And what does Big T eat with Mac and Cheese?

That's right, y'all: Stewed Tomatoes. Big T is a former colleague of mine who was always ribbed over the loudspeaker about his "favorite vegetable" when my pal Hoedje read the day's lunch menu to the school. Me, I'm not so much a fan of stewed tomatoes, but the WCM has been clamoring for them ever since the tomato plants began to yield. S, I went out to the garden yesterday morning and plucked some green peppers and some tomatoes - Roma tomatoes and some grape tomatoes, too, since they were ripe.



First, I filled my saucepan with water and started it boiling. Then, I cut a shallow X on the bottom of each tomato, because who wants stewed tomatoes with peels in them? Ew! I gave each tomato a quick bath in the boiling water - about 30 seconds each, really - then plopped them into an ice bath.


While I was letting them chill, I started cutting up my peppers and onions. I needed about a third of a cup of each.



I had way more green pepper than I needed, so I slid the rest into a freezer bag and let them chill with their previously frozen brethren. I always overestimate the amount of green pepper I'm going to need, and I hate to see it go to waste. So I stick it in the freezer for when the price goes up over the winter and I'm going to want some for my tomato sauce.

Thrifty, eh?

So I dumped this into my saucepan with some olive oil, salt, and pepper to get it all softened and flavorful while I went about peeling the tomatoes. The hot bath followed by the ice water shock allowed them to slip their skins easily, and I was left with a bowlful of plump rosy naked 'maters.


I cut the Roma tomatoes in cross sections and halved the grape tomatoes. I dumped them into the pot with the softened pepper and onion, and added some dried basil and oregano. If I'd had any fresh herbs, I'd have added them instead, but alas, I was without.


Aren't they pretty? I let them stew for another 5-10 minutes, and they got nice and soupy. The WCM was exceedingly complimentary, so I think this recipe's a winner.

Cheesiness!

One of my mother's best Sunday dinners came from cans and boxes - it was better for all of us that way, as there were clear instructions, times and temperatures given, and very little room for improvisation allowed. She'd make a box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, dump a can of stewed tomatoes into it, and boil a few hot dogs. Voila! Dinner!

Quite frankly, I learned how to cook because I have a strong survival instinct and refined tastebuds. Thankfully, I was only subjected to my mother's "cooking" two weekends every month, since I lived with the General and my stepmother. Not-quite-feigning an interest in all things culinary, I pored over my mother's cookbooks and gently took those reins out of her hands. Sometimes, I'll still find myself cooking dinner if I'm invited over to her house. She's a piss-poor cook, but she's quite clever, huh?

Anyhow, I make my macaroni and cheese from scratch, since it just tastes so much better that way and isn't loaded with mono-whatever and hydrolyzed-whatsit. It's also quite speedy, if you can plan it.

Tip #1: when you're cooking pasta, cook the whole pound whether you need it or not. Once cooked, put whatever you're not using into a gallon sized ziploc bag, add a glug of olive or canola oil, shake it about to coat the pasta, and throw it in the freezer. When you need cooked pasta to add to hot sauce sometime, you take the bag out of the freezer, empty the frozen brick of pasta into the colander and run hot water over it.



It thaws in a flash!



Tip #2: when you're making cheese sauce, do as I did and make a monster batch. Freeze the leftover sauce. You can thaw it in the microwave, dump it on the pasta, stir, then bake. You've got homemade Mac & Cheese in under 30 minutes, which includes the baking time.


Tip #3: when you go to Costco or whatever huge warehouse store you may frequent, and you see the packages of ham steaks, don't think "Jeez Louise! Who the hell is going to eat that freakin' much ham?!" Instead, throw one into your cart. You've got 3 ham steaks in there - that's 3 mac & cheeses, or 2 mac & cheeses and one ham & cabbage soup, or breakfast for a family of 9 minus the eggs and homefries. Just buy them. They're lovely.

Ok, tips done, time for some fun! Ingredients - Half & half (not necessary, but nice!), milk, cheese, flour, salt, Colman's dry mustard. Note the number of open bags of cheese I have. It would seem that instead of looking for an open bag, a certain spouse instead just finds any old bag of cheese and rips it open. So, if you have one of these spouses, you may find yourself in a similar situation. This is a great way to use up all of those bags. I'm all about space consolidation.



So, first, melt you some butter. Plop a whole stick of the stuff into your saucepan.


Let it melt all the way, then dump in 8 tablespoons of flour, one teaspoon of salt, and one teaspoon of Colman's dry mustard. Whisk the bejesus out of this, because you don't want it to burn!


Then, add 4 cups of the white stuff. I used one cup half & half and 3 cups of milk. You can do it however you like, though. Go wild. Once again, stir it like crazy, otherwise you're either going to have lumps or you're going to burn it. Neither scenario is desirable. So stir. You'll be stirring until this comes to a near boil and gets quite thick. I recommend using a whisk, since it eliminates the lumps better than a wooden spoon.

Now, take it off the heat and dump in as much cheese as you think it can handle. I thought my bechamel could handle about 6 cups of cheese. I was right.


