Sometimes in the winter I'll drink hot cocoa late at night, it's mainly for the micronutrients in the cocoa beans, which can clear up mood and thinking when stagnated.

2 cups milk
2 teaspoons dutched cocoa powder
4 teaspoons sugar

Put in a pan and heat at a bit below medium for under 10 minutes, stirring and pushing to break up the cocoa clumps. Makes a 16 oz pint or two 8 oz servings.

Nothing complex here and the recipe is probably printed on the side of the cocoa powder box.

I mention this all because it amazes me that few people do it this way. Instead they'll buy these boxes with single serving envelopes mixed with water that only make 6 ounces. There's 6 or 8 envelopes in the box that costs $3, so it's around 50 cents per 6 oz cup, or $1 per 12 oz mug to make the envelope version, which has low cocoa content, chemical anti-caking agents, uses powdered milk. It has no chi to it, no micronutrients and is sickly sweet, you just feel bloated after the envelope ones, not to mention there is residual aluminum from the envelope.

Making it from scratch, which is trivially easy, only costs the price of the milk. The sugar costs 1/20 cent or so, and the cocoa is $2 for a box that lasts about 3 years. And the result is it tastes like it should.

People who use the envelopes are just being foolish. It doesn't really save any time, costs a fortune, and produces a significantly substandard result.

1 (large) Cherokee purple or Black Krim tomatoes (size of a beefsteak)
4 (small) Golden Sunburst yellow tomatoes
1 hungarian wax pepper with all seeds
1/4 onion
1/2 lime
1 teaspoon sea salt

Dice up tomatoes, onion and pepper. Toss together with salt and juice from the lime.
In this case the hungarian pepper was ripened to red and that made it less hot than normal, so kids can eat this one.

Marzipan is a sweetened almond paste. It is very delicious.

Marzipan is now considered something like candy, but historically it was invented as a way to make almonds keep longer since sugar acts as a preservative. Marzipan is a great traveling food in the past since it has high protein and vitamins in the almonds, and energy in the sugar. Marzipan has a good energy to it and just a small amount can refresh you.

Most Americans have never had marzipan, even those who think they have. Occasionally a cake shop will make a cake with a marzipan topping, or a croissant stuffed with marzipan, but this too sugery stuff is not real marzipan any more than the drink that comes out of the machine at the gas station is real cappuccino.

When I was young, one of my mother's German business associates gave her a round pie shaped box with a half kilo piece of marzipan upon which was impressed a three dimensional bas relief of the German town where the client's business was based. This was the first time I had marzipan and it was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted. I ate it slowly, only a pinch a month or even less frequently. It was so delicious that a single pinch could be savored for an hour. I managed to make that pie of solid marzipan last about 5 or 10 years.

Mom mentioned to another German friend that I liked Marzipan and he began a tradition of buying me a bar each year when he was in Germany. These semicylindrical bars were covered in thick semidark chocolate. Some had raisins in them. They also had rum. I felt the chocolate and raisins detracted from the marzipan and would remove the chocolate and eat it separately. The addition of the rum was not objectionable — I think marzipan can be plain or with rum. But covering it with chocolate is a bit too much.

I would make each of these bars last a year. I started looking for domestic marzipan but could not find any of adequate quality. The closest was that See's Candy shops had a marzipan covered with chocolate that was fairly good, but it did come covered with chocolate, which was an impediment to full enjoyment. You could select your own pound of chocolate there, so I would get these and candied ginger in a box every few years, it was an expensive treat.

Where I live now there is no real marzipan available at all, and even the cake shop style marzipan isn't easy to find.

It occurred to me the other day that it had been over a decade since I last had marzipan, which is one of my favorite things of all time.

I read up on marzipan, got some almonds, and did some experiments. And now I am able to make real marzipan that is exactly the same as the best german marzipan. Perhaps you'd like to try as well.

The key is that you'll use an egg white to bind the almonds and sugar together. One egg white will correctly do about 6-8 ounces of almonds and an equal amount of powdered sugar. If you try to use less than 6 ounces of almonds, you'll end up with a sticky paste and not the firm solid malleable substance you really want.

Note that you will be using raw egg whites and there is no cooking involved, so if you don't have a safe source of raw eggs free from salmonella, you should probably just skip this whole project. There are other ways to bind the almonds and sugar together, but I think you should do it right or not at all, otherwise just get the fake stuff at the cake shop or candy store.

