Bitchy McBitcherson's Blog

Tag: food

  • A Turkey of a Holiday

    This year for Thanksgiving, I am thankful that I was sick.

    Okay, that is a lie.

    I mean, I was sick, that is true, but I was really pissed off about it.

    Actually, even that isn’t true. I was so sick I wasn’t pissed off about anything. I was just blah. I was really blah, and as bummed as I could muster the energy to be, about being sick for Thanksgiving.

    The week started out with a surprise sudden visit from my father, who sent me an email late Friday night while I was in Vegas (Vegas Baybee!) to say he needed to come down for business and would be arriving on Monday.

    Hmm, maybe I should start back even farther. On Wednesday of the week prior to Thanksgiving I got the husband from the airport when he returned from China. On Wednesday night we had dinner with a friend. On Thursday morning we drove to Vegas. On Thursday night we hung out with friends in Vegas and ditto on Friday (more on that later). There may have been a lot of eating and booze consumption. On Saturday we expected to leave after lunch to head home. We did, but that ended up being almost 4 PM. Why were we heading back on Saturday instead of Sunday? Because we had a party to attend on Saturday night.

    We drove into town, went home, ate a quick dinner and spoke to the teen monster, and said hello to all the animals, and then got cleaned up a bit, dressed and headed out to a party. We left when the police helicopter showed up. Don’t ask, I don’t know.

    On Sunday we had somebody over for dinner (braised pork in a apple Zinfandel reduction). Then on Monday I picked up my father & co. at the airport and ate too much for dinner and dessert and stayed up late talking. Indy woke me several times in the night. It is always a crapshoot (sometimes literally) as to whether she sleeps through the whole nights, wakes me up once to go out, or wakes me up every hour for one reason or another.

    My point is, that while I should probably not have been surprised to come down sick after all that, I was too out of it to notice that I was sick upon waking Tuesday morning. It wasn’t until I was about 50 miles into a 200 mile round trip with my father (decided to drive him to his business thing) that I realized I had a fever and all my skin hurt and my neck hurt.

    By the time business was over (during which I napped in the backseat of my car) and we made it back home, my hair hurt, all my muscles hurt, my joints hurt, and my bones hurt. My stomach felt mildly gross, and I was too hot and too cold. I fell into bed and stayed there for many hours, until my stomach advanced to feeling incredibly gross, at which point I had to sometimes leave bed.

    Around 24 hours later, I felt really, really bad, which was way better than I’d felt the day before. I decided I’d be fine to go pick up the teen monster instead of asking somebody else to do me the favor of picking her up (I’d already had somebody else take her). Clearly, I was still feverish and delusional, because I was in no shape to go pick her up.

    I finally made dinner on Saturday night because it was the last night the people I originally invited for Thanksgiving could do it. I still didn’t really feel very good, so I had to scale back on a lot of things. I washed my hands A LOT, and tried really hard to be extra careful about everything, and used gloves a lot of the time too, but really, I worried that I was serving Plague Feast.

    Anyhow – Menu (not overly traditional)

    Caviar (with little toasts and creme fraiche)
    Spicy Marinated Mushrooms, Garlic Stuff Olives, and Castelvetrano Olives (one my absolute favorites, even though my husband insists on telling the same lame joke every time I serve them. Frighteningly, some guests believe his joke.)
    Salmon (with cream cheese, sesame toast rounds, capers, onions and lemons)
    Cheese Plate
    Sourdough Bread and Garlic Butter
    Zucchini and Yellow Squash Salad
    Cranberry Orange Sauce
    New York Steak Cubes seasoned in salt, paprika and coffee, then wrapped in bacon
    Turkey (prepared with a dry rub and the cooked on the BBQ grill with a Turkey Cannon filled with beer and garlic and oranges)
    Rutabagas, Turnips, Parsnips, and Butternut Squash roasted in duck fat

    I also made Egg Nog (and spiced rum) Ice Cream with Ginger Snap Cookies in it.

