Friday Fast 5

Five quick things!

1. I really can't believe Sunday is Easter. Holy cow, where did the time go? Is this the earliest Easter has ever fallen? I think part of the reason it seems weird is because it's still so cold and rainy here. Spring is hardly anywhere to be found. I saw our Easter photo from last year, and I was wearing a sleeveless dress. Granted, Easter was two weeks later than this year's but still. I haven't even switched my closets over to my spring/summer wardrobe yet, it's been too chilly.
2. Jarrod turned 30 on Wednesday! In the morning I picked up doughnuts from Schulte's for him to take to work and we went out for Korean BBQ after work. I'd never had it before, but he had it a couple times in California last year and really liked it. And it was good! I was proud of myself for trying a bunch of stuff too, kimchi for one (it's not for me, but hey, I tried it.) Turns out tofu isn't that bad, especially if it's been cooked a little. 
3. It's funny, though... for both of our 30th birthdays, I realized we went to places where we had to cook our own food, haha. For mine, he took me to the Melting Pot, where you cook your meats in your fondue pot of boiling broth. And for the Korean BBQ, you cook your meats on the grill in the middle of the table. Both of them were also a LOT of food.
4. Trivia Night is coming up, and I've been busy finishing things. I can't believe it's a week away! As always, if you're interested in getting a table together, it's April 7, let me know and I can send you the flyer.
5. I bought Josie a new ball and it's turned out to be one of my best purchases. Josie absolutely LOVES to play ball. She chews the fuzz off of tennis balls, so a racquetball proved the best kind for her. But ever since we put in hardwood, playing ball became downright dangerous. Since the racquetball is so rigid and made the way it is, it bounced all over the place on the wood floor. Not only did Josie slip and slide everywhere trying to catch it, I started to fear for our home. One wrong bounce could send it flying into something breakable or leave marks on our walls. We had to only play ball outside :(. On a whim, I bought her a new ball. It's not perfectly round, and the material has more give to it, all meaning that it doesn't bounce all that much. It's great and she loves it. Woo hoo!

Project Recipe

This week I took on a random project: organizing my cook books and recipes.

The whole idea bloomed from a realization that Jarrod and I have been eating many of the same meals the past 3 months. I already felt like I had a pretty good system down for meal-planning. But I improved on it this week and my hope is that it will remind me to try new recipes more often.

My meal planning system is as follows: I have a small notepad with recipes we commonly make and meal ideas written in it. They are as simple and generic as "grilled chicken" to more specific recipes like "Whole Wheat Spaghetti Carbonara." I pull out my little notebook when I'm building my list to go shopping, or placing my online grocery order. I buy ingredients to make certain recipes or meals, trying to plan out at least a week's worth of food. Once I purchase the groceries (and know they weren't out of an item) I then write the meal on a sticky note that goes on the fridge. Then I can look at my sticky notes and easily know what I have on hand to cook. If I skip this step, I feel lost. It's so easy to walk into the pantry and stare for ten minutes going "What in the world can I even make? I don't know what to make." Even though I keep a lot of food on hand, not all of it matches up all the time to make a full recipe.

So that was how I have been doing things for a while now: consult notebook with recipes, create shopping list, write out sticky notes. And it seemed to be fine, until my realization.

I decided to edit and update the first step, the recipe notebook.

When I get a new cookbook I like to go through all the pages and mark different recipes I'd like to try. I put it back on the shelf... and rarely pull it back out.

So I decided to ditch the notebook and move everything to a spreadsheet—a Google sheet, to be specific, so it's accessible anywhere and Jarrod can see it too. I added all of the things that were already in my notebook, and then came the new part: adding in any and every recipe I have ever marked to try. I added the name of it and where I could find it (ie, Betty Crocker cook book, page 254.)

While I was at it, I also organized my recipe binder a bit better. When I got married, my mom gave me a binder with a few recipe printouts from her to get me started, and I've added to it through the years. There were tons of magazine clippings and printouts I shoved in the back file pocket, never to be looked at again. I went through them all (and got rid of most of them, since my cooking style has changed so much from when we first got married) and typed out the ones I still wanted, and put those in the binder in their appropriate section.

I'm really glad I took the time to do this. All told, it probably took a few hours—spread across three days—going through everything and typing it out; I didn't want a partial list and need to do this twice.

But now I have my spreadsheet full of many recipes I've never made, and I am pretty confident that seeing those will keep them more 'top of mind' and I'll actually make more things.

Here's to better cooking in 2018!

Friday Fast 5

Five quick things!

