sylvar

1 bag Morningstar Farms Meal Starters "steak" strips
1 can Campbell's mushroom gravy (maybe this should be 2 cans)
1 pound assorted mushrooms, sliced (I used half portobello and half ordinary)
2 Tbsp. butter
Egg noodles, or white rice, your choice

Cook the pasta/rice. While it cooks, heat up a large pan, throw in the butter, and put the mushrooms on top. Heat, stirring occasionally, until the mushrooms are mostly limp. Throw in the fake-steak strips and cook until they're hot. Pour in the gravy and cook until it's all nice and bubbly. Serve over pasta/rice.

I stopped at the grocery store on the way home and got some fresh broccoli, lemons, potatoes and portobello mushrooms. As soon as I came home, I started making Alton Brown's Chocolate Chip Muffins #7. Half the chocolate chips (by mass) were semi-sweet mini-chips, and half were huge honking Ghirardelli bittersweet chips. The cocoa, of course, was Penzeys natural-process.

While the muffins baked, I cut up a large bag of potatoes, about 4 liters when roughly cubed. I tossed these with olive oil, then mixed 1/4 cup Penzeys Greek seasoning, 1/4 cup water, 1/4 cup lemon juice, and 1/4 cup olive oil. I poured this Greek marinade and the potatoes into a two-gallon Ziploc bag and tossed it all together. It sat on the countertop absorbing yumminess as...

I then cut up two bunches of broccoli, about 2-3 pounds of it. I ran out of room in the steamer basket, so I ended up ignoring the bottom part of the stalks. The broccoli sat in the wire basket, suspended above a few cups of water in a large pot, as...

I used my new microplane grater to get the zest of two lemons, then I juiced the lemons. I measured out one tablespoon of cornstarch and set it aside while...

I sprayed a thick aluminum baking sheet with canola oil, then poured in a single layer of marinated potatoes, and popped the whole thing into a hot oven. (I found that 350F didn't do much in half an hour, so I bumped it up to 425F for about another half-hour.)

When Jodi came home, I turned the broccoli-steaming water to high heat, put the cornstarch into a small pot, added the zest and juice of the two lemons, and whisked constantly for two or three minutes until it thickened. As an afterthought, I ground some peppercorns into the lemon sauce, then put it on the cold burner.

The mushrooms went on the electric grill at some point, and despite absolutely no preparation, came out pretty well. (I'll marinate 'em next time.) Once the broccoli was done, I served it with the lemon-pepper sauce drizzled over it, aside the Greek oven potatoes and a limp mushroom cap.

That went over very well, although it took most of the evening to make.

And just now, I've started a double batch (2 cups bread flour, 2 cups whole wheat flour) of pizza dough, which is now doing its slow momentous rise in the refrigerator. It could be ready for tomorrow night, or it could wait until the weekend.

I still want to find sherry vinegar for Alton's pantry-friendly tomato sauce, but I'll use white wine vinegar if I must. And then there's the question of fresh herbs... I guess I'll be buying a basil plant or two to mercilessly mutilate into a chiffonade. Muhahahaha.

And I even managed to find time to take care of a load or two of laundry.

I was meant to be a housewife. I love this stuff. I love my wife and my mei-mei. This kicks ass.

...and now I'm gonna go get six hours of sleep.

Hooray! I've finally earned a KitchenAid stand mixer! With the Amazon.com discount code HOHOHOHO and free Super Saver shipping, I can get an excellent one for $146. I'm getting around $40 in fun money for a crossword puzzle I just created, I've got about $80 in fun money from turking, and I've already received $50 in cash as a Christmas gift. That's enough to put this in motion any time I choose.

(We've agreed that of the money I earn at turking and crosswording, half of it is "fun money" for me, and half of it will retire some debt. So I've also earned about $120 for that purpose.)

So what do y'all think -- should I get one in white or onyx black?



turtlebat23, you are tagged, please respond! :)

This morning I felt inspired to make an asparagus risotto.

That's good.

I decided to double the recipe, but realized after dumping in the rice that I only had enough vegetable stock for the normal-sized recipe.

That's bad.

So I grabbed a bottle of Bolthouse Farms' "Vedge", which is apparently something like V8, and diluted it by half to make the rest of the liquid and bring extra flavor to the party.

That's good.

But Jodi found the butter and olive oil left too greasy an aftertaste. I rather liked it, but she didn't want it.

That's bad.

So instead, I popped some garlic in the oven to roast, then threw together a fruit salad with grapes, bananas, and some pineapple and canteloupe that I'd cut up a few days ago.

That's good.

But the canteloupe had gone sour, ruining the entire thing.

That's bad.

So we headed out the door to buy some lunch, and we ate, and I got her to school with 15 minutes to spare, and I went to the library and got two more vegetarian cookbooks.

That's good.

And then I smelled burning garlic.

That's bad.

I took out the cake pan covered in aluminum foil, opened it up, and the four ramekins seemed to contain perfectly cooked roasted garlic, about two hours after I first put them into the oven. So now I have lovely little chunks of garlic, bursting with calcium, iron, and ascorbic acid.

Uhhh...

That's good.

Can I go now?

I got home a couple hours after dawn Saturday and slept until 12:15pm, when my co-worker called to say she needed me to drive back to the office to do a few more things. I did it, and got home around 3pm, and had a nice shower before having the rest of the day together. We got some beading supplies (25m of 0.5mm elastic and various clasps) and some nice shoes, then went to Barnes and Noble to get a copy of The Elements of Style. Somehow a revised edition of a classic seems a bit silly, but then The Message is my favorite Bible edition, so who am I to talk?

Sunday morning I made breakfast from scratch: piña colada waffles with butter-rum brown sugar syrup (from Alton Brown's I'm Just Here For More Food, my anniversary gift). I'm sure traditionalists will say that using tinned pineapple and boughten butter is not From Scratch. I'm sure you can guess my response. It was yummy. We spread the leftover drained crushed pineapple over the waffles before adding the syrup, and I was surprised that there were two waffles left over. Well, since I'm trying to avoid refined flour and eat more veggies, this is perhaps not too surprising.

Flash back to Friday afternoon, when my doctor said that I should try to raise my 'good' cholesterol. She suggested salmon, and I said that I'd gladly give up my 15-year habit of being a lacto-ovo vegetarian if that were her professional advice, but she said that I shouldn't have to do that. So I did a little research and found that apparently flax and almonds are also good sources of omega-3 fatty acids, which raise 'good' cholesterol. I'm going to see if I can get a consultation with a nutritionist who knows about vegetarians, though, and see what else I can learn.

I helped Jodi with her research by doing a bit of library legwork. I found some good articles and books about belief (as an epistemological concept -- what does it mean to say that you believe something, and to what extent can you resolve to believe something or accept a statement you'd been doubting?). The rest is up to her.

Not a bad anniversary weekend. Would have preferred to not have my sleep schedule thrown gobbledy-wicket by an 11pm-8am shift, but wouldn't we all?