It's been a productive (and a beautiful) day. Did yard work, mowed the lawn, ran errands - got me some new Cannondale MTB bike shoes (with clips) and a clip set of pedals - oh sooo schweeeet, some new bike shorts, etc. On the way home, there was a group of high school dance team people soliciting donations (for a $5 car wash), so washed the car. Then went out to dinner with the parents. Nice restaraunt - Il Lupo. The food was amazing, but the service was too slow and the atmosphere was too loud to have a civil conversation without shouting. Overall beautiful day. Tomorrow, I will be biking from east Leesburg to Purcellville on the W&OD bike trail - short 15 mile each way, but the section I've never biked. It's supposed to be very scenic. Tomorrow night, I plan to make some stuffed grilled calamari. Stay tuned for recipe.

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Holy crap, I have found a great new place to hang out. It's sad, but true.
There's yet another new high-end grocery store out near where I work, Wegmans. Basically, it's a Home Depot warehouse for foodies and silly cosmetic frugal suburbanites who like to guffaw and rubberneck what filthy bored rich people do.

Like the zoo. Let's see how the lazy animals who look good and yawn while doing domestic "chores" or dramatic "gee wizz" stuff to complete the image of anything survive. Purely, a real-time culinary solopsistic reality show, turned into itself like an unsure plastic surgery desision, minus the Iron Chef with a sharp Cycadia de-veining scalpel.

Ironically more sexy if you are a cook - or hip to the culinary jive. It's become retro-passe funkoliscious to diss William-Sonoma as a rabblerouser foodie snob than watching freaky yuppys buy expensive crap knowing far ahead that they will end up burning a Free Range Shark fillet at $114.99 a lb. on their $230k stainless steel BBQ NASA cookstation (these blokes took the NASCAR out of the NASA cookstation). I joked with my dad about this. He said, "gee, let me postulate that the poor graduate students in the area must be working overtime as suburban fishmongers - the job requires a masters degree in Ichthyology in order to splice a fish...or hose off some shrimp, or even de-vien a herd of Cycadia.

I took yet another bike ride tonight. I love it. Even when it rains. It was storming hard. Raining Cats and Wegmans Free Range Buffalo Wings and She Crab soup complete with garlic infused sour dough croutons at ¥ 420 or £630 depending on if NASCAR and NASDAQ merged into one full blown 7-11 and Ralph Lauren inspired Costco gated non-liquidation warehouse community. Good thing it did rain. It naturally washed down the pollen off my car. Damn horny flowers - flower sperm all over my car. Why yellow? I should have spunked a dollup of dishwashing gel on the top of my car before it started the wild downpour.

Oh crap, I forgot (often do), the new blog for cooking is here

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Added a new blog, not like I need another - but I decided to make a section devoted to just cooking (recipes, et al). I put a link to it on the left. The KneesAndBees title came from a dream (April 21st, 2nd paragraph) that Karibut had, "...I also remember being in a frantic panic trying to get to his apt....it was on the 9th floor....with no elevator....I was running up the stairs with a fireman...he kept saying...we call this "knees and bees" that your knees throb and your heart is beating so fast it sounds like bees buzzing..."

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I love Shitake Mushrooms. Well...I love all mushrooms. But the shitake mushroom is one of the most versatile mushroom of the fungi consanguinity. Good in sauces, good on salads, good on merinades, good in tapenades, great cooked in a special sauce and poured over a grilled steak, chop or breast of chicken. So without adu, I present:

Poulet grillé de champignon de Gingembre-Shitake en sauce à Ail-Chardonnay
(Grilled Ginger-Shitake Mushroom Chicken in Garlic-Chardonnay Sauce)

4 medium boneless chicken breasts
12 medium dried shitake mushrooms (rehydrated - see below)
1/2 cup Chardonnay
1/2 cup chicken broth
4 scallions thinly sliced
6 medium roasted garlic cloves, roughly chopped
1/4 cup ginger, chopped finely
1 medium serrano pepper, roasted, finely chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp lime juice
1tsp sesame oil
1/3 cup rice wine vinegar
1/4 cup Balsamic vinegar
1/3 cup Soy or Tamari sauce
large tbsp of clover honey
1tbsp butter
fresh cracked pepper to taste
coarse/kosher salt to taste

Before you begin, you must first merenade the chicken breasts, and rehydrate the shitake mushrooms:

Merenade for chicken: In a large mixing bowl, combine soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar, honey, garlic, ginger, scallions, lime juice, cracked pepper and sesame oil. Wisk so that honey is well mixed in. Clean chicken, pat dry and put in merenade for 20 minutes to an hour.

To rehydrate shitake mushrooms, combine 1/2 cup of warm chicken broth , and 1/2 cup of Chardonnay and all 12 shitake mushrooms in a small saucepan to soak for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, slice up shitake mushrooms and put in left over Chardonnay-broth mixture for later.

Once chicken breasts have merenaded, remove 1/2 merenade from bowl and combine with the shitake mushrooms in sauce pan and bring to a low boil then turn down to low, add butter, salt and cover.

Grill chicken over medium to high flame, ocassionally removing chicken from flame to slather in merenade mix, 2-3 minutes per side - flipped about 4 times. Put last of merenade from grill in saucepan, bring to a low boil.
Plate chicken and liberally cover chicken with shitake mushroom sauce. Goes well with fresh corn or asparagus. Enjoy!

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I am wickedly tired. Took a long bikeride tonight after a long day at work - it was really hot. Seemed like summer. I do like my bike better than my car (although I've had to have the bottom bracket overhauled this past week on my bike - and it's still crickety). And lately I put more miles on my bike than my car. I didn't realize that a 40k mile scheduled service at the dealership was gonna cost me $600. I was a fool not knowing this, then again..I'm a fool. SO when I called to make the appointment this morning for tomorrow, I asked, so what is this gonna cost me? She said "Five Ninety Five..." I was like...um "Five dollars and ninety five cents?"...I could hear her pause...laugh..and then say..um nope...I was floored...I said "are you serious?" she said, "um yes...". And of course it's NOT covered in the warranty. Sheesh. I've purchased used cars for the price of that. Arrrg.

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Sunday night anxiety set in. It was a beautiful day. Too nice to be inside. Will post my new merenade with shitake mushrooms on grilled chicken tomorrow.

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