~File This Under: Luxurious Shit... The "His, Hers and Theirs" Edition~

Follow my blog with bloglovin´

“Living in the lap of luxury isn't bad, except that you never know when luxury is going to stand up”
-Orson Welles

Theirs:

1) The Mood Rocking Bed $2,995

Take a rocking chair and a bed, combine them and you have the Mood Rocking Bed. This bed literally sways you to sleep... Rock-A-Bye Glamour Whore!! The "sway speed" is controlled with rubber stoppers. Genius... As a lifelong insomniac I need this bed in my life. It helps that its also visually appealing and can used both indoors and outside. Imagine putting this bed on the beach and swaying to sleep to the sound of the ocean?! *sigh*





2) The "Lets Crystal It" $25,000 Toilet (Via Luxury Launches)

100,000 Swarovski crystals and a platinum seat. Sold!! And I probably wouldn't even use it... I mean, how would you even clean it?! But I still want it... It looks pretty and would be a great conversation piece.





His:

The $100,000 Razor

Did you know Iridium was 10x more rare than platinum? Me either. I learned from researching the Zaffiro $100,000 razor which is made from the apparently very precious metal. The decadent grooming tool also features platinum screws and blades made of white sapphire... I personally would never spend $100,00o on a razor unless it was guaranteed I would never have to shave again. Ever. BUT... I would so love to meet a man that would. For 2 reasons... 1) Because for some reason this strikes me as the kind of product that a James Bond/Renaissance type man would own and that type of man is sexy to me... 2) Because as soon as he left for work or to go off on some "mission" I would sooooo be in a scented bubble bath shaving my legs with it... I'm sorry but I just know that the feel of white sapphire razor blades against my thigh would be deliriously, decadently sexy... Don't judge me.




Hers:

The $$587,500 (or 3.8 million "Yuan") Diamond Cooking Pot:

As with the aforementioned toilet, I would never actually use this pot. It has solid gold handles (totaling 738 grams of gold) and 13 diamonds. Nope, I would put fire to this gorgeous pot. But I want it anyway. It's just so damn pretty... Oh, and did I mention they deliver it to your house in a Rolls Royce? You don't get to keep the car, but still... Nice touch.



Kisses Bitches...
Glamour Whore...xoxo

~File This Under: Luxurious Shit... The "His, Hers and Theirs" Edition~

Follow my blog with bloglovin´

“Living in the lap of luxury isn't bad, except that you never know when luxury is going to stand up”
-Orson Welles

Theirs:

1) The Mood Rocking Bed $2,995

Take a rocking chair and a bed, combine them and you have the Mood Rocking Bed. This bed literally sways you to sleep... Rock-A-Bye Glamour Whore!! The "sway speed" is controlled with rubber stoppers. Genius... As a lifelong insomniac I need this bed in my life. It helps that its also visually appealing and can used both indoors and outside. Imagine putting this bed on the beach and swaying to sleep to the sound of the ocean?! *sigh*





2) The "Lets Crystal It" $25,000 Toilet (Via Luxury Launches)

100,000 Swarovski crystals and a platinum seat. Sold!! And I probably wouldn't even use it... I mean, how would you even clean it?! But I still want it... It looks pretty and would be a great conversation piece.





His:

The $100,000 Razor

Did you know Iridium was 10x more rare than platinum? Me either. I learned from researching the Zaffiro $100,000 razor which is made from the apparently very precious metal. The decadent grooming tool also features platinum screws and blades made of white sapphire... I personally would never spend $100,00o on a razor unless it was guaranteed I would never have to shave again. Ever. BUT... I would so love to meet a man that would. For 2 reasons... 1) Because for some reason this strikes me as the kind of product that a James Bond/Renaissance type man would own and that type of man is sexy to me... 2) Because as soon as he left for work or to go off on some "mission" I would sooooo be in a scented bubble bath shaving my legs with it... I'm sorry but I just know that the feel of white sapphire razor blades against my thigh would be deliriously, decadently sexy... Don't judge me.