1. During my weekday mornings, I used to make a point to watch CBS This Morning. But for at least the past month now, I don't even turn the TV on in the morning anymore. And I gotta say, I'm not missing it. I used to enjoy watching Charlie Rose and the rest of the hosts, but now I'm perfectly good not even watching. 
2. I decided to try a few of those Naked juices... in efforts to, I don't know, pretend I'm being a little healthier? But like all fruit juices, they are packed with sugar, so in reality they're not that healthy. And I'm pretty sure the company has been sued for false advertising by making their product look and sound extra healthy, when it's got like twice the daily recommended limit of sugar. 
3. Spring officially started. I'm happy about that and also not, since my allergies really bog me down. I can't spend any bit of time outside otherwise I pay for it by coughing all night long so... yeah. Boo. I gotta stay cooped up in the house like a hermit to survive the season.
4. I just finished the book Scent of the Missing, a book about search and rescue dogs. What a great book! If you are a dog lover, like me, I highly recommend this one. Finally, a dog book that isn't an emotional roller coaster that makes you cry! (I'm looking at you A Dog's Purpose...) It's quite fascinating to learn about everything that goes into the finds, training the dogs, and what sorts of jobs these dogs are called to do. If you are interested and live near, I can lend you my copy.
5. I have started to be very picky about the content I consume. I love books, movies, good tv dramas, and podcasts, but fitting any of that into my life has become a bit of a contest. What do I listen to first? Would I rather watch an episode of this show or read a chapter in my book? So I have decided to be much more picky about what I watch, read, and listen to. I used to always, always want to finish every book I read, or every movie. I am finally at a point in my life where I am okay with not finishing something. I know, it sounds silly, but it was a hard self-imposed stigma to overcome. I have wasted too much of my time on shows and books that were not enjoyable. I guess there was always something about actually finishing it, learning the ending, feeling accomplished. But why continue to read a book that isn't enjoyable? If you dread reading it, why not just put it down and move onto something else? I've kind of created a rule for myself regarding TV shows which is: If I am not hooked onto the plot by the 5th episode, I bail. I'm sorry but if it takes that long for a TV show to develop a plot or characters, it is not worth my time. And if I'm just not interested, that's fine too; we all have different tastes and what might be "The best show ever" for someone might just not do it for me, and that's fine. Moving on, DNF.

Friday Fast 5

Five quick things...

1. We've rediscovered hot tea in this house. Coffee in the morning, hot tea in the evening to wind down. It's quite nice and usually easy to do since so many varieties (or, varie-teas, hahahaha) are caffeine free. For the longest time I stopped drinking hot tea because I ended up preferring coffee over tea in the mornings, but this is an easy way to have both. It sounds obvious, but for some reason I never really thought about it before. I also bought a sampler of tea so we could try some different flavors; I didn't really want to buy a full box of 20 and then find out we hate it. So far we've tried about 4 of 20. 
2. Allergies are starting up already... wonderful. I actually noticed a visible layer of pollen on my car yesterday, and I've started coughing more at night. I took a walk with Josie yesterday, and it was great, and the weather was so nice. But I paid for it later. Yay...
3. Jarrod and I finally got to check out the Washington Coffee Shop a couple Saturdays back. Since I couldn't have caffeine while I was on meds, and also while I was on meds back during December, we never made it around to the new place until last week. It's a great addition to Washington! I love what they've done with the space, it's comfortable and easy to get to. 
4. I bought 'normal' eggs from Walmart the other day... not doing that again. A few years ago, I started paying more attention to the chicken industry. I learned about the conditions factory chickens live in, especially egg layers. It bothered me. I started paying more for my eggs, paying for ones that came from reputable farms that let their chickens truly have "free range" and live happy chicken lives. The proof was visible, these eggs had much more yellow yolks, almost orange sometimes, due to the rich diet of bugs, worms, and everything else chickens normally eat. I'd say we eat a good amount of eggs here. We frequently cook breakfast on the weekends or for dinner during the week, and these eggs tasted better! Who knew? Well, the other day for whatever reason, I decided to buy the Great Value cage free eggs. The yolks are so pale, I forgot that's how they looked. And they are flavorless! The scrambled eggs I made tasted so bland. Bleh.
5. Speaking of California, Sunday are the Oscars! I always watch them, though I admit watching it without a DVR to play/pause the show is much less enjoyable. They're just soooooo stinkin' long, and I don't always care about the acceptance speeches. I have a hunch that viewership will be down, simply because many people don't want to hear about politics anymore, and every awards show is always speckled with politics to some degree. Artists, for decades, tend to lean to the liberal side, and typically have "liberal" causes they are passionate about. This is nothing new, neither is speaking out for causes which actors believe in, it's just that everyone is incensed over it even more right now. But I really do hope the politics is kept to a minimum Sunday night, not because it upsets me as in How dare they say something opposing to my view of the world! but simply because I think all of us are dying to not hear/read/think about political commentary 24/7.

