Ham Sandwich Indicted!

It's damn near impossible (at least for me) to take a picture of braised meat that looks half way decent, but you'll just have to trust that it tastes amazing. Beef cheeks, you ask?  Are those what I think they are? Yes, they are on-the-face-cheeks, not rear-end-cheeks.  They're a tough, fat and sinew-marbled piece of meat, and are surprisingly big, as evidenced below: Big hunks of meat, huh? (And that's just two.) Anyway, somewhere along the way I read an article about beef cheeks and decided to give them a go.  After talking to the fine folks at Bluescreek Farms , I pre-ordered a "bunch" of cheeks and picked them up a week later...A bunch turned out to be about five and a half pounds for $18.  A pretty good bargain, I'd say.  I took home my bag o'cheeks and surfed the internet for ideas. (Not happening: The French Laundry's "Tongue in Cheek" --not because I'm anti-tongue, but I was really not interested in a three day project.

Hey! A post not about food! Sometime earlier this year, I decided to make the switch from being a runner (ha!) to being a triathlete (double ha!).  Partially it was because I started swimming at my gym and remembered how much I enjoyed it and partially because I finally got a bike (free! from a friend!), but mostly because I was really starting to lose interest in the running-for-a-long-Fing-time thing.   I dipped my toe in the proverbial (and literal) water at a mini-sprint in July and had a blast. It was a .25 mile swim, a 7 mile bike, and a 2 mi. run. I did the whole thing in under an hour and felt pretty spectacular about myself.  So much so that I signed up for a "regular" sprint (.4, 15, 3.1) that I completed last weekend.  ...It was an altogether different experience. But, like every good race, it was a learning one.  And now, at no cost to you, I'm going to share what I learned during that long, somewhat painful triathlon, so that you might learn from my mist

Sometimes, the universe conspires so perfectly to create a weekend of such magnitude and blessings, that it is nothing short of breathtaking.  Sometimes, the love, passion, and joy of six people is so great that a seventh one decides she has to join the party.  That was the case this weekend, when I went up to Petoskey, on the far Northern tip of Michigan, to visit my very pregnant friend B, her husband, and his father and brothers that also happened to be in town. Being that we're a group of people for whom food shortages are not an option (and because I couldn't sleep at 6am that morning), I brought up a peach-cardamom coffee cake, based essentially on this Cook's Illustrated recipe from The New Best Recipe  cookbook . I should have known I had no need for such worries as a lack of baked goods, however, as B married into an amazing family of very accomplished bakers and cooks, and for dinner that first night they 'threw' together a meal of homemade focaccia,