Hers:

The $$587,500 (or 3.8 million "Yuan") Diamond Cooking Pot:

As with the aforementioned toilet, I would never actually use this pot. It has solid gold handles (totaling 738 grams of gold) and 13 diamonds. Nope, I would put fire to this gorgeous pot. But I want it anyway. It's just so damn pretty... Oh, and did I mention they deliver it to your house in a Rolls Royce? You don't get to keep the car, but still... Nice touch.



Kisses Bitches...
Glamour Whore...xoxo

Want to read: Man With a Pan

Starting a new feature...not sure if I can manage it daily but there are definitely plenty of books I come across that I want to read. I don't always get to read them, but I want to, so I'll be sharing info about them.

I want to read Man With a Pan! It's a very big name anthology, edited by John Donohue of food blog Stay at Stove Dad, who you can follow @StayatStoveDad on Twitter.



From the New York Times review:

Mohammed Naseehu Ali, a writer from Ghana, describes how his father, a Muslim man with three wives, learned to cook after suspecting one of those wives was poisoning his food. He’s excellent on the practice in Ghana of tsibbu, a form of food-based black magic. “Women use water they have collected from washing their private parts to cook food for their husbands,” he writes about one form of tsibbu, ostensibly turning the men into their virtual slaves.

And Jack Hitt, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, is absurdly observant about multiple topics — not just learning to cook but also about growing up in the South, where black women worked in the kitchens and other people stayed out. About an untrained cook confronting a recipe, he captures “the world of hurt and confusion that can come from only three or four words such as ‘Puree until liquefied. Strain.’ ” Each of these four essays is, as the Michelin Guide puts it, vaut le voyage...

Several of the pieces here poke around in what Manny Howard, in his essay, calls “stunt cooking” — the male need to put on a show and, say, bury a whole pig somewhere. Other essays are about cooking for finicky children. Mr. Donohue, the editor, lashes things together with an essay that notes that, with more women working, men do about one-third of the household cooking today. There are side benefits. He mentions a survey indicating that men who cook “are more likely to have spouses who are in the mood for sex.”

Official description from Workman:

Look who’s making dinner! Twenty-one of our favorite writers and chefs expound upon the joys—and perils—of feeding their families.

Mario Batali’s kids gobble up monkfish liver and foie gras. Peter Kaminsky’s youngest daughter won’t eat anything at all. Mark Bittman reveals the four stages of learning to cook. Stephen King offers tips about what to cook when you don’t feel like cooking. And Jim Harrison shows how good food and wine trump expensive cars and houses.

This book celebrates those who toil behind the stove, trying to nourish and please. Their tales are accompanied by more than sixty family-tested recipes, time-saving tips, and cookbook recommendations, as well as New Yorker cartoons. Plus there are interviews with homestyle heroes from all across America—a fireman in Brooklyn, a football coach in Atlanta, and a bond trader in Los Angeles, among others.

What emerges is a book not just about food but about our changing families. It offers a newfound community for any man who proudly dons an apron and inspiration for those who have yet to pick up the spatula.

google chef

are there some flavours that you always thought would go well together, but have never had the opportunity to try combining? things that you just know would work? combining elements in a stir fry or a roast is somewhat easy- i made up a mushroom risotto for supper based on what seemed to go together and cooked until it seemed done- but where it can get tricky is with dessert. after all, you can't just throw together baking. the proportions are important, like in high school chemistry. no one wants to be that kid who blew his eyebrows off because he wasn't paying attention to how many parts of each element were required.

the other day, i had a brainstorm. it involved three things that i always felt would make some kind of great dessert: rose water, cardamom and pistachios. i've never actually tasted them all together and i'm going out on a digestive limb because, while i'm not exactly allergic, pistachios have always wreaked havoc on my innards, steadfastly refusing to be digested. it's just that i love them.

