25 posts tagged “kitchen witch”

Having had a Thanksgiving last weekend, I decided there was absolutely nothing wrong with a repeat: in this case though I let someone else be hostess and enjoyed myself. Rather. A. Lot.

Yesterday I got up (rather a lot late) and after some this-and-that went wine tasting. Also. Rather. A. Lot. At some point someone suggested going out to eat for dinner and I pointed out I could cook 'em all some Chicken Cacciatore. Which I did and we ate and we watched the Boondock Saints, because it's important to watch warm and fuzzy movies during the holidays.

This morning I got my knee taped, and picked up my packet, because tomorrow I'm going to be running. Rather. A. Lot.

It's been a while since I obsessed about the fiscal side of things, so let's do some of that.

I was a bad, bad, bad girl last month. I bought nightstands, a mattress pad, a pedicure, some clothes, and a garbage disposal (Well, technically I got the GD this weekend but still --- bad!). One can argue as to the longevity of these items and how each were researched only a couple of things were impulse buys, but the fact of the matter remains is my March budget remains in tatters. Tatters!

Therefore today I am back on my Being Good Again bent, and that means menu planning and grocery ninja-ing. This is the usually fun enterprise of meal-planning for a 2 week period, breaking it up into 2 distinct shopping trips, and then attempting (oh, the attempt) to stay away from the grocery store (and fresh.amazon.com) for that period. The additional bonus is that it's done primarily in Excel, which is my favorite program to play in. If I were to come back as a program it would be Excel, because I am the Excel ninja, and can hide amongst the cells in various abstruse formulas.

All fun aside, this also means I am going to, yet again, attempt to make bread. My bread attempts thus far have been mixed, at best. I suspect it is because I am not satisfied with a wet dough or a long rise time, and I suspect I am going to just have to get over it. Two weeks (or more) back I was listening to NPR and they had an author of a bread book talking about how there are these miraculous "no knead" breads and how time saving they were... except that they typically involve a really long, tortuously slow rise time. "Quick Rise" yeast does nothing to keep me from fidgeting. In the end I have a feeling that the cost and time I put into making bread will be more "expensive" than if I just bought the damn bread, but there is something psychological about this and I'll be content to run on my little wheel for a bit longer.

I have also determined I am getting Dish... I just haven't got around to it. What does it say when 70% of my drive to get Dish is to get my parents the coupon? Maybe I shouldn't get dish and get someone else's coupon for them. Then again, the new person sign-on is a pretty good deal as-is.

Things that will potentially impact my new Being Good Drive:

• Negative Impact
• Patio Furniture
• Home Improvements (one begets another)
• Garden Plant Lust
• A Disneyland Trip in Summer (here's hoping my IATA rates hold)
• Positive Impact
• No drinking = $ saved on wine
• Menu planning
• My chiro visits have been reduced from 2x/wk to 1x/wk
• Boy's last school payment is in June
• Unknown Impact
• We're starting an investment club at work
• I'm starting a container herb and veggie garden
• Farmers markets

Ready...Steady...Go!

"You have salt issues."

I have heard this on more than one occasion.

My salt issues stem from a disconsolate evening, early in my cohabitation with X, in which I created a beautiful lasagne that had a salt concentration roughly equivalent of a salt lick. You could've used that lasagne to season meat.

Since then I've been afraid of salt. I know it is necessary to cook with, to enhance and create flavors. It is a staple of the kitchen like no other: it is used in cooking and baking. I challenge you to find a recipe that does NOT include salt. Good luck with that.

K-Bear open mouths in shock when he sees me grab my beloved box of Kosher. GH is cooking dinner tonight and I suggested adding a little salt to help the onions sweat; he said "go for it, there's some in the grinder". So I ground it into my hand. "You have salt issues!" he accused. "I don't trust it, no". "You should blog about that"

So there you go. My love knows no bounds, I blog at bequest.

Today's anti-wheat/egg/cowdairy menu includes quinoa pasta, red sauce, goat's milk mozarella, meatballs made with rice bread crumbs, and peas roasted in garlic. So far, so good.

I am going to attempt to make french bread on Saturday. I will buy some just in case, as my bread history isn't so good. But while I'm trying to make some for the C to ingest -- baking a bread that calls normally for all 3 on the verboten list is optimistic at best -- I figure I'll try doing the real thing as well.

