Salsa

I like making my own salsa mainly because I don't like jarred salsa. They all taste too much like tomato sauce or something.

I also like making salsa because I get to play with my knives.

Unfortunately, making fresh salsa in the middle of December probably isn't such a great idea. The tomatoes were definitely sub-par and didn't have a lot of flavor. I also forgot to leave the seeds and such in one of the jalapenos, so there wasn't much heat involved. At least I got my servings of vegetables.

The recipe is fairly straight forward and usually pretty good if you have quality ingredients. It makes enough for two people to snack on.

3 Plum Tomatoes (I used the vine-ripened instead of plum because the plum tomatoes looked terrible)
1/4 Red Onion
1/2 Red Bell Pepper
2 Cloves Garlic
3 Jalapenos
Juice from 1/2 a Lime
Salt/Pepper

Pear Pie

I do not bake often. In fact, the only baking I've ever done consists of chocolate chip cookies and out of the box brownies (the cookies are quite tasty though).

I've never baked pies because there has always been someone around who can actually do it a lot better than me (my grandmother, mother, sister and now Mandy).

A couple of weeks ago, refrigerated pie crust was on sale, so we bought a box just to have around.

So for some reason this week, I got it in my head that I wanted to make a pie with the ready-made crust (taking the hardest part of pie-making out of the equation). I somehow settled on making a pear pie. Pears are sorta in season. So yeah.

The recipe was fairly straight forward. It had me just pour the sugar/flour mixture over top of the pears once they were in the pie crust instead of pre-mixing. I thought this was a little weird, but I followed the directions anyway.


We were pretty impatient and wanted to eat pie, so we only let it cool for about 45 minutes. The resulting pictures show that it hadn't really firmed up yet and was ridiculously wet. Subsequent pieces have been great.

I thought it was a little too sweet the first day also, but I actually don't think I'd change anything in the recipe.

Well, the first pie didn't kill anyone (yet), so maybe I'll attempt another with a greater degree of difficulty in the future. Ideally I'll try my hand at some pie crust, but no promises there.

Pie Filling:
5 Large Pears (I think I used Bartlett)
1 Cup Sugar
1/4 Cup Flour
1/2 Teaspoon Lemon Zest
1/2 Teaspoon Cinnamon
1/8 Teaspoon Salt
2 Tablespoons Lemon Juice (drizzled on top of the pears and sugar mixture)
2 Tablespoons Butter (cut up and thrown on top of the sugar mixture)

Penne and Chicken

Slow week for Joe Cooks Dinner and Stuff. I haven't actually been cooking all that much, instead opting for sake and sushi in some far off Brooklyn neighborhood as well as a nice little italian meal to celebrate some good news in Hobo Gary's life. However, fear not as I still have some food related musings.

I had actually forgotten that I made this until I found a picture while going through our camera today.

I've been pretty bored with jarred sauce for the past few months, so I was determined to try something new.

I made a sauce using some basic canned tomato sauce, garlic, basil, white wine and cream. Next time I make it (and if Mandy is not joining me at the dinner table), I'll probably throw some onions in there as well.

I sauteed some chicken with just salt and pepper, and mixed everything all together. It was pretty decent, and a definite nice change from jarred sauce.

Netflix Watch Instantly - Certifiably Stellar.

Hello to my four loyal readers. There hasn't been much cooking going on in the apartment for the past week for two reasons:
1) Thanksgiving - Mandy and I spent Thanksgiving with my parents. They proceeded to load us up with a ridiculous amount of leftovers to bring back to Sunnyside. This also does not include the fact that Gary gave me probably a pound of ham after I visited him at his parents. I ate a ridiculous amount of stuffing and sweet potato casserole this past week. No real cooking required.
2) Food Poisoning - I'll skip the messy details, but I'll tell you I blame it on the burger from Bar 43. The bad meal was on Wednesday night and I only feel 100% today. Ugh.

Cooking will most likely resume tomorrow.

So to fill this blog with some other Joe related rambling, I present you my thoughts on some recently watched films from my Netflix Watch Instantly Queue.


Toy Soldiers - Oh man. This cast. Sean Astin, Louis Gossett Jr, Wil Wheaton, R Lee Ermy, Denholm Elliot (brody from India Jones), Lenny Briscoe. I was having trouble placing the Colombian terrorist, Andrew Divoff. Turns out he played Mikhail on Lost. Also Russian Soldier #3 in the newest Indiana Jones movie. Such a wide acting range.

My plot synopsis: Sean Astin plays the rebellious rebel attending his 4th boarding school. Louis Gossett Jr. plays the no-nonsense dean. Terrorists take over the school in an attempt to... well, that doesn't really matter. Astin somehow manages to come up with a plan to rescue the students that the FBI/military find acceptable. Hilarity ensues.

I think the most shocking thing to me is that it came out in 1991. I thought it was filmed in the 80's. Then again, the entire cast is dressed like I was in middle school, so I guess this makes sense.

Favorite Scene: When Wil Wheaton storms down the stairs brandishing an uzi with an absurdly long barrel, how can you not get a ridiculous smile on your face?

3 stars

Lethal Weapon - An old TBS/TNT stand-by. An excellent way to waste 90 minutes of your life away. And there's no Joe Pesci in this one!! (I'm not sure if this is actually good or bad, I'll get back to you once I rewatch the rest of the trilogy +1).

My plot synopsis: Mel Gibson and Danny Glover team up in this cop buddy movie. Gibson plays a cop who is wacky (possibly auto-biographical). Glover plays an old detective whose catch phrase is "I'm too old for this." Hijinks ensue.

Eric Clapton did some of the music for this movie? Amazing. Doesn't explain all the sax solos though. Unless they had a guitar effects board in the 80's that modeled a saxophone.

Scene of the film: The entire ridiculous climax. Gary Busey and Mel Gibson in a fist fight to end the movie? Terrific stuff here. Also the fact that they (Gibson and Glover) drove a police car through Glover's living room when they could have just dealt with Busey outside if they knew he was coming.

3 stars

Five Whiskeys

On a recent trip through DC, I stopped by to visit Jeff, of Jeff Drinks and Stuff fame.

We decide to partake in one of our favorite activities not involving video games, whiskey. I'm not quite sure how we ended up with so much to drink, but there was probably some peer pressure involved.

Jeff already had the Jim Beam and Elijah Craig 18 Year (well, that was technically Laura's). He purchased the 1792 and Jameson. The Jameson purchase took a little prodding from me, which most likely consisted of me saying, "hey Jeff, this is on sale!"

I purchased some Knob Creek which was destined for a Wake Forest tailgate.

I actually took notes on each of the drinks, but in typical fashion managed to misplace them.

The one surprise of all the night was how drinkable Jim Beam was neat. I'm not sure I'd ever just sipped it before, instead of just throwing it back, but it wasn't as harsh as I thought it would be.

The one thing that wasn't surprising at all was the awesomeness of the Jameson 12 year. It was, bye far, the best whiskey of the evening.

The middle three are all pretty good, but I thought the Elijah Craig was a little too peppery for my tastes.

I gotta say it was a good day.