Food/Crafts/Books Girl’s blog

So about this time last year I was first trimester pregnant. We'd just moved into a new apartment two weeks before and basically I'd spent most of the time wrapped in a comforter sitting on a chair trying not to hurl, weakly telling everyone where to put things in my kitchen. Then we went to a friend's wedding and our flight was delayed so I think our annual corned beef and cabbage dinner wasn't a big deal. I don't even remember if I made it? I know I didn't do it the day of. I didn't care. I felt like crap.

This year I have a six month old baby. You'd think that might curb any plans we'd make for a big St Patrick's Day. Ha! No one ever said I was smart! If I were, that would make these entries a lot less funny to read. Hey, remember when she made the Guinness pie and sprayed beer all over the kitchen? Ha! Awesome! Anyway, this year's preparations have been a lot less disastrous, surprisingly.

First on the menu is the usual corned beef and cabbage, using the Tyler Florence brine and a head of cabbage, a packet of baby carrots and a whole white onion. Putting that together went surprisingly well, other than I discovered someone had put my container of allspice berries away instead of recycling it so I used the ground stuff. Hopefully that won't make much difference. bringing it last night went smoothly and putting it in the crock pot also not a big deal. I had visions of losing a finger while chopping up the veg but thankfully that one didn't happen. When I was home for lunch it smelled lovely.

Next up are the roasted potatoes. This is a Rachael Ray recipe I make where basically you chunk up the potatoes, toss them with olive oil, salt and rosemary, then roast them. I'm a-thinking these won't be a problem. They usually aren't.

It isn't St Pat's if I don't make a Guinness recipe, and this year there are two. First up, Guinness chocolate cupcakes, found here. I did some searching for recipes that didn't include sour cream, because I didn't remember having any, but a quick check of the fridge proved me wrong so all systems go! Things went together without me spraying my kitchen with Guinness- of course, now that my kitchen's got dark wood cabinets, sigh- and they went into the cupcake cups. The recipe said makes two dozen. I figured that mean two dozen if you're stingy and fill the cups halfway so I set out 18 cups. Imagine my surprise when I filled those 18 cups. I mean filled, like when I'd set the cup down- I should probably mention I have silicone cupcake cups here so you're not confused- it would leak a little. Huh. I filled the other six cups and... still had enough to fill two little pot pie tins. Wow. That actually was a blessing in disguise because the recipe calls for cream cheese frosting and last night when the husband was trying to get the baby to sleep we ate one of them and tried to decide how to frost them. Cream cheese was quickly discarded. Just putting whipped cream on them became the decision, but this morning I thought hmmm, what about chocolate whipped cream? That became "How about I make whipped cream with a shot of mint Bailey's?" Ding ding ding! That, I do believe, is our winner. of course, we'll see when I get to that point how tired I am.

Recipe number two is this one for Guinness bread with molasses. It went together easily while I was home, it came out looking nice, we'll see how it tastes. After all, the Irish soda bread looked nice too... Oh well, we have two loaves of rye from a deli here in town in case of epic fail.

This year's fun story was the Protestant orange jello. Since having the baby, my work schedule has changed and the husband finds himself, more often than not, making (or, more to the point, buying) dinner. Because of that, my idea of what's in our pantry is a little fuzzy. That's why I thought we had vodka in the freezer, but when I pulled it out after pouring the hot water in the jello, I discovered we had vanilla vodka. Ah well, it looks like we'll be having Protestant dreamsicle jello.

More details later, after dinner's been eaten. 

I haven't told the stories of the carrot cake I made out of the Baking Illustrated recipe, or my disappointing Paula Deen blueberry muffins- seriously? You'd think Paula "Queen of Butter" Deen would have really tasty muffins but they were actually boring. I thought I had pregnant brain when I made them, because I was sitting there while they were in the oven and I'd think oh! I forgot to put spices in! or oh! I forgot to add the vanilla! Then I'd look at the recipe and realize no, she doesn't use any. What? Anyway, my last couple baking efforts have been passable at best.

Lately the baby's been making me want herbs and spices, like sage and cinnamon. I was looking through Baking Illustrated, thinking wouldn't it be awesome if I baked everything in there and blogged about it, when I saw the coffeecake muffin recipe. Ooh! Cinnamon!