Once again, sing it with me, you've got to STIR this shit until it's smooth and velvety, because lumpy cheese sauce is nasty. Once it looks like this:

then you've got something.

So you reconstitute your pasta that you'd made sometime last week, easy peasy. If you're a vegetarian, you can add the cheese sauce and continue living your virtuous meat-free life. If you're an unrepentant carnivore like me and cannot imagine a meal that doesn't feature some slain animal carcass, then continue on to the next bit.

Ham! You remember that ham steak? Cube it, then throw it into your casserole with the pasta, cover the whole mess with about a third of that cheese sauce, give it a stir, sprinkle it with more cheese, cover it with a sheet of aluminum foil, and bung it into a 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes.

This was before Miss Peanut and the WCM went back for seconds. There's enough left for Miss Peanut to have a meal of it tomorrow. The WCM accompanied his Mac & Cheese with my homemade Stewed Tomatoes. I'm going to save that recipe for tomorrow. Lord knows, I've little else to report on!

Ratatouille

So, I've been telling you all about the lovely garden produce I've been harvesting from my garden. I figured it was time to show you some. After watching Remy the rat assemble a beautiful ratatouille in the movie by the same name, I thought that, as I had a smallish skinny eggplant, a zucchini, and several tomatoes, that I could do approximately the same thing. So I did.

Now, I have to tell you that the ratatouille of my childhood was always an aromatic soupy mess, served alongside some kind of meat. It was not a meal in and of itself. Nor was it ever so artistically arranged - the General had better things to do with his time than fiddle with the placement of vegetables in crockery.

Be this as it may, I have to avow that half my intent in arranging it thusly was to entice Miss Peanut to try some. She's a picky little thing, turning her nose up at all vegetables that are not asparagus. Let me tell you something else: it did not work. It wasn't half bad, though, so I'll share with you how I made it, just in case you find yourself with a free afternoon, some veg, and a burning desire to arrange circular veggie slices with mathematical precision, shall I? Ok, then.

You'll need one skinny eggplant, one skinny zucchini, and about 3 skinny plum tomatoes. They should all have roughly the same diameter. It will make your life easier if you plan it this way. In my case, serendipity played a part, since that's how they grew.

You'll also need one large-ish shallot, a clove or two of garlic, kosher or Maldon salt, freshly ground black pepper, a few healthy glugs of olive oil, and an ample handful of herbes de Provence.

Peel your eggplant. Whether you peel the zucchini is completely a matter of preference. I prefer not to, so I didn't. I'm lazy. Slice all the veg in damn-near paper thin slices, making neat cross sections. Put the zucchini - and only the zucchini - in a large bowl.

Finely chop the shallot and mince the garlic. Throw this in the bowl with the zucchini. Add the salt, pepper, herbes de Provence, and olive oil, and toss well, making sure that all the slices have some specks adhering to them. Oh, and since you're wondering why I'm picking on the zucchini here and not the eggplant, it's because eggplant is like an oil sponge. You put the oil on the eggplant and you're going to wind up emptying the entire bottle in there. It's not a good idea!

So then, into the casserole. A slice of eggplant, herbed zucchini, then tomato. Repeat. Repeat, repeat, repeatrepeatrepeat until you've either filled the casserole or run out of vegetables. If you've got any residual specks of herby goodness left in your zucchini bowl, scoop them out with the side of your hand and sprinkle them lovingly all over the assembled loveliness before you pop it into a 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes. If you were me, you'd throw some grated parmesan cheese over the whole deal after you take it out of the oven. But you're not me, so you'll do what you want.

On the whole, I prefer the General's fragrant soupiness, but this is really pretty.

Facebook ate my brain...

That damned Facebook done ate my brain! I spend waaaaay too much time there these days, frittering away my summer vacation.

I've also been cooking and baking a lot, since our garden started producing vegetables - tomatoes, bell peppers, zucchini, and eggplant. Our blackberries are ripening now, the strawberries are flowering, and the raspberries are just putting out fruit. The fledgling fig tree has a few figs on it, but, as I am not a fig fan, I refuse to wax rhapsodic about them. I couldn't give a fig. (har, har, har... groan...)

But mostly, I've been reading like a woman possessed and making ice cream. I've gone through a book a day for a whole month, pausing this last week to collect myself before launching into another spate of devouring pages. The ice cream, well, let me justify it this way: I have an ice cream maker, see? Why should I pay for inferior ice cream when I can make delicious additive-free confections at home?

So far, I've made chocolate, vanilla, mint chocolate chip, cappuccino chip, and butter pecan. I've been all over foodgawker for recipes - next up is peanut butter with chocolate covered peanuts and fudge swirls or fresh strawberry. I really don't know which one I'm going with, but whatever it is, I can guarantee that it won't last long in our house.

The Best Damn Apple Cake Ever.

