Kitchen Confidentiality

Pancakes and Pig Day

2010-03-06T14:23:00.000-08:00

My sister's in town visiting this weekend, so we figured we'd make a day of it. She had wanted to try her hand at making a latte, so we had at it while Steph made pancakes and took pictures. My sister (also a Stephanie) chose some peach syrup, I went with peppermint.

Watching the crema...

Steph (sister) pouring her first ever latte!

Steph (girlfriend) busy making pancakes.

The results of my peppermint latte, and...

Steph's peach in the front. Didn't turn out nearly as strange tasting as I expected, either.

Can't forget the pancakes - these were incredibly delicious.

Today was Pig Day at the farmer's market, celebrating all things swine! Plenty of pictures included from our trip down. Click the thumbnails for the larger version!

On a business note, the farmer's market being so accessible (as well as a multitude of very close-by fruit farms) could be a great opportunity to provide some fresh fruit for sale along with the pastries. I could definitely see myself grabbing an orange on the way to class along with my cappuccino. Pachamama was also present at the farmer's market and busy as ever.

Fair Trade Fridays...on Wednesday

2010-03-03T20:10:00.000-08:00

I've been talking about structuring my posts a bit with Steph, and I think I'm going to start doing Fair Trade Fridays. I get the feeling that most people don't know a whole lot about Fair Trade, especially in the coffee realm. A lot of catch phrases (i.e. "Green", "Social Responsibility", etc.) are thrown around by companies that are inflating their own appeal in an attempt to prey on ignorant consumers. The vast majority of large national/regional firms aren't socially responsibly or anywhere even close. Look out for that on Friday.

For today, one of my favorite concoctions thus far:

Peppermint Dark Chocolate Mocha
For most recipes, this one included, it's best to buy an actual espresso shot glass. It is very easy to pull a shot too long if your shot glass is too large, resulting in the beans being used past their "optimal life." Once the beans stop producing crema, a dark-reddish brown foam (also called schiuma) that will sit atop a shot of properly pulled espresso shots, the quality of taste declines quickly and can turn the smooth, rich espresso taste to a bitter, acidic mess very quickly.

1 shot medium roast espresso (you can use a doppio, but I find the mocha has better flavor with a single shot)
Spoonful dark chocolate powder (I recommend not using chocolate syrup, the powder seems to add a nicer consistency to the drink and creates the gradient effect in a clear glass)
Peppermint syrup to taste (the candies can work well, too)
A pinch of nutmeg
Cinnamon

Pull the shot, gently mix in the bottom of the glass with nutmeg (this is to prevent breaking apart the crema, which allows for the nice coloring on the top of the drink). Mix syrup into ice cold milk, froth until milk doubles in size. I'll go into much more detail on frothing milk in a later post (it's a lot harder than it looks!). The milk will absorb the peppermint syrup and spread the taste evenly throughout the drink so you don't end up with spots that have no sweetness and others that are far too sweet. Pour gently into glass, without mixing. You should end up with a nice gradient to your drink and a natural mixing. Sprinkle cinnamon on top, and enjoy!

Contact!

2010-03-02T19:41:00.000-08:00

Unmarred, beautiful latte. I was going to decorate it more, but sometimes I think the minimalist approach is best.

Got a response from the General Manager from Pachamama Coffee, who I discussed earlier.

Thanks for the email and your interest in our cooperative. Sounds like you know what you are doing.

As you may know, we have some experience in the cafe business, but we are now solely focus on the wholesale side of things. The coffee shop retail business is not an easy one. But it can work, provided you are well prepared and your expectations are reasonable. I am willing to help you provided that you would sell Pachamama coffee exclusively and, ideally, market the coffee and the farmer in a respective way.

Looks like we're going to try to set up a phone conversation for Friday - time to get together some good questions!

Here's what I've thought of so far:

Cost per pound of coffee
Availability of different roasts from each locale
Popularity
Their view of the viability of a small, local coffee shop (especially in Davis!)
Shipping time
Machinery lending (some suppliers will provide loaner equipment to their customers)
Training (similar to the above, some supplier provide employee training on the equipment)

I would love to hear suggestions from others. What am I forgetting? Hopefully this will turn into an informative correspondence. Heck, maybe it'll turn into even more..fingers crossed.

