Truffle Mutt

Pancakes anyone?

 
It's freaking cold out, Jason's gone off to somewhere much nicer and most possibly warmer and I have a full-on case of the winter blah's. 

I don't feel like leaving the house, going to the store, shoveling the walk one more time or waking up in the dismal darkness.  Isn't there a name for this kind of thing, seasonal attitude dysfunction or something?  Yuck.  It also means that I'm forcing myself to survive off the givings of my freezer and that's been a bit of a hit and miss.  The pantry is also getting bare, at least by my standards.  

Scraping the bottom, for tonight's menu a package of ground pork, 1/2 an onion and a jar of kimchi.  And you think this is going downhill don't you?  Not so.  Not so at all.  I adapted this recipe from Saveur, added a few pinches of salt, pepper, a couple of cloves of minced garlic and about 1 tbsp of paprika and voila!  I didn't have any rice flour (see above for reference to bare pantry), so I used AP flour and reduced the water by a bit.     

In school we made a similar kind of Japanese green cabbage pancake topped with a squirt of mayo, a drizzle of okonomiyaki sauce and mountain of bonito flakes.  Taking the lead from that dish I served these crispy fried kimchi patties up Japanese street vendor style with a mayo and oyster sauce. 

Any ideas for buttermilk, oranges and tomato sauce?  Maybe it's time to find that grocery delivery pamphlet.

Want a fry with that?

 
My morning coffee consists of a trip to Sunterra for a Starbucks grande dark with a shot of 1/2 & 1/2 and occasionally a touch of sugar. The entire experience sets me back exactly $2.05.

This morning was slightly different…

At first it started out just like every other morning trip to Starbucks, same coffee, same financial toll, same dose of low fat heavy cream. Then as we were walking back to the office I noticed a number of (what I thought were) paramedics standing at the top of the escalators in the midst of some commotion. They were actively warding people off with a fairly casual "nothing to see here" (which in hindsight could have been highly insulting to a particular party involved), or "please step away".

Of course, when you see escalators and paramedics, you think, or at least I think, seriously gruesome injury, severed limb, lots of blood. And then I see some guy in a suit trying desperately to get a shot with his cell phone and I am thinking how sick is that, you really want to catch someone's moment of horror in your digital memory? Seriously. That's messed up.

Then in the middle of my mental tirade, I glance over and see…

A naked man.

Well, that's not entirely true he had on what appeared to be, a reasonably intact shirt. His pants on the other hand, were either missing, or were a whole new level of sheer.

And in the midst of my mental tirade, my heart came to a complete stop. Wow! Now that's something completely different.

Today's coffee cost me a more than the usual $2.05. I also have in my possession a small mental picture, thankfully less graphic than a cell phone camera, that's all mine to keep.

Good morning ma'am here's your Grande Dark with room for cream, do you want my fry with that?

(The picture which I added later, was obviously at the beginning of his journey, before security managed to partially dress him.)