Archive for Oct 2006
Tue Oct 31 22:39:50 2006Hello? Trick-or-Treaters? Hello? Where were you? Here we were with the traditional stairs of flaming pumpkins and a yard complete with foam board tombstones, a grave-escaping skeleton with flashing skull, and a half-size hanging skeleton with an ultra chique black and orange feather boa all dangly-dangly by the front door. Seriously, where were you? We are lucky if we got a dozen looters this year. Oh, well, more candy for us. Just what my tuchas needs, right?
I carved seven pumpkins this year. I'd planned on eight, but seven turned out to be slightly more than I could handle. Eight would have killed me. By the eighth pumpkin, I would have been jumping up and down, throwing pumpkin guts at the cats, and screaming. I bought the wrong pumpkins, you see. The locally grown pumpkins all turned out to be complete bastards to gut. Their guts were really moist and gooey. The more I scraped, the more there was to scrape. It was if they didn't want to be clean. It was annoying and took too long.
Weirdly, the two grocery store pumpkins were the easiest to gut. The guts peeled away from the walls and, more or less, plopped right out. I'm guessing this has something to do with the freshness of the pumpkins? Grocery store pumpkins were picked further back and have dried out or something?Also, those cute ickle sugar pumpkins? They are certainly adorable, aren't they? They are also shit for carving, because their cavities are too small to allow for the gutting spoon and my hand at the same time. It is a good thing I carved all the pumpkins in the morning so they had most of the day to dry out a bit as I couldn't get all the guts out of those small bastards.
Later in the afternoon, in a fit of misplaced domesticity, I toasted pumpkin seeds. First, I rinsed the seeds in a big bowl of water until the majority of the goo washed off. When they looked clean enough, I spread them on a towel lined baking pan and let them dry for a couple hours. I tossed a third of them with cumin, chili powder, pepper, salt, and maple syrup; another third with maple syrup and cinnamon; and the final third with Worcestershire, garlic, salt, and pepper. Then I laid the seeds in single layer on a baking tray, sprayed them with cooking spray if they looked a little dry and baked them at 350° oven for 10 minutes or until they were lightly browned. The toasted seeds all tasted pretty good, but they didn't exactly make me weep for joy. I will stick to the plastic packets from the grocery store, thank you very much.
Fri Oct 27 23:51:09 2006
October's Cake of The Month is "Pumpkin Spice Cake" from Better Homes and Gardens New Baking Book (Meredith Books, 1998) with maple syrup cream cheese frosting and toasted walnuts. I had never toasted walnuts before and was a little worried they'd burn, so I think I pulled them out of the oven a little too soon. Probably, could have toasted them another 2 or 3 minutes. Better under-toasted than burnt, I guess.
The cake came out pretty well. Everyone who tasted it thought the frosting was nice and maple-y without being overly sweet. Even my mother, the diabetic, enjoyed the frosting (with her heightened sensitivity to sugar, her sweetness threshold is a lot lower than ours). The cake itself was light and airy with just a hint of pumpkin in with all that spiciness. As a welcome bonus, the whole house smelled like pumpkin pie while the cake was baking.
December's cake will be fruitcake. Yes, my dad asked for fruitcake. He likes the scary commercially prepared ones, you see, and wonders what a homemade fruitcake will be like. I worry it's not the fruitcake he likes, but the novelty of it as it is one of those things he gets, maybe, a slice of once a year. Certainly, it isn't something my mother allows in her house.
I'm trying two recipes -- both from the King Arthur Flour people. I need to get them started in the next week or two as they'll need to set for five weeks or so before they'll be properly edible. I want my father to get his cakes well enough in advance of Christmas that he will still have an appetite for them. Also, if they turn out badly, I will still have time to order him one from the Baker's Catalogue.
Tue Oct 24 12:16:43 2006
The driveway guys are here. Huzzah! New driveway! Unfortunately, they arrived at 8:15 and killed my plan to sleep in a little bit. Instead, I have been all busy-busy peering out the windows ala Gladys Kravitz, wrassling with butternut squash, and making chicken soup.
The butternut squash was for "Butternut Squash, Apple, Onion Au Gratin." A steaming hot bowl of cheesey apple-squash-bacon-onion yumminess seemed like an excellent brunch for this damp gray day. The recipe worked out pretty well, but the apples came out a bit too soft as I ended up baking the casserole thirty minutes longer than directed, because the squash was still too hard. Also, despite instructions to slice the squash, I think next time I'll chunk the fruit and veg into 1" pieces for better texture and, maybe, improved flavor as the whole cheese to bacon to squash to onion to apple ratio should be more even per forkful.
