Iceberg salad, watermelon, avocado, celery, pecans, original dressing

Same ingredients as the salad for yesterday, there are a lot of those elements around, rearranged with different dressing. 

This is my original dressing when I first started making my own. Soy sauce is the base, and sugar or honey to counteract all that salt. Chile flakes, garlic, ginger, and sesame seed oil, rice vinegar or lime, oil of any kind water because it turns out strong, saki, mirin, if you have those around. 

Steak

Tell you what I want, what I really really want, what I want, what I want, what I really really want...

Steak !

I had a girlfriend who could eat that whole thing and more. She held back because I ordered less. 

And then months later it was all, Weight Watchers this, and Weight Watchers that, and Weight Watchers says this, and Weight Watchers says that, this happened at Weight Watchers and that happened at Weight Watchers, and this lady at Weight Watchers said...,and hope you don't mind a Weight Watchers meal tonight because that is what I must have so you must too and it turns out to be more than I'd have anyway, and my sister joined Weight Watchers now,  and so did my mom and then so did my dad and after a year its was, with Weight Watchers help my family collectively lost a ton and a half of ourselves, isn't that great? Why does that incident with the 1 LB steak at the restaurant make me think of listening to that whole ordeal with Weight Watchers? I don't know, what am I, a psychiatrist? 

Blue cheese iceberg, strawberry poundcake, Weld

The man above owns the house and I said, "Come here and see what this lens does to this room." 

I was on the floor kneeling using the chair seat at the end for platform, the lens is a few inches from the plate. He answered, 

"If I get down there I won't be able to get back up."

"I'll help you." 

So the two of us were on the floor using the same chair for a table sharing the camera viewfinder.

That's what I made.

This is the chef who helped. He is no longer a chef but retains his mad cheffery skills. He cubed an avocado, limed it up, and sprinkled black pepper all over. 

And then we put on our accents and amused ourselves, in cartoon French-English, 

"It iz a mountain. And dis iz le detritus. And this is the snow upon the mountain. And dis is l'avalanche."

And indeed, the salads looked like little landscapes. The guests repeated they had not seen the likes of it before, they are so encouraging. Most are already familiar with the simple blue cheese dressing iceberg at Emilenes that I learned from for this, but they remarked they found the combination of detritus excellently unfathomable. 

But that comes from various salsa frescas minus the onion and garlic and chiles and harsh things, just the nice things that children would like then pair that with blue cheese. That's the odd part. And not mix them. They must do that.  The watermelon touches the blue cheese by accident on the plate and delivers a surprise. They go! And so do the grapes. They're in control, the mixing unforced.

The pecans are burned on purpose, but only slightly, I kneeled there patiently watching to assure it, so that they give up their nut-meatiness and dissolve in the mouth leaving a faint charred pecan flavor, and the croutons are large toasted cubes with irregular rough surfaces, made of my own sourdough bread.

Who does that? 

The chef pictured above asked what type of sourdough I used and I told him my own, I baked it this morning, his jaw dropped and he said he wouldn't attempt sourdough. I told him the culture was collected out on the balcony and he looked at me as if I were quite mad. 

But all of that is common. I guess they didn't do such things in his hotel and his catering.

Blue cheese dressing

There is no recipe here. Cream to fill about half this jar, mayonnaise to change to desired viscosity and fill to about 3/4th full, then half the cheese tested, not enough, added all the rest. So three ingredients only, in combination to suit myself. 

I do not know anything about this cheese. My fear is it is too weak. I want an abundance of chunks in each serving, none of this one tiny lonesome lost chunk per serving, no siree, this is an embarrassment of abundant blue cheese, totally lumpy blue cheese dressing, so maybe best that it is not so strong. Anyway, it has a few hours to meld. 

I'll pawn off the excess onto somebody, probably leave it with the hosts. 

edit: There was excess. But only a few tablespoons, maybe a quarter cup, half a cup at most, the bottom of this jar. Taken home by another guest. The next day the host called and said this type of dressing is his favorite, adding that he was first to finish his salad. I said, he must have had one of the smaller ones, and he returned, that he served the salads himself and took the one with the most dressing, just to be a hog about it. And I think that is very funny. But it tells me, I can just whip out a jar and hand it to him and it would be a very good gift. And so too for the person who took the jar home. 

Chili

This chile has cayenne with a speck of habanero for its flavor but that speck carries a lot of heat and puts this chili in the category too hot to eat comfortably by itself. Cream disarms it well. The cream is stirred in and the chili turns pink cooling it significantly. The heat is still there muted and so are the flavors.  

I like this chili a lot, but I would not serve it. People are opinionated about chili and I would not be open to comparisons.  This is the best chili I've ever tasted, but that is because I put in it the things that I like.