I had the opportunity to cook a ‘pre-thanksgiving’ thanksgiving lunch for several of my friends this last Sunday. Thanksgiving is my favorite menu of the year. Mainly due to the bread stuffing/cranberry/gravy/turkey combination… and of course the mandate to eat until it hurts… which brings out the masochist in me.
So, im guilty of taking a lot of pictures. And many of them are, i’m almost embarrassed to admit, of my cat, CAT. He is very photogenic and has this sixth sense about how to ‘be’ in a shot… hes a model. Yah…I know that sounds kinda creepy.
Since I am not very creative when it comes to naming pets my friends have each created their own names for CAT. Tony calls him ‘catface’, Karen calls him ‘Toby’, Davy calls him ‘koshka’, etc…. Princess Sprinkle Foot was an option on the table when we were going through a round of “where is the litterbox? I dont know… ill just piss anywhere the hell I feel like.”
But luckily a trip to the vet scared him enough… so now hes back to CAT.
Anyway, im going to post this ONE time a couple shots of him… and then I swear unless he learns how to knit or fly ill avoid posting more.
I had the opportunity to spend about 36 hours at my buddies farm in western pennsylvania. His family has been living in this one unique valley within a larger valley for almost a hundred years. There are two barns on the property that each are over 100 years old. I spent two nights in one under about 5 blankets. Barns are somehow cooler inside than out. Outside it was 40 degrees… inside it was frosty.
Prob the highlight of my weekend was when I had the opportunity to make a punpkin pie from scratch (though I used a calabash squash instead of a pumpkin) in a hundred year old amish barn.
I had to cobble it together from the limited ingredients I had… and it was VERY stringy. But overall it turned out really tasty. The crust was the same shortbread crust I use for just about everything. The filling was:
1 Calabash Squash (cut into 1.5inch pieces and brazed at 350 for 25 minutes until soft)
1 stick butter
6 eggs
3 tablespoons cinnamon (it was a big squash)
1 cup 2% milk (use whole if you have it)
1 cup light brown sugar
Blend together until fully mixed (use a food processor if you have one for a less stringy version). Boil on stove for 10 minutes. Pour into crust and bake for about 40 minutes. Tastes great right out of the oven. Tastes even better three days later (if it lasts that long).
Anyway, I had a great time. Its always a good thing to get out of the city for a little bit… and when you can do it for next to nothing (except for a little bit of ‘free’ labor) you gotta take advantage of it!
I bought these awesome winter squash from the 8th st. Farmers Market a couple weeks ago. They are so beautiful and creepy. The farmer claimed that they were some sort of Japanese winter squash but the only similar winter squash online is “Marina di Chioggia “… but all the images are of green or grey flesh and stubby stems… Ill try to find the same guy at the Farmers Market this next week. Till then, if anyone knows what these are please hit me up!
A few days ago I had the chance to tour the WOOT headquarters in Carrollton texas. These guys are awesome. If you don’t know the general business model its pretty simple. They sell one item all day until its sold out. The items are usually at an extreme discount and are generally things that people will actually want to buy (like a 52″ flat screen TV recently). They also have Wine WOOT, TShirt WOOT, Kids WOOT, Sellout WOOT and then of course the classic WOOT. On the back end they have a thriving wholesale business that allows them to sell off bulk items that didn’t sell out during their WOOT cycle.
WOOT Tshirt is a totally in house operation. You can see in the pics that they do all the screen printing and fulfillment themselves. Pretty great system. I asked the VP of marketing how many shirts they run through on any given day; depending on design up to 10k. Pretty impressive.
All around the walls of the tshirt manufacturing center were prints of every shirt Tshirt WOOT has printed. I saw one of mine on the wall… “Yay Broccoli!.”