The farm stand I buy my apples and squash from is holding a squash tasting next Saturday. It sounds pretty delicious -- people will be able to sample different preparations of acorn, butternut, red kuri, blue hubbard, buttercup, spaghetti, etc. I will miss the squash tasting, but the stand people are usually pretty helpful when it comes to questions like "how do I cook red warty thing?" so I'll cadge some advice off them later and have my own squash tasting festival one of these days.
Not having the best of cooking luck, lately. Made a pumpkin date bread from Better Homes and Gardens New Baking Book (Meredith Books, 1998) and it came out pretty flat. Perhaps, my leavening agents need replacing? Despite its flatness, the tea bread was still much better than the bread I made last year. It was quite moist and pumpkin-y and the dates gave it a nice chewy sweetness. I'll try this recipe again with new leaveners and, hopefully, it will rise properly.
My other culinary flops have come from Suzanne Bonet's 3-Ingredient Slow Cooker Recipes (Fair Winds Press, 2005). I borrowed this from work based on the recommendation of a co-worker who said all the recipes went together very quickly and tasted pretty good. Fast and tasty? What more could I want?
Most recipes came with an "Add It!" entry listing additional ingredients and it's the extended versions I used for all three dishes. The first recipe I tried, the extended version of "Tuna Casserole," came out really well. It was everything a tuna noodle casserole should be, but in a slow cooker. Excellent. The Husband liked the casserole quite a lot and I plan on adding the recipe to my collection. (I used fat free evaporated milk and whole wheat eggless noodles, but omitted the hard-cooked eggs, because that just seemed like too much stuff).
However, the other two recipes I tried were not so good. The extended version of "Savory Turkey and Rice" (I used leftover roasted chicken) was bland and dry. It seems impossible to burn something in my slow cooker, but I did! We smothered the whole thing in ketchup when we ate it, but it was still pretty bland and terrible. If I made it again (which I strongly doubt), it couldn't hurt to cut an hour off the cooking time, add more spices, and replace the water with broth.
The extended version of "Ravioli Stew" was also dreadful. This may not be the recipes fault so much as the ingredients, but I'm not going to try it again with different stuff. I don't see how the recipe could have turned out so terribly. I used the same brands and ingredients we usually eat and the dish itself is very basic. There seems no real room for screwing up and yet the sauce tasted bitter, the ravioli was grainy, and the beans were both hard and smooshy.
Let's just hope the chicken soup (my recipe) comes out okay or The Husband will be firing my ass.
Sun Oct 22 21:10:37 2006
We are now a two car household. Yes. We're slowly joining the normals.
For the last year or so, we've been discussing The Husband's transportation needs. It is sometimes inconvenient to only have one car and, yes, sometimes The Husband feels trapped at our house. However, the whole "needs a car" shtick wasn't such a big deal until he began making periodic business trips up to Boston earlier this year. It became more and more obvious that a second car would be a great convenience.
Yesterday, while driving in to work, there was a radio advert for localshiftydealership and their fabulous Repo Sale. Yes, that's right. Buy some poor bastard's repossessed car and assume payments. Fabulous idea, innit? Well, I thought we could just go look and see what prices are like. We didn't have to buy anything. We could just look and think and carry on as we have been for the past year. But ...
Somehow looking led to driving led to purchasing (how could I not have seen it coming?). I fear The Husband feels I am not exactly happy with the whole car buying thing and a little freaked out over the price, but this is not true. I trust The Husband. He is not one to piss away stupid amounts of money on a penis car which would completely fuck up our finances. No, the car he bought is a reasonably priced little four door which will get him to Boston and back without any problems or big holes in our pockets.
I'm the one who, left unattended, would burn big holes in our pockets with my unsavory lust for the new Mini and all. The Mother-in-Law has a red convertible with racing stripes and it is just the most adorablest ickle thing. Realistically speaking, I would never piss $22,000-plus away on what is basically something to get me to and from work. Yes, it is adorable and twee and, yes, I squeal like a girl whenever I see one, but I would need a whole different lifestyle in order to justify owning a Mini.
But, it is just so gosh darn cute.
