Fat Tuesday and Dirty Rice

Today is Fat Tuesday and all over New Orleans (and myriad other cities around the world) people are nursing hangovers with hair of the dog. I always think it's rather anti-climactic that the actual day of Mardi Gras is such a low-key event. Quite honestly, for me Mardi Gras day is less about hurricanes and hand grenades and more about a totally indulgent pancake supper. Giant stacks of pancakes with butter and syrup, or even chocolate chips, bacon and sausage, the breakfast-for-dinner works. I'd actually been planning on pancakes for dinner tonight, but as fate would have it, I have some chicken breasts in my fridge that must be used (dinner plans last night went awry), so this year we're forgoing the usual Shrove Tuesday pancake supper. I did give some thought to chicken and waffles, but I eventually decided to go back to my roots in honor of Mardi Gras this year:  we're having blackened chicken and dirty rice.

I know, it's not like it's gumbo or jambalaya, but when I was young and forced to eat Cajun food on a regular basis (read:  before I learned to enjoy such things), blackened chicken and dirty rice was my very favorite meal. My dad always used Paul Prudhomme's recipe for dirty rice from his Louisiana Kitchen cookbook, and, seriously, it's so freaking spicy hot. I think this is due to the copious amounts of pepper (my dad always used white pepper) in the rice. But it's warm and spicy and flavorful and I love it. I made this dirty rice with brown rice, and I scaled back the spices, but other than that and the decided lack of chicken livers (they're what traditionally makes the rice "dirty"), I think it tastes pretty darn authentic. 

No matter the blend of spices, dirty rice, like most other Cajun specialties, starts with the "trinity" -- bell pepper (usually green but I always go red), onion, and celery. There's usually sausage (andouille is common) and then the chicken livers. So, I know I've eaten dirty rice with chicken livers countless number of times in restaurants, and I'm certain that, though he'd never admit it, my dad has snuck chicken or duck livers into the dirty rice and I've eaten it with gusto, but I never add chicken livers to my dirty rice. And, you know what? It's still dirty and it tastes fantastic. I don't think my recipe is ever the same because it's based on what I have handy so I won't write it down here, but I'll give you a few links to get you started on dirty rice. And beware, it's supposed to have a kick!

Closest to Dr. M's Dirty Rice

Emeril's Dirty Rice (not as much spice or kick)

Dirty Brown Rice (a little healthier)

Happy Mardi Gras to all of you! We'll be enjoying this with some Abita, appropriately enough, and I'm definitely going to have some chocolate for dessert. After all, tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, and that's the point, right? To get it all out of your system before Lent begins. I still have to figure out what Lent is going to entail for me this year. I always give up chocolate, but I'm giving some serious thought to switching it up this year. Do you make a Lenten sacrifice? Or take something on. I'll have to decide what I'm going to do soon because time is definitely running out. 

Friday Five

This has been a pretty chill week around here . . . it might be the reason there are finally some blog posts up in this ghost town! I adore making lists and reading them, so I thought I'd give the whole Friday Five bit a shot. So, here you have it, five things that I'm loving this week.

1. Pittman and Davis grapefruit! 

My dad sent us a half bushel of Pittman and Davis grapefruit all the way from the Rio Grande valley, and you better believe I've been loving every blissful section of them. Grapefruit is one of my very favorite winter treats, and the only real drawback to living up here (aside from the obvious) is that citrus will never, ever be local. You can see that the grapefruit have joined the basket of citrus on my table. I always have a big basket of citrus on my table in the colder months -- it's cheerful and good for you, too! 

2. Pinterest

Adrianne has been telling me for months that I need to get on the Pinterest bandwagon, and I've steadily declined -- until now. Even though I'm even more convinced than ever that it's a tremendous black hole of time, I love it. It is so much fun to put all of your likes into one place. I'm not on Facebook, though, and that seems to be how you find friends on Pinterest. So, if you're on Pinterest, let me know because I'm an addict. I want to see everyone's boards. And if you're not on Pinterest, well, stay off or prepare to while away your days looking at pretty pictures. 

3. Whitney

The other night Dudley was watching the news and he did a big eye roll when the Whitney Houston segment led the evening's stories. But, you know, even though Dudley thinks he has impeccable taste in music it's narrow as all get out. And I looooves me some Whitney Houston, and she was pretty high in the diva-off my sister and I had this summer. She had to be either 1 or 2 on my list. So, needless to say, I've been pilfering my iTunes library to listen to my Whitney songs this week. And, if I can't be reborn as a surfer girl or a USC song girl, I'd love to get the chance to belt like Whitney. In the meantime I'll settle for singing along at the top of my lungs. 

4. Spring Cleaning

OK, it's not spring, but I've been taking advantage of my time this week to do a little (or a lot) of long-overdue cleaning and straightening. After all, it's nearly tax time so I'd best get my ducklings in one row. 

