French Toast

Posted from 08/16

It's a day off for Tony which means I'm spending it with him. I kept it easy but new. A new recipe and something everyone should know? I went with french toast. I didn't use a recipe, I used an even better source; my mother.
This is the exact “recipe” I used.

Use thick cut bread. If the store doesn't have Texas Toast, go to the deli and buy an uncut loaf of farmer's bread.

Whisk up “like 3 eggs” with a little milk, throw in some cinnamon and some sugar. How much? Uh... like “some cinnamon and maybe a tablespoon of sugar”. Soak the bread both sides and fry them. Repeat the egg mixture until you're done.

So basically, I winged it. The summary of my mother's recipe is to wing it. And you know what? It worked really well. So well in fact, I forgot to take a nice picture and snapped this doozey as soon as I remembered.

It went down easily as far as cooking goes. I fried up some thick cut bacon and did the “holy crap hot bacon grease” dance that normal people do when they're getting fragged by it. Tony's laughter from a safe distance during that time kept the beat I suppose.

I can tell you now why I never see my mother sit down and eat. I know why she eats in the kitchen. If you want hot food, you can't sit down and eat. You eat while you cook because if you don't, you either won't get any of the food, or the food you set aside for yourself is stone cold by the time you get to it.

Kitchen warriors, I salute you. I would raise my spatula in salute, but I need to go wash it.

Purple Potatoes!

Posted from 08/14

Let's talk more about appreciation for growing your own food. Why? Because I want to and you're my blog hostage. Blogstage?.. Ignore that.
Really though, today I went straight for using food from my garden. Those awesomesauce purple potatoes. If you'd like to learn a little more about purple potatoes you can Here.

The basics of purple potatoes for those of us who don't click links, is that they aren't really any different than any other potato. They can be used like a red or a white, best for roasting and frying but can be used for mashing. Then there's some stuff about color and antioxidants, but let's be real, I grew them because they're pretty.

I mean really, look at these beasts. Glorious! I did have a little trouble peeling these due to their size. They're similar in size to a red potato, so I used my handy dandy thumb claw and stabbed in to the potato to keep a grip and not peel my fingers. I came across this little cutie while peeling.

Looks like a little animal face!

So this is the bunch all peeled. When they're sliced, they're absolutely beautiful, I mean as far as produce goes. I suggest using them in a better way than me. Today I'm mashing, but these would be stunning sliced in scalloped potatoes or frying into chips.

Now I've made mashed potatoes from scratch before so I think I've got this covered. However, if you live in Basictown like me, there are a few things to note.

• Peel and wash your potatoes (peeling optional). Cut them to be all about the same size
• Start your potatoes in COLD water. This will prevent the outside from quickly cooking and turning to mush while the inside is still uncooked
• SALT your water. Just do it. I promise. I'll skip the science of starches, just know your potatoes will soak up the salt and you really really want that
• Bring them to a boil and then drop down to a simmer. Cook until you can stab them with a fork and they fall apart
• If possible use room temperature butter and milk. Again, the starch thing.

Fun fact! While peeling the potatoes won't stain your fingers, it will change the color of the water you're boiling. That's a pretty blue but I have yellow lights on my stove so it looks Rio Olympic pool green, but still awesome.

I've cheated and thrown in some frozen chicken breasts into the stove while I'm doing this. Can we all stop and not beat ourselves up for this, though? Most people don't raise their own chickens. If you do, wonderful! That's great! Maybe one day I can too if I have the desire to. We're about honesty here, so I have no problem admitting I'd rather watch Master Chef and Hotel Hell than go feed or wrangle chickens. Sorry, Gordon! The chicken I should note, I threw in a small roaster while frozen, covered them liberally with chicken seasoning and cooked for an hour. Tasty and simple like I like it. Not a ticket to win competitions, but super satisfying. I asked if Tony wanted a side like corn or green beans and he opted for no, so we had chicken and home grown, homemade mashed purple potatoes for dinner.

Today's enterprises succeeded.

