Singed red pepper salad

It's a thing. I like it. Don't know why.

And it's not just me. An acquaintance of Italian persuasion was over here and said, "This is perfect." Red pepper strips tossed in olive oil and singed on one side. The margin for satisfaction is broad from half cooked and firm to floppy so long as they have black spots.

Then pecans at the end and then little tomatoes at the very end all in the same oil and salt. A very nice balance right here, the oil and tomato, pecan with pepper, and you never see things like this. I think you'll like it too. 

I want more.

Meatballs, angelhair pasta

I have bratwurst sausage that I do not like. The spices are wrong and too strong. The sausage meat is diluted in panko breadcrumbs and heavy cream, a entire egg just for one sausage. Then treated as regular meatballs.

Sauce is a tin of prepared diced tomatoes with chile peppers mixed with tomato paste and starchy pasta water. Parmesan cheese and cilantro.

Clear ice win

Needed:

* 1 small cooler

* 1 freezing winter night

*  tap water 

In chipped shard form.

It's a hassle. And a wet mess.

Perfectly clear ice.

Gratis the Weather Channel. They reported on a lake with perfectly clear ice and two professional explaining it. 

The first woman apparently walking on it said the lake needed to be perfectly steady with gently dropping temperature so directional freezing from the top downward slow enough to allow bubbles to escape or to be pushed down along with impurities as the crystals are forming. 

Then a man in a freezing room demonstrated two masses of water, one large in a barrel the other shallow in a bowl. The bowl froze solid and was clouded, the large barrel froze a new lid of ice that the man lifted off leaving a barrel of water. The ice is perfectly clear. 

This trial did what the man did but had it to wait for nights on the terrace that are cold enough long enough. It is a hassle and a hazard with wet and slippery sharp knife also a bit of fun.

Tuna salad with pineapple and apple, wasabi mayonnaise dressing

A type of poke, I guess. It has wasabi instead of chile paste this time and it has mayonnaise. It also has apple and celery for crunch, so odd ingredients. But who cares? We make up rules around here. It is very good with a little soy sauce to taste. It will be something we chef types do for ourselves without putting it on the menu. Insufficiently universal inviting too many irrelevant complaints to put up with, but I love it.

White onion is rinsed to disarm it of its biting stinky sulfides. 

Peru beans, avocado salad, cold rib-eye steak, chocolate chip cookies

Three different things happen at once. Can you handle it? Can you handle it? 

I never saw Peru beans before. One cup swelled overnight to one pint and began to foam.

I bet these things will germinate within just a few days.

I saw them at the grocery in bulk bins for 5¢ per metric ton. Or possibly $1.50 pound, I forget. 

On the other hand, the bacon is incredibly expensive. Nobody pays this much for bacon, it's not even reasonable, so cost-wise the combination of the two ingredients is strange.

The camera worked overtime tonight. Between this and that the camera and phone took shots of the sunset interspersed at forty seconds. It's only 78 frames, and for some reason stopped and had to be restarted.

Ding. Cookies done.

Salted rib-eye steak, green salad

Look at that, it's eighteen dollar steak reduced to eleven dollars. It's nonsensically large and thick. Like a little roast. And it's only USDA choice, not even prime. See how little fat there is throughout? And it cannot be properly grilled outside due to city ordinances, municipal fire codes such is urban living. The rules are you go out for that. Thank you for the free seven dollars, Mr/Mrs. Grocery Person. 

After ninety minutes. ↓

That's my own bleu cheese dressing, simple as can be and it sure is good.

Drier, obviously. I like it. This works for me. 

Christmas dinner. This is 1/3 of the steak. What? I ain't no pig. 

And it's like my ginger Memaw used to say, Chip, there's always tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow I love ya tomorrow you're always a day away. Until she died.

This idea was written about on Ace of Spades food thread only a few days ago but now I cannot find it.