Lekker: Lemon Sage Butter Roasted Turkey

Gobble gobble gobble bitches! If I was some fancy cook I would have done this turkey as a test before Thanksgiving, and posted enough in advance so that you, my faithful followers, could make it yourselves for that happy day of gluttony.

Alas! I am but a poor and busy girl, so go ahead and bookmark this bad boy for your Christmas festivities or for Turkey Day next year. I'm not just saying that because it's *a* turkey recipe, but because: this is the best roasted turkey I have ever had.

(Everyone knows deep fried turkeys are the BEST turkeys, but not everyone wants to mess around with 30 gallons of boiling hot oil.)

LOOK AT IT!

Like no lie, I'm not meaning to boast because any time something of mine turns out so perfectly I'm 98% convinced it's a fluke, but--THIS IS THE BEST AND MOISTEST, MOST DELICIOUS TURKEY EVER!

Crispy brown skin, check.
Moist, succulent breast meat, check.
The kind of gravy I'd kill for, check.

Hooolllyyyyyyy shit. This one's a game changer.

So! Onwards to it then. This is a long-ass recipe because it covers the whole she-bang from the brine to the gravy and everything in between. The brine is a bit tedious and requires advance planning, but the rest of it is quite simple in execution.

First: To brine or not to brine? That is the question. Well, maybe not, but it's a much better question that that other esoteric bullshit.

~Kidding~, kind of, because Hamlet is my favourite Shakespearean work--but I have to believe that if the good ol' Prince of Denmark knew anything about Thanksgiving turkeys he would definitely be asking MY question instead. So, back to it--to brine or not to brine?

There's copious debate about this on the web and equally so among my friends and fellow home cooks. When informally polled, those who were pro-brining swore by it while others simply brushed it off with a "Meh, not worth it."

Alternatives to the traditional wet brine are a dry brine, a salt crust, or no extra preparation at all save removing the plastic.

This year, since I was cooking Thanksgiving dinner (my first by myself) at my Dad's house which boasts two fridges and the ideal 5 gallon bucket, I figured I would take the opportunity to do a classic wet brine. I'm sure in future years when I'm cooking Thanksgiving dinner in god-knows-what far flung locale, I'll be pressed to try these other more convenient brining methods and indeed, I look forward to it.

Let's get to it cluckers!

LEMON SAGE BUTTER ROASTED TURKEY
serves 4-6 people

WHAT YOU NEED

For the brine:

• a 5 gallon bucket or other very large pot, washed & dried
• 1 12-14 pound turkey (which will feed 4-6 people plus leftovers; I used Butterball)
• 8 bay leaves
• 2 T whole peppercorns
• 2 T dried sage
• 1 T dried thyme
• 1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
• 1 cup rock salt or other large grain salt (kosher, sea salt, etc.) (if you only have fine grained table salt, you might need to reduce it to just over 3/4 cup)
• 1/2 cup lemon juice (bottled is fine)
• 1 can light beer
• 1 lemon, quartered
• Water

For the roasting:

• 1 stick (1/2 cup) salted butter of choice, softened (I am batshit crazy about Kerrygold Irish Butter for fancy things like this)
• 1/4 cup finely chopped fresh sage leaves
• 2 lemons, zested, and the juice squeezed from only one (strain to avoid any pulp or seeds)
• Freshly ground pepper
• ~2 cups low sodium chicken broth (you'll need to fill up the bottom of the roasting pan to about 1/2 an inch)

Additionally:

• 1/2 a stick (1/4 cup) salted butter of choice, melted
• 1 T chopped fresh sage leaves
• 1 t lemon juice 

For the gravy:

• Pan drippings, drained of fat
• 3 T flour, mixed with 1/3 cup water to create a smooth mixture
• 1 cup dry white wine
• 1 cup low-sodium chicken broth (possibly)
• 1 cup water
   

WHAT YOU DO

To Brine:

1. First you gotta brine, about 24 hours before you plan to roast. In a medium sized pot over medium heat, combine the salt, sugar, spices, and lemon juice with enough water to fill almost to the top of your pot. Bring to a low boil and stir until all the salt and sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat and let cool.

2. In the meantime take your turkey out of the fridge, unwrap it in the sink, and remove the neck and giblets and whatever other weird body parts they've stuffed inside there. You can do whatever you want with those since I won't be using them. Rinse the turkey with cold water inside and out, and plop it into your makeshift poultry hot tub.

