Regardless of what Kip may think, the webcam does actually appear to be broken. Unfortunately when it tries to upload the capture it gives me an unreadable error. If I sit down with it for a few minutes I could probably fix it but things have been so hectic I just let it go. No worries, I’ll get to it eventually and y’all can get back to staring at my ugly fat mug. ;)

Mar just called in from Ottawa where she’s on a business trip. She relayed to me a story of how she got to go out with the folks she was training for dinner to some cool Mexican restaurant with what she was told were great Margaritas (she doesn’t like tequila.. bah..) and I’m stuck here. It reminds me that I do need to get a laptop at some point so I can tag along on these business trips and work out of the hotel. So I looked up a few deals and noticed that it’s substantially cheaper to get the exact same system with a Celeron than comparable MHz Intel. So I ask – is there THAT much difference? $500 worth of difference?

With Mar gone I got southwestern creative again. I did what I would call a spice-candied pork chop first, which is basically a pork chop seared and crusted with brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger, coriander, cilantro, cayenne, paprika, and ancho, then finished in the oven. I’ve done things like that before and they always end up good – ALWAYS sear your pork chops in a hot pan before you oven-bake them – trust me on this. But where I got creative was a spanish style rice. I sweated out a vidalia onion in butter, then tossed in a bit of saffron, which turned the onions bright yellow. Then it was coriander, cilantro, cayenne, and paprika – then chopped garlic. Let that cook, then threw in dry long-grain rice. Toasted that for a minute, then added a couple cups of chicken stock. Let that cook through until it was dry, threw in two bay leaves, covered it and let it simmer for 10 minutes. It turned out REALLY well, which further proves that I do my best creative cooking when there’s nobody else around to prove it to.

Only three more weeks until cooking class! :)

Cheers!