Wed Oct 18 17:22:51 2006
Tree guy came and took down our driveway tree, today. The stump grinding is done by a different crew so we still can't green light the driveway guy until they come early next week. Still, maybe, we can get the new driveway in before the weather turns too cold. I don't know. Autumn in New England is a tricksy beast ... weather could stay temperate through Thanksgiving or we could have snow for Guy Fawkes. It has happened, but I'm leaning toward a long Indian Summer.
It would be nice to have both the tree and the driveway sorted this year. Then we can move on to the front steps and walkway, which is what The Husband really wanted to get done this autumn and, probably, won't. The cost for the steps and walkway is high -- prohibitively so when you consider what we will have spent on the tree and the driveway (though we got a pretty good deal on the tree).
We actually have a plan for the front yard. Yes, we paid a flighty woman too much money and she drew a very pretty picture of what our front yard could look like. Mostly, I like the picture and wish to follow it, but I don't want to push for it, because it's not my money we're spending and all The Husband ever really wanted were the steps and walkway. Although, he is the one who contacted Flighty Woman, I am the one who cajoled him into signing on with her. It just seems ... inappropriate ... this wanting to spend money on our yard when the money is earned by the one who does not care about plants and shit.
Anyway ... tree, driveway, walkway, stairs, and full stop.
Tue Oct 17 14:15:29 2006
The Best Friend sent me an early birthday box and it is all full of deliciousness. It looks like a lot of it came from The Cool Mouse in Concord. She sent me a bag of caramel corn, fudge, and a lolly. She also sent me packets of sea vegetable salad and aka (red) miso soup -- I presume these are not from the moose people. Either that or the moose people have scarily eclectic stock.
The fudge is half pumpkin and half creamsicle. Haven't had any creamsicle, but the pumpkin is brilliant. Happily, The Husband does not eat pumpkin anything (except the pumpkin joes! ooh! need to make those!!) so I do not need to hide it from nibble-y types.
The Husband gave me an early birthday present a couple Sundays back. I had hoped it would be the start of a trend -- one present every Sunday until the Sunday of my birthday when the world would explode with presents -- but it was not to be. Just the one present. A good present, surely. It's a attentive husband who perceives his wife's need for a good sturdy pair of Fiskars Pro Kneelers before she starts transplanting the day lilies.
I like florist-y flowers and posh chocolates and fancy dinners out nearly as much as the next girl, I guess, but what I really love are the practical or tasty little gifts that show someone has been paying attention to me when I thought I wasn't saying much of anything at all. That's romantic.
Sun Oct 15 17:38:27 2006
Had my wisdom teeth out on Wednesday, which means I've spent most of the week in a haze. The dental surgery is not bothering me nearly as much as the miserable bastard of a head cold and, right now, I would happily engage in a little trepanation if only it would relieve the sinus pressure. As The Husband is unlikely to assist me in that venture, I guess I'll be sticking with Tylenol. This
It's possible the fault lies with me and not the oxycodone. I have, in the course of my life, taken massive amounts of opioids (codeine and morphine) and, maybe, the prescribed oxycodone just isn't enough ...
I meant to make a pot of carrot bisque before the surgery so I would have something squishy to eat, but completely neglected to make the soup or purchase any squishy groceries. Happily, The Husband has been nice enough to keep the fridge stocked with Wendy's Frosties, apple sauce, and Odwalla smoothies. He even fetched me some terrible eye-candy magazines when I was being all tetchy and miserable (too much television, snot, swelling) Friday night. Yes, I know Frosties aren't a healthy or Points-friendly food choice, but they are smooth and soft and soothingly cold.
I've lost weight on this (mostly) Frosty Diet. Yes, stupid as it sounds. Four pounds. If I were only interested in being thinner, I'd see how long I could work the Frosty Diet. Unfortunately, I'm not and realize the Frosty Diet is not good for me in the long run. Damned whole health initiative -- wanting me to take the slow road to smart-thin rather than the fast road to stupid-thin.
