The Pumpkin Trials

I've been doing time. Hard time. In the kitchen with a bunch of stone-faced pumpkins and one adorable sous chef. You see, I decided to make "Winter Squash" (mainly the pumpkin) the feature ingredient in this months cooking class. That being said, my sous chef and I have been testing recipes and we've made pumpkin gnocchi no less than 54682 times in the past few weeks.

Here is my sous chef demonstrating how to make gnocchi. 
(and some random TV dude photo bombing us)

 I was beginning to think that gnocchi should only be reserved for the potato, but then the sous chef suggested that we roast a whole pumpkin and use it instead of the pumpkin in the can, which we had been using. She's a genius...that's why I pay her the big beaters...errr...I mean the big bucks. The texture from the real deal is a little thicker, meaning less flour, meaning more pumpkin flavor and fluffier dumplings.

The Sous Chef, taking her checks to the bank.

Moving on to pumpkin hummus ~ A roasted garlic and rosemary version was just so-so. One with cinnamon and all the typical pumpkin-y spices was predictable, and a cilantro-lime version was just OK.  I'm of the opinion that pumpkin shouldn't go in hummus unless you are out of garbanzo beans and about a million other ingredients, so pass on the hummus and go directly to pumpkin soup.

Here's a shot of my Southwestern Pumpkin Soup 

with Toasted Cumin Creme, White Cheddar,

and Roasted Pumpkin Seeds.

We will be making this at Tuesdays class.

Next I got on a pumpkin Alfredo kick. I tried it first on fettuccine but liked it best on the gnocchi with some toasted hazelnuts and a drizzle of hazelnut oil. We recruited Hates Everything as a taste tester and she liked it so it's definitely going on the cooking class menu. No sneak peek here. It's in our bellies!
      Since I was already on the Creamy-Cheesy train to Fat-town I decided to try pumpkin mac and cheese. It wasn't bad but if it's not broke don't screw with it, and since there is nothing wrong with the version that mothers have been making for their kids for generations, this was screwing with it. Under oath I would deny liking any fake cheese like VELVEETA, but let's be honest, you just can't beat that stuff for its creamy, melty goodness so after two attempts, pumpkin mac and cheese won't make the cut...even though I did add bacon and toasted bread crumbs. *sigh*

Pumpkin Mac & Cheese...with bacon and toasted bread crumbs. 
It's just not good enough without Velveeta. There, I said it...into the microphone.

My sous chef and I also made a pumpkin roll 

and a pumpkin mousse, which didn't suck...

and a pumpkin beer bread that did suck.

 

The Pumpkin Roll.  

Pumpkin Mousse with Amaretti Crunch....it's on the menu!

I found the beer bread recipe on a blog called gimmesomeoven. I followed Ali's advice and wasted a good pumpkin ale on it, and not only did it not get done (cooked, baked, whatev) in the middle, it was as tough as an old shoe. I went back to the blog to see what comments the "other" bakers had made about the beer bread and it was filled with a bunch of gushing idiots saying things like, oh this sounds so good, I love beer bread, you're so creative, can't wait to make it, blah, blah, blah comments. Obviously not one of the twenty-four people who commented had ever made it, so I left Ali, from gimmesomeoven, a nice comment that said something like, (condensed version;) love your blog, made the beer bread, it stayed doughy and was tough as an old shoe, what did I do wrong? In other words I took full responsibility for the failure. And guess what Ali did? She frickin' deleted my comment!  Seriously Ali, you could have just said, I hear you suck as a baker, and I would have said, yeah, so what's your point? Or you could have said, I'm sorry your bread was shitty, mine was perfect, can I buy you a beer? But no. She deleted me!  I say, Ali if you can't take the heat stay out of the kitchen. Have you ever heard that one before? Huh?
     I know that some people can't boil water and maybe I'm one of them. But if you put it out there, own that shit! Damn straight I will. But enough about Ali. Sous chef and I tend to gravitate towards people with an actual backbone.   

