#I’m so lucky to have space for an amazing huge tomato garden & the skill to do it well but if u like have one good tomato from the market

[tomatoluvr69]

I’m sorry to have an influencer moment on here but I’m not lying when I say that these Tomato Cheddar Toasts from NYT cooking are hands down one of the best meals I have ever cooked for myself in my entire life (and I’ve been cooking daily for like 12 years lol) and they take like five minutes, most of which is spent waiting for the bread to toast. The recipe is paywalled so I’ll just say you take cheddar cheese and shred it on the tiniest side of your box grater/microplane, then mix together a 1:1 ratio of mayo and cheddar. Then when the bread is piping hot from being toasted you spread it on there (like a tbsp or two per bread) and the heat causes them to melt together into this insane creamy tangy spread. Then top with tomatoes and salt.

I have been eating tomato toasts almost every day this summer and I thought I had my formula down pat, but then I tried these and it changed my world. Genuinely a contender for last meal on earth if I had to choose. I have eaten it with every single meal since I got back from my backpacking trip except one bc I was invited to a potluck. I know my username might make you think I’m just overzealous but please for the love of god if you eat dairy and gluten and love tomatoes (and have access to some good ones) I am begging you to try this. On the left is the recipe pic and on the right is one of the ones I made. and like it doesn’t matter if no one tries this I just want this in my tomato tag to commemorate this unbelievable toast because I’m in a new era of my life for real

#TOMATOES #tomatoposting #garden tag #food #recipes #<- for my own blog sorry #I’m so lucky to have space for an amazing huge tomato garden & the skill to do it well but if u like have one good tomato from the market #and want to do it justice…please consider #and literally this morning when I ran out of bread my entire day then revolves around either buying or making bread so I could eat this aga #in lol #nyt cooking #*revolved #honestly kind of insane that I’ve cooked a million billion meals that take so much more time and effort and yet this simple shit is like #theeeeeee pinnacle

[eyeballjazz]

First of all I've been binge reading your fics whenever I get some free time so huge kudos to ya <3

Second, I've got a fun lil ask for ya: domestic headcanons for HB/PI and SS/DD :D

how do they share all their houses' chores? We all know HB is probably an amazing cook and DD looks like an organization freak but what about the rest? Does anyone besides HB knows how to cook a proper meal? We need to know!!

Well, hell!

First of all, thank you so much this is so sweet! Absolutely makes my day to know you’re enjoying my work. I hope you get lots more time to read soon, bro!

And second I’m about to go ON so I’ll chop the post here, but I’ve got headcanons old and new cooked up for you:

As I’m sure you’ve noticed I like writing about buildings so I can tell you exactly what everyone’s houses are like. The whole Crew lives across from each other on a block in the center of their territory, Slick and Droog in a Victorian townhouse and Hearts and Clubs in a duplex that’s broken into two railway style spaces. Slick would live shoebox if it was up to him, so thankfully Droog has very opinionated taste and likes spending his husband’s money enough to buy a whole antique for them to live in. 

I don’t have to tell you that cooking is huge for the Crew. They’re a small family of Italian uncles, so cooking is a major factor of their lives. 

As skill goes Droog is the best cook out of anyone. He’s self taught but for the very basics and some old family recipes his mother drilled into him back in Tuscany. And like everything with Droog, he’s someone who grew up dirt poor and now desperately wants to show off taste and affluence by being a highbrow snob. That means his skill for cooking has driven towards very elegant, subtle cuisine, lots of French influence (he says it must have been Italian, originally, but the French got famous for it somehow), and small portion size. Think of the fanciest restaurant you've ever been to and how teeny the serving sizes were and then imagine it was cooked by someone who is ferociously closeted and you’ve got it. 

Despite all that, Droog has not had working taste buds in at least thirty years because he’s smoked two packs a day since he learned to walk. Slick, likewise, had a bad smoking habit and quit for the kids so he’s not swimming in buds either. Add to that the fact that he’s had his nose broken so many times he’s functionally lost his sense of smell and you’ve got a match made in heaven. 