Easy Day, Small Wins

Posted from 8/13
It's been 3 days and we have subsisted on leftovers and a day where we went out. I got caught up in the nothing zone for Tony's day off and the next day I got caught in it again. We discussed what exactly we're doing. I have been feeling like I can't really set that kind of working schedule in the house if this isn't permanent or at least extended. We decided this is extended so now I'm able to get into the swing of it. Part of our conversation included such lovely phrases as
“That's a really open ended question.” “LIFE is an open ended question, motherf****!!”
“I love our life. It's a great life if not slightly weird”

So far today has been a short but good day. I have drive because we know what I'm doing. I got up, made Tony some hot spaghetti and used my passata and mixed in some herbs and spices to make a homemade sauce. I enjoyed it, Tony seemed to enjoy it and then in our special way we buried it under parmesan cheese.

Now it seems like something so small but let's cover the fact that after dinner I washed the dishes we used immediately. It's a small victory, but a victory nonetheless. It didn't decrease the amount of other dishes I still have to wash, but it made sure the pile didn't get bigger, they were super fast to clean and it made me feel better about myself. As far as improving our lives goes, this tiny step is an undeniable win.

After the dishes, I headed out to the garden. I was a weeding machine. Why? Because my potatoes finally wilted down and it was time to harvest! Not only did I get a little pile of potatoes, I harvested a nice slicing cucumber, a new pile of romas, and my first little eggplant. My eggplant is a Fairytale dwarf variety, so it's a little one.

I cannot explain the amount of effort that can get put in to working in a garden. It is rewarding, it is back breaking, it is dirty, fun, sometimes a huge pain in the ass and then at the end of it all, you get a meal. Sometimes the meal you prepare can be underwhelming because of your (or my) personal culinary shortcomings and even when that happens, it's still a good meal because you know the work that went into your food. There's a whole new appreciation if you grow your own food.

Off to the Races

Posted from 8/10

Hello friends, let's take some time and talk about TIMING because dear God is that a pain.
Tony unsuspectingly had to pick up a little over time which means SURPRISE MEAL PREPARATION! Hooray?
So it seems I'm channeling Tony's cravings because I said “tuna casserole” and he lit up and exclaimed his recent craving for fish. (Well tell me, fool and then I'll know! Lol) So let's get a recipe!

“Mom, can I have your recipe for tuna noodle casserole?”

“Well, um, you use..”

“No no, just the recipe.”
“I don't have one.”

0.o …. “erm, what?”

“I do it from memory the way my mother taught me.”

Sweet! That's alright with me, but I'm writing that business down. I'm sorry, I just can't remember that sort of thing yet.

I'm missing just a couple of ingredients so I plan to wake up at a set alarm time the next day and go briefly shopping. My round trip took maybe 20 minutes... but when you wake up and hour late? Let's just say I have no need for a gym membership today. Booking it in the kitchen is something I hate, but the alternative is Tony trying to explain to his boss the reason he's late is that his ladyfriend couldn't get the *expletive* tuna noodle casserole in the oven on time. 

Time. Running out of time. 

Everything's home now, put the water on to boil. 

No clean pots, not one. Maybe I should have allowed a little time for dishes? Clean the pot, start the water. Sweet, okay. Maybe I should wash a casserole dish and the pasta strainer while I'm at it! No problem. 

Tick tock.
Drain the tuna, drain the peas. So I have this new fangled can opener. It's the kind that breaks the glue seal and produces no sharp edges which is really nice... except when you need to drain what was in the can. I can't press it in! What do I do? I dorked around with the lid for a while but ultimately I ended up pressing it out with my fingers. Peas were easier.
Cat. One of the cats has caught wind of what I'm draining. Cue the caterwauling and the tripping me up. No really, thank you tiny friend, I needed to trip repeatedly in the hot kitchen today. And thank you for the crying, you've attracted the other cat who, as I found out today, isn't actually interested in tuna, she just wanted to know what was happening.
Noodles are done! Drain those things and GO! Crap, I forgot the cans of tuna and peas directly in the sink. Time to balance the hot cook pot with one hand and fish those puppies out with the other.
Throw it back in the pot, mix in the cream of chicken.

Dear river of cats around my feet (there are only two but gee golly it feels like more when they're around your feet), to satiate your nom propelled curiosity, I make this offering of a cream of chicken lid.
Mix all that crap up, go dump it in the casserole.

