COBB & BALLS SALAD

March 9, 2016
Bob Cobb would be proud...or he might be rolling in his grave.

Bob Cobb would be proud…or he might be rolling in his grave.

You can’t argue with a classic.  The Cobb Salad is a staple of any lunch spot.  But who says it can’t kick start a date into hyper drive?  It certainly passes the health stress test with the fiber, protein and low-fat content.  You almost forget how nourishing it is because each bite tastes like a magical mystery tour in your mouth.  The crunch of the lettuce, creaminess of the bleu cheese, aphrodisiac avocado explosion, & meaty monkey business in the chicken and bacon all lead you to one conclusion: God-fucking-damn!

Total time: approximately 10 minutes
Projected cost: $13
Drinking Buddy: Red wine or RAGING HARD ON LEMONADE

cobb-n-balls-salad-prepIngredients (serves 2):
1. ½ head of romaine lettuce
2. 1 teaspoon of olive oil
3. 2 teaspoons of red wine vinegar
4. ½ teaspoon of black pepper
5. 1 teaspoon of Dijon mustard
6. 1 handful + 1 teaspoon of bleu cheese crumbled
7. 3 strips of cooked bacon
8. 1 cooked chicken breast, grilled or baked
9. 1 AVOCADO diced into bite-sized pieces
10. 1 hard-boiled egg
11. 1 tomato diced

Step 1
Mix up the dressing by combining the Dijon mustard, ed wine vinegar, olive oil, black pepper and 1 teaspoon of blue cheese.  Set aside.
cobb-n-balls-salad-dress
Step 2
Wash the romaine, cut off the stock, then cut bite-size pieces of lettuce, and line the bottom of a salad bowl.  Throw the chopped tomato on top.  Slice the egg thinly and spread them out evenly.  Chop up the bacon into bits and spread it out too.  Chop the chicken breast into bite-sized pieces and scatter those on top.  Do the same with a handful of blue cheese and crown it all with avocado.
cobb-n-balls-salad-toss2
Step 3
Serve up the plates of salad, tonging up a plateful as is.  DO NOT TOSS!  You want the layers of Cobb glory to shine like a Tiffany diamond.  Scoop in your desired amount of dressing and let the good times roll.
cobb-n-balls-salad-plate-dressingcobb-n-balls-salad-prep-2

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ROASTED RED PEEPING TOM-ATO SOUP

February 17, 2016
Peep this pack of perfect peppers, player!

Peep this pack of perfect peppers, player!

Some of my best friends are peeping toms.  Society tells these voyeurs to be ashamed.  But I ask you, how different is it to watch someone in person then watching asinine strangers in a reality show?  Once you get used to hand prints left from peering into your window and your flowerbed continually being crushed, it’s really not so bad.  Voyeurs are essentially pleasure-delayers.  I personally subscribe to the hedonist school and want it all a week ago. But I respect their patience.  This soup is like that.  Roasting takes a dedication.  Are you up for the task of slow-cooking a perfect soup so that you won’t have to “take it slow” later?  I hope so because sometimes, every once in a while, I mean a long while, it is totally worth it to hold it back.  Like an orgasm you manage to stretch out an extra 5 seconds by grunting.  “Oh yeah! That’s it. Here we go. Unnnnggggghhhh!”

Total time: approximately 90 minutes
Projected cost: $5
Drinking Buddy: Ice tea, lemonade or an ice-cold beer to cool you down, Perv Master Flex

roasted-red-peeping-tom-ato-soup-prepIngredients (serves 2):
1. 2 red bell peppers
2. 1 tablespoon of olive oil
3. 1 teaspoon of salt
4. 2 cups of vegetable stock
5. 1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper
6. 2 teaspoons of bay leaves
7. 2 garlic cloves chopped finely
8. 1 onion chopped coarsely
9. 2 tomatoes