Anyhow, we got sick of pumpkins and then switched to squash. A butternut squash tart with fried sage leaves made the cut, butternut pasta did not. Lasagna stuffed spaghetti squash is in. Spaghetti squash in a bacon-tomato-fennel sauce...not so much.

Here's our beautiful tart!

So a few hundred pumpkins, squash, and dirty dishes later I finally have a menu put together for my next cooking class. It does involve a lot of cream and nutmeg and Pumpkin Patch Ale. Beer bread be damned!

Click on this link for the Butternut Squash Tart or this one for the Southwest Pumpkin Soup. If you want any of the other recipes let me know and I'll send them your way or put them up on this blog.

The sous chef...on payday!

Me and Bobby Makin' Bacon

If there's one thing I love more than Pig Candy it's Bobby Flay. Or maybe it's the other way around. Anyway, I had them both on my mind when I remembered that my Bobby has a recipe called Mango-Glazed Bacon, so you know what I was thinking.

I followed the recipe to the letter and good bacon is good bacon, whether it's coated in maple, mango, or manure, and I had some good, thick-sliced Applewood smoked bacon to work with.
     Because my mango was a bit under ripe and did not yield very much juice I was a bit underwhelmed with the results, making it clear that an over ripe mango would have made a big difference in the final taste. In fact the mango flavor was so not-there that I couldn't have picked it out of a line up, but what I could detect was just enough to know that this bacon could have been pretty amazing sitting along side a stack of Island Pancakes* so the next time I have a mango on the verge of going south I'll try it again.

While I was at it I mixed up some brown sugar and cayenne pepper and tried making some Pig Candy. I was hoping that it would be worthy of Cafe Genevieve, the original creator of this crack candy that I'm addicted to. It didn't happen...mine did not get as crisp, in fact much of the sugar coating melted right off.  I'm no quitter though, so I'll keep practicing and if I have to I'll eat the test pieces until I get it right. They weren't perfect but they didn't suck either.

And it looks good right? Well it was good because after all it was BACON!!! Thanks Bobby, love ya, call me, mean it!

The recipe for the Mango-Glazed Bacon is under the "Beef-Pork-Chicken" tab, if you want to try it the next time you have a really ripe mango that you need to do something with.  

* Island Pancakes...make your own pancakes and top with warmed Coco Lopez, chopped macadamia nuts and a squeeze of lemon.     

Bobby Flay's Twice Baked Potatoes

This recipe was really called Horseradish Twice Baked Potatoes, but I figured if I put that in the title some people would quit reading right there because horseradish is one of those love/hate ingredients.
     Personally, I'm not a lover of the horseradish and I can only take it in small doses. Like, I don't really want to taste it, I just want to wonder if that's horseradish that I'm tasting. So just a hint of it is a good thing. Ya with me? 

I know what you're thinking...her potatoes don't look anything like Bobby's. It's true and I'm a bit embarrassed to even show these pictures because my potatoes look NOTHING like my Bobby's beautiful puffed up, golden brown, nicely crisped spuds. I hate it when that happens!

     Mine look more like burnt, runny, weird tubers. ↑  ↓  See for yourself. 
 
I'm throwing Bobby under the bus for this. You know I make no apologies nor have regrets for cooking with a lot of butter and cream but I think the recipe called for (I can't believe I'm saying this) too much butter. Butter burns and I think that's why mine got more black than brown.

The other thing is, I think the recipe called for (I can't believe I'm saying this either) too much cream. I didn't even use all of the cream it called for and mine were preeeeety runny. Bobby did mention that the "potatoes should not be dry," but dude, should they be swimming in cream?

Anyhow, they were very good despite of how they looked.  Just a nice hint of horseradish, not overpowering and the skins were beautifully crisped. And see those pretty chives? I picked them from my herb garden  ~ the only herb (besides mint) that waited for me to come home, so I was happy to find a use for what remains of them.

