your goose is probably only half-baked at this point

Once upon a time, my dear partner went fishing in Alaska with his grandfather, dad, brother, uncles, and cousins.  This was all well and good, save for the fact that my partner a) doesn't fish, b) doesn't like  fishing, and c) hates traveling. He had a surprisingly good time and came home with a wealth of amazing photos, stories, and memories. ... and 70lb of fish.  35lb salmon, 35lb halibut. Which is awesome!  Save for the fact that I don't   didn't  know how to cook salmon.  I actually made myself seasick (har har) watching YouTube videos on how to cook salmon ahead of my partner's victorious return so I'd have some recipes ready to try. This was the second recipe I tried, and it was so good that we stopped trying other recipes just so we could eat this one again and again and again.  And it should be noted here that the first night we had it, I got the fish into the marinade, then passed out from exhaustion (it's been a looooooong few ...

Back in 1999, I'd never seen a single Star Wars  movie, but it seemed the entire nation was freaking out over Episode I: The Phantom Menace  coming out, so being the good conformist high school sophomore I was, I bought tickets to the opening night showing and went with all my friends (including and especially the dear soul who would six years later marry me) to see what all the fuss was about. It was a party!  People showed up in costume, carrying brightly colored plastic swords (my dad bought me a red one for the event, I'm pretty sure that means he's cool with my Dark Side tendencies?).  The high school marching band came into the theatre and performed the Title Crawl and Imperial March live (which was AWESOME).  And there was just this ... I don't know, this aura of sheer jubilation suffusing every square inch of breath in the room, a generation of parents who'd raised their children on the orig-trig getting to see a Star Wars  movie along with their...

Everyone I know is sick of hearing about my amazing veggie spiralizer . I'm aware of this. But I can't stop gushing over how much I love it because COME ON GUYS IT'S A THING THAT MAKES NOODLES OUT OF VEGETABLES. I can eat all those fabulous pasta dishes without getting all bloated and sick! And without boiling noodles forever in the summertime! It's F.A.B.U.L.O.U.S. *cough* Anyway. So there's this place called Wagamama, and it's strange how you can go there sometimes and get a meal that's so good it makes you want to cry, then other times you go there and your meal is mediocre, at best. Complete crap-shoot. We've had more good meals there than bad, but enough bad meals there that we don't really feel  like going anymore because it's not inexpensive enough for us to gamble on getting a good meal. One of my favorite dishes at Wagamama is the chili ramen. First time I got it, I ordered chili fried squid as an appetizer, which was great, then a...

I honestly don't remember why we bought the enormous bottle of sweet Thai chili sauce that's been in our refrigerator for the past ... probably three years. I suspect it was for a Thai dish (duh) but I make so many of those, that doesn't really narrow it down, like at all. Anyhow, because the bottle's been in the 'fridge for ages, and it had seriously like 2 oz used out of a full liter, we figured we should use it up. Or use it at all, you know. So I went online and looked for recipes that used sweet Thai chili sauce, and happened upon this recipe , which was pretty damn excellent, especially after an hour of DDR, 25 miles of bike-riding, a trip to the hardware store (I got to buy a power saw, I am SO EXCITED), and some pathetic attempts to do press-ups and chin-ups. Semi-related note: my arms have way more in common with cooked soba noodles than they should. I am ashamed. Here's my version of the recipe, complete with more veggies, less leek (seriously, l...

I've never been a huge fan of hamburgers, but they're one of those foods that I crave every once in a very long while. I found  this recipe  last weekend and got one of those rare burger cravings because, c'mon, chickpeas, sriracha sauce, and it's a burger? That's just got  to taste good. And oh, oh it did. The first time I made it, I legit fucked up and put everything together into the food processor, which yielded a really tasty sriracha sauce-flavored hummus. NOT what you want when you're trying to make burgers. To get them to work, I had to bread the stupid things before I could fry them. The next time, I did NOT fuck up, which meant we could have the burgers un-breaded, which also meant that the ingredients' flavors and textures were free to come through. And come through they did! This is the juiciest, most flavorful recipe I've ever encountered for a burger. We've made this recipe three times now - that's 18 burgers. Two were ...