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Let me start by saying I don’t eat meat. I began dabbling in vegatarianism in 1985 after dissecting a rat in science class and reading Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” in history. I was on and off a vegetarian for a variety of different reasons, mostly based on income, as in “if it’s free, it’s in my diet.” From the early nineties until the last two months of 1999, I was a lacto-ovo (can’t live without eggs or cheese) vegetarian then for health reasons I added a weekly fish dish (makes for easier traveling) and haven’t looked back. I don’t miss meat and frankly never liked it that much (except for bacon).

I can safely say my body was a 100% bacon free zone for at least 15 years before Katrina Markoff tempted me with her Vosge’s Chocolate Mo’s Bacon Bar. She has combined deep milk chocolate (I am usually a dark chocolate snob) with applewood smoked bacon, and alder smoked salt.

Crunchy, salty, sweety goodness.

I am sure you are having a devil of a time wrapping your head around the idea of bacon and chocolate, but trust me, this is amazing.

Katrina has built a business around her unusual chocolate pairings. Here are a few samples…

     Black Pearl: ginger + wasabi + black sesame seeds + dark chocolate, 55% cacao

Calindia: Indian green cardamom + organic California walnuts + dried plums + Venezuelan dark chocolate, 65% cacao

     Naga: sweet Indian curry + coconut + deep milk chocolate, 41% cacao

     Oaxaca: guajillo & pasilla chillies + Tanzanian bittersweet chocolate, 75% cacao

     d’Oliva: dried kalamata olives + Venezuelan white chocolate, 33% cocoa butter

     Red Fire: Mexican ancho & chipotle chillies + Ceylon cinnamon + dark chocolate, 55% cacao

My favorite is Mo’s Bacon Bar, second is d’Oliva (white chocolate and olives) and third is Naga (Curry and chocolate). Although I might need to have another go round and taste them again…

Chocolate bars start at $2.50 for a mini bar,  $7.50 for a regular sized bar, and $8 for a Day of the dead chocolate skull. (The website doesn’t tell you the weight of the product.) This is not cheap chocolate, but it is delicious. Go to their website www.vosgeschocolate.com and check out the truffles, flying pigs and all the fun!

caramel pre-cookie filling and limes, post squeezing …

But first, a photo of how they serve the pickled veg at Bardsley’s fish and chips in Brighton, England.

Move over film and nailpolish, you got nothing on me.  Here is a sample of some of the stranger things I have had to store in my refridgerators over the course of my career:

• breast milk (not mine)
• cooked whale (from Bequia–where it is legal to hunt whales old school style) (never ate it)
• TDS life caulk (black)
• Catalyzed Awlgrip (with brush, covered with rubber glove)
• West System Epoxy (active)
• Paper pulp with glitter and Indonesian spices
• Birth Control Pills (not mine)
• Birth control ring (not mine)
• Bait

Ingredients: Sugar, enriched bleached flour*, high fructose corn syrup, water, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, corn syrup, eggs.

This is the next “food” product in the series. 8*1*8 has an enormous amount of sugar (the very first ingredient on the box), and is far more moist than Patty, the Eterniburger. I am not sure what will happen, so stay tuned. I am a little afraid of ants.

Naturally, I am having another contest to name this cream filled golden sponge cake. Please submit your entries via comments. I will decide on Sunday night, the winner will receive two Wacky Packages, one with gum, the other with stickers.

Don’t delay! Enter today!

(spouses, relatives, employees, and previous winners may enter)

I am also taking suggestions for other products you would like to see in this project. Any suggestions I use will be rewarded with Wacky Packages. YAY!

*enriched bleached flour means they took all of the good stuff out of the flour when they processed and bleached it, then went and added a whole bunch of nutritional stuff to try to make it good for you again.

For BAK

Also known as garlic mayonnaise, but please, please don’t call it Garlic Aioli, that would be saying “Garlic garlic mayonnaise.”

Do yourself a favor and use a food processor. Start with the following in the bowl of the processor:

• 1-2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed*
• 1 egg, room temp**

Process, and with motor running, slowly add

• 1 cup extra virgin olive oil

Keep running until the oil and egg has emulsified. With motor stopped, add

• Salt and pepper
• 1-2 Tablespoon lemon juice or white wine vinegar

Finally, with machine running again, slowly add

• 1/2cup to 1 cup vegetable oil

Process until emulsified.

This is great in place of regular mayo, on fresh bread with sliced boiled eggs, on fish, etc. For a non-garlic version, replace garlic with 1 Tablespoon of dijon mustard.
*for a softer flavor, you can use roasted garlic. NEVER EVER EVER use pre-chopped garlic from a jar

**the fresher the better, go organic if you can. This won’t be cooked, but you should be safe–unless you are preggers or immunocompromised.

I got some pretty great feedback about my new “drawings” and can’t wait to go forward. This is another semi-new project. Semi-new because I started it before and someone threw out my cheeseburger. I really want to see where this is going to go. Today I bought a plain cheeseburger, no dehydrated onions, pickle, ketchup or mustard. Actually I bought two and tried to figure out the best way to get the date on the bun. First attempt: beads, no good. Second attempt: embroidery thread and stitching, not only no good, but I destroyed an expensive and cool piece of thread in the process. Next cheeseburger, third attempt: name brand rhinestones, did the job.

Once a week, I am going to take a picture of my (our) cheeseburger and  post it. Just so you know I am not messing around, I will make sure there is something with date context in the photo (probably a newpaper).

I am looking for a name for my cheeseburger. Best suggestion wins two BRAND NEW Wacky Packages trading card sets. One comes with bubble gum, the other a sticker. Send your suggestions today.

All of this looking at food, drawing food packages, researching what we eat, gluing onto plates, etc  isn’t getting me where I need to be, so I decided to take a different approach…

• 2 batches pesto with basil from my garden
• 13 jars of jalapeno jelly (I grew the jalepenos from a special salmonella free plant)
• Fancy tuna salad
• Greek garbanzo salad
• 2 batches Cierpoux (granola type cereal)
• Spinach tomato pesto Risotto (with homemade stock)

Recipes for any of the above provided upon request.

Please note the halal cow in the bottom left hand corner of this picture I took in Sharm el Sheik, Egypt in November.

Oh, you say you can’t see it, how about a close up…

Please note the vegetarian cow in the center of this picture taken in the square by my house in March…

We have been traveling through Muslim countries for months and the ham ran out ages ago. Buddhists don’t seem to have any pork taboos.