    After I immediately made Turkey and Wild Rice Soup to send home with one of the guests. Mmmmnn, plague soup. Although he reported back that it was quite possibly the best soup he’d ever had, ever, and failed to come down with the plague. Maybe I just lightly seasoned it with plague. Kind of like eating perfectly prepared fugu, with just enough toxin there to feel it and remind you of life, without enough to kill you.

    Anyhow, I did nothing at all on Monday, and did very little on Tuesday, and just tried to recover. I am finally feeling not too bad. Now I will post this, and finish making dinner, which is currently on the stove (and in the oven, and in the rice cooker).

  • What’s Cooking?

    One of my many happy things about being back in the Los Angeles area, is the food. I missed the restaurants, but I also missed the produce and the ethnic markets fiercely.

    Lately I’ve been enjoying garden bounty: Squash from one person with an overflowing garden. Lemons from another with heavy trees. Tomatoes from a friend who is growing more than her household will eat.

    It is such a wonderful thing. Because it is fresh, the flavor and nutritional values are higher. Because it is free, the financial benefit is awesome. Because it is what is available right then, it forces me to think of ways to make use of them, which often leads to meals I wouldn’t normally think to shop for.

    Most of all, for me, food is so much about caring. When the ingredients are gifted to me through my network of human connections and interactions, it ties me to the positive. As I cook, I think of where ingredients came from. I think of whom they are going to feed. I think about ingredients loved by people I love. I think of the last time I prepared a dish, and who I fed that time, or of whom I would like to feed with it. I follow the threads in my mind as I chop and mix and sample.

    Onions and cucumbers came from the CSA last week, and my daughter requested a cucumber salad. As I prepared it I thought back two summers to being in New York City, when a different CSA delivery led to a different cucumber salad. It was prepared by a dear friend as we worked together in the kitchen to create a feast from CSA items and food treasures collected at a nearby market. I know this is part of why my daughter wanted the salad too, because of her memory of that NYC salad, and because the friend was extra on our mind because she had a birthday this week. Every future cucumber salad will always remind both of us, of that one, and no other will ever be quite as good, because some food moments are so right.

    With my bounty of tomatoes I made gazpacho, which is pretty much a perfect summer treat. It makes some use of the lemons as well. Lemons can be used pretty much daily in cooking, especially during the summer, which is the perfect time for multiple salads. Anything to stay cooler.

    I’ve been cooking on the grill a lot lately, even things I wouldn’t normally cook on the grill (like banana bread). This is because it is fuck-all hot and I don’t want to heat the kitchen up further. The rest of the tomatoes I slow cooked into a delicious tomato sauce using the grill. I suppose all this unattended cooking out there could eventually lead to my house burning down, but whatever, in Southern California I can survive without housing longer than I can survive without food.

    Half of the tomato sauce is in the freezer waiting for another use. The other half, I simmered ground and seasoned lamb patties in. Those I served over portabella mushrooms, stuffed with a mixture of spinach, goat cheese, extra garlic, basil, and pine nuts (and cooked on the grill, of course). The abundance of squash has been sliced up, lightly salted, spritzed with ACV and grilled. Everything gets grilled.

    The heat has been leading to a desire for cooler and more refreshing cocktails as well. I brought home mint the other day so the bartender could make me mojitos. The peels from the cucumbers for the cucumber salad, I used to flavor vodka overnight, along with mint sprigs. Then that made cucumber mint spritzers the next night.

    The heat wave finally broke yesterday, after a week of evil yellow ball in the sky trying to kill us all weather. It is still summer though. It will still be a grilled dinner tonight with refreshing cold side dishes and beverages, just with less lethargy and overheated misery.

  • Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be

    We went to Bed Bath & Beyond yesterday, and walked past a display of Eggies. I paused and looked at them, because I get so frustrated peeliIng eggs.

    I was deeply suspicious.

    I didn’t buy any, but I did use Google to learn more.