Turns out, neither are interested in cream of chicken (divas!) and I've stepped just over the lid and it has now plastered to the inside of my pant leg and is glazing itself to my ankle. Can't stop! I have an alarm in my pocket that has been going off for 2 minutes and that casserole WILL GO IN!!
So it's in, I run to the base of the stairs and wake Tony. Wake Tony, yell frantically up the stairs to Tony, whatever.
Relax, calm down. You just made it in with enough time for it to cook and be out with 20 minutes eating time...
You forgot the foil on top. Yank it out, throw on the foil, shove it back in. Beautiful. Still good. Now just panic for a while for no good reason. Also, go clean your leg, you animal.
Food! It's food. Finally. Phew.

I scoop up a wad because, let's face it, that's how tuna noodle casserole comes out, and give it to Tony and this fool is smiling like he's never seen food before.
“Why are you smiling like that?”
“I just really love you”
Ah, tuna noodle casserole, the food of love.

So let's talk about that timing thing. I'm so horrendously terrible at it. Meal planning is so completely not my thing (yet). So usually here I am with an “Oh I know!” plan dejour and am missing the ingredients to fulfill it. I am usually missing the proper cookware not because I don't have it, but because I haven't washed it. I cannot explain the level of loathing I have for washing dishes. I really have to pump myself up for it, or be driven to it out of necessity through either needing them, or needing them not to start molding. Gross.

Planning meals means planning more than the food, it means planning your other chores, augmenting your day, and making sure you stay on schedule. Sure, you're home, but timing matters here just as much as a job outside the home. So maybe, if you're absolute garbage staying on schedule at home, you can see that at least once in a while, if you bust ass, you can still nail it - even with a furry river around your feet.

Kitchen Battle Draw

Posted from 08/08

Welcome to a new work week. Not mine. Tony's. As far as ideas go for what to make for dinner, he only really suggests something when he's craving it. I didn't particularly feel like being an adventurous cook today so I went with something easy for me from (partial) scratch. Baked mac and cheese. Indeed, that gooey delicious with a crunchy top meal that generally appeases everyone. I've made it before, no big deal, right? Apparently I was over confident. In fact, I'm still totally not sure what went wrong.
See here's the deal, the kind I've made before I keep a simple recipe for – but now it's on an old phone instead of in a recipe box like a normal human would have. So I decided to look up one on the internet. I picked one that seemed fairly familiar from a reputable food site I've used in the past.
This one starts with a rue. Butter, flour, whisking, warm milk. Add shredded cheese (I buy block and just shred it myself) whisk until smooth. Except it never got smooth. It's... odd. Kinda chunky. I mean it TASTES fine, but where is my smooth creamy cheesey goodness? This is WISCONSIN. How did I mess up mac and cheese? I just have no idea.
I suppose that's that point of an adventure. It isn't always going to go right.
I also added a little extra seasoning it didn't call for in the recipe. A little onion salt mostly and then Italian bread crumbs. The result? 

The crumbs didn't really brown the way I liked but thank GOD for them! Bland bland bland. My goodness it wasn't this bland before. If not for the bread crumbs, it would mostly just taste like noodles. While the cheese didn't get creamy the way I wanted, the mouth feel was not a problem. The cheese I added on top was great. Really between the bread crumbs and the cheese on top, they were the only positives. It was filling at least and Tony's verdict was “more of the top stuff, please” which to be fair, is what people say when it comes out right, right?

So what I thought was easy was an adventure, so now we'll see how my adventurous project turns out. I received my grandmother's food mill, and I have a stash of romas ready to go so I'm currently cooking the ever living hell out of them. I'm going with the long and low method. I enjoy rich tomato flavors much more than the fresh off the vine flavor. I know I already oopsied, because I started with enough water for 10 pounds and I realized after they'd already started to break down into it so I'm adding more time on to evaporate the water.

Furthermore, everyone should know I have a very bad time of not touching things. I can't help it. It says to just let them cook, so of course I keep poking at the tomatoes. There's about half an hour left on the timer so you know I'm antsy. I'm twitchy and antsy and “sweet mother of monkey milk” I need to learn to walk away from food! I'm quite certain it comes from my insecurity in cooking, and who the heck knows if that'll ever go away?

So it looks like I was pretty successful! With that small amount of tomatoes I used, I managed to mill out 8 oz of passata! Now I've got myself one small can's worth of tomato sauce that I can flavor how I will.

It's funny how today turned out like that. The “easy” mac and cheese went boringly south while my attempt at something way out of my comfort zone went so well even after making a mistake at the beginning.

