Rotisserieeee

I roasted another bird on the bbq rotisserie. And made a couple of delicious sauces on the side: chimmichurri, and spicy peanut sauce. Both from the great Grilling and Barbecue cookbook by Cook's Illustrated.

Before

After

The Farm restaurant, downtown Los Angeles

A perfect lunch on a dreary day: cup of asparagus soup and 1/2 a BLAT sandwich

Springtime

Organ cactus flower from my yard
This cactus only blooms once a year. Good thing we chopped down
some plants in front of it to reveal this gorgeous creature

Spring has sprung! Last weekend, we cleaned up all the winter weeds and grasses in the yard, trimmed back some aloes and agaves, cleared off the patio, made it ready for our first impromptu BBQ of the year! It was a glorious weekend, weather-wise, and getting outside in the sunlight did wonders for my mood and too-low vitamin D level.


AND we found a kitten!! It sounded like a bird chirping at 3 second intervals, so we followed the sound, and found the little guy between our yard and the neighbor's, tucked in between some plywood. Poor little guy. Only one eye open, fuzzy, grey and small. My husband was the brave one that poked around and found him. I contributed by having the bright idea of just walking down the street until we found his mama. And, strangely, that plan worked. I had already started thinking of names for him, completely ignoring the fact that I'm allergic to cats, and shouldn't even think about naming him. her? who knows with cats.


Also- I made a couple new and super easy dishes to go with grilled hamburgers that night: roasted lemony rosemary potatoes and steakhouse wedge salad. Flying by the seat of my pants on both dishes, they turned out really well. Hooray for somewhat effortless, successful pursuits!

The magical animal

Holy Swine! Carnitas' Snack Shack in North Park is amazing. A definite MUST in San Diego.

THREE kinds of pork in the pork sandwich. THREE.

Tremendous amount of succulent meat in the carnitas tacos

Lovely Fries served in a brown paper bag

And the patio in the back/side of the building is super cool looking. Looked to be made from renewable materials or sustainable or .. I don't know. But it has a nice feel.

Pork Chop Sammie

Made these with the Mister the other night. Really good, actually pretty healthy (came from a Weight Watchers cookbook) and easy. The super vinegary sauce was my favorite.

cauliflower crust pizza

I found this recipe through Pinterest, which is my newest networking obsession. That sounds funny to say in that lately I have been a real technology hater. Having so much information at our fingertips, it turns out that carrying on regular activities or conversations with people becomes impossible without everyone reaching for their own gadgets to check their messages, calendar, google something, search for an address, or cross check something or someone. What if we had to just talk about it until somewhere in the back of your brain, you actually REMEMBERED the name of that actor, without having to IMDB it?! That might just be too much of a mental workout! Better just google it. JFGI or GTS, if you will. I digress.

It's all about having this technology make your life easier, better, more fun, maybe even more efficient. So far, Pinterest is treating me right, by making it easier to do what I was doing anyway: collecting images, articles, and ideas and placing them into categories to easily find and review again later. And it's shared with your friends, thus the social aspect. Kinda cool.

Anyway, back to the recipe. It is from a blog called eat. drink. smile. I kinda screwed up the ratios from the get go, but it all turned out pretty well in the end. I will be making this flourless alternative again.