Which somehow reminds me -- It's been more than 3 years since I've divorced, and I don't feel like the D word is my main personal association anymore. When I have to write my status I simply write "single", I have to think to remember that I was once married to the X. So I need to come up with another DD name. Divine, of course, may stay ;) Our options include:

• Divine Domestic
• Divine Ditz
• Divine Doxy
• Divine Dictatrix
• Divine ?

Vote now! No idea when I'll actually come to a decision!

First, yesterday was a tie for my second best Valentine's Day. I got doughnuts. I ran 8 miles at my best pace ever. I have a new color of paint in my library that required no work from me (thank you GH!) (yes, it is Orange). I had a relaxing morning with the male person. I went to Whole Foods and got out with a week's worth of groceries for $65, and I got to make macaroni and cheese for the C's last supper.

You see, today started his (our) elimination diet, as while I'm with him I'm going to follow it as much as possible. That means soy milk lattes, alternative flours, etc. (I figure when he's at his dads I can revert). Today I made Wheat, Dairy, and Chicken-Egg free pancakes.

Old Pancake Recipe:

1.5 c flour, 1.5 c milk, 2 eggs, 1tsp salt, 3tbsp sugar, 1tsp vanilla extract, 1.75tsp baking powder; mix thoroughly and cook on a hot griddle with butter to grease it.

New Pancake Recipe:

same volumes, except substitute 1 duck egg for 2 chicken eggs, substitute Bob's Red Mill Wheat/Gluten/Dairy/Egg free all purpose baking flour, substitute milk with vanilla Silk, substitute butter with a soybased butter alternative.

I know what you're thinking. Man, that sounds like it tastes gross! I was certain it was going to be a disaster. Having cooked before where there have been 1 or 2 substitutions and being able to tell the difference (unpleasantly, more often than not), this would be a travesty of justice, once metered out.

It wasn't. They taste *very* similar, if not even a little too sweet thanks to the silk having some sort of sweet taste of its own. The C pronounced them acceptable, but asked if next time we could put fruit in it (absolutely!).

Rounding out my pleasant surprises of the day: the C has had perfect manners all morning (asking to be excused from the table without reminder), self-started getting dressed, remembered we were going to a brunch at Greenie's and asked if he could bring a toy (not Star Wars, mom) all on his own. I also finally got a solid night's sleep in: the last 3 before it I was waking up in the middle of the night for 2-3 hours at a time. 

I would extend the pleasant surprises to the scale, but I think that would be pushing it. Besides, I ate two pancakes already today. 

I have hauled 5 wheelbarrows full of random weeds, nonuseable vegetable matter, and failed vegetable experimentation. Not from Ms. Lisa's farm, but from the farm of a friend of hers that she is now using to grow things.

Memo to future farmers: Have your compost heap nearby your farm. It's practical both from the "feeding the compost" point and "using the compost" point. Having the compost heap uphill, via switchback, 200 yards away from your farming area is plain stupid, and I have a sore back and muscles to prove it.

Today I planted (I say I because the SC gave up early) beans, spinach, peas, beets, kale, and collard greens. We harvested onions, potatoes, kale, and kholrabi; and the SC ate his body weight in fresh blackberries. This is to make up for the complete lack of crab, which (thanks to commercial crabbing up the inlet) meant our crab pot was empty. Sigh, indeed. (Fresh salmon caught by Ms Lisa on her Alaska vacation awaits us for dinner, however).

I have also rediscovered my camping capabilities: bathing via 2 washbasins (with carefully heated water) and washing dishes using the same two different washbasins (at a different time, of course). I enjoy coming up here because it is so relaxing and it is so raw; but I cannot imagine living here 24/7. I really hope she gets her bath house by winter, for HER sake.

Ms Lisa and I have had quite the conversations this weekend; there are many ways in which we are similar (politically she's a bit more left than I, socially we're about the same par; she is WAY more do-it-yourself than I am). I have offered her repeatedly to sell her the SC, from $1 to 75 cents to 50 cents to 25 cents, but she bought him at 22 cents.

Maybe I can get some home grown onions out of the deal.

That being where Ms Lisa's farm is. I am pirating her computer while she is away this morning, and I have at my side 3 dogs and one snoring small child. It is raining.

