Fresh Ginger

For a baby shower I co-hosted last weekend I was asked to make something for dessert. Now a lot of you might cringe, but I rarely think about desserts because I usually can’t eat them unless I make them and it is enough to cook dinner most of the time. But apparently others think about desserts/sweets with some frequency. I hadn’t made a GF cheese cake yet, mostly because I only find occasion to make a cheesecake about every two years. Somehow, I decided that I wanted an Oreo style cheesecake, even though I don’t recall ever eating one. Mostly I wanted the chocolate cookie crust. So I made one. And, if I am going to make a dessert, well, I want to be sure it will be delish and what makes everything delish? Ganache. It conveniently covers up any blemishes that may occur while baking too. Here is the cheesecake framed by my partial spice rack:

Looking back over the last 3 months blogs, I noticed that I haven’t included very many food photos. It doesn’t mean I haven’t been taking them. They all get loaded on Flickr.com. So today is photo day. After digging into the long awaited cheesecake (well it was about 24 hours after making it) I regretted crushing up the extra cookies and mixing them into the batter. They were soggy and actually took away from the cheesecake flavor I think. The ganache made up for it.

I have been on a huge “eat as much seafood as I possibly can” kick and this happens to me every January. So to satisfy my craving I made my own sushi rolls one day:

and some miso soup with sizzling rice (I know they traditionally don’t go together, but it sounded good):

I am always in the mood for Vietnamese food and lately I have been experimenting with ban xeoh and dipping sauce:

These are so fresh, tasty and easy to make. The crepe consists of rice flour mixed with turmeric, coconut milk and water and then you make the crepe and add bean sprouts, pork, and loads of fresh asian herbs and cut a piece off, wrap it in a lettuce leaf and then dip it! The dipping sauce is shredded carrots, fish sauce, green onion, a bit of sugar and maybe some rice wine (I will have to check). I marinate my pork in GF tamari, ginger, garlic and red chile before frying. This dish is so satisfying as it is crunchy, salty and porky (new adjective) with coconut overtones.

Now, on to fluffy the killer squirrel.
Fluffy was very quiet today, so quiet that I thought I had better make sure that Fluffy was not in the trap. We expected to hear lots of noise and protesting if the trap went off. Wrong. Quiet as a mouse. I opened the door and there he was, in the haveaheart trap. So I picked him up and set him down in the hallway and he promptly pee’d on the floor. I grabbed some tissue to soak it up and then picked him up again (in the trap) and he pee’d again. So, we moved a little more quickly this time. Down the stairs and into the sunroom - but before you are free you must pose for a picture:

I hope he learned his lesson, but I am guessing he will be back in the roof tomorrow as they have been working on destroying the foam we put in the hole. 

I am off to a hard cider tasting!

Update on fluffy:  Fluffy was indeed sealed in the roof for 5 days as there have been no attempts to return to the hole in the roof.  I think fluffy’s partner was running around on the roof and trying to tell fluffy what corner to try to break out of and it was also ripping up the foam on the outside in an attempt to rescue it’s friend.  Both squirrels are back to playing happily in the backyard.

i’m out

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