New Hutch Pictures!

2010-03-01T22:21:00.000-08:00

A few pictures of the new Loft Buffet's maiden voyage. Frankie (the kitty) even got in on the action.

My foam got a little funky on that one cause I let it sit for a while..c'est la vie.

Layout updates, A Tease

2010-03-01T11:46:00.000-08:00

I realized that the layout background may have had scaling problems for some with lower resolution displays so I redid (or, I should say, my girlfriend Steph redid with my occasional input) the format to something a little more clean and simple. Let me know if anybody has any problems with the new format.

Over the weekend I snagged a "Loft Buffet" from World Market that is currently serving as my new home coffee bar setup. The best part? It was 60% off due to a few minor dings and a little bit of missing hardware that was easily remedied through a quick trip to the hardware store. Pictures to come later this evening!

Pachawhatta?

2010-02-27T13:46:00.000-08:00

There are a few criteria that are critical for my coffee product to have:

Taste

Above all, the coffee has to taste superb. The beans are the base upon which my entire existence is built. Just as you wouldn't want to build a home foundation using second-rate materials, I'm not about to skimp on taste. I'm not going to have the support of an entire corporate structure behind me, so I couldn't serve a tasteless, bitter concoction a giant like Starbucks can put out (not that I'd dream of it, even if I could!).

Variety

I'm a little bit torn on this - having multiple roasts of a particular coffee bean is essential, but multiple bean types? I have seen some corporate chains have success with this, but I'm not sure how viable it will be for me. In establishing a brand for myself, would it be more advantageous to have one consistent taste or a variety of beans from different locales?

Availability

Even if the product is excellent in every way, if you can't bring it in consistently due to low availability you're in trouble. What's a coffee bar with no product to sell? As a corollary, speed of delivery is equally important. Taste deteriorates from the moment a bean is picked. Slow delivery means a less tasty product.

Fair Trade

As a matter of personal preference, I will absolutely find a grower that offers fair trade coffee and a living wage for it's farmers. From a business standpoint, the popularity of products that provide sustainability and advocates higher prices for producers (not to mention creating social and environmental standards) has seen drastic improvement in recent years. This will make my product have a little bit more of a niche than most corporate alternatives and, hopefully, would result in a highly marketable product.

I've been doing some research, and Pachamama Coffee seems to fit all of these standards.

Pachamama is a unique family-based cooperative with more than 150,000 coffee farmer/owners around the world. They offer single-origin coffee product from Ethiopia, Guatemala, Peru, Nicaragua and Mexico. Pachamama provides a roasting service in California, which would minimize the time between when the coffee is roasted and it's ground on-site.

The best part? The company is based in Davis and incredibly accessible. I've been in contact with some of the local heads of the co-op and their product is looking like an awesome opportunity. If you've never tasted fair trade coffee (and chances are that you haven't - most grocers and chains don't offer any), I recommend picking some up. I'd even be happy to mail some out to people to try. Sustainability tastes awesome.

Dishes, Litter Boxes and Tiny Carbon Footprints

2010-02-24T00:02:00.000-08:00

Soy Mocha (that Zuki drank far too late at night for her to possibly sleep at all)

I managed to schedule an appointment with SCORE a few days ago. They're a non-profit small business/entrepreneur consulting firm on the edge of midtown Sacramento. I had to schedule myself a few weeks out, but that ought to give me some time to put together a list of questions I'd like to ask. Suggestions much appreciated - more on this later in the week when the relentless number crunching at work slows down.

I've worked out a barter system with Suzuki that's working out pretty well - I make coffee, she helps me do my dishes. I'm not sure what it is about washing dishes that drives me crazy; I can scrub the bathroom and clean the litter box all day without too much muttering, but dishes are a whole other beast.

