Alright, it's that time of year when it's blistering cold; and the best thing to warm you up is a hot bowl of hearty soup. Seriously, between this soup and beef stew; there's no need for central heat. Talk about comfort foods - gah.

Boil and mash three or four large 'baking potatoes' (Russett's). Dice two more (or three red potatoes) and leave raw. I use red potatoes in this second part becuase they give the soup more body. But whatever.

Sweat three leaks (sliced, white stalks only), a medium yellow onion, and a couple cloves are garlic until soft; not translucent. Add a couple teaspoons of thyme.

Add a quart or two of milk to the sweat, salt and pepper to taste, and bring to a bare simmer.

Toss in both the mashed and diced potatoes, maintaining a bare simmer. Salt and pepper to taste again, as this drastically changes the volume of the soup. Cook until the diced potatoes are soft enough to your liking. Check the spicing again, and when you're satisfied; remove from heat and stir in a cup or two of heavy cream. Garnish with parsley.

A note about the milk/cream: That's just a guideline. I was making this recipe one night and realized all I had was less than half a gallon of milk and a 1qt container of half-and-half. I couldn't leave the house, and using two quarts of milk was impossible. Instead I used: maybe two cups of milk, a cup or two of chicken broth, a cup or two of water; and instead of cream at the end I used a cup and a half of half-and-half. When I mashed the potatoes I mashed them up with maybe a tablespoon of lard just to make sure I got some of the fat back into the soup.

Regardless, the consistency should be not as thick as mashed taters, but not as thin as chicken noodle soup. Think thick chowder or something.

I spent my summer vacation at the Jersey Shore - Sun and Fun capitol of, well, New Jersey. We were visiting friends who have a lovely house with a beautiful pool close to the beach. They have a great dog named Rusty, a German Shepherd mix who I adored. Rusty doesn't like water. Consequently, he would freak out a little whenever anyone went in the pool. He would try to "save" you by running up to you, stopping, and then getting a very worried look on his face as if to say, "What in God's name is wrong with you people? That stuff you're so casually jumping into is WATER!!" Funny dog.

For the next three days we spent our time sunning and swimming and eating and drinking and then drinking some more. We drank like we were at a Roman orgy and the lines to the vomitorium were empty. We drank a lot. Our first night there, they threw a little party for us. We met their lovely neighbor D, who had just been paroled from prison for stabbing some guy 80 times in the head with a butter knife (the guy lived). Apparently, a butter knife was all D could get his hands on. I imagine if he had managed to grab a butcher knife, he wouldn't have been at the party. We played many games at the party. One game was electrocuting each other with a low-voltage dog collar. One person would hold the "remote" and put it on 1 (low) or 2 or 10 (high) and then electrocute the idiot wearing the dog collar. What fun! Another fun game was to punch some unsuspecting drunk at the party in the nuts. The beauty of this game is that no one really ever expects to get punched in the nuts. Thank God for Vodka, huh?

Anywho, one day turned into the next; fun, sun, food, drink. On our last full day there, we were just about to head out and play drunk Bingo (yes, there is such a thing) at about noon, when I decided to jump in the pool. I went to the diving board and look! Here comes Rusty! He's worried. God, he's adorable. It turns out Rusty likes me best of all because he really, really didn't want me to go into the pool. He made sure about a third of a pound of me never made it in. I jumped - he lunged, nuff said. When I got out of the pool a few seconds later the deck looked the Tate-LoBianco murders. Bloody footprints, splatters everywhere. I had a hole in my leg the size of a half dollar and about a half inch deep. Plus, one little fang mark that wasn't so little. A fairly uneventful trip to the ER and a few stitches later and I was good as new. Except I was limping and maimed. And pus-y and bleeding. And whining. Other than that - good as new.

Oh, and one thing that really grossed me out - before they stitched it up, in the wound there was this glistening white stuff which the Doctor told me was fat. My own fat!! There's something deeply disconcerting about that and I'm not sure why. I guess deep down we're all just well-marbled T-bones. Meat. And I think that's what bothers me.

Some people simply cannot cook, and I am one of those people. Lord knows that over the years I have tried. I had always figured that any fool can follow a recipe. Hell, that’s just like following assembly instructions and putting together a bicycle, but over time I learned that that wasn’t really the case.

