Stop Doing That

I have been absent from a lot for a long time. It’s been a month since I’ve written a post. It was over a week since I’d been on Twitter. It’s been months since I’ve really done anything on FoodBuzz.

Why? Work. Plain and simple.

Second Why? Because remember how before I wrote that I’d grown out of kOCD? Well, I have a new site that encompasses a little more.

StopDoingThat is the brainchild of my brain. It gives me a little more legroom to run wild with my thoughts. It’s also one of the phrases that I yell both mentally and verbally several times a day. I hope you’ll follow me over to the new site and just enjoy what you see/read.

Bye!

Ten-in-Ten: My babysteps

In light of recent developments around here, I thought it would be a good idea to gather a little encouragement from other people. Maybe I should backtrack and give off what the changes are.

We are attempting a thrice weekly vegan/vegetarian dinner plan. It’s been going awesome! We picked up a fantastic book call The Veganomican I  really recommend it to both vegans, vegetarians, and carnivores looking to explore the furthest reaches of their grocery. At first the meals simply felt incomplete without the soft squish of flesh to accompany the hard crunch of veggies. Then, after really exploring the recipes, the subtle sweet/sour/tang of the veggies became more apparent and the accompaniment of meat seemed more of a slap to the face of the goodness of veggies and spice.

We’re not doing perfectly! I have two pepperoni pizzas heating themselves up in the oven. (This is one of the 4 off nights.) But these are baby steps. And baby steps are good.

So to go along with my baby steps is Ten-in-Ten. Ten-in-Ten is the food communities promise to change something in ten weeks in 2010. I chose to move to vegan/vegetarian for 3 nights a week and lose a bit of weight I gained while on the birth control from hell.

These are my baby steps: have been only drinking water or unsweet tea, throwing away the desserts that come with the catered meals at work, not tasting the cookie dough and not keeping any “extras” around, not eating past full, tearing off any extra bread on sandwiches, ordering the smaller portions, giving myself smaller portions, passing up cheese, passing up mayonaisse, taking the stairs.

I’ve been pretty good, and I’ve very happily lost 7 pounds since having the birth control from hell replaced. That’s only eight more to go!!

Gingerbread House material acquirement and construction

Hmmm… everything is looking pretty good, but just so I don’t become complacent I’m compiling a list of current fails.

1) butter was frozen not 30 seconds ago and is now creating massive fat lumps in the brown sugar #fail
2) I am already sneaking bits of said brown sugar fat lumps #unhealthyfail
3) Mikey has made the following joke, “Bah, gingerbread houses are so last year. It’s gingerbread condos, now!” #spendingtoomuchtimewithmefail

I have just been informed that the above quote was taken from a Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends‘ Bloo. His cool factor is restored. Unfortunately, the use of “cool factor” by yours truly solidifies my own cool factor permanently at dork.

Ooookay… gingerbread houses and spontaneity do not mix. “… refrigerate at least 2 hours”. Hmmmm… breaktime! The dough is in the fridge and we are headed out to celebrate the towns Horses and Carriages Parade.

Oh, yeah. I got to use my dough hooks for the first time #win.

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I take breaks seriously. That last one went all night! We are just now taking the dough out to start rolling and cutting, and, word of the wise, when Simply Recipes says -

4 Wrap the dough in plastic wrap

-it means unroll a sheet of plastic wrap, drop all the dough onto it, and wrap it in the plastic wrap. Not, as I’ve found by my efforts to extract hardened gingerbread dough from the mixing bowl, cover the top of the bowl with plastic wrap. #fail (Boy, these are piling up. Oh, noes!)

So, I have issues with the word “liberally”. My idea of liberally applying is so much different from other peoples. As displayed in the picture montage, started with a clean surface, “liberally” applied flour, then applied the moose poo (er, gingerbread dough), failed, reapplied an actual liberal amount of flour, and won.

Shortcake was so awesome with a rolling pin. I’m tempted to make add that to her egg cracking and whisking repertoire, along with cookie cutting.

Bake, remove, let sit…. and sit… and sit….

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ENORMOUS INTERMISSION

During this time I am working very long days at work, making this two day project into a week long project. This post was started on the day the gingerbread was started – December 9th. The gingerbread houses weren’t finished until this week on December 15th. So, really sorry about the incredibly choppy writing. Most of it was done while I was dog tired, and now I’m trying to finish it up even though I’ve forgotten what happened. YIKES!!

