southwestern style bar nuts

roasted almonds and orange flavored dried cranberries tossed in a chipotle caramel, ( sweet, smokey, tart and a hint of citrus )


about 1/2 lb of roasted unsalted almonds
1/4 lb of dried sweetened cranberries
about 1 cup of sugar
1 chipotle pepper ( in adobo ) chopped fine
2 tablespoons water
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2 tablespoons butter

add sugar and water to a non stick pan and cook over low heat
add the chipotle pepper and cook until it starts to become caramel in color about 5 minutes
add butter, almonds, salt and cranberries

stir until covered in caramel

note - this is not enough caramel to completely cover all of the almonds
but you will get some clusters - which is good because its not too sweet, just enough

this shit is supposed to be easy....

well - it isn't
i am trying to do one thing to my blog - add google analytics
so all ten of you who read this every other day - i can track -
i know i have a map at the bottom of this - and its all filled with dots
but it wasn't enough....
wait should i really be telling you that i am tracking this blog....

well yes - it actually gives me a chance to have an excuse to post more often
i.e. the more ppl who stop through - the better this gets and so on and so forth


you get the picture - well hoe-fully...

i will keep you updated....

( btw my window is open and i can hear my neighbors having sex - i am at least double what that dude can do time wise.... )

some of my likes......

hearing high heels walking across wood floors
women laughing
the smell of freshly washed but not quite dry hair
hearing my name from across the room
the sound and smell of sunday breakfast cooking - when i'm still sleeping
the smell of the salty air of the pacific
not having to use an alarm clock to wake up
( turning over and going back to sleep )

not from virginia

She bought me beer

and more beer

and more beer

Then she said hey

You need to put out

I bought you some beer


I said to myself, "I need more beer, she is offering beer for sex."

Done

I was nuts

I could have slept with many many others

But they never offered me beer.....

frank V.

my favorite punk band....

100 days - left or so

i am almost at the 100 day mark -
until i'm free - to walk - away from everything here
and since i'm walking i am not able to carry much.
a sturdy pair of shoes and what ever i can fit in a day pack
or one of these


i am curious to see how long i can survive - scratch that
survival is relative
my definition of survival is varied depending on the day
i mean my survival if i decide to drop out of society for 3 months

i can do this because i have a plan b - i always have a back up plan if things don't
pan out...

i was telling Brad F. ( that dude who dunked on kevin cromer, who foolishly decided to take a charge in a pick up game of basket ball )
that i was on the verge of having a mid life crisis - im 35 which may seem a bit early
but i've been working since age 20 so im due - really due....

a scene from my favorite movie....

chess....

I be liking chess
Cuz chess is crazy, right there, that's the ultimate
It's like a great hobby right there, playing chess
The board, the pieces, the squares, the movement
You know, war, capturing, thinking, strategy
Planning, music, it's hip-hop, and sports
It's life, it's reality

GZA

video of the day......

I will eat cookies for food......

at times i am quiet - a lot of the time i am quiet, i observe a lot
my main curiosity these days or lately revolves around two things... behaviour and word choice - I'll start with the second one first - my father is brilliant - he never graduated from high school but instead went to college at age 16 - he grew up in a time where they taught latin in public schools and children were forced to not only learn poetry but retain and recite on command classic poems - which to this day he still does - some 60 years later..... he has a love of words and their origin and derivations - we would read the dictionary together - and i still do that on occasion - so i write as well as cook - and my main purpose in my writings is choosing my words - even when i tend to repeat my words - when i write it is planned -

so my world is consumed with words - so much so that i am constantly listening to people - and making judgment not on what they say but what words they choose to express themselves - and i think wow did they really mean to say that word - do they know what that word really means - i wonder if they know i am picking apart this conversation

the words you choose say as much as the ones you leave out -

another one of my interests right now is behavior - or really the interaction between males and females - i have a lot of female friends - i think more than the usual male does - and the majority of these friendships are purely platonic - because i believe sex complicates things - anyway my current obsession with the interaction of males and females is this thing called mirroring - and this is so fascinating - i indulge myself daily to see if this is valid - and it is

my favorite test of mirroring is when i look at a person ( female usually ) i will raise my eyebrows upon greeting and 90% of the time the woman will mirror my actions - this insures that we are on the same page and we can continue....

people i have cooked for....