This got me to thinking of expanding on an item on my list to potentially save some money while maintaining a minimal carbon footprint: dishes. Gently pushing mugs (or, to fit the artisanal theme, a glass similar to the one above) onto customers in lieu of throw-away cups would likely save me some money despite additional manpower costs and allow me to promote myself to some of the more green-minded types.

..and who am I kidding? Espresso drinks look beautiful in them.

Flowers are important too, okay!

2010-02-21T11:30:00.000-08:00

(Steph's hazelnut latte from this morning)

...is what I found myself thinking when I sat down to write this post. I've been doing some thinking recently on means to differentiate myself from the multitude of other would-be coffee shops. The directions I could take my shop seem limitless; the number of little-to-no-cost solutions seem less so. I've come up with a few ideas and broken them into two lists: one for solutions with little or no cost involved, and one for the more expensive (either initially or over time) ideas.

On the cheap:

Careful hiring of employees
Latte Art
Guest Pastries
"Did you know?"
Indie Art Sales
Free (even if you don't buy anything!) Wi-Fi
Limited use of paper products (i.e. cups)
Plenty of Word of Mouth advertising (including web-W.O.M., i.e. Yelp, Facebook, Four Square, Wikis, etc.)
Student-centric discounts (i.e. discounted espresso during finals week)
Activities (i.e. indie musicians, gaming tournaments, etc.)
Well designed interior (student designers are a GREAT resource)
Ambiance

Not so much:

Fair Trade/Organic Suppliers
Taste, above all (with the possible exception of service)
Large Variety in coffees/teas available
Proper employee training
Comfortable/fashionable furniture
Discounts for "regulars"
Strong Web Presence
Mobile phone ordering
A healthy amount of "park here for hours and study/work/write/etc." space
Ambiance

I'll talk a little today about Artisanal Coffee, though I'm certain this topic will come up over and over as my skill improves. This is pure marketing - the idea being that customers will remember my business if I serve them beautiful cappucinos/lattes presented with flair. Knowing how to pour latte art also assures that my baristas are steaming milk properly, a necessary component of the technique. Additionally, having this skill seems like it would give my baristas an enormous sense of pride, thus making their job more fun, interesting and challenging.

Because I would need to invest so much time and energy (read: money) into training (barring the lucky hire that has such a skill set already), ideally anybody I would hire would necessarily need to be a long-term employee. Proper training would go a long way toward creating the long-term employees I'd like.

A change of direction...

2010-02-17T20:39:00.001-08:00

I've decided I'm going to take things in a different direction.

Everyone has a list of "stuff that I really hope I get a chance to do/experience by the time I'm 18/21/30/40/dead". For me, I've always loved the idea of escapes - theatres, bars, restaurants and cafes, among others. Why escapes? I wasn't always very clear on why I was so attracted to them; I think now that it provides some sense of separation to my life.

I have work. I have home. I have my relationship. I have my cat.

All of these things require some sense of separation, lest they spill over into each other in ways that create unnecessary conflict. Taking the stress and anxiety of my working life home, for example. To this end, I have discovered coffee (and, to a somewhat lesser extent, tea). If I stop and grab a cup on the way home, or brew my own after I get there, it's almost as if a forced "limbo" is created between work and home.

The mental goal, then, that this blog will attempt to follow and document is my venture into the world of entrepreneurship. I have been mentally toying with the idea of creating a coffee bar for a while now, partially because I love the idea of owning a piece of downtown, but moreso because I can't imagine much making me happier than creating a life escape for others. Everything has something that makes them tick, something that establishes itself as the most important thing to devote mental energy to for a set space of time. For me, quirky indie coffee shop jazz, the perfect latte art, the smell of the roaster, the blooming of flowerbud tea.

As such, regardless of whether or not anybody reads this, I will attempt to document my progression toward, luck permitting, creating my own coffee bar. Your thoughts, comments and criticisms are much appreciated along the way.

