KirstenL4W

Mister was thinking about making a pie this past weekend, especially when I informed him that Sunday was Pi Day. I even showed him a Pi pie dish that, if we were complete math geeks with far more disposable income, we would have purchased.

Back to the pie. We went shopping on Sunday, and Mister selected some apples for the pie. Then he pored through his cookbooks looking for a better dough recipe for the crust, as he wasn’t satisfied with the one he’d been using in the past. Then it got too late to bake a pie - Mister got tired and there was this work thing that I do Monday through Friday that necessitates me going to bed before sunrise. Which brings us to Monday.

Monday, Mister suggested the pie again. But raiding and internetting meant that we did not even eat dinner until 8:30 or so - a bit late for dinner, never mind trying to bake a pie.

Tuesday, I got home and saw dough in the fridge. Progress! Maybe I would have pie on Tuesday. We went downstairs for dinner, Mister made us some delicious omelets, and said he’d finish making the pie after dinner. As I was finishing up my dinner, I heard a snore. So no pie for me. *sigh*

Wednesday I came home, knowing we had made plans to meet up with some friends we hadn’t seen in way too long. I dumped my purse and keys, walked around to the kitchen, and there it was. My Pi Pie. It was sitting on the cooling rack, taunting me. It also looked like Mister found a much better crust recipe, because this one looked like puff pastry. It looked too pretty to eat, but don’t worry, that didn’t stop me. I dug in, and it was worth every single calorie.

Behold the Pi of Awesomeness:

It’s official. I have no willpower. I was all set to get back on track today, packing low-fat yogurt, strawberries and grilled chicken breast for my lunch, when a vendor brought us cupcakes. Who can resist those? They’ve got to be 10pts each. But I had one. And they came right after I finished my mid-morning snack, so I wasn’t even hungry. But I had one.

Already this week we’ve had a birthday potluck at work. Now this. Oh, and I should mention that last night I had Kraft Mac&Cheese for dinner. That used to be one of my favorite things to eat. But not anymore. I wasn’t totally turned off by it, but I didn’t finish it either. The blue box has lost its luster for me. I think that if I am craving mac and cheese in the future, I’ll be making it myself. It’s just as easy to whip up with some whole wheat pasta and shredded cheese. And it’s a whole lot tastier, not to mention healthier. Now, I’m not going to say never, but I don’t think I’ll be going for the blue box again.

It’s funny what happens when you start eating healthier. As you put better foods - fresh stuff prepared at home - into your body, you get used to it. Your tummy and the rest of your body thanks you. Then when you put processed crap in, after you’ve gotten used to the healthy stuff, your body reacts in a bad way. It starts groaning, “Why did you do that to me? Why?” And you have to answer it, “Because I remembered how muchs I used to like the crap and my eyes and mind haven’t figured out that I really shouldn’t have it anymore.” My body knows what it wants and needs. Now I just need to tell my head that.

Still to work on: willpower. And exercise. Falling far short in both those areas.

I think I blew it this week. We had yet another potluck for a birthday at work (and another one next week). The food was just so good that I couldn’t resist. Well, I probably could have resisted the pastries. But the strawberries did it for me. Strawberries dipped in sour cream - trust me on this - then dipped in a brown sugar and cinnamon mix. It was heaven. At least that was the bulk of my overindulgence. Other than that, and Fritos cravings (very unusual for me to crave crunchy salty snacks), I think I’ve been doing ok. I’ll tell you one thing - once your body gets used to healthier foods it starts to reject the crap. I had my first afternoon slump in ages today, and even though it’s 8:30pm, I’m still feeling the slump. But I would not be me if I didn’t push myself to stay caught up on the blogosphere, despite my need to zone out in front of the television.