Step 1
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F.  Wash the red peppers and tomatoes, dry them off, and place them all into a large glass or metal oven-safe bowl.  Roast them until the skin blacks and separates from the veggie meat (approx 45 minutes).  Remove the tomato and peppers from the bowl and place them in a plastic bag that you will seal and leave in the fridge to cool (approx 20 minutes).  Take the bag out of the fridge and dump the contents, leaked juice included, back into the roasting bowl.  Slowly remove the skin from the peppers and tomatoes.  Finally pull out the stalks and chop it all up coarsely and set aside.
roasted-red-peeping-tom-ato-soup-roast
Step 2
Heat up the olive oil in a stockpot on medium heat.  Toss in the garlic and cook until it whitens (approx 30 seconds), then follow up with the onions that you will cook until they become translucent (approx 2 minutes).  Flavor it all up with the salt, cayenne pepper and bay leaves before mixing in the roasted peppers and tomatoes.
roasted-red-peeping-tom-ato-soup-cook
Step 3
Dump in the vegetable stock and bring to a roaring boil on high heat, then turn the heat down low and simmer with a lid on until the veggies soften (approx 20 minutes).  Puree the soup up using a Cuisinart, blender or hand blender (as pictured) and serve with a feeling of accomplishment.  You’re terrific.

roasted-red-peeping-tom-ato-soup-simmer-puree

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FLIRTY TURKEY BRIE SINWICH

January 18, 2016
Flirty, dirty and wordy.  This sandwich offers all manners of sinful delights.

Flirty, dirty and wordy. This sandwich offers all manners of sinful delights.

This turkey sandwich is no ordinary sandwich.  It has sex appeal scientists are struggling to devise a method of measuring.  It can’t help flirting with everyone its path.  This sandwich has won over everyone it has met besides a few vegetarians who are questioning their own eating habits.  That is the power of said sandwich.  The tantalizing melted brie cheese, cranberry goodness, creamy aphrodisiac-laden avocado and crunchy bread dares to take you where no sandwich has gone before.  You almost forget your eating a sandwich at all.  It seems more like nosh meant for the gods who happen to be food snobs.  I made this sandwich and God said it was good. God said it was damn good and paused time so he could have second.  Amen! Read the rest of this entry »


TRUFFLE SHUFFLE GRILLED CHEESE

December 4, 2015

Avoid getting into scuffles when you truffle shuffe.

While CTB has already done the GRATUITOUS GRILLED CHEESE SINWICH to great fanfare, one gourmet grilled cheese sandwich just isn’t enough. Anyone whose been to a grilled cheese contest can tell you there’ more than one way to melt congealed milk. At the GRILLED CHEESE INVITATIONAL, I learned that there are as many variations on the grilled cheese as positions in the Kama Sutra. Since CTB is not about to make grilled cheese the exclusive format, allow me to present this grilled piece of awesome for your dining pleasure. In the interest of full disclosure, I just got truffle oil and am totally and positively gay for it. A little dab works like a super lube, revving up the sexy time explosions in your mouth. Alas, I applied the glorious oil to a grilled cheese lunch. I took my first bite while standing and nearly lost my footing. Luckily the girl I was cooking for was able to break my fall or I would have knocked over the precious truffle elixir and likely licked it straight off the floor. By the time we gobbled down our sinwiches, we danced a shuffle from the kitchen into the bedroom without bothering to wash our hands first. Read the rest of this entry »


SAUSAGE PARTY SINWICH

August 24, 2015
sausage n peppers served 2

Big Ol’ Sausage Cumming your way!

Make room! Make room!  A massive sausage is coming straight for your open mouth.  There’s not a whole lot you can do but smile like a donut.  But don’t fear it.  Taste it.  Enjoy it.  Love it.  There’s nothing wrong with phallic food so long as you are comfortable with yourself and enjoy good food.  Just to make you feel better, you can Price Albert the sausage to make it less threatening.  Throw in all the veggies and aphrodisiac avocado and you have an innocuous, yet delicious open-faced sandwich to enjoy with your date.  Need I mention that you can whip these up in 10 minutes flat while you wax poetic with your game?  Now drop your inhibitions and pick up that big ol’ massive meaty sausage. Read the rest of this entry »


GRATUITOUS GRILLED CHEESE SINWICH

June 29, 2015

Childhood classic never tasted so innapropriately scrumptious

THis childhood classic never tasted so inappropriately scrumptious

Do you still think of grilled cheese sandwiches as a slice of American cheese thrown between two slices of Wonder Bread?  The grilled cheese has come a long way and wants it’s day in court to appeal.  Be an honorable judge and listen to the cheese plead its case as it melts on your tongue, accompanied by evidence in the form of tomato, avocado and cilantro.  Only a cruel monster lacking in taste bud ethics could throw the book at a sandwich so deviously divine.  I found this extreme makeover on a childhood classic to be an effective weekend lunch date meal.  Grill these babies up, pop in a movie, pretend to yawn and throw your arm around your date.  If your game is strong, the vibe is on, than you should be knocking boots ‘til the break of dawn. Read the rest of this entry »


GETTIN’ YOUR GOAT CHEESE SALAD

June 15, 2015
Gettin your goat will make you float and rock that boat!
Gettin’ your goat will make you float and rock that boat!