Anyhow, the recipe is super easy and and it was tasty.  Just don't add all that butter and cream (There, I said it!) and adjust the horseradish to taste. You can find it under the "Soups-Salads-Sides" tab. I may have to ask for a do-over on this one....Thanks Bobby, love ya, call me, mean it!

Because I have an unusual fetish for Pig Candy, up next is my Bobby's Mango Glazed Bacon....mmmmm......stay tuned!

My Latest Addiction: Pig Candy

I said, "Lord, you can take me now. I've had what surely must be a taste of Heaven!" 
     I'm talking about Pig Candy. You heard me right...Pig Candy. If it's on the All-You-Can-Eat Buffet in Heaven I'm ready to go. Where does the line form?

Last week my friend Karen N. brought me a box of the stuff, which she got in Jackson from a restaurant called Cafe Genevieve.  Cute packaging, I thought as I opened the box, and then I saw that it was real bacon! It was ♥ at first bite. I dropped to my knees and prayed to the bacon gods that Pig Candy would would be fat-free. Well you can't have everything. 

Never, ever, EVER in my forty or fifty or whatever-some years have I ever eaten anything as heavenly as Pig Candy. I mean it...and I've eaten really good food in a lot of other parts of the world.
     (Side note:  Pig Candy could stop wars. If the Muslims would just stop being so sensitive about pork and would try a little a piece of Pig Candy all this hatin'-terrorism bullshit would come to a halt because they'd be busy wiping drool off of their beards instead of strapping bombs on their babies. But hey, that's another story for another time.)   

Ok, seriously...If you had asked me in the five seconds before I ate the Pig Candy what was THEE BEST thing that I have ever eaten in my life I would have said the seafood cannelloni in Sorrento, Italy. It was so amazing that we went back the next night and ate it again. I don't recall the name of the restaurant, but this ↓ is a dinner that I will never forget!

Or I might have said it was one of our more memorable recent dinners ~ the giant red snapper from our favorite restaurant, La Estacion in Fajardo, Puerto Rico. Four pounds of a tender, grilled, just barely out of the water, fish served with mango salsa, johnny cakes, and green papaya salad.  We won't likely ever love a snapper again like we loved this one. ↓

But never in a million years would I have to expected to add Pig Candy in Dayton, to that prestigious list. But I'm hooked. Pig Candy is my meth...or my crack or whatever it is that you get hooked on.
     So to avoid becoming a gluttonous-two-fisted-poke-it-down-the-ole-pie-hole-piggy, I hid the box from myself on a high shelf in my pantry. I knew that if I left it sitting on my counter only bad things could happen. 1) I may have to share it with The Big Guy; 2) I would eat myself into Hog Heaven or; 3) I may have to share it with The Big Guy. A definite lose-lose for me.

The picture above is what Pig Candy looks like on the flip side. It's all that brown and crunchy goodness of brown sugar and cayenne pepper that I assume makes it so damn good. The idea of making my own is now rattling around in my head since I am down to one piece. 

Confession to make:  I have now, on more than six occasions went to bed only to get up at an hour when most addicts are sleeping off their drugs, and have gone downstairs and rummaged in the far corner of my panty to get out that beautiful brown box, just to break myself off a sliver of Pig Candy.
     This is just crazy, I said to myself the other night at around midnight, when I was standing on a chair to reach it. So the next day I did what most junkies do. I gave my dealer (Karen) a hundred bucks so she could get me some more. A hundred bucks, you say?  Why only a hundred? Well it was because I didn't have an extra thousand laying around.
     If anyone one wants in on my stash when it gets here let me know. I can hook you up....but it's gonna cost ya, so bring cash!

My Sixth Date with Bobby ~ Another Killer Quesadilla

I swear, Bobby Flay must have me on speed dial! When he called me last week to try out another one of his recipes I was thinking, shit, not another quesadilla, but when my Bobby calls...well I fire up the grill because I'm his grill, errrr girl.
     
