press going. Our drive-to-work cups come from the Moka Pot, and the pressed batch goes into a thermos and comes to work with me. There you go. After ten years of practice, that is what it comes down to. And while it's about three hundred degrees too warm to sit on the deck with a cup and occasional cigar, here's a testament to my "dudeness"...because nothing goes with coffee like a serious stick from an island south of Miami.... I only enjoy about two per month, always on the golf course, and always with a travel cup of my homeroast in hand. A pocketful of bacon and the scenario would be perfect. I'll be checking in between getting the chicken prepped and starting dinner...thanks everyone for reading! I will do my best to interrupt your work days this week.

French Press is a steepin'... NORMALLY I don't sleep in like a lazy slug, but the porkfest and staying up too late last night took its toll. I'm realizing just how bad of a hit Farmville is going to take this week.....my neighbors are not going to be happy about their lack of free gift deliveries. rarerollingobject- Now you've gone and made me feel weird about the fact that I didn't have any cooking planned from "Fat" or "Bones" at any point this week.....will revisit, lol. They really ARE Bibles. Pierogi- Happy Birthday! Only the finest among us were born in July. Glad you enjoyed the intro- I usually error on the side of "too much information", and in this particular case I wanted to soften you all up a little bit with the romantic stuff so I have more latitude later if I go off the reservation. Sylvia- I generally try running something past my wife if I have any question about where it is on the gonzo-meter before I post...so far, no silent blank stares from her, but we'll see. Mainly I want to do the food blog justice....loved Peter the Eater's blog, we've had some great ones recently. Kim- Eh,you I know already, so good morning, lol. I will try to keep our shared "country mouse" enthusiasm in full effect. Darienne- Thanks so much! I will definitely, definitely be eG-friendly this week without losing too much of the punch. LindaK- The food community here is outstanding, and my HOPE is that after I get time to blog last night's dinner properly you will be filled with regret by the end of TODAY, lol. (Edited to add a response...)

