Category Archives: Delicious

Happy Holidays

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This was written Saturday night, but posted elsewhere. I am reposting it here for the 18 of you who actually read this.
So I have approximately 1/2 of the twin cities metropolitan area residents coming to my house tomorrow for a non-secular holidy food eating party. being busy busy with other things and also being a retard, I didn’t plan my menu until this morning.
Went shopping this afternoon, first for Christmas gifts then for food. Along the way I stopped to pick up the wine. I wanted a few specific wines, a spatlese, a sangiovese, a beaujolais villages and of course, prosecco. First liquor store doesn’t have prosecco, so I buy nothing.
Then I hit the grocery store and get most of what I need, understanding that the specialty stuff will have to be purchased at my local grocery and not at the gigantomart.
Stop at home to drop jen off so she can begin the prep work and I can run out to find the wine and get the last few items. She goes to preheat the oven and it doesn’t turn on. It’s been having trouble lately, but it was intermittent. Now there’s nothing. No oven. I have 1.5 million people expected tomorrow and no oven. I put my head down and had a good hard cry.
Then I took my oven apart, thinking that if I could threaten it with the awesome power of my furrowed brow, it might start working. No dice. At least the burners work. So, I triaged the menu, figured out what needed to be baked and called jen’s mom. She generously offered me free reign in her kitchen tomorrow. I set jen up to prep all the items that needed to be baked and set off to pick up wine and olives and raisins.
Liquor store #2 had prosecco with a screw cap. A SCREW CAP. I bought the other wine and some Bailey’s and tried not to cry. Then I headed to Liquor Store #3. I somehow missed my turn and ended up on the other side of the freeway. So I’ll take the long way. Then my dad called, that was good, he’s comforting. Except he just got back from a work trip in Japan and his sleep time is all mixed up so he’s hyper. I want to cry and he wants to tell me about the airplane he flew. We confirm the time that he is coming over and say goodbye. I head in to LS#3. They had some very nice wines, but no prosecco. So I went to the parking lot, fought back tears and headed to LS#4. I searched and searched. They had to have it, liquor stores are closing in 30 minutes and they won’t reopen until Monday.
I ask for the wine and lo! they have it. Pleasant Guy shows me where it is and I say, “If it wasn’t so weird I’d kiss you right here”. And I probably would have.
Head to the grocery store and get kumquats, canola oil, and more cheese. Unfortunately, the olive bar was closed down for the night, meaning I had to come back for olives in the morning. Then some cute guy comes out from behind the cheese counter to help me and when i recount my night of pain he very cutely puts his hand on my shoulder and tells me it will be okay. If things don’t work out between me and the cheese girl I’m hoping maybe this cheese boy might be interested.
Get home, unload, discover that now the stovetop won’t light without a match. Fine, fuck it, we’ll light with a match. My very very dear girl has prepped a bunch of stuff already, currently producing root vegetable skewers at an alarming rate. She’s good.
I make up a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese spirals, call someone, have him listen to me whine about my life. Then I proceed to make horseradish sauce and then eat mac and cheese in his ear. He’s sweet to listen.
Eventually, we’ve done what we could. The girl goes to bed and i spend another 3.5 hours on the phone when I should have been sleeping. Tomorrow, I have a million things to do and clean and a lot of my food needs to be cooked in a kitchen 13 miles away from me. Sigh.
But it will be okay.
*UPDATE*
Sunday morning we got up and found that the oven decided to work. I don’t question why, I just decree that the oven will not be turned off for the rest of the day.
We keep the oven on, work our asses off to make huge amounts of food and actually find ourselves serving things on time for once. Nice.
All in all the party was a success and pictures will be posted soon enough.

