Zero To Dick In 3.2 Seconds

Is it just my husband or do all men turn into Jeff Gordon on crack when they get behind the wheel of a rental car?

     I think he has a split-driving-personality although I know he would deny this accusation. Judge for yourself:  When he gets behind the wheel of a vehicle that requires you to put your initials in 72865 boxes before you can have the car keys, the guy who drives like a geezer down Coffeen Avenue suddenly turns into Bo Duke, but put him behind the wheel of a vehicle that has a payment coupon book with his name pre-printed on it and he turns into Morgan Freeman, driving Miss Daisy. Seriously!
    In his own vehicle The Big Guy is one of those people who will set the cruise control on about 74 and then just coast. When I drive I set the cruise on 84 then drive about 98, and yes it is true that I drive with binoculars so that I can have a look down the road at any oncoming cars to see if they are the po-po, but that's another story and this isn't about me.

Is it just me, or does he look stressed to you too?

Here's the deal: the higher the mortality rate of the country that we are in directly effects how crazy of a driver he becomes — meaning we that we are likely to get dead quicker in a place where they just pile up the bodies without regard to a proper burial. Ummm huh.
     And get this: he likes to use the emergency brake as a kind of Jake brake, so not only do the rental cars we return have tires with flat spots, but they have NO E-BRAKES left on them for the next poor sucker. I shit you not, he can drive an entire week and never turn a corner using the steering wheel because Larry The Big Guy Gordon reefs up on the emergency brake and then punches it so we just do a kind of skidding bat turn around the corners. Ohhh yeah.

Yep...that's the road rage comin' on!

Awhile back we were in Puerto Rico in a rental and he was zipping in and out of traffic and changing lanes like he’s a coked up Earnhardt and he's got a case of road rage like the trucker from the movie Dual, and he was cussing like he’s in a contest. I bring up the point about his Coffeen Avenue geezer driving and he gets all defensive about it and gives me a stink eye as we zig and zag and change lanes some more and go approximately 30 miles and never actually pass the truck that is in front of us, which I also point out. Hmmmm.

A few weeks ago in St. Thomas (where you drive on the left) he cuts off this chick by making a left turn in front of her although we were clearly not in the turning lane. She lays on the horn for a good solid three minutes and you know what that means. Yep, Big tries to out-honk her. She wins...our horn peters out after about a minute. She then gets the opportunity to pass us so she mashes on it and her sporty little jeep zips around us and she sticks her arm out the window and gives us the finger while we follow her for the next five miles. I don't have to tell you what The Big Guy does, do I?  You guessed it...he puts his foot in it and winds up our old rent-a-dent-loser-cruiser and with his face pressed into the windshield we veer and careen and do our best to keep up with her so he can give her the old California howdy sign back. And I ain't talking about the peace sign, people. And he's loving it. I can tell because he's laughing like a lunatic.  (Authors note: We were taking friends to the airport so there were witnesses to this incident and they just kind of lunatic-laughed too, once we got the "Oh Shit" bars pried out of their hands.)

Watch for it...here is it....zero to dick in 3.2 seconds

Some of the rental cars here have a sticker on the dash that says, “KEEP LEFT AND BLOW HORN FREQUENTLY.”  I gotta hand it to him...he does do that most of the time.  However, and I have pointed this out; there is NOT a sticker that says, “KEEP LEFT AND GIVE THE FINGER FREQUENTLY WHILE MOUTHING OFF,” but he does do that sometimes too.

So here is a warning:  If you ever think about buying a used car that was once in a rental fleet ask to see it's rental history and make sure it’s one that Larry The Big Guy Gordon has never rented.  Any of our friends who have ever ridden with him in a rental car already know this, but I feel it’s my duty to warn the public as well.


Who doesn't love finger foods? (Sneaky segue, I know) Here is a great appetizer recipe for  Mango-Curry Shrimp Salad in Mini Phyllo Cups. Click on the "Appetizers" tab to view it.

