Thursday, January 27, 2011

Hmmmm

As a folllow-up to the previous post, yesterday morning I got up and ready for work and...nothing happened. I got to work on time, no injuries, no delays and no problems. Today, though...

No wait, nothing happened today, either. Not that I'm complaining mind you. I'm perfectly content to have things perfectly quiet.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

A week. Five mornings. Or maybe just four.

I have Friday off, so the morning doesn't really count, since I won't be up scrambling to get the show on the road. The rest of the week though, well, looking forward to what Wednesday and Thursday have to offer. Why? Let's review the two mornings I've already dealt with:

Monday:
Couldn't sleep, so I got up and made cinnamon buns for breakfast (I know, not the most healthy choice but there you have it, I made them kids ate them), got supper in the slow cooker and made a pie. The pie was no last minute choice. National pie day being on Sunday (although many prefer the more logical date of March 13th), two of us decided on Friday of last week to bring pie to work on Monday. Having promised to bring pie, a pie had to be made.

I had originally planned on apple, but ended up making Lemon Chess Pie, as I had lemons and I wanted to try something new. It was quite simple to put together and looked really lovely.

Now, the thing is, Chess pie is in the custard family of pies so it requires a setting time. I figured that time would be at work. When we left, I mentioned that I'd need help with the trunk (the spring loaded thingy still being hors de combat). By the time I got outside The Girl was already in the car. I decided...despite the fact that I KNEW one handed pie storing would not work...to let her stay there and do it myself. Or at least try to. Because we all know it didn't work, right?

It didn't. I was propping the trunk open with one hand and leaning over to put the pie in the large delivery thing I keep back there when it started to slide. The pie, that is. And the hot custard started to slurp out. Not willing to see the whole thing ruined, I saved the pie. By letting go of the trunk and grabbing the other side of the container with my hand. Leaving, of course, no hand holding the trunk open. So it slammed shut. On my head. A head that was already combatting a headache (the headache was the reason for the not being able to sleep, too).

Saved the pie for the most part (although it looked terrible in the end it didn't loose enough filling to make it unusable), giant whack on the head. So there was Monday morning, done.

Flash forward to today. No special baking in the morning. 'Cept pancakes. Something about this cold weather has me baking up a storm. Anyway - pretty normal morning. Until the toilet broke. Not a difficult problem, and not one I couldn't fix, but one that had to be fixed. And before leaving for work which meant, naturally, that it broke just before we left. And messing about inside with the workings meant hands covered with black icky stuff. Washed my hands three times and there are still black smudges on them and my fingernails are hideous.

So, two days down and two to go.

I much preferred last week when I had a morning when I found out the my father, sister and brother-in-law have collectively conspired to fly The Girl and myself out there for a break. The Boy opted to stay home on his own. No surprise there! Given a choice between a full house including babies, missing work at a job he just started and classes from his second semester of university and a quiet house with no extrovert sister and mother, I think any 18 year old guy would choose the same. Now all I need to do is cling to sanity for a few weeks.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

B-baking B-blog

I’ve been skipping out on the Tuesday baking post, haven’t I? In Jurassic Park Dr. Malcolm (who is THE BEST PART of the movie, by the way) talks about life finding a way. Recently life has been finding a way to complicate things. I’ve been cooking, just not blogging about it. But I’m back on the wagon (blagon?) so here we go:

The Boy and I made Gnocchi, basic potato gnocchi. It’s something he likes to eat when he’s on his own, and -lucky boy! - it’s something that appears to fill his hollow legs without giving him a spare tire. 18-year old male metabolism at work.

The recipe we used came from a cookbook that can be a bit of a challenge, but I figured I should use an Italian cookbook for an Italian dish. The book is "Italy al Dente" by Biba Gaggiano. Her recipe for Gnocchi with Italian Sausage and White Beans is delicious beyond belief. And I’m not a fan of gnocchi, in general. But I love that dish, so I thought I’d take a crack at her recipe for Gnocchi. I do have a copy of some recipes from Silver Spoon, but they were at the office (because….nope, sorry, don’t know why) so Biba it was.

I was surprised at the start to see that the potatoes were baked, skins on, instead of being boiled. I always thought of gnocchi as being something that one makes to use up leftover mashed potatoes. Which may be how the recipe came about in the first place, but leftover was not what the recipe asked for, so baked it was. Baked russet potatoes, cooled a bit before peeling off the skins. Then they were put through a potato ricer (a kitchen tool that I only acquired in 2009, but which I LOVE), mixed with milk and flour and salt. Once it was all mixed together and lightly kneaded, we came to the hard part: the shaping. As with many small pastas – tortellini, ravioli – the serious work time and effort came with the shaping. And gnocchi isn’t even a filled pasta!

Now, I’ve watched this done before. I’ve seen contestants on time-limited competitions make them with ease. I’ve even watched a “how-to” video. And as with all things that require expertise, the experts made it look easy. I would go so far as to say effortless, even.

