Adulting slow-cooker style

Check it out.  We bought a slow cooker, it arrived yesterday, and I’m cooking in it today.  Can you believe it?  I’ll give you a minute to fan yourselves and get over the shock.

Here it is, yelling at me, apparently, telling me to COOK.  Yeah, I get it.

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And here, beneath the steamy lid, you can kind of see dinner.

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My first recipe is beef and broccoli, and if the recipe is correct, it’ll be ready in 5 minutes.  I didn’t tell John what I was making, but he’ll find out soon.

I hope it’s good.  I hope it’s edible.  Good is secondary.

Update: It was DELICIOUS.

Gin is not always disgusting

Gin: not the grossest alcohol on the planet.

Let’s not get too excited about this, gin drinkers.  I still think gin by itself tastes like pine sap, and gin and tonics taste like rubbing alcohol, so those of you who like it that way (Mom and Dad, Mel, Will) – yeah, you’re still crazy.

HOWEVER, I have discovered that I like some drinks that have gin in them, like the gimlet.  I had a vodka gimlet in Annapolis one night with Jess that was pretty good, and in the spirit of adventure, I tried a gin gimlet a few weeks ago and liked it.  Better, I think.  That’s basic, right?  Gin, lime juice, and sugar.  Surprisingly yum.  I haven’t tried making one myself, so I have no idea about proportions.  I’ve also tried experimenting with different gins, but last night’s experiments were made by different bartenders, too, so the whole thing wasn’t very scientific.

Three gimlets, three different gins, three different bartenders (same bar – the band had a gig)…so for one thing, each bartender might have made them differently.  For another thing, that means I had three gimlets last night.  Did I like the third one best because it used Hendricks instead of Bombay (the first gimlet, my second favorite) or Tanqueray (the second gimlet, my third favorite)?  Or did I like the third one best because it was the third one and of COURSE I liked the third one?  Also not scientific: last week, the gimlets I drank at the arcade with the 90s music and the flash mob (did I tell you about the flash mob?) were made with New Amsterdam gin, and I liked those very much.  More than the Hendricks one?  I have NO idea.

Also, I’m not experimenting again for at least a week because three gimlets is my limit.  Oh, I had a gin cocktail with dinner Friday night: rosemary-infused gin, lemon, grenadine, ginger soda, bitters.  It was pretty good.  Conclusion: add sugar in some form and gin tastes good!

Dinner smells so good

We are grilling steaks tonight!  So yeah – that delicious smell that’s wafting through the neighborhood?  For once, it’s coming from OUR backyard.  Dinner is corn (also grilled), steak, and a salad, and I am SO hungry right now.

This will be the…third(?) time we’ve used our little charcoal grill.  Most of that is because it’s a PAIN.  Next time, gas grill.  Definitely.  Forever.  Or no grill.  With as little use as this one has gotten (and with the rain that is supposed to arrive in a month), we could have gone without.  Like we’ve gone without a microwave for over five months now.  We hardly miss it.  It would make a couple of things easier (like reheating leftovers), but that’s what ovens and stoves are for.

Anyway, dinner will be yum, and it’s almost done, and I have to go eat it.

Bad timing

I got a cute sundress at Target yesterday, but I want more than one cute sundress.  More than one more cute sundress.  My one chore for the day was to bike over to Trader Joe’s to pick up dinner while John was rehearsing at Will’s house, so I figured I’d do it after I finished my long bike ride for the day.  It made sense at the time, but I didn’t think ahead to how much I don’t want to still be on a bike after that many miles.  Still, Trader Joe’s is only a mile from the house, and what’s two more miles at that point?

Yeah.

Trader Joe’s shares a parking lot with Old Navy, so I figured since I was there anyway and not in any particular hurry, I’d check out their sundresses.  They have the added benefit of being super-cheap.  It wasn’t until I took my helmet off and noticed how gross and sweaty my hair was that I thought about how gross and sweaty my whole body was.  So….maybe shopping for and trying on clothes wasn’t the best idea.  I cruised through anyway, just looking.  I’ll have to go back.