So, ever since my brother-in-law, AC, got divorced a year or so ago, my husband has taken to inviting him over for dinner every now and then. Yesterday, we had a surfeit of bratwurst, so the WCM invited AC over. I sauteed a lot of sliced onion, then simmered them with the bratwurst in lager for about 40 minutes. I made my very favorite red cabbage with bacon and goat cheese, and whipped up my late mother-in-law's famous mashed potatoes. That woman was a nasty piece of work sometimes, but she made ass-kicking mashed potatoes.

So, the mind wandered a bit while I was mentally making preparations to produce this epicurian feast, and asked my consciousness what I was going to serve for dessert with this meal? Hmmm, said consciousness, how about an apple cake? You've got lots of apples to use up, why not make them even yummier with cake? Mind responded with a mental two-thumbs-up and we were all resolved that apple cake it was to be.

So here's how it was accomplished:

I preheated my oven to 350 degrees.

Then, I took a stick of butter and melted it in my medium-sized frying pan. To this, I added six peeled, cored, sliced apples, and sauteed them for about 5 minutes. Then, I added one half cup of white sugar, 2 tablespoons of ground cinnamon, and one quarter cup of packed brown sugar, and let this bubble away for a while - about 15 minutes - until there was a lovely cinnamon caramel sauce. I turned the heat off, arranged the apples with two forks so that there was a single layer in a rough concentric-circle pattern, and prepared the cake batter.

You need:

1 stick of butter
1.5 c. sugar
1/2 c. canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla

3 eggs

1/2 c. milk
1 teaspoon vinegar or lemon juice

1.5 c. flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
dash ground cinnamon

(See how those ingredients are separated? There's a reason for that!)

Cream the first set of ingredients together until you've got a smooth mixture. Add the vinegar to the milk. Combine the last four ingredients together in a smallish bowl. Then, you're going to add these ingredients in a round-robin fashion in three batches: one egg, stir, a splash of milk, stir, a bit of flour, stir, and keep going until you've used up all your eggs, milk, and flour. (a normal person would've said to combine, alternating wet and dry ingredients, but y'all know that I'm not normal!)

Pour the cake batter on top of the apples in the skillet and spread it out until it covers them completely. Put the whole shebang in the oven for about 40 minutes, or until the top's a golden crackly brown and you can stick a toothpick in the center of the cake and have it come out clean.

Let the cake sit for about 15 minutes and try not to pick of the crunchy edges. I know, they're damn near irresistible, but you're going to have to try. Slap a platter on top of that skillet, flip it, and unmold the cake. Be careful, because the caramel on the bottom of the pan is still liquid and you don't want to scald yourself!

Let it cool all of the way - or, if you're like me, most of the way - before slicing it up and devouring with with your choice of beverage. I recommend milk, personally, but it would pair wonderfully with tea (Earl Grey. Hot. Make it so!).

In which I am all thumbs and spasms

Not only am I an inarticulate knitter, I am a profanely clumsy one, too. At least I know how many stitches I started with, and haven't dropped one yet, so nothing's really lost. I very nearly lost my shit though, when I had a freaking spasm in my hand and yanked that slippery green metal needle completely out of the row. I have about one inch of sock cuff knitted, for those who are keeping track. Nothing much, really, but for me, quite an achievement.

I also ran today for the second time in several hundred months. I was a little sore and stiffish today at work. I can tell you this, though: sore and stiff though I was today, I'm likely to be thrice that tomorrow! Christ on a cracker, I am actually hurtin' right now. I'm also a weensy bit impressed with myself. Only once did I give up in the running, and that was on the last stretch of it, uphill, and for the last seven seconds. I counted. Knackered, I am, but come Wednedsday, I'll be doing it yet again.

School today was hard. We're just all getting back on track after the chaos that was the State testing program. After seven days of laxity, it's very difficult getting anything closely resembling work out of my students. Even the rocket scientists were ridiculously chatty and difficult to corral. That's only to be expected, though.

I have a few friends, who all independently of themselves, have recently suffered personal setbacks. I want to hug them all, shelter and shield them, fight for those that need it, and let the others weep on my shoulder. Unfortunately, not all of them are geographically close enough to me to do that. For those of you that aren't, expect a phone call soon. For those of you that are, you may find yourself taking one for the team - even though you personally don't need a hug, you may find yourself receiving one intended for another. Please accept it and karmically pass it on. It's well-intentioned.

And hell, while I'm giving out the karmic hugs, if anyone out there would like one, I'm sure I can pass one on to you. All you have to do is ask.

The Bucket List

I've started Bucket List. I'm not in imminent danger of death - that I know of - but I figured there was enough stuff that I haven't done in my life that I should do, that I should organize it. This weekend, I got a start at two of my Bucket List items.

The first, Run a 5K, will happen this July. Since I am about as out of shape as Jabba the Hutt, I figured I'd better get started on this now. I downloaded an interval training podcast and began the arduous task of running and walking. I looked like a complete ass, alternating between minutes of walking and mere seconds of running, but I did it. I'll keep doing it, until I can run five bloody kilometers. It's more than I've ever run continuously in my entire life, but I'm determined. This will happen. Even if I hate it. Which I currently do. Hate running. Yuck.