I was watching a pbs/bbc documentary today about black hollywood - and all of these images and memories came flooding back - not only about black hollywood - but hollywood in general - I used to work at the famous Beverly Hills Hotel, the only way in the kitchen was to take the graveyard shift - which was 9pm to 5am - it sucked but I benefited from it so much - after 11pm there were only two cooks in the kitchen and after 1 am it was just me - cooking for all of the after hours crowd and overnight room service - it was an interesting situation - because the maitre 'd who is mexican - would alert me when any famous black person was in the dining room and let me come out of the kitchen and meet them, which included Chris Tucker among others - I remember him the most because he would come back frequently mostly on my days off and ask for me - can you imagine coming back from your days off and someone telling you - " oh chris tucker was here yesterday looking for you. " and this continued - all through my career..... even in Tucson i seem to be always cooking for someone who i've seen on tv..

some of those I've cooked for.... Bobby & Whitney, Sean Combs & Jennifer Lopez, Shaq, Geraldo Rivera, Jay-Z, the black dude from Buffy the vampire slayer and his ghetto ass girlfriend, restaurant owners, notably The Farm in Beverly Hills, Bishop Noel Jones, Tyler Perry, Adam Sandler, I even taught Garret Wong how to make sushi in my sushi class in Sedona, Garret Wong played Harry Kim in Star Trek : Voyager. The list goes on......

negro.....

" what's up negro? "
my friend greeted me with this - today - and it made me hesitate
and i smiled - because she's cool ..

this is the first time i have heard her use the term negro - but she has on multiple occasions told me that i was not black - which a few other people have told me also....

anyway - she lived in south africa - so she is comfortable with other races as friends
we all are but i guess when you live as the monority
it becomes you to be friendly to everyone...

so i have a new found love for this woman - i always had - but
now its more concrete

my career thus far.....

i cook for a living..... if you can cal it that.
when i first started thinking about cooking - my sister's boyfriend at the time
gave me a name and a number of a local chef to call - he was black - and recently won the james beard award for best chef mid-atlantic - his name, Patrick Clark


so for a very busy chef - to set aside time to mentor a young cook -- was wonderful to say the least - and that was how my career began - although i never worked for him
( he turned down the chef job at the white house to go to new york to become the chef of the tavern on the green )

so we kept in touch - so for the first two years all i wanted was to become the best black chef in america - and i planned my resume around that goal - i also wanted to become an executive chef by age 30 - i bested that age by one year....

i had goals of working with or for Thomas Keller in yountville, i had an offer to try out
at his other restaurant bouchon - but never went - funny enough it came around again but again bad timing.

i worked with really good chefs - I learned both savory and pastry to become well rounded - i won an award " best breakfast in the usa " at this b&b i was the chef at in sedona.........

but something happened - maybe it was just working too much with no real break
or just had enough - not sure
but the past three years - my love for food has waned - and my heart is not in it anymore - the funny thing is i know if i really wanted to have a world class restaurant
i know i would be successful

wait i lied i know what the tipping point was - for 95% of my career i worked in places i couldn't afford to eat in and that started to bother me -
one morning early i stumbled onto this small cafe in boulder
and my life changed....

turrets syndrome

i think its because it only has 4 letters -
maybe its because its an old name - that you seldom hear anymore
but people like to say my name - like really like it
when i say people i mean women - i think somewhere in the deepest
parts of the universe - these 4 letters a, e, d, l, - combined to form my
name causes either dyslexia - she called me darryl tonight twice
or a minor version of turrets - the same night - she just yelled my name
and kept walking - so im not sure -

i really need to start listening to my sister....

i mean i have in the past - but it usually takes me a while to
put pen to paper and understand what she is saying...

i know she will never leave her husband for me - but i have finally
realized this fact..... its hard though - but i must go on

my latest obsession

me and brian constantly send each other e-mails of very beautiful women
because clearly we have nothing else to do
but here is my newest obsession
she plays on fringe

flirting...?

just curious - when women stick their tongue out at men ( me in general )
is it a sign of flirting - im not sure - but she was of an age where
i don't think she could comprehend flirting unless it was towards her peer group
which is still in high school.

so i took it with a grain of salt and let it go - she's probably old enough to be my daughter - if i was actually sexually active in high school....

new era

is it just me - but with all this new technology
coming out every day - why are we as consumers constantly watching and
waiting for our, cell phones, pda
s smart phones - iphones - laptops - etc batteries to die - so we can
charge them again - you'd think we wouldn't have to always be charging something

in the car, at work, at home -
its crazy.... like now i am constantly plugging and unplugging
my macbook - so i can preserve some sort of long battery life
for what reason/....\
so i can recharge it again...

humans depend on cycles - and wasting time