My lunch

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Today’s lunch, in no particular order
* 2 chocolate Riesen candies
* 1 Tessalon Pearl prescription cough suppressant
* 2 Day-Quil Liqui-Caps
* 4 generic Tylenol
* 2 cups Tazo Zen Green Tea with Splenda
I PROMISE to resume my regular writing by next week.
If you are looking for somehting to do, check this out

How could I have forgotten

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Last night I made sushi for the first time in a long time and I had forgotten how much I loved to do that. This was also the best batch of sushi i’d made so far.
I made spicy tuna rolls, fatty salmon-avocado-wasabi rolls, and vegetable rolls (carrot, jicama, avocado, wasabi). Also made a quicky stir-fry for Jen who does not eat fish.
I need to remember to make sushi more often. Homemade sushi, too much saké and good friends laughing about the stupidest shit. These are the things that I love.

I miss you, really

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I know I’ve been lax about updating, believe me when I say it’s been mad crazy. I thought that after the holidays I would have more time. I am so foolish. These are the things currently taking up a lot of time…
New York
I go to New York at the end of February to speak at a conference about permanent placement policy for foster kids. Not a big deal, I can do this in my sleep, except this is big. Bigger conference, bigger expectations, more to give. I’m getting more jittery than expected. If this were the only thing on my plate, it would be a cakewalk. I have so many other things going on though.
Tazo Wild Sweet Orange Tea
Okay, I’ll admit it doesn’t consume much thought, but it is tasty and I’ve been drinking it a lot. It’s probably better for me that the Tazo Chai tea bag that i steep in my espresso every morning. Now that’s unhealthy.
Kitchen Remodel
We’re remodeling the kitchen, yay! Okay, mostly yay and a bit of stress. I’ll be writing more about this over the weeks. I’m picking out floors and countertops and lights and handles and paint and secret compartments to hide the bodies. I got my new fridge already which is just HUGE and shiny and stainless steel, sigh. Now we have to put the rest of it together. I want everything to be perfect and withing budget and not require painful effort and also be perfect while coming in on budget. Also, perfect. Along with the kitchen stuff we are doing a few things in the bathroom (new faucets, painting) and hopefully some landscaping in the yard.
Wheatberries
I know this is so ‘1987 San Francisco’, but i live in the midwest where we feed the wheatberries to the cows and eat the cows later. My new favorite recipe is:
Wheatberry Salad
1/4 cup chopped smoked chicken breast
1 julienned carrot
1/4 cup grapes
1/4 cup tamari roasted almonds from Whole Foods
1/2 cup prepped wheatberries (i used soft)
Mix together and toss with raspberry vinaigrette:
1 tbl raspberry vinegar
2 tbl walnut oil
1 tsp grated ginger
Salt, pepper
Try it sometime, maybe add some spinach.
The Deep South Road Trip
Like 8 or 9 days of getting in the car and driving across the south. Crazy. In March/April so it won’t be so hot. Not as much ocean as my last vacation, though.
Europe
Two weeks in Europe for our birthdays, culminating in 3 days of hedonism in Amsterdam. We are currently debating how much planning should go into this trip. On one hand, it would be nice to have two weeks untethered to a schedule, just whipping around Europe, eating pastries and flirting with men who think American girls are easy. On the other hand, I have nightmares about being stuck in some weird city where no one is willing to speak English and there are no hotel rooms and American girls had better learn to be easy if they want to sleep in a bed and take a warm shower.
PMS
Yeah, PMS is ha ha funny. Woo. Until you have killer PMS for 2 weeks solid, and you don’t realize it’s PMS at first because it’s so early and it’s worse than PMS. So much worse. Makes you hide in bed and cry and you get so depressed and you begin thinking about driving your car into an abuttment (okay not really, but sort of). PMS so bad that you are convinced that your girlfriend of 9 years is going to leave you because you cry all the time and you are stupid. Yeah it was that bad, and it was that bad for two solid weeks. It didn’t work up to being that bad, it just started there (although yesterday was the definite nadir of the situation). If I was mean to you (and, inexplicably, you are still reading this) I apologize, it totally sucks to know me sometimes. To be fair, I do warn all my friends pretty early on that I can be a real asshole sometimes. I’m feeling better, i have new hair (thank you, Owen), I’m ready to go back to the gym and I almost have all the bodies hidden.
This is a little like therapy. I need to do this more often. Okay, wish me luck.