I realize it’s been awhile since I’ve last posted, but rest assured that I have good things in the works for you, my dear readers. Both of you are in for a treat when we start getting dispatches from our new guest bloggers. If all works out, we will have an English teacher (and my old roommate) writing about his adventures growing a rooftop garden in Korea, an astrophysicist telling us about his culinary experiments in Minnesota (and if you happen to live in the Twin Cities area or just really love cheeseburgers, check out his blog), and a culinary student in London who is preparing to start at Le Cordon Bleu. So, once I manage to tweak the code on the site so that the guest posts fit in seamlessly, we’ll be ready to go. Stay tuned.

Now, I know what you’re thinking… “That’s all well and good, but I don’t want promises of food in the future. I want food now.” And, while I haven’t been in the kitchen as much of late, I have had some excellent meals. Among my favorite (if not my very favorite) was a home-cooked meal by my good friend Elliotte’s mother.

She made pot roast with* au jus (and definitely hit none of the snags that I did), creamy mashed potatoes, sweet and savory green beans (cooked with almonds and brown sugar), a green salad, and dinner rolls from scratch. Then, when I was too stuffed to move, let alone eat more, she brought out strawberry shortcake with homemade whipped cream. Then, she even baked cinnamon rolls for me to take home (seen above).

God bless southern mothers.

*Edit: Asad (the cheeseburger scientist) pointed out that "with au jus" is redundant.
 Au jus = "with [its own] juice." Thanks, Jeffrey Steinga... I mean, Asad.

Note that we didn’t make a gravy. Elliotte prefers au jus to gravy and I didn’t mind at all because the pot roast was so fall-apart tender and juicy that it didn’t need any additional liquid.

I wish I had taken a better picture of the pot roast, but every time I tried to do so I just ended up picking at it and eating it and then not wanting to get my camera all greasy. I even took home leftovers, intending on taking a nice picture with them, but alas, I ate them before even warming them up, let alone setting them up nicely to take a picture.

These green beans are excellent and how can they not be with copious amounts of butter and brown sugar?

Oh, I also forgot to add… Elliotte’s mom bought her a stand mixer (yes, I am super jealous), so that means I get her hand-me-down hand mixer. Now I can start baking!

K, I probably won’t, but it’s nice to have the option.

If I do start baking, you can be damned sure I’m going to ask for the recipe for this shortcake. I was near bursting when she brought this out, but the smell alone convinced me that death by shortcake was completely acceptable. This was, without a doubt, the best shortcake I’ve eaten in my life. Light and fluffy with the perfect amount of sweetness to complement the strawberries without overwhelming them. Oh, and the mountain of whipped cream on top was its own brand of light-fluffy-strawberry-complementing-deliciousness.

On an unrelated note, when I was younger, I used to enjoy calling strawberries bawstrerries.

Actually, I still do.

I sent Harold (the English teacher in Korea/my former roommate) some seeds to round out his rooftop garden and was a bit worried about them getting stopped by customs. You live in California long enough, you assume everywhere is as draconian about agriculture as it is here. Click on the picture to zoom in on our conversation. The thing that Harold was excited about is being a guest blogger.

I’m excited too Harold. I’m excited too.

Edit (5/1/2010):  Harold has started growing the seeds.