The last post about baking for a while

I know I’ve been talking about baking and cookies and stuff a lot, but I promise this is the last one for a while.  It’s just I keep trying new things!  Today, I made a ton of gluten-free oatmeal raisin cookies.  I hear they turned out well, but I will have to take everyone else’s word for it.  I love oatmeal, but oatmeal cookies?  No way.  I like grapes, but raisins get stuck in my teeth, so I avoid them.  Oatmeal cookies combine those two things into pure evil.  I made them by request, and it was…a learning experience?

Corey, Dad, and Gaby all said they were good.  I’ll assume they weren’t just being nice (it makes me feel better).  I’m happy to make stuff by request, and I like baking – it’s fairly simple, I’ve never completely ruined anything (so far, I think), and it doesn’t take forever.  But for the most part, I think I’d rather make things I’ll actually eat.  On the other hand…my diet will thank me if I stick to oatmeal raisin cookies…something to think about.

No more baking!  Until Christmas.  Or until John runs out of cookies.

Gluten-free baking and other disasters

Saturday morning, I made about 4 dozen gluten-free chocolate cookies, and they came out great.  Not great-for-gluten-free cookies.  Straight-up great.  This was one of the new things I tried, and I’m pretty darn happy with the results.  (I’m also typing this without my contacts in, so all the text is blurry and I’m relying on the inline spellcheck to catch all the mistakes.  Might not be happy with the results of this post.)  No disasters occurred during the making of those cookies. The bit about the house burning down might have been a bit prescient, though.  John kept me updated throughout the afternoon about the fire at the Annapolis Yacht Club.  Here’s an article in the local newspaper.  It mentions dozens of pedestrians watching the firefighting activity – John was one of those dozens!  (Does that technically mean he was one dozen?  John contains multitudes.)

Anyway, I also mentioned dogs eating dough.  Gaby and I made regular chocolate chip cookies for dinner, and Ginger (one of Mel’s dogs – the counter-surfer) licked three of them.  I usually under-cook my cookies, but these were a little less cooked than usual, so I think it counts as dough.  Prescient again? Or self-fulfilling prophecy, somehow?

Kitchen issues, part 436

This week has not been a good one for me and cooking.  I had the issue with the pie (it still turned out pretty good).  I dropped the salad all over the floor.  My cookies all came out fine, but I realized when my oven started pouring out smoke that I bought waxed paper instead of parchment paper.  The kitchen was smoky and the cookie sheets ended up all waxy and gross and hard to clean.  I hate waxed paper.  I’m planning more baking for this weekend.  I’ve learned from my mistakes, but I just know I’ll find something new to destroy.

Possible disasters:

  • I’m trying two things I’ve never baked before.  They’ll be inedible.
  • There are two ovens.  I’ll preheat one oven and try to bake in the other one, wasting hours on cookies that aren’t cooking and ruining the empty oven.
  • There are four hungry dogs in the house.  They’ll eat the dough.
  • There are four curious dogs in the house.  One of them will end up in the oven.
  • I’ll get distracted quoting Martin and Lewis with Mel and the cookies will burn.
  • I’ll get distracted quoting Martin and Lewis with Mel and the house will burn down.

Yeah, those seem likely.  Who’s betting?

I can’t even

I made another pie on Monday.  One more pie.  That’s a crucial detail I missed when I started to put it all together.  I boiled sweet potatoes for only one pie.  I peeled them, put them in the mixing bowl.  Then I added the rest of the ingredients, according to my recipe.  Yes, according to my recipe WHICH IS WRITTEN FOR TWO PIES.  Started the mixer, noticed the resulting mixture was a bit runny….oh, shit.  Dropped head into hands.  I didn’t buy any more sweet potatoes, so I couldn’t just turn it into two pies.  Tasted the mixture – a bit sweeter than usual (because of DOUBLE the amount of sugar needed for ONE pie), but pretty good.  So at John’s suggestion, I added some flour to thicken it up, crossed my fingers, and cooked it.

I don’t know how it turned out.  It’s puffy, and it took longer to bake completely.  It was meant for my team at work – they’ll have to let me know.  I’ll just hide when they try it.  They’ve had it before!  They’ll know!