3. Pour your dissolved mixture over the turkey, along with the beer and lemon quarters, and then fill the bucket the rest of the way with plain water until the turkey is just covered and stir. You may need to weight it down with something to make sure it stays immersed; I found that if I just sort of jammed it in there properly it stuck.

4. Stick that monstrosity in the fridge to chill out for about 24 hours, or until about an hour before you need to roast.
 

To Roast:

1. Hooray, it's T-Day! Time to get going. About an hour before you need to stick the turkey in the oven (check the packaging directions to find out how long your turkey will need to cook; I had a 13.45 pound turkey and it took about 3 hours and 20 minutes) remove it from the brine and place it on a roasting rack set inside a roasting pan. Pick off any solids like bay leaves and peppercorns and such and throw the brine down the drain. Allow the bird to come to room temperature for about an hour. Chill the hell out about bacteria and whatnot, it'll be fine.

2. Preheat your oven to 450 degrees F. In a small bowl, mash together the butter, lemon zest, lemon juice, sage, and freshly ground pepper. Now here you have to do something kinda gross/mostly cool: run your hands underneath the turkey skin on top to separate it from the breasts. There's a thin sort of membrane that attaches the skin to the flesh and you'll feel it give way as you separate it.

3. Take half the butter mixture in your fingers and insert it in between the skin and the breasts you just separated, rubbing and smoothing it out until the breasts are well covered.

This is sounding a bit suggestive at this point but tbh who doesn't want to be rubbed down with Kerrygold Irish Butter? 

Rub the other half of the butter mixture all over the outside of the turkey, in all the crevices like the wings corners and drumsticks.

Like so.

That's my Maple Bourbon Pumpkin Cake chilling behind me, and a mimosa in my hand because it isn't a holiday unless it's started with some bubbly!

4. Woo! All done and time to go in the oven. Last thing you have to do is pour in about 2 cups of chicken stock or broth into the pan so that the drippings won't burn during roasting. Toss that bird (we named ours Dorothy because I'm macabre and weird) into the oven at 450 for only 15 minutes. This blast of heat allows the skin to get a jump start on browning. After 15 minutes, turn the heat down to 350 degrees and set the timer for 1 hour.

5. Somewhere in that hour, melt the additional 1/2 stick of butter and mix with the extra sage and lemon juice. After the timer goes off, remove turkey from oven and baste with pan juices and some of the melted butter mixture. Replace back into the oven, and repeat two more times until turkey registers 160 degrees F when a meat thermometer is inserted into the thigh, or about 2-ish more hours. If you find that the breast is browning too much (at around hour 2 for me) you may gently cover it with a bit of foil.

The last baste...look at all that yummy sage and lemon zest! And those pan juices are destined to make a bomb ass gravy.

To Grave

(.......I went with it)

1. Once the turkey is done, remove it to a plate or carving board to relax for about 20 minutes to let the juices disperse throughout. Cover with foil to keep warm. Toss the roasting rack into the sink, and pour off the majority of the fat from the bottom of the pan into a separate heat-safe dish. You can use one of those nifty gravy-fat separators if you want.

That should leave you with just the delicious drippings in the pan. At this point you have the option of cooking the gravy directly in the pan set over two burners; or if you used a nonstick pan like I did, you can just pour all the drippings into another more manageable smaller pot. However if you did NOT use a nonstick pan I DO NOT RECOMMEND THAT! All those browned bits stuck to the bottom will be left behind and they are total flavour bombs. You'll want to include them in your gravy.

2. At any rate, bring the drippings to a rapid simmer and whisk in the flour and water mixture. Whisk constantly and cook for about 4 minutes to thoroughly cook out all the raw flour taste. The gravy should thicken considerably at this point. Then add the wine, and cook for about 8 minutes, whisking often, until most of the alcohol has burned off. Whisk in the water, and TASTE! The salt level at this stage is important. All that salty butter and chicken broth may have provided more than enough salt for your tastes. If the salt level is good, do not add chicken broth and instead simply add more water until your gravy reaches the desired consistency.

Serve over your carved turkey, and I'm sure you will have a very happy table! Bon Appetit!

Liquor: Lemon Ginger Martini

So I have this really pathetic little game going on with myself right now, where I give myself a blue star (literally just a star scribbled in blue ink) on my wall calendar for every day I don't drink this month. There's no incentive for doing this; I've not promised myself anything, am not rewarding myself in any way, and have not been commanded to do so by any sort of rehabilitation programme. I have no idea why I play these games with myself.

Today is February 19, and I have 7 blue stars.

Don't you judge me. It's largely because of this drink! The Lemon Ginger Martini.