Friday Fast 5

1. Wow! It's been a month since I wrote anything on my blog.
2. I've decided to try and cook one new recipe each month, and on Tuesday my new dish for dinner was Mongolian Beef. And it turned out awesome! I was so happy. I made the sauce, cooked the beef, got the rice and noodles ready and it all tasted so good. Jarrod said it tasted better than the restaurant versions he's had, so woo hoo! If anyone wants the recipe, email me. 
3. A bit of advice when making Asian food at home: Jarrod and I have found that you must make your own sauce. It's more ingredients and a little more time, but it makes your kitchen smell oh-so-good and tastes 100 times better than sauce you can buy in a jar. I have another copy-cat recipe for PF Chang's Spicy Chicken where you make the sauce, and it also tastes great. We've tried going the easy route and buying the Panda Express orange chicken sauce and another General Tso's sauce with lackluster results. It doesn't end up tasting like takeout, and it doesn't taste all that great either. So, it's all in the sauce!
4. Last week was a stormy week. Thankfully, we were spared some of the worst. But Josie was stressed out a bit more with the bad weather. I went downstairs with her a couple times, which seems to be the best way to handle her storm anxiety so far. We sit in the back treadmill room where the wind, rain, and thunder cannot be heard much. More than anything, I'm trying to establish a consistent place for her to go, and hopefully this bit of training is catching on... slowly. I watch the radar on my phone and once the coast is clear we come back upstairs. 
5. This year midway through Lent, I decided to give up Facebook on my phone. Once Lent was over, I talked about how I might keep it up most of the time in another blog post. Lent ended almost two months ago, and I am still keeping up with it! I am very, very happy with my decision. I log out of my Facebook app every time I am done using it, and for me that has been the key to keep me off of it. Being met with the login screen each time I open the app is like a stop sign for me to mentally ask myself Do I REALLY need to check Facebook right now? Why am I doing this? and sometimes I log in and see what's up, and sometimes I just close the app and leave it alone. On the rare occasion I don't log out when I'm done, it's like my brain knows that the cookie jar is wide open so it just wants to keep going back for more and more treats (excuse my metaphor, but I thought it worked haha) and sure enough, I find myself coming back to Facebook 3-4 times in an evening, just like old times, scrolling through hoping for something new. If you're wanting to reduce your social media time, this plan of attack would be my suggestion. It still allows you to get on there, but that tiny little pause is enough to break the habit of just opening the app over and over without thought.

Snowy Saturday Morning

Upon checking the weather this morning, I discovered the very-distinct-line between rain and snow was upon our town. I opened the curtains and decided to lay in bed and semi-watch for the snow to arrive.

Sure enough, in about 15 minutes, the wet sloppy snowflakes began. So we officially had our first snow of the season. It wasn't much, but I don't think Josie enjoyed it while she was out.

I contemplated going to get coffee this morning. Last week a friend and I caught up over coffee at a new coffee shop in town, and it was delicious. But in the end I decided to haul out my espresso machine and [attempt to] make myself a cappuccino. I haven't used it in a while, and afterwards I remembered why I would rather just pay someone to make my coffee drinks.

I asked for an espresso machine a couple years ago for Christmas with the hopes of enjoying coffee shop-quality drinks at home, for about 10% of the price. I have a cheapy espresso machine, as far as those go; they can run into the hundreds and hundreds of dollars. So it's nothing spectacular, but I suppose it does the job. But it's all so involved. Getting out the coffee grinder, grinding the beans; setting up the machine, making espresso, steaming the milk, then the huge amount of cleanup because you just dirtied 8 different things just to make one cup of coffee. I am not good at steaming milk, which is pretty much the key to the latte or cappuccino. I can get the milk to bubble up, but they dissipate quickly, and within 10 minutes of completing my drink, it's cold, which is really disappointing when you spent more than 10 minutes setting up and making the darn thing. I can't gulp down espresso in 10 minutes, neither would I want to; it's a drink to be sipped.

So yeah... back on the shelf for the espresso machine, only to be pulled out in six months when I once again forget how time-consuming and involved the entire process is for very little reward.

A couple days ago was Josie's "Homecoming Anniversary." I originally called it an adoption day, but I realize some people might find that misleading since she wasn't "adopted" from a shelter. But yeah, I can't believe it was three years ago that we brought our little dog home!

