Chocolate-bacon drawing

As promised, to give you some sort of idea of what's going on when bacon is dipped in chocolate:

8/10/11 - Fogo de Jeff

It's restaurant week here in Baltimore. All the dank restaurants have 3-course specials for a fixed rate. I think it's like $35, which for the nicer restaurants around is a sweet ass deal for 3 courses. Best bargain on the list? Easily Fogo de chao. I can't really explain how amazing this place is, but just picture an all you can eat steak house, where juicy cuts of meat are being whored around - you don't even need to get up, they come to you! It's a tittie bar for fat people.

So you can imagine my deep sadness when we called and found out they were all booked tonight. I'm not surprised, Baltimore is very Jewish. Jews are rich and like a bargain, and this is a bargain. Normally it's like $45 bucks a head. Belieeee dat.

I was wallowing in depression and considering ending it all until my dad suggested we make our own steakhouse. Take that real Fago! (intentional spelling error). He went to the store and came back with two big ass rib eyes, one tenderloin, and a NY strip. Here was my plate:

Wow, that's just gorgeous. That's food porn. In the spirit of food porn, let's get a close up:

And to spice things up, let's get a threesome going with all three sluts cuts.

That is just sexy. All 3 cuts were coated with worcestershire sauce, ground pepper, and Kosher salt. The rib eyes were rubbed with a sweet/tangy rub, and the strip was rubbed with a more peppery rub from Texas. Every cut was cooked exactly how I like: medium rare. I see on the pictures that I had sides on my plate. Don't remember them at all. Incredible dinner, and every cut deserved 10/10 Jeffs. 

For dessert my dad grilled some peaches and added some 'nilla ice cream:

Grilled fruit is great. Ice cream is awesome. The peaches had a hint of smokiness. Pretty good, 6.5/10 Jeffs.

8/10/11 - Bacon for dessert?!

More guest cooks. My sister and her/my/everyone's friend Alex Jacobs decided to go buck wild on some bacon yesterday. It's hard to imagine the gloriousness that is bacon getting an upgrade, but these dames went all Frankenstein on it and dipped it in chocolate and brown sugar. Let that sink in for a second...

Now I can't, by any stretch of the imagination, think that they're the first to try such an experiment. In fact, a quick google search shows this is a pretty damn popular practice. But I'm a n00b in the bacon-as-a-dessert game. Here it is, atop a maple cupcake that they made (keep it in your pants):

Seriously, this mutant was fucking awesome. Some out there are going to argue that they're playing god, that this an abomination, an unholy union. Silence nay sayers! 

As any sane person out there would do, I totally neglected the cupcake and ate the bacon off the top immediately. It was salty and sweet at the time. It was totally fucking with my taste buds. Now I have a physiological/psychological problem dealing with salty versus sweet things (basically I'm crazy and need a perfect balance between the two), but this creation managed to harmonize both tastes. It's like a pig had sloppy, nasty, regret-it-in-the-morning sex with a Hershey's bar. I'm going to draw that actually and upload it later.

And thus remained the lonely cupcake. It looked sad without it's chocolatey-bacon crown on top, but I had myself a nibble. What did Jeff find inside? More bacon! Bits of salty swine were mixed into the batter. Madness!

Anyway, I easily give this dessert 9/10 Jeffs. Would have been perfect but now I feel like a heart attack is on its way.

*My sister has been all bake-happy lately, so if you have any suggestions let me know.

8/10/11 - The dinner that was lunch

On Tuesdays I play in a softball league for Dudas Tavern in Fells Point. This shouldn't surprise anyone because I'm an incredible athlete. We just get drunk and play a game best described as America's sport's gay brother.

What this means is I miss out on Tuesday dinners with my pops. And I'm fairly certain he intentionally cooks good meals when I'm not around just to spite me. Like last night for instance, the guy made scallops and clams. Mind you, he just came back from the beach, so these crustaceans were fresher than these shoes (don't copy my kicks):

So while I did enjoy a post-game meal at Pei Wei, I didn't get to partake in seafood fest 2011 until today, for lunch. 

1) What's there really to say about steamed clams? They're pretty basic. It ain't like you gotta marinate them or season them. You just steam them and throw out any stubborn assholes that didn't open up. Chewy and salty. I'm not so sure I'm even rating my dad's steaming ability so much as I am rating Mother Earth for making clams? To avoid a lightning strike or a tree falling on my house, I'm gonna give them a perfect score of 10/10 Jeffs. Love your Mother.

2) Scallops is trickier because you actually gotta cook them, or maybe lube them up with sauce. These were cooked perfectly. If you recall when I was introducing "the stars" of this blog, I included scallops as one of my dad's specialties. Well the guy didn't disappoint. There's some sauce on them but I didn't even ask what it was. I ate them all within a minute. That's what happens when you wake up at 2. You're starving and pretty much shove anything in sight down your gullet. 8.5/10 Jeffs.