The second item begun is slightly more fun and entirely more sedentary: Knit a Pair of Socks. My grandmother taught me how to crochet, embroider, cross stitch, needlepoint, and sew. My mother taught me how to knit a scarf. Socks, however, are something that I've wanted to do ever since I saw my friend Cathy doing it. I asked her to teach me, and she has graciously acquiesced. Today, with another Kathy, we had our very first Stitch-n-Bitch.

Today's Stitch-n-Bitch deserves its own paragraph, as there was quite a bit of bitching. Kathy and I are pretty much rank beginners, able to turn out a mean scarf or potholder. Socks, however, reduced us to language that would do any dockhand proud. Or, at least they reduced me to this language. Kathy may have been a bit more appropriate and ladylike. I do believe we two are the founding members of the First Guild of Inarticulate Knitters, as much of our frustrations were expressed in wordless utterances - "Whaaaaa? Gaaaah! Meh! Feh! Bleaaaaargh!" Of course, we were trying to knit both socks at the same time on two circular needles. Glah! Eeep! Floooo!

Two weeks from now, at our Second Stitch-n-Bitch, I imagine we'll be slightly more articulate, as I intend to practice and get a few more inches done on these two socks. Maybe I'll be ready to turn the heel by then. And then? After I finish these socks? I'll never have to do another pair. But who knows? I might! Why? Because I'll know how. Further down on my Bucket List is to pass the knowledge on to my daughter, should she want to learn - not just socks, but all of the nearly lost feminine arts I learned from my grandmother. But that's not something I'll be doing on my timeschedule.

So what's on your list?

One of the Stupidest Things I've Ever Done...

...is not what you're thinking.

One of the stupidest things I've ever done is learn to make microwave cake in a cup. Now, I am no more than 5 minutes away from cake at any given time. Goddammit.

So of course, I feel honor-bound to share this recipe with you. But, be warned - you must love chocolate.

Get a large mug (beaker to you Brits) - the bigger the better - and a fork for mixing. Then find your measuring teaspoon.

Into your mug, measure 2 Tablespoons of All Purpose Flour, 6 Tablespoons of Sugar, and 3 Tablespoons of Cocoa. Stir 'em up just to get the lumps out.

Then, add a splash of vanilla, 1 egg, 3 Tablespoons of oil (I used Canola, since it's got no flavor), and 3 Tablespoons of milk. Mix this all up until it's amalgamated and smooth. It should have a stiffish brownie batter consistency. (Nom, nom, nom!)

Then, for the coup de grace, throw in a handful of chocolate chips and give it a very cavalier stir. You don't want them all falling to the bottom of the cup, so be a lazy person and half-ass it. Pitch the fork into the sink and bung the cup into the microwave for 4 minutes on high.

Let the cake sit for about 2 minutes before tipping it out onto a plate and digging in. You don't want to burn your mouth while it's piping hot.

Or, if burning your mouth seems like a really good idea to you you just can't wait, don't tip it out onto a plate and plop a scoop of vanilla ice cream on it instead. It's a substantial cake, so it can take the moisture of the ice cream.

It's enough for two people to share, or for one really greedy person to enjoy in the privacy of her own kitchen. I'll let you figure out which one it was for me.

Dammit.

Lazy day

There are a few wonderful perks in my profession - not working on holidays is one of them. I'm at home with Miss Peanut, enjoying a beautifully lazy day.

We both slept laaaaaaate this morning - arising at 8:30ish, I poked my head into Miss Peanut's room to witness her sitting up in her bed, rubbing sleepily at her eyes. She hurdled out of it, flung her arms around my waist, and gave me the sweetest hug. We both climbed into my big bed and had a snuggle to plan our day. Miss Peanut made me squeal by placing her "cold feet of DOOM!" on my bare legs while we decided that the first order of the day would be a walk to Dunkin' Donuts to get breakfast.

One Waffle sandwich later, and we're walking back home, me clutching my iced coffee - yes, iced coffee. I'm not much of a hot beverage drinker these days, even my beloved Tea. Earl Grey. Hot is not doing it for me now - and Miss Peanut clutching a bag containing a Triple Chocolate Muffin for our afternoon snack.

On the docket is a little bit of reading, some web surfing, some TV watching, some scrapbooking, and a whole lot of lazing about in pajama bottoms. I'm making a chicken stew and scratch biscuits for dinner tonight, so I'll be about that a little later this afternoon. But for now?

Pajama bottoms, TV, book. Check.

Exciting Culinary Adventures!

So, since the New Year began, the WCM has been feeling a scoche pudgy. He decided that he'd like to do the South Beach thing again, and as I am, of course, a nice and thoughtful wife, I decided that I wouldn't tempt him, and would go along with Phase One. Phase One is two weeks of complete carbohydrate deprivation.

They should just call it Phase Hell and dispense with the euphemisms altogether.