So as I was going through my reader tonite, I came across a post on TwiTip about making your tweets worth following. I read the article when it came out a few weeks ago, but for some reason it didn’t really stick then. Reading it again tonite, I took note of who the guest poster was. Summer Tomato was the home blog of the author, and it was mentioned that it was a blog about healthy eating. Hey, I’m trying to do that more and more! Maybe I’ll check this place out. Turns out, Summer Tomato is a treasure trove of good, common sense healthy eating facts. What’s preached on the blog is very similar to the healthy eating habits that WW teaches, but it goes further by endorsing fresh, local, non-processed foods as well. WW falls short there, because they have their own line of processed foods. I’m still looking around on Summer Tomato and I’m really liking what I see there. There’s no quack advice, as far as I can tell. Like I said, it’s all common sense stuff on there, and that’s what I like best about it.

If you get a chance, head over to Summer Tomato for some sensible talk about healthy eating.

Over the weekend, I made Mister an English muffin. It came out just fine. No worries, right?

Sunday morning, Mister decided he wanted to have some toast while I was staring at HGTV. He put two pieces of bread in the toaster. A few minutes later, I was awakened from my house-pr0n daze because Mister was using some choice words for the resulting toast. I don’t know how all of you people like your toast, but in the KirstenL4W house we like it a nice golden brown. Not incinerated. After throwing away the two pieces of charcoal, Mister turned down the toaster settings and tried again. This time the smoke alarm went off. OK, now you’ve got my full attention.

Mister started telling me that we ought to get a 4-slice toaster so that we can make toast for the both of us at the same time. It would be more efficient, he said. But it’s hard to justify a new purchase like that when we have a perfectly good toaster at home. That’s when it happened. The toaster suffered an unfortunate accident and ended up with a huge dent in one side. So I just had to drag my butt out of the house and go to a huge housewares store.

I came home with a nice, brand name 4-slice toaster. And it makes the perfect piece of toast.

I think I’ve written about the mental block I have with meal planning in the past.  If not, well, see, I have this huge mental block with meal planning.  I just have a hard time coming up with meals that 1. make me want to cook them when I come home from a long day at work 2. my husband will like and 3. won’t bother my bland-is-grand stomach preferences.  Oh, and I want to keep mealtime exciting too - not serving the same thing every night.  And I don’t want to use all the pots and pans we own to prepare dinner.  Got all that?

Before I met Mister, I had a pretty boring diet.  I figured I could cook, but for one person who really, really likes pasta and can’t afford much else, I ended up eating a lot of pasta.  Particularly pastas that come in boxes with little envelopes of powdered flavoring.  That suited me just fine.  Once in awhile I’d get a craving for something else, so I’d buy the necessary ingredients and make myself a serving of whatever it was that I craved.  Then I was back to pasta.

After I met Mister, I started cooking more, but I realized that I had no idea what I was doing.  Mister guided me through some basics so that we wouldn’t be eating pasta all the time.  Veggies I can more or less handle, provided it’s something that I’ll eat, but meats perplexed me.  Not only did I not know how to cook meat, I was also afraid of cooking in a stainless steel frying pan.  I’ve chiseled quite a bit of food out of stainless in my day, and I was none too eager to do it again.

So, fast forward to today.  Earlier in the week, I saw roaster chickens on sale at a great price, so I bought one.  I was looking for boneless skinless chicken breasts because I’ve gotten quite good at that particular cut of meat, but the store didn’t have any.  I saw the roasters on sale and figured it would give us quite a bit of leftover options (I’m even worse at leftovers than I am at planning that first meal).  After consulting a few cookbooks and websites, I figured I knew what to do.

Until I realized that all those recipes were for a 2 1/2 - 3 lb bird.  As I discovered at 6:00 this evening, mine was twice that size.

No worries, I said.  Everything will be fine.  Our Thanksgiving turkey cooked a lot faster than we thought. So tonight, after the allotted time, I took the chicken’s temperature and all was well, according to my digital meat thermometer. I took the chicken out of the pan and placed it on a platter to rest. A few minutes later I noticed lots of red juice. I know that when a chicken’s number is up the juices will run clear, so this was not right. I consulted with Mister and after telling him my story, he advised cooking it for another hour. Which I did. Which means that my 5-6 pound bird cooked at 375 for the same amount of time that my 11 pound bird did at 400 for an hour then 325 for 1.3 hours. The same amount of cooking time for two vastly different sized birds.