I bought a 12 ounce tray of unsalted almonds. I used half of them. I put them in the blender in two batches and blended them down as fine as I could go. The powder got stuck on the sides of the blender, so I kept stopping it, pushing the powder down off the sides with a chopstick, then putting the cover on and doing it again. I think it's best to only do 3 ounces at a time, otherwise you get too much powder in the blender.

You can then add the powdered sugar to the blender if it was clumpy, or mix it in a bowl with the almond paste if not. I did this step to taste, using my memory of the correct sweetness, which is not very sweet. Really fine marzipan should be half sugar and half almonds. Commercial Marzipan can go down to only 1/4 almonds and 3/4 sugar to save on costs since almonds are rather expensive, but that mixture is way too sweet. Don't use granulated sugar, use powdered.

Now with the sugar and almond powder in a bowl, I added about a 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla extract. Real vanilla, not fake. It's getting hard to find real vanilla due to civil upheaval problems in Madagascar. Most real vanilla comes from northeastern Madagascar. I read recently that the age of consent in Madagascar is 21, and that is the oldest age of consent in any country. That seems so strange. Madagascar has lots of adorable ring tailed lemurs and those weird Baobob trees. My best friend growing up is now a renowned expert in the Malagasy language that is spoken in Madagascar. He spends time there on occasion. I should ask him next time I talk to him about the vanilla situation. In any case, if you don't want to use real vanilla, stop right now! Just get the cheap marzipan at the cake store. We are making real marzipan here. Let's proceed.

Toss in a bit of lemon juice as well. Not too much, maybe a teaspoon or a half teaspoon. We don't want this too wet. Oh, and that egg white. Put that in now.

Stir and stir and stir. It should seem like you don't have enough liquid, but keep mixing. I do this by hand with a fork, not by any electro-mechanical device. You're going for a consistency kind of like bread dough. Once it gets to be pretty well mixed, you can fold and knead it, and dip back down to pick up that stray powder that didn't mix in yet. Kneading and folding helps the almond oils release into the sugar. Then roll it up into a ball. My marzipan ball was about 5 inches across or so. Now, stick this in a container in the refrigerator for a day or so, and then you can cut of slices pretty thin about 1/8 inch thick. Eat with strawberries and or serve with brandy or something. Not sure about the brandy, it seems a good idea but I don't have any brandy. Let me know if you try and it seems a good pairing. I tried it with beer since beer is also German and I found that beer isn't the right thing to have with marzipan, it clashes.

Very high end pastry shops in big cities might have marzipan sculptures in the display case. These will be little apples or oranges or such things that are sculpted out of marzipan which can be sort of like edible Play Doh to a baker. They paint the outsides with food colors and glaze them to make them shiney. These little treats are probably just like real marzipan, but I wouldn't know since I would never pay $55 for a half size marzipan apple.

In any case, this will introduce you to the delights of genuine marzipan. Don't eat a lot of it at once. Good marzipan is something you just eat a tiny bit of at a time.

I looked in our cookbooks for a gravy recipe, but they all involved drippings from meat. What if you don't have any of that around? I made up the following recipe and it turned out real nice.

1/3 lb turkey sausage (1/3 of a frozen roll)
3 tbsp oil
1/4 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp fennel seeds
1 1/2 cup milk
6 tbsp flour
1/2 tsp fresh ground black pepper
1 tsp salt

1. Defrost turkey and chop into small fragments
2. Fry in pan in oil with cumin and fennel seeds until cooked.
3. Shake milk, flour, salt, pepper in large jar to dissolve flour, get rid of lumps.
4. Add to turkey in the pan.
5. Cook, stirring, until of right consistency.

I sometimes forget why I am shunning certain products. This is a new category to keep track of food rants so I remember.

The rule is that if I have a problem with a food source even once, I will never buy it again. Likewise, a single incidence of food poisoning at a restaurant is enough to never return. It doesn't matter if they 'fix' things; if their process allows customers to get poisoned, they can never be trusted again.

Tyson Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts

I do not like store bought chicken at all and that is why I raise my own chickens. But I have problems getting cooperation regarding killing, plucking and dressing the chickens. As a result, most of the chickens I have raised for meat end up living so long they get eaten by dogs, possums, and chicken hawks, discouraging. Somehow store bought factory chicken product appears in the freezer. Organic free range is considered less valuable than the corporate product by society.