Then I was disappointed by Trader Joe’s (they don’t have fresh, non-frozen salmon!).  I couldn’t face biking to yet another store, so I called John and he picked up KFC on his way home.  I can live with that.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, Rock Star Astrophysicist

We saw Neil deGrasse Tyson last night at the Hult Center, where he gave a talk called “An Astrophysicist Goes to the Movies”, and it was great.  He’s a funny guy, and he treats his audience like the intelligent geeks we all are (seriously – we were surrounded by our people).  If you ever get a chance to go see him, I say go.

It was a night out for us, so we got semi-dressed up, went out to dinner at the nicest restaurant within 4 blocks of our house (Oregon Electric Station, which used to be a train station, and is pretty darn nice, actually), and then walked the one additional block to the Hult Center.

Then we climbed four stories to our seats in the upper balcony.

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No nosebleeds, but I was afraid to lean forward.  The screen for his presentation was GIANT, which is a good thing because I couldn’t see him at all.  He was a blur – my eyesight sucks.  Although maybe everyone would have a problem seeing details at that distance.

Still, it was a good time, lots of laughter, lots of funny (and well-handled) heckler moments.  His books are now on my To Read list (where they should have been before).

St. Patrick’s Day festivities

Our St. Patrick’s Day festivities are days late and did not include drinking.  We’re not very good partial (or fake) Irish people.  I am wearing green, though.

Corned beef and cabbage for lunch, plus a good luck cake for our trip out west.

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We’re completely stuffed from that, but I really want the tres leches cake I know is waiting in the fridge.  We’ll just skip dinner and eat cake.  Later.  Much later.

I ran out to the hardware store to make a copy of our storage unit key for Emily and Sean, and when I came back, I found two thirds of the family asleep in the living room.

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We might not make it to the next round of cake.  That would probably be okay.  Except not.  It’s really good cake.

Sandwiches are the universal cure

This morning:

Jess mentioned the other day that it’s amazing how quickly she can go from “Today’s a pretty good day” to “I hate everyone and everything” some days, and some days, I’m right there with her.  Today, at least, I have identified a trigger: it’s laundry.  Not just laundry, though – I’ve been doing laundry for years, and it doesn’t automatically put me in a bad mood.  No, it’s laundry HERE, in THIS apartment, with THIS gross basement and machines that don’t drain correctly (the utility sink that the machines drain into has dirt in it – DRY dirt – even after two loads of MY laundry have drained), and with our messy upstairs neighbor who is doing his best to live on his own, but needs additional help.  I’ll cut him all the slack he needs, but that doesn’t mean that what he does (or doesn’t do) doesn’t affect MY mood.

Messy neighbor definition: we have mice (or something) in the attic because he leaves open soda cans and pizza all over his apartment (according to our landlady).  In the laundry room today, there are two full loads of his clothes on the (gross) folding table, most likely put there by the downstairs neighbor who needed the dryers.  Don’t know how long they’ve been there or how long they’ll be there.

I’m going for a run.  Maybe I won’t hate everyone when I get back.

This afternoon:

Better.  Not great, but better.  Running is good, running is helpful, AND I ate a sandwich, which probably has a LOT to do with it.  (I typed “AND I hate a sandwich” and fixed it SO fast.  That is not true.  That will never be true.  I love sandwiches.  Rumors about sandwich-hating are hurtful and must be dealt with immediately.  Without delay.  Posthaste.  Now.)

Yes, I’m feeling better.

Oh, Ray’s, how I’ll miss you

Ray’s the Steaks is the best.  And even though I made the rookie mistake of ordering my own little cup of crab bisque (rather than stealing bites from John’s) so that I was already full of overly rich food by the time my steak arrived, I was still able to enjoy the few bites I had before I couldn’t look at food anymore.  AND I got to take it home, and boy was it good cold at lunch today.  Also, they sent home mashed potatoes and creamed spinach (the sides that come family-style with every entree), so yay very much for me.

I’m going to miss that place.  Not tonight, though.  It’s Pi Day, and we’re having pie for dinner.  Of course.

Decadent

This is the life (but better if John were here):

I traveled to the office today.  After spending the day at work (both stressful (didn’t get enough done) and pleasant (saw a lot of people I like)), I went out to get a drink with some coworkers.  From there, I checked into my hotel, where they gave me a warm chocolate chip cookie.  Now, I’m going to take a bath in a bathtub WAY nicer than the one in our apartment.  This might be my first bath since we moved to Annapolis.

