Two Pies!

I told you about the Christmas presents I made. Now what about the people to whom I brought them?

My husband and I enjoyed a fun but picture-free Christmas Eve at my dad's in Vero Beach. My grandparents on that side are proper to the point where they leave the rum out of the jingle bell punch (everybody's jingle bell punch... not just theirs), and I didn't know how well snapping pictures at the table would go over. So my dad's famous crab au gratin casserole will have to be a story for another day. I exercised the eating muscles plenty and rested up the picture-taking muscles for Christmas Day at my mom's.

Visit her blog if you want to hear her whine about leaving the green beans in the microwave overnight. Stay if you want to hear me rave about what a porktastic, cosmotastic, pietastic meal we were treated to.

Stuffed pork loin for dinner, cosmopolitans with a secret ingredient (she knew I'd suffered through the previous evening booze-free!), and a two-pie breakfast for Boxing Day... how much more completely awesome does it get? TWO PIES, PEOPLE. Quiche and apple-cranberry. COUNT 'EM, TWO!!

Now, as far as what the pork loins were stuffed with... I see she hasn't put either recipe up on her blog. Luckily she gave me a copy of one. It appears to be from page 234 of the December 2009 edition of Cooking Light. The unfortunately punctuated title is, "Fruit and Walnut-Stuffed Pork Loin" [sic]. (Or am I old-fashioned for wanting to add that extra hyphen after the word "Fruit"? Tasty Trix? Copyranter? Someone help me out here.) The other one was stuffed with sun dried tomatoes and gorgonzola, and I'm not sure what else. She made it up herself though, so don't expect to find it anywhere else in the known universe. I'm sure if you pop over to her blog and ask real nice in the comments, she'll let you have the recipe.

Boxing Day was spent as it should be... catching up with old friends. This meant my diet consisted of leftovers and takeout. Nothing exciting.

The 27th was my husband's grandfather's birthday, so my mother-in-law pulled out all the stops and served both lobster tails and beef wellington.

I snapped a picture of my beef after it was cut as well, but standard dinner party lighting rendered my camera fairly useless. Which I'm sorry to report, because that beef wellington was TO DIE FOR. The color, texture... everything was perfect. Oh, well. Sometime when you run a food blog, you have to stop, take a deep breath, and remember that food is fleeting. With cooks like the ones in my family, there will be plenty more pictures to take!

Beat the eggs. Whip the cream. Show no mercy.

Chickenless Cook of the Week: Dave Spencer

I know I was supposed to wait for tomorrow, but I will be visiting family all day and will not be able to blog. Also... I just couldn't wait to share this dude with you! It is my great, great, great pleasure to introduce Dave Spencer, Instructables guru and mastermind behind the pieces of food art you see before you. Above is his never-before-seen UFO cake, which he flatters me by sharing even before the Instructables article comes out. Until then, please satisfy whatever remaining foodlust you may have for it by watching this Youtube video.

The fact is, this man just might have the most spoiled kids alive. Every year he outdoes himself by coming up with a new and increasingly badass birthday cake. He even fixes those little twerps special fiery birthday pancakes:

(Just kidding, Dave... but seriously, we're all jealous of your kids.)

And it doesn't stop at breakfast and cake. Oh, no. The carbo load has just begun. He assured me I wouldn't be interested, being that this is a "cooking blog" (i.e., I must subsist solely on truffles and caviar), but oh, was he wrong about the levels to which I will stoop! Here is a pair of before-and-after shots of hot dog bites that Dave Spencer has lanced through with tri-colored pasta to form chains of kid-friendly goodness which will be the primary topic of his eulogy in years to come:

Not interested? Not interested?? Dave, you'd better hope I've lost your email address by the time I have kids, because otherwise I am ditching them with you on every birthday they have, and you will be the one dealing with the emotional consequences of that as they grow older.

Now, as if the flashing lights on the UFO cake weren't enough to trigger your rofls, how about a tank cake with moving parts? Check out the instructables article, complete with link to a video of the cake's rotating gun turret (I guess that's what you call it on a tank... I'm not exactly G.I. Joe).

And the coup de gras... an exploding volcano cake. Need I say more? No, I needn't. Because in this day and age it's not only possible but common to share pictures over the interwebs. Here is Dave Spencer's exploding volcano cake.

Congratulations, Dave, on being my first Chickenless Cook of the Week! I hope there will be many more. Remember, don't be shy about emailing me your suggestions for future nominees. I might just make a tradition out of this late-night-Thursday posting... hmm...

Use what you have learned here only for good, and a happy early Friday to all!

Beat the eggs. Whip the cream. Show no mercy.