Today I am handing over my kitchen tongs to a chef. A real chef. A working chef! His name is Jason, but you may know him as the The Well Done Chef.

Now Jason is a dude with strong opinions. I admire that– and though he may be an actual chef, and though he may have a fancy French name for the method he wants to discuss today. I want you to know that I have a little non-chef secret of my own. What he calls Système Débrouillard, I have always called default. As in the default pasta that makes random appearances here on Sippity Sup.

As proud as I am of my default dishes, I am not sure this qualifies me to the title of chef. Because Jason takes the concept of default to an art.  Still, whatever fancy name this style of cooking goes by– I like to call it "cooking by the seat of your pants!".  And just so you know, if I were indeed a chef I would call default cooking cuisiner par le siège de vos pantalons!

So please read on and welcome Jason as he proves what I have always known, Default Cooking (or should I say Système D?) is what the love of the kitchen is all about! GREG

I was recently asked to make a birthday cake and bring it to a friend’s party. Of course this is a great honor. Of course I wanted to do a bang up job.

But I did think to myself, have you ever seen SippitySup? Cakes are not my thing! I am not saying I can’t make a cake when push comes to shove, but it’s not what I'd would call a strong point.

Though, I did make a simple and rustic strawberry cake a few months back, and an even simpler Italian-style corn meal cake with fresh berries even more recently. I was rather proud of these cakes. These are Sups! kind of cakes. Flavorful with out being too sweet or too fancy. Layers and ganache are beautiful and, of course, delicious– but they probably make a heck of a mess in the kitchen. Nope, I am not into messes!

I get stress dreams just thinking about the kind of work that must go into some of the comely confectionary creations I have seen cascading across the pages of so many of the talented geniuses in this big, wide blog world.