It’s amusing to me how, on shows like “Top Chef” and “Chopped,” contestants (or “cheftestants,” which has to be the most annoying word ever) are always making deconstructed dishes. In my plebeian understanding of cooking, this means they separate all the elements of a dish to be … fancy or something, I don’t know. So a deconstructed clam chowder would have a pile of clams, a stack of potatoes, and a swirl of whatever chowder is made of, and everyone would coo over how wonderfully inventive and imaginative it is to deconstruct things.

So I decided to get in on this fancy action and make a deconstructed dish for dinner the other night. I found a recipe for balsamic-roasted broccoli and went from there, ultimately choosing to make beef stir-fry. At the grocery store, I picked up a container of baby corn, which I love because it always makes me think of this image macro:

The only problem with this plan is that the only baby corn the grocery store had was pickled. We bought it anyway and threw it in with the broccoli, some garlic, and a little toss of olive oil:

While that roasted, The Husband took care of sautee-ing the beef in garlic and olive oil, and I poked at the rice a little bit and tried to keep it from boiling over. We ended up with this:

Deconstructed!

The best reaction I can dredge up for this dish is: meh. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t the most amazing thing I’ve ever eaten either. What was truly amazing was the accompaniment I had to this dinner. Allow me to explain myself before you see this picture, because I imagine when you see what I was drinking your brain will refuse to comprehend anything else I have to say.

When I was a sophomore in college, I spent a semester in Germany as an exchange student. Each of us were assigned to a student who was supposed to be our mentor, but most of them only did it for the extra money they got. My mentor ditched me shortly after picking me up at the train station on my first day there, so I was unofficially adopted by Jon, an American from Nebraska who’d been living in Germany for the past several years. Since I was of legal drinking age in Germany, we would go to bars to play chess (seriously) and have some awesome German beer. One day, he ordered a Bananenweizen, which is a combination of banana juice and wheat beer (Weizenbier). After my initial revulsion, I ordered one … and was sold. It was delicious! I’ve spent the nine years since looking for an acceptable substitute, and last month at Jungle Jim’s in Cincinnati, I found one:

It was incredible — just like I remembered it, except without a chess game going on in the background. (Those of us who weren’t so good at chess invented and patented a new move — the Flying King — that enabled us to win every time.)  One of these days we’ll get back to Germany and I can have a real Bananenweizen, but until then I think there will be another trip to Jungle Jim’s in our near future.

(DG note: I started this entry three weeks ago and never got a chance to finish it. As most of you know, I travel quite a bit for work and am therefore largely unavailable for dumbassery. Great news, though — travel season is over until August!)

Today (April 10 — ed. note) is the opening day of the SKy (as in Southern Kentucky) Farmers’ Market, which is conveniently held in a parking lot within walking distance of my humble abode. In a fit of seventh-grade nostalgia, some friends slept over last night in honor of this monumental occasion (and because we wanted an excuse to eat junk food all night), and this morning we woke up at the crack of dawn to see what the farmers had for us. The great thing about the SKy Farmers’ Market is that everything there comes from somewhere in our region, and whatever you buy was either grown or made in our (figurative) backyard. My personal goal is to buy and eat more locally this summer, so I was very excited to wander among the items for sale.

Here’s today’s haul, carefully carried home in the crocheted grocery bag my friend Anne made for me last year:

I bought the coffee yesterday, but it’s still local.

The bounty includes fair-trade, organic Highlander Grog coffee from Spencer’s Coffeehouse (coarse ground for a french press); Swiss and tomato basil cheddar cheeses from Kenny’s Farmhouse Cheese; triple berry jam from Apple Berry Farms (the gentleman staffing the table said the three berries mean it tastes different every time you eat it); and jalapeno pepper bread from a lovely Amish or Mennonite (not sure which) family. After a bit more poking around, we saw a sign advertising eggs “from contented hens” for sale, which made me smile. My mother would have thought that was hilarious. Alas, we didn’t need eggs, so the girls and I walked back home. They left for their respective houses and I got busy making breakfast:

I included the pan in this pic because it’s so phenomenal. This omelet came out perfect!

That’s tomato-basil cheese oozing from that omelet, which was pretty darn fantastic despite the fact that the eggs probably didn’t come from contented hens. The jalapeno bread wasn’t too spicy, which is nice for my wussy taste buds, and the Highlander Grog coffee was spectacular, as is everything that comes from Spencer’s.

I hit the road for a few weeks shortly after I started this post, so recently my dinners have been along the lines of Taco Bell’s combo #3, Lunchables pizza kits, and the like. I’m beyond excited to settle down at home for a little while. I’ve been toying with the idea of requesting a plot in the community garden nearby, but my attempts at balcony gardening have been so hopeless that I’m almost scared to try. Anyone have any tips for successful summer gardening?