Smoked Pork Baby Back Ribs

2009-07-28T20:36:00.000-07:00

Rib Rub #99
3/4 Cup Sugar-in-the-Raw
1/2 Cup Salt
1/4 Cup Paprika
2 Tablespoons Black Pepper
1 Tablespoon Granulated Garlic
1 Tablespoon Ground Cumin
1 Tablespoon Chili Powder
1 Teaspoon Dry Mustard
1 Teaspoon Ground Corriander
1/2 Teaspoon Cayenne Pepper
1/2 Teaspoon Ground Allspice

Trim any excess fat from the top side of ribs, but be sure to leave any marbilized fat inside the meat - this will melt and add to the tenderness.
Peel back the membrane on the bottom side of the ribs against the bone - it will look similar to the fat, but will be somewhat translucent. You should be able to pry it up with your fingers and pull it back in a single strip.
Liberally apply the rub to the top and bottom side of the ribs. Preheat grill to about 275-300 degrees.
Cook ribs on indirect heat for about an hour with the bone-side down, then flip and cook meat-side down for about an additional half an hour. Flip one more time and cook bone-side down for a final 30 minutes, or until fairly glazed-looking.
Remove ribs from heat and place onto a single large strip of aluminum foil. Drizzle honey on top of the meaty side of the ribs, fold up aluminum foil like a pouch but leave one side open. Pour a moderate amount of apple juice in the bottom of the foil pouch, then return to heat and cook for an hour over indirect heat. The apple juice will evaporate and mix with the melting honey to add sweetness to the meat, along with a significant amount of tenderness.
Remove ribs from foil pouch and increase heat on grill to about 400 degrees. Coat in barbeque sauce (any of your favorite bottled brands will do - I'll post some of my home-made kinds in a later post) and cook for about 5 minutes on each side until sauce forms a thick glaze.
Remove from heat and serve immediately.

So, finally an update! I'll get right down to it...

These are ribs I made on Sunday after my Graduation Party (thanks to everyone that came!) that turned out pretty amazing. There are a few optional components to the recipie that I didn't really cover above, such as smoking the meat, but these are topics for entire posts and would really make this too lengthy. I think I'm going to try to keep posts pretty short and sweet (no pun intended), but I'll try to update more frequently. Let me know what you all think, and if anyone makes any of these recipes, let me know how it turns out!

Happy cooking!

My kitchen, California State fire laws, and why Joss Whedon is the best thing to happen to the internet since sliced bread. Wait, what?

2008-08-08T10:50:00.000-07:00

What it actually said:

Dear resident,

This notice is meant to inform you of a law that is now being enforced by the local fire department. The law now states that:

California Fire Code, Section 308.3.1 Open-flamed cooking devices:
Charcoal burners and other open-flame cooking devices shall not be operated on combustible balconies or within 10 feet of combustible construction.

Please note that, effective immediately, the use or storage of barbeques within 10 feet of your unit will be considered a violation of your lease.

What they really meant:

Dear resident,

It has come to our attention that you recently started a blog involving, if not primarily based around, food. We also have received information that barbequeing is something that you enjoy and would love to share with the world. Because some people are missing critical brain cells that allow for a basic comprehension of outdoor cooking safety and, because the Davis fire department and city officials really have nothing better to do, you have exactly 0 minutes to remove your barbeque from your apartment. That's right, you're already in violation of the law. We don't care that you really have no way to transport a barbeque that doesn't fit in your car, nor do we comprehend the fact that you do not feel compelled to throw away the hard-earned money you spent buying said barbeque.

Please note that, effective immediately, we intend to bend you over and give it to you up the ass. Repeatedly. Relentlessly.

---

Thus far, I've actually been fairly satisfied with my new apartment. The maintenance guy is quite pleasant and does a great job. The management was fairly easy to work with in getting through my subleasing fiasco, and they do provide pretty amazing doughnuts in the morning. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with my barbeque, now that it's currently perched illegally on the balcony outside of my apartment in plain view. Maybe I'll wait for the fire department to come take me away for blatant violation of the California Fire Code, Section 308.3.1.

Rib-eye steaks. Teriyaki chicken. Beef rubbed with olive oil and rosemary. I don’t really know how to cook meat in a stove. I can’t cook my rib-eye steak in a frying pan. It just doesn’t work for me. Besides, grill lines are what makes everything taste good; what am I supposed to do, paint them on?

