Plans

Today I will be slow-cooking pork for BBQ sandwiches tonight. It was good last time, and the time before. It should be good tonight as well.

I really hope that my brother isn't planning on asking me for a ride back to Milwaukee tomorrow. That would really be awful. Mostly because I will want to say no more than anything else in the world. And am usually unable to do so. Actually, that reminds me. On Thursday night I had a dream that Robby asked me to drive him back to Milwaukee and I flipped out with all of the rage that I normally feel on the inside when he asks me to drive him home showing on the outside. I was so enraged that I'm surprised I didn't wake anyone up.

Today (while the pork is porking slow-cooking), Robby and I are driving to our sister's house so he can meet the baby. I suspect I'll mostly be playing with her boyfriend's older son, Anthony, because (somehow? In the past year?) I've gotten pretty awesome at hanging out with kids. Babies I'm still pretty unsure what to do with. I mean, beyond the first cursory, "Oooooh, look at his cutey facey-wacey! /funny face" stage. There is more to it that that, isn't there?

I have never changed a diaper.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm making green bean casserole as I type. It smells like Thanksgiving.

I'm also sitting in my office listening to songs that I shouldn't be, songs that shouldn't be sad, really, and yet they are.

I saw an old neighbor at the bar last night, and it's possible I made him sad. I feel bad about that. I'd say I can't be held responsible for how I was last night, but I can. And I feel it. Damn.

Happy Turkey Day!

G-B-C-B

This is the longest week in history. Next week will be the shortest, and the the week after that will be cruel, because it will beat this weeks record for longest week ever. I'm skipping right past looking forward to next week, into dreading the week after that. There's something depressingly pessimistic about the mindset I'm in right now. It's a little crazy. Stupid menses.

So yeah! I'm making the Green Bean Casserole for Thanksgiving this year. Yeah, that's right. I'm the Green Bean Casserole Bringer. It's a title of reverance, because one year somebody (I'm not naming names... We'll call her Dant Aebby) made it using frozen green beans, and didn't cook it long enough to cook them. We ate raw green beans in a sea of mushroom soup that year, and none of us will ever forget it. Ever since that fateful year, Dant Aebbie brings the rolls. (Store-bought.) Everyone is happier. Especially those relatives too polite to not clean their plates. (Not I, I will happily zip past you and scrape into the garbage. If you can't be honest with your relatives, who can you be honest with? Although I'd probably fib on the exact reason. "Oh, guess I'm just not in a bean mood!" or something similar.)

Does your family engage in the "Who eats first?" dance?

What Time is it?

I am so lost. The clocks got changed last night, right? Nobody told me, so I'm a little confused. Is it really 12:17? PM? Just checking.

I almost forgot to post today. It's going to be a long month.

My house is a mess. I need to clean, but it's hard when every time you turn around, there's a kitten knocking the plants off the shelves. And lasagna being made willy-nilly.

Yeah, I made lasagna last night, and it is amazing. My first try. Very good stuff. (I'm really glad I like it, because I'm going to be eating it for at least a week.) I made it with some of my homemade sauce, and I think that made the biggest difference. It is seriously excellent.

Sauce II

I'm sitting here in my cold, cold house wondering what I should do in the space of time between now and being up north tonight.

Of course, I could always make some more effing sauce.

Guess what? I'm an aunt! He was born on Thursday, 10lbs 3oz. He and Mom are both doing fine.

Saucy

These are the tomatoes I've been waiting to make into sauce for almost a week. They are fresh from my overrun garden and they make very good sauce, if I do say so myself.

I'm being overrun by tomatoes. I have too many. I thought I'd be in the clear when I planted, because Bruce wasn't planning on being gone 75% of the time and my dad was doubtful that I'd ever have enough, but here I sit. Making tomato sauce every single day for the rest of my life without an end in sight.