Easy-peasey lemon-squeezy.

This drink recipe comes entirely from my friend Lilypad, who is just so tres chic it's no surprise at all that she would come up with such a sophisticated drink. I love it because it's not too sweet, and so refreshing I know this is going to become my signature summer drink. With over a foot of snow piled up outside, clearly I am already pretending it is summer! I think it's about time I switch back to liquor from wine and beer, too, in trying to make smarter caloric decisions--so you can expect cocktail recipes to pop up more often, especially "skinny" ones. Cos summer IS coming. Thank god.

Lemon Ginger Martini
makes 1 martini

What You Need
2 ounces gin (BECAUSE YES, ACTUAL TRUE MARTINIS ARE MADE WITH GIN, NOT WITH VODKA) As you can see I used Tanqueray, but usually Bombay Sapphire is my go-to. Lilypad, because she maintains only the most exquisite taste, likes Junipero, which I must say I quite like.
1 ounce freshly squeezed and strained lemon juice (I forbid you to bastardise this simple deliciousness with the bottled stuff!)
0.5 ounce (or 1 ounce if you like things sweeter) ginger simple syrup, recipe here

What You Do
1. Did I or did I not say easy-peasey lemon-squeezy? Shake all over ice in a cocktail shaker for 30 seconds and strain into a martini glass. Garnish with a lemon slice.

Liquor: The Weasley

One of my goals for this year is to figure out how to add some coding and widgets and gidgets and whatever to this blog so that people can Pin recipes directly to their Pinterest boards and e-mail certain entries to their friends, etc. Unfortunately I seem to have magically forgotten everything I learned when I built my first few websites--I blame vodka induced amnesia (and lack of recent practice!). Or...in the theme of today's entry, did someone Obliviate me?

What's the perfect drink for staring at HTML coding until your eyes cross? ALCOHOL! But more specifically, whiskey, since that's what I like to drink these days. And because I am on a ginger kick as of late (that started with the ginger infused broth of whiffy wonder in my Thai Chicken Noodle Soup) and also because I am a HUGE geek, I present to you...

THE WEASLEY. 

 In my mind, of the 'Fred & George' variety.

You've seen this kind of thing from me before.

My thought process: "Hmmm...whiskey....firewhiskey...and ginger, like THE quintessential gingers...but if it's going to be like firewhiskey it should also have a tiny bit of a spicy kick to it...but still sweet...and of course, it should also be HOT. Because, obviously."

Just a head's up, this recipe does require a wee bit of advance planning as you should let the whiskey infuse with the ginger for a night or two. The longer you let it go the more ginger flavour you'll get, but I wouldn't let it infuse past two nights.

The Weasley
this recipe makes two drinks; I split it up so that each would have a different whiskey


What You Need
Whiskey, about 1/2 cup per drink, brand of your choice: for one drink I used Jack's Tennessee Honey since I figured the sweetness would be offset with the ginger and lemon and spice, and I was right. I used Maker's Mark in the second drink and that was also lovely. Obviously, you don't have to do two different brands; just pick one and go with it!
1 medium piece of fresh ginger, about 4-5" (Fresh ginger packs quite a punch, so if you're not familiar with it, take a little lick/taste of the raw peeled ginger so you can get a feel for it and then decide how much you want.)
1 lemon
4 dashes ground ginger, so 2 per drink

2 pinches (and I seriously do mean a PINCH) red cayenne pepper, so 1 per drink (optional, really, since ginger can be pretty spicy, though it's a different kind of spice)
Smidge of honey, optional, to taste (if you're not using Jack's Tennessee Honey)
Club soda or tonic water, optional, to top off (I don't enjoy whiskey neat)

What You Do
1. So, here we go! First, carefully peel your fresh ginger root with a vegetable peeler or by using a spoon to scrape off the skin. Ugly thing, isn't it? But spicy and fresh and sharp and lovely. Dice it up into small pieces (you can see one floating in my drink, above) and make sure to trim off some of the rough, stringy outer edges. Toss it into your whiskey of choice, about 1 cup or so in a Mason jar, and let it infuse for 1 or 2 nights.

I assure you, that waiting time only happened because a) I got too busy to mess around with cocktails and b) I found a bottle of wine I forgot I had in the meantime.

