Carmel Sauce

          What do you do when your computer crashes? You go to Carmel-by-the-Sea. 

This time of year the hills looked like Ireland as we started our trip. 

 At last we arrived at this charming little village 

where sunsets are gorgeous,

food is amazing, 

 

          and there are even a bunch of fairytale cottages to find, built by Hugh Comstock for his wife, exactly 100 years ago.

          We drove past Pebble Beach, 

and enjoyed the fact that the seals are all gathered at Bird Rock, and the birds are all gathered at Seal Rock.

     

   This Frank Lloyd Wright house just sold for $22 million.

There are lots of other homes still on the market, but let’s just say it helps if you’re a billionaire.

          However, for the fabulous price of FREE, you can enjoy dozens and dozens of my Youtube Mom life hack videos.

Tough Crowd

         It doesn’t always work to crack jokes when traveling in foreign countries. They have humor, alright, but it’s their humor.

          For example, on our recent trip through Europe, Bob joked that we came wurst class, but got plenty of sausage. No one cracked a smile.

           Then our guide led us to a giant statue of a man on a horse. St. Bob quipped, “Is that John Wayne?”  Well, of course we all know it isn’t John Wayne. It didn’t even need an answer. (Mr. Wayne would never have worn such a flouncy hat.)

         But the guide adamantly explained that it most certainly was not an American movie star, but Emperor William I. Several times he repeated this, to clear up any confusion.

Then, further down the river, I tried to kid with a member of the crew who was helping us get back on our boat. Sometimes they dock two or three of these longboats beside one another.

The fellow told us to walk right through the first two boats, and enter the third one.

“Hey,” I said, “if you could line up five or six more of these, you’d have a bridge to the other side!”

Oh, no, not possible. That would break the rules of safety. That could never happen. There are regulations. Never could you attempt such a thing. I was already down the ramp by now, but the fellow was continuing, shouting after me about safety rules lest I try such a foolhardy maneuver.

Whatever. Lunch was a fabulous crab salad, a tasty bit of pork, and a caramel apple confection. 

Thankfully I was not given gruel as punishment, and sent to my room. Although their muesli is pretty incredible and my room has an awesome view.

You can find great travel tips on my Youtube Mom channel—check it out!

Death of a Hobby

           For years I've loved entering cook-offs.  Sometimes these are live events where you compete with other cooks. Or it may be a contest where you send in an original recipe, then expert chefs try it and award prizes.

          It was a blast. For one thing, I won more than a hundred of them. This meant fabulous trips (France, Hawaii, the Caribbean, New York, etc.), appliances, and cash.

          St. Bob likes to tell the backstory, which is that I make up recipes and send them in without first trying them out. But after umpty-ump years of cooking, I can tell when I read a recipe if it will work. And then, of course, if it wins I definitely make it! Here are just a few big winners, starting with a mini-cornucopia made from turkey, for Thanksgiving:

Then a Vacherin:

This one, from 1997, is why you see tortilla roll-ups at every potluck now:

Here I am being interviewed at the National Beef Cookoff: 

I definitely went through a spiral roll-up phase:

This Jazzy Jamaican Eggs Benedict one took us on an incredible trip to France:

And a layering phase:

And more:

 

And then social media happened. Suddenly the entries were not judged by experts, but voted on by your friends. And if you worked in a big office building, you could get 1,500 votes, easily beating the measly 285 votes of the home hobbyist.

          Companies didn’t care that it was now a popularity contest; the advertising they got from all the postings and likes were worth it.

          So, like writing jingles in the 1950s, or selling buggy whips in the 1800s, the legit recipe cook-0ff was dead. Or, as Billy Crystal said in Princess Bride, “mostly dead.”

          Every once in awhile I’ll still hear about a contest that’s judged by experts, and sometimes I’ll enter. But the glory days are gone. And let’s not bemoan it; let’s just celebrate the fact that it was such fun while it lasted. If you’d like a few of my original recipes, check out the “What’s Cooking with Joni” tab on this blog. Food is fun, and always will be.

          Two of my books are cookbooks, in fact. Check ‘em out right here. And be sure to subscribe to this blog!

The Fig Diet

         Okay, everyone has gained their 19 pounds from COVID-19.  So today I’m giving you an easy way to cut down on all the overeating we’ve been doing.

          It starts with figs.

          Did you know figs have to be pollinated on the inside? This means fig wasps crawl in to lay their eggs, but in the process lose their wings. So the female wasp dies inside the fruit.  YIKES, right?  I mean, an enzyme in the fig breaks her carcass down into protein, but STILL. I promise this is true; you can look it up.

          And I already told you that all chocolate bars contain fragments of roaches. The FDA allows anything less than 60 insect pieces per 100 grams of chocolate.  Roach parts are also in popcorn, wheat, peanut butter, fruit, cheese, and pasta.

          Insect pieces are in almost everything—canned goods, baked goods, boxed goods, veggies, coffee, tomatoes, spices, fast food. Experts say it’s just the cost of doing business in the food industry. They can’t eliminate ALL the pests, so they decided what percentage is basically safe for us to eat!

          But it’s even worse. (Are you shedding pounds, yet?) Some foods’ formulas deliberately add fish bladders, human hair, duck feathers, and a musky/vanilla-scented beaver secretion. Each of these items provides something they want— say, for fluffier bread.

          So, not to bug you, but are you gonna eat that last bite of ice cream, or can I have it?

Many of my Youtube Mom videos show you slick tricks for fixing and storing all these foods (be brave), along with must-see life hacks.

How do you say "YUM!" in French?

Here’s the deal with French food.  I love it.  I love it too much and will eat until I am sick, like a dog with a stack of steaks.

I love the sauces, I love the ingredients, and I most of all love that you are basically eating art.  Here are just a few examples caught on camera before I inhaled them on our recent trip to France:

And believe me, there were more.  I even love the fact that Du Pain Et Des Idees, a little bread bakery in Paris, has this for its ceiling:

I cannot find its equal in the U.S.

At Pierre Herme they will design a dessert for you that reflects the personality of your company.  And you could swoon over their macarons, fall to the ground and hit your head.  They’re that good.

at Amorino in Paris they even sculpt ice cream into a rose:

HOWEVER, drum roll please, my daughter did the sweetest thing, no pun intended.  She made me a fabulous cake for Mother’s Day.  And this is no mere fete.  It’s Verden’s Beste Kake, the national cake of Norway, which translates to The World’s Best Cake. 

When she pronounces it, it sounds even better.  It’s layers of sponge cake (that taste like pound cake), meringue, cream, custard, almonds, and fruit.  You bake the meringue and the cake together at the same time—wow! 

So maybe I can survive without a trip to France for awhile.  Piece of cake.

And what goes better with cake than a great book to read? Order any one of my 25 books here and curl up with a generous serving!