Upon further research, I found that The National Fire Protection Association reports that barbecues sparked 8,300 fires nationwide in 2005, causing $137 million in property damage. Okay, understandable. We don't want to burn down the world with our little balcony grills. However, this is the part that really blew me away:

"Grilling with charcoal and natural gas are still okay on apartment decks with automatic sprinklers. Grilling with propane is acceptable if tanks are tiny, fit for camping. All grilling is allowable if apartment balconies are made of non-combustible materials such as stucco, concrete or brick. The new rules don’t affect single-family homes and duplexes."

Okay, wait. My balcony area is made of metal, concrete and stucco. Which of these is flammable? Oh, right. None of them. Way to go Glacier Point. I'll have to make a trip down to the office later today to sort things out. More than likely, though, any grilling I might have done will not be happening, anymore. My sister may be coming up next weekend, so the grill will probably be disappearing after then. Maybe I'll grill something once or twice before then for you all to see.

---

Moving on. This is my kitchen. "Surely you jest!" they say. Indeed not. I am no great chef, I work with the same tools as every other starving college student. I eat sugary cereals (Pops) just like the rest of you. My freezer has frozen french fries and frozen chicken patties. And a frozen gatorade, I'm not really sure why that's there. By the way, the pizza stone I use is featured in the bottom right of the above image - classy, no? No, my kitchen doesn't look like this anymore, this was the aftermath from my Pizza Margherita entry. It's a good thing my other two roomates (three, if you count Suzuki) aren't here to get on my case about it yet. I'm going to have to make a conscious effort to keep things clean once they get back. It's actually going to be exciting to have more people living in close proximrity to me. I'm sure I'll get into this more later, but last year my housemate wasn't exactly ideal. I'm sure there will be rocky patches this year, too (not that there haven't been already - I never realized getting a check from housemates for rent was so difficult), but it'll be nice to have people around. Suzuki was interested in making bread and I haven't done that in quite awhile, so look for that in the not-so-near-but-not-really-all-that-far-off future.

---

For those of you who have no idea who Joss Whedon is, I encourage you to check out his IMDb page. He is the head writer for Buffy the Vampire Slayer as well as the creator of Firefly, a Western set in space, and later director of the movie based on the series, Serenity (both of which everyone needs to see at least once - best show to ever be cancelled). His newest endeavor is even more bold - a classic hero/villian tale, where the hero is the bad guy and the villian is the good. Since that wasn't quite enough, he also put it into a musical backdrop. Holy biscuits, Batman!

On to the good stuff. Joss created this new three-part short called Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog. I don't want to spoil it with words, but both Steph, myself, and all of iTunes (that's right - Dr. Horrible is currently the number one downloaded TV Season on iTunes THREE WEEKS RUNNING!) agree that it is the best thing to happen to the internet in quite a long time. Why so great? Here's what Joss said in the Q&A in his Master Plan:

3) Joss, you are so kind, and generous, and your forehead is like, huge, like SCARY, like I think I can see Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint hanging off it… what can WE do to help this musical extravanganza?

What you always do, peeps! What you’re already doing. Spread the word. Rock some banners, widgets, diggs… let people know who wouldn’t ordinarily know. It wouldn’t hurt if this really was an event. Good for the business, good for the community – communitIES: Hollywood, internet, artists around the world, comic-book fans, musical fans (and even the rather vocal community of people who hate both but will still dig on this). Proving we can turn Dr Horrible into a viable economic proposition as well as an awesome goof will only inspire more people to lay themselves out in the same way. It’s time for the dissemination of the artistic process. Create more for less. You are the ones that can make that happen.

Wow. I had no idea how important you guys were. I’m a little afraid of you.

This is a big deal, folks. Do him a favor and buy it off of iTunes (or, even pirate it off of some torrent, somewhere. Any publicity at all is great.). This is really a good direction for internet media to be headed, and Joss knows his stuff. Did I mention that Felicia Day, creator of The Guild (PLEASE ALSO SUPPORT THIS!) stars in it, as well? For those of you that like to "try before you buy", the whole series can be watched here, for free:

I know this post was a bit long, but only because I'm going to be gone for the weekend visiting friends in San Louis Obispo (SLO). Should be fun, but I anticipate at least some minimal levels of awkwardness with Liz. More on that when I get back Sunday.