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Putting it together. In terrible lighting. LOL

Mmmmm… candy. I totally forgot the Mikey loves anything jelly and made the mistake of buying spice drops, gummy fruit, Swedish Fish, and tropical Skittles. We ate half the bag of Skittles, most of the spice drops, and you’ll probably notice later that none of the fish made it onto the gingerbread houses.

And below you will notice the difference in shooting at night after a 10 hour work day and a Saturday morning after a 10 hour sleep.

Completion! Shortcake told me she didn’t want a gingerbread house, so she has a gingerbread birthday cake. She took one look at my candy oozing down the sides of my house and told me very gently, “Look, mommy, I put all my candy on top, so nothing slides off. You do that because yours is starting to look yucky.”

Wow. Told.

We are now all beyond capacity for sugar. One-fourth of my candy has slid down the sides of my gingerbread house, while Shortcake’s are all where she put them. Moral of the story. Gingerbread is tricky. This could take years to perfect.

Let the good times roll.

Wherein I attempt to make a gingerbread house

Thanks to some convoluted idea that a ginger bread house is easy peasy to make, the first gingerbread house I ever made was 1/4 gingerbread and icing, 3/4 caulking and cardboard. I was pregnant at the time and determined to have the Hallmark Christmas. The stupid thing brought me to tears and being the awesome man that he is, Mikey, immediately grabbed the offending house and tossed it out the apartment window, over the balcony, and into the wooded void. Banishment!

He is my hero.

I’ve gotten better at cooking and no longer have any of those crazy preggers hormones to get in my way! Unfortunately, my expertise with gingerbread houses only comes from eating them. So for a little guidance, I turned to Simply Recipes. And guidance she gives! The recipe is filled with the tips you would expect to get while spending a lifetime cooking with your grandmother. Which makes sense, since it is a blog filled with decades of family recipes and techniques.

If this goes wrong, I know it will of no fault of hers. And hopefully, I don’t fuck up because we no longer have a wooded void beyond our balcony.

Trying out new themes

Yes, boy and, well, probably mostly girls, I’m trying out new themes. Since this is not Squarespace, there are a limited amount of themes that will work for me. And I’ve seen a bunch of themes that I like that blogs I follow are using. So let’s see whose I copy/emulate/use.

Wherein bribery becomes grey area…

Background – Mikey and I have Hellsing vol. 4 and chocolate cheesecake filling waiting. It’s 7:15pm. The Shortcake is still awake. Must speed up the bedtime process. Go.

Me: Shortcake, it’s time for a bath.

SC: No, I’m clean.

Come on, kid, let’s go! Momma’s gotta get her chocolate on!

Me: Your last bath was 3 days ago. You stink.

SC: No. I just smell like clean.

You’re killing me!

SC: See smell me. I smell like clean.

Fine. You wanna play hardball. I’m game.

Me: Mmmm…this is so tasty!

SC: gasp! What’s that?

Me: This is a bathtime snack. Only people in tubs get to have this.

SC: Uh-oh! I just smell like nasty! Smell my hair. It’s gross!

VICTORY!!

Spoonful of Yum

Moral of this story: chocolate cheesecake filling equals bedtime victory.
I would love to give up this recipe, but the problem is… I don’t know it. I threw stuff together to get it eaten before it went bad. My bad.

A paper cup, a hammer, and some sugar walk onto a balcony…

…where the paper cup eats the sugar and the hammer beats the paper cup to smithereens. Along comes a completely innocent woman who tosses the hammer aside and picks through through the remains of the paper cup for its last meal. The end.

So, rock sugar. Not to be confused with its easily broken cousin rock candy. I’ll tell you about the first time I used rock sugar. I was making a pot of pho. I put everything into the pot and finally got to the rock sugar part. “Put in 1 inch of rock sugar”.