GET LINKS TO DESSERT RECIPES!



thinking that i couldn't possibly be the only person to think that these things would go well together, i googled the three foods and added "cake", since that was the format i saw this dessert taking. lo and behold, the internet rolled out its welcome mat. it turns out i'm really not the first person to think of these elements. there are dozens of recipes to choose from, i just had to select the one that appealed to me. this was the winner. personally, i didn't bother with the glaze, because i don't like things that are too sweet. and the recipe didn't include cardamom, but i threw some in anyway. that's just me. what came out was a lovely tea-style cake, with all of its elements springing to the palate.

not satisfied with baking one cake, i decided that, given my recent troubles which may be wheat-related, that i would bake a flourless chocolate cake as well. i knew such things existed- i've tried one before- but i hadn't the faintest clue how to make one. within seconds, i had a multitude of recipes and i selected the one that seemed the most straightforward. unfortunately, it required cocoa powder, which i forgot to pick up while getting a few groceries. so did i put off cooking this? hell no. i just googled until i found this recipe that used only ingredients i already had in the house.

a dozen years ago, i had the idea that i would make a cake that contained all the elements of fruitcakes that i liked- basically, the gingerbread style base- and none of those i didn't- the fruit and the cheap alcohol. this has become a yuletide and winter specialty for me. i love making it and everyone i feed it to seems to like it. the fact is that it's just an idea in my head. every couple of years, i have to google a new recipe so that i have a base to start from, because the proportions don't stick in my head.

this is what the internet has brought us to. from ages when recipes were handed down within families and where they were often closely guarded secrets, the cooking world has split open. everything we might envision, it seems, has already been posted somewhere and all we need to do is follow the guidelines. there is no excuse for eating poorly. information on tasty, healthy (ok, not the cakes), hearty and original-seeming dishes is everywhere. so how strange and sad is it that so many of us eat so poorly?

perhaps it's the stigma that cooking is work- personally, i find it relaxing and fun. i like the fact that it's a short-term investment, where i can work for a short period and immediately see the fruits and vegetables of my labours on a nice plate. of course, not everyone has the time that i do and cooking can take time. i don't know too many people who can bake between two and five in the morning, which is what i ended up doing. but it does seem like a sad state of affairs that, when technology makes it possible for us to enjoy virtually any edible treat we can imagine, that we turn our backs on the kitchen.

just an observation.

now if you'll excuse me, i have to go google "keeping fresh baked goods away from a pack of cats".

eat the cup 2010, part 6

the danger in falling a couple of days behind on this project, especially at this juncture, is that the winner that you laud one day can make a hasty exit. such is the case today, where i'm writing a recap of a meal cooked to honour paraguay, a meal prepared on the day that they advanced to the quarter finals but written up on the day after they lost that quarter final to spain.

still, there's certainly no shame in their accomplishment. i don't know that anyone thought they could pull off a victory against the reigning european champions. (i didn't. -ed.) what remains remarkable, however, is the fact that they had such a good run, vaulting past the 2006 cup winners italy and fighting their way through the first elimination round, only to come up against a challenge that proved insurmountable. and in the end, it's not like they were blown away.

the supper consisted of tilapia cooked in citrus juices- predominantly orange juice, with a little lemon and lime added. note- the fish is actually cooked, roasted in an oven, folded up in parchment paper. the central and south american ceviche, where white fish is "cooked" by allowing citrus juices to act on the raw fish, is not typical in paraguay.

as a side dish, i found a recipe that called to my british heritage. it was described as a sort of south american yorkshire pudding, where a cornmeal "dough" is baked in the oven mixed with tomatoes, onions, cheese, hot peppers and cilantro (or other flavourings to taste). this is absolutely delicious, reheats well and is certainly going to be making future appearances on my table.

although i still imagine that most people would have trouble locating the country on a map, the cup chase has at least reminded people of their existence and possibly made people aware of how fascinating the country really is. the country is home to one of the world's least known unesco heritage sites, a mark of its jersuit past. it also has a significant mennonite population, something normally associated with the north, rather than south, america. (which in turn might account for the fact that german is the third most commonly spoken language in the country.)