One of the things that put this quesadilla over the top was my Bobby's brilliant paring of  jalapeno and basil.  Jalapeno + cilantro = predictable, but jalapeno + basil = totally unexpected and unbelievably delish. It goes in the inside with a mixture of  Monterey Jack and goat cheese and then the cotija cheese goes on top.
 

But that's not what really made this dish so good. No...the thing that bumped this quesadilla up a notch was the Charred Corn Relish and I just happened to have some fresh picked corn that I had bought at a little roadside stand in Loveland. Charring the corn brings out its natural sweetness and if that isn't great enough on its own, the touch of balsamic vinegar and honey paired perfectly with taste of the grilled corn. Someone was seriously licking the plate!

Like my Bobby, I am an over-achiever so I went all out and made the (optional) Smoked Red Pepper Sauce too. Even though there was only a splash of the sauce called for on the quesadilla, it's a BIG sauce and the roasted sweet pepper and the smoky chipotle added one more layer of flavor. The three components of the grilled corn, the roasted red pepper, and the jalapeno-basil, turned this quesdalla into a party in your mouth. With fireworks!

For some reason Bobby seems to think that a quesadilla has to be three layers and I've been meaning to have a word with him about that.
     I say why waste the calories on that third tortilla?  Skip it. Go for more veggies and/or cheese, because the tortilla shell is just a vehicle to get the thing to your mouth, and I only need two. At the very most. Actually one tortilla and a fork and I'm there and I've saved a good 200 calories. Right?

But back to the recipe....don't make one without the other....the charred corn relish and the smoked red pepper sauce, that is. They neeeeeed to be on the same plate so unless you have a piano tied to your ass I say get off it and make them both. The good news is that you can make them ahead of time and if  you do, this dish comes together in a flash.

So pour yourself another glass of wine...you deserve it for making both and  being an over-achiever like me and Bobby.  If you don't love it I'll have Bobby come wash your dishes.  
      Thanks Bobby, love ya, call me, mean it! ♥

This recipe is under the "Appetizers" tab so go there to check it out. And by the way, this quesadilla kicked the Mushroom with White Truffle Oil Quesadilla's butt. Not just to the curb but out the front door, down the street and OUT OF TOWN! If you don't believe me ask The Know-It-All...she sampled them both and she knows, it all.  

My Fifth Date With Bobby

Yeah I might be just a little obsessed with white truffle oil. My daughter, The-Know-It-All shook her head and rolled her eyes at me the other day when we went to the movies and I pulled a bottle of white truffle oil out of my purse, leaned over and whispered, do you want some truffle oil to drizzle on your popcorn? Then she had the nerve to call me crazy when I pulled the Parmesan cheese out of my purse. Let me point out that batshit crazy or not, she passed me her bag so I could drizzle and sprinkle the goodness on her popcorn too. 

So when I see a recipe that says, "and white truffle oil", what I really see is something that has my name written all over it. Yes, I could be tempted to whip up a horse turd souffle if the recipe called for a drizzle of that liquid gold, so when I came across my boy Bobby Flay's Wild Mushroom Quesadillas with Red Chile Jack Cheese and White Truffle Oil, you know I was all over it!

So I cooked down a mixture of Shiitake, Trumpet Royale, Hen-of-the-Woods, Hon-shemeji and Crimini mushrooms. (Exotic mushrooms: one of the perks of living next to a Whole Foods☺) After re-hydrating the ancho chiles, Bobby said to reserve some of the soaking liquid and add it to the chopped anchos and the shredded Monterey Jack, thrus making it "Red Chile Jack Cheese."

Even though Bobby didn't tell me to, I dusted mine with a bit of ancho chile powder before popping them in the oven. Then I added the crumbled cotija cheese on top.

