I have always been somewhat intregued by scallop mousse. When I saw Raymond make it on the finale of LRS this year, I knew I had to try it soon. These manicotti were great, and different, but there was one main problem with it. Scallops are just so awesome seared. Blending them into a mousse is much more effort and takes away a lot of what makes scallops so good!

I have never made crab cakes before. When you are trying to come up with a new take on a classic food, it is kind of important to make the original food first! I wanted to grill, and I had crab, so I just ran with it. The problem is that the best crab cakes are mostly crab with minimal amount of filler/binder. In order to grill these guys, I needed to bump up the binder so they wouldn't fall apart on the grill. I had seen blue corn crab cakes, and I happened to have blue cornmeal, so I thought this would be more interesting than a breadcrumby crab cake. In the end, no one was really impressed by these grilled crab cakes. They had a gummy texture and a muddy flavor. A grilled crab cake could be interesting, but this isn't the recipe. I didn't mark this as a failure, because we all ate it and it wasn't terrible or anything. Just not good.

I know you guys were on the edge of your seats all day yesterday wondering if I stuffed the burgers of not. Well I did! I was gonna put the corn and carrots in the potatoes and leave the burgers plain, but then I really thought about shepherds pie and I realized the corn and carrots are usually mixed in with the beef. I'm glad I stuffed, cause these burgers were fantastic! A great St Patrick's day lunch! I never thought to top a burger with mash potatoes, and I have clearly been missing something my whole life. The superfans may remember my old friend Gareth from Bermuda who loves shepherds pie. He would DIE if he ate these burgers. Cause of death: palate explosion.

Before I start my burger rant, Happy St Patrick's day to everyone! Hopefully you have some tasty green beer and corned beef and cabbage today. And how about that Daylight Savings you guys? So awesome. The image quality on the website improves vastly when it is light out during dinner. What else does daylight savings mean? I think that it is officially the start of burger season! MMM burgers. I miss thee. I wanted to take a minute to talk about burgers before the season starts so I don't have to mini-rant every time I make one, I can just link this post. Click through to read the rant.

My good friend Rich had a snowboarding "incident" about a week ago. His Dr. told him to stay on the couch for awhile. I headed over during the week to hang out, play video games, and watch episodes of The Wire with him. I also cooked a meal for him with his favorite protien; duck! This simple duck ragu was somehow light and rich at the same time. Complex flavors with not that many ingredients, just quality food with attention paid to it. The kind of comfort food that will make you forget about your back pain!

In Friday's recipe, my sister and I turned meatballs into a dip. What would you serve with a ball that was turned into a dip? A dip turned into a ball of course! I made soup with spinach and artichokes a few weeks back, but this was sorta like the opposite. I had to keep it dry so that I could form balls that wouldn't fall apart while frying. I sort of succeeded. These bites tasted amazing, but were a bit finicky to work with. With a few adjustments this would be an amazing appetizer.

My first "Sandwich as a dip" was at my sisters engagement party. Since then, she has been a huge fan of the sandwich-dip series, and all of her friends have since made the italian hoagie dip. Heading to her place this week for a pre-housewarming party, I knew she was expecting a new sandwich to be turned into a dip. We threw a couple ideas around, and landed on meatball sub dip. What we ended up with really stretched the confines what defines a dip, but was still a dip nonetheless. You COULD pick it up with a piece of bread, but it was easier to spoon it on.

I was recently asked to review these "Knuckle Sandwich" knives for Guy Fieri. It was a tough decision for me, because on the one hand, I am not the biggest Guy Fieri fan, and my blog isn't usually filled with product placement and equipment reviews. As my friend George Costanza once said, "This is the Blog, and we're NOT going to change it!" ...or something like that. But on the other hand, I make almost no money off this website, buy a lot of expensive ingredients, and spend a ton of time writing up my posts. My Mom desperately needed new knives, and I have been abusing her kitchen a lot lately, so I figured why not? One last question I asked of the people sending the knives, "Can I trash them in the review? Does the review have to be favorable?" I had seen the commercial for the knives and they looked atrocious. Who is the target market on these things? (If there is one thing I want in a knife, it is goofy flame cartoons.) Nope, she said. You can write whatever you want! Click through to see what I actually thought of the knives.

As I mentioned yesterday, I am visiting New York for the weekend. It is so convenient here being able to get any ingredient you want at any time. After the weekend of latenight pizza, wings, and lots of beer, Nick and his roommate wanted something a bit lighter and healthier for Monday night dinner. All I needed to do was walk down the street to pick everything up!

A friend in New York convinced me to come visit for the weekend to go to an all day party with some of his friends. I knew we would be needing some sustenance since we were planning on drinking all day. I have wanted to make beef jerky for awhile since I saw it on good eats, but felt that in Bermuda it wouldn't work because of the humidity. I thought jerky would be perfect for this past weekend as a snack throughout the day.