Not Food: Dragoncon Parade

There's a scifi convention in town every year called DragonCon. As part of it, they have free parade up Peachtree St. downtown where all the cosplay folk get to strut and show off their stuff.

Cobra commander and the Baroness.

I didn't know that Superheros were so into my last name.

Nobody expected this...

Speed Racer in the Mach 5

I don't remember the Thundercats trucking around in a mini Cooper.

Ghostbusters... kinda retro.

Halo/Red vs. Blue

Pirates of the Caribbean

Sgt. Pepper and the Lonely Hearts? Huh?

KOTOR Sith dude.

Star Wars meets Pez... pretty funny concept for costumes.

A whole lotta folks who can't aim their laser guns.

Sand people.

Booba Fett?

Liz Visits

Liz braved the Atlanta August heat and came to visit us.

First stop: Papi's for some Cuban food.

Dinner: Korean BBQ (Hae Woon Dae)

Banchan


Meat a sizzlin'...

Then it was off to Zesto for dessert.

My banana split.

Liz looks a little intimidated by the volume of ice cream.

Random Steak Night

Had some ancient fillets sitting in the freezer. Decided to finally break them out, thaw 'em and grill 'em.

Appetizer of mussels with fresh thyme, onions, red peppers (I think that's what's red), white wine.

Previously mentioned fillets, wrapped in bacon, of course.

BBQ!

Time to put the smoker through a more serious workout.

Dry rub applied to three racks of pork ribs and allowed to sit overnight in the fridge.

Ribs after smoking. Nice deep red smoke color. I smoked them a little too long and the thinner parts came out too dry. Oh well, I'll just have to practice some more.

Appetizers. Peanut-butter filled jalapeno pieces on left (learned these in Texas), and roasted asparagus wrapped in prosciutto with a light drizzling of white truffle oil.

Ribs, mac-and-cheese, collard+turnip greens, and a cold Shiner Bock.

Happy eating!

Close up of the super cheesy (made from scratch) mac-n-cheese.

Attempted recreation of durian dessert from San Francisco. The durian wasn't blending very well, so I mixed in some coconut milk, too. Didn't taste quite the same, but it was good (to me anyway).

Lucky 8's!

Eight (ba) is a lucky number for the Chinese. Ba is supposed to sounds like "fa", which is the first word in "fa cai" or to come into fortune, although "cai" is really the fortune part. Anyway, that's why eight is supposed to be lucky.

Lucky for my car... too bad it's dying and will be replaced soon.

Smokin'

Finally decided to build myself a means of doing some more serious smoking of meats.

I bought a deep stainless steel buffer tray with lid, drilled a hole in the side of it for some plumbing (broke a couple of bits in the process), screwed in the short piece of plumbing, and voi la! Home-made smoke box!

The pipe fits perfectly in the hole in the side of the grill where smoke usually leaves.

Not much time that evening, so we just smoked some chicken thighs and wings which don't take too long (compared to ribs or brisket). I think we just gave 'em something like a 90-120 minute smoke.

Wings (marinated in a pineapple-curry hot sauce).

Thighs. I don't remember what the flavoring was... probably just some dry rub.

Random "Chinese" Food

Decided to make some Chinese-style dishes, although I don't think any of cooking really qualifies as bona fide Chinese food.

Spicy stir-fried/sauteed green beans with red peppers and onions (left). Fermented black-bean sauce with tofu, okra, and a little ground beef. I put too much black-bean sauce in this dish so it came out a little too spicy. Okra isn't very typical in Chinese food from my experience, but I think the texture and flavor works well.

Blanched Gai Lan with oyster sauce (left) and diced chicken with corn.

Low-Country Boil; BBQ Ribs

Went to the "welcome to the neighborhood" event for the Cyprus Street Pint and Plate. Free "Low Country Boil" and cheap beer specials.

The aforementioned boil. Mostly shrimp and taters, plus some corn on the cob. Not bad for free.

That night, decided that it was time to break out the BBQ and do some smokin'.

Mesquite-smoked ribs; probably about 3.5 hours in the smoke. I'm out of practice... didn't get a good strong smoke going so the penetration was a little weak despite the good external color. Ribs coated with some old dry rub that KB had given me over a year ago.

Also made some BBQ sauce from scratch. Made it slightly spicy by adding sriracha sauce to it.

Accompaniments. Green beans, baked beans, and some bad biscuits.

Pasta Effort Saver!

After having gone through several iterations of making pasta completely by hand, I decided that I liked this idea of fresh pasta enough to warrant sinking a little bit of cash into making this easier. I had been rolling out all of my dough with nothing more than our counter, a rolling pin, and a knife.

The kitchen-aid pasta roller attachment. The kitchen-aid is pretty cool; it is really just a multi-purpose motor packaged as a mixer.

Fresh pasta.

Final result! This was a lot easier than doing it all manually!

Massive Serbian Dinner

Milos and Alenka had a bunch of us over at their place for a traditional Serbian dinner. Too much food was had by all... (yum.)

Salad.

Alex getting ready to help out in the kitchen.

Milos cradling the freshly-baked bread like a new baby.

Happy Birthday Jon! (6-pack of Guiness is not the easiest thing to wrap.)

First course(s).

Pork tenderloin.

Potato and bacon things.

Stuffed cabbage.

Dessert blintzes.

Another dessert... sort of cousin of baklava?

Yet more dessert (I think Sasha brought this one).

Obligatory photo of Jon on his iPhone.