Internal Success and Failure

Posted from 08/04

Well, let's catch up. It's been a while. Something I haven't talked about that is a major component in my life is the death of my grandmother. She died June 30^th and it's difficult to explain what it means to me. To explain what she meant to me is easy. A childish clarity in circumstances. I loved and continue to love my grandmother. What our relationship means to the rest of that side of the family is what seems to be so complicated. It isn't necessary to go into the ins and outs, we don't need to air any laundry, dirty or not. What I can say is that I did not expect to be able to receive anything of my grandmother's. I had hoped for an apron she used to wear when she would take care of me and felt that even that may be a long shot. Shockingly, I have inherited her piano. Her PIANO. (And the apron!)

What does any of this have to do with a domestic adventure?

My aunt wanted the piano out of the house. Like yesterday.
My living room is trashed. I had about a day's notice to make room. Making room means a pretty deep clean. Now I don't mean having to shampoo the carpet, we aren't filthy people like that. That does mean however that I can't just “move the armchair”. I have to dig out the area I'm moving the chair, dig out the front of the chair, move the chair, then clean out the nest that has developed around it. When you both have been working to exhaustion, there is no keeping areas like that clean. A tag pulled off a shirt, a spoon that fell, cat fur, etc falls down around the area, you leave it because it isn't something that rots, they aren't things that make your house smell. We are fairly self conscious about not letting things rot in our house. So it's garbage, knickknacks, and bobbles we never found homes for. The odd cat toy hiding places develop in areas like this. I knocked it out. My sudden panic at having to have a place ready THAT DAY lit a fire under my ass like none other. I killed it in an hour. While moving a chair, an end table and a chord organ (not inherited, bought for the cost of $15 at a junk shop) should have been the work of about 10 minutes for people that have been able to keep up with their house, an hour for me in the mess we've created is damn impressive! I may have emptied my vacuum a few times.

On a side note, while my vacuum is 50x better than the previous vacuum I owned, it is a bagless variety designed for pet homes and is a terrible design. Suction? Great! Brushes? Wonderful. Capacity and easy of emptying the collection unit? Absolute garbage. Because of the fur that collects, I have to reach into the thing and dig it out with my fingers. If you've ever cut open a vacuum bag, imagine sticking your hand around in that and allow a lot of it to sprinkle on your arms, legs, and puff into your face.
Get it together vacuum companies.

So my house has dramatically improved. The living room isn't even near completion but at least half has been cleaned and vacuumed. We are already enjoying the emotional boost of having a cleaner space and Tony has taken an interest in learning piano. Being able to sit down and practice for 20 minutes and then spending further quality time with Tony when he'd like a lesson is an incredible feeling and I hope my grandmother knows how much joy her piano has brought us. Our girls feel a bit differently but of course they are cats, so who knows what they really think. I know that Lorraine was mildly curious until she stepped on a low note and scared herself. That was supervised. We don't leave the keyboard open when the piano is not in use. Bubbles on the other hand has decided that she is a piano cat. She sleeps on the bench, she sits on top when I play, and occasionally attempts to play while I play. I cannot express how much joy that brings me. Bubbles is in my lap now as I type.

Before I move on to a new meal I made I'd like to address something in regards to being a stay at home anything. In my particular case I already have a case of anxiety and depression which I am medicated for. Remaining at home can be a very depressing challenge. You frequently only see your significant other for days at a time and the same work every day looks at you in the face. There is no delegating to a coworker, although of course it is perfectly okay to ask your S/O for help, the work WILL pile up and it will pile up quickly. If you don't do your work, your health and the health of your family can suffer. From my personal experience in the last 2 short weeks has been the difficulty of keeping up on what I already finished while continuing to improve new areas. You can scrub the bathtub and shower (which I did) but it'll need regular upkeep to prevent that kind of mind and body numbing scrub job. The thing is, when you may be battling depression, the daily challenge is  not giving in to just doing nothing. You can sleep in, so you do, but then nothing improves and then it's 3 days later and there aren't any clean forks in the whole house. The mess you let build is depressing to you so sleep in some more. Breaking the cycle and willingly saying “I WILL do better!” is huge. Some days you accomplish that large or challenging task and you feel great, and then there are days where you look at the same damn dishes you JUST washed and want to take a bath and read a book. Balance I suppose.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is while I myself have not thought that staying home has ever been an easy job, too many think it's Peggy Bundy sitting on the couch eating bon bons and spending Al's money. I have a sliver of insight now and I wanted to share that.
But can we all also note that while Peggy Bundy was lazy AF, that house was a whole hell of a lot cleaner than my home. Oh the magic of television.

