Games 13 and 14

Roast chicken with homemade stuffing. Only God knows if the chicken was completely cooked. Making stuffing at home was really amazing for me. It was -wake up in the middle of the night sweating and desperate- good. I only hope no one ever catches me eating freshly made stuffing for breakfast in the dead heat of summer alone and rapturous.

Po' boys loosely adapted from this local restaurant's Rich Boy sandwich. Much garlic.

Some cookies I was dying to make months ago but held off until Christmas when I was over it. Honestly, the spirit of the season disappeared awhile ago but I sticking with my homemade plans. The white stuff is homemade marshmallow for a sweet treat gift. While making your own marshmallows is a fascinating science experiment it smells like hell and the knowledge of the ingredients is quite off putting. I had Brandon taste them because I was absolutely disgusted by the end.

Handmade Holidays So Far

I have been diligently working on my homemade gifts. The unicorn is for a work friend. It took at least 10 hours longer than I anticipated. I learned a few lessons mainly about myself. I had to sort of call it quits even though the legs are still crooked and I had re-sewn (by hand no less) each one at least 3 times because I was afraid I wouldn't get to any of my other gifts and ruin Christmas with my obsessive repositioning. I chose to make it first because I have wanted to make one ever since I saw a knitted unicorn in a book that we were sending back to the publisher. There were are few attempts at drafting the pattern until my mom offered and made one in minutes that then took a week and a half on my end to complete. But now my time is free for the rest.

A needle book and matching pincushion for my boyfriend's sister.

A marker/pencil carrying roll for Brandon's birthday.

Ornaments on the tree and the fabric scrap garland that took too long and I quickly lost interest and Brandon finished in a real show of patience. Ideally I want to add scraps every year until it is long enough to go all around the tree. Also, what a crafty walk down memory lane it will be when I pull it out of storage every year!

Games 11 and 12

Sausage Chili! Five jalapenos!! Even better the next day!!!

Fish and Chips in honor of the beloved Steelers and Brandon's birthday. I enthusiastically made this last year using a recipe from Jamie Oliver that instructed me to fry it in a gallon of vegetable oil. It was terrifying but absolutely sublime. After massively overeating and drinking too many champagne and Guinness cocktails (really more than 1/2 of one glass was overdoing it) I swore I would never do this again. I am a worthless liar. Except I did switch to a Joy of Cooking recipe that only called for 3 inches of oil and a much smaller pot. If I could eat fried fish every day I would absolutely joyfully.

P.S. The team won each game.

Recently Made

I am planning to do a "homemade holiday" this year. Which means I will sew or bake all the gifts. As something to brag about it sounds like a good idea but in practise we shall see. I am also making ornaments for our tree. Unfortunately, it is a dreary day so there are no pictures. Only this one of my newly recovered ironing board. I felt silly when I finally discovered that you can make your own ironing board cover because I had been lamenting the price of store bought for months. In a great bit of irony I did not iron (or wash now that I think about it) the fabric I used.

Game 9 & Game 10

Slow cooked barbecue ribs with lemony spinach and garlic cannellini bean mash. Obviously, the Steelers won.

Last weekend (game 10) we were both busy and out of the house separately so there was no game day meal. The subsequent loss solidified the belief that our meals and the successful making and eating of are the determining factor behind whether the Steelers win or lose. Ridiculous?

game 8

Chicken of the Taverns by Amy Sedaris. We have been eagerly looking forward to this meal. It did not disappoint. So buttery and yummy.

Belated Halloween

We made a jack o' lantern cake for a belated get together last night. It was a burnt sugar cake from Joy (obviously) with cream cheese frosting. The burnt sugar was a huge pain in the ass. It took three tries and two different cooks to get it right and even then it was still a little runny. We (i.e. Brandon. After the caramel I was done with finicky stuff, plus he is an artiste.) only added a little sugar to the icing because the cake was quite sweet already. The combination of deeply sweet cake and almost salty cream cheese frosting was perfect! I would make this again just as a regular cake despite the 45 minute crystallized sugar ordeal.

Games 4 & 6, 7

We tried to make our own pasta for spaghetti and meatballs. I had memories of this being a difficult but ultimately rewarding experience. Not so. We argued. The Steelers played poorly and the noodles were tough and uncooperative with the rest of the meal.