  • Squawk

    If I was granted 10 wishes, I’d wish to be a nicer person.

    Fuck you. No I wouldn’t. I was totally lying. You didn’t believe that horseshit, did you?

    I would wish to be less obsessed with getting it perfect, and a lot more satisfied with getting it done.

    I’d also wish for world peace, via having a large number of people (think REALLY LARGE) shift to an alternate reality that they were not sharing with me. I don’t care about an end to war, I just need more peace for me, personally.

    I don’t have the top 10 all mapped out, but somewhere in there, I’d want to be able to consistently peel a boiled egg perfectly.

    I’ve read hundreds of web tips, watched videos, explored techniques and looked at gadgets. I still peel a mutated fucked up dented, chipped, and gouged egg as often as I peel a perfectly smooth egg shaped egg.

    I fucking hate slop in the kitchen.

    I have a boiled egg almost every day, unless I am eating breakfast out, have run out of eggs, or… I don’t know, am too busy puking my guts out or something (see the 2nd week of July), so it isn’t as if I don’t have a lot of practice peeling eggs.

    I like deviled eggs. I LOVE good deviled eggs. I make a damn good deviled egg, but I never do it because the process of trying to peel that many eggs drives me fucking mad. I haven’t made a batch since before my kid was born, and she is old enough to get her driver’s license now.

    The last time I made them it was because I asked people I love what I should bring to their house for a party, and they replied “Your deviled eggs!” I made eggs for the party. There was a lot of screaming and swearing and a little crying (and a lot of rejected eggs) and people at the party loved them. I never asked those friends what I should bring to their house again. I just told them what I could bring.

    Yes, I know, some people would make deviled eggs with slightly fucked up, or even very fucked up eggs, but I am not that person.

    Wait, scratch the egg peeling skills wish. If I am wishing, let’s just wish big. I want ultimate egg skillz, yo. No fishing egg shells out of mixing bowls. No breaking the yolk on over easy eggs. No fucking up an omelet while trying to flip or fold it. No curdling while making a custard. No accidentally having one roll off the counter and break on the floor while I am busy grabbing some other ingredient. You get the idea.

    Clucking chickens and their little packages of kitchen stress.

    Yes, I know. If you are paying attention and are the kind of asshole who likes to point shit out, you might be itching to type something about how if I was less obsessed with getting it perfect and more obsessed with getting it done, I’d just bring ugly tasty deviled eggs to parties, and I’d be a lot more likable. Fuck you. I don’t want to be likable. I just want to quickly peel eggs without having chunks of white stick to the shell, and I want to do with without resorting to raising my own chickens in an effort to feed them perfectly and have the eggs be as fresh as possible.

    If there were less people I wouldn’t need as many eggs to serve deviled eggs at a party.

    My morning breakfast peeled perfectly this morning. It won’t tomorrow. I don’t even know which is worse.

  • Texting Without QWERTY

    My first several cell phones did not have a QWERTY keyboard, and I did more texting on it than I did talking.  It was fine.

    Then I got the Sidekick II, and entered the much easier world of QWERTY texting. In the meantime, in the non-QWERTY world, they became helpful. Now that I am back to having a non-QWERTY keypad, I am being much pained by this helpfulness. As usual, it doesn’t help me, because there is something about the way I am wired that means most UI design works for shit for me, the more carefully designed it is, the more it tends to suck for me.

    I am trying to make the help back the fuck off, so I can text the way I did before the QWERTY phone, I was fairly fast at that. So far, I am just being hampered by all the help.

    Seriously, yesterday friend texted to ask info she needed about cooking something. She clearly wanted the info quickly, and I could not fucking manage to write a reply. I ended up resorting to finding my husband in the store (BevMo) and interrupting his booze shopping to ask him to text me what I wanted to reply, so I could forward it to her. I’m not kidding. That is how I replied to her.

    Today, I was waiting for take out dumplings and I texted my husband who was waiting out in the car.