Recipes had ‘keywords’ that were pertinent to the outcome. Sauté. Sift. Fold. Blanch. Words that held no meaning for me in that context. And even if I did manage to follow a recipe, when it got down to the actual cooking with heat part, I royally fucked it up. I burned shit. Even worse, I’d burn things on the outside and they would be raw on the inside. I couldn’t even grill a steak. It didn’t help that I only wanted to cook masterpieces. I never tried meatloaf or pot roast. Every time I tried to cook it was always some extremely complicated thing with reduction sauces and very expensive ingredients which I summarily ruined. I wanted to cook a spectacular meal or nothing at all. In the end, of course, it was nothing.

I don’t know, but five points to anyone who can produce an actual recipe (for edible food) more vile than this one.

Ingredients

1 sheep heart
1 sheep stomach
1 sheep's lung
1 sheep liver
1/2 lb fresh suet
1/2 cup oats
3 onions, chopped
2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
3/4 cup stock beef broth

Lungs are illegal in the United States, so you may have to do without that delicious part.

Wash lungs and stomach and remove membranes. Soak in cold saltwater for four hours.

Turn stomach inside out for stuffing purposes.

Cover heart and liver with cold. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Chop heart and coarsely grate liver. Toast oats in a pan, stirring frequently.

Combine all ingredients and mix well. Stuff the mixture into the stomach, about two-thirds full.

Press any air out of stomach and tie well. Put into boiling water to cover. Simmer for 3 hours, uncovered, adding more water as needed to maintain water level. Prick stomach several times with a sharp needle when it begins to swell; this keeps the bag from bursting. Place on a hot platter and serve.

###

Personally, I can’t think of anything more disgusting, but I’m sure someone else will. All that was missing is “garnish with bashed in sheep’s head.�

Decision of the judges (me) are final.

Cookies. The culmination of millennia of treat making lore. The ultimate delicious nugget of baked goodness. Cookies.

I don't really like most cookies. Now, now, now - put the big sticks away and let me explain. There are some cookies that put me into something approaching an orgasmic trance. It's just that the cookies that do this are (luckily for you) fairly rare. There are Salerno butter cookies. Milanos from Pepperidge Farms. Cocoa chocolate chip cookies from ... well ... me. Necessity is the mother of invention and since no elves bothered to learn how to make cocoa chocolate chip cookies I had to take this as my own mission. You, my lovely readers, benefit now from my efforts.

How to make Jim's Cocoa Chocolate Chip Cookies

Step 1: Tell somebody that you're going to make them some Cocoa Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Step 2: Wait a month or so.

Step 3: Offer various lame excuses about why the cookies aren't there yet. Illnesses in the house, a bombing at the post office and death all work well at least once.

Step 4: Wait another month until the excuses run out.

Step 5: Get off your ass and make the damned cookies already.

Victor asked for Lovely Wife's split pea soup recipe. She gave it in the comments but I'm putting it up here where everybody will notice it. It's my good deed for the day - spreading goodwill and yummy food, not to mention AssWar ammunition.

Just to warn y'all, this isn't quite so much a recipe as it is a force of nature. Lovely Wife cooks her soups the old fashioned way, by love and intuition.

Y'all know about live blogging, right? Well this is live blog cookin'. Tonight's special is called Macho Dip. I'll be making two flavors - one that works well as a depilatory and one for pussy wuss momma's boys.

Assemble the ingredients

Two pounds chopped sirloin (I don't know why it's called "ground" when it's beef and "chopped" when it's sirloin. I think it's just so they can charge you an extra 50 cents a pound. Anyway, use sirloin or 97% beef or whatever they call the good stuff in your neck of the woods.)

One big-ass block of Velveeta cheese. (I think it's two pounds. Use "Mexican Flavor" if they have it. If not, no big deal. It's not like this is real cheese anyway.)

Two cans Campbell's Cheddar Cheese soup. (They used to have "Nacho Cheese" soup but I haven't seen that in a coon's age.)

Two jars of salsa. (I'm using one mild and one hot since I'm doing the real one and a pussy variety.)

Anal-friendly sauces. (For the wuss dip.)