Yesterday I looked in the fridge and thought, "Well, tomorrow I can use up these and the ones ripening on the island, and then maybe next week I can make another batch." Today I went out to the garden and found a whole canvas bag full of perfectly ripe tomatoes just waiting to be picked. So this morning I made a batch of sauce.  Actually, it was more than this morning, it was all day.  

This is the bunch I picked today.

Then I went and Wii'ed at a friend's house.  I am a terrible golfer.  I'm sure anyone who's miniature golfed with me in the past would attest to it, and I'm here to tell you now;  I'm a terrible golfer.

I have at least three more batches of sauce to make, which means three more packages of italian sausage and mushrooms and green peppers to buy.  Who has sauce without those things?  Not my house, that's who.

White is White!

Last weekend I went through a terrible trauma. After reaquainting myself with my village in Animal Crossing, my GameCube broke. Something is wrong with the lens, and cleaning it only did it good for a few minutes, and then it stopped working again. I was pissed. After all, I was starting to remember all the things I love about Nintendo - their games are the top of my list. Zelda, Mario, Animal Crossing, I love them all! And of course, the console broke on my first day of vacation.

Bruce decided that my meltdown was unpleasant and asked if there were any computer games he could download for me. I picked one out, and it took all weekend of downloading for it to come through. When it finally did (we were back from Milwaukee for two days, and I was officially back to work when it was finished, the bastard), my video card wasn't good enough for it to run on my computer. I gave up and bought an older version of the game, one I'd played on this computer before. It worked just fine all week, but I'm not going to be entertained by Zoo Tycoon for too long.

Today, Bruce convinced me that I should get the new Sims game, The Sims Life Stories. When I installed it and tried to start it up, it informed me that my video card wasn't capable of supporting it. Gaaaaahhhh! I feel like such an old lady saying this, but my card is perfectly good! It works fine! There's nothing wrong with it, and when did this video card thing change, anyway? It didn't even mention anything about the video card requirements on the package! When did this miraculous across-the-board upgrade happen, when did it become the standard? WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELL ME?!

Long story short, I now have a new video card, and my computer is no longer using the 800x600 resolution, and most importantly of all... drumroll please... white is no longer pink! Life is good.

I cleaned out the fridge today - everything but the freezer, now that I think about it. It looks so shiny and nice, just like the day we got it. I rearranged a few of the shelves too, so everything fits where I want it to now. Like my perpetual box of wine is on the top shelf now, so that I don't have to drag it back and forth across the bottom every time I want a pour. And I got rid of that chunk of melded-on cardboard that has been on the glass shelf since before we moved - it was removable, who knew?

Tomorrow, I'm making a stratta. A sweet stratta. Here's the recipe and I'll let you know how it goes. Tomorrow is also the day of the first baby shower I'm attending for one of my friends. It starts.

Tomorrow, Lasagna

I made the sauce tonight while Bruce was at work, using some mild Italian sausage and ground turkey and will be fixing the rest of it and layering it tomorrow. I was going to repay my mom for the ravioli lasagna she sent over a few weeks ago, but now I'm thinking it'll be fun to do a real lasagna. You know, with ricotta and stuff.

I say that as though I hadn't bought the ricotta earlier in the week. It's been on the list of plans for a while. Let's leave it at that.

As I said, I made the sauce while Bruce was at work tonight at the radio station, and now it's going to simmer all night on low in the crock pot. I'm really hoping this isn't an awful idea.

Here's a picture of that ravioli lasagna, which was actually pretty good. I think my mom got the recipe from Rachel Ray. Wow, they're really marketing her pep, aren't they? That show is like her other shows revved up a few notches - and I was surprised she went any higher than her other shows. Goes to show.

Apple Pie

Last week sometime during one of my (suddenly frequent) trips to the grocery store, I bought a bag of Macintosh apples, for pie. Never mind that I'd never baked a pie before. Nevermind that I didn't really know how it was done. My new phillosophy with cooking is that people did it for centuries without cookbooks, it can't be all that hard.

