I took two weeks off from the grind called work. What did I do? I stayed home and ground my own.

Chorizo, that is.

There’s a hoary saying about the ugliness of witnessing the production of either journalism or sausage. Read on; this one’s pretty tasty.

My home-ground chorizo experience started in April, when I bought a 7-pound pork loin at QFC, dramatically marked down the day before its sell-by date. I stuck it in the deep freeze and forgot about it until I saw 10 pounds of pork shoulder at Costco. I beelined over to Bed Bath and Beyond and bought a grinder attachment for my Kitchen Aid mixer.

Home-made chorizo is easy to make. It’s a lot better than chorizo from the grocery store. That kind’s greasy and contains pig parts I don’t want to think about.

I asked my dad’s advice for preparing the pork (puree spices and chiles and let the cubed meat marinade in the mixture) and peeked at a Rick Bayless cookbook for proportions. With measurements scaled up to approximately one-quarter cup each, I lightly toasted the spices: oregano, cumin, paprika, peppercorns and Chinese five spice powder. I added garlic and salt. I cheated and used canned chiles in adobo, rather than reconstituting dried chiles in boiling water.

Once the meat was marinated, I ran it through the grinder. Then I poured three cups of cider vinegar into the ground pork and mixed it all together by hand. I covered the tub with plastic wrap and stuck it in the refrigerator.

Two hours later, I cooked a test batch. I was pleased. The chorizo was lean, with a meaty texture that didn’t crumble in a greasy pool like the supermarket stuff does. Two days later, after the spices mellowed and the vinegar started to preserve and flavor the meat, I cooked lunch – a scramble of chorizo, onions, bell peppers and mozzarella cheese, scooped up with corn tortillas. I ate the same lunch almost every day last week.

I gave some chorizo to a friend. She made breakfast pizza. I gave some to another friend. He shared it with his dad for breakfast, scrambled with eggs the way Mexicans have started their days for centuries.

I’ve got about seven pounds of chorizo left. I’m thinking about making chorizo chili. Maybe chorizo meatloaf. Heck, chorizo con chorizo sounds bueno, too.

Homemade strawberry ice cream, on my deck.

The raw unpasteurized whole milk and cream came from Meadowwood Farm in Enumclaw. The milk is $10 per gallon, the cream $6 per pint.

If you've got any health hangups about drinking raw unpasteurized dairy products, this milk isn't for you. If you have no qualms, then this stuff's for you: It tastes like fresh grass. It's creamy yellow in shade, and thick and creamy to the mouth. Stays fresh in the fridge for two weeks. Great for drinking, making cheese, yogurt, creme fraiche or ice cream.

Fresh Strawberry Ice Cream
Makes about a pint
1 cup raw unpasteurized whole milk
1 cup raw unpasteurized whole cream
1 tablespoon vanilla
5 egg yolks tablespoon vanilla
1 cup sugar, divided
1 pint fresh strawberries, hulled and coarsely chopped

Combine strawberries and one-third cup sugar. Let macerate 2 hours. Combine milk, cream and vanilla. Set aside. Whisk or beat egg yolks and remaining sugar until thick. Whisk in milk-cream mixture. Drain the macerated berries; combine berry juice with custard base. Chill thoroughly in refrigerator. Freeze the custard base in an ice cream maker, according to manufacturer's directions, adding the strawberries in the final two minutes.

I saved half of the juices from the macerated strawberries. I reduced the juice with calvados, and drizzled the strawberry-apple brandy syrup over the ice cream.

I've got home-spun Cherry Garcia in my freezer. I tweaked the recipe above: pitted and sliced Bing cherries instead of strawberries, plus one broken-up bar of Ghiradelli semi-sweet. I could have used better chocolate, but Jerry Garcia and Ghiradelli are both from San Francisco, so that's where my heart goes. For a Northwest drizzle, I honored another Washington Bing -- Bing Crosby -- and boozed up my home-spun Cherry Garcia with cherry brandy syrup.

Raw unpasteurized milk at Meadowwood Farm: 20228 SE 400th St. Enumclaw; 360-802-3845; closed Wednesdays.

Yukon River king salmon, with chimichurri and corn, on my deck.

I fell asleep soon after dinner last night. Fitting, since dinner was a dream.

Now that the ice in Alaska’s Yukon River has melted and the Eskimos have taken their share of the fish, Yukon River king salmon are in markets and restaurants. I bought a filet at Johnny’s Seafood in Tacoma yesterday.

It was $35.99 a pound. Johnny’s fishmonger said it would be a buck higher today.

I brushed the fish with my dad’s chimichurri (parsley, garlic, red peppers, red wine vinegar and olive oil) and broiled it, leaving the thickest part rare and cool in the center. I de-cobbed two ears of corn I’d bought at Mosby Farms in Auburn, sautéed the kernels in butter and mixed the corn with a few spoonfuls of chimichurri.