Anal-explosive sauces. (For the depilatory dip.)

Corn chips.

Beer. (Whatever variety you prefer to drink. It's not for the dip, it's for you. None of the wimmen folk will be bothering you while you cook for fear that they will frighten a man out of this strange 'kitchen' environment so it's the perfect chance to sock a couple away 'free of charge'.)

Begin Cooking

Get a big frying pan and put it on the stove.

Turn the stove on. Figure about 70% of maximum. If your dial thingy doesn't go to 10 you can use a calculator to figure out where to set it.

Put the beef in the pan.

Chop the hell out of it with your spatula so it's in bitty bits instead of the big rectangle o' beef. Use a spatula appropriate to your pan.

Drink some beer.

If the pan is non-stick and you used the barbecue spatula you will need to consume more beer now in order to weather the assault that will come later.

After a couple minutes use the spatula to whack apart the beef pancake that has solidified in the pan.

Drink some more beer.

If you started drinking prior to cooking (you know to build up your courage) you may need to pee now. Go for it.

Be right back...

Hey, this is just like one of those cooking shows only you don't have to send in two bucks for the transcript!

Drink some more beer.

When the beef is browned nicely (this is a French cullinary term meaning "healthy dark gray with earthy undertones") turn the stove down to simmer, or #2, or low, or whatever the next to the lowest setting is on your stove.

Strain the beef.

Put the Velveeta into the now beef-less pan. Make damn sure that you put that sucker on low. Velveeta is a space age polymer that resists all damage (including digestion) except heat.

Drink some beer.

If you did not turn the stove down you should begin pounding the beer at this stage as you just ruined her best pan.

Seriously, burned Velveeta is what they use to stick the tiles on the Space Shuttle. Don't burn the Velveeta.

When it starts to melt whack it apart with your spatula. Yes there is a lot of whacking in this recipe. Guys are naturally superior wackers after all.

Drink some more beer.

When the Velveeta is all nice and smoothly melted add the cheddar cheese soup to it. Mix well.

Beer.

Get out another skillet type pan. Oh, you thought this was a single pan dish? It probably is for you, you lucky bastard. Me - I'm making two flavors so I need two pans. Grmblrm...

VERY IMPORTANT! Do not forget which pan has the hot and which one has the not. If you're making two flavors like I am. Which you probably aren't. So ignore this part.

More beer, please.

Split the amazingly cheese-like substance between the two pans.

Add the beef to the two pans. Put more beef into the one that you'll be eating. They won't notice but it'll satisfy your inner gremlin.

Let it warm up a bit more.

You did turn on the burner under the second skillet, right?

Dumbass. Do that now. And have some more beer. Thankyou! Don't mind if I do.

Gotta pee again.

Don't forget to wash your hands after you pee. Thanks.

Okay, where the hell are we now? Right! Salsa. Add the cans of salsa. Mix up the pans real good.

Turn the brners up to 3 or 4 or "braize" or whatever medium low is on your stove.

"Brners"? Um...yeah.

More beer.

Warm up the concoctions for a little bit. Stir occasionally.

You should be able to finish a full beer right at this stage.

Add sauces to taste. For the wuss flavor you're probably okay as is. I'm using just a little chipotle and cheyenne. For the man's dish it is important to remember that everything you have done to this point was to create a vehicle for hot sauce delivery. I'm using chipotle, chili, cheyenne, habanero and scotch bonnet sauces.

I got the scotch bonnet sauce for Christmas.

Mmmm...beer...

It's from Jamaica. The sauce, not the beer.

Jamaica is now on my short list of places to visit. Hot sauce and ganja. What more could you ask for?

Put the stuff into bowls and scoop it out with the corn chips.

And don't forget the beer! As this food has no actual dairy content, thus no lactic acid, it is an incremental hot. That is, the more you eat the hotter it will get. Beer should be used to modulate the ambient heat level. You can easily work 2 more beers in during consumption.

And there you have it - Jim's Macho Dip.

Thank you, thank you. Oh, you're too kind. Too kind.