Well, it’s officially Sunday and we have a whole lot to cover this week, so...hello and welcome to Missouri. I’m a troll’s troll. And as much as I’d like to pretend that I actually DO live under a bridge waiting for goats to walk by, I am looking forward to putting my OCD to work and showing you a little bit of “MY Kansas City”. To begin my blog I’ll open it with an absolutely true story…in addition to changing the way I approach food, whether it’s dining in a new city or trying a new recipe, I owe the largest part of my happy life to eGullet. For it was HERE that my lurker wife (I’m sure she’ll pop in here at some point) first spotted my gleefully grammatically challenged wordsmithing and began to stalk me…and it went like THIS- A few months after my gastric bypass surgery in 2007, I hosted a dinner party and talked about it on the Sopranos food thread: The Sopranos Dinner Thread So she saw that and was like “Oh man, this guy is going places!”, and she fell into the vortex that is my blog (which DOES contain adult themes and language…BIG time) after hopping over there to read the extended version of the dinner. My blog is kind of like a landfill and gets about ten accidental visits per day, one comment every three months…it is absolutely shill and self-promotion proof. So in the interest of including some important non-food info I’ll link to a specific post without feeling too bad about possibly boosting my traffic to twenty over the next few days. If you skip to the third comment, that is where this whole story took off after a random dinner party report. My wife-to-be happened to post to something I wrote about online dating...comments complete with John Cusack references. Anybody here have a heart?!?! Isn’t it PRECIOUS?!?!? Thoughts about dating that reeled in a wife... And so thanks to eGullet we were off and running! I was in Kansas City, she was in Richmond, Virginia...and after several months of phone calls and literally hundreds of pages of emails we arranged our first face time. Planning for a worst case scenario, she would drive to DC (which would give her a quick escape if needed), and I would fly in and have three days to eat and drink in that town…with our without her. So where was our official “first date”? Is that a rhetorical question? We were going to be in DC, and you don’t remain a bachelor until almost forty without learning a thing or two about “classy” first dates. So no brainer…minibar. BOOM. You can’t make that stuff up. And my wife mentioned how much she likes it when the eG food bloggers include a picture, so here you go- this is us on that first date, at the bar at Café Atlantico, waiting to be summoned upstairs: We had a small destination wedding in Savannah, Georgia in Whitefield Square’s gazebo. On June 25th we celebrated our second anniversary during a roadtrip to Deadwood, South Dakota (Corn Palace, Wall Drug, the works). We live in Parkville, Missouri, which is about ten minutes northwest of downtown Kansas City (Missouri…there’s another one in Kansas  ). No kids, but we do have three rescue animals...one cute but common decency-challenged cocker spaniel and two one-eyed cats. Overall, life right now is grand. And this is a FOOD blog, but I will add that what makes life so great is making it through a pretty crazy first couple of years...I mean, we did everything you’re NOT supposed to do. Long distance relationship where we both bounced back and forth between Richmond and KC, planning a wedding with the full knowledge that in a few months I would be laid off from my job, getting married and then having her leave home to move a thousand miles away...finally arriving here with no job prospects and me being out of work for what ended up being seven months. 2009 was crazy….five people in my family died that year, I got married, I quit drinking, my whole team got laid off, my bachelor pad was about to be retrofitted for estrogen-friendliness, wife looking for a job, a one-eyed cat thrown into the mix...you don’t realize how crazy it is when you’re in the middle of it. So now I am literally thankful every single day for what we’ve got; we’re both employed (I’m in IT, she’s in healthcare), we have a happy home, great family and friends...and we love our food. When the good times come you devour them, and you pass on as much good as you can to others. And life will always come back and happen to you at some point…and sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, the good times will return. And when they DO return, YOU CELEBRATE WITH A FANTASTIC MEAL! So I just wanted to give that little backdrop to set up what I’m wanting to do with this week. I could have gone a million different directions or just try to make this what I think of as “eGullet-y”. But as my wife told me, there isn’t really any NEW ground to cover on this site, so best to just personalize it and see where it goes. I’m just going to blog how I blog, food-centric and minus the wildly excessive profanity... other than that pretty unedited and full of self-amusement. You’re going to see some good food, I promise you that. I’m going to test your limits with my rambling, horrible photography, and movie references...and I AM the king of the ellipses... but it’s going to revolve around food, who we are, and what makes us love eating in KC. I’ve lived in Arizona and Minneapolis, but Kansas City Kansas is where I was born (on the 4th of July!) and most of my life has happened in the major metropolitan area. I moved to the Missouri side after my broken-hearted return from Minneapolis in 1995, because it is just better than Kansas. Sorry, it’s just true . I’ll have to leave a lot of stuff out that may tweak folks familiar with the area, but I’m always available for questions, requests, and whatever is of interest about food in my town. If it exists here, I’m probably at least aware of it, I am deeply familiar with the current scene, and we eat EVERYTHING, too bad we've only got the week. Like many eG bloggers it will be a big one-off as far as overall dining costs and calories in a seven day span. Oh, and here’s the big kicker...no BBQ. I create world class bbq, I love talking about it, and am happy to chit-chat, but that is one serious all-or-nothing topic. Plus, a Kansas City blog without bbq is just funny. I gotta be FREE! Some NEW stuff! For its size, Kansas City has an amazing food community, and I will give you just a tiny fraction….and please ignore any eye-rolling and fact checking from other KC eGulleters because MY KC is the coolest version...full of folklore and intrigue!!! Oh, and “zeemanb” is a screen name I’ve used since around 1995 when I first got online. Sadly, some from KC think it has something to do with the Z-Man sandwich at Oklahoma Joe’s BBQ…but cheese belongs on bbq about as much as mango chutney or pop rocks…or bbq sauce…so not hardly. I took the name from the character Z-Man Barzell in the Russ Meyer classic “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls”, written by Roger Ebert. My holy trinity of movie directors would be Stanley Kubrick, John Waters, and Jim Jarmusch...so there is a big clue into my voice and worldview- with deepest apologies. In the morning I’ll detail how we approach hard narcotics, er, I mean COFFEE in this house. We’ve got friends coming over in the afternoon for some Ad Hoc fried chicken, and I am DYING to post dinner from tonight. I know it happened a couple of hours earlier than the start of the blog, but I assure you it is not to be ignored. Gotta hit the hay, so until then here are a few random shots to tide you over: Photo of my favorite spoonrest. And by favorite, I mean my only spoonrest: We find that the best use for the extra plastic grocery baggies we steal is- cheap cat toy: Lastly, before I head to bed, here is some super cool food photography we bought while we were on our anniversary roadtrip: More rambles once I get the caffeine in my veins.....

You're killing me over here...I was happy just to see some great marrow bones, but wow, great looking food. It has been great reading about your trip, the food photos ALMOST top Mr. Shook's driving.... As far as the eXpresso thing, my pet peeve is "chi-POLE-tee" instead of chipotle....

Making it with a homemade biscuit, now that is the stuff. Compared to giant Belgian waffles and the stuffed French toast craze, it's practically a bowl of nonfat yogurt! Wise breakfast choice, thumbs up.