I was not thrilled when I started the recipe and found out I was going to have to pull the food processor out of storage. Sigh. I hate cooking with the food processor. I have a Kitchenaid, that's what you're supposed to bake with. I noticed there were nuts to chop so okay, I decided to use the food processor. I started by chopping together the nuts, some cinnamon and brown sugar and managed to get everything sesame seed sized like they asked, but not in five one second pulses. I started going one, two, three, four, five and there were still a lot of large chunks of nuts. Crap. Then I tried ooooone, twooooooo, threeeeeee, and somewhere in the middle of four it was good. Okay. I separated them out into two bowls- one to mix in later, one for topping- and moved on to the batter.

Oh, the batter. Flour, sugar and salt, mixed with the food processor. Then you add the butter, which was softened and sliced, and process until it looks like oats. Okay, except zap number one? All the butter disappeared. Crap. I think they shouldn't have had you soften the butter. Don't you usually use cold butter when you make streusel? I added some of the flour mix into the streusel top, stirred it up, added the rest of the dry stuff to the food processor and went to the wet stuff. Sour cream? Check. Vanilla? Check. Egg? Frick. Somehow the eggs had been put on the top shelf of the fridge and half of them had frozen and cracked. Damn. This is why I hate top and bottom fridges. Anyway, I found one that was okay and mixed up the wet stuff, then added it to the batter. Again with the one second pulses, and that's where I hit the problem. Pulse until it's moistened? Again, one shot. Then add the streusel and pulse till the streusel's distributed and everything's crumbly? Um, one pulse and everything was mush and not at all well distributed.

I think, had I been thinking, maybe colder butter in larger pieces- half inch pieces did not do it for me here- and I would have been willing to do it in the processor because that is an efficient way to cut it in. However, then I think I should have transferred it to the Kitchenaid and mixed it up the rest of the way so it didn't get to be such a mushy mess. When it came time to add the streusel, definitely stirred it in by hand. Oh well. Moving on!

Putting them into the cups and getting the streusel on them, not a problem. Then I forgot about the last time I baked something from Baking Illustrated and took them at their word- 350 for 18 minutes, turning halfway. When I made the carrot cake the recipe said 35-40 minutes and it really took over an hour. I put the muffins in and was talking to the Husband on Google chat and another friend on Facebook and left them five minutes over how long they needed to go and ew. Gooey. I put them back in the oven and decided whenever I thought about them next I'd check. I think it ended up being about twice the time the book said, about 35 minutes before I checked them again and they were done according to my toothpick. Stupid Baking Illustrated.

After all the bitching I did about these muffins, they came out looking okay and were pretty tasty. The Husband and I each had one and really liked them. I credit the sour cream. The Husband, who is not a nut eater, didn't notice the nuts. I'm not sure why, because I did. Anyway, I think I've learned my lesson. Tomorrow I want to make their quick cinnamon roll recipe and I'm totally going to check after the amount of time they say they need to bake, but be prepared to take them out after twice that time.

I did some googling and apparently I'm the only person out there who has a problem with Baking Illustrated. Huh. It really makes me wonder what my problem is, then. You know, they go through and work and work and work and fine tune their recipes and it's not like they're in Denver- or I'm in Denver, for that matter- making these recipes and having to adjust for altitude. I follow the recipe. I don't substitute things. I seriously doubt my silicone baking cups would have made that much difference in this instance. I just don't know. We'll see tomorrow.

Being pregnant and crazy means I come up with some ideas that I normally wouldn't and should be vetoed but they aren't because people fear the crazy pregnant lady. For example, the Husband's birthday was last Friday and while I was thinking about what we were going to do for it, I got an e-mail from Ikea saying that June 20th was Midsummer's Eve and the Swedish celebrate it with meatballs and potatoes and herring and strawberries and caviar. I decided to pass on the herring and caviar and just focus on the other items. That part turned out pretty well. I made use of my friend Kraft Foods and did their easy cheese swedish meatball recipe- seriously, buy meatballs from Trader Joe's, then let them thaw in your fridge overnight and stick them in the crockpot with a can of beef gravy and half a cup of sour cream. Damn tasty and stupid easy- as well as this one I discovered for potatoes. The potatoes were a big hit and also pretty easy to do. The Husband got his second banana cake of the week- check Better Homes and Gardens for that recipe, and I used store bought cream cheese frosting. Everyone raved about it. Who knew? Anyway, after the dust settled we had a lot of leftovers, particularly strawberries. I lurve strawberries and haven't had strawberry pie in forever. What better way to use the two containers of leftover strawberries than put them in a pie?