To make matters worse, also on Monday (after the pie made it into the oven), I dropped a plastic mixing bowl of caesar salad.  It landed right side up (small miracle), but half the salad bounced out of the bowl and landed on the floor.  I had to walk away.  Actually, I think I stomped away.  That’s also when I decided not to make cookies that night.  Too dangerous.

And you wonder why I don’t cook!  Maybe you don’t wonder.  THIS IS WHY.

Eating light

I’m trying to combat the holiday season food problem (with associated weight gain) by not eating.  I haven’t been that successful.  But today!  Today, I’ve had a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of tea, then I went to the gym (although I wouldn’t count today’s among my hardest workouts), and now I’m eating a piece of toast with peanut butter.  I’m trying to go extra light today because I’m making cookies as soon as I’m done with work.  Lots of cookies.  And I’m not going to try to pretend I won’t be eating cookie batter and fresh warm cookies all evening.  Maybe I’ll skip dinner.  Cookies for dinner sounds great, right?

Tomorrow I’ll be in the office for the first since mid-August – I’m bringing the cookies (so more cookies for me tomorrow), we’re going out for a team lunch, and then we have the holiday party tomorrow night.  I’ll be eating all day.  And I won’t have to time to run tomorrow, so I can’t fight it that way.  And if I get the chance to run on Thursday, it’ll be later in the day, and I don’t have the greatest track record when it comes to running later in the day.  (Get it?  Track record?  Camembert!  These are the jokes, people.)

Mr. Blue Sky

All it takes is one sunny day.  Yesterday was a gloomy, chilly, rainy day.  Today has been the clearest, sunniest day in the history of clear sunny days.  And even though it’s a bit chilly (I wore a scarf with my jacket and hat to lunch), it is glorious.

Good things that happened today, in no particular order:

  • John had a good phone interview for a great job
  • Jess got very positive news about a potential promotion
  • I had a GREAT run this morning (five miles with perfect music)
  • Lunch was half of a delicious burger, split with a giddy Jess
  • Except for one meeting this morning, I have not wanted to reach through my computer screen and throttle anyone

It’s a banner day!  And it’s Friday!

 

Pizza pizza pizza pizza pizza – man, that looks weird

You know how you can go for months on end without eating fast food, without craving it or even thinking about it, but then you’re on a trip and you go through a drive-thru and then find yourself craving it?  And, probably, eating more of it?

Yeah, I’m doing that with pizza right now.  I love pizza, but I tend to go overboard and eat ALL the pizza when we get it, so I’ve been avoiding pizza.  But I love pizza, and when Jess suggested pizza for our movie night this week, I thought it was a brilliant idea.  (We watched Mean Girls and Bring It On (she had never seen either) and then Victor/Victoria (which I had never seen) and then the first episode of Crazy Ex Girlfriend (because I can’t be the only person who loves it) and then we were well into the third bottle of wine and called it a night.  It was great.)  The problem is that now I want pizza.  More pizza.  Pizza again.  It doesn’t even have to be good pizza.  I will eat all pizza.

I could go to the one place in town I know about that sells it by the slice (and only buy one slice), but I am also trying to stop eating out for every meal, so I went to the store. My compromise is pizza muffins (cousin to the pizza buns that became one of my food obsessions growing up, along with hot dogs and then toast).  We have tomato sauce, we have mozzarella, and we have English muffins.  That’ll work, right?

I don’t need to do that again

Whoops, I missed a day.  Well, it was a busy day.  A busy weekend, really.  We spent Saturday morning cleaning up, both because it was necessary and because Sean and Emily were coming to visit, and we spent the rest of Saturday hanging out with them.  I made the worst decisions in terms of food and alcohol – let’s have salad and fish and hey, some raw oysters, and then follow it up with cream-based alcoholic beverages!  Sounds like a plan!  That combination is never a great idea, but it’s especially stupid when you have a race the next day. I woke up this morning at 6:15 seriously wondering if I would be able to run.  I could, and I did, but I wasn’t sure I’d feel well enough until I actually started running.  (I feel much better now.)