2. So two days have passed and you're back; or, alternatively, a few hours have passed and you're impatient. Whatever. Strain out the whiskey or just fish the ginger pieces out and pour into two glasses. Slice the lemon into quarters and squeeze one quarter into each drink. Add two dashes of ground ginger to each drink, plus the pinch of cayenne pepper if you're brave, and the honey if you want. The nice thing about this recipe is that you can mess around with the proportions to basically whateverthehell you want depending on what you like--sweet, sour, spicy, whatever. This is your party.

3. Microwave for about a minute each until piping hot and smelling utterly boozy and wonderful. Top off with club soda, if desired, garnish with the leftover lemon and maybe a piece of ginger if you want, (I thoroughly enjoyed chewing on a couple of the pieces of ginger whilst drinking) and let the honey-whiskey-spicy-lemony-gingery goodness warm you from the inside out.

Warm you from the pain of losing Fred.

*sob*

Cheers, mates.

Lekker: Avgolemono

Avgo-what? AV-GO-LEMONO. I know, I still can't really say it right. Apparently you don't really pronounce the "g" as a "g", it's more like a "y" sound that exists in Greek. Since I do not actually know Greek, I'm sort of at a loss--but I'm pronouncing it "av-yo-lem-ONO" in my head.

I assume you've gathered by this point that this dish involves lemon and that would be correct. It's a traditional Greek soup consisting of chicken and rice (or orzo) in an egg-lemon broth. Yeah, yeah, I'm at it again with soups. LOOK! I'm trying to slim back down after the sheer overindulgence of the holidays, and soups and salads are the best way to do that. Deal with it. Plus, it's snowy and cold up here and I slipped on a patch of ice on Friday, falling and cracking my tailbone--so I needed some comfort.

Plus, I had some rotisserie chicken left over from my Thai Chicken Noodle Soup the other night, and ballin' on a budget means nothing goes to waste around here.

I had this again next-day with a small Greek salad and some crusty bread. Quiet, warm comfort at its finest.

Avgolemono
makes about 4 servings

What You Need
4 tablespoons butter or olive oil
1 small yellow onion, diced finely
1 leek, white and light green parts only, washed well and sliced down the middle, then sliced into thin half-moons
1/2 cup uncooked orzo or Arborio rice (I used orzo because it's what I had on hand, and I like it better than rice--in case you don't know, orzo is actually pasta in a small elongated shape similar to rice. It made an appearance in my Italian Lemon Chicken Orzo Soup, but I think the next time I make this dish I'll try rice.)
1/3 cup white wine (Totally optional and I highly doubt it's traditionally Greek, but if you know me at all of course I had a glass of white wine in hand while I was cooking--Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc, if you must know--so in it goes.)
5 cups of chicken broth (or stock, whatever) plus 1 cup water
2 cups shredded precooked chicken
3 eggs
4 tablespoons lemon juice, fresh squeezed if you have it (Cut it down to 3 tablespoons if you don't like things really lemony--but if you don't like lemon why the heck are you making this anyway???)
Salt 'n peppah, to taste

What You Do
1. Okidoke let's get this show on the road! In a large stock pot over medium heat, melt the first two tablespoons butter or oil. Throw in your leek and onion and cook for about 5 minutes until things start to get all golden and translucent and shit. This is about the time I throw the wine in too and cook it down until all the wine has evaporated and been absorbed.

Now, you kinda gotta multi-task here because you have to cook the orzo at the same time, too. In a separate pot, melt the other two tablespoons of butter/oil over medium heat and throw in the orzo. WHAT?! Isn't it going to burn? No, calm your jets guys. Cooking raw orzo over medium heat in butter or oil toasts it, giving it a beautiful golden colour and nutty, toasted flavour. (Works for rice too.) This is an extra step and of course you don't have to do it, you can just toss the orzo and water in a pot and boil away--but I do it because it's easy and delicious. But yeah, once you're all nicely toasted (and the orzo is too, I suppose) pour in enough water to cover well and let boil for about 9 minutes to al dente perfection.

Some say you can just throw the raw orzo into the soup and let it cook in the broth. I don't like doing this, because pasta releases starch into the water it cooks in and I don't like that starch mucking up my silky perfect broth.

2. Shit, where were we? Oh, right. OK so the orzo is cooking away in the small pot and your onions and leeks have cooked away with the wine in the big pot. Now throw in the chicken broth and water and the shredded cooked chicken and let that simmer away gently. When the orzo is done, drain it and add to the big pot.

3. Now's the time to make the egg-lemon part. This is the only vaguely tricky part, but if you can do two things at once (whisk with one hand and pour with the other) you'll be fine. We'll be tempering the eggs--which means warming them up/cooking them gently before adding it to the hot broth so that they don't just scramble like Egg Drop Soup. That's ugly and gross. Do you want stringy threads of scrambled eggs in your soup? No, so pay attention!