eat the cup 2010, part 5

oh, it's getting down to it now... fewer teams every day and now, just about every favourite has bowed to the pressure (hey argentina, is that a nervous sweat i see?) and soon the great football feast shall be done.

i've already tipped my hat towards holland this year, but i'd like once more to rise and applaud their accomplishment. at the time this dinner was prepared, the oranje had yet to allow a goal (they let one through earlier today, but look at the results nonetheless). that, to me, deserves a second look. (perhaps that's the irish sliver of me feeling a certain bond of ancient kinship.)

and so a second look it has been given. what you see above is another fish dish from holland, one that grabbed my attention as I lolled through various sorts of recipes on line. River trout with pine nut sauce (Forel met pijnboompittensaus for the brave of tongue). it's a basic, straightforward thing with no big "secret", but that packs a real bang. yeah, that's a metaphor.

in this case, i just served it up on a plate of arugula. there's no soccer significance to that, i just really love arugula. although now that i see it, it kind of looks like it's resting on a giant green playing field.

this feast was accompanied by an argentinian wine. i'm such an adorer of the region's malbec wines, which just have so many winning qualities, it's hard to see why they wouldn't be a favourite with everyone. (yeah, another metaphor.)

eat the cup 2010, part 4

must apologise for the fact that i've been a bit slow with this update. strangely, this absence has been because i've actually taken a few days off from work, which always seems to leave me with less time. kind of turns logic on its head, but there you go.

i'll also have to apologise for the fact that i forgot to snap a picture of the night's dinner before i'd scarfed half of it down. whoops. at that point, it really didn't seem like such a great idea to snap a photo of the carnage, so i opted to go forward with the written portion only.

the fourth eat the cup dinner was an homage to the simply, straightforward, dynamic flavours of the mediterranean. it was particularly to note the advance of two teams situated along that body of water who don't get the culinary respect they deserve: spain and portugal (as you read that second one, please imagine the sound of me coughing up a large hairball.)

granted, we have seen more of spain since the onslaught of over-hyped, trendy "tapas bars" in the last five years or so. but a real spaniard would turn his or her nose up at those places. (or, more likely, roll his or her eyes and grunt "conyo"- a charming all-purpose spanish insult that has the same meaning, but not the same connotation, as a similar-looking word in english.) tapas are really just the spanish variant of pub bites. in north america, they've been transformed into an excuse for restaurants to charge their patrons the same amount of money for a lot less food.

two small spanish dishes that have a combined prep time of less than fifteen minutes and boast a huge flavour payoff are the tomato salad (tomatoes and diced spanish onion tossed with olive oil- of which spain is the world's largest producer, accounting for staggering 40-45% of world production- and red wine vinegar) and gambas al ajillo (shrimp stir fried in olive oil with enough garlic to take out the entire cast of twilight- which some might see as reason enough to eat it right there.) these are quick, basic foods. the kind of thing the owner of a bodega can throw together without too much effort, as he sloshes out glasses of wine. (spain is also the world's third largest producer of wine, although that's another well-kept secret.)

if portugal is known for one thing (sound of grating teeth trying to avoid smart-assed comment) in the culinary world, it is probably the whimsical-sounding piri-piri sauce. the ubiquitous brownish-red chili concoction can be used for marinating, basting or dipping. it's often combined with meats, but in this instance, it was used for the pleasure of dunking- that activity that really distinguishes the lusty appetites of the common man from the more genteel classes. (tell me there isn't something almost erotically transgressive about eating with your hands, all those comingling juices dripping over your lips and down your fingers...) and so, in celebration (hack-hack-hack, here comes another hairball) of portugal's emphatic win over rivals north korea (yeah, whatever, they scored a lot, old news, move on, -ed.), i prepared my first piri piri.

