spice channel.

This house is overstuffed with publications about food, they're everywhere. I don't mean overstuffed as in unpleasantly excessive; I mean it the way Pizza Hut or Taco Bell would mean it, in a totally positive way. As in, you're experiencing a wonderful and unusual luxury to encounter something this stuffed.

Buuuuuuut, with such a bountiful harvest, if I may lazily, stupidly, pre-emptively, etc extend an already clichéd food metaphor here: with soooooo much wheat, there's bound to be some serious fkn chaff.

And pour moi (is it or is it not interesting how many Frenchisms have snuck into English, since America hates the French so darn vituperatively), I fear that Chile Pepper Magazine gets totally filed under Fkn Chaff. There's an issue of it in my room near the bed and I (of course) leafed through it the other morning and found myself making scoffish faces within the first few seconds, and as the pages kept turning my face just got more and more scoffish until I was scoffing so intensely I couldn't even see the magazine any more, I think one of my eyes may have rolled kind of permanently.

That's probably mean. Ahhhh, I guess it's kind of quaint, but it's just so stuck in this not so quality-oriented "chilehead" thing from the 90s, where any/every ingredient is combined/infused/rubbed with chiles and voilà (Frenchism), wild and crazy food times ensue.

Anyway, I don't really care, and their intentions are ultimately on the good side I guess. I really only bring it up to mock my own cooking, because I'm making something tonight that could've come straight from the pages of Chile Pepper. If I capitalize all the ingredients 90s style, it's a Green Chile Crabby Melt with Tickler's Fabulous Extra Mature Cheddar, Kicky Jalapeño Tartar Sauce, Roasted and Marinated Red Bell Peppers, Caramelized Onions and Roasted Garlic Salsa. TGI Fridays here I come.

+++

UPDATE: I should mock my food more often: these were actually stupendous, way better than yesterday's non-chilehead version...this is definitely the best sarcastic food I've ever made. Not much to look at though, as you can see: bad lighting and zero styling, I didn't even have time/foresight to chop some cilantro for a green visual distraction.