Mmmmm mmm!  Sticky lick-yer-fingers good Barbecue ribs, made entirely indoors in the oven and on the stove because it’s friggin’ 100°F outside!  Silly Virginia summers.  The meat falls off the bone, the connective tissue dissolving into tasty morsels of goodness.  Pour the fat drippings into your BBQ sauce for an extra smooth and almost buttery texture in your mouth.  Amazing.

The pantry was pretty slim pickings when I was looking for a snack the day after we got home from Holland.  This seemed like a good idea at the time.

Can’t really recommend it.

I thought this pic was all stealthy and stuff, and the original post was entitled “Super Ultra Secret Food” and wanted you to guess what it was.  Then my wife informed me that I had so mangled the actual name of the dish that I’ve decided to completely rewrite it.  Miss the original?  If you subscribed to my RSS Feed you wouldn’t have.  Meh, it wasn’t that good.

Anyway, we had these the night before, but I didn’t take pics.  So I ate it for lunch, and it was great!  Sure beat the pants off Chipotle.

I took these shots on top of the Lexus in the driveway.  Good lighting.  I wonder if my neighbors wondered what the hell I was doing taking food porn shots on my car.  I should have started shouting Austin Powers-esque photo shoot comments at the mystery dish.  Next time.  And I’ll make a video of me doing it and Damn Well Fed will go viral.  Super social media.  It’ll be one of those videos you get emailed and IMed and Facebooked to you by 7 different friends within 4 hours.  Kind of like the Arlington Rap.

Here’s a few more food porn shots.  Yes, Yes, YES, NO! NO! NO! And I’m spent.

This is the same thing as this post from August, except that Jen added some fresh peppers of unknown type that were also stolen from our neighbors garden by my Kitchen Wizard Ninja wife.  And I got better at editing photos taken in halogen lighting, and even spent some time with the lasso tool making the green onions more green and the red chilis more red and the whole thing more blue to offset the yellowish tint of the halogen lighting.  Does it look too fake?

This is what the whole dinner looked like.  Here’s the Bok Choy post, but I wouldn’t click on it.  Maybe for a 10-spot I would.

The  Diced Chicken with Chili Pepper Recipe can be found in the amazing Everyday Chinese Cooking Cookbook.  If you’re Dutch like me, you can use the Amazon LookInside feature and read page 73.  If you have the cookbook, it’s on page 81.  Why Amazon doesn’t make it easier for us to NOT buy the cookbook is beyond me.

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It’s crazy that when Jen cooks I learn.  I don’t learn how to cook, mind you, I just learn that there are things in the world I haven’t yet eaten.  Did you know that kai-lan is also known as Chinese Broccoli or Chinese Kale? It’s amazing what Wikipedia can teach you.

It’s also amazing what Wikipedia can leave you wondering about.  The “American version” of kai-lan is gai-lan.  Does that mean we just decided that kai-lan was too hard to say, and made it gai-lan?  Or is there an actual “American” strain of this bitter leaf vegetable?

I’ll say this for kai-lan, or whatever it is.  It was interesting.  Both Jen and I thought it was a bit more bitter than we’d like.  The sauce was great, and there was a nice flavor to the kai-lan, but neither of us will likely be asking for it again.

Maybe it wasn’t kai-lan’s fault, but gai-lan’s.  I fault the farmer who grew it, and Monsanto just because they probably had a hand in growing it.  Thank god for garlic.

Jen keeps asking me what I want to eat for lunch. See, I am lucky enough to be able to work from home, so I don’t go out to eat every day like most of you. But that still doesn’t give me any desire to actually cook or prepare anything when it is time to stuff my face between 11:30am and 3pm. What I want is to grab two or three Gladware containers (sorry, couldn’t resist), put it all together on a plate, and more often than not either microwave or toaster oven it. That’s about all the cooking I’ve got in me at lunch time.

When Jen’s up to it, and not swamped with this thing called life, she does some sweet remixes. Sometimes I call her Mix Master Mighty White but she doesn’t like it.

