"The Salad Pirate" Doesn’t Have Quite the Same Ring...

I’ll get to the salad day in a minute, but first: the motion-activated paper towel dispenser we have above all the hand sinks at work is branded as an "Intuition Dispenser." Am I the only one who finds that very, very funny?

Another random aside (the best kind!): I mentioned Wiley and I saw mountain lion tracks a couple weeks ago on the back road behind our apartment where I let him off-leash. We’ve also seen lots of mule deer on the ridge above the road, with their thick winter fur and cute, skull-like faces (they have white markings that, from a distance at least, look like skulls to me). Well, a couple days ago we saw what happens when the mountain lion meets a mule deer. We found a deer. Pieces of it. A leg, random viscera, part of the rib cage and a clump of fur. It was a little sad, but I was also happy the mountain lion got something to eat, because apparently the snow has been unusually heavy this year and a lot of wildlife is starving because of difficulty finding their food source, whether it’s deer trying to get down through the snow to the grass or mountain lions trying to get the deer.

Wiley, for his part, was curious but a little afraid of the carcass clumps and kept his distance. He did that thing where he stands squarely but stretches his neck forward as if trying to get closer without actually, you know, getting closer, until one or both of his front paws come up and he trips on himself, gets embarrassed and walks away with a cat-like expression of "what are you looking at?"

In other Wild Kingdom news, last night Wiley and I also saw another fox just happily walking around the parking lot without a care in the world. Wiley cried a little, like when he sees a dog and wants to be friends but fears losing his gangsta cred. The fox was too far off for any interspecial interaction, though.

Okay, now to the subject line... This weekend we’re starting to serve mignardises in the finer dining restaurant... those are the little sweets like petit fours that are sometimes brought with the check. So I’ve been doing all kinds of little stuff that will keep (so I don’t have to make it every night), including French macaroons (the flat cookies made with egg whites and almond flour, not the American macaroons which are haystacks of sugar, whites and coconut). I love macaroons, but was worried the altitude would have a negative impact on the recipe I had. Surprisingly, they came out great, though they baked in about half the time, even at a lower temperature. I’m still figuring out the altitude thing. Some recipes need no changes, some need to be baked at a lower temp, others at a higher one, some need less leavening or more eggs... no disasters so far, but it is a constant challenge.

Last weekend, the finer dining restaurant (where I am physically located) was fully booked, plus we had a wedding reception for 37 people in the adjoining hall. I was busy prepping desserts when Chef came back and told me to do the salad course for the wedding. Huh. I’d helped him plate salads for a wedding once before, so I knew the ingredients, but it was still a little "uhm, okay...." to find myself tossing great piles of bibb lettuce with vinaigrette, salt and pepper, arranging the leaves just so on 37 plates and then garnishing with radish, blue cheese and candied walnuts.

It’s a beautiful day and this is my only one off from work this week, so I’m headed back out into the sunshine with Mr. Cute-tastrophe to see what other deer parts we might find!