It is going to be raining the rest of our weekend.

The last time I came here, I packed mostly jeans (e.g., long pants) and middle-to-lightweight shirts. This time, what with it being *SUMMER* and all, I packed shorts and tshirts. This...could get interesting.

Yesterday we arrived after having spent a couple of hours in the Mukilteo-Clinton ferry line, just in time to send the SC out with Ms Lisa to dump a crab pot. Ms Lisa is buffer than any 2 guys I know, she rowed right out to the middle of the inlet and right back, with a rollicking SC. Me, I stayed behind and shifted the other boats.

Then I made chicken marsala. It would've been better had I eyeballed the salt properly, we found ourselves reaching for the shaker at dinner. Afterwards, the SC got his "TV" for the day -- Dora the Explorer -- and Ms Lisa and I retired to the deck, to watch the fire and catch up a bit.

One of the things she mentioned was that no one visits in the wintertime. It gets dreary. I hope she gets at least an interim plubming solution sorted out by then, but I am determined to come and visit in the wintertime.

And remember to salt the marsala better.

CC is getting married in 5 days; the kilt is DONE. I put the lining on last night. McGuyver tried it on on Saturday and all I had to do is scootch the buckle straps in a bit and then line it. Yay! I think it looks pretty darn good.

Saturday I helped host the rehearsal dinner -- I had help with the cooking and set up, which rocked -- for 26 people. That's a lot of people :)  I have now learned how to do bacon wrapped scallops (look up the Rachael Ray recipe on food network) and I have officially kicked my creme brulee spectre.

Now I'm sitting here knowing that, once the ring pillow is finished off tonight, I have other projects competing for my time. It doesn't help to have a checklist mentality and an XL spreadsheet that reaches to October of 2010 (yes, really) of projects to do.

In the meantime, work beckons -- in the last 3 working days I have fired someone (unfortunate), hired someone (yay!), and written reviews for my crew. The VP of HR sent me a smirk and said, "welcome to management". Not a bad list of things for my sophmore year.

Goodreads won't take my library DB I have unless I have ISBN numbers, which I suppose I do... if I were willing to go through 2736 books and type them out. Yes, I have that many books (inherited mostly, I've only read about 70% of them) and no, I'm not going to fish out ISBN numbers. I'll just update Goodreads as I read, and update my DB as I add ones to the permanent collection. Also, Google's Picasa and Flickr don't seem to want to keep my preformatted hirearchy of folders (for organization) for my pictures, so those shall remain on my 'pute. The good news is, I FINALLY used the card P-Ade gave me and got all of my pics off of my phone. I'm not going to go retroactively add them to posts -- why bother? -- but I hope this bodes well for future image enhanced posts!

I now weigh less than I did when I started dating GH! Finally. I hate losing weight: it's such a battle of plateaus and dips. I'm trying not to get cocky here. I have about 10 pounds to go and then I'll be at the weight I was when I started dating X, which is my personal best. I was really in shape then but I work out more now; so we shall see how it looks on a post-mommy, mid-30's body.

With the kilt nearly done (all I have left is the lining and I want to do some reinforcing stitching here and there -- but it pressed beautifully! I really recommend that book and I really recommend reading every step 4 times before committing thread to wool), I'm also using the family genetics (engineering) to conceive of a better chicken coop. I've scoured the wiki's, the forums, and the 'blogs; I've got stats on how many perches and how high and how many nests and how large and how often they clean out and how frequently they lay and how much space they need in and out per chicken. The chief pains of keeping chickens seem to be coop clean-out related; I'm going to have a coop that is 3 feet from the ground and will have a floor on hinges, bifold, so when you unlock the unhinged sides, the floor falls away (ostensibly with the chickens in the run, not the coop) and the litter falls to the ground. Or better yet, to a wheelbarrow. I'm also determined to make it from as many recycled or reclaimed things as I can; I've got quite a lot of decent-shape decking leftover and a friend with extra roofing felt. Craigslist is now my favorite haunt -- even once you take out "Missed Connections".

Which brings me to: IT'S NOT 'ROT' IRON, PEOPLE. It's wrought. As in Wrought Iron. As in the iron was wrought; iron itself can't rot. Why oh why do these people not use a dictionary?

