May 27

So, I’m packing up my kitchen today and it’s making me a little sad. Not only did I have to pack up all my dishes and silverware, rendering this space a culinary dead zone, but I will not be able to use my Le Creuset spatula, balloon whisk, or stand mixer for several weeks. My cast iron skillet will be sandwiched between dish towels and cutting boards until it has made the journey to the barren cupboards of a completely foreign kitchen. And perhaps the most depressing part of all, I have no kitchen to call home anymore. So long microplane, offset spats, and mandolin. I will see you again on the other side.

May 22

be coolinary cameo in witch gardens video!

I have some exciting news! A few months ago I helped my pals Bobby and Kyle make a music video for a local Seattle band Witch Gardens and it is all finished! My job was to contribute a few Hook-inspired food stuffs and a birthday cake for two separate scenes.

The video premiered on Vice today which is very exciting, but I also embedded it in this post just for you. Check it out!

Read more to see how I made food cool enough to be in a music video!

May 17

upside-down cake messenger

You guys! This past weekend Seattle saw it’s first 80°F day of the year! That is, like, hot for us! I took full advantage of another sunny weekend by putting off working on moving out of my studio, dusting off my favorite pair of spandex shorts, and making it my personal goal to get on my bike and find the Mountains to Sound bike path that goes over the I-90 floating bridge and into Mercer Island and Bellevue.

And then, after my epic ride, I continued procrastinating and made a peach upside-down cake. I know that peach season is still a long ways off but it felt like summer outside, and I had a bag of frozen peaches in my freezer, so I went with it.

At that point it was clear that I was not going to be making any progress towards packing up my apartment, so I conveniently deserted any plans to be productive and went to a barbecue at my friends Darren and Rick’s house, bringing my cake for dessert. Maybe it was from all the exhaust fumes I inhaled on my ride, or maybe it was the spandex cutting off circulation to certain parts of my brain, or maybe I just didn’t have the heart to exclude my bike from the barbecue after our long and beautiful day together, but whatever the reason, I felt the need to transport my homemade contribution the only way I knew how in the moment: freshly baked and still warm, strapped to the back of my bike.

I became an upside-down cake messenger of sorts. Not a bad gig for a short ride and, well, it was a piece of cake. ZING!

Read more to learn how to make some tasty peach upside-down cake and how to be an upside-down cake messenger!

May 13

be coolinary cookbook club: better late than never

A long time ago, when I first started this blog, I began what I called the Be Coolinary Cookbook Club. I was not only president of this club, but also its only member. As such, it was my goal and duty to mock and ridicule bizarre cookbooks I acquired from the sticky bins of second-hand stores and perhaps even feature a presumably less-than-stellar recipe from said less-than-stellar cookbooks. The first and only appearance of the Be Coolinary Cookbook Club on this blog was when I wrote about the Cop Cookbook back in February of 2011. Since then I have been dutifully collecting laughable and curious cookbooks from the dank depths of the second-hand outlets and I have acquired quite a treasured collection.

But, alas, I am moving, so in hopes of lightening my load, some of these hilarious cookbooks must return from the dollar bins from whence they came. But before I donate them, I wanted to share their spectacular weirdness with you mostly for the sole purpose of making me feel marginally better about buying them in them first place.

May 8

remembering my food memory

So, in case you haven’t heard, I am moving to California next month. I put in my notice at work, I gave my landlord written confirmation I will be out of my studio by the 31st, and I have started collecting moving boxes. It is happening. For the past few weeks, I have started the long process of going through my belongings, deciding which things are worthy to make the trip with me and which things need to be donated to Value Village. For the record, I am keeping my pasta machine—even though I haven’t used it yet—but I am tossing my copy of the Cop Cookbook (I know you were wondering). Somewhere along the line, while organizing the contents of a 6-drawer credenza that has been chock full of papers from various points in my academic life, folded in a binder with some truly hideous photos from pastry school (what were we thinking?!), I came across a paper I wrote. It wasn’t an assignment really but rather a scholarship essay I wrote in hopes of being awarded a nice chunk of tuition money. The theme was 500 words about a memory we had that pertained to food. I knew I had as good a chance as anyone and I knew I had no shortage of food memories to woo my chef instructors with so I picked my favorite and this is what I wrote:

May 1

just braid some bread already, will ya?