I was stricken with a mystery virus so there are no photos of the tasty nachos from game 5. Beans, salsa, cheese, enormous pile of chips. Oh, and the latest craze in our kitchen: canned pickled jalapenos. For some reason there are carrots in there too but they are too hot for me!

Brandon's pot roast with sweet and regular potatoes. Another lesson learned: don't just sit around drinking beer while it half dries out in the oven. Still, the bottom part that cooked in the beer and mushroom stock was melty and delicious.

Bacon Cheese Fries. At home. There goes my waistline!

Games 2 and 3

Hash Browns, Sausages on soft white buns with Brandon's Family's Sounds-Gross-Until-You-Try-It Peppers and Ketchup sauce.

And Tacos with taco meat which I was always very wary of as a child because it is so dark colored and trashy people seem to really like it. I still prefer beans but for the Steelers I will eat "taco-spiced meat."

A 5K!

We ran the GPLC 5k today. It was the first race I've ever been to and I was relieved to find that I could keep up relatively well. We ran it in 33:30! I was worried I wouldn't even be able to finish, which was ridiculous because I have been running (slowly) for a few months, so I was very happy to run a 10+ minute mile. The next race I hope to do is the Gutbuster on Thanksgiving.

Also, the Steelers won so the whole household is happy today. Below is the first game day meal. More to come.

House Hunting

Yesterday I began my house search. Some of the houses were pretty nice. A couple were pretty gross. All in all I was really happy with the day. This used to be a grocery store.

Three Blooms!

This summer my night blooming cereus had three blooms. I am so proud!

Another

After seeing tote bags in the stores this weekend that were too expensive and not exactly what i would want anyway I made this. I have yet to produce something that really lives up to my expectations. This bag ended up being a little too grandma for me but hey, I can't run from it forever so I might as well just accept that I'm a nerd.

The doll quilt fell victim to the heat wave. If the weather stays nice I intend to get back to it. I have been pretty excited to try the hand stitched binding again. Such satisfaction!

Quilt

I finished the quilt I promised myself I'd never make. Now I intend to begin piecing together the baby and doll quilts that I "really meant it" when I said I'd never make. The hand stitched binding that so terrified me ended up being the most satisfying to sew. All the crap I got from my elders about challenges being the most rewarding experiences turns out to be true. Dang!

cake day 2

Chocolate cake with peanut butter icing. Luckily the homemade look is all the rage these days. Linder balls as adornment.

makin' stuff

So I have a really gorgeous new sewing machine. Here are some pictures of things I have recently made. Of course, I told myself when I started sewing again that I was not going to start making toys or quilts. Obviously, I am now working on a real quilt, not just a cover for an existing blanket, but a true quilted quilt and the pictures are of useless half mangled toys.

The giraffe is a particular hit around the house.

curried carrots

The weekly menu planning is such a great success! We were making our list tonight and looking over all of April and were pleased to discover that each week was more enjoyable than the previous. Now we plan a "special" friday night dinner. Last week was spaghetti and meatballs. We were bursting! Brandon seems to be in charge of the ideas for the exciting meals. This week he has taken on a very ambitious menu. Pierogies (homemade) and some manner of cabbage dish. Another reason to anxiously await fridays.

I had another run in with a not quite right Martha Stewart recipe. The Curry Chicken with Carrots and Lime Rice from the most recent Good Cooking magazine. I used half the chicken and carrots but the full tablespoon of curry powder and it was still sort of bland. The pictures in her recipes always get me but then the flavor falls short. Of course, we are having it again this week because the carrots were awesome. Roasted in chicken fat with curry and then doused with lime juice right out of the oven. I am just going to amp up the chicken somehow. Probably just with some salt or a long roasting.

Cake Day

After a frenzied hiatus, we have gotten back to cooking and planning ahead. The ham and 2 huge plates of homemade candies at Easter destroyed my will power for a while. Luckily, Brandon made Chicken of the Taverns from Amy Sedaris' book and it was so amazingly good that I realized that home cooking can in fact still satisfy my insane cravings.

A note on Amy Sedaris' book I Like You. It is definitely funny but there is much more to it than the humor. I think it is a genuinely good, interesting cookbook/entertaining manual. The huge corporate bookstore I work for insists on shelving it in the humor section with books that have pictures of cats doing funny things and books collecting all the Dilbert comic strips. I love those books just as much but I think it is a disservice to the customers and to Amy Sedaris to have her book pigeonholed. There are plenty of cookbook collectors who are missing out and probably just as many humor nerds who just think her book is a joke.