I may be lazy, because I bought frozen pie crusts, but I do have standards so I didn't want to buy a sleeve of that red goo from the store. I paged through my cookbooks to see what could be done. The Joy of Cooking was pretty minimal in their pie recipe so that got nixed. I think I found a couple recipes that called for rhubarb or making a chiffon pie or else didn't have a recipe at all, among the Gourmet cookbook, Better Homes and Gardens and my Baking Illustrated book, so I hit the web. I was thinking Paula Deen, but first I saw the Emeril recipe. It did set off warning bells in my head, because some of you might remember the great Black Forest Cake debacle of Christmas 2006- apparently it was so bad I never blogged about it, but it involved a spectacular meltdown. I used an Emeril recipe to make a very involved Black Forest Cake and there was epic fail which caused me to proclaim, loudly, that Emeril could suck it. Anyway, come on! Strawberry pie! It'll be awesome!!!

Ha ha haaaaaaa. I sliced and hulled the strawberries while the pie crust baked, then started to make the sauce that would hold the pie together. Strawberries, check. Cup of sugar, check. Vanilla, also check. I cooked that until the sugar melted and while that was going on I mixed up the cornstarch/water/brandy cocktail Emeril asked for. Okay, the sugar melted so I added the cocktail to it and then let it cook until it thickened. It thickened nicely, let me tell you. I let it cool while we ran errands then poured it into the pie crust, covered it and stuck it into the fridge. It said let sit 6 hours, so I figured waiting until the next day would be fine, right?

I had dreams about this pie, mainly because when I licked the sauce off the spoon and the sides of the pot it was really freaking tasty. Way better than the red goo you get at the store. I got all excited and said "I'm never buying red goo from the store again! Emeril, you're a geeeeeeeenius! I'm sorry I blasphemed against you after that whole Black Forest hot mess! Damn, this is tasty!!!" At work I promised my assistant she'd have a tasty piece of strawberry pie, made from scratch, no less, the next day. On the way home from work I picked up some squirty whipped cream, because I thought that would taste super good. After dinner settled I looked at the Husband, all excited, and said Pie!!! We pulled the pie out, I got a knife and some plates and forks and took the cover off. As soon as I stabbed it with a knife I knew something had gone horribly wrong. The nice thick sauce from the day before? Soup. How the hell could it have gone from nicely thickened like pudding to runny and nasty overnight in the fridge?! We still ate the pie, in bowls instead of on plates, with squirty whipped cream to kind of bring it together, and it still tasted nice but damn. We made the "Can I pour you a piece of pie?" joke too. My aunt's mother in law made the soupiest lemon meringue pie in christendom and my uncle always used to say "Can I pour you a piece of pie?" I also said some nasty things about another Emeril recipe biting me in the ass. Screw you, Emeril! I am NOT going to be fooled again!

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go cry into my pie bowl. Sniffle.

Uh yeah. It's been a while since the last post. I kinda gave up on the book a month challenge because February and March kicked my ass, personally. Many of you know that I've started a new craft project, aka "getting knocked up" and that's slowed me down and killed my concentration. Add to that getting the flu in February, followed by moving not long after and really, I haven't been able to do much.

Moving while pregnant was a humbling experience. There was very little I could do, between the exhaustion and the chemicals involved in cleaning up, so there were days where my friends would come in, tuck me into bed or a chair and say "Tell us what to do." While I greatly appreciate our friends and family, because moving wouldn't have happened without them, the aftermath has been a little awkward.

Take our kitchen, for example. The prevailing attitude when we moved in was "I'll just put this wherever and you can sort it out later." Things were placed approximately where they should go and left at that. As such I'm still not sure where half our things are and some of our cupboards make a game of Jenga look like a piece of cake. We're working on this slowly but surely, and I'd like to go over a plan we have.

In the old house we had a corner cabinet where we stored food. It was really deep and had a shelf in the middle. On each layer was a lazy susan. Every so often I would go through the lazy susan and inventory what was on there so I'd know what I was working with, because I had a tendency to think if I couldn't see it we didn't have it. It helped a lot, but I often lamented that it was limited to being in the house and wouldn't it be nice if I had a palm pilot to keep track of what we had? Well, in organizing the freezer portion of the fridge I decided that hey, maybe it could do with an inventory too while I was sorting. What to do with it, though?