8/8/11 - Oh look, Kerry decided to cook

Nothing warms these ole blue eyes like the sight of a woman in the kitchen. Tonight, my moms was eager to make a chicken dish that she admittedly stole from a friend. I hear that shit tastes like chicken, so I was game to try it out. Hurr it is:

1. Ok so the chicken was stuffed. Stuffed with what? Raisins? Glass? A smaller piece of chicken? No you stupid retard, with mozzarella cheese and pesto. And if that didn't get your nether regions frothy, take a gander at what's wrapped around the chicken. It's prosciutto! So meat, wrapped around meat, stuffed with cheese. Shawtay looked good enough to eat. Meat2 (aka chicken) was just sliiiightly over cooked for me, but it was delicious and if my stepdad doesn't eat the last one tonight I'mma holler at it tomorrow for lunch. 8/10 Jeffs, only because of tenderness issues.

2. I wish the sides served were also wrapped in meat, but not every little boy's dreams come true. As a green we had asparagus and broccolini. I think broccolini is a snobby asshole vegetable. It's essentially broccoli but bigger. I look down on broccoli now for not having leaves as big or stems as long. Anyway, they were both sauteed in garlic, which would make rocks delicious. 7.5/10 Jeffs.

3. It just took me 3 minutes to even look up how to spell this mothafugga. Quinoa as they say. Quinoa is cous-cous's hipster cousin. I don't know how to describe it, but there were home roasted pine nuts in the joint. Yo had 2 scoops! 8.5/10 Jeffs.

8/7/11 - Faggedaboudit...Italian night

So your mans just got back from the dirty Jerzzz, and more specifically, he was at the shore. Did you know there's Italians at the Jersey shore? Neither did I!

To keep the Italian theme going, my stepdad whipped up a number I like to call "pasta with sauce and vegetables in the sauce with bread on the side." Rolls off the tongue - just like Italian!

Here we have a plate picture. As unrealistic as this sounds, I actually forgot about this really important and informative blog that everyone loves (right?!) and didn't get a picture until the end when only a few scraps remained. But you get the idea:

Screwwy shaped pasta with spicy, homemade red sauce. Crushed cayenne pepper all up in the biznitch. Yo was sweatin the whole damn time. What else was in it? Mushrooms and eggplant, that's what. Pretty basic Italian meal, but not everyone gets this stuff homemade by an authentic Italian (even if he doesnt have a blow-out).

**Editorial note: there's been debate over my rating system. Some think I should stick to whole numbers, some think I should expand my system to out-of-ten, some even think I should stop writing about my meals (as if!). I think I'll compromise and essentially do the first two (but I'll use half numbers too), cause if ya'll are even reading this dumbass blog, I should be grateful and considerate of opinions. 

That being said, I'll give this dish a 7/10 Jeffs. It would have been an 8 but I sweated too much.

8/1/11 - My mom is lazy; first restaurant dinner

My mom decided she was gonna be lazy tonight. What does that mean for ole Jeff? Will he go hungry? Will he have to scour the neighbor's trashcan in hopes of finding a wee morsel?

Naw yo, it means we goin to the Corner Stable.

You see, on Mondays the Corner Stable has a rib special. Full rack and fries for $13.99. That's pretty damn good as far as full racks are concerned. And I love racks, especially full ones.

Now it's no secret I've put on a little weight. I probably shouldn't even get the rib special right? If you said yes, go fuck yaself. Those ribs are money. So instead of skipping the ribs altogether, I figured I'd just eat a salad ALSO, because eating even more food is ok when that food is green right?

Too bad the salad was a disappointment. I've found that few places can really master the caesar salad (the Bonefishes/Outbacks of the world). This salad barely had any dressing on it. I felt like a rabbit the whole time I was eating it. The one upside to it was the ton of shredded parm on top.

And thus, the ribs were served.

1. Have you had Corner Stables ribs? They're fan-fuggin-tastic. I should get an endorsement deal. Not only do the bones literally slide off like butter with no effort at all, the sauce is sweet and tangy and maybe the kind of thing two lovers would lick off of each other. There are all different possibilities of taste as far as ribs are concerned, but if you're looking for tender and sweet, these are the cat's meow. 4.8/5 Jeffs.
2. The fries. These are sort of complicated because on their own, I find them underseasoned. But they sit at the bottom and get all saturated in that sexy sauce and by golly they're incredible. Let's assume you dip your fries in the puddle of sauce they give you and give these a 4.5/5 Jeffs.

Tomorrow I have my downtown softball league. It's island night so there's gonna be a ton of good food and a ton of ugly Hawaiian shirts. We'll see if I remember to take some pics. Reporting live!