So, we started the South Beach Diet on Saturday, figuring that the misery that is the first couple of days of that diet were best accomplished at home, where one could whine and complain of headaches and fatigue without repercussions to one's employment. On Monday, I must admit to not yet being equal to the task of actually teaching and being nice to my students at the same time. One of my aides, a sweet and funny young man, asked me why I felt so crappy, so I told him about my pledge to help my hubby. He replied "So, then, he's on the 'South Beach' diet, and you're on the 'South Bitch' diet, huh?"

Yep. That's about right.

Now, granted, due to my unique digestive situation, I am not doing this diet strictly by the book. I have added lots of fat into it, by using full-fat dairy products and supplementing with the daily Slim Jim (heh heh heh). I also think that, given the sheer volume of sugar that I consumed over the period between Thanksgiving and New Years', the carb/sugar detox period is doing me a lot of good. It doesn't hurt that, since Saturday, I've already lost the 5 pounds that I put on in that extended holiday gorge-fest. It's also forced me to be a bit more creative in my culinary efforts, hence the title of this post.

Tonight, I made Pecan-Encrusted Chicken Bosoms. They were yum-o-licious! Here's the recipe:

4 chicken bosoms, pounded to 3/4 inch thick
1 egg, beaten, for wash
1 c. pecans
1 t. rosemary
1 pinch cayenne
1 clove garlic
salt
pepper
olive oil

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees, and get out a big ol' baking dish. No, bigger than that. Huge.

If you haven't pounded out your chicken yet, get to it. Season it on both sides with salt and pepper.

Haul out your food processor and dump in the pecans, rosemary, cayenne, and garlic. Pulse until it looks finely ground, but still a bit crumbly-looking. Dump it all out on a dinner plate.

Dip your chicken bosoms into the egg wash one by one, and then dredge in the nut mixture. Press firmly to adhere the nuts.

Place in the baking dish and bake for 30 minutes.

Get out the mop and a bucket, because you're gonna be mopping up drool puddles as the aroma wafts about your house!

*~*~*~*~*~*~

I had yet another culinary adventure tonight, as I tried Queso para Frier (cheese for frying, for the Spanish-impaired). This stuff is pretty tasty, if you like relatively rubbery tasteless cheese that manages to be just a bit salty. Being a huge fan of Mozzarella sticks, I am indeed fond of relatively rubbery tasty cheese that manages to be just a bit salty.

You slice this stuff, fry it in a pan with some olive oil - just to coat the bottom, we're not talking deep frying here - and it browns up nicely, but still holds its shape. If I had some Marinara sauce, I'd be ten kinds of happy! It's Mozzarella sticks without the carbs - gotta love that!

Now, if only I had the same kind of inspiration for a South Beach Phase Hell dessert.

Communique from Cookie Central

Hello everyone! I'm still alive, but I'm baking cookies and not to be disturbed. So far, I've made Fudge Drops (a new recipe, and OMG yummy), Russian Tea Cakes, and Gingerbread People. I've got another couple of batches of yumminess still to go - Chocolate chip, Peanut Butter blossoms, Pretzel Snaps, and Iced Butter Cookies.

Can I just say here that this level of holiday baking is decidedly NOT NORMAL for me, and I'm wondering where it's all coming from psychologically? I've even managed to keep my hands out of the cookies, except for the obligatory Quality Control check from each batch. This is also NOT NORMAL for me.

Hmmmmmmm. Pondering... Could it be? Perhaps?

Sublimation?

An intriguing culinary experiment

So I was browsing about the internet the other day, and I came across this site. It proposed the most intriguing combination of flavors I'd yet explored - a Bacon Cinnamon Roll.

Well, today, just for kicks, I tried putting these suckers together. I only needed 5 strips of bacon, so with the rest, I made Pig Candy.

I experimented a bit, and I microwaved the bacon to partially cook it before I rolled it into the pre-made cinnamon rolls. I followed the baking time suggested on the can, salivating all the time at the aroma wafting around the kitchen. I don't know who was worse, me or the dogs, but the mop has to come out in a minute to take care of the drool puddles.

Well, the result was somewhat disappointing: the pastry was delish, but the bacon was still undercooked, despite partially cooking it in the microwave first.

The pig candy, though, was exquisite.

Ah, well, I'm chalking this one up to a lesson learned.

Everybody's got one

Vices, that is. Everybody's got at least one, and mine's food.

Still.

I suppose it could be worse, though. I don't smoke, I don't take drugs, and I rarely drink. What else is left, really?

So, yesterday, I took Miss Peanut to her Nana's house for the weekend. I asked the WCM if he'd like to, perhaps, be a grown-up with me and go do some fun stuff. You know, just the two of us. After he'd finished with the Groucho Marx eyebrows, he told me to find some stuff to do.

I came up with going on a trip into nearby Philadelphia - hitting Tony Luke's for lunch and doing either the Italian Market or the Reading Terminal Market for some interesting afternoon shopping. I'd also found a Dracula Festival, but the WCM put the kibosh on that, for whatever odd reason.