of course, if you have dunking sauce, you have to have dunkables. in this case, i made cornbread, since various sorts of corn-meal based loaves are staples in the cuisine of uruguay and paraguay, both of whom also celebrated victories (and who have both since moved on to the "knock-out" round). cornbread is one of those things that stands in defiance of the idea that baking is tricky. seriously, starting out, this is the sort of thing that will build your baking confidence like no other. recipes generally involve fewer than half a dozen ingredients and are, by baking standards, pretty forgiving.

to round things off, of course, you need a nice wine. in this case, i selected something from chile, who have quietly been tramping over the opposition in their inexorable movement towards... a game with the almighty brazil in the knock-out round, unfortunately. in honour of their progress, however, i picked a carmenere. carmenere is a french varietal, however it is almost unknown in its homeland and is now almost synonymous with chile. i don't know that i've ever seen a predominantly carmenere wine from any other country. i'll just take this moment to reiterate what those who know me have already heard: i'm a real fan of chilean wines. once the poison grapes scandal had died down and once it was no longer politically reprehensible to buy chilean wine (i have a distinct teenage memory of seeing a shirt that said "if you're buying food from chile, you're already sick. thus is young political conscience awakened.), i got to discover that they are (along with spain, actually), one of the best quality-for-dollar deals you're going to come across. and those of us who can't fork over for a high-end burgundy or northern california cabernet appreciate that sort of thing.

until next time, salud. the field will narrow, but the menu will not.

(ok, ok, i give. several people have noticed that there is an elephant in the room. one team has a perfect record, a rich culinary tradition and yet, somehow, has not made it into this year's eat the cup. forgive me. i love brazil, i really do. and i love their food most of all. the thing is, i started off trying to go with those countries who i felt had less of a chance of advancing. i know i'm going to have time to get to brazil, because i don't see anyone knocking them out of the tournament in the next couple of rounds. that said, i'm thinking i might want to get to work, because this is exactly the sort of thinking that has prevented this year's 'eat the cup' from including bouillabaisse or risotto.)

eat the cup 2010, part 3

one of the surprises of this years' winners at the world cup is that those whose cuisine I'm familiar with- the ones I’m already comfortable cooking from- just aren’t winning. So this really is a challenge for me this year.

The third installment of this year’s eat the cup sees a combination of foods from far-flung corners of the world, with different climates and different dishes to accommodate them.

First of all, let’s start with Uruguay. I had to brace myself for this, because this is a cuisine I knew virtually nothing about. As with all things on the internet, there is mixed information available, but one common thing was found throughout the sites that I checked. Apparently, Uruguayans love something called Russian salad. I have no idea why this should be, or what exactly makes it Russian, but every article I found on Uruguayan food lists this as a favourite dish. I had eaten such a salad before, prepared by a Spaniard. So maybe it’s a Spanish-speaking thing. The salad itself is a fairly simple take on a potato salad and makes a refreshing side for a summer meal. (Perhaps it was Uruguay’s penchant for Russian salads that made the US suspicious that they were a secret hotbed of communism that needed to be controlled.)

On the other end of the scale, of course, you have the fondue. This has been one of my favourite dishes since I was a child. After all, what can compete with the sheer joy of being told you are supposed to dunk your food in delicious goo- cheese, chocolate or bouillon- before eating it? These cheese fondue has always been a particular favourite of mine. Hearty, straightforward and generally filled with tangy Swiss cheeses like Emmenthal and Gruyere, this is really the ultimate comfort food for people looking for relief from the alpine winters and the endless stream of tourists asking them if they yodel. Personally, I’m a purist, which means I don’t hold with those who dunk vegetables in the cheese. This is not vegetable country and if you’re trying to be healthy, I might point out that drowning your food in runny cheese is a bad start.