Turns out, it's not. Basically, I looked at the recipe in the old Fannie Farmer cookbook I borrowed from my Grandma's house, and fudged it. I think it turned out ok.

Apple Pie

2 pie crusts (I bought mine at the store, but next time maybe I'll make them from scratch.)
A few apples, preferably ones that are good for baking. (I think I used eight. Enough to fill up the pie crust in a pleasing manner.)

1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice (Which is actually just ginger, nutmeg, and cinnamon, and the recipe called for nutmeg, but I didn't have any nutmeg, so I used this, and it's good.)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1/2 tablespoon flour
1/2 teaspoon salt

Place the bottom crust on the pie pan, taking care not to touch it too much. (When you touch the crust, the heat from your hands melts the shortening in the crust, and then the crust loses it's flakiness.)

Mix the sugar, spices, flour and salt in a bowl. Peel and slice apples, and coat them in the sugar mixture. (I had too many apples and not enough coating, so 3/4 of the way through, I embellished the sugar mixture with a handfull of this and a pinch of that to get more, and mine turned out ok. This isn't as hard as it looks.) Then put the coated apples into the crust.

Put the other pie crust on top, fold the edges under and press them together, either with your fingers or a fork. Cut slits in the top of the pie, and then brush the top of the pie with an egg and sprinkle with more granulated sugar. Bake in a pre-heated 425* oven for ten minutes. Turn heat down to 350*, and bake for another 30-40 minutes.

(I've read that if you want to make sure you have a crisp pie bottom, you should brush an egg white on the bottom of the crust before you fill it. I forgot this, naturally, until just after finishing the pie. Oh well, next time.)

Sundays are for Cleaning -

and Oh, How I Wish the end of that sentace wasn't "Up dog turds." But it was, and it got done (you're welcome, neighbors!) and our driveway is negotiable again. Without stepping on any turd-stones.

I'm slow-cooking some pork shoulder right now, and I'm looking forward to eating it. (It's a simple recipe I halfway found and halfway made up. Basically, you put pork shoulder and some broth - I used beef - in the crock pot with some chopped onion and a clove of garlic all day long, and then you add a bottle of BBQ sauce - or make your own, which I'm not doing today - and then shred the pork and put the pork and the BBQ sauce and the broth in a shallow pan in the oven and bake at 350* or so for 1/2 hour uncovered, so the sauce sticks well to the pork. I'll let you know what I think, but I'm prematurely calling it fantastic.) The hard rolls they sell at Pick'n Save are the best, so that's what we'll be eating pulled pork from this evening. I bet you're jealous, aren't you? I would be.

I'm pretty excited, because this week I got the crock pot, and it's something I've been wanting for over a year. There are just so many things that I feel like I could make now. I'm definitely more confident about making meat in a slow-cooker, because of how well meat responds to low and slow cooking. I hope I'm not making that up, and that it's an actual fact.

Well, those of you who know me well will be shocked, but I'm going to go take a bath now. I like taking baths now. I hope your week is fantastic!

I'm Boring Lately

I spend a lot of time thinking up new things to make, which I rarely make, and new ways in which to help myself be less crazy.  I want to spend less time worrying and more time enjoying the simple things in life.

The easiest way I've found to enjoy life more is to take the extra time to enjoy the people around me.  Sometimes, this is hard to do.  (I work in customer service.)  So I spend a lot of effort (when I'm actively trying to enjoy people, before it becomes a habit) making sure I'm understanding where everyone is coming from and being genuinely happy to see them and acting like I am when I'm not, so I trick my body into acting happy and then I trick my mind into thinking I'm happy... it goes on and on like that.  You can see why I don't feel like talking about it constantly.  The running commentary in my brain is enough, trust me.