On this very fine day I was hand-delivered a bountiful plate of Pork Summer Rolls with Peanut Sauce. To be fair, I liked this better than the original. Not sure who or what I’m being fair to though.

An additional pic in case you don’t know what Summer Rolls look like.

Unrelatedly, these are not to be confused with Summer Glau Rolls, which do not exist. Though I’m sure there are people who wish they did.

I’m sure I’m slaughtering exactly what a Vietnamese individual might consider Bun. To the wonderful Vietnamese people in my neighborhood, some of whom also happen to run some really great Vietnamese restaurants in Falls Church, I apologize. If you are not in town to see me, check out Present and Hong Que (Four Sisters) for some great Vietnamese food, and Pho 75 (the one on Graham Rd and Route 50) for the best damn Pho in town. And it’s pronounced “FAH” so when I say “FAH 75 is the greatest” you know to google “Pho 75.”

Still, this was really tasty, whatever bastardized concoction this really was. Inspired by a post by Lacey at WorthHerSalt.com. Ours looked absolutely nothing like hers. I have no clue what happened between Jen reading the post and our consumption of this meal. It was still better than what you ate for dinner.

When I worked for CAIS Internet we would walk two blocks (OMG Geeks going outside, much less walking?!?) to Boston Market at least once a week. Ordered the Quarter Chicken Dark with Macaroni and Cheese and Mashed Potatoes and Gravy for $4.99 (Year 2000 Dollars). One day I realized I was not getting any REAL veggies, so I tried the Squash Casserole. It changed my life. Now there were THREE sides I could choose! Nobody picks the green beans, and don’t tell me you did, because you’re a pansy liar.

Jen found the recipe, or at least a really good approximation, for the casserole on RecipeZaar.com. We’ve eaten it twice. The picture, heavily edited using either Pixelmator or Acorn and taken in harsh halogen lighting, does not do it’s deliciousness justice. And because the original was so bad to begin with, you get no interesting background. Fail.

When asked where she found the recipe, Jen said “Recipe Czar.” I really had to think about how to spell it. There’s Czar or Tsar according to Wikipedia, but had they not purchased RecipeCzar.com, I never would have guessed zaar. Good work RZ!

It’s still summer in Virginia. We can finally open the windows, and the humidity has broken, but the tomatoes are still friggin’ fabulous. This is just a mix of tomatoes from the Annandale Farmers market, while others were stolen under cover of darkness from Abe and Sonya’s garden by my stealthy ninja wife. Did you know that if you finish the peanuts and don’t tell her she’ll cut your head right off and not even think twice about it? That’s Real Ultimate Power.

The Green Goddess Dressing can be found in the Barefoot Contessa at Home Cookbook. Ina Garten is a rockstar you know. I bet she would love my red chairs in the background from the now-defunct Storehouse which had the greatest furniture ever.

It was lunch time and the kitchen was bare. Well, mostly. I found some salami, mozzarella, and some artichoke hearts, lathered on a smidgen of olive oil for good measure (and because I didn’t want nor have actual olives) and slapped it all between two whole wheat tortillas, got it hot with some fire made from really old dead plants (natural gas), cut it up, took a picture, and subsequently, ate it.

It was lunch. Not so much a masterpiece of fine cooking, just lunch. Nay, it was good. I’d totally make it again. Italian-Mexican fusion. I should start a restaurant.

On a side note, I’ve decided that food photography is all macro lense in-focus/out-of-focus hokey pokey. Every. Single. Shot. Go look at TasteSpotting.com (who haven’t posted either of the two submissions I made, elitists). Find me a picture that looks well composed that is NOT selectively focused with a large aperture. Well I’m going to do something slightly different. I’m going to make sure that there is something in the distant background that is mildly interesting. See the car? I took this on our front porch. I think the car adds to the fusion theme. Now it’s Italian-Mexican-German fusion. Booyah.