Pizza Margherita

2008-08-06T19:21:00.000-07:00

Show the recipe!

Tom's Rustic Pizza Dough:
This makes a great thin-crust dough. Stong enough to support as many toppings as you'd like without getting droopy, but really shines in a traditional Neapolitan pizza.

1 Tablespoon active dry yeast (1.5 packets of yeast from the grocery store)
1.5 Cups warm water
3.5 Cups All-Purpose Flour (Baker's Flour can be used as well for a slightly different taste)
1 Tablespoon Virgin Olive Oil (Note: Don't use "light" olive oil)
Pinch of Salt

Basic (But delicious!) Pizza Sauce:
This sauce is super simple and is great for a pizza without many toppings. It keeps the slight acidity of the tomatoes without overpowering them with lots of herbs and garlic. Simply peel the tomatoes, combine ingredients in a pot, bring to a boil and let simmer until it becomes a fairly thick sauce.

6-8 Roma Tomatoes (peeled - just boil for a minute or two and peel off skin)
About a cup of water
2 tablespoons olive oil
Pinch of oregano
Salt and pepper, to taste

In a small bowl, sprinkle the yeast on the warm water (it should be hot, but comfortable to touch), and stir to dissolve it. Set aside until the yeast starts forming bubbles in about 5 minutes.
Sift the flour. Pour the flour into a large bowl or on a work surface. Mold the flour in a mound shape with a hole in the center.
Pour in the yeast mix into the center of the hole you just made, along with the olive oil and salt.
Using a spatula, draw the ingredients together then mix with your hands until a semi-sticky dough forms.
Sprinkle flour onto your work surface and knead the dough briefly with your hands pushing and folding. Knead just long enough for the dough to take in a little more flour, and until it no longer sticking to your hands.
With your hand, spread a little olive oil inside a bowl and transfer the dough to the bowl. On top of the dough make a cross-shaped cut (not too deep, this is just to keep the dough from cracking as it rises) and rub a small amount of olive oil on the top.
Cover with a cloth and let rise until the dough has double in size (about 45 minutes to an hour, depending on the strength of your yeast and the temperature of the water you used).
Punch down the dough to eliminate the bubbles, then cut the dough into three equally sized pieces.
Shape the pizza using your hands and a rolling pin. I like to make the square, but it really doesn't matter.
Apply whatever toppings you like (read below for suggestions), and transfer the crust onto a lightly floured cutting board, pizza peel, or anything else you can use to transfer the pizza into the oven (and hopefully onto a pizza stone!)
Bake at 450 for 10-15 minutes. Your oven may take more or less time, but you'll know the pizza is done when the crust is a light brown color on the bottom.
Remove from the oven and let set for 5 minutes or so. This is so that it cuts easily and doesn't crumble to pieces when try to cut it.

I've eaten a fair share of phone-in pizzas in my time. In fact, I've probably eaten my share along with four or five other people's. I had tried making pizza at home once before with a moderate level of success, but had never really managed to make anything (or seen anything made, for that matter) that impressed me very much. This time, though, I did my homework. After looking around online and not finding anything that really impressed me, I found this book by Peter Reinhart in Borders that really showed me what a pizza should be. Pizza, as I typically thought of it, had always fallen under the category of fast food. After flipping through Reinhart's book, I thought otherwise. Comparing what you order from Round Table or Domino's to an "ethnically created pizza" is like comparing fresh Carne Adovada at Los Caporales to the brown mulch that Taco Bell puts inside their "dishes."

There are a few common areas where a home-made pizza is easy to ruin. First, and perhaps most importantly, the dough is key. Why would you buy top-grade ingredients and cheeses to put on a sub-par crust? That's like putting racing stripes on your Vauxhall Nova. There are a million and one recipes out there to make a good dough, and I will supply you with mine here, but the key is really to experiment.