After our Saturday Morning Trader Joe's expedition, we unloaded quickly, then set off for Tony Luke's. If you've never been there before, you really need to go and get a Roast Pork Italian. Their cheesesteak is good, but honestly? Don't even waste your stomach space if you can get the Roast Pork Italian. You've got juicy sliced roast pork, liberally seasoned with salt and pepper, sharp provolone cheese, and garlicky broccoli rabe all nestled in a soft italian roll. Oh. Sweet. Jesus.

I nearly orgasmed after the first bite.

The WCM got the cheesesteak. He thought it was tasty, so after I'd finished about a third of my sandwich, I offered to trade. I ate what amounted to a quarter of his cheesesteak before my stomach told me to stop. It was good, but the Roast Pork was better. Seriously - if you get the chance to have one of these, you should.

The Reading Terminal Market - a foodie mecca. They had all kinds of cuisine, including my very favorite place in the world: Termini Brother's bakery. I love Termini's for the cannoli. They make, quite literally, the most mouth-watering cannoli that it has ever been my privilege to taste. My stepmother used to work in Center City, so every now and then, she'd stop into the market and pick up a couple of cannoli to bring home. Ah, memories... I got eight, had them box up six, and then the WCM and I ate the other two right on the spot. My God, but they are good.

We also scored an incredible stuffed pork roast - a gorgeous pork loin butterflied, then stuffed with spinach, provolone, roasted red pepper, and mild italian sausage. I'm going to roast that sucker tomorrow and serve it with some asparagus and some roasted garlic mashed potatoes. At another butcher's stall, we found some incredible-looking sausages: I got a pound each of Luganega, Sage Breakfast Sausage, and a Pork Broccoli Rabe sausage. I'm so ready for dinner this week!!! I found avocadoes for fifty cents apiece, too. Looks like there's guacamole in my near future. I bought a small container of organic raw milk, just for fun and botulism, from one of the Amish stands.

We tootled off down the road after grabbing some coffee, just in time to wonder what's for dinner.

Yeah, I've got a vice. And it's a tasty one!

Feeding my addiction, plus a PSA

So, a couple of weeks ago, I went to Melting Mama's site, where she was having a contest. The only thing you had to do to enter was to tell her how you liked your coffee. Since I'm a caffiend, and extremely free with my opinions, I told her all about how I liked my coffee.

Well, I won! She sent me a canister of Click, a coffee-flavored protein powder. Vanna White, eat your heart out.



Being a former Starbuck's 'ho and a current Dunkin Donuts regular, I was all over this. Please note the appliance closest to the canister.



Now, I just started having protein shakes recently, since I prefer to chew my calories. However, whenever I feel like something sweet, my Banana Scream shake (made with ice and half&half in the blender) is a bit healthier for me than the Oreos I'm likely to reach for instead. I've been curious about this Click stuff ever since Melting Mama started talking about it. Well, it arrived in my mail today, so I got busy with the blender!



I started out with about 2 cups of crushed ice, and wound up with about that same amount of half and half. Now, see, I know that most people are not going to use half & half with which to make a "healthy" protein shake. With my surgery, though, I won't absorb 80% of the fat I eat, so I make my shakes with half & half so I get enough fat in my diet. Wild, eh? My cholesterol at last check was 90. Ninety. Unreal. Anyway... I used 4 scoops of Click (30 g protein in all) and 2 scoops of UpCal D (Calcium Citrate with Vitamin D), then blended the stuff until it was all nice and shakey. Putting it into a rinsed-out Dunkin Donuts cup is key to my enjoyment - I'm passing for "normal" here! Nobody knows I'm drinking something good for me!



Holy Noms, Batman! The stuff tastes every bit as good as an Arby's Jamocha shake!



I'm giving Click a big thumbs up! Thanks Melting Mama!!

Bits and Pieces

Because my mind is working in fits and starts these days - divided among school, family, friends, and hobbies, and not necessarily in that order - I offer you these bits and pieces of cognitive detritus. Do with them what you will.
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So far, I've heard loads of funnies in the hallways of my high school. One girl was chatting cattily with a friend about another girl when I happened to be within earshot, and I overheard the truly priceless description of "she thinks she's Queen Shit on Turd Island." Well, that was worth a giggle - and not a detention - that day.

Another student's parting shot as he sailed out of school for the day was "I'm OUT, like titties at a strip club."

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Cake has gone stale in my house. I baked one on Wednesday night, because I was trying out a cupcake recipe for a new colleague's birthday (more on that later) and only needed to make 6 cupcakes. I poured the rest of the batter in a smallish square pan (8x8, if you must know) and baked it. After I was done working cupcake magic, I frosted the cake (chocolate! even!) thickly with the rest of the (chocolate! again!) frosting. Nobody, including me, has touched it.

There is a half-gallon of ice cream - Edy's Loaded Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup - that has been in the fridge for 2 weeks, similarly untouched.

The WCM bought a tub of scrumptious coconut macaroons at Trader Joe's a week ago, and aside from the obligatory one-macaroon sample - necessary to declare them scrumptious - they are still sitting in their clear plastic tub on the counter.