Haha, I thought, I get to put candy in my pho! Wrong! What in my mind had been translated out as rock candy due to the synonymous nature of candy and sugar was, in fact, closer to it’s rock moniker. So, I smugly pulled out a 3 inch piece of rock sugar, gripped it by opposing sides, and… nothing. I smugly thwacked it a few times against the counter… the sink… nothing. I huffingly slammed a metal spoon against it… nothing. I wrapped it in saran wrap and beat it with my rolling pin and got… shreds of saran wrap. Desperately, I scanned my drawers for something hard. No meat mallet. No electric knife. No “100 Ways to Have Your Rock Sugar and Get 1 Inch Chunks With It Too”. A quick glance around me, told me I was alone with my failure, and god help me, I considered throwing that whole damn thing in the pot.
Then while I was thinking about how much I needed a meat mallet, I went to the dry erase board on the fridge to write “meat mallet”, and noticed the corkboard was cluttered, so while cleaning that I began wondering how strong the thumbtacks must be to be holding this huge corkboard to the wall, then I remembered it was held up by nails. Hahaha, you’ve been nailed… oh, wait! Hammered! Hahaha, you were hammered. Oh, WAIT! HAMMER!

Yes, it is glorious the way this idea trap works.

The first time I slammed down on a hunk of rock sugar, I ended up spending quite a bit of time cleaning up dust sugar. So take it from me… the paper cup/paper bag is necessary. This method won’t get a perfect 1 inch result, but if you have a better way, let me know!

“1 Way to Have Your Rock Sugar and Get a Bunch of Little Pebble Sugars With It, Too, While Legitimately Beating Something With a Hammer”

You will need… a large paper cup/paper bag, a hammer, rock sugar.
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Place sugar into cup.
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Beat the shit out of the cup.
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Reap the rewards.

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Put it back into the original box or do like I do and put the “good rock sugar” into a separate container and leave it for the world to see it’s beauty. No, seriously, I do this.

Recipe: Raspberry Basil Glazed Chicken and Cooking RED to Remember

Cooking RED to Remember

I started off Thanksgiving with less than a thankful heart. My in-laws live too far away. Where are we going to get money for a down payment on a house? I hate this apartment. Why am I such a horrible cook? Why do I have to be so concerned over this other thing? Why don’t we have family here?

I was put to shame by this story. This woman has one of my favorite blogs, and her personal story about losing both her brother and her cousin to AIDS destroyed me. What an incredibly strong woman. And she was exactly right when she said that no one can fully understand the loss. I can’t. I’ve never lost or even known anyone with AIDS, but I can empathize. And be thankful to that I had my ass handed to me.

I am thankful that my in-laws are so awesome, I start to miss them. I’m thankful that we weren’t laughed out of the realtor’s and have actually been pre-approved for far more than we expected. I’m thankful that we know better than to buy a house at our pre-approved amount. I’m thankful that the reasons we hate this apartment weren’t here this Thanksgiving. I’m thankful that only one spontaneous dish was just not awesome instead of horrible. I’m thankful that the other concern has no real hold over me. I’m thankful that, after slapping myself awake, I realize, again, that the two people who are always here for me are the only family I need at my table.

The chicken recipe wasn’t chosen as a dedication to Cooking RED to Remember. The pieces simply fell together. I am thankful for that, too.

Raspberry and Basil Glazed Chicken
Serves: 4 to 6

1 cup fresh raspberries, warmed on the counter
1 Tbsp fresh basil, minced (about 1 large leaf)
1/4 tsp fresh ginger, minced
1/4 tsp fresh garlic, minced
2 tsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp oil
pinch of salt

whole chicken or 4-6 leg quarters
2 Tbsp water (to keep glaze from burning in the pan)

1. Preheat oven to 375°F. Wash, pat dry with paper towels, and arrange the chicken in a baking dish. Salt lightly. Set aside.

2. Using a large spoon, mash the raspberries through a sieve or strainer into a bowl. This will take elbow grease, just stick to it! Put the pulp into cheesecloth or the like (I use these, since I don’t have cheesecloth), and squeeze out the remaining juice into the bowl. Pour the juice into a blender or food processor with the basil, garlic, ginger, sugar, soy sauce, and oil. Blend for 1 minute.

3. Baste the chicken and cook for 20 minutes covered. After that, cook for 1 hour basting every 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and let rest for 15 minutes, covered. I hate how aluminum foil can take some of the skin away when you remove it, so I ingeniously covered the chicken with one of my massive mixing bowls.

Eat. Mmmm.

Money Idea: Make money unavailable, to make extra activities attainable

ALRIGHT, 5TH TIMES THE CHARM!