So I braided some bread again recently and it was a blast. Well, it wasn’t really bread, technically it was Danish pastry, but that is sort of like bread except totally different. Danish is like bread in that it contains yeast and flour, but it is different in that it contains a significant amount of butter, requires more patience, attention to detail, and knowledge on how to fold a business letter. It also usually has some kind of sweet and tasty filling incorporated into it and the Danish braid that I made just so happened to look like the biggest Toaster Strudel in the history of Toaster Strudels:

l filled it with some tasty apricot jam that I made over the summer and, not to toot my own horn or anything, it blew any Toaster Strudel I have ever had (yes, I was 14 once) right out of the water.

Read more to learn how to make your own giant Toaster Strudel, I mean Danish braid!

Apr 27

if you care

This morning, as I was half asleep making my daily cup of coffee, I happened to take a closer look at my box of coffee filters…

I hadn’t really noticed it before but it appeared that I had purchased the most passive aggressive brand of coffee filters in the world. If I care? Of course I care you jerks! I am glad to know that my coffee filters are made from “Forest Stewardship Council certified unbleached totally chlorine-free paper” and that they are “allergen and gluten free” and all but do they need to be so snotty about it? The condescending message implicit in their brand struck me as a bit rude and got me thinking of comedian David Cross’s rant about a similar experience. He is way more funny than I could ever hope to be and sums it up quite nicely:

The company makes a whole range of products and they are probably available at your local grocery store. So pick some up today, I mean, if you care.

Apr 23

sunny sunday shortcake

Holy Moly! It was a 70° sunny Sunday in Seattle yesterday! I even got a bit of a sunburn on my pasty white flesh! This is quite atypical around these parts, but, hey, we’ll take it. To take full advantage of Sunday’s splendidly sunny afternoon, I went to the first neighborhood farmers market of the season to stock up on goodies to cook at the first splendidly sunny Sunday barbecue of the season. And low and behold, new this year to my neighborhood farmers market is this:

Honest Biscuits. I was curious—and hungry—so I bought two.

As you may know, I love a good biscuit, and these were good, but they weren’t the flakey, buttery biscuits I am most fond of. The Honest Biscuits I tried were more of the doughy and bready biscuit variety, almost like a dinner roll. To describe them in three words: large, dense, and intense. Not bad, but not the smartest way to start my Sunday morning either. My experience left me with a bit of a tummy-ache but also with the urge to go home and make a lighter biscuit. And of course, true to form, when I got home I decided that a light biscuit was not really what I wanted. What I wanted was a light and sweet shortcake to douse in juicy berries and rich whipped cream. Sweet teeth trump tummy-aches.

Apr 19

happy birthday brooke!

Hey everybody! It’s my oldest sister’s birthday today! To celebrate this momentous occasion, I thought I would share with you all what I would have bought her, or anyone of equal awesomeness, had I 1) been more organized, 2) had copious amounts of disposable income, and 3) been a more generous and giving human being. Unfortunately for Brooke— and the rest of you—I am/have none of those things so she will have to settle with a woulda-coulda-shoulda birthday blog post. Hey, it’s the thought/blog post that counts, right?

First I would have taken her out to dinner to this great restaurant:

Then I would have paid for us to attend this amazing pasta-making class just upstairs in their dough room after dinner:

Then we would go home and I would have given her this fun and amazing cookbook that everybody won’t shut up about:

Then, even though she says she sucks at baking, we would have baked something tasty from that yummy cookbook with this amazing enamel baking set I would give her:

Then, after all that hard work and tasty food, her favorite NBA player Karl “The Mailman” Malone would show up and help us clean up!

Then, after sending Karl home, we would complain about being soooo full and then go to bed. But the fun wouldn’t stop there because in the morning, I would have made sticky buns and then given her these awesome wooden labels for her to use in her garden:

And that is my thoughtful, although pretty much thoughtless, birthday present to my sister Brooke.

Hopefully, this year she will settle for a card…

Apr 15

It’s shaping up to be a nice day outside so I can’t bring myself to be on my computer longer than it takes to post this funny video. From SNL, I bring you not pizza exactly, but almost pizza!