    “15 min wait. It might take me that long to type this.”

    I was able to get a reply from him and type one response before the food was ready.

    Next we went to Paradis where we samples some flavors and then all of us chose the Orange Buttermilk, because it was SO good. I need to look at buttermilk ice cream recipes. I’ve never had it before, but I need to make sure it is not the last. I would have tweeted about it, if I had better texting capabilities, but I did not. I might have mentioned it on facebook if I had a smart phone, but I did not.

    So, that is how things are progressing during my experiment.

  • Playing Catch Up – Part III

    We finally made it to the motel, with all the humans and cats still alive, and an hour later were ready to go to sleep. Another problem with this motel, besides the fact they had a firm check in deadline, was they had a very early check out deadline too. I signed up for this and agreed to it when I reserved the room, but because of the detour, it was a major pain in the ass. The next morning arrived way too soon.

    Still, we hit the road again, and had a very easy 400 and change miles planned, to get us into Vegas. The drive went pretty well, for a pleasant change. Getting back to more familiar vistas was very welcome. I could feel myself getting more comfortable as we got closer.

    Really nice to see some desert.

    We made it to the La Quinta Inn & Suites Las Vegas Airport South. Unfortunately, and hour after arriving, we were still not settled into our rooms. As a serious chronic pain sufferer, the move and road trip had been taking a toll. Our rooms were kind of midway from all exits, and not at all convenient. In the 140 room, 3 story inn, they had exactly 3 luggage carts. All of them had been taken and squirreled away inside guest rooms. The staff tried to ignore my repeated requests for help locating the carts. I found out from a long term guest that this is constant problem, and yet, they had not instituted any kind of check out process for the carts. I walked all the floors, but the carts were not to be found in any public areas. After a lot of my annoying presence the staff made a half-assed attempt at finding the carts and also failed. We finally moved into our rooms by using the rolling office chairs to load our stuff up and take it into the rooms. I know that the staff thought we should just get off our asses and carry shit to our rooms, but we really had a very large amount of stuff that wasn’t a good idea to leave outside in the parking lot at that location, and we were really not in any condition to carry it in piece by piece.

    By the time we managed to be in our rooms, it was getting pretty late. I needed to hit a grocery store because Indy had not been very pleased with the on the road meals I’d been preparing for her, and her general state of stress wasn’t doing well for her health. Also, the cats were not doing spectacularly. I wanted to get them all something special food wise to entice them to eating a really good sized meal. Then I arranged for the kid and my mother to eat dinner in their room and watch the dogs, while the husband and I went out and enjoyed Vegas a little. My first several restaurant choices were closing, so we ended up just driving down the strip to look for something. We decided to stop at The Cosmopolitan since their flash sign indicated a lot of late night dining options, and we’d never been to that hotel. The hotel has a very popular night club, and the hotel was crawling with young hip people and people who wanted to pretend to be young and hip. We went to The Henry for dinner and people watching. (Is it really a dress if it is so short you crotch is visible?) The meal was enjoyable. Husband had a Midtown Manhattan (Bacon Infused Makers Mark Cinnamon and Fig Infused Sweet Vermouth, Angostura, Fee’s Aztec Chocolate Bitters) which was very tasty, and prime rib. I had a Mambo Italiano (Garlic Roasted Vodka, House Made Bloody Mary Mix, Basil) which was also very good, and an excellent burger. We shared the
    Millionaire’s Deviled Eggs (lump crab & truffle stuffing, thousand island dressing & caviar) to start. The next time I’m in Vegas, I think I’ll go try Holsteins. The menu made me drool, but it was way too noisy and crowded for me to venture into on a Saturday night.

    The next day we got a late start. We were pretty wrecked from our trip so far, and the time zone changes had not been in our favor for getting on the road early. We headed out of town and soon were reminded why it is important to leave really early on Sunday morning. The traffic from Vegas to L.A. on Sundays is pretty nasty, often further hosed due to accidents or road work.