I baked them for about ten minutes and they came out of the oven nicely browned and looking like that. ↑ 

In my under-paid opinion Bobby skimped on the cheese a bit, so if you make these be more generous with the Monterey Jack than what the recipe calls for. The drizzle of rich, white truffle oil added on top elevated these quesadillas from decent to decadent.  Thanks Bobby, love ya, call me, mean it! ♥

Although this is under the "Appetizer" section of Bobby's  Mesa Grill Cookbook, The-Know-It-All and I had it as an entree. It's filling enough that it can go either way. If you aren't a fan of mushrooms skip this recipe, but do take your bottle of white truffle oil to the movies next time. 
     Click on the Appetizers tab to see the recipe. 
                                        

My Fourth Date With Bobby

I had been drooling over the picture (below) of Bobby's Grilled Shrimp with Smoked Chile Butter and Tomatillo Salsa, so it had been next on my Flaydar.  And speaking of butter; me and Bobby practically fell in love over butter. And salsas, and seafood, and sauces and I'll shut-up now.
      The Big Guy's taste buds are still a bit screwed up from chemo, so tangy flavors just haven't been sitting too well with him so at the mention of Tomatillo Salsa he made that face. It's the the same one that the dogs make when I try to feed them a heart worm pill. It's the if-you-force-feed-me-that-I'll-pee-on-your-pillow-to-get-even-face. I know the look well so I just quit pimping the dish and went with Plan B.

Plan B: Nobody in this house with a pulse and/or an unclogged artery passes on butter, so I decided to deviate from the recipe a bit and skip the tomatillas but make the Smoked Chile Butter and serve it over salmon. For some reason chemo hasn't managed to mess up Big's taste for fish and since I had some nice salmon in my freezer, I decided to make the Smoked Chile Butter and glaze the salmon with it.
     I seared the salmon and then topped it with the butter during the last couple of minutes of cooking.  As it melted into the fish and browned in pan it left that distinctive nutty brown butter taste along with that delightful chile/lime flavor that Bobby is known for. A little shake of the pan and the underside picked up the delicious brown butter taste too. Win-win, right? 

Someday I will make the tomatillo salsa so I will try this dish again with the shrimp, but in the meantime I have had some of the butter leftover so I've been using it to spunk up grilled corn on the cob. It took the corn from so-so to so-so fabulous!
     Check out the entire recipe under the "Seafood" tab.  Thanks Bobby, love ya, call me, mean it! ♥

Shish-Kaboobs ~ Because Some Men Can Never Get Enough

I have a loyal reader who mentioned that he wished I would talk more about boobs, yeah he said that. He said that he was "disappointed" that I hadn't mentioned boobs in my last post, and since here at the Sauce we aim to please, this post is for you Billyboob Billybob Cornfed. 

As you know, besides adoring The Big Guy I have a thing for Booby Flay. I ♥ him and I try to keep abreast of all his latest recipes. If mammary serves me right, my boy Booby has a "Build-Your-Own-Shish-Kaboob" recipe so I was thinking that with summer and grilling and all, that this would be a perfect time to make some ka-boobies. (Click on this link for the recipe.)

Getting ready to go on the grill

Confession to make:  A lover of the ka-boob I am not. Because some of the items tend to be overcooked while others are undercooked, I'm really not a fan. For example, throw a steak ka-boob on the grill and in five minutes the beef is still mooing but the mushroom is so far gone that there is no nursing it back to life.
     On the udder hand a shrimp will curl up and turn into a charred, shriveled up titty-bitty thing, but a cherry tomato, at first bite will spit enough hot juice at you to burn your lip and stain your shirt. Is it chest me or have you had the same experience with ka-boobs? And worse yet ~ sometimes no matter how you turn the ka-boob, the peppers spin on the skewer and turn black on side A, while side B stays uncooked. Anyhow for me, ka-boobs are kind of a bust.

That is why dear ka-booby lovers, I like to do it this way:  I choose a smoked meat such as sausage ~ chicken, beef or pork will all work well. Next pre-cook the hearty ingredients, such as the po-tata and the corn on the cob (yes they can go on a ka-boob). Soft, fast cooking stuff like mushrooms, zucchini, and cherry tomatoes can go on raw. Peppers swing either way and no recipe is really needed.

