skinny girls & mayonnaise

Welcome to the third season of Skinny Girls & Mayonnaise!

(I like to think of my blog like a TV show, in the event that some enterprising producer out there decides to offer me a cooking show.)

“Brought to you by the good people at Kikkoman Soy Sauce. And by the Norwegian Seafood Council.” (I’m a PBS guy.)

We’ve got a great year ahead, folks, with all sorts of interesting things planned…

Corn butterer

Actually, I’ve got nothing in particular planned. I typically jot down ideas as they occur to me (much like this one, and I currently have no idea where this is going). In my “Drafts” folder are 15 or 20 partially completed posts, ranging from a few sentences to nearly finished. It’s helpful to have a handful of those “nearly finished” ones to turn to when I’m not feeling inspired.

Likely most of the coming year’s posts will be motivated by something I’m cooking and decide to videotape. Or someplace I eat or shop for food. Or by someone saying, “You should do a post about that.” Tonight, as I gnawed on some Buffalo chicken wings I’d made earlier, I thought, “Maybe this will be the Year of the Wing.” Chicken wings are the best part of the chicken — handy mini-serving sizes, somewhere between white meat and dark, little toothsome chewy bits, nice contraposition between the chubby drumsticky ones and the silky two-bone ones, no gristle, the ideal ratio of meat to fat. Just considering the Original Buffalo wing and the Korean-style fried wings I brought to a party the other night, I had at least two posts! Surely there were countless more out there.

I thought of reviving my “American Series” series. I left off at the crab feed, and could pick right back up with hot dogs, gumbo or chicken pot pie. This might, in fact, be the perfect venue for my current obsession with Original Buffalo wings. We have a new nanny from Guatemala, who was talking about tamales this morning. Which made me think that perhaps I should delve into Guatemalan cuisine. Like Mexican except with more bananas?

Another popular series where the source material never seems to dry up is my “Good Gadget, Bad Gadget” series. With the result that people now actually bring me gadgets — both good and bad — when they come to dinner. My good friend Justin one recent evening offered me the gift of the gadget in the photo above. “Can you guess what it is?” he asked. Not to be outdone, his newly-ex-girlfriend and also good friend Suzanna brought the following garlic crusher that very same evening. In a curious twist of gadgetry fate, it was Suzanna’s mother who sent Justin the corn butterer as a gift in the first place.

Snazzy garlic squisher

Whatever the year has in store, I hope it will find you eating and drinking well. And perhaps this blog will inspire a good meal or two, or at the very least, a laugh. In the meantime, watch for “Skinny Girls & Mayonnaise — the Show” coming to a PBS affiliate near you. It can only be a matter of time…