Food porn is back, kittens!

I know it's been a shamefully long time since I last posted food porn. Please, hold your produce.

Seriously? Who threw that?

Anywho, you all have my lovely momma to thank for my bringing you this food porn. Because I'm terrible daughter and I'm about three holidays in baking debt, she demanded nothing short of excellence for her birthday this year. I could tell there was no fucking way I was getting off the hook...

She asked me for entremet. Not that particular one, but it's basically a multi-layered dessert with contrasting flavors and textures. My only response to her was, 'why do you hate me?'

She replied with some blah blah blah about challenging my skills and demanding excellence and I wasn't really listening.

So I look up recipes for entremet. Fuck me gently with a chainsaw, all these damn recipes are in metric form. I'm too lazy to convert them. Eff that ess. I'll do what I do well. I'll make something up.

Her primary request was that it be chocolate. Easy enough. Without further ado, here is my version of entremet (I apologize to your bandwidth):

I decided my stable layers would consist of Ghirardelli devil's food cake. Four layers, to be precise.

Oh yes, bitches. I went there. I made an ICE CREAM ENTREMET. My mom loves coffee, so I figured this should have an interesting texture, and you can't go wrong with Ben and Jerry!

One layer of devil's food cake sprinkled with coffee, then Coffee Heath Bar Crunch ice cream. It looks fabulous already!

For my middle filling layer, I chose to go with chocolate mousse. Something light to contrast the heaviness of the ice cream. Forgot to take a photo of the spread layer though. I fail.

What contrasts coffee? Peanut fucking butter, kittens! And I thought the pretzel would be pretty cool to add some extra crunch.

Yes, this was as time consuming as it looks. But pretty, so worth it. :)

I used a springform pan to hold it together while it set in the freezer. I used one that was too big. Oops. Whatever, it worked.

It's the leaning tower of Cheeza! (Bad Goofy Movie reference)

Was I done? Oh, no, kittens. I wasn't done. My mom loves dark chocolate, so I made Ghirardelli 60% bittersweet chocolate ganache to cover the whole thing! It ended up being too bitter with the devils food cake, so next time I'll use milk. Still, MOAR CHOKLIT!

So pretty and shiny...

Very impressive looking, no?

My dad's verdict: "It's like 1,000 pornographic orgasms". My mom loved it.

I'm fucking screwed for her birthday next year...

I'm creating a new tag...

Dating is decidedly becoming less and less of the bullshit variety with every date I've gone on lately.

I went on a second date with Travis, and I have to rant and rave about his mad skills... In the kitchen.

Seriously, trying to figure out something to do in this godforsaken town on a Sunday night besides the tired old 'dinner and a movie' schtick is damn difficult. So he invited me over to his place for dinner and said he would cook for me.

I will never say no to food, kittens. Then, he one-upped himself. He told me what he was planning on making.

Bacon (!!!) and goat cheese stuffed chicken with homemade mushroom risotto. Bacon, cheese and risotto? Dear sweet baby Jesus, I was drooling like mad. It was on like Donkey Kong, bitches. So we made plans for Sunday evening. I told him I would make him dessert, and finally decided on Oreo Butterscotch cheesecake.

This is already shaping up to be an amazing evening, no? Then I offered to bring the movie I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell as Travis hadn't yet seen it... With vernacular gems such as, "If you ever speak ill of the pancakewich again, I will force feed you one while I fuck you in the ass using the wrapper as a condom, and then donkey punch you when the infused syrup nugget explodes!" and "I'd rather fellate a hot curling iron than drive 250 miles because Tucker breast-fed until he was nine." What's not to love?!

I show up at 6 with cheesecake in tow. He wrapped his arm around me, put his hand on the small of my back (which is seriously a huge thing for me, I love it) and kissed me hello. Boy, it was warm in his house...

Then I got to watch him cook. He's pretty damn adept in the kitchen. Everything smelled absolutely amazing, and most everything was done or well on it's way to done by the time I arrived. I offered to help, was there anything he needed me to do? Oh, grill the asparagus?

I meant is there anything I KNOW how to do? No? Alright then. I'll stand here and watch. :)

Dinner consisted of bacon and goat cheese stuffed chicken, mushroom risotto and fresh grilled asparagus with lemon butter sauce. It. Was. Fucking. Amazing. He is such an excellent cook. We brought our plates into the living room and ate dinner. After we finished eating, we cuddled on the couch and just relaxed. (Yeah, yeah, get the, 'awwww' out of your system)

After Tucker Max was done, I sliced and diced the cheesecake, drizzled the slices liberally with butterscotch, and Travis made fun of my springform pan. It was fancy, or so he said. He seemed to be thoroughly impressed with my baking skills. He accused me of buying the cheesecake and trying to pass it off as my own. Um, no... Totally all me. I rock in the pastry department.

Then we watched Talladega Nights and cuddled some more. All in all, a very fabulous, relaxing evening.

My son is also apparently well on his way to becoming a nudist. Seriously, we're in the door less than ten minutes and his monkey ass is stripped down to his underwear. What is it with children parading around nearly nude?

My tummy loves Blackwater.

I had a date last night. Yeah, that's been happening a lot lately. Dating is bullshit, but it also is not. Seeing as I've only had one bad date, I'm kind of digging this whole dating thing.

Last night was my first date with Travis, the guy I blogged about texting with the other day. Seeing as how our text message conversations have been riveting and full of hilarity, I was very damn excited to meet him in person. He has a thing for old-fashioned military pinup girls, so I decided to go with something to accentuate the hourglass figure. :) I wore a fitted black pinstripe pencil skirt that hugs my curves, a green button up shirt, a black lace camisole, black pantyhose and black peeptoe pumps.

Yeah, he's 5'9". I'm so cruel.

We agreed to meet at one of my favorite bars, the one where I used the best pickup line ever. I ended up getting there a little early, luckily, because so did he. He looked adorable in jeans and a button up shirt, and was far cuter than his profile pictures. We picked a table and sat down. There were some fun awkward silences... He was a little quiet, but he found me to be entertaining. Which, hi? Awesome.

There was definitely an attraction in the air... Even though we both joked about how we were incredibly ugly and stupid, lol. The conversation flowed better as the night progressed, and the sexual innuendo was rampant. It was really fun, I was actually disappointed it had to end.

He walked me outside, and cracked a joke about how he needed a stepladder... And then he kissed me. And it was lovely and wonderful. He's a good kisser.

We talked for a while again last night and today. We've got plans to see each other again, just trying to figure out what we're going to end up doing. :) And I'm very pleased with this plan.

Chalk one more in the 'decidedly NOT bullshit' column for the dating tally.