If you are using wood skewers soak them in water for at least thirty minutes before you put the ingredients on. Then heat up your BBQ grill until it's hooter than hell, because you'll want to cook these puppies pretty fast so that they don't dry out, but yet still get those pretty grill marks. Do it this way and you'll end up with a tasty mouthful!

For a super fast and easy appetizer, put tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil on a skewer and then perk them up with a drizzle of olive oil, a splash of balsamic vinegar and some sea salt. An udder easy option for the ka-boob loving men in your life is to put some pre-cooked meatballs on a skewer, add a cooked tortellini or two and some manly-man veggies. Grill them for just a few minutes ~ or long enough to warm them up and then serve with Marinara sauce.

But really if you ask me I think you should forgo the shish-ka-boobs and do what I prefer to do. I get The Big Guy to throw some ribs on the BBQ and then I open him up a beer, pull up a chair beside him and just sit back and enjoy the evening while he nurses that beer and keeps an eye on that rack...of ribs.
 

So there you have it Billyboob Billybob, I hope this post has ta-taught you something and satisfied your request. Sauce du Jour...pleasing peoples appetites, one reader at a time!

My Third Date With Bobby

I have to admit that I thought my boy Bobby was slacking when it came to the Green Onion Smashed Potatoes in his Mesa Grill Cookbook. Just green onion? C'mon Bobby you can do better than that.
     I like to think of myself as kind of a (S)mashed Potato Queen. I do a Bacon-Blue Cheese (S)mashed, Green Chile-White Cheddar (S)mashed, Chipotle-Monterey Jack (S)mashed, a decadent Truffled (S)mashed, Spinach-Gruyere (S)mashed, Caramlized Shallot-Smoked Gouda (S)mashed.....and on and on. Forget the Roasted-Garlic and the Wasabi (S)mashed, they are passe and so last year.

When I say (S)mashed, I'm talking about the spuds, not me ~ and the method....always (s)mash them by hand. Lumps are good. Rustic is good. An electric mixer can turn them into the consistency of wall paper paste and that's just wrong.  When you use small red skinned spuds just go ahead and leave those skins on if you want to because they will be tender and blend right in. For the creamiest (s)mashers use Yukon Golds, and don't forget; lots of butter and cream are an absolute necessity.

But back to Bobby's Green Onion Smashers.  I gotta admit I was thinking, booorrrriiiing. But what Bobby did was spunk 'em up with some sour cream instead of plain ole' heavy cream, and I gotta tell ya this (S)mashed Potato Queen was impressed.  It was simple: just new red skinned potatoes, a LOT of butter, even more sour cream, green onions and salt and pepper. I've made these three or four times now and for something so simple they do pack a lot of flavor. Whip some up!


A couple of nights later I made Bobby's Southwestern Potato Salad and this was potato salad funk at it's finest.

     The weird thing was that it had tomatoes in the recipe. I've eaten a fair number of potato salads but I don't think I have ever eaten one with tomatoes in it. Because it was Bobby and he's never let me down yet, I went with it. It was a (kind of) pretty color of pink because of the ancho chile and cayenne peppers.  When it all came together I was glad that the tomatoes had came to the party.

I had leftovers and I really wondered if those tomatoes would turn to mush because of the lime juice in the salad but I was pleasantly surprised the next day when the salad was even better than it had been the first time around. Yeah, the tomatoes did break down a bit, but the flavors of the sauce intensified.
     If you are a purest when it comes to potato salad, skip this one, but if you have already been to a dozen BBQ's this summer and are BORED with the old mayo-mustard-pickle-egg-onion variety, give this one a try.  Check it out under the "Soups-Salads-Sides" tab. Thanks Bobby, love ya, call me, mean it! ♥

Gone Today, Hair Tomorrow

 See kids ~ we really were young and super cool once! (1978)

The Big Guy and I have been together since 1978 and in those thirty-five years I have never seen him without a mustache or a headful of thick hair. Back when we met he had a lot of kinky-curly black Afro-type hair and I loved that mop, but honestly if I could remember back that far I'd have to say it was his sense of adventure, not his hair that really attracted me to him (no matter what he might think).