This is a 2.5 lb sack of processed white chicken meat. Mostly it is water. The bag indicates that the chickens are 'fifteen percent' injection filled with a 'broth', that consists of salt and 'natural flavorings'. (What is that? Beef and pork juice? Turpentine extract?), and then 'water glazed' before being 'flash frozen'. So the meat is not only injected 15% full of water, but it is covered in ice, which is in addition to the 15%. So defrosting it you lose a substantial amount of the supposed 2.5 lbs. Now that's just a rip off really, and what is with adding flavors to chicken? Is that to mask the flavor of rotten meat, or meat so filled with antibiotics that it is bitter? Probably.

Frying this frozen stuff you find a pan that is actually filled with water with chicken floating around in it. That's how much water was added to it before freezing! The problem is that in addition to this, there is this very foamy stuff foaming all over the place and making foamy noises. Where is this foam coming from? From inside the chicken, the chicken is exuding some chemical that is creating foam. So we finished cooking this batch and gave it to the dog. I hope he doesn't die from eating this Tyson 'chicken', which is obviously unfit for human consumption.

Food Club Extra Long Grain Enriched Rice

Then we made rice. This is a 2 lb bag of Food Club (generic brand of Food City) Extra Long Grain Enriched Rice, distributed by Topco and a "Product of USA". Just plain rice, but with the usual vitamins added: Ferric Phosphate (Iron), Niacin (B-2), Thiamine Mononitrate (B-1), Folic Acid (B-9). The rice had a very noticeable chemical flavor that I would compare to the base of some cheap perfume. It left a weird pasty feeling on the top of my mouth. Shortly after eating a few spoons of it my stomach was hurting and the rest of the family is now complaining of stomach aches.

Now I think the USA sourced rice is fine here, what I worry about is the "vitamins", which are undoubtedly sourced from China. I used to work in the vitamin importing business and by far the cheapest chemicals are for China and for good reason. The drums you get are filthy and the chemicals will be filled with dirt, mouse droppings and not be the right color. Assaying the chemicals almost always would should that the chemical was not the right amount specified. Sometimes you'd have to send the chemical out to be reprocessed. Sometimes it would be the wrong chemical. Lately, chinese chemicals have been in the news, where chinese companies will substitute rat poison or antifreeze for things like additives to baby food or animal feed. This is very common and is the way the chinese do things. Most American import companies do not re-assay the chemicals though, and so the "vitamins" you are taking to improve your health are often actually poison or worse.

Our national food supply is not safe. Not safe at all. This is a systematic problem and as such, is a far greater threat to our lives than so-called terrorists taking pot shots at buildings and dams.

The coffee machine broke down some time ago and I couldn't find a replacement that was the type I like that was not expensive.

Brewed coffee is ruined by warming it on a burner as the aromatic oils that give coffee its earthy character quickly evaporate. So I wanted something with a thermal carafe aka thermos, which keeps the coffee warm through vacuum insulation rather than the dreaded externally applied heat. The problem with carafes though I found out from my last machine — Silurian Coffee Slugs! OK, not Silurian, I just made that adjective up to make it seem more exciting. But slugs nonetheless. Weird, weird slugs. I found that the carafe had all these slugs living in the innards of the complicated screw on cover, and when the coffee was done, they would slide out of their hidey-hole in the cap and crawl around in the carafe, consuming coffee, then return to the secret slug dwelling place. These were not normal slugs like any entomologist would recognize, but some freaky space alien slugs that would give anyone the screaming heebie jeebies, or at least it did to me. My goodness, it was creepy.

I tried to sterilize the whole thing by boiling the cap and the cap warped out of shape and wouldn't go back in and I couldn't fit the carafe under the filter anymore and there were no replacements and the machine was ruined. At that point I switched to an old French Press, which is a glass tumbler with a metal filter disk on a stick that you use to press the coffee grounds down to the bottom after letting the hot water steep in the grounds for a bit. Makes a real nutty tasting coffee, but it cools quickly. This press was decades old, and I was sad when it disintegrated after a few months of use, leaving me coffee-less.

Besides the carafe, another criteria in looking for a pot was that it use a funnel shaped filter and not a flat bottomed one. Coffee made with a funnel shaped filter tastes better as the hot water goes more evenly through the grounds.

The problem is that the pots I could find with both these characteristics start at $60, which was outside my budget possibilities.

It's been far too long without coffee though and so today I resolved — even if I had to think outside the carafe and funnel box — to purchase the least expensive device I could find that wasn't out and out unacceptable.