As I type, I'm running my dishwasher and my dryer. Multitasking, people. Multitasking. In this case it's easy as I'm using machines, but I frequently pick one thing up only to get sidelined about 5 other times. Turning in literal circles has been known to happen. My hope is that when (if?) I get my house to a level of cleanliness that makes us happy, I wouldn't be so distracted, that maybe upkeep will be easier. Maybe making meals will become regular and less special. I want my meals to not be a special occasion or a surprise.
What has been nice on the meal front is that fact that my garden usually does fairly well. I had to put a lot of effort into making the left behind 4 garden boxes on my rented property usable as the people that installed them had no idea about soil content. They lucked out on a couple plants, but for the amount they planted, their harvest was terrible. I have since augmented the boxes and properly tilled them and my plants are thriving. Thriving despite the fact that I don't really weed. I am however, going to need to rescue my potatoes from getting choked out. I have harvested more green beans and sugar snap peas than we can eat and am going to have to either freeze them or can them. I have a pile of Roma tomatoes that I plan to process into Passata (a nice tomato sauce base that freezes well), sunflowers that I'll be drying for the birds for winter, heirloom carrots that I've been able harvest half of already filling a moderate sized tupperware container, an eggplant that has a 6 inch beauty and 3 other started on it, 4 different kinds of pepper plants, one singular plant of which that will be producing 3 big beautiful peppers by itself, a cucumber plant with a HUGE cucumber that I have no idea what I'll do with, purple potatoes that are looking promising, and 2 zucchini plants flowering beautifully. I have a garden box by itself that I let go this year and the cherry tomatoes that my neighbor planted there last season reseeded themselves. HARD. That box is solid cherry tomatoes and they'll start turning from green quite soon!

I am a picky eater, so making food for Tony is both horridly disgusting for me and incredibly rewarding. So when I surprised him with a meal of tacos (completed with chopped tomatoes from our garden) he was thrilled! Making tacos isn't particularly difficult, but it was the first time I'd ever bothered. They went well.
I also ended up making him enchiladas later in the week. I used a Recipe from the Campbell's website. I looked for something without ingredients I wasn't comfortable using. Turns out it was the right recipe because Tony ate 3/4ths of the pan in one day, and the only thing stopping him from eating all of it was that my mother requested a taste. My mother has always wanted to make enchiladas but no one in my family except her will eat them. My mother loved it and my father was intrigued enough to steal some of hers. The bottom line is that I now have to hand over a recipe to my mother, which is truly shocking, and more shocking that my father has decided he really likes enchiladas. They were topped again with tomatoes from our garden. Adventure success.

Nothing like draining nearly 2 weeks of info into a post. Ahhhhhh. Mind you can be still.

First Day

So I'll post a few of these a little closer together than what I'd like because I've got a few on hand. Enjoy!

