Monthly Archives: May 2012

We can eat a thing

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Boom! Crepes and Trader Joe’s and flank steak and chevre and italian sausage and maple syrup.
It’s been a food week.
Sunday was a grill out at my dad’s. Got to see all the new gardens and eat burgers and hold the baby.
Monday, flank steak on the grill. I made a tasty marinade with orange and toasted cumin, it was nice. The high heat of the grill kind of killed anything subtle so you didn’t really get to taste anything but meat and meat and a bit of salt. No mind, it was delicious. I made up some herbed focaccia and marinated tomatoes in sesame and thyme. Toasted the focaccia slices on the grill, got them on the plates, covered them is sliced steak and smothered it in tomatoes and dressing. Was going to be all swanky and use the leftovers to make panzanella the next day… but there were no leftovers.
Tuesday was Trader Joe’s day!! You seriously do not realize how much you need falafel chips, chocolate mochi, orange sticks or a pack of cured spanish meats until you are standing there mumbling, “holy shit…felafel chips… mmm serrano ham… I need all the things!!!”. Mostly, though, I didn’t go crazy (but the impulsy shelves by the check out got me).
Today I have to make croutons out of the rest of the focaccia and do something with the giant ciabatta I bought for no reason yesterday. Something something cheese, garlic, red sauce something.
And the rest of this week is going to be “make the useful things!” chicken stock, sausage, mustard, maybe some more marmalade depending on what’s in ‘season’ at the grocery story.
ALSO!!
The move to Vermont!! Along with making things that will only be given away as I don’t think I can use them all in the next 3 months I will also be filtering and packing and we have until late August to get these things done. Is it wrong to throw a goodbye party for yourself? I have not hosted a party in a very long time and I miss it. This might be my chance.

Pontoon Tangue
rock it

Stick your finger…in the…..stew

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Got to Penzeys a couple weeks ago. Spent what seems like an obscene amount of money on herbs and spices and…stuff. I was a tad surprised at how much it cost but when you factor in how long it has been (many years) and all the things that I am just getting for restocking the kitchen and how long it will last us, it’s not so bad.
Also, you don’t realize just how much smoked spanish paprika you use until it is gone.
I am suddenly hit with the urge to make those things that are not stuff you eat but the stuff that goes into what you eat. Chicken stock, both regular and asian, italian sausage, sage sausage, 3 chili sprinkle, chili powder, spiced clarified butter (niter kibbeh but also other sets of flavors like a curry-ish one and an herb-y one), because they are delicious for cooking and so so so terribly awesome for popcorn. When you cook off all the water in the butter it then doesn’t shrivel your popcorn when you drizzle it on. The problem is that I want to make so many things and so many things are not a good idea when we are trying to minimize the volume of things being transported across the country.
I imagine it will be easy enough to offload that stuff to people here.
Today marks the end of the last full week at David’s job. Just a handful of days and he is done. It will be the relief of an ugly burden.
You know what? Today is a day for grilling steaks! We will celebrate! Steak and beer and corn with chili butter, that is what today says to me.

1…2….5….7..8..TEN

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The move is on! David is resigning at the end of the year and we are not renewing the lease. Come this fall we’ll either be in New England or living in a moving truck stuck in Eau Claire WI. We shall see, as David says.
Everyone has a list of things they hate, divorce, murder, watching nudity dances and the like. Close to the top of my list is moving. Moving is a pain in my ass, all the packing and lugging boxes and unpacking and lugging piles of empty boxes. I have been in this place since 2005, seven years!! This was supposed to be my temporary place until David and I either decided to get a place together or I would get something more permanent. Instead, a couple months later David moved in with me and there we are.
Now we are moving to something more permanent. Details about chickens and acreage and permaculture and cob houses will be shared later. Right now I am just wienering around.
We’re in the ‘sort and toss or donate or recycle or scream your fool head off when a desiccated centipede falls out of a project basket you forgot about 3 years ago’. I went through my yarn stash and blasted out anything that didn’t have a good plan in place (or was worth keeping). I have now sent 4 kitchen size trash bags of yarn, just the yarn! to the thrift store and still, STILL all the containers are full of yarn. My house is a damned yarn tardis (your mom is a tardis, bigger on the inside).
Also, the only thing I hate more than moving or packing or letting Chester practice home dentistry on me is garage sales. I hate having garage sales, hate them with all my soul. I’m donating everything because I do not want to spend my time carpdicking around over a nickle. It’s all donated and it’s all going. Incidentally, if you are in the twin cities area and would like a free tv, dvd player, 55 gallon aquarium with ALL the peripherals, and possibly a portable dishwasher that you hook up to the sink, let me know. They’re yours if you get them out.
But, for all the complaining there is a goodness. This is an awesome opportunity for us, a way to really change things. If it gets messed up we’ll deal with it. I’m worried about leaving my friends and family here, especially the lovely niece, Viivi, but we can travel back and forth to visit and also, I have friends and family all over this country and anywhere I move will put me close to someone. So, there it is! We’ve got no choice but to be mobile by the end of summer and we may as well head east.