WTF? I am perplexed, yet not particularly hungry. Maybe that's why I'm sitting at a new record low weight for me. It makes me nervous and more than a little insecure, body-image-wise. But, hey - I know that if I'm too nervous about it, I certainly know how to make the number on the scale move UP.

*****

My legs hurt - pleasantly so, though - from some fairly athletic and bendy canoodling I was doing the other day. Ha ha! I canoodled! I am smug with my canoodling! And also yoga.

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Those cupcakes I was talking about? Deeeeelicious. This is what I did - I baked 6 chocolate cupcakes. Then, I popped them out of the silicone liners. After that, I cut the tops off ("Off with their heads!" - I am a French teacher, after all). Following that, I cut the bottoms off and replaced them in the silicone muffin cups. I put four of the lovely middles into my mouth in the freezer. I then softened a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream and layered some over each of the cupcake bottoms. I replaced the tops and froze these mini ice-cream cakes until they were solid. Once they were solid, I frosted them, and put them back into the freezer. They were yummy. Very yummy. And appreciated by my whole department. All 6 of us.

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And that's all I have to show for my last 2 weeks of toil and travail. Perhaps y'all did better.

Baseball, Mom, and what my kitchen smells like...

Mmmmmm, apple pie!

Tomorrow, the WCM, Miss Peanut, and I are all heading over to the WCM's brother's house for a Fourth of July Pool Party. Since my brother-in-law, we'll just call him AC for now, just got a divorce and moved into his new house, we're not expecting much in the way of refreshments. The WCM procured a lot of wine (including my favorite, which tends to get me in trouble...) and bade me prepare potato salad and broccoli slaw. Since I had a fruit bowl brimming with uneaten apples, I threw together two apple pies, too, since there's no other dessert as American as Apple Pie, now, is there?

There will be much frolicking in the pool tomorrow, I can foresee, as there was frolicking this afternoon. I went to an el cheapo store yesterday and bought a couple of inflatable rafts and an inflatable pool chair so people could laze about in the water. Miss Peanut and I had a blast propelling ourselves around the pool on them after I'd gone nearly cross-eyed blowing them up. She's not a half bad little swimmer now. I still don't trust her in the deep water, though. She'll have to work a little harder for that.

Hope you all have a lovely holiday!

Brussels sprouts are still icky

Whether you roast them, boil them, steam them, or fry them, Brussels sprouts remain icky. Even when paired with Bacon, nature's perfect food, they are icky. I cannot countenance the sprout. Ick.

I'm off to find better vegetable recipes. If you have a favorite, please feel free to suggest it, as I am spent.

Mon frigo est mort!

My fridge died!

My behemoth refrigerator has finally given up the ghost after fourteen years of exemplary service - its coolant is slowly traveling south. It certainly owes us nothing, and will surely be headed to the Great Towers of Chilldom in the sky. It does, however, leave us with a lot of things that need to be thrown away, consumed, frozen downstairs, or cooked.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that knows me that we have a large-ish standing freezer in the basement. I am a Cancerian woman, meaning, in a nutshell, that food is love to me. If I have fed you, then you can reasonably assume that I love you in one form or another. Have I ever brought you cookies? I love you. Have I had you over for a meal? I love you. Have I ever drizzled chocolate sauce all over your naked flesh and slowly licked it off? ahem. sorry. But you can be assured that if that ever happened, that I would certainly love you. The WCM is a Taurean man, meaning, simply, that he thinks with his stomach. As long as his gustatorial demands are satisfied, he's quite a happy camper. He gets cranky if I don't feed him regularly. Luckily, I love to cook and nourish those I love. In this area, we work quite harmoniously together.

So, tonight, the WCM and I cooked. He grilled some bratwurst while I roasted some brussels sprouts (yes! another vegetable! and a formerly reviled one, at that!) and fried a whole pound of bacon. The recipe for the brussels sprouts only calls for 4 rashers of bacon, but, c'mon! It's bacon! I can't really refrigerate it again, so I might as well cook it. It'll keep just fine on the counter until I'm hungry again in 3 hours and pounce on it like a ravenous she-wolf.

After dinner, we're going to go purchase a new fridge. Hope it's big enough to hold all the love we need.

Patchwork

So called because this is full of little bits and pieces today, composed of nothing major, really.

Relaxation just doesn't seem possible for me when the WCM isn't at home. I think it's my strong oppositional streak that just doesn't let me settle down when there's nobody around to rebel against. I've been cleaning - still! - and I just started working on next year's syllabus for my most advanced class. School just ended on Friday, true, but my department head put the pressure on me by telling me that he'd like me to take IB French 4 the year after next. I feel like I have to get MYP French 2 down to a science before I can let it go, and I'll only have one more year to do that. The nice thing is that my department head has that kind of confidence in me. The other nice thing is that I have loads of materials and education with which to do it. So, I'll sacrifice part of my summer. It's not that good for me to sit still much, anyway.