I've been researching making my own lip balm, and while it seems interesting and fun, it doesn't sound like something I'd want to do all the time and try to make money at.  So that idea's over.  But I've decided I would like to make some from scratch as gifts for Christmas or something, maybe next year.  In the meantime, I'm going to keep knitting dishcloths (count is up to 9.5), but that's about all the knitting I've been doing.  Oh wait, I lied.  I'm also knitting a  garter stitch scarf for a certain cousin's daughter.  She picked out the very soft, very fuzzy yarn herself when we were shopping, and suggested slightly heavily that she would like a scarf from some yarn like this, because it was soft and fuzzy and the colors reminded her of spring and maybe that would mean that spring would come faster when she wore it please.  So that's what she's getting.  Someday.

My cooking is improving, but other than an ambitious (for me) tomato-cream sauce last week, it hasn't gone anywhere it hasn't been before.  For the Superbowl party (us and my parents and the creatures)  I made two pizzas from scratchings (read this recently somewhere, and it made me die a thousand cute deaths, but I can't remember where I saw it, sorry), and we had veggies and dip.  

The bread baking has slowed to a halt.  I've been really tired lately, as lame as that sounds.  Maybe it's all the crazy thinking I've been doing.  Who knows.  Alls I know is I've got some loaves promised, and there'll be some head rolling all over the place should I not come through with them.  The head will be mine.  In case you were wondering.  I also found a springform pan in some stuff, and I'm wondering what one makes with such a device.  I'm too lazy right now to look it up.  Is it cheesecake?  Does one make cheesecake with a springform pan?  I'm guessing it's something like that, but I'm miles away from cheesecake.  Making cheesecake will take (above anything else) a desire to eat cheesecake.  I'm not really a cheesecake sort of girl.  Maybe Bruce will want cheesecake someday.

My work is sort of sucking lately, and it's something specific I don't want to talk about on here.  If you're curious, you can always email me to hear me vent.  It's a couple of things that are sort of specific.  A few nights this week, I've come home and taken a bath to relax.  I'm becoming bath-dependant.  I'm concidering billing my gas bill to Workman's Comp.

So!  I was looking for something fresh to do.   Any ideas?

Where to Start?

Oh, I know! How about with the "secret" that I failed to post in my last attempt? I think it involved homemade pizza sauce, and the addition of paprika. Our second pizza (the one with paprika in the sauce) was better than the first, at any rate, but it might have been the cheese. That fancy mooot-zerella might be cool and authentic, but my tastes in cheese run more along the lines of a Wisconsin Cheddar. So that's what I added.

I put three coats of lotion on my face today. The winter has been dry indeed.

I had an interesting conversation with Hannah last weekend. Here is her part of the conversation:

Wow! You have big boobies! Those are for feeding babies.

You should have some babies.

Maybe you're too young to have babies.

Can you have babies?

Are you still having... [voice drops to stage whisper] The Blood?

I'll Let You in on a Secret...

[Added on 2-1-07: Here's where I tried to post a picture of the pizza I made for Bruce on his birthday.  Then I tried to post a video of the pizza sizzling, and failed.  I then gave up, because I was drunk.  Now, you may enjoy the picture.

Thanks for your patience.  Sometimes I like to forget about my drunken stupors instead of correcting the mistakes I made while in the middle of them.]

Bread

Amish White Bread
I, like many people suggested, reduced the 2/3 cup sugar to 1/4, with great results. Mom, Dad, Bruce and I all approved.


English Muffin Bread
Simply wonderful. Crunchy crust, crumbly slightly sweet insides, perfect with honey butter. Simple to make, with only one rise. I'm going to make this all the time. It's that good.

If you'd wondered what I've been doing lately, wonder no more. I'm making bread. At least twice.  And cleaning the house. And making soup. And learning how to embroider. And reorganizing the pantry. And unpacking the spare bedroom so that Bruce will have somewhere to set up a studio/practice room for his instruments. And jumping on a mini-trampoline whenever I pass it, for a few seconds at a time.