Ok, so this is NOT The Big Guy, but this was his hair in the '70's.

Plus he had chops and a mustache. He lost the chops sometime in the 90's, but in our thirty-five years together I had never seen him without a 'stache. Until today.
      In fact I'm convinced he was born with one.

Don't believe me...see his baby picture below. This was baby Larry Joe at six months.

Then a few years ago, when he started injecting himself with Neupegen I noticed it caused his hair to go straight and to thin out a bit. When it came time to prepare for the transplant we knew the high dose stuff was coming next and and we knew what that meant: Chemo's a bitch and would manage to steal what time and age couldn't.
     So in anticipation of all that glorious hair going bye-bye, The Know-It-All gave her dad a military worthy buzz cut. I suggested that he shave the whiskers since they were going to come off anyway but he refused to give up those hairs. I wondered just what it was that he was hiding under there. Then he started chemo. Then we waited. It thinned a bit. His goatee took on the look of a yuppie who manscaped.

To be honest, as much as I loved the goatee and that head of hair, I was kind of  looking forward to seeing him with a chrome dome and a clean lip. Some of the best looking men I know are sportin' the Mr. Clean look; (and I'm not talking about Bruce Willis, Bob Duvall and the guy from Pawn Stars) I'm talking about John S., Lance R., Wade H., and Scott B., just to name a few....those guys are all looking good rockin' the cue ball so I was OK with Big becoming a brother in baldness.

Hates Everything and her Sugar Daddy. Circa 1999 +/-

For years The Big Guy has smacked at me and the girls like we were bees whenever we tried to run a handful of gel through his unruly hair. Well it turns out that Neupegen is candy compared to Busulfan because now that his hair is *ahem* thinning gone, we are all stand-off-ish with the hair products and the comments.
     Even though a few weeks ago the head went shiny, the eyebrows and a few mustache hairs clung to life, like a baby monkey to it's momma. Or maybe two chihuahuas to their daddy. Sometimes I forget about this new look and when I glance at him I feel like I'm living with a stranger.      

 About a week ago he shaved off the few hairs that remained in his goatee. I then realized that I had more hair on my upper lip than he did on his, so with my usual amount of tact I asked him why he didn't just shave that shit off.  He said if he did he felt like he would be giving up on the last of the hairs that were still refusing to give up on him. (Insert knife in my heart here.) I can be such a matter-of-fact-no-bullshit shithead that I have to be hit in the face with a chandelier before I see the light. Sometimes I forget that no matter that I'm here, he really is going through so much of this transplant business alone. And I'm sorry.

Then yesterday he pointed out that he had some new whiskers that were trying to sprout on his face. After further searching we detected two new mustache hairs growing. He was pretty excited about that, and hey, I have two new chin hairs too but I'm not doing the happy dance. It's the little things that can make a man so happy.

This morning he announced that he thought he needed to shave and I rubbed his cheeks to verify that there was indeed stubble. (Turns out there are little things that can make a woman happy too.) What I didn't expect was that he would finally shave off the stache' too. My subtle *coughbullshitcough* comment(s) about me having more lip hair than him must have finally got the best of him. I feel like such an ass.
     He said he shaved it off because he thought if he started over it would all grow in more even. Makes sense to me but I'll admit I'm not a whisker expert. I have my hands full keeping an eye on my own two chin hairs.

Two hours later we did another whisker check and yep, sure enough they are sprouting like new grass seed. Well it turns out those whiskerlings also brought something else out. Big is acting more like his old self...you know, making passes at me and saying lewd comments to me. Basically being a pig; but that's The Big Guy I know and love.

Hahahaha Cancer! Take that! This big hunka-hunka man, whom I have always thought of as a bad-ass has showed cancer who's boss.  I see a full head of hair, a goatee, and a mustache in our future!

The Know-It-All and The Big Guy, on their way to the bank.