She's snoozing next to my feet right now. The snow has stopped, but it's very cold and windy outside, so I think we're going to stay in for most of the day and stay warm :)

Cookie Season

It's once again Girl Scout cookie season, but this year comes with some changes. Most notably, the addition of online ordering and that the price of a box of cookies went up 50 cents to $4.00 per box. It's all for the kids, I know, I know... but I will agree with my mom in that they are going to price themselves out of selling cookies before too long; especially when you consider that you only get 16 or less cookies in most boxes. There will always be those people who buy them no matter what, but for those of us who don't have a niece, cousin, or relative selling cookies, it's a bit of a tough sell to convince me to buy cookies just for the heck of it. Jarrod and I don't plan on getting any this year because, honestly, we don't love those cookies that much. Heck, I still have Tagalongs from last year, that's how rarely I eat them.

In thinking about the price change, it doesn't seem all that surprising considering food costs for everything have risen over the past year. So I'm guessing the ingredients to make the cookies went up in price, thus they needed to raise the price.

I've never been a fan of the Thin Mints, which I am sure is still their biggest seller (take this from a girl who used to sell 200-250+ cookies a year [when they were $2-2.50 a box, mind you] the Thin Mints always outsold everything else by a landslide.) But if you are a fan of the Samoas*, like myself, I am here to tell you there is an alternative...

Not to rain on the Girl Scouts' parade, but you can get Samoas in the grocery store year round. I finally tried a package of Keebler "Coconut Dreams" cookies which, by the example on the front, looked to be like Samoas.

They ARE Samoas.

They are the same size and they taste EXACTLY the same. And I'm not speaking in terms of how some off-brand things 'kind of' taste like the name brand, enough so that you think to yourself 'Ok this will do, it tastes pretty much the same.' No, these are dead on; in a blind taste test, you'd have no idea which one was which. I even compared the nutrition labels: they have the exact same calories, same fat content, and the ingredients list is the same except for being in a slightly different order—but not by much.

And just for funzies:

• Keebler Coconut Dreams: $2.50 per box, 18 cookies, 14¢/cookie
• Girl Scout Samoas: $4.00 per box, 15 cookies, 26¢/cookie

*I'm talking about "Samoas", not the stupid "Caramel DeLites" our area was treated to a couple years ago because the region's chapter decided to switch bakers. The Caramel DeLites sucked, and I have no doubt it was because they were a "lighter" cookie with less calories and fat (it's true, they have less than Samoas.)

Friday Fast 5

1. We should all enjoy this weekend because after that, the cold officially sets in. I'm not excited for it so soon, but I'm not surprised. I really don't know why anyone should be surprised; we had one of the mildest summers in a long time, of course the cold weather is going to happen even sooner because of that. Looks like deer season might actually be cold, unlike the past couple years where it was too warm.
2. I wish there were stricter laws for "mature drivers". In our state, you have to renew your license every 6 years, and if you're over the age of 70, it's every 3. To that I say: woo hoo... who cares? What needs to happen, I feel, is that they need to retake the actual driving test (there are states that require this, ours is not one of them.) Eyesight and being able to read signs are not the only components of driving; slow reflexes, not to mention having just the mental capability to think quickly, go completely unaccounted for. The reason I'm complaining about this is today, this old lady almost caused an accident with me three times! THREE TIMES, with JUST ME! First she pulled out in front of me at the stoplight (making a right onto Hwy. 100 while I was turning left from Hwy. 47; she pulled out so late that I almost ran in to her), then she signaled to get in the left lane and merged without looking, then I changed lanes and was trying to pass her and she just drifted back over (no blinker) into the right lane and almost sideswiped me again. I was blaring my horn at her for that last one, and I don't think she even noticed. This lady should NOT be on the road. Beware the turquoise Chevy Equinox with the white-haired lady in it! I know giving up your license can be difficult for older citizens, emotionally, but for the safety of others sometimes it just needs to happen. There are some who do it willingly, like my great grandpa I believe, and my grandma limits herself to short drives only during daylight hours, but there are many who don't.
3. I got some Starbucks today—which I haven't done in a LONG time. I think their prices went up... luckily I had a gift card. Wow, no wonder people can go broke getting a coffee drink every single day at over $4 a pop. Anyways, it was 470 calories of yum in a cup!
4. Speaking of high calories, my weight's been holding steady! I was worried I'd drop back a few pounds with that cold. Eating is not very enjoyable with a cold; nothing tastes right because you can't smell, milk sounds gross when you're all snotty and coughing, it's really hard to keep your appetite up. But looks like I survived, which is very reassuring.
5. I've started to see people putting up their Christmas trees. I really don't get that one... part of the 'specialness' of it is that it is up for a limited time. Less limited=less special. But that's just me. Am I weird?

Mom Stole the Cookies from the Cookie Jar

Who me?

Yes you!

Couldn't be!

Then who?

Allow me to sound like an old curmudgeon for a moment, but what in the world is wrong with parents these days?