Mon Oct 09 15:57:28 2006
The tree guy is supposed to come this week and take down the tree growing in the end of our driveway (we have a "Y" shaped driveway) so the driveway guy can put in our new driveway (not "Y" shaped), before it gets too cold and the asphalt plants shutdown for the winter. Since I had today off, I moved the daylilies out of the way so they won't be destroyed (any excuse to buy a pitchfork, I tell you). Because I have way more daylilies than available planting space I bagged up a bunch for some of my co-workers, but there are still too many daylilies. Don't want to compost them, but don't want to dig a whole new (temporary) bed for them, either. Fuck knows, the hour and a half I spent transplanting three wheelbarrow's worth has left me trembling and brainless -- I can't imagine transplanting any more without having a heart attack. (Transplanting the catmint was easy, though. I just stuffed it in the side bed with the other catmint).
This transplanting business is rather depressing as I've spent a significant amount of time getting the driveway bed looking good and now I'm ripping it all out. Of course, we knew the tree was sick and the driveway would need re-doing one of these days so it's just poor planning on my part. Should have just left it all weedy and shit.
Anyway, soup. Bought a packet of dried beans a couple weeks ago when I was picking up more barley and have been wanting a nice bean soup ever since, but haven't had time and have had some problems finding a recipe that didn't include pork products. Finally stumbled on a Betty Crocker recipe ("Slow Cooker Easy Multi-Bean Soup") which is chock full of veggies, pork free, and works out to a tasty 3 WW points per serving. Yum.
I started the soup late last night and it was ready for lunch. I followed the general outline of the recipe, but did some tweaking out of necessity and preference. I only buy wax cartons of broth so I used 1 ¾ 32 oz cartons of (low sodium organic) chicken and vegetable broth instead of the cans called for. My slow cooker (your standard size available everywhere) couldn't accommodate all 70 ounces of broth which is why I only used part of the second carton. I poured a carton and ¼ in last night and then added another ½ carton this morning, because it looked a little thick. It was still thick at the end and I probably could have thrown the remaining ¼ carton in, but I wanted thick soup. Bean soup ought to be thick. Runny bean soup is a heresy unto the belly and taste buds.
The recipe also called for "Italian" seasoning, but I don't tend to buy blends so I just added handfuls of dried basil, parsley, garlic, and thyme until it looked about right. At the end, when I added the crushed tomatoes in, the soup tasted a little blah so I added three cloves of crushed garlic. Yum.
The soup turned out very thick, very rich, and very tomato-y. This is probably because, rather than using 2 tbs of tomato paste, I chucked in the full 1 oz tin ("roasted garlic" flavor). Also I substituted a can of Muir Glen Fire Roasted Crushed Tomatoes for the diced, because that's what I had on hand and the crushed tomatoes blended in with the soup much more than the diced would have.
Yes, I know, there's a lot of garlic in this soup. Mmmm. Garlic.
(Please, someone explain to me why there is no HTML character entity reference for 1/3? I can sort-of see why 1/8 and 1/16 don't get one -- they're not so commonly used -- but 1/3??? That's pretty common. Isn't it? Hello? Anybody?)
Fri Oct 05 19:50:16 2006
In keeping with my master plan for better health and world domination, I've been including more whole grains in our weekly menu. I started the easy way, by replacing my old breakfasts and snacks with Kashi products and have now begun dabbling with barley. Why barley? Because it is a recognizable grain -- we've eaten it before in soups and we can even pronounce the name. Bar Lee. Quinoa? I can barely spell it and can only pronounce it if not looking at the word. Also, once upon a time, I bought a box of quinoa pilaf and that was a cooking experience I'm in no rush to repeat.
So. Barley. Cooked properly, it's pretty tasty shit. At first, I wasn't sure what to do with it other than put it in soup, but a quick browse through the 641s turned up some promising recipes. Probably, the best recipe was "Ground Beef, Shiitake Mushroom, and Barley Skillet Dinner" from The American Heart Association Low-Calorie Cookbook (Clarkson Potter, 2003). I did cheat and use (low sodium organic) beef broth instead of water as the AHA recipes sometimes run a little bland and I was trying to stack the deck in favor of tasty results. And I was not disappointed. The rehydrated shiitake gave the dish a deep, smoky quality while the whole stewed tomatoes melted in and added a hint of sweetness. Also, I love any recipe that says "no stirring needed." Just set the timer and walk away. Brilliant.
The "Barley Mushroom Casserole" from Jeanne Lemlin's Quick Vegetarian Pleasures (HarperPerennial, 1992) was also very good and made six generous side dish servings (4 main dish). Again, it was great to set the timer and walk away. I used beef stock, because I had left overs from the AHA shiitake dish, and red onion just because I am partial to red onion. The casserole had a wonderfully meaty flavor with a nutty/chewy texture that was very filling and worked well with little red wine marinated steaks and crisp salad. Definitely worth repeating.