Can that possibly be true?

I think it is.  I’m going to take a bath.  With a chocolate chip cookie.

Maybe I should have titled this post “Wine and Cookies”.

People are right about Portland

We spent about 12 hours hanging out in Portland last Monday, before our flight back home, and they were a VERY good 12 hours.  We had a really good day.  We spent the night just south of Portland, planning to sleep in.  That plan was foiled by a garbage truck in the parking lot of the hotel around 7:30am, but we were in no rush.  We checked out around 10, I think, and found an all-day parking spot in a lot downtown a few blocks away from Powell’s (!), which was the BIG reason we wanted to spend a day in Portland.

First, though, breakfast.  I spent 30 seconds googling all-day breakfast places in Portland, and I found a diner that sounded great.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t open, which was a little bit mysterious.  We were well within the hours posted on the door, and it specifically said it was open Mondays…but oh, well.  We took a walk and found another place that worked.  It didn’t look like much – it was travel-themed, Route 66-type, lots of souvenirs from road trips in the 50s, tacky decorative plates on the walls – but the music was GREAT, the waitresses (friendly) were all absent-mindedly singing along (so was I), and the brunch special was this egg scramble that had cauliflower in it.  Who thinks of that?  It was delicious.  Cauliflower, spinach, proscuitto, tomato, avocado on top.  Maybe something else.  SO GOOD.  And while we were there, we got the call from the property management company that our application for the house had been accepted, so YAY!

From there, we walked to Powell’s, and we didn’t come out again for HOURS and it was GLORIOUS.  We’d heard about it for years, of course, and I’ve been dying to see it.  I was not disappointed.  We stopped on every single floor and browsed nearly every single shelf.  It was overwhelming, in the best possible way.  Every shelf was a mix of new books and used books, hardcover and trade and mass market paperbacks, and the selection was varied and enormous.  After we toured the entire store, we stopped in the science fiction and fantasy section.  I didn’t come out of those shelves for at least two hours (maybe three).

The science fiction and fantasy section (which is enormous and comprehensive) reminded me entirely too much of what our bookshelves used to look like.  It was eerie.  Our personal collection was always heavily SFF, and this section had shelf after shelf of my favorite authors, with whole series represented (very different from your typical bookstore, but very much like what we had).  It felt like the best combination of used bookstore and library, and for the first time, I felt a twinge of regret about getting rid of so many of our books.  Just a twinge.

I stuck to my goals and DIDN’T buy ANYthing.  (John bought three books.)  We went for a wandering walk around the neighborhood, again with a restaurant I’d found online as our intended destination, but when we got there, it was a little fancy for how we were feeling.  There was an interesting looking place on the opposite corner, so we walked in there and were seated immediately.

I don’t remember what John had, but I had the spicy mac and cheese, and it was SO GOOD.  And while we were waiting, they brought us bite-size pieces of grilled cheese sandwich with lemon in it.  Sounds weird?  Was delicious.  The chefs were experimenting, apparently.  Dinner was really pleasant.

After all of that, it was only about 7:15, and we didn’t need to return our rental car until about 9.  We walked back to the car and realized that we’d parked right next to an arcade.  Serendipitous!  So we went into the arcade, John picked up a beer, we changed $5 for quarters, and we played Galaga and Joust and Tetris and Star Wars and X-Men and I-don’t-know-what until we ran out of quarters.  That was our signal to head to the airport, and thus ended our day in Portland.

It was a good day.

It’s the brie. It’s always the brie.

I have raved about the sandwiches from Sammy’s Deli in Annapolis before, I know.  I’ve never had a bad one, and there are plenty I’ve gotten more than once because they’re so good.  Yesterday, I tried a new one and oh my god it’s good.  Turkey, honey mustard, brie, and apple slices, on multi-grain bread, and HEATED UP so the brie is all melty and gooey and IT’S SO GOOD.  If I miss one thing about Annapolis (besides Jess) when we leave, it’ll be Sammy’s.  I almost miss Sammy’s right now, and I was just there yesterday.