Also, a kid I work with recently organized a "Cake Day" because everyone I work with loves cake. I brought a Nigella Lawson's Mother in Law Madeira Cake. It is my favorite "adult" dessert. A lemon cake with no icing just a hard sugary crust. I always feel very grown-up eating it. One of the older women who really seems to have her life together (because she always looks put together and has a husband who really pays the bills so she can just have a sort of hobby job) said it was very good. Embarrassingly, hers was the only opinion I wanted to hear. I hope I get over this wanting to be taken care of phase because I never used to want to be a woman whose husband paid the bills while I just cooked and indulged myself in hobbies. Honestly, I don't know anything about her life or their set-up but it would be nice to not be panicked about money and the future.

Sloppy! Joe!

I grew up in a pretty healthy house. We ate vegetables and tofu. We didn't have salt and my parents are probably still using the same sugar from 1982. The cooking certainly wasn't amazing but I was also healthy and at a normal weight and also still had a future. But now I am grown up and can do what I want which translates into sloppy joe sandwiches for dinner and then lunch and possible lunch again tomorrow. I console myself with "at least it was homemade, not canned (yet!)" Even if it was, sloppy joes at home is quite possibly the best thing ever. I had chips with it too but just couldn't bring myself to photograph that part because there is still a tiny voice inside me saying, No! Stop! Don't eat that too!

St. Patrick's

Sheperd's Pie. Not nearly as good or exciting as I thought it would be. Many stomach pains.

Nicoise

One of the restaurants I worked in served a salmon nicoise. I always wanted to eat it but never did. We weren't allow to eat or even buy the food at work or after our shift unless we changed clothes and came in a "real" customer. I still have a lot of unresolved anger over that. But anyway. I finally got the chance to have a nicoise earlier this week. I worked late so my boyfriend made it and it was ready when I came home. Then suddenly I was having one of those mind blown open oh! I am older and now I understand moments that your parents insist will happen. No wonder all the customers complained about the nicoise at work. It was almost completely unlike the nicoise on my table at home. Instead of potatoes it had angel hair pasta, and tons of red onions, no green beans, a mustard less dressing or maybe no dressing at all, no greens of any kind, and barely any salmon (to be fair mine didn't either it was tuna). I felt a twinge of guilt over mocking the complaining customers, but I still maintain that you are responsible for reading the menu before the food comes. Our homemade nicoise was tasty. I ate too many olives and woke up puffy the next morning. And I still have a deep craving for the pasta nicoise at my former job.
This was from Joy of Cooking (obviously).

Portions of Pain

So I have been trying to eat the correct portion sizes lately. It is a pretty terrifying experience so far. I read a whole book about it at work the other day. The book was mostly photographs of the huge amount of food I am used to with tiny bits taken out to show how much I should be eating. We went out to eat last night and I held the palm of my hand against my sandwich and felt very sad. I was already totally starving from my properly portioned lunch. I survived the dinner. I comforted myself with the fact that I was going to have my leftovers for breakfast. Which I did (I even got up early in my excitement) and was surprised that it was too much for me to eat!

Tonight we had the always delicious lentils, rice, and caramelized onions from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.

fried fish, beans

Not together but separately. I love them both very much. However, my love for fried fish and everything else fried and really, if I'm being honest, every other type of food has more than caught up with me so that I have gained a lot of weight. I even bought a scale to prove it to myself every time I walk into the bathroom. So the fish was a bad choice of food but the beans were not. White beans dressed with red wine vinegar, a bit of extra virgin olive oil, and mixed with chopped onion and some tuna. Spinach was what I had to fill it out. It really was good.


I have just started reading Mrs. Beeton's Household Management (abridged) and came across this intriguing recipe: toast sandwich. A piece of toast between slices of buttered bread. A favorite among the invalids. No wonder they couldn't get out of bed. It is an amazing book. Apparently it is the much overlooked culinary/house keeping classic, but also a fantastic feat of organization and writing. Hopefully that is true and reading it will make up for all the crap mystery novels I have been devouring lately

New bag

I have been searching for a new bag for awhile because my current one isn't quite big enough to carry my lunch to work and I never have room for my new digital camera either. So I stumbled across tinyhappy's shoulder bag tutorial
and ran out the JoAnn's as fast as I could. Her pattern was really easy and the bag looks great! I added a padded camera pocket so I can always have it with me without worrying. I am excited to start using it! I want to make more! Send me your orders! I may start offering it in my etsy store and maybe someone will finally buy something from me.