The Husband and I have decided we're going to create a Google doc for our pantry inventory. That way it'll be easy for both of us to access and edit, and should we decide at work "This is what we're having for dinner!" then we can look at the doc and see what we'll need to pick up at the store, instead of going home to figure it out and losing momentum. It'll take some work, and we'll really have to keep on it, but hopefully it'll work for us and help us out. Stay tuned to find out if we're making it work or not.

I read this for the Book a Month Challenge. This month's theme was time and hey, it was already in my library pile.

The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible

A. J. Jacobs

I really liked this book. It was interesting to read about his "stranger in a strange land" style experiences. Some of the stories made you laugh, like his interactions with his wife when she was menstruating and he had to declare her unclean, or think, when he examined how often he lied or coveted things. The stories he told about the people he met on his journey, like the Amish man in Lancaster, PA with the strange sense of humor, or his interactions with the Hebrew fiber tester, or his ex-uncle in the Holy Land, or his visit to the atheists, which made him realize that religions need a belief in something, otherwise there's just no focus, or the drunken orthodox dancing men, were great insights into other religious worlds. Over all it was a great book.

I should be writing about the book I read for the Book a Month group I joined. I read the book and finished it last weekend. Instead, I'm going to talk about last night's dinner.

Chili is a personal thing, I think. Everyone had their own recipe and there's so much debate about what goes in there- beans? No beans? Peppers? Cheese? Even in my family, my gran has one chili recipe, my mother has another and I even have my own. My gran's is actually my grandfather's, it's a recipe he brought home from the army. There's even two secret ingredients and if I told you, she'd kill me. One, though, I'm pretty sure she came up with because I'm guessing the army didn't have them back then. I don't know. My mother's chili recipe came from a lady type magazine, either Good Housekeeping or BH&G, I'm a thinking. I remember being in college when my mother tried it and we all loved it so that's the one she stuck with. When I moved away I missed my mother's chili so she sent me the recipe. It's great, I printed off the e-mail and it's quirky, just like my mom. I love it. I thought about making it last night when I made chili for dinner but, you know, the Husband loves my chili so that's what I went with.

My chili recipe came from a recipe group I was in back in grad school. It's called Autumn Afternoon Chili and the recipe looks something like this:

1 lb hamburger
2 small shallots
1/2 t crushed red pepper
16 oz can tomato sauce
salt
pepper
chili powder
2 t chives
basil to taste
garlic or garlic salt
2 C grated cheese

However, over years of evolution it now looks like this:

2 lbs hamburger (because this recipe makes nowhere near enough)
one palmful dried minced onion (apparently I am Rachael Ray, with the palmful there)
two shakes of cayenne pepper (I hate crushed red pepper. Cayenne gives it a better kick)
2 16 oz cans of tomato sauce and one can of diced tomatoes (we just added the diced tomatoes last night because I decided it needed more texture)
kosher salt
pepper
a palmful of chili powder (the original recipe said "to taste". A palmful is my taste)
a palmful of basil, plus a couple shakes later
a couple shakes of garlic salt
just throw cheese in until it looks right. Note: this depends on the cheese.

The procedure is pretty much the same as the original recipe calls for, brown the ground beef with the salt, pepper, minced onion and basil, then drain the grease off. Dump in the tomato products and give it a stir. Add the remaining spices and stir some more. The cheese part gets a bit tricky. We never seem to have the same cheese in our fridge twice, so this part always changes. The cheese they recommend is Swiss and I will say, Swiss cheese does give it a good taste. It's good for giving a bit of bulk to the chili. Tastewise it's okay. Mozzarella is also super good and bulks the chili up a lot. Last night we had neither, so we threw in the last two fistfuls of a bag of taco cheese and that was okay.

Usually when there's chili there's one of three things- texas toast, cheddar biscuits or cornbread. We didn't have any texas toast in the freezer (whose house is this? There's pretty much always texas toast in the freezer at my house!) and I was too lazy to make cheddar biscuits (the Red Lobster kind, mmmmm!) so cornbread it was. Made from Jiffy mix. Brings back memories of being a kid and my mom making it after school for a snack. Last night's dinner tasted so good, and it was perfect for the cold windy night it turned out to be.

In response to bookishbiker's comment about wine from my last post...