7/23

My first day free of my job, but my first day of a new job at home! The plan is to have my application we picked up earlier in the week ready to go Monday morning.
So what did I do with my remaining Friday? Well I'll tell you. After turning in my work keys, I went to my parents' house. And then? I passed out on their couch and slept all night. I slept through their old people puttering around (62 and 70 respectively) and woke up around 7 am. Tony came to find me, we had a little snack, and we went home – aaaaaaaand slept. All day. Tell me I wasn't exhausted so far beyond myself. But! I WILL work to improve my life and to improve Tony's life. This is the work that is worthwhile to me. This is the work that I set my alarm for and didn't hit snooze. I set my alarm for 3 pm, so I have time to make a meal for Tony. A few days ago I harvested from our garden. I have a nice bunch of Burgundy beans. (They're a bush bean. They are a pretty purple color that turns green when you cook them, just like any other green bean in flavor as far as we've noticed.) After a half hour or so of YouTube videos (hey, I'm still new to this and waking up is hard, dammit) I pulled out the grill I bought as a present for Tony when we moved in together, lit the charcoals, snagged a little grocery money, and ran to the store.
Burger patties are twice the price as the same ground meat with the same fat content. Well, let's do this the right way out of the gate. You want to save money, start doing it. I did get a better quality bun, though. With buns, you seem to get what you pay for.
So grilled burgers, green beans and mashed potatoes. We have potato flakes in the house already, work with what you've got. I know how to make all these things, no sweat. Except the grill isn't as hot as I need and I have a half hour until Tony leaves for work. Finished the potatoes and beans but gave up on the grill on slapped them in a pan. Lucky for me they'd gotten a smokey start in the grill and tasted fully grilled. I watched the wiggling while he ate. “How are they?” “GOOD!”
Packed him his lunch and sent him on his way. Note to self, start the grill sooner, give yourself time to get those coals HOT, but don't forget your other options.
Another meal that felt so good to be able to say “I made you this!” and have it appreciated so fully.
It also helps that he's a garbage disposal for food, God love him.
So what other domestic things did I do? HA! Apparently I'm still recovering because I ate my share and slept until almost 1 in the morning. We'll see what I can accomplish later tonight. The girls are so happy, they are cuddly and frisky unlike they've been in a long long time. I guess it's taken a toll on all of us. Things are looking up. I don't even know if I want to fill out my application. We'll go over our finances and see if we can pull of having me only work part time.

Get it Started

First let me say, I'm new to blogging. Maybe this will advance to something I really love to play around with, derping with layouts (a good possibility), or maybe I'll get everything out I needed to get out and then let it pass. For the past few weeks I've privately journaled to myself with a consideration to start this. So I have some past posts to share.

This is me and my fiancee Tony trying to figure some chunks of life out.
I will make sure to update more about myself and include more pictures in the future.

7/22
So you've quit your job. You turned in your keys and walked away. Good for you! Your fiancee is supportive and positive about the life change and physically you aren't sick everyday from the stress of getting jerked around, underpaid, and threatened with a firing (again).

But now what? You have no job. What can you do?

Well this is what I'm doing and this is me using an outlet to share my successes and failures.

My Average Misadventures if you will.

So my first adventure started the morning I was going to quit my job. Even just the thought of leaving gave me so much incredible energy. Because of the drain work had put on me and Tony, we haven't had a real homemade meal in a very, VERY long time. A few months at least with us shoveling fast food in to save time. Unfortunately this is super expensive and frankly, it gets old. I don't want to think about the health aspect.
So I decided that since Tony frequently has wrappers from egg salad sandwiches from the gas station (puke) I would make him homemade egg salad.
Here is where the adventures in my own shortcomings started. Not in the physical process of making the egg salad but even in the thought. “I need to boil some eggs.... Wait.. how do I boil eggs?!”
That's right boys and girls, I forgot how to boil eggs. It seems simple when you watch your mother do it without a thought for 25 years, it's a whole 'nother animal when I have to do it.
Do I boil the water and add the eggs? Wait, wasn't there something about vinegar? Salt?
Thank God for housewife ing in the Google age. Turns out you start them in cold water. After starting that first simple step it went super easily, which honestly it should have since egg salad is about as basic as you can get. Well, no. My mother's egg salad is as basic as it comes. Eggs, mayo, salt, and pepper. I know my Tony though, so I picked something I knew he would enjoy. Mine included the eggs, mayo, salt, and pepper, but I added celery, onion chives, and a splash of lemon juice.

You can find the recipe I used Here

Sacrificing an egg for testing was fun. Especially when I handed one to Tony and said “hold on a second”, turned around and heard a pop and silence. Dead silence.
Lol! the egg was perfect – if you wanted a soft boiled egg. I turned around to a stock still Tony holding what was left of an egg, the rest splattered in a half halo around him. He was prepared for a perfect hard boiled egg, had put his thumb on it and pushed and well.. my kitchen floor has the tale splattered on it. After that, everything went smoothly.

When we are happy in this house, we wiggle.
Tony would not stop smiling and would not stop wiggling.
I questioned him on flavors and textures, everything apparently amazing. He told me it's the best egg salad he has ever had. Yay me! Yay Google! Yay Inspired Taste!
So now he has a packed lunch for the first time in months and I have a sense of personal accomplishment I haven't felt in years. This feels so good and so very right.