This Place Is a Stranger

I was going to rework this and never finished doing that. Wrote a new soundtrack and meant to fix the poor cropping, but here it is.

A friend, Tad, shot some squirrels and one made its way into my hand. This marks my first official squirrel butchering.

Field dressed and ready for the skin to come off.



Sometimes I think jokes should be off the plate when concerning nature and the consumption of it for my own livelihood. But here the squirrel is beside himself.



All of that said, it was a great experience which I have decided I want to perfect and understand on a deeper level. I haven't yet consumed the meat but soaked it for two days in coconut milk to see if I can mellow out its gaminess without using buttermilk, not sure because of its fat content. Anyhow, it is stewing now and will quickly become a really nice dinner I feel. Reports on that later.

The dumpling bread was made from almnds ground into flour and egg washed.

The filling is deer, carrots and cabbage all fried in bacon fat. All of this formed into a dumpling and deep friend in a wok with vegetable oil seasoned with bacon fat grease.

The sauce is made from coconut milk and almonds. A close dairy and gluten free alternative to Thai peanut sauce.

Homemade almond flour mixed and rolled into crackers which instead of baked were deep fried.

Shrimp, carrots and onions pan fried in coconut oil. All of it topped with a smoked remoulade.

Fucking delicious.

Bought a White 464 sewing machine and recently threaded it for the first time. The needle is more than a decade old and broke after a few moments' use.

So it's been way too fucking long, and I have a plethora of excuses, all of which make it look like I had nothing to do with not posting. But hey... ITS AMERICA!

Started a new Chef gig in Nashville TN, working with some great dudes and learning alot. These are some of my creations as newby as they may be.

In layer from bottom to top: Cornmeal Cracker, Ribeye, Roasted Red Pepper and Raspberry puree, Bias Cut Scallion, and Sriracha.


Smoked banana slices, Heirloom tomato, chocolate sauce, Roasted corn, and for garnish very cute little carrot ribbons.


Raspberry reduction, Potato balls, Chocolate/Snickers ganache, smoked salmon rosette, micro greens and lemon twists for garnish.


Made this one at home, a dairy free Chocolate sauce.


Cornmeal crackers make a reappearance, the lighter colored spheres are chicken liver mousse, between them is a red onion marmalade garnished with white and yellow shredded cheddar....more.

As a celebration for my new position with Loews Vanderbilt, a line cook, I decided to build me a cutting board for my home use.


Here are the three boards from whence it was constructed. From top to bottom: Cherry, Black Walnut, White Oak


I planed and cut the boards into 1x1's then glued them together.


Here I had sanded the boards don so they would join evenly, made slices into 1x1's again in opposite direction, arranged them in a pattern I like and glued/clamped them.


Here is the final sanded and oiled product. Overall I spent 3 days on it, most of that time spent sanding down to a 440 Grit with a random orbital.

I will be using these ALLLLL night. Like an LA Stripper

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=money%2Clove&year_start=1500&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3

As usual, instead of working on one of the two dozen projects I've got going, I made this.

I have six locks on my door all in a row. When I go out, I lock every other one. I figure no matter how long somebody stands there picking the locks, they are always locking three. ~ Elayne Boosler