I went to bed hoping I’d dream up a fabulous description for my dinner. I woke up wordless, still dreaming about dinner.

The fish smelled and tasted like the cradle of the rivers and the seas.

The leading edge of a fork tine flaked the flesh.

The flesh barely needed chewing. It was as if this fish – one that stored up enough sustaining body fat to make a 2,000-mile trek to its spawning ground – wanted to slither down my gullet.

If the oils in salmon flesh could power an SUV, humans would wage war over this fish.

Thankfully, Yukon River salmon abound with the good kinds of oils – heart-healthy blah, blah, blah.

I got plenty of sleep last night. But I don’t think I’ve had enough Yukon River salmon yet.

Does the post below taste bitter? Yeah, well ... Here's a sweet thing I've been working on from home: caramel.

It's amazing what sugar does when it gets hot. Add butter and cream and a shot of vanilla and -- wow.

Besides trying to figure out how to pronounce the word -- do you say "care-uh-mel" or "car-mull"? -- here are a few things I'm doing with the gooey good suff this weekend in advance of my deadline on Tuesday.

Chocolate-dipped caramels, on my deck.

Caramel paste baskets, on my deck.

Want to see why you need to be safe when working with molten sugar? Click below.

=> Read more!

Today's a deadline for the culinary creations vying for blue ribbons in the Puyallup Fair's home arts contests.

Are you entering anything? Tell me about it.

I have another deadline this morning, so I won't be baking any entries today. However, I spent my Labor Day weekend knuckles-deep in dough.

Yeasted Olive Oil Pastry
1 package dry active yeast
1/2 cup warm water
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup olive oil
3/4 teaspoon salt
10 ounces all-purpose flour (Note: I weigh flour. Buy scales, people. Otherwise, measure 2 cups that don't overfloweth.)

Pour water in a large mixing bowl. Sprinkle yeast on the water. Stir. Add sugar. Stir. Let sit 5 minutes, or until yeast froths.

Beat egg, oil and salt. Combine all wet ingredients.

Slowly add some of the flour, about half, to the wet ingredients. Stir with the handle of a wooden spoon. Add the remaining flour as necessary to make a slightly sticky, slightly springy dough. Reserve a few tablespoons of flour.

When the dough is firm enough to be picked up with your hand, remove the dough (and any bits of dough/flour) from the bowl. Gently knead the dough for about six turns on a clean work surface, dusting with (and incorporating) the remaining flour. The finished dough should be shiny and springy, but not sticky.

Rub the dough lightly with olive oil. Return the dough to the bowl, and cover with plastic wrap. Let the dough rise for 1 hour.

This recipe makes enough for one double-crusted pie. It's easy to roll. It rolls thin. It doesn't tear. After it's risen, you can keep unused dough in the fridge for a day.

Here's what I made with three batches of yeasted olive oil pastry this weekend:

Open-face galette with tomatoes, basil and burrata. Yes, yes, yes, I know using burrata -- fresh mozzarella wrapped around a core of cream, $24.99 per pound -- is a bit like making mimosas with Dom Perignon, but I was in a decadent mood, so there. Every bite was a pillowy pleasure.

Open-face galette filled with leeks, shallots, bacon and peppered brie, and topped with thinly sliced and roasted yellow crookneck squash.

Open-face galette filled with blueberries and vanilla-whipped ricotta, topped with sliced peaches.

Double-crusted pie filled with ground beef, hot peppers, leeks, spinach, ricotta and raisins.

Pizza with roasted orange bell peppers, bacon and mozzarella (generic cheese, this time).

A food writer cooking on Labor Day? Sound fair to me.

Pretty porterhouse, on my deck.

See that porterhouse? That's what I've done with my summer vacation.

I take that back. Eating steak is work. If you chewed on the New York strip I had for breakfast today, you'd agree.

But about that porterhouse, and that bone-in rib steak and that London Broil and even the filet mignon that was bigger on price than it was on flavor ...

I melted a load of butter in a hot cast-iron skillet. I seasoned the porterhouse with salt and pepper. I seared the steak on both sides. I finished it in a 500-degree oven.

I don't measure cooking times. With meat, I have a mother's instinct, and this big baby cooked up dark and charry on the outside and ruby-bright on the inside. The flavors were intense and clean, the texture was firm, and the meat on either side of the bone, the New York strip and the filet mignon, practically chewed itself.

I've got more homework on my plate.

Rosé and jerky, on my deck.

Being a reporter is about making connections. You know: Follow the money. Saddam, WMD. Rosé and jerky.

"A lot of people are opposed to rosé," said Angi Unger of Bacchante Wine & Essentials in Tacoma. "A lot of people are used to white zinfandels, a pink wine that doesn’t have a lot of flavor, that’s too sweet, that doesn’t really say much about the wine."

Rosés are made from several grapes: sangiovese, syrah, merlot. Being a fan of big, bad reds, I was skeptical of rosés at first blush. Hmmmm, tastes like under-sweetened Kool-Aid. But, given time, the half dozen bottles I've sampled in the past month have all been dry and drinkable -- nothing like the bubblegum-in-a-bottle of pink wines past.