    We dragged our butts into our house later than we expected when we first packed up the car, but we made it. It was really good to be home. We unloaded the crap from our car, and wandered over to a friend’s house for dinner. It was so good to spend some time with them, although in hindsight, probably a mistake. By the time we made it home we were exhausted, and then discovered that the movers had put our bed together wrong, so we couldn’t sleep on it without finding tools to fix it. We were way too tired to find the tools. So, our first night home we couldn’t sleep properly.

    The cats were thrilled to be out of the damn car for good, at it was clear that they knew exactly where they were. They settled in immediately, although they were (and remain) annoyed by all the boxes in the way. Indy also recognized the place, I was wondering about that, since she was already had CCD before we left, but we did move into the house when she was “all here”. She even remembered that she isn’t allowed into the kitchen and dining room. Watson, of course, had no such memory of rules against entering the kitchen, which is the land where all good things come from. After a couple of corrections, he was going great.

    Ahh, home, sweet home… for about 10 seconds, and then the overwhelming To Do list of getting our shit in order here comes crashing down on my shoulders. Lots and lots of stress, but really, it is good to be home.

  • Random Chatter About Today

    Today was good. Indy continued on her road to recovery, so the weight on my shoulders from yesterday, eased. It was kind of a rough night, and I will probably be spending a second night downstairs, but, really, things are MUCH better. Still, rough night equals not enough sleep, which is just no fun.

    Watson’s playdate got canceled, but I was able to get somebody else to bring a good natured Golden over for a romp on the deck. She was a little too good natured, and she didn’t do enough reprimanding of Watson being a booger, but still it was a fun evening, and included sharing a bottle of wine with her owner. Plus, the Golden got Indy extra alert and best of all created a bunch of wagging, which had been missing since surgery.

    Red fox sighting today! So cute. I’ve seen foxes a couple of times before in the area, but today was the first daylight one. Actually, my mother saw a fox while walking Watson today, and then we all saw one from the back deck. I don’t know if it was the same fox, but it seems likely. It’s about the right time for kits. I wonder if there is a den nearby, filled with cuteness.

    Lamb burgers with feta cheese for dinner. Lamb is good food. Perhaps I could lure a fox with some of it.

    I also have some fresh strawberries in the house and have been experimenting making whipped cream with liqueurs. Last night was Disaronno and tonight was Grand Marnier. This also led me to thinking I was to try making a Limoncello ice cream this summer.

    Thunderstorm tonight, time to find out how Watson feels about thunder. Hopefully he’ll be as easy going about it as all my other dogs have been.

  • you are what you eat

    A sushi-eye view, life on a revolving sushi bar belt –
    http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c35_1178938654&p=1

  • Cold (bland) Turkey

    I haven’t been feeling very well, physically. I am extremely busy right now, and very distracted by all the crap going on. When that happens I often forget to take even halfway decent care of myself. I need a chance to reset.

    Starting tomorrow I’ll be cutting out:

    • caffeine
    • all sweets (fake or real sugar)
    • wine (because of the sugar content)
    • carbonated beverages (even unsweetened)

    I will also be cutting way back on sodium.

    I do this every once in a while when I just feel that my body, my needs, and my cravings have gotten out of whack. It usually takes between 2 weeks and 5 weeks for me to perform a reset. Basically as soon as the thought “I really need a cup of coffee” isn’t coming up all the time, I’ll try a cup of coffee. If that one taste triggers me to start desperately wanting coffee, then I know it hasn’t been long enough and I wait another week.

    At some point things go back to what I consider normal and I can, for instance, eat a sweet thing and think, “Oh, that is really good,” and feel completely satisfied, instead of thinking “Give me MORE, right NOW.” Usually some items can be added back before others.

    Also I need to make a concerted effort to take my meds as scheduled each and every day. I am way behind on my blood tests and there is no point going in if I have not managed to keep things regular for a decent amount of time before the test, the results won’t be accurate enough to be worth the bother.