In a medium mixing bowl, whisk the three eggs together until frothy. One tablespoon at a time, whisk in the lemon juice until well incorporated. It should look frothy and creamy at this stage and a light yellow colour. Now with one hand, keep whisking steadily. With the other, slowly add in one ladleful of hot broth from the big pot. Do this two to three more times. Ta-dah! You've successfully tempered eggs. Now turn OFF the stove, and slowly pour THAT mixture into the big pot, whisking away. You're done.

DO NOT let it boil once you've added the egg/lemon mixture. It'll break and you'll get Egg Drop Soup. Be gentle when you reheat this the next day, too. Microwave on half power and stir often.

Enjoy, beauties, and dream of the warm and sunny Greek isles amidst all this chilly nonsense.

Lekker: Italian Lemon Chicken Orzo Soup

Ya know, I really didn't expect to come home from a blissful vacation on the beaches of Florida this past weekend to all sorts of upheaval at work, a government shutdown, and..bronchitis. What is UP with everything?! GTFO, moon cycles or universe or polar tides or whatever the hell else is causing all of this nonsense.

Protip: Wine helps. I recommend Monkey Bay Sauvignon Blanc. TRUST ME, I am a pro at this by now. And if you're furloughed, you know that means some good ol' Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill baby!

So, given that I have absolutely zero regard for my personal health (apparently) what was a cold last week has turned into a wonderfully throaty cough/bronchitis. Hey, I gave it a try with vitamin C and echinacea and fluids and zinc and this that and the other thing, and it didn't work, so...wine. Also, soup! Yes, fall is sort of here (it's still 87 degrees but the leaves are turning orange so I don't know WHAT is going on. Goes back to that crazy moon/universe/tide thing, I think, although if you believe my housemate it's BECAUSE OBAMA!) so it's soup season. Combined with being sick? Here's today's Lekker Recipe: Italian Lemon Chicken Orzo Soup.

I was actually inspired to create this by my best friend Lion, who is also, entirely coincidentally, sick with the same thing. I turn into a full-on mother hen when people I care about are sick, so I wondered about what I would make for him. What would make him feel better, and comforted and satisfied, but still be healthful enough to fight the illness, and perhaps even pay homage to his heritage?

Italian Lemon Chicken Orzo Soup, a recipe dreamed up entirely by me--and believe me, it's been a loooong time since I've been so inspired. 

P.S. As good as my motives may have been, I'm actually totally horrible because he didn't get any of this stuff. The post office did not take kindly to my request to ship a quart of soup 1000 miles. Jerks.  Sorry, Lion Man. Next time.

Italian Lemon Chicken Orzo Soup
makes a metric shit ton--I obviously I thought I was going to be sick for a long time. I ate a bowl for dinner, froze half, and still have two more servings left for lunch tomorrow. It freezes great, so you may as well make the whole batch, but you can halve it too.

What You Need
1 rotisserie chicken (just the 2 breasts really unless you want more) or ~2 chicken breasts, otherwise cooked and shredded (I made my life easy and picked up a pre-cooked delicious chicken from the store because I hate cooking whole chicken breasts; plus, I get to eat the wings and rip off the skin and devour that as soon as I get home as a pre-cooking snack and that is LITERALLY the best part) 
1 leek, white and light green parts only, washed thoroughly (they have a lot of grit in them, so slice it off at the part where it gets tough and dark green and wash the bottom half well)
1 14.5 ounce can artichoke hearts in water (if they come already quartered, just slice them up a bit further nicely; if they're whole, then quarter and slice)
3 cloves garlic, crushed or minced
1 tablespoon Italian seasoning
6-8 cups chicken broth or stock (I use the Knorr Homestyle Stock jelly-type things since I think they taste the best) 
3 large handfuls chopped Swiss chard (this stuff is great, I love it! It's like the silky older cousin to spinach; bitter when raw but utterly smooth and delicious in soups. I used the Kaleidoscope Chard from Trader Joe's here which is pre-washed and cut, but if you can find regular fresh raw chard that's great too. Just wash the leaves thoroughly, fold each leaf in half and slice out the tough inner stem, and slice the leaves into thin ribbons.)
2 large handfuls fresh baby spinach
1/2  bunch parsley, washed and chopped
1/2 cup dry orzo (Don't know orzo? You're missing out. It's a pasta shaped like an extra-large grain of rice with a GREAT mouthfeel used in Greek and Italian cooking. Mouthfeel means how it feels in your mouth. Giggity.)
olive oil, for frying
juice & zest of 1 lemon

I know it seems like a lot, but this is really super easy and hardly takes 30 minutes to put together. Ready? OK!