Ugh, this post has been a disaster! 1st, space cadet, like, totally. 2nd, loss of direction. 3rd, Jack Donaghey. 4th, internet crashed taking the post with it.

This attempt is like having taken a trip through a field and having accidentally dropped some of your belongings along the way only to cross the field and be told that it’s actually a minefield and what you dropped is essential to life and now you have to go back and pick them up.

Maybe not that bad…. but it feels close.

Aaaaaanywaaaaay, we here at kitchenOCD do a lot of things. We are weekend warriors and not for home repairs. We do festivals, carnivals, fairs, community events, concerts, simple walks down untravelled trails, zoos, museums, and amusement parks. Considering our budget, this is a pretty damn amazing feat.

That we do it without ever using plastic, has me patting my own back at this very moment.

It takes a bit of planning and a lot of willpower. What we do is make money unavailable. It used to be that making it unavailable meant putting it in the bank. Well, now everything is electronic, and we pull directly from the bank for necessities. This makes keeping a certain amount of funds unavailable really tricky. Because it’s still technically there in your available balance, so accidentally spending it is really easy. Then you are shit out of luck the day before your mother’s birthday when you had this thoughtful gift all lined up, and you’re left giving her a fantastic phone call to make up for it </sarcasm>. I know. I have.

Then, I discovered this nifty and kind of retro currency called cash. A brief lesson on cash (k-A¯SH). It is printed on paper. It cannot, in fact, burn a hole in anyone’s pocket. Every other country’s paper money is prettier than ours.

It’s also really good at getting out of sight, out of mind. This is how I build an activity fund:

1. When we have money, we make it disappear (magic!) by pulling a few bucks here and there at the grocery store, gas station, or passing by the bank. Nothing big, maybe 10 here, 5 there. The important part is that it becomes part of the routine, so you can trick yourself into making it a necessity. I’m less likely to pull cash if I have to make an extra trip because then it feels extraneous.
2. Immediately after getting home it goes out of the wallet and into the treasure trove.
3. The treasure trove then goes out of sight on the fridge. Keeping the money from finding it’s way into my hands again isn’t hard because I start to feel this sense of accomplishment as the pile builds, like when I was a kid and did odd jobs for my mom to earn enough money to buy Christmas presents for everyone. (Sure she was technically buying them, but I’d be damned if I’d let it be a handout.) If you don’t get this sense, and need a little bit of help keeping away from the cash, allow Piggy to give a visual presentation on choosing an appropriate Cash Keeper.

______________________

Hello, Piggy. Ready to help us choose a Cash Keeper?

______________________

He may be the Rebellion’s new hope, but he borrowed 5 bucks from me to pick up some power converters and I haven’t seen a red cent since.

______________________

Good idea, Piggy. Just walk on by.

______________________

Cloning? Hmmmm… that seems like a risky venture. Heeey! Robots don’t need to be cloned!

______________________

Now who is this fine fellow?

______________________

Such a trustworthy face! With poison jab to boot!

______________________

Krogunk, I choose you! to be my Cash Keeper.

The end.

Re-Purposing Carry-Out: herbs

Thai Basil

We don’t order our Asian dishes to go very often. There is something about sitting in the scent while you are eating the scent that just blows my mind each time. It’s also part of the reason that when after years of being without a Vietnamese noodle house, I walked into a noodle house to pick up my pho’ and almost burst into tears from the familiar aroma of rich grilled meats and full, soothing pho.

Once I got to enjoying my pho’ calmly slurping up each noodle from my styrafoam cup (there wasn’t a bowl to be found at work) and my hand stopped shaking from repressed joy, I realized that within that carry-out box was a treasure trove.

Thai Basil.

I have found this no where in all of my quests! It was just pure, dumb luck that I was also thinking about the ice cream in the break room kitchen that was off limits for some stupid reason it’s not like I don’t leave at least one serving in the bottom of the containers, but this also reminded me that there’s ice in freezers and that Lifehacker put up a great article on preserving fresh herbs.

Freeze them. So I did. I chopped up the basil, put a perfect tablespoon into a mini muffin tin, covered with water, and froze them. Now I have fresh-ish Thai basil whenever I want! And with the convenient location of the Vietnamese noodle house… comfort whenever I want. This can be done with any fresh herb. Just pop the servings out of the muffin tin and store in a container – in the freezer, of course.