Normally I only post a recipe when I've just made the food. Then I give a little anecdote style offering along with the actual recipe (or reasonable facimile of a recipe - this stuff just comes out of my head most of the time). It's sort of like my own Chicken Soup For the Soul. Maybe I should make a category for it: Chicken Soup That Will Melt Your Soul Because Almost All Of The Recipes I Have Are Hotter Than Your Ass Will Be Able To Safely Contain The Next Day or something like that.

I'm going to make an exception to the unwritten "write up the recipe after you've cooked the food" rule this time because I saw Kate's chili recipe and discovered that Sgt. Hook needs my recipe in order to save the blogosphere from the weak-ass nastiness that has so far been submitted to his chili cook off.

DISCLAIMER: I'd already been hankering for some chili lately and tried to find my Death Chili recipe with no luck. There's an actual recipe for this one and it's for a good reason. I tend to be making chili at the same time I am consuming beer. Depending on how much beer I consume the chili will grow to inedible levels of hotness. Even for me, and that's pretty freaking impressive.

Anyway, I can't find the recipe but I'm going to reproduce it here for you from memory. It should be safe as I am currently completely sober (a bit jumped up on coffee but I don't think that'll affect anything except spelling errors).

Oh, lovely, lovely cheese. Everything is better with cheese. Except perhaps ice cream but the verdict is still out on that one.

T'other night Lovely Wife made mac 'a cheese. This is not the blue box dinner I speak of. Such prepared cheese like food product is anathema to the palate. No, I speak of true lucious homemade mac 'a cheese, wherein the macaroni serves merely as a vehicle to carry the delicious and savory cheese.

Why is this news, you ask? Because I am the cheese meister of the household. I am the undisputed champion chef for cheesy goodness of the macaroni variety. My mac 'a cheese is of a world class. Check that. My mac 'a cheese is beyond that. There is no mac 'a cheese anywhere, prepared by anybody, that approaches the cheesy perfection of my dish. Mac 'a cheese is way at the top of my comfort foods list. It's created with love and many years of "touch". I make the hell out of mac 'a cheese.

And Lovely Wife was going to attempt to follow my recipe to duplicate my gastronomical perfection? Let us just say that the recipe is...less than detailed:

Dinner last night was wings. Not just Any Wings. Oh, no. I despise Any Wings. Those are the wings you get from Dominos, Pizza Hut, Chiles, Insert National Chain Name Here, and the vast bulk of restaurants, bars and taverns. Any Wings are made by pimply faced kids or grimy fry cooks with a 3 day shadow. Any Wings are not made with love. There is no soul to them. They are sauced with a prepared mix designed by uninspired bean counters whos prefered foods include porridge and jello. They are served with a side of celery that you are actually expected to eat. Any Wings are generally soggy from sitting in a styrofoam container or from swimming in their tepid inferior sauce. They may even be (God, this even hurts to type) battered. Any Wings are beneath contempt.

No, these were real wings. Buffalo Wings. Lovingly individually hand cut and trimmed. Deep fried to a perfection of crispy skin and succulent flesh. Gently spoon turned in the sauce bowl to impart on each a perfect coat of fiery essence. There is no foul vegetable poluting the bowl of wings. No ersatz phallic symbols of watery fibrous celery or (gasp!) foul titian sticks of carrot to profane the perfection of the wing. There is a partner for the wings though. A bowl of luscious thick and chunky blue cheese dressing (no, not bleu - that is a foul spelling fostered on us by evil Canadians). This is not a dressing that is found on the shelf of a supermarket. No! Such watery roqueforts must not be allowed to befoul the wing. This is a dressing that comes from the refrigerated section with words like "Extra Thick" and "Super Chunky" on the label. A dressing worthy of accompanying the wing.

And the sauce. How do I even begin to describe the sauce? Its thick reddish brown appearance can only allude to the smallest hint of the cullinary delight that even the tiniest sample can evoke. When taken into the mouth of its lucky ruminant it blesses the tongue with a rolling tingle from tip to base. An orgy of sensual delight overtakes the ravaging eater as the sauce fights back with passionate fire and then slowly succumbs to linger on the palate in abject prostration. But this aqua vitae, this veritable milk of the pepper, is not done for it still burns lovingly on the lips in piquant reminder of its spent glory.

Of course there is a price to pay for such unfettered delight. There is a yang to this yin. This price is alluded to in the title for this post. I'll not elucidate further.