    I am not posting this because I particularly expect any of you to give a shit, it is something I am doing for myself. It is just sort of a warning because the first couple of days I am usually in an extra foul mood. Also a warning to those who eat with me regularly, because I get somewhat boring food wise for a few weeks, the cutting back on sodium has the most impact because I have to be really careful about restaurant foods.

  • Random Mutterings

    Still chafing over this DST crap. It has really thrown a wrench into our lives. It shifted our morning schedule because our morning starts with an alarm clock and the clock time changed. We just work an extra hour because our evening schedule is based on the way it feels, and we don’t typically look at ending our work day until it feels late and we are feeling hungry. I don’t necessarily mind putting in an extra hour of work, we are behind on everything. The problem lies in that by the time we are ready to get dinner, our restaurant options have shrunk by 90%. I could cook, but the whole not feeling late and hungry means I haven’t started prepping already, plus since I am behind on everything, managing the grocery shopping becomes an issue too. The past two nights we drove up to the restaurants of choice to find them closed and were stuck with something else. Last night we did manage to grocery shop, so I will cook tonight. I need to set an alarm so that I notice it is getting late and start cooking on time. I think somebody is coming over dinner tonight.

    I used to hardly ever eat breakfast. I didn’t feel hungry in the morning and when I did eat in the mornings, it made me feel sick. Every once in a while I would make an effort to regularly eat breakfast because the common philosophy is that breakfast is “good for you”. Even after I stuck with it, dutifully eating a bowl of cereal or having a bagel each morning for a month, it still made me feel ill. It certainly didn’t feel very “good for me” and I’d give up on it. Then a couple of years ago the husband and the kid began having a regular breakfast routine that often involved cooking bacon. Soon I found myself attracted to the smell of bacon in the morning. I’ve now been eating breakfast regularly for about 2 years and I really do feel much better. The key for me is that mornings really have to be seriously about protein. Many traditional breakfasty things are fairly high carb (cereals, pancakes, pastries) and eating those things in the morning made me feel positively ill. It was especially problematic because I typically only ate breakfast because I was going out with other people, so not only was I have the morning carb load, but I was eating large portions too, since that is what breakfast places were serving. So now I usually have a small high protein meal in the morning and it tends to make me feel better throughout the day than I used to feel with no breakfast, so that’s one improvement in my life, and I really am pleased by any improvement.

    Most mornings I have spinach and an egg, or some egg whites and some bacon if somebody else cooks it for me. The egg whites is a new thing too. A little over a year ago we went out to breakfast and I ordered an omelette based on the ingredients. It sounded good. It arrived and was all white on the outside. I actually said “What the fuck?” I looked back at the menu and it came default as an egg white omelette. I’d never had one before. It always seemed like something people did to be healthy and when it comes to food I really prefer it to be about the food, especially if I am eating out. Still, I had ordered it, so I wasn’t going to send it back. It turned out I actually preferred it. I liked the texture better. I guess I should have beens surprised because if I get eggs cooked to order I go with sunny side up or overeasy, I don’t care for scrambled. So that led to me purchasing and using egg whites at home.

    This morning I still had some spinach left, but it was no longer in an edible condition. The fridge is running too cold right now. I keep tweaking but it isn’t helping. Without my normal spinach I was poking around trying to figure out what else to eat. I ended up making an artichoke heart, cillantro, onions and bleu cheese, egg white omelette. I really liked the combination. I’ll have to toss that into my breakfast rotation more often.

    Today I need to go buy more spinach, and eggs too.

    Maybe I will get dressed and head out of the house now. As I have mentioned before mornings are not my most productive time. So far I have only managed to do random internet time wasters and answer a couple of important meetings, made my daughter mad at me, plus have a brief talk with the writer/director of the short. This is all fine as long as I don’t give in too much to the random internet time wasters later in the day once my energy is up.