It was a different story when The Boy and I started. Basically, you roll the dough out into a rope about the diameter of your index finger, cut it into pieces and run each piece against the tines of a fork. I kept getting ropes that were hollow inside. I’m pretty sure that if what I was supposed to end up with was hollow ropes then I would have made perfect gnocchi ropes. That poor dough got worked over a bit more than it probably should have but we did it in the end. The rolling against the fork is to give the gnocchi the traditional lines of classic gnocchi. They help the sauce cling to the pasta. I’ve bought gnocchi without the little lines on them but we wanted to do things exactly by the book. And we didn’t want to waste the dough, not to mention the effort we put into making the ropes. So we forked them all. And there were a lot. More than I ever wanted to roll over the back of a fork. The only thing that made me persist to the end was the possibility that they would taste a million times better than store bought, and the fact that the company was excellent. Amazing the things your kids will tell you over a quiet afternoon of cooking!

When it was all done, we cooked a few. And it was just a few; four to be exact. We weren’t hungry at that point, but we felt we owed it to ourselves to try them fresh off the fork, so to speak. So into a pot of boiling salted water went four lonely moderately misshapen gnocchi. And when – after perhaps two minutes – they rose to the surface, we fished them out and had two apiece. The result? Definitely more of a potato taste to them than any we’d had before. Better than store bought? Yes, but by a slim margin. A margin so slim that the pain in the ass factor wiped it out. The PIA factor is something we pay attention to when cooking. Something has to be pretty amazing to justify long hours standing and cooking. And these, well, they weren’t amazing. They were just…good.
We divided the remainder into two packages and froze them. The Boy will cook one batch at some point and we’re thinking that perhaps A.H. will take the other bunch. She’s a gnocchi fan, so it will be interesting to hear what she thinks. And if they’re terrible…I’ll make her and Mr. H. a vegetarian version of the gnocchi with Italian sausage. A meal so good that any bad gnocchi tasting will be forgotten and forgiven.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

It Happens

It's not that I don't get mad in life. I do. It's just having my mother and brother die far before their time means that not a great deal manages to really truly upset me. But...however long that fuse may be, it does have an end.

It can be an end that involves shrieking (the last and possibly only time that has happened was about twelve years ago) or it can be standing up for myself and putting my foot firmly down. Telling people EXACTLY what is going to happen, no discussion, no arguments and don't even think about arraging some sort of meeting to go over it. Which is what went down last night and this morning. I suspect The Girl, The Boy and The Ex are all in a bit of shock right now. Well, good. It's about time.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Just the envelope honey, just the envelope.

I grabbed the mail from the mailbox yesterday, waiting for The Boy to join me on a shopping trip (something he hates doing, but he had stuff at the mall he wanted to deal with). There were three pieces of mail: an envelope for him from Blood Services Canada, and two catalogues from Victoria's Secret for me. I bought two sweater dresses from them online this winter, so I get stuff in the mail from the all the time. I tossed everything onto the passenger seat and went back to contemplating life.

The Boy arrived shortly thereafter - he'd been at his dad's - and jumped into the front seat, picking up the mail first. He sits down, looks at it and says:

"Wow. Mail AND Victoria's Secret catalogues waiting for me. You're the best mom ever".

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Worth it in the End

So yes, Christmas eve was a mess. But Christmas? Just about perfect. Being closer to the rest of my family (hello Vancouver Island!) would have been icing on the cake, but even without that the cake itself was pretty awesome.

Didn't get the house cleaned beforehand, but our day - after present opening and so on - was mainly along the lines of: read a little, watch a bit of something on dvd (TV shows were part of the presents), eat something, clean a little, play a board game, clean a little...
all very easy going.

A nice quiet day, and the turkey turned out well. It was, of course, ruined in the carving. Because I still can't carve to save my life. It was a little better than usual, though, because I took one of the breasts completely off the bird and sliced it on its own. So there were some non-mangled slices to be had. And - of course! - enough left over turkey to make a pie. I froze that, so we'll have pie when we not so over-turkeyed. The kids had three turkey suppers, not counting suppers of leftovers so I'm thinking turkey later as opposed to sooner is the best plan.

The Boy got me music, one disc of which I've been listening to in the car since I got it. It's a Frank Sinatra collection. The other disc is a jazz disc, but it's a jazz musician playing blues music. Which shows how much thought there was in the choosing. I'm slowly - thanks to The Boy - getting to like Jazz music (although I suspect that I'll never understand, let alone enjoy, free style jazz). I already love the Blues. So what better way to get me to listen to a jazz musician? Brilliant!

The Girl got me pajamas from La Senza. The softest cuddliest pajamas you can imagine. I am the most huggable person this side of the Atlantic. If I could have worn them to work today I would have. I'm guessing that someone might have said something, though. There's casual work wear and then 'what do you think you're doing" wear. People here struggle enough with how often I am barefoot (never, by the way, when I am with clients. Or in the bathroom). I think they'd have a collective break down if I showed up not just barefoot but sporting pajamas, regardless of how soft and cuddly said pajamas may be.

While I'm on the topic of gifts I received, I'd like to say I'm all for gift cards. I heard so much this year about gift cards being a bad/thoughtless idea. I LOVE them. Especially when they are for places that I LOVE to shop at, but tend to not spend money at, because there are things - a million things - I should spend money on before I spend it on myself. So far, I've spent some very enjoyable time just thinking about what to get with the gift cards I received this year. Fun with no actual spending yet! How great is that? So hey - don't knock gift cards, ok?

All in all, it was a great Christmas. And a very happy new year. I hope everyone else had as enjoyable a time with friends and family as I did. Time with family - the best gift of all.