Lucky them, Karkat and Aradia get the spoils of Droog’s great cooking and are the picky eaters their fathers wished they could have been as boys. Droog is very proud to have snotty kids. So it is his great displeasure when, instead of having a single scallop lightly seared in browned butter then dusted with rosemary and thyme, the kids just want peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. But both happen regularly. 

Hearts is a close second but of a very different school. He learned to cook primarily from his mother, who is a master of Southern cooking and made sure her boy knew how to do for himself before she let him leave her home. The rest he learned as a cook in the army, and then later from Droog after Hearts insisted he learn some real Italian recipes since his father never cooked when Hearts was a boy. Hearts still has a habit for cooking for a literal army and so he often cooks for the whole family. 

His food is mostly soul food/American southern and he seasons hard and often. One might even say it is dangerously flavorful, and everyone agrees it is extremely fortifying. It’s even strong enough to get through to Droog, who can (with the addition of hot sauce) taste it and secretly wishes Hearts would offer to teach him a thing or two.

Too willful to learn, Slick is a very low third place. He doesn’t care about food much and burns most things he tries to cook out of impatience. Plus, he hasn’t needed to learn since he married Droog so why start now?

Pickle Inspector, dead last, can’t so much as fry an egg. He loves food and knows the locations and operating hours of every restaurant and pub and gas station hot bar in the city. But cooking itself eludes him. He does occasionally try to go vegetarian but folds immediately when offered the chance to have a big beautiful meal he didn’t have to cook himself.

This matches up perfectly with Hearts’s master plan, which is to feed Pickle Inspector to within an inch of his life. And Pickle, like a stray cat, loves the attention and knows where the free food is. Hearts insists he’s too skinny and will often say ‘Just have a little,’ and then hand him a plate with half a lasagna on it.

HBPI is a ‘you cook, I clean’ split. Self conscious of his lack of cooking knowledge Pickle does every dish in the house whenever he sneaks in (read: breaks in) to spend time with Hearts and Tavros. And very often when he breaks in he tries to carve out some time to spend playing DnD with Tavros, with an ambition to get him and Hearts in a game so they can show Hearts a more kinetic version of fantasy than having a read a lot of books by nudists from the 60’s.

Because they may or may not be out as a couple to the Crew, Pickle and Hearts don’t get to spend a lot of time out on Hearts’s front porch together, although kicking back on the porch is one of Hearts’s favorite things to do. But, every so often, they take their coffee together out on the porch way before anyone else is awake. They watch the city all in blue together, right before the sunrise.

SSDD and chores are much more complicated.

Droog is fastidious, meticulous, and intense about cleaning. He also uses it to avoid or ignore any emotions he may be feeling so their Victorian is constantly spotless. Droog does all the kitchen chores, all the rewarding dusting of art pieces, mantles, and mirrors, and looks after the kids to make sure they learn how to keep their own spaces clean.

He dumps all the chores where you actually chance getting dirty on Slick. Taking out the trash, mowing the lawn, cleaning the bathrooms, washing the cars, touching anything weird, bugs, that’s all Slick.

Slick also looks after their garden, not for any love of plants but because he’s gotten himself into an all out war with a warren of rabbits that want to eat Droog’s spices and tomatoes. The war has been multi-generational for the rabbits and they’re too invested to pull out now. Slick is the only person who really looks after the garden, Droog assumes ownership of the plants but doesn’t care about them beyond having fresh basil to cook with.

Slick’s contempt for the bunnies and ferocity in keeping his husband’s plants alive have made him an unwitting expert on what a good spice garden needs. Like Droog, his feelings for the whole thing aren’t tied to love for the plants but instead pride and anger. Droog, meanwhile, loves seeing Slick do violence in his name and will often watch his tantrums in the backyard whenever one of the tomato plants gets chewed up.

Whew, this got long quick. Since it’s already so long, I’ll leave you with one more hc which is that Pickle Inspector knows how to juggle. Thank you again for the great questions, this was so fun!!!

#the midnight crew #ssdd #hbpi #spades slick #diamonds droog #hearts boxcars #pickle inspector #the intermission #I fucking love domesticity bro I LOVE IT