While I was picking out bagels at Schnucks, a mom brought her two kids over to the cookies. She picked out a cookie for each of them and handed it to them. They ate it while she piddled around looking at the rest of the desserts. Um... HELLO??? Aren't you going to pay for that!? What in the world. Showing your kids it's okay to steal food? They're not free samples. I was so taken aback A, that she wasn't even the least bit ashamed, B, that she didn't even try to hide it, and C, how matter of frank the entire thing was, like they do this all the time. It's time like this I wish I was more bold, I wish I would have called her out for it. Part of me wanted to, the other part told me to mind my own business. That part won.

Adventures in Homemade: Part Three

Today I am finally baking my bread that I said I would do a couple months ago. Weekend after weekend would come and go, and I just never had a good portion of my day to set aside for it. Well, today is finally that day. And I'm not talking about using a bread quick mix, or using a bread-making machine, I truly mean from scratch (flour, salt, sugar, shortening) and working the dough like a pioneer.

I had decided to go simple for my first time and do a classic white bread, and it started out pretty good. I got to use my dough hook in my mixer for the first time! I was just hoping for the best, since so many little things can go wrong and have a negative affect on the bread: not enough flour, too much flour, didn't rise enough, the water wasn't warm enough, didn't knead the dough enough, temperature was too cold during rising, temperature was too warm during rising.

My dough mixture was fairly 'doughy' and it was time to knead it. Funny enough, at that exact moment Andrew Bird's song "If I Needed You" was playing. Which, audibly, sounds like "If you kneaded me..." so it was like my bread had picked out the song just for me, haha!

Coming Soon: Deliciousness

I put the dough in the front room, since those face south and were the only ones with sunlight coming through. It looked a little silly, this shiny metal bowl sitting on the floor, but hey you gotta do what you gotta do. I figured the house was a little too cool, so if the dough was in sunlight it would be warm enough. After it rose in the big bowl, I then rolled it out and formed my two loaves. I put both of the bread pans back in the front room, on the windowsill, but by then the sunlight was moving and wasn't streaming in so much anymore. After another bit of rising it was time to bake.

Introduce part one of the rewards of bread-making: the lovely kitchen smell. The house still smells great. They baked for about 30 minutes, then it was time to cool. I set them on my wire racks for a while, then I couldn't wait any longer. I had to dig in!

I cut off a piece, and by all appearances it looked pretty okay; not too holey, not too dry, crust seemed fine. Then I took a bite and...

Oh. My. Goodness.

It was SO good. It was moist, soft, and still warm. I was grinning from ear to ear for the next half hour because I was just so happy that it turned out well! I exclaimed to Jarrod "I have made BREAD!"

Reflection on Cleaning the Fridge

Sometimes I can be a 'go-getter'. If I see a process that could so obviously be improved to be more efficient, I'll take it upon myself to improve it. And sometimes when I see things that need to be done, and no one's doing them, I will take charge. 

So I took it upon myself last week to make myself the Self-Appointed Fridge Nazi at work. The last time anyone cared to clean out the fridge was in 2011. And as I recall, they didn't take much out of it. The people at my work leave so much stuff in the fridge. From salad dressings, to salsas, to water bottles, it got so bad that there was no room left for me to place my lunch and some days it was hard to close the fridge door.

I got so fed up with it I decided to do something about it...

So last week I put a sign on the fridge telling people it would be cleaned out today and that ANYTHING left in there would be thrown out. The first day, there was a small surge in people taking things home. After that, it didn't look much better. Today rolled around and there was still tons of stuff in there, so I highlighted the words on the sign to reinforce the fact that 'Hey, it doesn't matter what kind of container you have, or what it is, it's goin' in the bin!' 

I got to work and started pulling out everything in there. I think I threw away 90% of what was in there. I filled up a large 60 gallon trash can about 75% of the way. Some notes:

• I brought home 25 water & soda bottles to recycle—that's ridiculous.
• The award for Oldest Item goes to: an opened bottle of Diet Mountain Dew, expired in February of 2011.
• The 2nd Place award for Grossest Item goes to: a tub of some sort of soup or potatoes from Dierberg's Kitchens that was growing both green and white molds. 
• The award for Grossest Item goes to: what I think were green grapes??? They had decayed so much that all that remained was a bright green liquid (in a bag, thank god) and some sort of yellow-green mush. I took a photo of it, but I'll spare you. I find it 200% more revolting looking at it now than I did when I pulled it out of there.

So where does this reflection come in? Well, I realized that there was enough food in the trashcan when I was done that we could have made a serious dent at a food pantry, had that all been donated when it was new. I'm not the best at not wasting food, but today's escapade made me realize again just how much food we all waste in our very-blessed lives. It's something I need to work on: making sure that the food I buy and consume does not go to waste. 