Today was the Across the Bay 10K, the race where about 30,000 runners cross the Chesapeake Bay, taking over one of the two spans of the Bay Bridge.  It’s nuts.  We were afraid it would be windy and chilly, but it was sunny and warm-ish, so yay for that.  The logistics were a nightmare: park at the stadium (we jogged there, since it’s only a little over a mile from our place), wait in line to get on a school bus to get to the start line. Run the race, finish on the eastern shore, and get on another school bus to bring us back to the stadium.  Since the eastbound span of the bridge is closed (until 2pm), the westbound span is handling two-way traffic, and it took forever to get back over the bay.  We got off the bus at the stadium and still had to walk over a mile to get back home.

We stopped for brunch at the Irish pub (John had corned beef hash, I had the andouille quiche), and we just got home, and I really want to take a shower.  So, you know, there I go.

I think I could live in Eugene

Today, I had a waffle with spinach and goat cheese and strawberries and carmelized onions and some sort of balsamic reduction on top.  It was SO GOOD.  And I had lots of coffee and I had beer from a local brewery and we went to Hayward Field and stood on the track and it was a really nice day and did I mention I had lots of coffee?

Pictures later.  Not of the coffee.

Rhapsodic about cucumbers

Cucumbers are a wonderful thing.  I mean, they’re not as great as avocados (let’s not get crazy here), but they make other foods better.  I’ve been slicing cucumbers onto my sandwiches all week, and the other night I added cucumber to a caesar salad.  So good, so crunchy, so FRESH!  A cucumber slice in water is delicious and light (and THAT I would never do to an acovado).

I sound like a morning talk show personality.  I should stop now before I start in with the cucumber-related beauty tips.

Is it home yet?

We’re back from Kentucky and a successful surprise party for Corey to celebrate his 40th birthday (very late – it was in July) AND his successful bar exam results.  Corey is an actual honest-to-god lawyer now!  Well, he will be when he gets sworn in, which I think happens tomorrow (Wednesday).  He’s got business cards and everything.  (You can’t call yourself a lawyer without business cards.)

It was a good visit (and I’ll be going back soon), and it was both good and super strange to come back to Annapolis from there.  On the one hand, it felt like coming home.  It’s familiar (BWI, the main roads – we’ve lived in the area for a LONG time), our stuff is here, the weather was super-nice (that always helps a homecoming feel good), that sort of thing.  But on the other hand, we’ve only lived here for 7 weeks.  Just how homey can it be?  And on the OTHER hand, does it need to feel like home?  We’re basically itinerants now.

We missed the torrential rain from the hurricane (since we were in KY), but it definitely came through the ceiling again.  The bowl we left behind was half-full. And the toilet has started leaking again.  One of the bathmats was soaked from the end near the toilet to about halfway across the sink.  Our landlady says there’s a window leaking on the third floor (she’s waiting for the replacement window to arrive), and she’s calling the guy about the toilet.  So maybe that stuff will get resolved.

Other than that, the apartment is in good shape.

We got home around 4:30, unpacked, picked up a little, and then went out to eat.  We picked another good one this time.  Vida (on Main Street) is a taco place, local food, and really good.  Yummy guacamole and really interesting tacos.  They have traditional ones (carne asada, avocado, that kind of thing) and non-traditional ones (ahi with kimchi, pulled pork, etc).  SO good!  And when they brought the check, they brought little hot hand towels doused in lavender water for our sticky hands.  (Oh, the margaritas were really good, too.)  AND today is Tuesday (Taco Tuesday), so we got 20% off the bill.  I’m happy.  We’ll go back.

A win!

I’ve said before that our experiences with Annapolis restaurants have been pretty disappointing, but I’m happy to say that brunch this morning with John’s parents at the Severn Inn was SO good.  It’s in a very pretty spot (I wish the sun had come out – I’d like to sit out on their deck and eat, but it was chilly and windy), the food was really good, and it was surprisingly not crowded.  We picked a good weekend for it.

Of course, now I want a nap (again with the naps!), and I may never eat again.  Buffets (good ones) are evil.