Dinner tonight was frozen pizza for Mister (thank goodness for 2 cooking racks in the oven!) and a blue box of dinner for me. I had the blues. But I would rather have had chicken.

Maybe one of these years I can cook absolutely delicious meals like my friend Uncommon Jasmine, whose husband must have the happiest tummy in all of Canada. Maybe someday I’ll be able to do something with every ingredient you could throw at me. Maybe someday I’ll be able to effortlessly whip up a cozy luncheon for seven or so people without feeling like I need a nap before the food is on the table. Maybe someday. Today, however, I’ll continue to be inspired by cookbooks, cooking shows and cooking websites as I try not to disappoint with my mediocre skills in the kitchen.

I made a ham for Christmas, and since it was just Mister and myself, we had a lot of leftovers.  Today, with some of those leftovers, I made pea soup.  I have to admit - I’ve never in my life eaten pea soup.  I had no idea if I would even like the stuff.  And since I’ve never had it before, I’ve also never made it before, nor seen it made.  So here I was, with grandiose ideas on making something that I didn’t know how to make and didn’t even know whether or not I’d like it.  Quite a commitment, eh?

I saved the ham bone specifically for this, and it had a lot of meat left on it.  A LOT.  Then I went online for recipes.  I wanted to do this in the slow cooker, because crock pots are a lazy cook’s best friend, so search the interwebs I did.  I finally came across this recipe, which was simple in its ingredients, prep, and technique.   I got up this afternoon morning, and got to work.  I rinsed the peas and sorted them, not knowing what exactly I was looking for during the sort, so I just took out some yucky looking ones.  Then I chopped the rest of the ingredients, plopped the ham bone in, poured in some water, and turned the pot on.  A few hours later I went to look at it, and it smelled divine.  Heavenly, I tell you.  Finally, around 7pm, I could take no more of the smell.  I was hungry, and I’m sure Mister was too.

I went over to the crock pot, took the lid off, and with some tongs lifted out the bay leaves.  Then on to the ham bone.  I lifted it out and had a fork ready to take the rest of the meat off, but the fork wasn’t really necessary.  The meat fell off the bone and plopped into the soup.  I stirred it up, thinking I’d need to add more water like the recipe said, or use the immersion blender, but that was not necessary.  The thickness was perfect, and because they’d cooked so long, the peas took care of themselves.  The carrots and chunky ham looked so good that I just left it alone.  Besides, pea soup is a hearty soup, and in my opinion hearty soups should be chunky.

I served dinner with some fresh artisan bread, and took a bite.  Hey, Mikey likes it!  This is really good stuff.  You should have some.  But make it yourself, because between Mister and me, there won’t be much in the way of leftovers.  Enjoy!

Today I went to a different store to find Bell’s Seasoning.  They don’t have it either.  I give up.  My mom will be sending me a box of the coveted spice blend via overnight delivery.  I could keep looking, but she needs to send it out tomorrow to make sure I get it in time, so I’ll just relax on the seasoning and focus on lactose-free whipping cream.  I’m sure I saw it at Whole Paycheck…

About a month ago, I heard a rumor that Home Magazine was closing up shop.  A visit to their website didn’t reveal any information until I clicked on the subscription link and got a 404 page.  Then tonight I was going through all the feeds in my reader, and More Ways to Waste Time had a post about this very topic.  It seems that there are a number of shelter magazines that are ceasing to exist.  I don’t see fashion magazines or gossip sheets closing (and we all know the world can do with a lot fewer gossip magazines), but home decor magazines are disappearing like they’ve been hit by the plague.  There’s not much I can do about this, other than to buy the magazines that are left and hope they don’t go anywhere, but on the other hand - remember my magazine organizing project?  It will be a heck of a lot easier to keep up with now, until the economy gets better and new magazines can come out.