And after an hour in the coffee machine aisle, that happened to be a $24 cappuccino machine.

I've long been curious about these, but I've avoided them because I had heard that they are hard to use, complicated to clean, and it takes a lot of skill to get the foam just right. But hey this was the cheapest thing, and I love good cappuccino, although I was skeptical I had the skills to make it myself. I figured with practice I'll could probably figure it out, but didn't have hopes it would be as good as restaurant stuff.

For those who have not had it, real Cappuccino is not the stuff you get at the gas station or hospital from the automated machine that says "Cappuccino". That stuff is just cheap instant coffee with lots of artificial flavors added. Kinda decent if in the mood for that sort of thing, but it's not the same thing at all and the difference is like the difference between Champagne and 7-Up. Both have their place.

Real Cappuccino is a cup with espresso, steamed milk, and milk foam on top. The milk foam acts as an insulator and keeps the coffee warm longer. The steamed milk goes through a chemical transformation from the brief scalding and has a really different flavor from just adding warm milk to coffee. And espresso is an intense coffee made by driving steam under high pressure through a small canister of dark roasted coffee. The coffee is made from freshly roasted beans which are ground immediately before making the espresso, grinding to a particular sand-like texture. This takes more time and trouble than pouring from a pot: each serving must be made individually and takes many steps. For this reason, cappuccino can be very expensive at a restaurant or coffee shop, running $4 and up at most places.

Cappuccino was invented a long time ago in Italy by someone who tried every possible way he could think of to make the most delicious coffee possible, that captures and transfers all of the subtleties, details and highlights of the beans. In the end, brewing by high pressure steam extracted the most oils and flavor without damaging them, while leaving the headache-inducing toxins behind. The steamed heated milk was the nicest way to complement and tame the flavors of the espresso with milk and the foam was just an extra to keep it hotter a bit longer.

Italy is one of my favorite countries. I've been to lots of places and like to meander about without any plans and take things in. Italy is just one of the most pleasant places to live in the world. There is a wide variety of Italians and each region is like its own country, but on the whole Italians are passionate, fun, friendly and approachable people. Food is very important in Italy and even the worst of the food is fantastic. Things are made from fresh ingredients and the American value of doing everything on the cheapest way possible is simply not done. You don't compromise on the food, for food is life. In Italy, I cried and had visions after eating ice cream in Rome, which was so utterly brilliant that I could not eat ice cream for a year after returning, not even Hagen Dazs or any of the premium brands. There was no comparison. Italian ice cream was genuine and the best of the american ice creams was nothing more than a complete and obvious forgery sharing almost no qualities with the original. Coffee was also the same. Italian cappuccino was perfect in every way. It made you sleepy. It made you see coffee for the first time in your life.

Back in the US, I tried to find coffee like this, even visiting an Italian restaurant founded by recent immigrants who meticulously tried to do everything they could to duplicate the coffee of their homeland. It was quite excellent, but something was still missing. Over the years, I realized some things. You couldn't use tap water because that has chlorine. And you couldn't use bottled water because that is missing certain trace minerals that effect the chemistry of the coffee making process. It had to be unprocessed spring or well water, and the source of the water affected the taste a lot. Water was the most important factor, more so than the beans. Beans should be 100% Arabica, but not the cheapest stuff. You couldn't buy pre-ground, you have to grind the beans yourself. And you should be cautious about who roasted the beans, and make sure they are relatively fresh. Better yet, buy raw coffee beans and roast them yourself, though this is a nasty dirty business that must be done outside due to the smoke.

Anyway, I unpack the machine, grind up some beans that a close friend brought me back from a trip out of state, pour milk in my big coffee mug as a milk pitcher, pour the water in, snap in the coffee handle and turn the pressure cavity cap, and turn the thing on. It starts flowing after a few minutes, I switch the control to steam and swish around the steam nozzle in the milk. It seems to be frothing pretty good. Dip the nozzle down in the milk mug to heat and not just froth, and now the espresso is done. Pour into a 12 oz coffee mug 1/3 full, then 1/3 of milk, then spoon the froth on. This was the first time doing this in my life and didn't bother to read the instructions but it just seems kind of obvious, though I have seen them do this at coffee shops.

So, will this first batch suck, or will it be barely acceptable?

And here goes.... Hm, well now. This tastes 100% exactly like the cappuccino I would get in Italy.

Wow.