All of that means that I'll have loads of time to work on my new computer. Apropos of nothing one day last month, the WCM announced that for my birthday and our anniversary, he was buying me a new computer. I hadn't asked for one, nor even made a disparaging comment (out loud) about the old one that I was using, so it caught me completely off-guard. Apparently, the WCM had needed to use mine briefly while his was updating something-or-other, and was distressed and frustrated by how slooooooooow it was. So he bought me a new one. Nice, huh? The bastard ordered it in PINK, though. Can I tell you, pink is at the bottom of my list of least favorite colors, just above kumquat orange? Oh well. It's a lovely new Dell, with Windows Vista - a new system for me to learn - and it's quite spiffy, albeit PINK as a freshly smacked ass.

Speaking of smacked asses, the ER staff at a certain New Jersey hospital which shall remain nameless (largely because I don't know its name...) sent a friend of mine home without realizing she had a twisted bowel. Thank God for her surgeon who went in and fixed it! Poor thing is now recuperating from both that and the gallbladder removal which precipitated it. I hope she feels better soon!!

And following that feeling better soon, I have a feeling that I shall be feeling quite good on June 19th, which is the 2-year anniversary of my Duodenal Switch surgery. I don't know what exactly I'll be doing to commemorate it, but it'll probably involve beef. I love beef. I can't get enough of it these days! I have a Pot Roast in the crock pot for dinner tonight, and I'm fixing Warm Red Cabbage with Bacon and Crumbled Goat Cheese along with Roasted Cauliflower with balsamic drizzle as the sides. That cabbage with goat cheese is sooooo tasty, I just want to stand over the pan with a spoon and eat it all up. The only difference between the recipe above and the way I make it is that I use balsamic vinegar. It deepens the lush purple of the cabbage and gives it just enough of a sweet tang to set off the mustiness of the goat cheese. I'm salivating... I can't wait for the WCM to get home so we can eat dinner.

Oh yeah, the WCM is coming home tonight, bringing with him the petrified remains of ancient crustaceans (trilobites, most likely). I just hope he doesn't track gravel all through my nice clean house. And, I hope he remembers to stop at the Krispy Kreme, as I told him not to even think of setting foot in my house without 2 dozen Original Glazed donuts from Krispy Kreme. I'm a hard woman, me. They freeze well, those glazed donuts do, and once you pop 'em in the microwave for 20 seconds, they're practically fresh-off-the-conveyor-belt good again. Two dozen ought to last me about 2 months, give or take. I cried fresh hot tears when the Krispy Kreme packed up and left my city.

Well, chickens, I've goofed off enough for one afternoon. It's time for me to get back to my travails. Have a good one!

Weekend Edition

It's been a quiet weekend at Peevish Place, much to my dismay. Miss Peanut went to her Nana's house on Thursday night and has been gone all weekend. The WCM left for a fossil-hunting expedition early on Friday morning, and won't return for some time. Friday was my last day of work for the school year. It made me feel quite maudlin, as there's all sorts of change in my professional life - good ones, to be sure, but changes bring about beginnings and endings, all of which are usually marked with high-running emotions. I spent Friday morning at work, went to a luncheon with my colleagues, and then came home and started cleaning my house.

I don't know what brought about this house-cleaning spree, other than I knew that since nobody else was around, nobody would be messing up my housework 5 minutes after I'd finished it. Plus, whenever I do housework with other people in the house, I develop Martyr Syndrome - "I don't know why I'm the only one working while everyone else is sitting on their ass!" It's unattractive... but at least I recognize that, right? I accomplished a hell of a lot on Friday, pausing to attend a retirement party for a dear friend. I went to bed with high hopes for Saturday, as I'd made some really fun plans.

Saturday, unfortunately,unfurled with a crashing low. I won't go into my plans for the day, but I will say that I had been looking forward to Saturday with unduly intense anticipation. I found that those plans weren't going to come to fruition on Saturday morning and spent a good hour in bed, whining, moping, crying, and generally cursing the universe. I was crushed - totally, entirely, desperately crushed. It caused an actual physical ache that I can still feel in the pit of my belly.

So I spent the day running errands, doing more housecleaning (my house is SO clean now! You'd hardly know I had a "dirt problem!"), and trying to keep my mind occupied so I didn't dwell on my disappointment. And do you know what happened? I got a great phone call.

See, my friend Bobbinchick had made a pie - an honest-to-goodness, homemade, just picked the damned strawberries herself PIE. And she called me to come help her eat it. Can I just tell you how much I loved that? That the person she thought to come help her eat pie was me? I loved that. Hearing that I was all on my own, she also invited me to dinner. How great was that?!

Having three very ripe avocadoes in my fruit bowl and a bunch of cilantro in the fridge, I made a bowl of guacamole, grabbed a bag of tortilla chips, and set off down the road to Bobbinchick's house. A delicious dinner, fun conversation, beautiful energetic children, and GORGEOUS strawberry pie later, I came home to a calm, clean, cool house, and was able to finally relax for the day. One extremely sexy vampire romance novel later, and I was tucked into my fresh bed, ready for sleep.

It was a pretty good day, all things considered.