5. Warm Chocolate Chip Cookies

In an epic failure of judgment I made a batch of chocolate chunk cookie dough (I used the recipe from Flour by JoAnne Chang and it's fabulous, btw) earlier this week. At the time, I had every intention of baking it and giving the cookies away. But then, after dinner one night I wanted dessert -- this is NOT out of the ordinary -- and there were two options. The nuclear option was to bake some of the cookie dough and have fresh chocolate chip cookies. The non-nuclear option was a piece of fruit. Of course I went for the nuclear option. And the rest is history because we've had warm chocolate chip cookies for dessert every night this week. This is NOT a good idea when your jeans are already a little snug. 

Meet Huckleberry

In my new little family we have yours truly and Dudley of course, and you probably remember Lucy, the yellow wonder dog, but I don't believe I've ever properly introduced Huckleberry. So, without further ado, meet Huckleberry!

Otherwise known as Dudley's wingman -- his counterpart to Lucy, if you will. It's actually my fault that Huckleberry is part of our family. You see, when Dudley and I first started dating, he lived in Fort Worth and I lived in Houston. One weekend I went to Fort Worth to visit Dudley and we took his family's dogs to the park. When we got there, I noticed an adorable puppy playing with another dog and his owners. Well, this puppy ran up to say hi, and of course, everyone loves a puppy, but as I was cuddling this fluffy little thing, the other dogs owners told us the puppy wasn't theirs, and it'd been at the park since they arrived. Uh oh. 

So, Dudley suggested we call the little guy Huckleberry because he was just like Huckleberry Finn (this park is on the Trinity River), off on a great adventure and loving every minute of it. We knocked on every door looking for the lost puppy's home, because who would ever abandon such a sweet puppy, but no one knew anything about the little guy. I went back to Houston after the weekend was over, and Dudley spent the next three months trying to find him a good home. But, as you can see, Huckleberry is still in the picture and we are ever so thankful because he's the sweetest little black-nose-curly-tailed-brown dog you'll ever find. 

Now, I adore Huckleberry, and I love my little family, but this guy is a rascal and a half. We're not sure what sort of blend of dog he is, but he definitely has a hound dog nose, and he will follow a scent to the exclusion of everything else around him -- including me yelling my fool head off. But he's also very soft, and he loves a good cuddle. 

So there you have it, the missing piece of my little family. Oh, and did I mention that Huckleberry is what Dudley calls a "kitchen hound" -- he loves to be in the kitchen with me. Dudley spends most of his time when he gets home from work keeping the dogs OUT of the kitchen while I'm making dinner. In addition to the kitchen floor and following his nose, Hucklberry loves: car rides (seriously one of his favorite things in the WORLD), dead animal carcasses (we have a lot of crazy things like deer and raccoon carcasses up here) for eating or rolling -- GROSS, soft piles of blankets all around and over him for napping, property acquisition (you know, walks) and sunny weather. He hates thunder and loud noises of any kind. They make him put his curly tail down. 

Now Huckleberry has officially been introduced, and you better believe he's a big part of Life After Singleton. Dudley often proclaims that the dogs rule our lives, and they do, but they're worth it! 

Sweetings

February 14th . . . it's the placeholder for all things pink, red, and oh-so-very fluffy. As in, it's so fluffy I'm gonna die; as in, it's so fluffy my little heart might actually explode. It does go pitter-patter in the midst of all of the red and pink happiness, but I haven't actually had the opportunity to find myself standing in Target, or Paper Source (be still my heart), overwhelmed by all of the fluffiness this year. In fact, I haven't even gotten my husband a card for our very first married Valentines Day together. I was going to make him a card, but even that hasn't happened as yet (there's still time!). But, somewhere in this maelstrom of daily activity, my brain started to think in sweetings again. Cupcakes, cookies, and pies, oh my! And somewhere I decided that red velvet cupcakes were very, very necessary.

Specifically, red velvet cupcakes with fluffy frosting and dainty little cookies adorning the top. This is definitely red and pink fluffiness, dontcha think? And do you know, my valentine didn't even get to taste one, but that's ok, I know the way to his heart:  Mexican food.  That's what we're having for dinner tonight. I dithered and dithered about what to make my very anti-Valentine's Day husband:  should we have heart shaped pizza? But we've had a lot of pizza lately. An all red and white dinner? I didn't know about that -- it's kind of limiting, especially when tomatoes are seriously out of season. And then it hit me:  Mexican food. It's his favorite and it's spicy and perfect and I haven't made any in ages. So here's to Valentines Day and Mexican food and fluffy red velvet cupcakes with dainty cookies. I hope your hearts and hugs day is filled to the brim with pink and red fluffiness in whatever shape blows your proverbial skirt up. 

This is the red velvet recipe I used. It got rave reviews (red velvet isn't my thing -- I just don't understand the point of one measly tablespoon of cocoa powder -- so I'm not a good judge). If you want super fluffy mounds of icing, you'd best double the icing recipe.