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Snacky lunch. Red Bean, Walnut, and Pomegranate Pâté from Cool Beans by Joe Yonan with olives, pickle-y stuff, walnuts. Triscuits not shown. This pâté LOOKS almost exactly like a chicken liver pâté. The taste, of course, is entirely different with sweet and tart pomegranate molasses and bright fresh garlic largely overwhelming the more earthy flavors of the beans and walnuts. Pickles are the recommended accompaniment so I started out with those skinny yellow piparra peppers in the front of the plate and some peperoncini. I enjoyed the heat but they were kind of piling on with more tartness. Olives came to mind and sure enough, some bashed up some Castelvetrano olives were just the ticket. Good thing as I've got quite a bit of that pâté!

And that's undiluted vinegar.

Good grief! 1:4 or 1:5 dilutions of vinegar in water aren't going to sanitize anything though it's quite nice to use for streak-free windows and mirrors. Bleach and hydrogen peroxide can sanitize if used correctly.

Rancho Gordo cicerchia beans with shiitake and brown beech mushrooms over polenta, which was cooked in the Instant Pot in the same little dish I served it in.

I agree. When I encounter such issues these days, I look back fondly on old labs I used to work in where we had all sorts of adapters, connectors and hose clamps that I could at least test out if not ...um....borrow 🙃

Ras el Hanout Roasted Cauliflower with Mashed Chickpeas from Tenderheart. The cauliflower gets tossed with ras el hanout and olive oil before roasting. Chickpeas get mashed into a lemony tahini dressing. All served on a bed of arugula with tomatoes and warmed up yogurt flatbread.

Deb Perelman has a recipe for a Porch Swing cocktail on her website.

I've gone back to this one and am very much enjoying it, either up or on the rocks. I'm using my homemade limoncello that I've sweetened sparingly. I followed the suggestion to reduce the vermouth and limoncello to 1/2 oz but upped the green Chartreuse to 1/2 oz as well. Lately, I've been making it with 1/2 oz of Génépy in place of the Chartreuse because my bottle is getting very low and I don't see any on the horizon in these parts.

The other day, I made the Salty Margarita Sour from Joe Yonan's Cool Beans. He credits the idea to a margarita he had at José Andrés's Mexican restaurant, Oyamel, topped with a foamy layer of "salt air" instead of a salt rim on the glass. Yonan decided to try it with a frothy layer of whipped, salted aquafaba. I don't really care for the grittiness of salt rims on cocktails but I enjoyed this version. The recipe is available online at this link. Scroll down, it's the last recipe.

Another hummus from Cool Beans. This one is Corn Hummus with Spicy Corn Relish. The recipe is available online at this link, along with several of the recipes in my previous post. There's corn blitzed into the hummus which adds lightness and flavor. In addition, the corn cobs are cooked along with the beans. Not sure they imparted a ton of flavor but I liked the idea. The yellow color of the hummus comes from the addition of turmeric.

Here is the no longer available iSi slim silicone spatula (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) added to the lineup, to the right of the tape measure. The edges are very thin, which is functionally excellent but if your cat sitter uses them to scoop out the food from pull-top cans, they get nicked, as you can see. I currently have one of these Mrs. Anderson's baking slim spatula (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) in my Amazon cart. I purchased one of these Mastrad silicone slim spatulas (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) a while back but the edges are quite thick and chunky. So far, my top contenders are this Tovolo spatula with a stainless handle (eG-friendly Amazon.com link), pretty good with a nice thin edge. I'd probably use it more if it were red 🙃 I also mentioned previously the Rose Levy Beranbaum graduated spatula (eG-friendly Amazon.com link), which is a touch narrow, but not bad either. I'll give that Thermo spoonula a good audition to see how it works.

Fusilli with White Beans, Cherry Tomatoes and Corn Sauce from Cool Beans by Joe Yonan made with Rancho Gordo Caballero beans. This is a nice summer pasta. About half the corn is grated and becomes part of the sauce and the rest simply cut off the cobs. I added sugar snap peas. Looking at the recipe, I thought lack of acid might be an issue and that I might want a little more spicy heat but made as written to see. The tomatoes do a nice job on the acid but you'd need a lot more to get some of that sweet/tart contrast in every bite. I considered olives, capers, and diced preserved lemon but they don't seem to fit the flavor profile. Sun dried tomatoes might work. I think diced peperoncini, pickled jalapeño or another mildly spicy pickled pepper might also do the trick. I'll let you know if I get around to trying it.

I bought a bunch of silicone spatulas from Thermoworks the other day when they were 40% off to see if there's one that would be a good sub for my iSi spatulas that are no longer available. Sadly, none look as good as that one but some may be serviceable. From the left are the mini spatula and spoonula. On the other side of the tape measure are the Spoonula, followed by the small, medium and large spatulas. That large spatula, that's almost 15" seems like quite the weapon. The spoonula looks most useful, though it's a lot bigger than the iSi slim spatula I'm wanting to replace. Cat? What cat?

I buy organic lemons at my local farmers market. They aren't waxed or coated with anything so I just use a scrub brush and warm water to clean them up. Hotter water would be a good idea to remove wax. Pesticides could possibly be incorporated in the skins and I haven't studied enough to know whether using a detergent is helpful in removing it. For me personally, I don't believe I consume enough lemon zest to worry about it. My homemade limoncello is probably the most risky, with a lot of zest extracted in an organic solvent (EtOH) but even there, since I'm using organic fruit, the alcohol is probably more of a health risk

You can bake a chiffon cake in a regular cake pan but it should be an uncoated pan, usually aluminum. If your pan has any sort of non-stick coating inside, forget it. The chiffon cake batter needs to be able to stick to the sides and climb up as it rises so don't grease the sides either. Likewise, if your pan has a dark coating on the outside, that's not a good idea either as it can make the edges too dark. Having a removable bottom helps getting the cake out of the pan but you can line the bottom with parchment paper and run a knife around the edges to help them release. Chiffon cakes are quite delicate but the small size of your pan may be a plus there. I'd guess that you could get two 6" layers out of a recipe made for a 10-inch tube pan. So bake one with half the batter, cool, remove the cake, wash out the pan and bake the second one. In either case, make sure to leave enough room for the cake to rise. A 10-inch tube pan is quite versatile as you can use it for angel food cakes, chiffon cakes or bundt cakes so you might check around to see if you can find one.