I'm a little busy. And (I hope this doesn't jinx it) I also think that I might be losing weight. A little bit. I bought a pair of work pants from Old Navy that were on super-clearance, because a pair of pants for $7.50 is a good investment, even if they're slightly too small, at least it is if you're really going to try to lose some weight. Anyway, they're size 14, and the last pair of work pants I bought was slightly too small at size 16. However, those were from a different store, and I don't believe they were "stretch". If you've ever bought pants with "stretch", then you know how much that can falsely boost your confidence level. They fit like a dream, though, and even if it doesn't mean I've lost any weight, I'm going to let it boost my self-confidence and my desire to slim down (some).

I'm also really impressed at myself for making the chicken soup I made this week. It wasn't anything fancy (in fact, I didn't add actual "chicken"), but it was much more than I would have thought myself capable of. Part of my New Year's resolution was to open myself up to trying new things, things that are scary. Cooking is turning out to be so enjoyable that I'm having a hard time understanding why I didn't start this a long time ago. I hope the rest of my experiments turn out as well as the cooking. I have a feeling they're going to. I can't wait.

Also, I started knitting a pair of felted clogs (from the FiberTrends pattern I bought almost a year ago). So far, so good. Oh, and I started over on my hourglass sweater, this time with a different yarn. So far, so good. The drape is much nicer with the new yarn and new gauge. I might have to do some creative increasing for the chest portion, but I'm going to cross that bridge when I get there. Still haven't ripped out the old sweater, because it's much more fun to birth a new project than to bury the old.

Dishcloth count is up to 6.75. That doesn't sound right, but those are the ones I was able to grab from the bin at one go.

It's Snowing Again

I tried to make french bread last night, and it totally failed. Here's what I think went wrong: I didn't so much "follow the recipe", and when I halved the recipe that I didn't follow, I didn't so much remember to "halve" all of the ingredients. Now I have a brick of bread-like substance. The nice thing is, I like pretty much all bread, and will no doubt eat it anyway. This is why bread is a good cooking experiment for me.

Last weekend, I made chili from scratch. Did I tell you? Well, it was actually good! Wow! I can sometimes cook things and have them turn out!

Next weekend is Mom's birthday, but it's also Bruce's birthday weekend. There's a tattoo convention happening at Oneida Casino that we're planning on going to, afterwards joining in some festivities. Not sure where, but I'm sure there will be festive people somewhere. It's finally gotten cold, and it's snowing, and if nothing else, we'll have to join in the festivities on the middle of a lake somewhere, because these people up here know how to have a festive time, and when it's finally wintery and they feel like they've been missing out ice-fishing-wise, they'll make that festive happen in the middle of the lake.

Shit, I just remembered that Bruce got invited ice fishing by a friend of ours. Oops. We should have maybe talked to him since, oh, September if that was going to be a possibility.

The weekend after next, I'm going to Appleton with my cousin Michelle. We're shopping for ingredients for our Valentine's Day presents (mostly for female family members). We're going to be making Aztec Hot Chocolate, from this recipe that I got on Hello Yarn:

Aztec Hot Chocolate
makes one jar

*1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
*1 cup powdered milk
*1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
*1/2 cup granulated white sugar
*1/2 teaspoon salt
*1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
*1 tablespoon ground chili powder- I used ancho, but you could go spicier (just don’t use as much!).
*about 3 oz. chopped dark bittersweet chocolate

Mix up everything but the chopped chocolate- get the lumps out! Stir in the chocolate and put it in a pretty quart jar.

Use 1/3 cup for every cup of boiling water. Makes 12 servings.

I'm interested to see how the chili powder affects the drink. :)

Cookies, Made

Oh, thank god, this new blogger, right? Finally it makes it easier for you to sign in and do your own thing! I love it.

Today I went to Grandma Mavis' house, and happened upon many many cookie cutters. This completely alleviated my past stresses about cookie cutters, and even though my boss scheduled me for different hours today than she's scheduled my hours for every other Thursday in the past two to three months, I was OK with the whole deal, because I had good cookie cutters. Some of these cutters are so antique they're impossible to fine now. I'll show you, as soon as I get some good pictures of the sets.