Recipe adapted from one in Bon Appetit. I like mine better...less mayo, more chutney and curry and phyllo cups instead of wonton wrappers.

The Bon Appetit Throwdown: Round 3

I'll get straight to the point:  This pizza was AHHH-MAZING!  For the throwdown we invited about ten of our professional taste tester friends over for a pizza party, one of them being The Big Guy's buddy, Mike, who is a real Dough Boy.
     He arrived with pizza stones and pizza peel in hand and I loaned him my very cool chef's hat and we got to work making pies.

Per the recipe the dough needs about 18 hours to rest so I made it the day before and then watched it do its thang and its thang is to turn into a heavenly bowl of dough that is as soft as a baby's bottom. Chef Dough Boy lovingly patted it into shape then everyone took turns making their own creations with toppings that included prosciutto, Italian sausage, Canadian bacon, pepperoni, red sauce, white sauce, pesto, pineapple, tomatoes-sun-dried and fresh, roasted red peppers, kalamata and black olives, fresh basil, arugula, oregano and the kitchen sink.

And then there were the cheeses!  We had mozzarella, Parmesan, cheddar, and Karen brought some fancy burrata. Sticking to the cover recipe, I ordered the stracciatella (from Alma Gourmet ) and it was soooo freaking fresh and good that I just wanted to eat it with a spoon. This I know: Water buffalo milk mozzarella kicks cow's milk mozzarella any day and I'm now I thinking I want a water buffalo for a pet. 

The first pie I put together I put on the sauce of imported Italian tomatoes, which I squeezed by hand just like the BA bully told me to do. That was pretty much when I stopped paying attention because I then put the mozzarella, stracciatella, oregano and crushed red pepper on it and Chef Dough Boy slid it into one my blazing 500 degree ovens. When it came out of the oven the stracciatella was pretty melty and runny and it wasn't a very handsome pie. Hmmmm...Then Karen read the recipe and said that you were supposed to put the stracciatella, oregano and red pepper on the pizza AFTER it comes out of the oven. Duh! So I did that on the second one and forget handsome, this one was down right pretty.


 


The Lowdown on the Throwdown:

There were two reasons this pizza was was so fabulous: the crust and the cheese.  I'm certain the secret to the wonderful crust was the 18 hour resting period and the fact that you barely handled it. No kneading involved so it remained soft, and tender and baked up into an airy and crispy crust, soft yet chewy. Unlike other pizza doughs that you have to whip into shape, this dough went right where you told it to go and behaved like a well trained husband.  
     My professional taste testers and I believe this may have been THEE best pizza we have ever eaten. Thanks, BA!

For the recipe click here

Pass The Butter Knife

Have you ever met someone who makes you want to stick a fork in your own eye? Wait, that’s too harsh of me; I wasn’t actually considering forking my eye until I was about thirty minutes into a three hour conversation with her. For the first fifteen minutes or so I thought about chewing my arm off just to see if she'd stop talking.

     Super nice lady, bless her heart, obviously off her Asperger's meds. I swear her lips NEVER STOPPED MOVING! Not even for a second. I didn't know listening could be so exhausting.

The following conversation isn’t verbatim because 1.) my mind kept wandering in between her verbose, Tolstoy-like telling of her life story and 2.) I jumped off the dock once or twice, but it went something like this: 

We’ll call her Gabby. (Not short for Gabrielle)

Me:  Nice to meet you. Is this your first time in the Virgin Islands?

Gabby: Oh no, (dismissive hand wave) we’ve been here a few times before, on big cruise ships. Well, only to St. Thomas, never to the British Virgin Islands, but we’ve been to St. Maarten, well that was on a different cruise, and we went to blah, blah, blah…

Me:  So how are you enjoying sailing?

Gabby: Oh we love it! (big toothy smile) And we just love these islands...we stopped and shopped back there, what a cute little village. I found some flipflops that I just had to have (heart grab gesture). They look a lot like a pair I got in New York, very stylish, little heel, I wore them to a Broadway play blah, blah, blah...

