And then this happened

Almost.



Ok.

That.



Hello, you.

You see... I was fittin' to post about all the cultural activities R & I got up to over the MLK weekend (some music, a bit of art, a view,a jaunt through a museum), which was all very fun and interesting. And then a week passed and it became Sunday. And I decided to make a roasted pear upside down cake.

Bold move.

I was snooping around on Food Gawker (hours wasted), my sweet/hangover tooth aching for something. There were the classic chocolate goodies (my go-to) but somehow this completely out of the blue pear cake just spoke to me.

I might have helped that we had three more-than-ripe pears begging to be consumed. R kindly jumped out into the cold (nothing can motivate a Sunday person like a home baked dessert) to get the provisions (who has corn meal on hand, anyhow?). And off I went.

There was one misfire when I found I needed baking soda AND powder (damn you two leavening agents!) but it turns out if you use three times the amount of powder for the amount required of soda, you're good to go.

Honestly, it may look impressive (you're not allowed to say otherwise) but this was one of the easiest desserts I have ever made.

AND. It. Was. Delicious. It had that salty-sweet thing going for it and the cornmeal gave it a fantastic grainy texture. It was light but moist and the bottom layer adds the kick of sweetness (a layer of sugar butter. That's right. Sugar. Butter.). The pears roast down to a delectable softness that melts in your mouth and then the rosemary offers this hint of savory flavor. Awesome.

And THEN just to top it off. I made this genius asparagus, goat cheese and lemon pasta from Smitten Kitchen.



I swapped regular pasta for the curly cute kind (because it's all that I had) and I swapped rosemary for tarragon for the same reason. The rosemary worked out fine, though I'm sure tarragon would have been EVEn better. It was creamy with that goat cheese bite. We wolfed it down. And it really only took 20 minutes. Amaze, amaze.

So, there it is. Back on the cooking wagon (not that I really strayed).

Next time, the cultural adventures... I swear.

A day that will live in Bellamy

While snooping around yesterday for interesting stories I noticed a curious, shall we say, epidemic, possibly global, infecting men by the name of

Bellamy.

Yes.

When was the last time you heard that name? I think I know of a comic by that name, so it rings light-hearted and happy to me. But it turns out, Bellamys have a dark side.

Particularly on 1.12.11

Here's the latest on this late-breaking conspiracy:

The brothers Bellamy.

Who, might you ask, are the Bellamy brothers and, what, pray tell, do they have to do with Britney Spears? In no other world, besides, possibly porn, would two aging mustachioed country-pop kin and one struggling pop princess be connected. And yet here we are.

Ms. Spears debuted her new pop dance floor single, "Hold it against me," on Monday, after years of meltdowns and scandal. Surprisingly, despite her helium-soaked vocals, the tune was mildly heralded and quickly became the no. 1 download on iTunes.

The pop princess returns!

Nay! Say the Brothers Bellamy. In honor of the 35th anniversary of their "massive debut pop hit" "Let Your Love Flow," the Bellamy Brothers are reentering society in scandalous form. "Hold it against me" is OURS, the brothers proclaim. Those four seemingly innocuous words are country pop gold when strung together and preceded by the pick-up line, "If I said you had a beautiful body..."

Did Britney rip off the country crooners? Or do the two pop groups just have the same taste in common lyrics? The debate continues.

Baby Bellamy.

Who the hell is Matt Bellamy?

He might be in a band, but more importantly he is giving Kate Hudson's baby Ryder a sibling!

The couple have been reportedly dating for nine months and word on the street is that said baby Bellamy was not planned but the couple is "embracing it."

Cue exclamation points!!!

Don't famous people have birth control? I mean, I know my monthly BC takes a hit out of my already empty wallet, but somehow I don't see Kate suffering from the same affliction.

Well to each his own.

And now we can all thank our lucky stars that Matt Bellamy has entered our world. We definitely needed another pasty emo rocker with sculpted hair. Yipee Skip.

Manchester Bellamy.

And in the third, and what could make this a global, Bellamy phenomenon I bring you Craig Bellamy.

Again, who?

He is a soccer player with a bit of a temper, it would seem. Not that that is a surprise. But the reason he appeared in my news feed at all, it seems, is that he's, like, Beckham famous, so...

Here's the breakdown: former Wales captain Craig Bellamy got into a brawl with two other men (man babies - merely 20 and 26 years of age) and some peeps may have walked away with bloody faces.

The clincher is that the fight came HOURS after Bellamy's team and another team tied 1-1 in the FA Cup third round.

GASP!

And that's all the energy I can muster to care about that.

BUT I think we can all admit that the coincidence is a weird one. Just be thankful your last name isn't Bellamy. And if it is, well, stay out of trouble.

Slow cooking the shit out of 2011

It was a culinary kind of Christmas.

Santa brought not one but TWO slow cookers. Something, or someone, was trying to tell me something:

I want meat, and I want it tender.

And so we began 2011 with a three pound cut of beef chuck roast, Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook and a programmable Cuisinart slow cooker.

If you are to enter into the slow cooker way of life there are a few things you should take into consideration:

1) Do not begin your maiden meal at noon on a Sunday
2) Best to do your grocery shopping the day before so that everything is ready to go
3) For God's sake, take the contraption out from it's comfortable Styrofoam nestle of a box

Since we like to live dangerously, we opened our precious piece of meat half past 1 in the afternoon for what was quickly becoming a late night pot roast snack.

But it was hard to stop. I mean look at that thing. It begged to be slow-cooked.



We chopped a few veggies, braised the beast in the new All-Clad pan, simmered a little dry - or available - wine from our Box 'O and plopped the whole thing in the slow cooker -- setting it to a generous eight hour timer.





And away we went.

We were giddy with the idea of all that flavor and tenderness working away without us. We had hired out, or out-right stole, Cinderellas little bird and mice friends for an afternoon of free cooking labor while we hit the town. It seemed scandalous.

Four hours later we were starving and had exhausted our neighborhood activities.

We returned to our meat-smelling abode with stomachs growling and patience waning.

We watched a movie, flipped through old issues of US Weekly and, being desperate for the passage of time, tidied.

It was brutal.

We ate a salad appertif in ten minutes that was meant to kill two hours.

I began boiling water for the egg noodles with 90 minutes to go. Within 30 minutes we were slicing up that tender puppy, weak in the knees, not caring a lick to wait any longer.

I threw some flour in the cooker and jimmied together some gravy. I piled egg noodles, the falling-apart meat and the soupy gravy high in a bowl and we just stood and stared at our non-work.



Sure it was 10 p.m. but... It. Was. Glorious.

Somehow in all the commotion of those first cooking moments I neglected to pour salt and pepper on the mound of meat (Me! Forgetting salt!) so it did lack a little depth of flavor, but the tenderness made us quickly forget any such negligence.

It was indulgent and delicious and, I can say from experience, even better the next day.

Of course three pounds of chuck roast is WAY more than a couple needs, but it did get us three meals worth and its more meat than we would have normally eaten in six months.

Oh, glorious, slow cooker, I can tell we are going to have a very happy and caloric life together.