Productivity

Not gonna be an exciting blog post, but I just gotta scratch my own back. By the time I go to sleep, I will have:

• Created the menu for Thursday. (Sorry for not consulting you, hubbie! Love you!)
  
• Done most of my shopping for my Turkey Day Food Fest and Friday's Green Bean Extravaganza.
  
• Cleaned out my work e-mail account. I took that biatch down from 8 pages of largely unread email and spam to two pages of work-only, non-spam, fully-read content. Hah!
• Worked an 8 hour shift.
• Re-read at least some of the articles associated with my research project.
• Had dinner with friends.

Take that, procrastination. My therapist would be proud...

Two a day - kitchen style

I've come across a meme I can't resist. Without further ado - the kitchen meme!

In the kitchen with... doctawife

Variety is the spice of life.
In my cupboard, I have this many spices: Two drawers worth, plus the revolving spice rack on top, PLUS the four kinds of salt I have around: sea salt, kosher salt, regular table salt and pink salt I picked up in Napa Valley.
Rack or no rack? Both. We used to have two racks in the old apartment, but the new place is more of a drawer kinda joint, so we've retired them. Except for the revolving rack mentioned above.
Alphabetize? Um, no. The salt is kept next to the cooktop with the oils and tongs, the popular spices are in the top drawer, and the revolving rack holds some of the marginally useful stuff. Definitely no A-Z order.
Which spice do you use most often? Fleur de Sel. Or is that Sal? Anyway, it's fancy French sea salt. I love it.
Which recipe? Ooooh. I just made a fantastic dish inspired by the Indian subcontinent from one of the Food and Wine cookbooks. I love me the Food and Wine - so hard to go wrong.

It's like the pot calling the kettle black.
Coffee or tea? Coffee
Do you make coffee at home? Yes. We have at least five different ways to make coffee around here: French press, drip machine, Bodum weird vacuum kettle, espresso machine, ebrit, and probably something I can't remember.
If you make tea, loose or in bags? Loose. But usually only when we want something decaf.
How many kinds of tea do you have? 2 or 3, mostly herbal.

If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
I use my stovetop: I used to use my stovetop almost every day, but then I started working again. Since hubbie and I are both gaining weight, I (we) need to starting cooking for ourselves more. Even when using heavy cream, I think we do better calorie wise eating at home than when eating out. And I love my stovetop - five burners of joy...
I use my oven: Whenever I'm baking bread, a chicken or a pizza. Yummy stuff, but the darn thing definitely needs cleaning!

Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?
Soy or cow? Organic Cow all the way! So yummy, and the expiration date is always light years farther away than the non organic stuff.
Skim or whole? 2%. I used to be a skim kinda gal, but I've come to love whole milk in my coffee. My compromise? 2%.
How many gallons a week? Less than a 1/2 gallon. Really, it's just around for coffee and the occasional sauce. No glasses of milk here... Well, unless peanut butter is involved. Then a glass of milk is a must.

Three items in my freezer (right now):

1. home made chicken stock
2. pasta
   
3. home made ground beef
   

Three things in my fridge (right now):

1. St. Arnold's root beer
   
2. St. Arnold's Lawnmower
3. Yummy leftovers from that Indian inspired dish I mentioned earlier.
   

Item I am most chagrined about: The lack of fresh produce. I want to cook more, damn it! But I can't if the fridge and pantry are bare. Grocery store, here I come!

Item I bet noone else has: A pressure cooker. And yes, I use that sucker all of the time. How do you think I got all that home made chicken stock when I work crazy doctor hours? I don't have time to wait around for stock to simmer! 30 minutes in a pressure cooker and I'm done, baby. One of the best inventions ever, I tell ya!

Turkey Day!

For the first time, we're having Thanksgiving at our house. (Okay, okay, we had a Thanksgiving in our apartment in Boston, but that was an apartment, not our HOME.) Which means, for the first time, I can actually do some prep work with my stuff in my space. How cool!

