Cooking like a madwoman!

In general, I don't cook.  I bake.  I'll make a loaf of bread every day if I have someone to share it with.  I bake cookies in batches of 12 dozen.  But I don't like to cook. This weekend, though, I went shopping and got stuff together to make dinner.  Lots of dinner.

It all started with this post I saw on Pinterest.  It's a woman who did a whole pile of prep work in one two-hour period, and froze everything for a bunch of slow-cooked meals.  I love my Crock Pot.  I love it so much that I have two of them, actually.  I can have a good meal that's ready when I get home from work, and it doesn't heat up the whole kitchen like the oven will.  I used a couple of her recipes, and then went through my three slow-cooker cookbooks and grabbed some more.  In all, I made 9 different meals, which broke down into 17 batches that are now taking up the bottom of my deep freeze.

It was a LOT of food: 18 chicken breasts, 4 lb stewing beef, 2 lb kielbasa, 8 italian sausages, 9 onions, peppers, carrots, celery, potatoes, spices, soups... that shopping trip included more food than I normally buy over the course of a full month!  But I worked it out, and with leftovers, I should have enough for 20-30 meals, maybe more, depending on whether I make rice or pasta or potatoes to go along with the main dish.  So I'm thinking it'll work out well.

Even following the recipes, though, I ended up with some extra food, mostly because of the way it was packaged.  So last night, I made up alfredo noodles with grilled chicken and grilled orange peppers, and tonight was meatballs and bowtie pasta with tomato sauce.  I've got to say, I'm looking forward to just microwaving or slow-cooking my meals for a few weeks...

Also, it took three showers, a gajillion hand washings, and multiple scrubbings with my stainless-steel smell-remover thingy to get the scent of 9 chopped onions out of my hands.  Just saying.

Anyways, my point here is, I'm going to try all these recipes now, and the ones that I really like, I'll be repeating at the end of October, so that when NaNo rolls around, I don't have to worry about cooking.  I can just use my time to write.  Yay!

1-2-3-4

One arm bruise.

Two scrapes.

Three cuts (not scrapes, because they bled a teensy bit).

Four mosquito bites.

The result:

Check out the new grill!  It took a couple of hours, but my dad and I managed to assemble it ourselves!  And we even tried it out - it was perfect!  I'm pretty excited about trying it on my own sometime... to make pancakes.  Yes, pancakes.  My grill has a griddle.  It's made of awesome.

Note to self:

Just because there aren't any cookies left on the cookie sheet, it doesn't mean that the metal has cooled down enough to be touched with bare hands.

Just sayin'.

Mmm... food...

Went shopping with Zoe at the Fresh Market today. WOW. The food there was just beautiful! There was so much there... it all looked and smelled wonderful. There was so much variety, and there were so many specialty items.

We ended up getting some vanilla tart filling and brown sugar whipped cream for dessert tomorrow (I've got pastry shells already), and we're going to have vanilla cream tartlettes. Yum! We also got some caramel machiatto coffee - freshly ground! I'm not a big coffee drinker, but I had a cup tonight with some of the brown sugar whipped cream on top, and it was delicious. I may end up becoming a coffee girl.

Now I'm totally up for food preparation - also picked up some phyllo shells to make chicken salad appetizers for tomorrow, and Zoe is baking up a storm as I type (puppy chow and haystacks, I believe). There is much fooding. It is good.

Poor time management skills

So.... I went out tonight. I went to Blake's for dinner, because it's Wednesday night, and that's what we do on Wednesday night. Then we headed to WalMart, to buy supplies, because tomorrow's the Thanksgiving lunch at work, and I'm bringing pumpkin cheesecake. Which is currently baking. However, it's 11:30, there's still and hour and a half of bake time left, and I haven't written a word for NaNo.

Eeep!

I'm off to write while cheesecake bakes, I guess, since I can't really go to bed while it's in the oven!

Look what I made!

It's a birthday cake for Shane!

I don't really understand the frog thing...  I had froggy wrapping paper, and then I found these froggy dohickies to stick on the card that I made for him, so it seemed right that his cake should have a frog, too.

Mmmm... food...

I made dinner tonight. 

Okay, so for most people, this doesn't sound like a big accomplishment, but, honestly, it's been months since I actually prepared a real dinner, not just making myself a sandwich or nuking a frozen dinner.  On most nights, we go out and eat, because I'm tired when I get home.

There's something about having my folks here, though, that makes me want to cook and show them that I really can do stuff like that, even if I choose not to do so on a daily basis.

In unrelated news, I lost my navy blue gel pen, and I can't make myself write in my "Take Five" notebook without it.  :(  Sometimes OCD sucks.

Blargh.

Ick.  

That's all I have to say about last night's post.  Ick.

I was trying to write a first-person account of a D&D session, but it just turned out badly.  I think that it's because I'm really not into the character that I'm playing.  We've only had two sessions, and not a lot of RP, so I suppose it's not that bad, but, well, that story attempt sucked.

So instead of sucking at more story attempts tonight, I spent the evening cooking.  I made perogies.  From scratch.  And they are AWESOME!!  I must have finally hit the right combination of onion and cheese and salt and pepper, because the filling tasted the way it's supposed to.  Last time, they were a bit on the bland side.

For future reference for myself... used 1 potful of potatoes, mashed in one block of Kroger brand medium cheddar cheese, used 1/2 onion (sauteed), about 1/2 tsp pepper, and 1/4 tsp salt.  Yay!

Now I must go call Matt and tell him that I have perogies.  He has been waiting and begging for them for almost a year.

The universe conspires

Apparently I am not meant to stay up and blog this week. Nor am I meant to sleep well.

I woke up with bites. Fifteen (15) bites, to be exact. Thirteen of these were on my left thigh and knee, and one on each ankle. WTF?? I have no idea what bit me, but they weren't there when I went to sleep. I've been in agony all day. I took an antihistamine this morning, and I've been slathering on hydrocortisone cream, but I still just want to rip my skin off!

In other news, I made an awesome dinner tonight, and I will have another awesome dinner on Sunday, made from planned leftovers. I like good food.

In other news, my puppy didn't eat much of her food today. She still got a couple of treats for going outside instead of peeing on the carpet, and she devoured part of a rawhide bone, so I guess she just wasn't hungry. I put it up, so she can't snack all night. We'll see if she's hungry tomorrow.

In other news, I found a box full of mittens and scarves while I was pulling out my suitcases. This is a good thing, and not entirely unrelated to my first story of the night - I will be sleeping with mittens and socks on tonight, in an effort to avoid scratching.

In other news, I'm going to bed now.