I’ve been on a baking kick lately. It started on my birthday, when I decided to bake a birthday cake for myself on a whim. From there, my new newfound like of baking has really taken off, and I’ve been baking like a fiend. For my birthday cake, I decided I wanted to do a traditional white cake with a chocolate butter cream frosting. After much research, I found a recipe for a Golden Vanilla [...]
Recently I’ve become keenly interested in all things sausages. More the point, I’ve been reading about salumi, charcuterie, and forcemeats, and fantasizing about making my own sausages, fermented or otherwise. Sausage making can be an expensive hobby, with grinders, stuffers, and smoke houses costing a small fortune. Fortunately my lovely in-laws provided me with the building blocks for my budding hobby in the form of the grinder and sausage stuffer attachments for my KitchenAid mixer. [...]
It took four years, but Seattle’s schizophrenic weather has finally grown on me. To celebrate our beautiful, inconsistent, lengthy, sunny days (which are quickly slipping away) I thought I’d do another music issue. Curren$y – Pilot Talk An up-and-comer from the 504. Spitta, as he is known, has the most ridiculous flow ever. It’s all about getting money, smoking weed, etc. Highly recommend. Tame Impala – Innerspeak Psychedelic rock band from Australia. Booty shaking, hippy [...]
As a Texan, I take my barbecue very seriously. For example, I would never throw burgers and dogs on a grill and call it a barbecue, because that would be a fallacy. That’s grilling, not barbecuing, plain and simple. I’m not suggesting that grilling is in anyway inferior to barbecuing, but cooking something on a grate over a hot direct/indirect heat source is not barbecue, so stop confusing the two. To me, barbecue consists of [...]
I made these chickens for a neighborhood barbecue a few weeks back and they turned out to be the star of the show. Brining the birds overnight keeps the meat moist throughout the long smoking process, and the liberal amounts of rub give the finished skin a fabulously spicy and sweet crust. You could do these impaled beauties on a grill if you aren’t in to the whole smoking thing, but the finished product is [...]
As you may or may not know, the wife and I have two amazing mutts that we share our lives with. We’re pretty active dog parents, and spend a lot of time training, playing, and hanging out with Clem, a 6 year old Chesapeake Bay Retriever / Husky mix, and Iris, a 1.5 year old Catahoula Leopard / Pit Bull. We are frequent dogparkers, and have been to just about every dog park in the [...]
So yeah, it’s been a month since I last updated. Not particularly proud of that, but you know how it goes. Things have just been crazy around Casa de la Spangler lately, and between work, traveling, being good dog parents, sinus infections, and family visits, I just haven’t found the time to write. I’ll try to be better about it in the future. On the upside, I have been using my time wisely. The wife [...]
The wife and I had some friends over Saturday night for a little fish taco party. The tacos ruled (and I’ll blog about that some other time), but the star of show was the key lime pie. After a gluttonous feast of fried snapper with chipotle lime mayo, this key lime pie was exactly what we needed to cool our palettes. Every pie lives and dies by the crust, so don’t wuss out and use [...]
Gristlybits is mostly a food blog, but I haven’t been cooking much of late. So, instead of boring you with tales of grilled cheeses and taco salads I will share with you, dear readers, some tidbits from my other hobby, music. WXYC: College radio from University of North Carolina, is by far my favorite radio station. Think KEXP without the overpaid morning douche and pledge drives (not that there’s anything wrong with the pledge drives), [...]
I fully intended to make a nice chicken-veg-pasta soup last night (with De Cecco acini di pepe!!), but after walking the dogs and doing some work around the house, I just didn’t have enough time. So, the wife and I decided to check out one of the restaurants in our ‘hood that we’ve been eyeballing for a while. Columbia City is one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Seattle and has a wide range of [...]