Every Day Can be Gras

Tomorrow is a ManCamp day. I spent part of the morning trying to figure out what to fix.

I can't believe the huge inventory of really good recipes I have. I'm so proud of myself. But it makes it hard to choose. Luckily some items, like hog stuffed with apricot dressing, are just too big and too much work.

I really miss my croissants. Oh, man. The ones with strawberry and cheesecake filling are mind-blowing. Nothing I ever got from a bakery even comes close. And the chocolate ones aren't exactly bad. But I can already imagine the moaning I'd have to put up with if I showed up to watch football with croissants.

I can't make any of my spicy recipes. Not everyone at ManCamp can stand them. Although Val's wife Maggie eats raw habaneros with her fingers, which is almost scary to watch. I'd love to make a big tank of andouille jambalaya, but without the habaneros, it's just rice and sausage.

Turns out we're doing beer-butt chicken. I'm slapping a dry rub on one and putting it in the fridge tonight. I think I'll also shoot it up with salt, Jack Daniel's (in order to avoid scathing emails from my friend Amanda), and maybe some maple syrup.

Just for the hell of it, I'm also doing potatoes au gratin. Some people moaned about this dish being too similar to my macaroni and cheese. However, that's because...hello...potatoes au gratin are INHERENTLY similar to macaroni and cheese. Hot cheesy sauce on potatoes, or hot cheesy sauce on macaroni...how much different can you make them?

I'm making a test pizza today, to watch with my recently acquired Monty Python and the Holy Grail DVD. A reader suggested I try Barilla pizza sauce, and since I'm trying to duplicate the taste of pizzeria pizza, which is almost always made with prefab sauce, it sounded like a reasonable idea. But I bought the damn cheese and then found out my store didn't have Barilla pizza sauce. So I'm experimenting with paste.

I had this idea about the croissants today. Why not blueberry as well as strawberry? Aren't blueberries American? If so, what a poke in the eye to the weasely, garlic-smelling French.

That's what I'm up to today.