Best sandwich in the world

Guys, you can stop looking.  I have found the best sandwich in the world, and it is made right here in Annapolis.  The restaurants we’ve tried here have been hit or miss (mostly miss), but this sandwich shop is really really good.  It’s called The Big Cheese (or Sammy’s Deli – seems to have both names), and it’s got this enormous menu.  John and I (and Jess) have tried a bunch of their sandwiches already (all good), but there’s one I’ve had twice now, and I’m going to have to force myself to get anything else after this.  It’s the called the Brie Sandwich (the sandwich is more exciting than its name), and you can get it cold or warm.  French brie, honey mustard, lettuce, and tomato on a baguette (I get the French baguette, not the American baguette), and I can’t imagine getting it cold.  I’ve gotten it warm both times, and the cheese is all melty and it’s SO delicious.  (Dad, I haven’t asked yet if they have gluten-free bread, but I’m SURE they would make you a sandwich on whatever bread you bring.)  I think I’ve been there four times now (in the 16 or 17 days we’ve lived here), and I think I’m starting to look familiar to the owners (I think they’re the owners).  John tried (and liked) a sandwich named the Randi Sue (chicken salad with cranberries and other things in it), and then the next time he went, Randi Sue was working the register.  Turns out she’s the owners’ daughter, and they’ve got a son they’ve named a sandwich after, too.  Nice place, nice people, GREAT sandwiches.

A big welcome

Molly moved to DC a few days ago.  How happy was DC to have her?  So happy they threw a parade in her honor!  Or, coincidentally, the day we headed downtown to hang out with her also happened to be the day of the DC Gay Pride Parade!  Which was totally awesome.  We had to park 8 or so blocks away from her apartment (street closures), but that meant we could follow the parade route to her block, cheering and dancing the whole way.  (Well, I was.  John is not the dancing-at-parades type.)  And then, to our surprise, we followed the parade route ONTO her block, right past her front door.  But where was Molly?  Not on the stoop with her neighbors, whooping it up like any self-respecting young woman in her 20s.  No, she was napping and had NO idea any of this was going on right outside her front door.  In her defense, her apartment is on the back side of the building, and she swears that when she came back after a run to the store at 3:30, there was no sign that a parade was about to come through.

We gathered her up and followed the parade all the way to the circle (more dancing and cheering from us, of course, and I will admit to choking up a few times from the outpouring of love and support – it was great), and then veered off to find dinner, assuming (correctly) that we wouldn’t have too much trouble getting in someplace while the parade was still going on.

Dinner (French) was delicious.  All three of us had mussels – LOVE mussels.  We had another drink at a bar with a game theme (we played Scattergories), and then we headed home (after making sure Molly could find her back to her apartment – she’s a bit directionally-challenged).  Bed finally at 2am, and we slept until 10:30 Sunday morning.  I am not a young woman in my 20s.

Elementary school lunch

I brought my lunch to work Tuesday morning (PB&J and an apple), but then I got a better offer, so I left it in the fridge.  (When a friend tells you she has monumental news and can we please talk about it over lunch, you say yes.)  Wednesday, lunch was catered (as a thank you to the department for hard work on a software release).  My brown bag stayed in the fridge because make-your-own-burrito sounded pretty good (and was).  Thursday arrived, and with no better offers at hand, I pulled my packed lunch out of the fridge and went back to my desk.

Did you know bread could go stale in the fridge?  It seems kind of obvious, but I’d never considered it before today.  Even with lots of strawberry jelly, my poor sandwich had seen better days.  I ate it anyway (I was pretty hungry), but it was a pale imitation of the sandwich it could have been.  My apple – well, it was a lost cause.  50+ hours in a brown bag in the fridge had turned it into one big bruise.  Sad little thing.

When’s dinner?  I could eat.

The donut diet. It’ll catch on, right?

I would like to take a break from eating.  Too bad that’s not really an option.  I feel like all I’ve done for the last two weekends is EAT.  A LOT.  Good food, but too much of it.

Speaking of that, I had the BEST DONUT EVER yesterday.  I had every intention of skipping the donuts my boss brought in, but everyone was raving about them, so I caved. It was so worth it.  They came from Duck Donuts, a place I’d never heard of.  My boss said the line was out the door.  SO GOOD.

Maybe I should forego all food EXCEPT donuts.  Except THESE donuts.  Maybe at the same time I can do something about this ALL CAPS PROBLEM I seem to have developed today.

Don’t shop hungry!

