Rod Peter Jr, host of The Showdown was nice enough to play along with this wresting announcer concept – a good fit, as the show’s theme this month is WrestleMania inspired.

Then we played with his impressive (alarming?) collection of wrestling action figures.

This is still a work in progress but I thought it would be an appropriate piece to share today.  After all, love is a battlefield.

Also, does anybody want a pound of gently used cinnamon hearts?  I can’t stand the bloody things.

On a recent trip to Costa Rica I had the pleasure of trying carambolas, AKA starfruit.  In our garden was a tree, just laden with ripe offerings.  Eating tropical fruit fresh off the tree was a daily highlight of the trip.

The tree was brought to our attention by Olman, the gardener/caretaker of the property who quickly became a friend.  He spoke very little English.  We spoke very little Spanish.  We got by with a handy phrasebook and a lot of charades.  One day he tried explaining this “muy rica” (Spanish for yummy) drink his wife makes using starfruit, rice, water, and some sugar and spice.  Eager to partake in an authentic Tico experience, we gave it a go.  I’m not sure if it was the language barrier or our gringo ineptitude but, to put it nicely, it was a complete disaster.  Too polite to be honest, Olman claimed it just “needed more sugar” but trust me, all the sugar in a box of Ding Dongs couldn’t have saved that mess.

From that point on we just enjoyed the starfruit simply, letting it shine on its own.

There is no yellow citrus fruit I love more than the lemon.  Just the smell lifts me up where I belong.  Both zest and juice have so many applications – baked goods, soups, martinis, seafood, pastas, ice creams, bathroom cleaning.  Lemons can do no wrong (with the grand exception of the Master Cleanse).  They also serve as an advanced warning system for threats to employment income for restaurant servers across the land.  Any waiter will tell you – a customer who orders lemon and hot water is a surefire lousy tipper and must be passed off to the new guy whenever possible.

No, this is not about trying a French recipe, as the title may have led you to believe.  I am fighting the strong genetic* impulse I have to unleash a tornado of beet/beat puns on this post, and I’ve already lost the battle with the title.  And quel dommage, because if I ever do photograph horse meat with beetroot, I’ve already used up my best title for it.   Here I have these beautiful vegetables, I’m reveling in the pleasure of cooking and photographing foods when they are in season and all I can think to write are a bunch of groaners.  So I’m going to stop right there and just get on with the other photos – A simple beet and carrot slaw and another shot of those fabulous trimmed off bits that never made it into the dish, but really help to beautify the compost.

*I’m sure it’s in my DNA, thanks to my dad Vern.  Seriously, five minutes with him and some beets, it would be obvious to even the most witless of dullards.

When the stars align and your fridge happens to contain eggs, Parmesan, bacon and whipping cream, there is only one thing to do – Pasta alla Carbonara.  If you ignore this generous twist of fate, an angel dies from lack of comfort food.

In this instance, the cream had already been whipped and the bacon was of the back variety.  In fact, the whipped cream contained vanilla and a wee bit of sugar, as it had been used for the previous night’s dessert.  No matter, it all worked out beautifully.

Of course, an indulgent dish such as this requires a side of sensible vegetables.  So I took some vibrant green beans and sauteed them in the bacon fat and sprinkled them with the remaining Parmesan.  Delicious.  Then again, a piece of cardboard sauteed in bacon fat with Parmesan would be delicious.  But the green of the beans was so much more photogenic.  And I was fresh out of cardboard.

I cut off the ends of the beans – they were not consumed, but aren’t they lovely?

Bacon is everywhere these days.  Including the men’s room in a diner in Hope, BC.  It was the “All You Can Eat Fish and Chips 9.99″ sign that lured* us in, but I think that this bacon dispenser was the real reason we were meant to stop there.

*irresistible pun, you must admit

I wanted to make sure my vitamin C intake was up to snuff, as no cold is lamer than a summer cold – so gauche, so out of season.  And scurvy is not attractive (just do an image search – it’s a dentistry nightmare).  Limes worked for those ‘Brits’ (slang for Limeys) and I had a whole bowl of them.  So I mixed up these margaritas in a jar and served them in jars so I could cleverly dub them “Jargaritas”.  Also I love the textured glass.  Salud!  And where is the upside down exclamation mark on this racist Anglo keyboard?!

We cooked up these lovely shrimp that I bought at the farmer’s market.  Though ironically, and happily, they were wild and not from a farm at all.  They are so pretty in pink when raw.  We scarfed them down with Mexican style chili lime corn on the cob plus a potato salad and artichoke dip.  These last two items, while delicious,  did not quite fare as well in the photogenic department and have been relegated to background performer status.

And, as is often the case for me, I found the remains of the meal as visually interesting as the pre-eaten version (the premains?)

Cold Hard Truth

An anonymous social commentator used our fridge recently and I suspect that the relative anonymity of this particular media is what encouraged such a bold statement.   At least I assume it was a person actively spelling this out, as opposed to some Ouiji-like force that possesses ordinary appliances.  At any rate, the searing attack on global oil giant BP came rather as a surprise to me.  Usually the magnets spell out names of visiting nieces and nephews, cheery phrases such as LETS DANCE [sic] or the occasional vulgar/suggestive word, which we try to shuffle away before the next niece/nephew visit.  In essence, our fridge has been a kind of analog social network and, like many social networks, has now become a political platform as well.  Well, who am I to fight this onslaught of opinion?  It certainly gave me something extra to think about over breakfast besides “What should I have for lunch?” or “Too bad that kid can’t spell his own name”.