And that is something I have never had in the US at any restaurant, no matter how expensive. I think the well water is part of it, plus my intuition for the right size of bean grind. And I guess I'm a natural for the foamy step.

Yay!

Just then the oven beeped and my date-nut-raisin bread made completely from my own scratch recipe was ready, so took it out and made a slice, and put real butter on it. And after years of failing at the most basic baking attempts, somehow last year I got it together and now I have this whole bread thing down and this date-nut-raisin is better than any bread I have had in any bakery anywhere.

So I am standing about, feeling pretty mellow and quietly stunned and appreciative of my good fortune at having somehow done this right, and having discovered some great secret that I was searching for for years.

And I have three cappuccinos from that first batch.

I don't know if you've ever heard this, but great Cappuccino is a hallucinogen. I realized that in Italy. You feel really super mellow. It's not like the harsh caffeine in coffee at all. It's exactly like the difference between $100/bottle wine and Thunderbird wine that is aged in the bottle for 20 minutes on the assembly line before the screw-on cap is attached. One is harsh and nasty and gives you a headache and nausea, and the other is smooth and mellow and makes you relaxed and giddy.

Then the mind wanders and the visions come and colors are brighter. You might need to take a nap.

At the end, all you can think about is getting that next Cappuccino. But I know that if I make another one, I won't be able to stop and I will be making them all night long, until I run out of beans. Or until I start to get bad scary trips from excessive Cappuccino induced psychedelia. So it's just one pot for now.

You want to know about something that's freaking awesome? Well I'm gonna tell youns all about something that's freaking awesome. And when I say it's freaking awesome, it's not just so freaking awesome, it's so SO SOOOOO freaking awesome, let me tell you dudes I ain't a messin' with you man, this is some deep, some awesomely deligioomousious sassalilicaly yum yum freakin wow wow. Yeah. Burp. Hey there.

Dangit I HATE Corn Syrup and all it represents. Down with the Man and Down with his lousy Corn Syrup and his stoopid lobbiests that write junk articles about how it is the wonder wonder yum. That junk ain't no wonder wonder yum yum, my friends, that junk is some stuff that is baaaaaaad for you and ho. And it tastes like gunky sticky crud.

You needs some real nutrition, some real food, my friends.

BLAAAAAACK berry. That's right, it is **BlaCkBeRRy*8 season right now!!! You go get some, we need 2 or 3 cups of them right now, go pick them. And stop by the store and get some fresh ginger root while you at it. I wait.

Back yet? Good. A treat awaits.

Lay out this stuff on your counter:

3/4 cup sugar
2 tbsp finely grated ginger
1/4 tsp yeast
3 cups fresh blackberries
water to fill 2 liter bottle
Funnel
2 liter soda bottle, empty and clean
Balloon

OK, now dump the sugar in bottle and with the yeast using the funnel.
Grind blackberries with some water in blender to create blackberry slurry.
Fine grate the ginger - really fine.
Pour slurry into bottle on top of ginger.
Fill the rest of the bottle through the funnel with cold water.
Place balloon over bottle neck - this captures the CO2 while maintaining pressure and keeping gnats out.

Leave on counter at room temperature for *72* hours (3 days)
Then refrigerate it for 12 hours.

It's gonna look like a big poop is stuck in the neck, but that is just the blackberry crud, don't worry you can eat it if you want it's not as bad as it looks. But the stuff at the very top, maybe gentle squeeze that out a bit, let's call it 'decanting'. By that time, the rest of the crud will have fallen into the bottle and be mixed around and there's no doing about that, just don't worry, it don't taste bad at all, no sir.

Pour this into a mason jar with some ice.

Put the original screw cap on the 2 liter bottle and back in the fridge.

Now, drink that mason jar, even the sludge at the bottom, go ahead, it's gooooooood. (yum)

You drink! You like! Frickeen-Awesome!!! This is the best hootch you ever drank ! Woo hoo! Dang boy, you need to make more bottles of this right pronto yee haw!!!!!!!!!!! And 100% natural and that's no lie.

Did I mention that it is rather alcoholic? You may have inferred that already.

This is the most delicious thing EVAR. I call it "Red Barn's Wickedly Delicious Blackberry Ginger Brew" and it is my own invention!!!

Try!! It will change your life!

Note: Please be aware that although delicious, this recipe makes very poor quality spirits. They are not aged and thus have byproducts of the fermentation process that will give you headaches and a hangover. Don't drink the half gallon all at once or you will end up sick as a dog.