I like sandwiches.  I love brie.  I love Sammy’s.

Way to ruin breakfast, dude

We are boycotting Graul’s Market (the nearest grocery store) from here on out.  For the second time in less than 6 months, we have opened a brand new sealed gallon of milk with a sell-by date over a week in the future to find it spoiled.  John got a face full of the smell when he opened the new gallon to add milk to his cereal, and it nearly put him off food altogether.  That’s a really awful smell.  Just the thought of it makes me shudder.

Yes, we could return the milk, but it’s not worth the trip.  We just won’t go back there.  It’s the closest store, but it’s far enough that we have to drive, so if we’re going to get in the car anyway, we’ll just go somewhere else.  Annoying, but we’ve got less than two months to go.  We’ll manage.

We have other smell problems this evening.  I’m making salmon (so yum salmon and garlic and olive oil), but our downstairs neighbors are cooking something that clashes unpleasantly.  On its own, I’m sure it would smell delicious (when I can separate it from our dinner, I get something sweet and warm, like cake, but not dessert), but mixed with salmon and garlic?  Not so great.

It’s a habit, but it’s not a HABIT, you know?

I was going to stop drinking coffee, right?  As soon as my creamer ran out?  Yeah, I’ve failed on that one already.  I used the last of the creamer Saturday morning.  Sunday morning, John flew for an hour, so I went with him just to be up and about.  I couldn’t fly with him (he’s not licensed yet), so after he took off, I went looking for a bakery I’d found online.  Got there, ordered a cheese danish.

“Coffee?”  “Yeah, sure.”

So yeah, I had regular coffee and a danish for breakfast Sunday morning.  I didn’t even realize what I’d done until we got home.  But it was January 31st, right?  So…maybe we can say I’m starting this in February.  My birthday present to myself – less caffeine, fewer empty calories.  Today (being February 1st), I had decaf tea and instant oatmeal for breakfast.  Much healthier.  Peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch (we’re going to the store as soon as John finishes his Battlefront mission) and nothing but water to drink the rest of the day.

Except for the half-pint of Naptown Brown Ale I had when I met Jess for lunch.  Oops.  Baby steps.

Found another good one

We went to Osteria 177 for our anniversary dinner.  It’s one of the fancier restaurants on Main Street, and this one was good (so that makes…four? five good ones?).  We went early (skipped lunch), and at 5:30, I think there was only one other table in use.  They sat us in the front window and gave us the waiter several Yelp reviewers raved about.  (They weren’t wrong – he was great.)  Dinner was wonderful, the wine was good, we split a yummy off-menu dessert, and we didn’t spend our entire savings account on it.

Figured I’d get some pictures of us first, and since I’m an Instagrammer now, I posted them there.  Sorry about the cross-pollination, those of you who follow me in both places.  I did NOT take any pictures of or at the restaurant. I may be on Instagram, and I may be guilty of posting the occasional food picture there, but I am not willing to be THAT GUY. Not in a fancy restaurant, anyway. We even dressed up!

Happy 15th anniversary to us!

A photo posted by @zannah42 on

I thought I was going to die

I have eaten so much food these last few days, it’s ridiculous.  After Christmas dinner (Beef Wellington), I thought I was going to burst, and then when Molly and I went for a run the next morning, I thought I was going to throw up.  I can barely think about that dinner.  I mean, it was delicious and wonderful, but it’s going to be a while before I can remember it without shuddering.

Gotta stop talking about it.  I may never eat again.  Until breakfast.

You make me egg foo young

It’s a rainy day, we went to the gym, I had a bagel for lunch – do you know what that means?  It means Chinese food for dinner.  (It does.  My logic is impeccable.)  I always (99 times out of 100) regret it, but on a rainy night with no food in the house, I’m doomed to repeat my mistakes.

Question:  Is it better to eat cookies all day or eat lightly during the day (normal food, not cookies) and then over-indulge in Chinese food at night?

What do you mean by “better”?  More acceptable?  Nutritionally better/healthier?  

What do you care?  Since when did you become a health nut?  How many days has it been since you ate a vegetable?

You’d better back the hell off, Judgy McCritic, before I shove a vegetable where the sun don’t shine…