I've had a jar of marinated artichokes in the pantry for much too long as well as a pound of sliced "exotic" mushrooms in the fridge which needed using up, so I cast around on the Internet for something which would let me combine the two with barley and I ended up with "Chicken Artichoke Toss" from CDKitchen. I know, it doesn't call for barley at all, but I substituted cooked barley for the cooked radiatore pasta and it worked fine. The whole dish came out well, but needed just a little more oomph. Next time, I will add a couple cloves of garlic and serve the dish with some shredded parmesan.
Emboldened by my success with other chef's recipes, I decided to create one of my own. I had a package of butternut squash chunks and wanted to do some kind of barley bake which would include the squash, carrots, and onions. I ended up putting ½ cup barley in a 2-quart casserole with the chunks of squash, carrots, and onions over top. Poured 1 ¼ cups hot (low sodium organic) vegetable broth over. Sprinkled with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and ginger to taste. Dotted with a little butter and baked (covered) for about an hour. Barley was a little chewier than I like so I would add more broth and tweak the cooking time when I make it again. The vegetables and spices all worked well together and I am generally pleased with my little endeavor. It made about 4 main dish servings @ 3 WW points per serving. Ain't Core, but is pretty damned healthy.
Now I just have to figure out what to do with the (impulse buy) pound of bulger I picked up last week. Recipes on the box are for breakfast-y things and I'd prefer something more savory and supper-ish. Oh well, back to the 641s.
Mon Oct 02 16:05:05 2006
Well, we are a divided bunch of librarians at my place of work. About half of us think Millennium is pretty quirky, but we can live with it (because we must), but the other half of us hate it and seem unable or unwilling to adapt to it. I know it has only been a week, but I am heartily sick of "in Dynix we could do x" as if Dynix had been the best thing since sliced bread (especially when coming from certain persons who used to complain mightily about Dynix).
Sigh. In some ways it feels as if the whole librarian/light bulb joke has come home to roost ... "How many librarians does it take to change a light bulb?" "Change??"
Anyway, put up October's library display. We're featuring graphic novels this month, because (even though the catalog doesn't agree) we own quite a lot of them and I would like to advertise them better and get more of them circulating. I know, graphic novels are pretty passé as the big professional push was probably 2002 or so, but we are a little behind the times with these new fangled genres and formats at my place of work.
Seriously, we do have good stuff. No manga yet, but lot's of stuff like Persepolis, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Epileptic, Bone, and the (pretty great) Graphic Classics series as well as a bunch of books on how to draw superheroes/manga/cartoons. And, for the old-timers, I've included our Calvin and Hobbs and Peanuts collections in the display.
I'm going to put out more of the "scary" graphic novels around Halloween and, hopefully, tweak the display to be slightly more YA for Teen Read Week. We don't own any breast cancer graphic novels (no Cancer Vixen or Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person), so I can't do anything about that. Do feel slightly bad for not doing another breast cancer display, but we did one last year and haven't since added enough new materials to the collection that the display would be significantly different. I don't want to start duplicating displays. The point of the displays is to showcase interesting and relevant library materials ... if I start duplicating displays, people will stop looking at them and then I might as well stop doing them and I like doing them.
Yes, for this I went to graduate school.
Sun Oct 01 23:18:24 2006
I came home from work yesterday and The Husband had shaved his head. Well, most of it. I did need to finish the back and tidy up around the ears for him, but still there was enough missing when I walked into the bathroom that my little brain tried to explode behind my eyeballs. It's not that The Husband is any less sexy or adorable or desirable with no hair. It's merely that in the decade plus I've known him, he's always had hair. The change is just a bit startling.
Are we experiencing some sort of existential hair crisis in my house? Not only has The Husband shaved his head, but my hair has gone very short and very purple. Are we fighting approaching middle-agedness or just bored? I don't know.
Seriously, I haven't had hair this short since the barber took the clippers to my head back when I had ulcerative colitis and was going for the whole "terminal patient" look. I like my new hair cut, but before I dyed it purple it induced a lot of illness flashbacks and made me feel all weird and vulnerable. Now that it's purple, however, I feel much more normal.
Yep. Nothing like purple hair to make a girl feel normal.
last updated: Sat 17 Nov 2007 08:19:03 AM EST