No wonder the French drink the stuff like water.

Rosé is the new black.

"They’re making such great rosé right now," Unger said. "You have the smell of initial flavor, then you’ve got spices that linger in the middle and then a finish that lasts for a long time."

And the jerky connection? Like rosé, jerky's got a blush (thanks to sodium nitrite, a chemical that turns meat pink). And in my recent eating and drinking, lamb jerky, pork jerky, pepper jerky, and good o'l jerky jerky all paired well with rosé

I'm still in the middle of my research, but I'm encountering tons of great jerky in the South Sound: Meat Shop of Tacoma (whose all-natural, organic jerky qualifies as artisan jerky in my book), Green Valley Meats in Auburn, Stewart's in McKenna, Johnson's in Olympia, Parkland Meat in Parkland, Blue Max in Puyallup, and AA in Lakewood.

Now, I'm wondering what to do with all that jerky. About 15 years ago I had a memorable green papaya-lamb jerky salad at a Vietnamese restaurant. I want to recreate it.

The organic, no-nitrite jerky at Meat Shop of Tacoma reminds me of carne seca, the dry shredded beef that's wonderful in tacos and scrambled eggs.

Inspired by Fife City Bar & Grill's pecan-bacon waffles, I'm flipping out thinking about the jerky flapjacks I'm going to make this weekend.

Maybe I'll throw together a jerky and cheese plate.

I might even open another bottle of rosé.

Raw cow and goat cheeses from Estrella Family Creamery, Montesano.

Bread from Bill's Bread, Vashon Island; the Bread Peddler, Olympia; The Tall Grass Bakery, Ballard.

Gordon Double IPA, Lyons, Colo.; Caledonian Golden Promise, certified organic/vegan friendly, Edinburgh, Scotland; Anchor Bock, San Francisco.

Doggone, that was good dim sum.

I pigged, ducked and goosed out on dim sum in Richmond, B.C., recently. If you don't read Chinese, here's what I ate:

Braised duck webs with sea cucumber
Steamed spare ribs with preserved vegetables
Braised pork rind and fish balls in curry sauce
Baked BBQ pork pastry
Sesame cake
Steamed beef rice rolls
Steamed scallops and pea tips rice rolls
Salty fish and pork on rice
Seafood congee
Spicy goose webs with jelly fish

The duck webs -- yeah, the feet, with feet bones -- were supple, slithery contrasts to chewy, leathery sea cucumber.

Pork rinds were anything but leathery: simmered in yellow curry, they were puffy and tender, almost like fried tofu.

Salty fish was flush with sodium -- perfect against fatty pork.

Goose webs -- no bones, just the gossamer skins -- were unusually delicate; shreds of jelly fish were tough chewing.

Year of the Pig started yesterday. I'm heading back to Richmond, B.C., the Hong Kong of the West, real soon.

Dim sum recommendations, anyone?

My wife's been after me to bake something for one of her office gatherings. I generally resist such requests. My thinking goes like this: We spent too much money on culinary school for me to flex my baking muscle for a bunch of Realtors who wouldn't cut their commissions for cookies.

Last night I relented. That's because 1 pound and 2 ounces of Scharffen Berger chocolate arrived in the Swag Heap mailbox -- and I really wanted to know how chocolate containing 99 percent cacao tastes and behaves.

=> Read more!

Last time I tried to make cochinita pibil -- a Yucatacan pork roast, cooked in banana leaves with sour Seville oranges and anato paste -- it ended up tough, and not the flavor I remembered from the times I've had it made right.

The toughness was just a matter of cooking time and temperature. This time I went low and slow -- 275 for six hours. The pork practically shredded itself when finished.

But the main change was in the braising liquid. Since Seville's are hard to find, equal parts grapefruit, orange and lime juice were a close approximation, and darned tasty against the sharp sultriness of anaoto.

This is as close to a recipe as I allowed myself to follow: 1 cup citrus juice, 1 large pork loin, 1. package anaoto (buy it at Latino markets, next to buillon), 1 package banana leaves. Blend anato paste and citrus juice in a blender. Marinate pork loin in mixture overnight. Wrap marinated pork in banana leaves. Place in Dutch oven or other heavy cooking pot. Add marinade to pot. Cover. Bake at 275 for 6 hours.

Makes great tacos or pulled-pork sandwiches.

This job has its perks. Like, I get to suck on popsicles and call it work. I also get to keep the leftovers.

I was on my third post-deadline popsicle last night when pop went the perks.

Let's dispense with scientific explanations. Here's what happened: a super-frozen popsicle stuck to my lips. Forgetting entirely about that scene in "A Christmas Story" in which the kid licks (and sticks to) a frozen pole, I pulled the frozen treat from my lips, along with some skin.

Yeah, bloody ouch.