Tuesday Night Project

At our previous house, I had a small closet's worth of pantry space. It is way better than none, but with the amount of food that I am used to keeping in the house at one time (which is a lot), it was fairly tight. In our current house, the pantry is ENORMOUS. It was as big as our walk-in closet; it was a nice perk. But when we moved in, for the sake of time I'm sure, we just shoved a lot of stuff on the shelves to get it done. And ever since then, it's stuck.

The other day I turned to Jarrod and said "You know, I've been thinking that the pantry needs to be rearranged..."

To my slight surprise, he agreed and said "Yeah, I think it's time we "get organized" and, you know, not go too crazy, but maybe buy some bins and tubs..."

So I went to the store and bought 6 medium basket tubs, 2 small basket tubs, and 1 long tray. I thought eight tubs seemed like a good place to start. If I didn't need all of them, I can take some of them right back to Target.

So tonight was the night, and I started by taking some 'before' pictures, which you can click on for larger versions if you'd like...

The food side. Looking at this picture, it hits me
just how much food we actually have. As you can
see, it's sort of grouped, but not really. Again, shoved away onto a shelf.

The side dedicated to "stuff." Crock pots,
small appliances, recycling, lunch bags,
grocery bags, all thrown onto shelves wherever
they may fit. Oh, and two clocks...?

So I got to work right before dinner, taking things out of the pantry in order to figure out how best to sort them, group them, or what might be best in bins. I tackled the food first, since it was the most 'pieces' by far. The crock pots and whatnots would be tough because they're big bulky items, but I figured the food would be the most challenging.

And this is what I came up with. I used up all of the baskets I bought, plus a few other bins I found in the pantry (that weren't being filled with anything.) I think it's a huge improvement! And I'm really happy with it; feeling a big sense of accomplishment for tonight. And there is so much more room now! But I'm not going to be too anxious to fill it up with even more stuff.

Starting on the left side, we have the cereals, then disposable things;
chips, sauces, oils, and vinegars, breads;
random breakfast items and snacks, coffees, teas, and other drinks, baking stuff;
starches, an entire row and bin dedicated to Easy Mac, canned goods
(now in rows according to what they are,
[veggies, soups, soups for cooking with]), baking ingredients;
crackers and cookies, and multiples from Costco.

Slightly better than before, less junky I'd say.
Cook books have moved over to this side, many items
were removed (like the random clocks), and bags were consolidated a lot.

Woo hoo!

Adventures in Homemade: Part Two

You can file this under "semi-homemade" more than "homemade" but I'm still very proud of my small achievement in the kitchen.

Last night I made my very first pizza. And I say it's "semi-homemade" simply because I didn't make the crust from scratch. I've been dying to make a margherita pizza at home for quite some time; it's becoming a pizza flavor I really like. And I figured it would be super simple to make, and it was.

I bought some roma tomatoes (Schnucks has a whole display of organic and heirloom tomatoes, who knew?), the pizza crust, and black olives. Jarrod and I agreed on a half tomato/basil, half olive/basil pizza since he doesn't like sliced tomatoes. The rest of the ingredients I had at home, plus a bunch of fresh basil leaves from his brother (apparently he has basil out the wazzoo.)

I sprayed olive oil over all of the crust, spread a light layer of marinara sauce, then started piling on the cheese, tomatoes, olives, and basil. I baked it for 7 minutes and the result was a light, delicious pizza. It was sooooo good, and I didn't feel gross afterwards like sometimes you do with pizza (you know, because it's so loaded with stuff.) Bonus with making your own: you can control the amount of sauce you have on there. Jarrod said he liked it partially because "it doesn't have an ungodly amount of sauce on it!"

So it was a successful dinner! Not cost effective, versus a store bought frozen pizza, but worth the small effort.

Man, I am on a roll this week. Still planning on the bread Saturday.

Adventures in Homemade: Part One

I got a spurt of inspiration yesterday. I decided to bake a cake from scratch!

I'd never done that before, and I needed to strike while the iron was hot. So I went and got some sugar, since Jarrod used up the last of it yesterday making simple syrup, and baked a yellow cake at 9 p.m. The cake was still too warm before I went to bed, so I had to wait to ice it and try it today.

Jarrod and I just had a piece and the verdict is in: not bad! Pretty good, actually. It's a little dense, but that is probably because it didn't rise much.

Why didn't it rise? Well, my new best friend Betty Crocker says that it could be because of too much liquid, too much fat, or the oven was too cool (unlikely). I'm going with too much liquid, that's my guess.