But before I get all up with my bad chicken self, I need to manifest dinner and dessert for 28 people this Saturday. I hear a Costco trip... 

Kale is the redheaded, bastard stepchild of the modern garden. People claim to eat it but very few do, and I've discovered that I rather like it. Plus, it has all sorts of health benefits: nature's broom, and all that.

However, my kale recipes are of limited application: saute some garlic, onions, olive oil in a wide saucepan, add kale, and cook as collard greens. Oh, you can mix it up and use some of that Costco sausage -- the chicken spicy stuff, it's too salty on its own for my taste -- but that's about the only thing, minus "traditional salad", that I know that kale works with and/or in.

Off to Google I go.

You see, Ms. Lisa will be harvesting, and purportedly selling, kale. And I will be one of her bigger consumers: while I fully intend to ramp up a small veggie garden, it isn't going to be ready until next year, and will not include kale (onions, tomatoes, carrots, leeks, garlic, chives, corn, bell pepper, zucchini, eggplant, and pumpkin are on the list). Ms Lisa will continue to be my kale dealer, and more likely my occasional kohlrabi dealer (dealress?).

I digress (as a habit!)....

Most of the kale recipes I've found online are mastery of masking kale: enough feta cheese, for example, to start your own Greek restaurant. I'd rather appreciate the strong, almost mustardy flavor if I can. Hey, it puts hair on your chest. Since I have a Lucy this is no real problem for me :) But my quest continues, and if you have ideas, do let me know.

Which segues not at all subtly to my next posit: as much as I think web 2.0 does for the introvert and the populace as a whole, I think this era of facile connectivity has rendered some awkward social circumstances. To wit: one of the people I didn't really altogether like that much in high school has "friended" me on Facebook.

I went to Jr. High and High school with this gal. She was a bit snotty, and I remember one or two particularly acidic barbs, but on the scale of what I was dished out those five years -- and yes, the dish continued to the bitter end -- it was maybe a ph of 5. She is now officially a coworker, in a different department, and was all "lets do lunch" when we ran into each other in the hallway. I.... was at a loss.

I have zero warm feelings for this person and my high school memory factor has all of the warmth of a holiday fruit basket with a preprinted card: what incentive, short of "can't we all get along?", was there for me to say yes and "friend" this person. This person is not a "friend". Why oh why did I do it?

Things are rarely as simple as you envision them. I believe I envisioned adding her, and then ignoring her, "punching the clock" so to speak. But then a certain amount of schadenfreude entered and I started perving on her profile. The friend of hers from high school that became a local Weather celebrity (she was actually nicer), the guy who had fantastic camera talent and was permanently nice (and wouldn't remember me with an annual and detailed notes), six or seven others I didn't even realize I graduated with but apparently did. Web 2.0 has allowed me to know what happend to whom in a list of people I would have, and could have (were I my parents generation) gladly forgotten.  Like Humpty Dumpty, I cannot go home and put the shell back; I see the limited profiles of people I hated (yes, I know that's a strong word: wake up every morning for 2 years crying and you will know what it means, too) and people I was at best benign toward, and wonder what happend to them and are they the same and do they remember how mean they were? Probably not.

I have my share of moxie -- and my bitch streak, which I suppose I should thank them for -- and so it surprises even me that I just stood there and made pleasant commentary, and that I clicked the "accept" to the friend request. I don't have any illusions that I will have any further responsibility -- lunch has failed to manifest itself in the subsequent period, for which I am grateful -- but I wonder if I'm somehow letting down the little girl who cried.

I do not mean to diss Web 2.0 -- it's just an eventuality I was unprepared for. Case in point: I never used to "text" -- up until about 2 years ago I firmly believed "text" was solely a noun and would've argued against adding it, like Nero Wolfe arguing "contact". But "text" I do, now, and it has made some things in my life much simpler. I have an entire blog in which to spout my neuroses and offer them up for commentary, and if that isn't an invitation from Web 2.0 to come in for coffee then I don't know what is. I send "evites", I facebook, I blog, I scour other blogs and webzines and forums for content (be it recipes, howto, or again that sweet schadenfreude); I suspect were I to look for a job outside of BTCo I would fully use the different social networks established online. I'm just saying the yin to this particular yang is a bit more awkward than I would have ever thought.