In other news, do you want to know how to make Bananas Foster if you have absolutely no culinary skills?  It’s not as good as the real deal, but it is pretty yummy.  First, peel a banana and slice it up, just like you would if you were going to put it in cereal.  Put it in a bowl.  Then take your favorite butterscotch or caramel ice cream topping and pour it on top.  Wine pairing: Captain Morgan’s.  No flambé necessary.  Nutritious and delicious!

Tonight I’m going to read the last few pages of Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince.  I tried to finish it last night, but just couldn’t make it and fell asleep with the book open on my chest, as usual.  On the other hand, this means that I’ll be done all the books by the time the next movie comes out, since I only have one more book and at least six months before the next release.  With lots more books downstairs, at least I’ll have something to read, even if it’s not my favorite magazine.

As you well know by now, Mister and I recently returned from our trip to New England, specifically the area north of Boston near the New Hampshire border, and into New Hampshire a bit.  The primary purpose of the trip was our honeymoon and to introduce Mister to my family members who did not come out to Vegas for our wedding (and I know better than to make them come when it’s well over 105°F outside).

After a lovely flight in which we got little, if any, sleep due to a whining child in the row behind us, we obtained our rental car at a much higher price than our online reservation said.  At 6:30am and as tired as we were, we didn’t push the issue, but after thinking it over, Mister was able to secure a car with another company at a much, much lower price, so it was worth it to us to get up at 4am the next day to go into Boston, return the first rental, pick up the second car, and be on our way.

So back to day 1.  It was too early to check into our hotel, so Mister tried his hand at driving in the Bay State.  It might have been a bit easier if he had an informative and educational book such as this one, but eventually he got the hang of rotaries and the overabundance of yield signs.  We drove to Gloucester, took some pictures of statues, then drove around Rockport and headed back towards Danvers for a roast beef sandwich.  Mister didn’t understand why I was craving one of these so badly, and he insisted that I was describing Arby’s.  Not so.  For those familiar with a Massachusetts-style roast beef sandwich, you know of what goodness I speak.  For those not familiar, let me enlighten you.  First, you take a bulkie roll (I prefer onion rolls), split it, butter the inside, and put it on the grill (flat grill, not a bbq type grill).  This gives the inside of your sandwich a nice, flavorful cruch.  Then you take warm, rare roast beef and slice it just a bit thinner than your deli slicer will handle.  Pile it high on the roll!  Add mayo or bbq sauce, and cheese if you desire.  That’s it.  Mister was impressed that the sandwich contained real roast beef and not that loaf stuff that’s used at a previously mentioned fast food chain, and by the end of the trip he was a convert.

After lunch, we decided to check in at the hotel because we needed some shuteye.  We only planned on sleeping for about an hour to make ourselves ready for the rest of the day without dooming ourselves to a night owl schedule in a part of the country that doesn’t have much nightlife to speak of, but that plan went horribly wrong.  I slept for around 4 hours.  Officer Friend called sometime during that nap, but I wasn’t coherent enough to talk to him and went back to sleep.  Mister finally woke me up in time to find some dinner, and we ended up going to downtown Newburyport to a landmark restaurant called The Grog, and took in the first of our fresh, New England seafood dinners.  Yummy!  I grew up on fresh seafood, and miss it so much.  A word to the wise: don’t even try to eat seafood in a landlocked state.  Just don’t.

After dinner we walked around Newburyport for a couple minutes, window shopping our way back to the car, and then headed back to the hotel.  We stayed up and watched tv for way too late since we were no longer tired, even though we had a 4am wake up call to go swap cars.  But we managed.  The next day, we swapped cars and since it was still way too early, I amazed Mister with my amazing Dunkin Donuts radar and then we went to Salisbury Beach to watch the sun rise over the Atlantic - a first for Mister.  A drive around the seacoast showed Mister the neighborhood I lived in right before moving to Vegas.  Then we drove to Salem, MA.  Mister was really eager to see Salem, so we made it our sightseeing priority.