So, wine. I wasn't always a wine person. When I started drinking I was too busy hitting the gin, or beer if I was feeling poor, to explore other options. After all, you needed to know something about wine to drink it. I did not want to put that much thought into getting my drinky drink on, so tom collinses it was! Flash forward about ten years to the recent past. Scene: Trader Joe's. The Husband and I are walking through the wine section and I am looking for interesting things in the center island, because if something were to catch my eye it would have to come home with me. I was dismayed because while they had interesting wines like Vinho Verde and the Honey Moon Viognier, there were a lot of bottles of white zin and chardonnay and merlot for cheap. I go off on a rant about how really, wines like that are the opiate of the masses and people who drink cheap white zin or chardonnay are really people who have no imagination and aren't adventurous and just want people to think they're sophisticated because oooh, I'm drinking wine, aren't I a hipster/it girl? After I stopped to take a breath the Husband pointed out that two wines over, some girl picked up a bottle of chardonnay, heard my screed and put down the bottle and slunk away. Then again, for that story there's also the time I stood there in Trader Joe's for fifteen minutes helping some guy pick out a bottle of wine that would go with his dinner. How did I get from college Drinky McDrunkerson to Wine Snob? Let me tell you.

Honestly, I am not knowledgeable about wine in the slightest. My tastes developed by trial and error and mostly were influenced by Trader Joe's, their fliers and in store wine tastings. I guess it started out from a love of spumante. It's sweet, it's bubbly and it goes with brunch, my favorite meal. My brunch enabling friend A (she who introduced me to the joy of bacon crack) got me hooked on Prosecco at brunch. Prosecco is a lot like spumante, sweet and bubbly. She got it at Trader Joe's. Normally when I got the Trader Joe's ad I went through and circled what looked interesting, so I'd remember to take a look at it in the store. When I looked I usually skipped the wine but after that I started looking and adding wines to the list. After all, TJ's is inexpensive enough that you can experiment with wine and not have to drop a bunch of money. Remember the movie Sideways? I had to try merlot because of the whole "I'm not drinking merlot!" bit. After trying a couple different varieties (Purple Moon comes to mind) I agreed- merlot is out. I finally hit a point where if I liked what I tried, I'd buy a couple bottles because it wasn't always in season. Then I started noticing TJ's had wine tastings, so I'd try to manipulate our trips so that we were there while they were going on. I asked a lot of questions of their wine guy- who was a really great guy and I really do have to credit him with my love of wine, too. Had he been a jerk I think my wine experimenting wouldn't quite have flourished and I wouldn't know the drop in the bucket of wine knowledge I have right now- and gradually learned a few things other than just what I like.

Rather than babble, let's go over what's in the wine rack right now.
* 1 bottle of Charles Shaw Merlot- okay, I know I said I was a wine snob, but Two Buck Chuck (which isn't two bucks in Ohio) makes for good mulled wine for our holiday party.
* A bottle of 2005 Menguante Garnacha, which was a gift from the aforementioned holiday party. I have no idea how it is, we haven't opened it yet, but it does say Carinena, which I have no idea what that means but I've had some great wines that say carinena, so I have high hopes for this one.
* A bottle of Bear's Lair Viognier. I really like viognier. Sweet but not too, crisp but not dry, it's a great light white wine. This isn't my usual viognier, I'm trying something new.
* A bottle of 2004 Charles Krug Cabernet Sauvignon. Also a holiday party gift. I like cabs, I'm a fan of full bodied reds, and a friend of ours who also loves wine invited me to bring it over so we could drink it, so I'm guessing this is going to be a good one.
* A bottle of Vinho Verde. I pretty much always have a bottle of this around. While at TJ's, my friend S and her husband J asked "Vinho Verde? As in, green wine?" Yes. The wine has a really green, grapey taste to it. It's a great non-sweet white wine and it's rather inexpensive. While at Jungle Jim's I saw a couple different vinho verdes and wondered how they compared to mine, but held off from buying half a dozen bottles to conduct research.
* A bottle of 2005 Abrazo del Toro that says Carinena on it. I bought this after tasting it at TJ's. It's a good red.
* A bottle of Tabor Hill Red Arrow Red table wine. Holiday party gift.
* A bottle of Conti Neri Valpolicella Classico. Another full bodied red I tasted at TJ's and loved.