I think the Betty Crocker cookbook is pretty much a staple in most kitchens. I've finally started really paging through mine, and let me tell you, this is a cooking & baking newbie's dream. It breaks down how to do anything you could think of, and in most cases there are little pictures and diagnostics for when things go wrong. Just like my cake not rising; there was a whole list of "What went wrong" and in the next column "Why". It's kind of awesome. In paging through it I also just got some tips on how to cut a chicken, how to know if my muffins are too done or perfect, what in the world kohlrabi is (pretty sure my grandma Watson's mentioned that one), how to poach an egg just right, and that Mesquite is actually a type of wood chip used for smoking (I always thought it was just some sort of flavoring, not an actual wood type.) Who knew? And I found a recipe for something I'll probably have to make for Jarrod's birthday next year: bread pudding with whiskey sauce. Yum.

So the next chapter in the homemade baking saga happens on Saturday: I will attempt to make bread. We're just starting with classic white bread. I don't know how I got so crazy, but I'm doing it. I bought my yeast and now I have everything I need. Jarrod is pretty stoked.

Let Betty guide the way.

PS - On the blog post yesterday, if you subscribe to the email, the YouTube video I posted at the end did not show up. Click to the blog if you want to see the clip from the Animaniacs' Schnitzelbank song :).

Honey Mustard

I made a small discovery tonight that made me so happy: an easy way to make honey mustard. I wanted to put some on some sandwiches I was toasting, so I gave it a shot. It turned out awesome, and it's good to know I can throw together some honey mustard sauce with stuff I already have, versus wasting money on a bottle of French's.

So, to make some awesome honey mustard, just have equal parts honey, mustard, and Worcestershire sauce (wow, I just spelled Worcestershire off the top of my head correctly!) I promise it tastes good!

Support Chick-Fil-A

So, at some point today I saw on a tweet, or maybe in the AP exchange, that today was "Support Chick-Fil-A" day or something of that nature. I joked with Jarrod that we should go to Chick-Fil-A for supper, to which he said "Absolutely not! Some guy at work tried to go at lunch and he said he couldn't even get in the parking lot." We opted for another restaurant instead.

If you haven't a clue why this was happening today, I'll catch you up right here: Recently, it was discovered or said that the founder of Chick-Fil-A was against gay marriage, basically. This stirred up a ton of controversy, and those in support of gay marriage started banning the restaurants in certain places and long-time fans decided to never eat there again.


For my own brief commentary on this, I'd like to say how ridiculous I think this entire thing is. Do we really need to involve politics in EVERYTHING these days? Can't a chicken sandwich just be a damn chicken sandwich? Also, personally, I feel that it seems that if you disagree with the liberal way of things, you get lambasted. If you disagree with more "conservative" tendencies, there isn't nearly the same outcry. Apparently I'm not the only person who feels this way, because otherwise today's craziness wouldn't have happened.

So back on point. Today was a day where people were going to "support" Chick-Fil-A; essentially indirectly supporting the restaurant and their stance against gay marriage. In other news, gay marriage supporters are ALSO planning a day like this, which will be Friday. They plan to flood Chick-Fil-A's with some good ol' PDA... which is exactly the way to get people to come around to acceptance of gays... *shakes head

I have never, ever seen something like what I saw tonight. We turned off a main road, onto a side road where we were stuck in flippin' traffic... for Chick-Fil-A! I mean, they have good chicken, but it's not that good lol. We had to wait over ten minutes in what was, basically, an extremely backed-up drive-thru line that spilled out onto the "road" that runs between a bunch of stores and the restaurants closer to the highway. Had we actually been in line for some chicken, I have no doubt we would have waited over an hour for it. Oh my gosh, people were parking at the back of the Kohl's lot, parking in neighboring restaurants' lots, walking over to Chick-Fil-A, there was a line of people almost wrapping around the restaurant, plus the aforementioned traffic jam. A traffic jam! Over a fast food joint!

On a side note, I feel really, really bad for anyone who had no idea what was going on, assumed Chick-Fil-A was giving away something for free (good assumption considering the swarm), only to find out they weren't, haha.

I wish I could have gotten a better shot of the whole situation, but here is a snap of the scene. It was just plain nuts:

 

 

Burnt Sauce

I had a minor kitchen catastrophe tonight, but it was a first for me. I burnt something on the stove so badly that it caked onto the pot. I was reheating some meat sauce for our noodles, absentmindedly turned the burner on high from the start, and not much later there was steam/smoke coming out from under the lid and my sauce was a bubbling away.

And burning.