So today I kinda went apeshit with the prep. Here's the list:

2 pies (sweet potato, not pumpkin, alas)
one bread starter
four pints of veggie stock
four pints of chicken stock
and a huge ass grocery run

Not to mention tiling a half of the north bathroom wall. Oh yeah, and halfway through my pressure cooker broke so I had to go get a replacement. Yargh. But that wasn't all bad, 'cause my first pressure cooker was a lesson in why product research is good. Ya see, I bought a model of pressure cooker that can only create an internal pressure of 12 psi. The international standard for pressure cookers, and thus all pressure cooker recipes, is an internal pressure of 15 psi. That was a little factoid I had not grasped before making my purchase. Oops.

I'm sure you can understand the problem.

But now that the under-researched pressure cooker has kicked it, I had an excuse to replace it with the real deal. Yay!

And tomorrow? Bread baking!

Almost thirty

I haven't been posting much 'cause I haven't much to write about. I'm still wicked underemployed, incredibly frustrated with TSMB and depressed as hell. And really, who wants to read me whining? Is not so good.

On the super upside, my best friend (AF) is flying in two days. And I saw the new Bond. (Side note - the Dossier option on the previous site is quite cool. Especially the psych profile. Hehe.) New Bond, new Bond - YAY! Ahhhh... How I love the Bond. I even like the new actor playing Bond - Daniel Craig - is so incredibly hot as 007. He gets this little quirky pout whenever something pleases or amuses him. I don't care that he's blond. His huge baby blues make up for it. (I have a thing for men with intense blue eyes, just like my wonderful Mr. Man.) Check out all the different Bond sites - each is very cool.

And AF is coming to town. We're gonna make a turkey and sweet potato pie and something veggie - our neighbor Lance is coming over, and he doesn't eat meat. I know, he's crazy - cow is GOOD. We'll have to find some movie to see after we stuff ourselves with tryptophan, 'cause it is the tradition in her family. Then again, we may just put in a DVD and pass out on the couch.

Oh yeah, and did I mention I turn 30 on Sunday. Yargh.

Dinner goodness

Those of you who know me, know that I'm a little bit of a gourmand. I like my food and wine - and I hate hate hate putting anything in my mouth that doesn't taste good. What's the point? So in defense of my wallet I've learned to cook. And I don't suck. Last night I made a lovely Boursin-stuffed chicken breast with garlic mashers and a side salad.

But sometimes, the fancy-schmancy food needs to take a seat. 'Cause we all need some good ole American-style grease. So tonight -

hot dogs
Kraft mac 'n' sleeze (the kind with the gooey Velveeta packet instead of the powder)
salad with ranch dressing

Awww yeah.

Awesome freakin' weekend

Or, how I learned to love crazy Cubans.

Anyway, Friday night was a gas. My hermit friend (referenced in an earlier post) threw another juggernaut of a party. This time, there weren't any homosexual singing surgery interns, but there were Jello shots. And it was good. Oh yes, it was good.

It was made even better because before the pah-tay we went to see Molly and the Ringwalds. They are an awesome 80's cover band - everything from Oh Micky to GnR to Black Sabbath to Depeche Mode. Aww yeah! So, so good.

Then there was Saturday. Saturday was filled with shopping for one of my favorite things ever. Kitchen supplies. We went to Ace Mart Restaurant supply, Sur la Table and Penzi's Spices. We got spatulas, spice containers, spices, roasting pans, wine glasses... so, so good.

And it wasn't over yet. Next was... billiards! And beer! And friends! Yippee!

Then, the coup de grace, Harry Potter! Again, so, so good. Right after the movie, there was a brief interruption in the goodness when our crazy Cuban friend lost his car keys, but because it was such a good damned weekend, we found them without too much panic.

Today was also super good - I got new fish! Yay fish! And the crazy Cuban kept me from buying some less than ideal Frontosa. Instead I got some beautiful haps and some mbosa. My 55 gallon aquarium is officially purdy now. And tonight I'm baking home-made bread. I'm not even cheating and using a bread machine - I'm doing it all on my own.