So you don’t think goats are sexy, huh?  You don’t find their hooves and beards enchanting?  Their bleating cries a top a craggily mountains isn’t a huge turn on?  Then you haven’t sampled goat cheese baked to perfection with the pistachio crust atop a mountain of greens and grape boulders smothered is a sticky sweet balsamic reduction.  You may find yourself licking the plate clean and stealing a little off your lover’s plate (CTB won’t tell).  No one will blame you once this sexy dish seduces your mouth, body and soul.  The goat bleats will become a choir of enchanting angels beckoning you to join them in their four-legged rendition of the Macarena.  You will be completely powerless to resist and you will love every minute of it because your date will be by your side, equally entranced by the goat cheese’s power that is turbo-charged with the balsamic blast.  The healthy spinach and the mysterious aphrodisiac powers of the grapes create a perfect storm of culinary delight.  Give in and go with it.  This salad can take you places you never knew existed.  And at the end of the journey your inevitable sexual conquest will be secondary to the post-coital glow you experienced with love at first bite. Read the rest of this entry »


LECHEROUS LEMON BARS

May 27, 2015
These are lemon bar none the best way to make somone sweet into a tart

These are lemon bar none the best way to make somone sweet into a tart

Lemon bars are a fairly innocuous sweet treat favored by WASPy church ladies and the uptight men that don’t get to bang them.  Even I can appreciate the wholesome nature of these lovely lemon luxuries.  But that doesn’t mean we must have undying reverence for the sacred lemon bar.  Make them right and lemon bars can be a citrus-soaked ticket to Boom-Shaka-Laka-Land.  Praise be to the dessert treat that can lure in the do-gooder with the do-great ass using sweetness, then convince them to get naked with sour tart.  Think of these lemon bars as the bait on a trap, a decoy if you will.  Plant a seed with that sexy new coworker, naughty neighbor, or coffee shop acquaintance.  Hand them a bar, allow them to experience the orgasmic indulgence in private and wait. Compliments and praise for your culinary prowess will surely follow.  This is the part where you invite them over to your place for more of the same, but in a more intimate setting.  Game, set and match! Read the rest of this entry »


SKEEZER SALAD

May 14, 2015

All hail Caesar Salad!

All hail Caesar Salad!

The classics deserve much props and little improvisation.  You can’t get much more perfect than the Caesar Salad.  Like a great lover, it is crisp, moist and creamy in all the right places.  No wonder this salad is so universal on plates across the world.  Now is your chance to wow even the most discriminate date with this simple DIY Caesar Salad from scratch.  Once you make this ridiculously easy salad once, sequels by the dozen are sure to follow.  This salad works perfectly as a starter before a blow-their-mind entrée, or can stand alone as a lunch.  It was the perfect follow up course to the sultry French Onion Soup I served.  Naturally, my date was satisfied to her core with such simplicity.  She pounced like a wildcat before I could even finish.  My only regret is that the lettuce wilted before I could eat the rest.  I can always make more and more and more. Read the rest of this entry »


GOING GREEK SALAD

September 5, 2014
Once you go Greek, you don't go back...unless you're squeamish

Once you go Greek, you don’t go back…unless you’re squeamish

The Greeks sure know how to live. They have amazing islands, beautiful tan people and ouzo that pours out of every faucet. Seriously. I actually took an ouzo shower in Mykonos. But the shower was in a club and my Greek friends were pouring it over my head. My first thought was I had pissed off one of the girls by telling her she looks like the homely older sister of the goddess Athena. Thankfully this goddess-like mortal didn’t lose my sarcasm in translation. The ouzo shower was her mating call. Naturally the boorish American read it wrong thinking I had offended her. Believe it or not, that happens a lot. It took a few more alcoholic hosings and a passionate kiss on the dance floor to finally get it. I was crystal clear as the Mediterranean Sea when she led me down to the beach like a Trojan horse. Now I fully comprehend what it means to go Greek. Interesting. What’s also interesting is the island nation’s produce. Super healthy, tasty Greek Salads will fuel many ouzo shower-filled evenings. Do Zeus proud and go Greek! Read the rest of this entry »