Banana Splits For Breakfast!

I read parts of the Biggest Loser Cookbook during a slow time at work the other day and discovered a real gem. A healthy banana split. Peanut butter spread on banana with yogurt and granola. The recipe called for all low-fat/no-fat ingredients and probably fruit instead of granola but this was super tasty.

Yesterday we had a very ambitious day planned on our menu: home-cooked bbq ribs. Brandon ended up making the whole meal because I was in the middle of a sewing fit (see above) and he did a great job. Classic American potato salad with mayo and mustard, barbecue ribs just falling off the bone in a homemade barbecue sauce with fresh ginger and lemon, and more homemade rolls (still somehow really salty! we are just learning about baking!), as well as the last minute addition of spinach sauteed with garlic to balance out some of the heaviness. Everything came out of Joy of Cooking and seemed to be pretty easy. I have no idea how I survived before getting this book.

udon: no longer scary

Years ago I had udon noodles in a Chinese restaurant in Akron, Ohio. They were enormous, slimy, and cold. Everyone at the table (including adults with food experience) agreed that they were disgusting. I hoped to get over this trauma when I bought a package of dried udon a while ago. Finally, the other night I had this meal. Very simple flavored with soy sauce and equal parts minced garlic and ginger. These were so delicious. The meal reminded me of ramen noodles but I didn't feel awful afterward. I can't wait to make this again. I almost wish I was a waitress again so I could come home late and tired and fry up a pot.

Tonight was a caeser ( I believe that was how Joy of Cooking spelled it) salad. No raw eggs, no creamy mayonnaise. All marvelous. Joy of Cooking is my new favorite cookbook. Every recipe works. The authors never preach. There is never any shame or horror when the meal is finished. No stress.

the winter of salty biscuits

We have been having a lot of biscuits. I love biscuits but really how many should a person really have? This stew was loosely based on the Barefoot Contessa's. Recently I became my mother and since then I have been unable to actually complete a recipe in it's entirety without major trauma. Resulting in meals that do taste delicious but look unappetizingly monotone or somehow not quite right.

The menu planning is getting easier and gives me a real sense of accomplishment which is lacking in some other aspects of my life. As challenging as it is to move Hannah Montana books around the front of store displays I would like something more.
Brandon's new specialty is stuffed peppers. I always thought it was sort of grocery store deli food but now I like them. If you don't look at all the cheese it is probably even pretty healthy.

tofu with peanut sauce

When planning a week's menu and trying to stick to it do not leave the untested unfamiliar meals for the end of the week. We made this mistake and ended up being too tired and going out to eat and spending too much money. This tofu meal was the last we made and we only made it by the skin of our teeth. Tofu is new to my kitchen even though I grew up eating it. This was a very good filling meal but I felt unsatisfied because I had dreamt of pizza all day. The peanut sauce was homemade!

weekend pancakes

We have started a weekly planned menu. Written out with holiday specific decorations just like the ones in elementary school. It was very difficult. Not quite gut wrenching but much harder than it should have been for two people who enjoy cooking and eating and rarely disagree. However, it is the most comforting thing to know what is for dinner ahead of time. So far we haven't had to order pizza in a panic or eat out at all. We only planned dinners so the pancakes were impromptu (having the ingredients for a week's worth of dinners has so many perks!).

The pasta was day 4 of the menu. It is a remembering of Jamie Oliver's "Workin' Girl Pasta." Feel good food.

perfect strawberries, homemade tater tots

Finally a successful trip to the grocery. A truly thought out list, though often too impossible to create, makes life so much easier. The "sale fruit" ended up being winter strawberries that were perfectly sweet all the way through. Not one tart berry in the entire container.

A day off and an opportune story about a boy nicknamed Tater produced the greasy pile of homemade tater tots. They were one hundred percent more wonderful than the store bought variety. If I can find a way to make them without the house reeking of oil (not to mention cutting out some of the fat from a diet perspective) I will make them all the time. They were just as easy to make as mashed potatoes.

Also, I finally attempted to make tomato soup. Better tasting than canned, just as easy, and much fewer terrible ingredients. Another successful Joy of Cooking recipe.

bratwurst, apples, onions

Last night's dinner was a weekday success. Even though I was too last minute to brown the sausage and it had an eerie 70's look.