I was smart enough to know early on, if you've got bad dough you are destined to have bad pizza. Figuring out the dough factor was not as easy as you might think, though. I have experienced (both first hand, and through observation) many deflated attempts - a little yeast here, a lot of yeast there, this flour, that flour, knead by hand, knead by mixer, high baking temps, lower baking temps, and on and on.

The key to dough is in the fermentation and the baking process. If you like to wait until the last minute to make pizza dough, you are out of luck here. The key is the slow fermentation process. You end up with a golden, beautiful crust with the perfect amount of crunch and subtle yeasty undertones. This, of course, requires a pizza stone like this one I bought at Target. It essentially sucks the moisture out of the bottom layer of crust, allowing for a crispiness at the base and a light, airy dough above.

Finally, and this is something I was guilty of for the longest time, resist the urge to pile eighty toppings onto your pizza simply because you can. In a good pizza a lot of care goes into making a delicious crust and sauce - you don't want to cover this up with the overwhelming taste of pepperoni, sausage, canadian bacon, and whatever other chunks of cow will fit. Focus on quality ingredients, not quantity. For half the price of buying all that meat you can buy a package of Bocconcini and a bit of basil - both of which have very strong, natural flavors.

This Pizza Margherita (which, for all of you pizza neophytes out there, is essentially a high-class cheese pizza) is a testament to this quality-over-quantity lesson. My favorite way to put together a pizza margherita is with a simple tomato sauce, a few torn up bocconcini cow's milk mozzerella balls, and a few pinches of salt before putting it into the oven. When it comes out, I give it a quick dusting of grated Parmesan, a drizzle of virgin olive oil, and few sliced pieces of basil. That said, it's up to you to play around with the toppings. My recipes are all listed above - feel free to use and manipulate them as you see fit.

To finish up, here are a few images of Steph, Megan and I enjoying the pizza and a bit of salad (while watching Sharks devour everything that moves on the Discovery Channel):

Logistics

2008-08-06T17:14:00.000-07:00

Well, everything seems to be in working order (I hope). I still need to find an image of myself to put up, though, and there are a few kinks to work out. Here's a few things that I have planned and/or in the works at the moment:

Setting up Kitchen Confidentiality for search engine web crawling. More on this later.
As the site grows, I'll be adding more content. Recipes (as will be discussed in future posts) will be categorized to the right. This feature comes standard to nearly every free (and paid) blogging service online right now, with the exception of Blogger. Nonetheless, I chose to go with Blogger because I liked the fact that I could integrate my Google Picasa Album with my Blog directly, so here I am. There seems to be a nifty work-around using del.icio.us, though, so I'm going to try getting that to work. This brings me to...
Trying to figure out how to work del.icio.us. I tried it out for a little bit last night, but to no avail. Usually I'm decent at these sorts of things. Maybe working after midnight doesn't go over well with my brain, or maybe it was the horrible J-pop music Megan was playing all night deteriorating my brain cells. Either way, this feature is still MIA.
A third column. I put one up last night and, after a few hours of toying around with various settings, decided it just doesn't work with my current layout. The addition of future content may demand it, though, pending space limitations.
I also plan to put together a list of "characters" that appear in my blog. This way, when I reference people who may not be familar to the readers, they won't be totally lost. Thanks to Lena at Sex and the Ivy for the idea.

Having never done anything like this before, I'd love anybody's input. I'm going to be posting KC on facebook and the like, so hopefully I'll get some people to come take a look. If there are any suggestions out there for better ways to format anything (including colors, sizes, etc.), feel free to comment or send me an e-mail. Having gotten all that out of the way, I'll try to get some good content going. The plan is to update as frequently as I am able, but I'd like to spare all of you those "nothing-posts" where somebody rambles on about nothing in particular for eighty pages. As such, I'll update as frequently as my food, musings, and drama allow.

PS - I've gotten conflicted reports, can anybody confirm whether you put a comma before the "and" in a list of statements? (i.e. Thing one, two, and three vs. Thing one, two and three)