Salem, MA in October is not a quiet place, as you can imagine.  Can you really expect it in a town where the police have a witch on a broomstick silhouetted on their cars?  No, it was a bit crowded, but being there on a weekday as opposed to the weekend helped give us a bit of breathing room.  We started with the Corwin Witch House, which is a wicked old house that belonged to a judge involved in the witch trials.  Then we walked down Essex Street to go towards the Witch Museum, stopping in some shops along the way.  When we got to the Witch Museum, we started walking towards the entrance when two busloads filled with elderly tourists stopped, emptied out and rushed the entrance.  Suddenly there was a line down the street, and since it was now after lunch and we were tired, we decided to plan our next trip to New England in the off season, and put the rest of the Salem attractions on that trip’s list.  We headed back to the car, taking a detour to a wicked old cemetary, and decided to drive to one more old thing: House of the Seven Gables.  Mister’s interested in history, and old houses feed into that interst, so it was a fun tour.

By that time it was getting late, and we had plans to have dinner with my dad and stepmom, so we headed up there.  I did a quick driving tour through my hometown, which Mister enjoyed because Methuen has a lot of cool history. We stopped at the local cemetary to visit my grandfather, then went to my dad’s house.  I think Mister enjoyed seeing the house I grew up in.  We chatted with my dad and stepmom until it was time to go pick up my nephew, Bubba, from his football game.  We all piled into the truck to head to the high school I attened in 9th and 10th grade and encountered a crowd of parents picking up all their kids from various sporting events.  With no cell signal, there was no way to get in touch with Bubba to tell him where exactly we were, so since I knew the school grounds I walked up the bus loop and quickly found Bubba waiting on the sidewalk.  I stood next to him for a few minutes before asking him if he was waiting for a ride.  He said yes.  I told him I knew where Papa was, then he finally realized his most favoritest Aunty in all the world was standing beside him.  “Oh, hi Aunty.”

At Bubba’s suggestion, Dad took us to a seafood joint near his house.  It’s mostly fried seafood, and trust me, we Bay Staters can fry seafood really good, but I had something else.  The Holy Grail of seafood.  Maine Lobster.  Yep, it was on the menu and I was having it.  But not just any Maine Lobster.  Twin Maine Lobster - that’s two whole lobsters.  For $19.99.  Oh yes, I was bibbed, my sleeves got rolled up, and I was in the zone.  So messy to eat and so worth every last morsel.

Saturday was the day of our par-tay, the one we planned so that we could get everyone together in one place and meet and greet and celebrate.  We started out in mid-morning by heading to my dad’s place of business.  Mister’s parents have a truck yard, my dad has The Garage.  Mister has heard so many stories that occur there, so I wanted to show him.  He liked it - he said it was a really nice little office, and a great yard.  There’s a brook out back and trees, so even though it’s on the main road through town, it feels rural and relaxing.  After visiting dad, we headed to a different Salem, this one in New Hampshire, to get lunch and do a tour since I spent way more time in Salem, NH than Salem, MA growing up.  We stopped at Newbury Comics for a wicked good time, then wound our way through town.  I showed Mister the house I lived in until I was 6, which is when Dad bought the house in Methuen.  We went to the church to see the memorial garden and visit my mom’s parents.  Grandma’s name was just carved on the headstone that week, so I’m glad I got to see that.  We continued to wind our way through Derry and Londonderry before arriving at the restaurant for our party.

The party was pretty good.  Kids got kinda loud, as kids do, but it was really nice to see everyone.  Dinner was great, and everyone got along, so it was a very nice night.  Except the part about my brother, which my mom wrote about.  But it was fine in the end.  Mister enjoyed meeting the rest of the family and some of my friends, and was finally able to put faces with the names.