Our open bottles: Black Mountain Malbec, which is one of my favorite wines, hands down. It's a read and it goes well with so much- steaks, chili, burgers, Mexican food, and best of all, chocolate. In fact, the day I tasted it at TJ's the wine guy was telling me what it went with and we lucked out because dinner was enchiladas and TJ's tiny chocolate cupcakes. It went well with everything and tastes great. In the fridge is a bottle of Pinot Grigio. Can't tell you which, I'm too lazy to get up and look. I will tell you that I am not so much a pinot grigio drinker because to me it's too dry, but TJ's had some thins summer I tried that was sparkling- normally pinot grigio isn't? Anyway, it was sparkling and that cut some of the dryness for me and I loved it. There's also an open bottle of Schmittsohne Reisling, because I like rieslings as well.

So there you go. Not an educated viewpoint, but at least the voice of trial and error.

There is a food mecca about two hours from our house, and that food mecca is Jungle Jim's. We have been talking about going there for a long time but never managed to make it down. There isn't a lot in that direction to see- although that's about to change, because they put an Ikea about 5 minutes from Jungle Jim's so we'll be down there all the time now- so we hadn't made it down there before now, but since we had the day off yesterday and I got paid last Friday we decided to make the trek down.

We met friends of ours, Q and B, for lunch at a nice Italian place called The Spinning Fork for lunch- tasty manicotti. I am truly a cheese whore. We refused dessert because come on, JJ's has to have samples, right? It's magic happy super food land! Other than a cinnamon apple walnut spread, we were sadly mistaken. Anyway, in preparation for our visit, we wiped the camera's memory card so we could take pictures as we ooohed and ahhhed over things. Headed in the door, the first thing we saw? A sign that said no pictures. Damn! I was tempted to draw pictures to go with this entry, but I am not that talented.

Anyway, the first thing that hit us were the carts. You know how most grocery carts are wire grid like things? Well, these carts were like SUVs. Like Target carts on steroids. The handles looked like they were designed by a team made up of people from Jeep and Oxo, they were thick and bumpy. I let the Husband push the cart while we wandered. Poor man. The first thing inside that we hit was the cheese section. There's a huge provlone that looks to be the size of a telephone pole in it's own glass case that they're aging. They had the cheese arranged by type, like cheddar and jack and swiss, but then they also had them arranged by country, France, Italy, Germany. There were cheeses I'd heard of, but never ever seen. You will probably see that phrase multiple times. We ended up with a smoked gouda cheese ball and some baby swiss for the Husband.

Next to the cheese was a stand full of butter. Oh wow. Tons of butter. Not Land o Lakes, but Presidente and fancy European butters. I was kind of surprised to not see Plugra, but hey.

After the butter we wandered the wine section. I am a picky wine ho and I have to say, I had to use all my strength to not come home with a case. Again, they were broken up by region with some sections of specific types. I was pleased to see they had some wines that we had at home. It made me feel like we were doing something right.

Next to the wine was the bakery. Oh my bakery. The fun thing was they had cakes and pies and things for sale by the piece, so the Husband went home with a piece of chocolate covered cheesecake on a stick. Yes. I debated what was in the case, and thought about bringing some of the fabulous looking fancy cakes home to put in the freezer until my birthday, but ended up with some whoopie pies, both chocolate and oatmeal. I love whoopie pies, but they're a pain to make so this was a super treat. The Husband also got a baguette, because he lurves baguettes. Next to the bakery was a little stage where an animatronic lion was dressed as Elvis giving musical performances. Um, yeah.

After the bakery we hit the meat department where it was like being on Top Chef. Duck? Check. Alligator? Check. Turducken? Check, and ew. They had a super sale on ground beef (boring, I know, but we need it) so I got some, as well as the boneless beef short ribs to make my cousin's chianti braised short rib recipe. We hadn't been able to find boneless ones anywhere here in town- everyone had bone in except for Whole Foods, who only had a small package and didn't have any more. Amazing, the amount of meat they had.

I think after meat we took a turn into the produce section- which, actually, I'd been wondering when we were going to get to that. Usually that's the first thing you pass when you're in the grocery store- and they had long aisles of stuff. Standard fare, really, but that didn't matter. We were entranced. I've been on a fruit kick lately so I picked a bunch of stuff up. One thing we got that made us laugh? Satsumas. Real satsumas, a la Doctor Who. Lovely.

The produce kind of spilled into the International section, because they put the fresh international produce next to the other produce and walking that aisle was, again, like being on Top Chef. Things I'd only heard of but never seen. Amazing. I should have taken notes.

I should mention, Q and B were doing their regular grocery shopping there so they set off on their own but periodically we would see them, like in the wine section where we peeked into each other's carts to see what the other might have missed, like the smoked gouda cheeseball or the chocolate covered cheesecake or the random blue soda. That was fun and led to a lot of back tracking.