Thank goodness it was on an older pot. I soaked it immediately after we spooned out the sauce we wanted, which luckily still tasted fine, and then grabbed a brillo pad and scrubbed away. Since this is my first burnt-pot shenanigan, I'm quite proud of myself for getting all of it off of there. You'd never know that a couple hours ago, that thing was black as coal. You know, it was almost therapeutic in an odd way, scratching away the burnt parts bit by bit. (Knowing that my pot was not ruined for life was a nice feeling too.) It reminded me of scratching off a lottery ticket.

Do What You Do, and Be Good At It

I have a complaint to make to the restaurants of America: Why do you all feel the need to serve almost every genre of food?

Recently on vacation, we dined out a little more than normal, like ya do when you're on vacation. Anyways, it occurred to me that so many of the places we went to had a huge variety of food; an unnecessary amount, in most cases.

Why is it that an Italian restaurant feels the need to serve burgers? If I'm going to an Italian place, there's a good chance I'm going because I want Italian food. It really bugs me that so many of our restaurants feel like they have to cater to everyone and the only way to do that is to offer a little of everything. The fast food industry has taken a turn like this too, if you haven't noticed. Five years ago we wouldn't have dreamed of going to Wendy's for a salad, or get iced coffee at McDonald's, or breakfast at Subway. Why? Because they were already successful with (and good at) their staple items, burgers or sub sandwiches. According to a retired fast food franchisee, the restaurants have expanded their menus so much these days, requiring more and more equipment to make these new special items, that it is nearly impossible for anyone to even get started, much less stay in business.

Please, restaurant CEOs: cut it out. Instead of being mediocre at a lot, how about you try to be awesome at less. Instead of serving me just 'eh' spaghetti, forget about the burger and fries, and make great pasta! Do what you do and be proud of it.

Reminiscing about fun, happy meals

I had a random thought driving in to work this morning. That thought led into another one, and they were both about McDonald's.

Does anyone know if you can still trick or treat at McDonald's? As I recall, unless I'm completely making this up, I used to stop by McDonald's on Halloween night. If you did that, you would get a bag of cookies. My favorite have always been the McDonaldland cookies, and let me tell ya, this was always one of the best treats I got on Halloween. (By the way, if you order a Happy Meal for your self [which I sometimes do, it's the perfect amount of food where you don't feel blah] you can usually ask to exchange the toy for a bag of cookies.)

So then that thought led to the next: I wonder if you can still take your report card to McDonald's and get free burgers? Does anyone know if you can? It was kind of an un-advertised thing, but you could take it there and get free hamburgers for every A you had. Limit of 6. The person who waited on you would initial your report card so you couldn't cheat and bring it back, and it was great! We usually got our burgers and then went over to my grandparents' house where we would share them with them. And I would usually find a piece of cheese in their fridge to add on. For a short period of time, Taco Bell jumped in on this too and gave you free tacos, but I think that was limited to only 3 or 4.

Ah those were the days. As much as everyone wants to dis McDonald's for their unhealthy food, I think most everyone has fond memories of being a kid and going to a place like that and getting fast food. A friend of mine (she's in her 70s) has told a story where Friday was McDonald's night, and they would pile their 10 kids in the station wagon and treat the kids. My mom still occasionally will talk about going to the A&W that used to be in town, and getting the little 10-cent root beers. I remember, in my hometown location, how the play area used to be in the back of the store. And friends had birthday parties there, and there was only one slide. That slide is still there to this day, though it got moved to a larger play area. Back in the day when fast food and easy-frozen cooking wasn't rampant, it was a real treat to go there. Heck, I still think it's a treat for myself to this day. On my last day of college, the day I moved out, I had everything packed up and ready to go and I decided to REALLY treat myself and get breakfast at McD's.

I think these reasons are why it really bums me out when I hear about legislation to ban Happy Meal toys because it's supposedly promoting 'unhealthy eating.' Yeah right. Let kids be kids. A toy is a toy, and McDonald's food is perfectly fine in moderation, as it's supposed to be. No one is 'supposed' to eat there as often as some do, so don't punish a bunch  of kids because of your lack of a desire to make a home-cooked meal.

My day

I am on a great emotional high at the moment.

I just made a grrrrreat supper. I mean, we actually had a MEAL. I fixed chicken patties for sandwiches, white rice, and fresh corn on the cob. It was my first time cooking fresh veggies (I know, I know, it's just boiling water and salt mostly, but still) and the corn happened to be a delicious bunch, too. So that was all really good. Oh! And, not only did I do this, but my timing was perfect. All three things were done within 2 minutes of each other. And to top that, I just lined up three, count them THREE, lunches for myself this week. I boiled some noodles after supper so I could use up some spaghetti sauce I had in the fridge. I got two servings out of that, and in addition to that I have my leftovers from the Elephant Bar the other night.

Boo-yah!

All the dishes are clean, there are no dishes in our sink anymore, and we are ready to watch some Breaking Bad!