Day 2

Dinner turned out better than expected! Especially after I changed things up a bit. Instead of braising the cabbage in red wine, I used beer (in particular, Stella Artois-it gives the dish a nice brightness) and lemon juice. The cabbage was really good! The short ribs turned out quite nicely as well. I seared them off and then deglazed the pan with red wine, added the lamb Demi and covered the pan with aluminum foil and let it hang out in the oven at 200 F for a couple of hours. The pork tenderloin was exactly that, tender! I crusted it with hot harissa and then seared it off on my grill at 500 F. I then put it on the top rack, drop the temp to 250 F and cooked it until it registered 145 F. Instead of purple Peruvian potatoes, I used golden Yukon, they are more buttery and is perfect for what I did with them. I first blanched them in water, and then cooked them the rest of the way in goat's milk butter and thyme and then topped them with fresh Parmesan cheese. Freaking awesome! The whole family loved it.

This morning was pretty rough. My 9 month old daughter decided she was not going to sleep, so I had to stay up with her until she went back to sleep. This was at 5AM until 6AM. I don't know what the deal is, but she has been doing that for the past week, she won't sleep for more than a couple hours at a time. It's pretty rough.

Earlier today, I received an email from someone I was hoping to. She wrote that she would probably need me to help work at the Masters! Great opportunity. She owns a huge catering company and I can learn a lot from her. One of the things I want to do is start my own catering company.

So, yeah. Chloe (9 month old) has started crawling. My house is not ready for this. I have been running behind her grabbing things from her. I just spent the last hour rearranging and moving furniture to make it safer for her.

Tonite, I'm going straight dirty with the food. I'm from the south and every once in a while, I have to have "Southern" food. I'm making chicken fried chicken, fried okra and mashed potatoes, all topped with peppercorn gravy! Hmmmmm! If you've never had real Southern food, you really need to have some. Find someone who knows how to cook it and have a party. I'm really excited about it. My mouth is actually watering.