Next to the international section was the seafood area, and so we detoured. In the center of the seafood area they have live fish aquariums. Not only for crab and lobster, but if I so desired I could have had my own fresh catch of tilapia or catfish or flounder. At first it was really cool, watching the tank of fish going nuts, but they kind of swarmed and freaked me out so we moved on. They also had a shellfish bar with, again, things I'd only seen on Top Chef.

We went back to the international food section to wander some more and found a bunch of cool stuff. Smarties for our friend who studied abroad for a semester and fell in love, Mexican Coke for the Husband, who loves Coke and was interested when he discovered in other countries they don't have a rule for what sugar you put in, so this Coke was made with cane sugar and it came in a bottle, and a crazy Mexican religious candle for our friend's crazy Mexican religious candle collection. We laughed about the little rooms to the side with various country themes- we called the Swedish room Little Ikea and B wanted to get a pair of the big fuzzy wooden shoe slippers in the Holland room. About that time, we were starting to think maybe we'd wandered enough, so even though we missed out on the frozen food section and I hadn't seen a durian yet, we checked out.

The check out was an experience in itself. Q and B got bacon and their check out person was of a faith that didn't allow them to handle pork. Never fear, she had paper towels for just such an occasion. The Husband had put our groceries on the belt indiscriminately, so I worried they wouldn't get bagged well but the checker, bless her, bagged everything the way I would have without my needing to say anything. Awesome!

All in all, it was a really great trip. It was totally worth it to see all the "mythical" food items that we'd never seen before. We're totally going to again when they have the Ikea open.

The Husband and I like hanging out with other married couples. We've sort of fallen into the habit of having dinner with our friends K and J once a month, either at our place or theirs. This month was our turn, so we had them over and I made chicken paprikash. K has a very Polish background and I grew up in a super Polish/Ukranian town, so we both know from hearty peasant food and have a great time talking about pierogis or kielbasa or other tasty things, so when I decided to make paprikash I was really playing to him. Especially when you consider J hates mushrooms.

The recipe I used was from a local food blogger. I'd made it once before and the Husband loved it. It's hearty, it makes a lot and it calls for a pint of sour cream. How can you go wrong with that? Ha ha ha. As has been mentioned before, I should have READ AHEAD!!! tattooed on my forearm. While I had made the recipe before, I totally forgot the "Let cook for one hour" step. Heh. When we got home from work I though oh, we have an hour, no problem. I had the Husband start with the mushroom, onion and garlic cooking and I cut up the chicken and tossed it with the flour and spices. I don't know why, but whenever I put something through a flour dredge it takes me twice as much flour as the recipe calls for and I never remember that so halfway through the dredging I had the obligatory "put more flour in the dish" moment while the Husband browned the chicken pieces. Somewhere in the middle of all that K and J showed up, so I informed them my lack of forethought meant they were going to have to wait for dinner.

Once dinner was simmering on the stove I did have my only moment of forward thinking and started on dessert. Dessert was chocolate cupcakes with melty centers, recipe taken from my page a day cupcake calendar. The recipe had you melt the chocolate and butter together, then let it cool. The cupcakes needed to cook for 20 minutes, then sit for five, then be served immediately, so I did the figuring and got everything ready to put them in the over when we sat down to dinner. That actually worked out well, and the Husband made the noodles to go with dinner while I was doing that, so we were just about ready to sit down to dinner when I realized I forgot the vegetables. Argh! I can not be organized!

Dinner went well. J picked out the mushrooms and handed them around to everyone. Everyone loved the paprikash and had second helpings, so I figure it was a success. J made a comment I hadn't even considered- chicken paprikash is a lot like beef stroganoff. There's a sour cream based sauce, chunks of meat, mushrooms, you eat it with noodles, relatively slow cooked, huh. Around the end of dinner the timer for the cupcakes went off so I opened the over door. They didn't look done so I muttered "stupid oven" and let them go for a few more minutes. About three minutes later, I realized oh! They're not supposed to be done! Crap! The cupcakes that were on the edges of the tray didn't have the melty centers, but the ones more toward the middle did. It didn't matter, everyone seemed happy and ate a bunch.
All in all, it was a nice dinner with friends. Right now I am debating adapting the recipe for the crock pot. That wouldn't be too hard, right? Ha! You know me!