The next day, Sunday, we planned on doing Boston.  But my not so great plans, which didn’t consider situations like Mister’s bad back preventing him from walking, meant we got into Boston, parked, got up to the Common, and walked back to the car.  We tried to drive to the USS Constitution, but Boston’s well-laid out roads had other plans and tried to shove us to the airport.  So we decided instead to go back to Newburyport, which is much more compact and more easily walked.  The Autumn Harvest Festival caused us to abort those plans, since heavy traffic meant that we would most surely not get a parking space anywhere near the downtown area.  We were starving by this point, so headed to Friendly’s for lunch and called my mom to announce that we were coming over.  Mommy was thrilled at the unexpected visit, and Mister got to see a bit more of New Hampshire since we had to drive nearly forever on a road to the middle of nowhere to get to my mom’s house.

For Monday, our last full day there, Mister suggested we call my Gram to visit with her.  I really liked this idea because I really like spending time with my Gram.  First we picked up Bubba and went bowling so that I could show Mister a form of bowling that is more challening because the ball is not as wide as the lane.  We had lunch at the bowling alley then headed to Gram’s.  Mister enjoyed talking to Gram and learning of how she earned her engineering degree in the 1940s and worked as an electrical engineer for a time.  Then we popped downstairs to visit my aunt and uncle for a bit, and I got to show Mister the house I spent every single Christmas in until I moved to Nevada.  Then we dropped Bubba off and headed back to the hotel.

On our last day, we had an evening flight, so we checked out of our hotel and did a driving tour.  Mister wanted to see more of New Hampshire and fall colors, so we did that before heading to the airport.  Overall, Mister really liked his first visit to Massachusetts and New Hampshire.  He loves the fact that there are 4 distinct seasons and would love to experience Christmas with snow.  He loves the old houses and the fact that newer homes are built in pretty much the same styles that were used since the Pilgrims first landed.  He loves the accent, even though he thought I was speaking a totally different language most of the time.  Most of all, I think he loves that I grew up there and was able to show him a part of the country he’d never been to before - a part of the country that is a huge part of who I am.

I haven’t participated in the Monday writing prompt in a couple of weeks. Two weeks ago, Mister and I were visiting his parents in one of the most perfect places I’ve ever seen, and last week the topic didn’t apply to me. But I’m back, with stories about cooking. Other people’s cooking. I admit that I’m not the best cook in the world, but I don’t think I’ve ever really messed something up bad enough to make a blogworthy story. I have blogged about other people’s cooking before, specifically my stepmother and mom. My mom is funny. She can be a bit forgetful when she cooks - like the time she made tuna casserole and forgot to put the tuna in. Other times she makes a big mistake. Once, she accidentally reached for the wrong thing in the spice cabinet and ended up putting cinnamon in the meatloaf instead of allspice. She blamed that one on “someone” who was moving things around in her meticulously organized spice cabinet. Oh, and there’s the time she made a roaster chicken and put 4, count ‘em, four bullion cubes in when she was making the gravy. She wanted it to have some flavor, she said. Oh, it had flavor all right. The unmistakable flavor of way too much sodium.

My mom is not the only one with her disasters. My sister, when she was younger and much, much less experienced in the kitchen, decided to make herself a grilled cheese sandwich. What she got was two pieces of blackened bread with cold cheese in the middle. She fried both sides of the bread until they were nice and crispy, then stuck a piece of cold cheese between them. Brilliant. She’s much better at it now, and is even better at making roasting chickens than mom is.

One disaster that I was not witness to, but really enjoy hearing, is Mister’s experience with salmon. He likes to cook with wine, and is quite good at it. Actually, he’s quite good at cooking period. Anyway, he was cooking this salmon and decided to add some white wine. As he reached for the wine bottle, he realized he was out of white wine. He figured since the fish was already in the middle of the cooking process, he’d add what he did have - red wine. How bad can it be? Well, he soon saw the results of red wine with salmon. He ended up serving purple fish. A crayola-like passionflower purple. Very, um, colorful. The recipients of this meal were a bit unsure at first, but as they put on a brave face and started eating it, they realized it was yummy. Very yummy. So yummy, in fact, that they specifically asked for purple fish a number of times after that. It ended up being a popular dish in his circle.

So there you have it - some cooking catastrophes. Some I have been subjected to, others not. What are some of your cooking catastrophes?