Welcome!

Yesterday I participated in a home-grown Iron Chef, and my team won! I was actually kind of the booby team mate (added when a previous team mate dropped out–I volunteered thinking that I would be more of a chopper and cleaner rather than a chef), but then some of my ideas actually worked. Phu was the workhorse and main chef-mind of the team. His summer rolls and Vietnamese curried catfish (served on a bed of shredded green onions, and topped with fried shallots and carrots) with a side dish of vermicelli and fish sauce were totally gourmet and gorgeous. He and his wife/teammate Melanie also prepared the dough for our desert flatbread, and she and Abbe wrapped 30 rolls in record tasty time. My contribution was the drink–watermelon and carrot juice, with a squeeze of lime and a dollop of vanilla ice cream (Abbe insisted the ice cream would come in handy, and it surely did); and the desert. Ahhh, the desert. The secret ingredient was carrot, so I started by boiling up carrots, with a beet (for color). Then the boiled veggies were pureed, and sweetened and spiced (with cinnamon). Then I cooked up some dark chocolate (a handy gift from my sister Zoe), mixed with Tahini and a bit of butter. Cherries from the farmer’s market were wrapped in foil and thrown on the grill. Marscapone was mixed with ricotta, sweetened a bit, and dosed with vanilla. The flatbread dough was rolled and thrown on the grill. Then smeared with the carrot puree (a beautiful deep red), and striped with marscapone and chocolate sauce. Cherries were strewn on the top, and the dish was garnished with mint leaves. Divine.

We totally deserved to win.

The other teams also delivered up tasty treats, and a great (tho soooo hot) time was had by all.

Thanks to Mandrake for hosting the event! And to Vin (last name?) for organizing it.

From Deep Economy by Bill McKibbon (which I cannot recommend highly enough–lots and lots of totally inspiring information mixed in with the very bad news):
“Do we just think we’re happier in communities? Is it just some sentimental affectation? No; the body reacts to community in measurable ways. Staggering ways. According to Robert Putnam, if you do not belong to any group at present, joining a club or a society of some kind halves the risk that you will die in the next year. A 1997 Carnegie Mellon University study found that, when researches (somewhat disgustingly) sprayed samples of cold virus directly into subjects’ nostrils, “those with rich social networks were four times less likely to come down with illness than those with fewer friends.” The national Heart, Lung and Blood Institute found that middle-aged women with large social circles had a 23 percent lower incidence of coronary artery disease. People above the age of eighty with “poor social networks” had a 60 percent higher than average chance of dementia.”