I went to the store on my way home from work to pick up two things.  TWO!  I left with six.  I cannot be trusted.  It’s not like I went crazy – I didn’t buy caviar and dog food and ice cream and olives and six pounds of potatoes.  (Feel free to substitute your own list of things you don’t need when you go to the store.)  I bought things we eat, things we like, things I knew we were out of (or thought we were).  But still – TWO things were my plan.  I needed salmon and croutons for dinner.  I got salmon and croutons…and crackers and two types of cheese and a bottle of wine.  Turns out we’re not out of crackers yet, but we will be someday.  Someday soon, I mean.

It could have been worse.  I stayed away from the cookies.

Dinner!

I don’t cook much (as most of you know), but for some reason, I feel like what I made tonight for dinner was more like real cooking than the other things I make for dinner.  Patently ridiculous.  I don’t consider salmon, brisket, pasta, stir fry, etc., real?  I even include vegetables when I make those!  Crazy.

Tonight’s meal wasn’t any harder.  I diced onions and a bright orange bell pepper.  Sauteed them in a pot with a little butter.  Added canned red beans and garlic and pepper and a little salt (didn’t need the salt). Tossed in small pieces of already cooked andouille sausage.  Steamed some rice.  Threw it all in a bowl.  It was good.  Why does it feel more like cooking?  Because it took more steps?  Not any more than stir fried vegetables over rice.  It wasn’t exactly healthy.

It was maybe a little satisfying to have it come together so nicely.  But I didn’t enjoy it, no.  I don’t like cooking.  I do not.

Weird dreams and overwhelming smells

I’ve been having a lot of strange dreams since we moved into the apartment.  Don’t worry – I’m not going to subject you to ANY details.  Nobody cares about anyone else’s dreams.  I barely care about my own.  Just…they’ve been weird.  I don’t think it’s the apartment’s fault.  I suppose it could be, in a blameless kind of way.  Lots of things are different.

  1. John and I switched sides of the bed.  Not for any particular reason.  I mean, we had a reason.  When we moved in, we put my dresser on one side of the bed and his on the other.  His is much taller, and I like to be able to reach the top of mine, so we switched so I could be next to my dresser.  Also, I’m on the side next to the bathroom (important).
  2. Our bedroom window faces southwest instead of north, so the light is different, even with the blinds closed.
  3. Our window faces out onto a parking lot (fancy!) instead of a street, so it’s lit completely differently (and so the light coming in is different, even with the blinds closed).
  4. We live in an apartment complex, not a neighborhood with houses, so the nighttime noises are different.  Nothing is particularly loud.  In fact, it might even be quieter since we don’t have teenagers across the street anymore.

On top of the weird dreams (and possibly not unrelated, now that I think about it), our apartment seems to hold on to kitchen smells for a very long time.  We’ve been cooking a lot lately (yay for being grown-ups!), but not everything stinks up the apartment.  We noticed it with roast beef a couple of weeks ago (and with something else I can’t remember).  The whole place smelled like roast beef (STRONGLY of roast beef) for at least two days.  I’m afraid yesterday’s brisket is going to linger the same way.  It’s been warm enough to leave windows open, so I hope that’ll help.  We left the windows open all day yesterday while it was cooking, and we opened them again when we left for work, but we were practically assaulted by it when we came back in from boxing this morning.  John’s towel smells like brisket.  I did laundry yesterday – do the clean clothes smell like brisket?  I’ve been in the apartment for most of the last 24 hours – do I smell like brisket?  Oh, god.  (My officemate says I don’t smell like brisket.  At least, not from a normal distance away.  I didn’t make her get up close and smell me.)

At least we’re not being subjected to BAD smells, no trash or raw fish or anything like that.  But why can’t the apartment hold on to lighter, more pleasant smells, like the cookies I made weekend before last?  I like brisket and roast beef (and whatever the third thing was) very much, but once dinner is over, I don’t want to smell them anymore.  I think I’d rather enjoy smelling cookies all the time.  Or toast.  I love the smell of toast.

If I imagine myself eating, I won’t feel so hungry

We spent several hours this morning and early afternoon watching the rest of season 3 of Downton Abbey while the tantalizing smells of a brisket cooking drove us mildly insane.  The brisket just came out of the oven, but the potatoes aren’t ready (John’s in charge of those).  I’m SO hungry.  I will attempt to distract myself with the best science fiction and fantasy short stories from 2007 and our ongoing CD-ripping project.  Wish me luck.