If the rest of my vacation goes like this, I'm in fat city.

Mushroom risotto for dummies

I like to cook quite a bit. One of my favorite things is to cook for other people - especially really involved time-consuming multi-step recipes. Informal dinner parties at my condo are my favorite kind of entertainment. I can baste the chef all I want (since I don't have to drive), I can make sure that I like everything on the menu (even the veg. items), and if I do all the cooking I don't have to do much cleaning ('cause whoever cooks does not clean - thems the rules of the hiz-ouse.)

So I thought I would share some of my favorite recipes - not that you can't find most of these on other sites. Almost everything I do is a close variation of a published reciple. I'm no chef - I can't create new food, but I sure as hell can take a recipe and make it yummy!

With a nod to Alton Brown, here goes - Mushroom Risotto ala doctawife.

Hardware
deep, heavy bottomed skillet
spatula
measuring cup
small pot
cutting board
chef's knife
deep pasta pot
cheese grater

Software
1 cup aborrio or carnaroli rice
4 x 2cm diameter leeks - white part only, cut across the grain into 1 inch disks then washed by soaking in the deep pasta pot
1lbs. mushrooms - shiitake, white, baby bella, dried morel all work, caps only, quatered
4 tablespoons butter, divided evenly
4 tablespoons olive oil
about 32 ounces (two boxes) of chicken stock - I like the organic free range kind. If vegetarian, use imitation chicken stock or mushroom stock.
1/4 cup sherry, brandy or white wine - sherry is the best, so use it if ya got it.
1/4 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
1 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon - substitute 1 teaspoon dry tarragon if that is all you have
Kosher salt to taste
Freshly ground black pepper to taste

• Heat the chicken stock in the small pot over low heat. Do not boil.
• Heat olive oil and half of the butter over medium heat. Once the oil is heated, add the leeks. Saute for three minutes until just starting to soften. Keep the leeks moving enough and the heat just barely low enough that they don't brown.
• Add the mushrooms and a pinch of salt and cook until soft, about 7 more minutes.
• Stir in the rice and keep it moving in the pan. Watch for the rice kernal to change from fully opaque to translucent with an opaque center. Without this step, the risotto won't become creamy as it should.
• Deglaze your pan with a hit of sherry. I tend to be generous with the sherry, but you just need enough to coat the bottom of the pan.
• Once the sherry (or whatever) has almost fully evaporated, add 1/4 - 1/3 cup of the hot chicken broth and stir to mix. Warm chicken broth is necessary to let the rice release its carbs out into the pan, creating that creamy texture we all know and love. Risotto with cold or room temperature stock just doesn't work. Once the first batch of stock is almost fully absorbed, add the second 1/3 cup. Keep repeating the cycle until the rice is firm to the tooth, but pleasantly soft and creamy (about 20 minutes). The amount of stock used will vary, just keep a good supply nice and hot in the small pot.
• Once the rice is done, add the remaining butter, taragon, parmesan, salt and pepper. Serve immediately.

Bon Apetit!

Things that don't suck

I haven't been having the greatest three months, so I've decided that tonight I'm going to create a list of things that don't suck. Just to make me feel better.

My husband
Our cats
Zoloft
Sex
Guinness
Sam Summer
Astros
BoSox
Live baseball - Major League or triple A
The resident crew - the uber-bachelor, the soon-to-be-married, the (mostly) happily single
The boyz (which, oddly enough, includes more than one girl!)
The Proletariat
My aunt
Ice hockey
Mythbusters!
Risotto
Epicurious.com
Blue Man Group
James Bond
Central Market
Weezer
NIN
Grey Goose Vodka
Helios
Ireland
Scotland
Paris
Vienna
Family Guy
DVR
The Internet
Action Flicks

Enough for now. If any of my three readers want to, start your own list!