What You Do
1. In a small pot over medium-high heat, get some water boiling with salt so you can cook the orzo. I always cook pasta separate from the soup it's going into because I don't like the starch it releases during cooking to muddy up the broth of my soup. You want the orzo to be just slightly undercooked, because it's going to finish in the soup. I cook mine for 7 minutes flat, drain, and rinse with cold water to stop the cooking process and wash off excess starch.

2. While the water is boiling, shred up your chicken breasts with your fingers, or two forks if you want to pretend to be civilized (you're not fooling anyone), and slice up your leeks and artichokes as well. Leeks are like onions, but more complex in flavour and nutrition. Mince or crush the garlic, too.

3. In a large stockpot over medium heat, drizzle in some olive oil and throw the leeks and artichokes in to get them cooking with a bit of freshly ground black pepper. I saute them for about 5 minutes, just to get a bit of browning going on. Toss in the garlic and Italian seasoning and cook for 2 minutes more. Then add your stock and bring to a simmer.

4. Now's where it gets really easy! (Was it really that hard thus far? Nah, just a longer ingredient list.) Throw in your shredded chicken and let it simmer all together for 5 minutes. The spinach, chard and parsley take hardly any time at all, which is why you want to throw them in...now. Add the orzo now too, so it can finish cooking.  Now's the time to adjust the broth, adding a little more if you like your soups more watery like I do. Cook for about 5-6 more minutes.

5. Turn the heat off and add the zest* of one lemon and the juice of said lemon (through a strainer, if you want to avoid pulp and seeds in your soup). Taste and add salt if necessary. (A note: the chicken stock is probably pretty salty. However, I like salty things, and when I'm sick I tend to err on the side of more salt because it makes me drink more, which is important when you're sick. Capeche? It's why they give people in hospital that terribly salty chicken broth--to get them to absorb more fluids.) I always like to stir in a good glug or three of olive oil to finish a soup, too.

Done! Molto Italiano, no? Ah, io penso di essere stato un Mama italiano in un'altra vita!

Hope this banishes your sniffles, coughs and blues as much as it did mine. Ciao, bello. 

*I have a mircofine zester that I use for such purposes. If you don't have one, you can get away with the tiniest holes on a cheese grater as long as you don't get too much of the white pith mixed in there with the yellow skin, because that shit's bitter.

Lagniappe: FAIL.

Consistency is not my strong suit. My best friend Ghost once told me I was predictable in my unpredictability, so it's safe to say I won't be sticking to some sort of blogging "schedule"--my life is structured enough, thanks!

It's not that I'm not cooking though. I always am, usually about 5 days a week, tooling around with new recipes or finessing old ones with the eventual goal of posting them here. But, like any human I am prone to failure and not all of these recipes are successes! Whether it's due to human error on my part or a poorly written original recipe, the gaps in posting can be chalked up to something that didn't work out.

My godfather Harry suggested that I *do* write about my failures to have a more balanced viewpoint, but without any positive conclusion (this recipe was totally screwy, but LOOK, here's how I fixed it!) it's just a long FAIL blog post and no one wants that. For example, do you want to read an entire post about how the Lemon Blueberry Loaf I attempted on Monday was too moist, too dense, and wayyyyy too much work with glazing this and sifting that and zesting this and the other thing? At the end of the day it's just me being mad at a cake on my counter and what is THAT? No.

If I think a recipe is worth another shot (that cake is not, btw) I will continue to work with it and tweak it (like the Crispy Zucchini Cakes I attempted and screwed up--too much onion, too much moisture, cakes too big and tall) until I have a success, where I will write about it and mention how I royally effed it all up before so that you don't have to waste your time making my same mistakes. See: History; repeating itself, et. al.

tl; dr I don't blog about my failed cooking escapades because that's stupid and not the point of this blog.

I'm in Long Island with my Bonus Parents (godparents that are way more than godparents) this Labor Day weekend so I won't be doing much experimenting. In the meantime, drink one for me to toast the end of summer (BUT WHO IS REALLY WANTING TO TOAST THAT??? COME HERE SO I CAN SMACK YOU!) and I'll be back in the kitchen with flour on my nose and sugar sparkling on my skin next week.

The shitty, ill-fated Lemon Blueberry Loaf.