Me: I once killed someone with a butter knife.

Gabby: We had the best butter when we were in Paris! Have you been there? You should go! We stayed at the Chateau Frontenac and every morning we would have fresh pastries and baguettes with this to-die-for butter (heavenly eye roll) and blah, blah, blah…

Me:  I’m out on probation now. Last week I choked a chicken to death with my bare hands.

Gabby: I'll tell you who serves up a pretty good West Indian curried chicken, it's blah, blah, blah.  I tried curried goat once when we were in Jamaica but I didn't really care for it (icky face) but I ate it just to be polite because, you know, I didn’t want to offend the chef but it was blah, blah, blah...

Me: I got a goat drunk on wine once. Would you pass the wine?

Gabby: When we were in Napa we went to the Mondavi Winery, have you ever been there? You just have to go (squeezes my arm) they give you blah, blah, blah...

Me: I can juggle.

Gabby: I love Cirque du Soleil! (hand clap) We saw a show in Vegas last year, have you seen “O”? You just have to see it. And then we went dinner at blah, blah, blah...

Me: Yeah, I saw…

Gabby: No, it wasn’t “O”, it was “Mystere”, at Treasure Island but we stayed in that new luscious hotel, the one with (weird hand gesture) the blah, blah, blah...

Me:  I can hear my dog talking to me. 

Gabby:  Our yellow lab lived to be fifteen! FIFTEEN! We just lost him last summer. So sad (frown face, fake tear wipe) but we still have two cats blah, blah, blah…

Me:  Our cat pukes in her own dish when she eats too fast.   

Gabby:  Hahahahaha! (obnoxious fake laugh, too long, too loud [Authors Note here: it wasn’t intended to be funny, I was still trying to shock her back to reality] )  I had thee best lobster when we were on an Alaskan cruise, have you done an Alaskan cruise? You really should! It was so good and I ate it so fast that I thought I was going to be sick (finger down the throat gesture) so I had to blah, blah, blah...

Me: Pass me that butter knife, would ya? 

Ok, stick a fork in me, I'm done. And speaking of butter, here's a yummy steak butter. Put this Tarragon Butter on your steak as soon as it comes off the grill. It will dress up your NY or rib-eye pretty enough to go downtown, plus it melts into a creamy sauce. Go to the "Beef-Pork-Chicken" page to view it.

**Recipe my creation. Photo not taken by me with my cheap digital camera

 

Bon Appetit ~ Round 3: Pizza Like A Pro

Thank God I don't have to cut up another chicken! After last months BA challenge my vegetarian tendencies have been coming out of the closet, so this months cover recipe for a rustic tomato and stracciatella to-die-for pizza pie looks just divine to me!

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Believe me when I tell you that (in Wyoming) I don't live within 400 miles of real stracciatella di bufala, which is a soft kind of mozzarella cheese that is made from the milk of the water buffalo.

While I was in Italy taking cooking classes we went to the home of a wonderful Italian lady named Rosa, and made two kinds of mozzarella — one a firm braid and the other a soft creamy one. Neither involved milking a buffalo, but that soft creamy cheese was heavenly and something I will never forget.  

Italy ~ May 2004 ~ Making Mozzarella

Yeah, I know that picture looks like it was taken about eight years ago. Rosa is the short Italian looking lady and I have no idea who those other three are (wink, wink). Anyhow, I've been burning up Google with searches for Italian Cheese Purveyors and now have the real thing located so I am ready to hit the "BUY" button. My mouth waters just thinking about it and I can't wait for it to meet up with this pie and to say those wise words of Fat Bastard: Get in my belly! 

     Strange as it may seem the best dough man I know is The Big Guy's buddy, Mike, so I'm going to enlist his help when it comes time to make the crust. I've had his pizza before and I know that he knows how to work that dough. If you want to make it with me click here to get the recipe and don't forget to share your results.

     Can't wait! Stay tuned!

The Dough Boy ~ Not sure why he's holding on to his monkey.