I don't post here very much anymore and I'm not really su...

I don't post here very much anymore and I'm not really sure why that is but I think it's because, as a general sentiment, blogging is done, over with, passe. Facebook is now everyone's god, and twitter, at least for me, is getting to be even better, because there's no point in writing things that go on for more than 140 characters or whatever. See, already this blog post is stupid.

So perhaps I will threaten as I have always threatened that this will become a place wherein I talk only about food and cooking-related stuff. And I threaten this to no one, really, because I don't think anyone really (I mean really) reads it anyway.

So, here goes: it's winter and almost the end of winter and a favorite wintertime food is mole and I haven't had mole since last summer, a time when one doesn't usually have mole but I got tired of eating fucking coleslaw for the sixth day in a row while at the beach with family because that's what my family does while at the beach in summer: eat coleslaw constantly and I die a little with every meal.

Moles are not only delicious and fun to eat they are especially fun to make because they contain tons of ingredients and many of those ingredients require multiple steps for prep before they even go into the mole. I have made primarily rojo, verde, and chocolate moles. I'm scared to make a mole negro, because to make that you have to carefully burn everything so that it turns black but does not taste scorched. It's tricky. It is where, I think, cooking gets close to baking, or what I think of when I think of good baking, or when I talk to my friend Molly about it (and she is like the best baker I know personally).

So since I've never done that I'll only talk about what it takes to make a chocolate mole which is yums. First, during Halloweentime my wife and I always get pumpkins to put on our deck or to decorate the dining room table or a bookcase or something. We get big ones for carving and little ones too. The little ones are good for eating, and all of them are good for pepitas, or pumpkin seeds. But the bitch of pumpkin seeds is making them edible. You scrape them out of the pumpkin and wash them free of pumpkin guts then set them out to dry or roast them dry in the oven. After all that you shell the fuckers one at a time. I've gotten good at pumpkin-seed-shelling and I can get through one in about 2 or 3 seconds. This means that, in order to get enough pepitas to make a mole for four people this one ingredient takes me ~ 1/2 hour of sustained effort.

Once I've got my shelled pepitas I roast them in a castiron skillet till they brown and pop a little bit. i set them aside so they cool, then I roast some sesame seeds. Sesame seeds are easier because I just buy them in a little plastic jar, and I dump about a tablespoon's worth into the skillet and shake the skillet around so they brown evenly.

Then I chop and onion and about four or five garlic cloves. I chop this all pretty fine, but it doesn't have to be super fine because it's all gonna end up in a food processor at some point anyway. I saute the onions and garlic in olive oil because I guess I'm being health conscious, but if I really want amazing flavor i would saute them in lard or bacon fat. Bacon fat makes pretty much anything taste amazing.

I'm tired of this now and I have to get ready for work, so I'll talk about finishing this mole later. bye.