The nice thing about preparing food from countries that are out of the ordinary- and I think that this meal is a great example- is that “new” doesn’t have to mean complicated. This is something that can be prepared even if you’re running short on time (insert obligatory cuckoo-clock joke here). Thus are disparate cuisines brought together.

eat the cup 2010, part 1

and so it begins... again.

some of you who know me or who have been reading this blog for a long time (four years or more- thanks, by the way), know that i decided to integrate my interest in cooking into the world-wide world cup fever that takes over in the month of june (and into early july). for no reason in particular, this phrase "eat the cup" occurred to me in the same instant that i had the idea that it would be hilarious and fun to start cooking a meal in honour of the day's tournament winners. and indeed, despite some competitive disappointment on my part at the end, the whole thing was fun- lots of fun. and there really isn't any reason not to do something again when it's fun (as long as there aren't criminal charges involved).

this year, in order to be equitable during the opening round and in the interest of making things as difficult for myself as i possibly can, i've added a little wrinkle. for the first round, rather than simply picking a match and cooking a meal in the style of that team's homeland, i'm going to make meals that fuse elements of the cuisines of the day's various winners. that'll make something fun even... funner...

of course, this year's tournament has already shown its willingness to laugh in my pasty white face, since the first winners all seemed to hail from countries where veal is considered a vegetable. since i tend to avoid either red meat or poultry, this adds a wrinkle on which i hadn't counted. from what is being predicted, i take comfort in the fact that the delightful fleur sauvage natural food shop in my neighbourhood has a healthy supply of mock bavarian sausages and mock italian sausages. (no it isn't cheating!)

so to start things off, i decided to wait until sunday to cook a big meal (because sunday just feels like a cooking day and friday, when i really should have started, i was headed out to a show. this isn't the kind of thing that can just be rushed along.) of course, the teams did cooperate a little by limiting the number of winning teams that i actually had to contend with. heck, if i'd started on friday night, i'm not sure what i would have done. if there's no clear winner that day, should i just fast? that sounds like less fun.

by sunday, however, there were some clear winners and so i set to work making a feast in their honour.

lettuce and rice wraps with spicy sauce (korea)

in fact, both koreas have teams in the world cup this year, and so far the one team to play scored the first clear victory of the tournament, with a convincing victory over greece. these little wraps are pretty simple street food, but the magic is in the sweet, spicy, pungent and garlicky sauce. (korea can compete with any nation on earth in the love of garlic sweepstakes.) this year provides a welcome chance for the team to prove themselves after winning their bid for the 2002 cup (sort of) under controversial circumstances and having their run for the cup tainted by accusations of referee malfeasance. the straightforward win was probably a welcome distraction for the nation after a catastrophic incident with the country's space program earlier in the week.

empanadas- these wonderful little dough-wrapped pockets of pure food pleasure can be stuffed with basically anything. although apparently spanish and portuguese in origin, they are associated mostly with the former colonies in south america. an unfortunate tendency i have to overwork dough made the crusts of mine a little too crusty, but these are really about the insides. (i probably set my expectations too high, in that i was spoiled in toronto by the drool-worthy el gordo- meaning "the fat one"- empanada emporium, which i always found superior to its better known neighbour.)in this case, i opted for a cheese filling, but in honour of two of the tournament's lesser-known victors, i added raisins (after a well-known slovenian dish, actually a dessert, with cheese and raisins) and chunks of sweet potato (a important food crop in ghana). as a side note, to roll out my dough, i used an empty australian wine bottle. because if country needed to feel that they could steamroll over something at the moment, it's got to be the australians.

and speaking of nods to less than inspiring play, i couldn't resist accompanying the meal with a tasty side dish of buttered greens, with a dash of lemon for that tang of bitterness.

to finish off, the meal was accompanied by a bottle of mosel riesling, the superstar german varietal, because their 5-0 shellacking of the australian team definitely deserves a toast. the hosts of the last world cup (and therefore the first "eat the cup") served notice that cup favourites argentina and spain are going to have a very tough time on their hands.

warning to those who may want to attempt this: this meal is rather astoundingly rich and managed to send two full-grown adults into what i would describe as a "food coma" and hoping that the next country to win would be one that is known for its superb crackers and soda water. the challenge continues tomorrow. onward and inward.