My cookie mystery has come to an end. Please come and visit us (Especially you, Cam, because Bruce loves you before all else - except for me - we LOVE visitors.)

I AM THE FREAKING COOKIE MONSTER!

What the hell? I realize that waiting until the week before Christmas is probably cutting things a little short, but WHY ARE THERE NO CHRISTMAS COOKIE CUTTERS ANYWHERE?

All I want, I was telling Bruce this, all I want is a reindeer. Just one reindeer cookie cutter, so that I can make oh-so-thin-and-crispy reindeer sugar cookies, just like Grandma always did. The closest thing to Christmas I've come in three stores is a freaking star. Which would be fine, but Hello? I've already got a star, thanks!

And even the most trusted store of all (Mom's House, as in, where my Mom lives) doesn't have them. She thinks that perhaps she THREW THEM AWAY.

GAAHHHHH!

Choco-scotchy

I decided late last night as Bruce* was watching that one movie they made a year or so ago about that guy who got skinny and won his high school crush's heart** that I wanted to make chocolate chip cookies. So I looked on a website for recipes, and I found one and made the cookies.

*Check out his blog. He's posting again and stuff, and he's wonderful. I'm sure you'll agree.

**What sort of message is this sending? The kind of message that sort of makes me pissed off, that's what sort of message.

So I looked at a few of the recipes, but nothing was jumping out at me. Then I came across this one. And it's got peanut butter in the batter. And maple syrup. And you can substitute butterscotch chips for the chocolate chips, and she says it makes them even better, and that's just great, because I happened to have only half a bag of semi-sweet chips and a whole bag of butterscotch, and this would work out perfectly. So I put together the batter, like the recipe says:

ALEX'S MELT IN YOUR MOUTH CHOCOLATE CHIPS COOKIES
Printed from COOKS.COM

Dry Ingredients:

2 1/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of baking soda

Wet Ingredients:

3/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup (pressed) dark brown sugar
1/4 cup (pressed) light brown sugar
2 heaping tablespoons creamy peanut butter
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla syrup
1 cup butter

Add last:

24 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips
16 oz plain no salt added peanuts

Cream the butter and white sugar, add peanut butter, vanilla extract, and maple syrup. Add both the light and dark brown sugar.

Tip: pressing the brown sugar helps reduce little hard sugar balls in the batter.

Combine dry ingredients and sift into wet mixture thoroughly. Add chocolate chips and peanuts, if desired.

This batter is very good with white chocolate chips and even better with butterscotch chips!

Use a teaspoon to measure the cookies size and bake for about 8-10 minutes.

Bake at 375°F. Watch carefully and do not allow to brown. If cookies are browning too quickly, reduce heat, if not baking quickly enough, increase heat according to what your oven requires to bake cookies in 8-10 minutes.

Best served warm with milk!

Submitted by: Alexandra Hall

Only I'd started making another recipe (the one off the back of the chips bag) before I looked online, and that recipe and the others I'd seen all called for 1/2 cup of butter, so that's what I had in the bowl when I started. And then when I realized that it didn't have any eggs, I was flabbergasted and ran back from the kitchen to the office at least six times to make extra sure I hadn't missed them somewhere in the recipe, but I hadn't. But my batter was so dry! It for sure shouldn't be this dry!

So I ran back for the seventh time, after adding most of the flour mixture to the batter and knowing that something wasn't right, to check on what could be wrong. And that's when I saw that the recipe called for a full cup of butter instead of a half, and that the extra butter is probably what made it "melt-in-your-mouth". I put in the extra stick of butter and they turned out great - with half a bag of butterscotch and half a bag of semi-sweet chips. They're going to be gone before the end of the week, and they made at least four dozen.

Oh yeah, this is the movie.