RFTW - Ready For The World

Tempting. But I'm not talking about these guys!

For the past several weeks, I've used part of my weekends to prep food for the upcoming week. Today was one of those days.

In an effort to eat consciously and eat better foods, I'm working hard on preparing my own stuff. In the fridge, I've got a tub of rojo sauce for quick and easy chilaquiles, crumbled queso anejo and a squeeze bottle of crema. But that's not enough.

So today, I had some chiles that I picked up last weekend at a local farm. Don't know what kind of chiles they're hot and I tossed them into the smoker to dry. Since the smoker is fired up, might as well toss in a boneless turkey breast and a half-rack of pork short ribs for good measure.

Then there's the tub of chipotles that looked a bit too "smoked" from last weekend. Stemmed those and ground them in the food processor and now have a smaller tub of chipotle powder.

The nice thing about having the tube of chilaquile sauce is that I can ladle a couple spoonfuls into a pan, heat it up, pour over tortilla chips, fry an egg, drizzle with crema, cheese and sliced white onion and I've got a great breakfast in a couple minutes.

But that's not enough, roasted up some garlic and tossed a bunch of stuff - including roasted tomatillos, into the blender for a tub of salsa verde that I can use with tacos or plainly on tortilla chips. There were also some avocados and tomatoes sitting around, so I couldn't let those go to waste. Chop, toss into a bowl, mash, add some onions, cilantro, lime juice, salt and presto! Instant guacamole.

The only thing I'm worried about is that I'm down to my last bag of tortilla chips from Tortilleria Sinaloa. If I'm not careful and don't restock soon, I could be in trouble later this week.

But for now, I'm Ready For The World.

More From The Kitchen

The day's special: Grilled Halibut with kale.

Before heading off to HouseWerks annual Halloween bash and the Gutierrez's flaming pot of goulash, I stopped by Woodberry Kitchen and ended up having another round of plates with Amy. It was the first day of revenue service so we decided to split a couple supper plates.

The special of the day was a grilled halibut with kale. I find kale to be rather chewy and prefer not to look too closely at the texture of the leaf, which reminds me of the textural patterns one finds in tripe. However, the kale didn't taste like tripe but was rather good - for kale. The halibut was nicely done. A slight carmelized crisp on the exterior yet fluffy and thick on the interior. Very enjoyable.

The second dish we had was the Bone-In Pork Shoulder served with a mixed beet torte. The pork is cooked sou vide for sixteen hours and 160F, then finished in a skilled before serving. Because of this, portions of the meat are incredibly tender. Not falling off the bone tender as might happen with slow roasting or smoking for the same amount of time, the fibers still hold together but the texture is silky, soft and refined in a way that smoking or roasting just cannot match. The mixed beet torte was interesting for its' textures and odd bites of sweetness.

The Bone-In Pork Shoulder.