how we learned to cook

(Click on the picture for our favorite youtube episode, Hard Gay and the Cooking Show)

St. Augustine, Flordia

Here are some pictures from the very beautiful town of St. Augustine. They don't do it justice.

sweet and salty pecans on goat cheese

These pictures have sat on my phone for a good month, now--so I decided its time to post them. One quick aside--massive quantities of wine were consumed, thus the quality of the photos is fairly questionable.

mmmm....wine. You are so delicious and I love you.


I went over to my friend EP's house to hang with her and her husband, John, and drink some wine. EP was one of the first people I met when I moved to Atlanta from Detroit, and we have been close friends ever since. We used to be roommates, in this same house. Here she is with John.


They are both geologists. Besides being into rocks, ground water, and spelunking; EP is a connoisseur of wine and John is one hell of a cook. He had gotten a whole bunch of pecans from his parent's tree and decided to make an appetizer with them and some other goodies he had on hand.


Here's EP shelling the pecans. (you can't see me, but I'm eating every other one)

...wine is kicking in...

John toasted pecans in something sweet and sprinkled salt on them. I was a bit too focused on drinking the wine to follow his process. He used goat cheese as the base for the candied salty pecans, and they were gone in about 5 minutes.


Thanks guys!


(I then stumbled my way home)

walk at lunch

in my Georgia colored shoes...

inappropriate gravy, coconut soup that looks weird, and some exciting news..

It's not been a great cooking weekend for me thus far. That's okay, because other good news has far outweighed a few odd meals.

Here are my not-so-gorgeous biscuits, obviously I'm not a true southerner.


And I had leftover red wine, so I ended up making a rich, mushroomy, dark completely inappropriate gravy. It was such a meaty, night time gravy.


We each munched a polite bite, set the rest aside for dinner and went for a more appropriate, TavoLini-esque sunday breakfast:


While doing up lunches for the week to come, we decided on Coconut Shrimp Curry soup. Got the mushrooms and curry and grated ginger going...


Tavo wasn't a fan of the fish sauce smell--actually I'm not a fan either! Our house reeks of it.


Added the coconut milk


raw peeled shrimp (I swear, this $4 for a lb of shrimp sale should NEVER end...)


squeezed the lime juice..


And the soup--the coconut milk stayed kind of separated throughout the cooking. Don't know why exactly. But it tasted fine, regardless. Packed up for lunches.


(whoa! see that ring finger squeezing the lime? It's true--Tavo proposed over the weekend :) Yeah!!! That's the big news) I love you babe!

....but what did you eat?

Don't worry--we keep eating. Here's some bruschetta and a good tomato-zucchini soup. We found heirlooms and just had to enjoy the first real taste of summer.


And it was still cool enough to bake some bread. This is a fairly basic light rye. I tend to always mix half all purpose/non bleach flour with my whole grains to make it less dense.


grated some parmesan cheese to put over the heirlooms and fresh bread...


finished product--added herbs de provence and shaved garlic (after toasting with butter--I like olive oil, but I LOVE butter)


Our friends, Saeed and Gigi enjoyed the "mini pizzas." Congratulations! They recently married :)


And here is the soup--I couldn't afford enough of those heirlooms to use them solely, so I also used Cento brand (my fave) whole romas and just crushed them the old fashioned way. Good, small zucchinis and I added a couple jalapeños just because I can. Puree but leave some good chunks.


Actually, its best enjoyed with a vintage ale...


"When you're out of Schlitz, you're out of beer"

-Crazed Tomato Lover post

Little Sister came to Atlanta and took GREAT pictures!

Didn't get a chance to post last weekend, but we had a fantastic time. Lini's Little Sister left the frozen tundra of Detroit and came down to Atlanta. It wasn't warm throughout her visit--but she at least had one day to sit in the sun. Here are some photos she took of us, the bar, and our first trip to the aquarium.

Little Sister, Tavo and myself at 6 Feet Under--the seafood place across from Oakland Cemetery.


Tavo and my old roommate, JP, enjoying a beer. Yep, that's Tavo's 2nd beer.


The whole gang


What's better to do after eating seafood? Let's go to the aquarium!


These snakes would sink down into the sand whenever a fish swam over, then would all come back out of the sand again...


Japanese crabs


Whale Sharks


Tavo in the piranha bubble


Lini in the bubble


Tavo and his buddy...


Thanks for coming down Little Sister!