Happy Made Up Holiday!

We always call this "Made Up Holiday" instead of Valentine's Day.

I guess it's because we don't like to be told what to do and when to buy candy, so we rebel in the best way we know how: make up a snarky name, act all above everything and then go about doing the same shit all the true Valentine's Day Believers (who we call SUCKAHS) do but with a sense of superiority because Well, this is for Made Up Holiday, so I'm not buying into anything, really. I bought this tub of peanut butter cups and Bubba's sending me flowers because we want to, not because any holiday told us to. REALLY.

Our web of delusion is really coming along well, don't you think?

Anyway, this keeps us from feeling like part of The Machine or like we're a slave to The Man or have fallen victim to any other scary The's, so whatever.

Our interpretations are a little off, anyway, so perhaps that's the fine line keeping us from becoming the SUCKAHS we make fun of for buying carnations off the street from the dude with the giant teddy bears.

No Godiva chocolates in this house.

Who needs red roses when TJ's has calas for $3.99? I bought these for myself. Happy Made Up Holiday, me! I hope I score.

No breakfast in bed around here. But I did wear my purple Wrightsocks on my run. Festive.

Bubba sent me orange roses to work yesterday because he knows I love orange and because he knows that getting flowers at work is a very favorite self-involved thing of mine.

I don't think it's still considered traditional if you shove a Valentine in with your farmshare fruit.

Anyway, Happy Made Up Holiday, people. I hope Santa Valentine brings you things you really like and that someone cooks you dinner AND lets you sleep in while he walks the dog.

Or whatever it is that you like.

xo
Finny

Slow on the uptake

Alright, I know this post isn't going to come as an epiphany to anyone since everyone in the whole wide world (seriously, there are 52 posts in my Reader alone) has made the friggen No-Knead Bread except me, but STILL, I made it and it's awesome and now I will share with you the many ways I love this bread and a few things I learned so that if you're the one other person out there who hasn't made this bread besides me, you don't do the same dumb shit I did that might lead to disappointment and sadness.

If you're bored of the NKB, I won't blame you if you skip this post and come back tomorrow (ish) when I plan to change tunes altogether and just bitch openly about a cultural phenomenon that I find to be wholly inexcusable.

Anyway, my bread.

I never thought I'd make this bread because I had three or four different run-ins with faulty yeast in a very short period of time and the experiences had broken my bread-baking spirit.

I was off bread baking forever because apparently yeast was my arch nemesis and chose to revolt in inertness when I ripped the package open. It was very disappointing, to go to the trouble of making bread dough only to have it lie lifeless in the bowl, not a rise or bubble in sight.

And I realize that this synopsis sounds a little lewd and lascivious, but I promise it wasn't. If it were, I might have at least been amused but overall it was just sad and made me hate baking bread.

But then Elke made the bread. And she went on and on about its ease and fabulousness and perfect crust and things. It made me want to go back into the water with the fucking yeast to see if it would, by some miracle, work for me again as it once had when I used to bake bread in a flower pot like some kind of fruit.

So, I consulted with my bread-baking neighbor to find out what kind of works-every-time miracle yeast she used (Perfect Rise Yeast) and then I went right over to TJ's and got it. And while I was there I restocked on King Arthur flour because we all know it's the best flour, so there.

And then I came home and did my famous reenactment of Finny Cooks Without Reading the Recipe All The Way Through that nearly took me back to hating bread because of the part where the recipe says, "Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven" which I did not know about beforehand because I WHOOPSY! didn't read the recipe all the way through before starting to bake like a normal person might.

Oh.

I don't have an oven safe 6-8 quart heavy covered pot. What the fuck am I supposed to do with this big blob of dough NOW? Is what I was asking myself in a loud annoyed voice.

Please don't throw me out. I promise to behave.

Shit shit shit.

But wait. I DO have a crock pot. And it has a big ass ceramic removable pot because it's from the friggen 70s or something before Rival got all fancy and started making these things from shiny stainless steel and stuff.

And that fucker has a LID! An oven safe one!

Hazzah. I had my oven safe 6-8 quart heavy (as all get out) covered pot. Also, I'm now extra glad that I didn't WHOOPSY! donate Bubba's ugly old crock pot back in the day when we moved in together because of its ugliness and how I thought I'd never use a crock pot so why did we need one taking up all this cabinet space.

Sometimes I can be such an asshole. Also, wrong, but you know, NOT THE POINT.

The point is that I have a pot that totally works to the point where I now LOVE our ugly old from-the-70s crock pot even if the LOW temperature setting really means OFF and even though I'm sure it was originally marketed as being "a lovely kitchen appliance in fashionable harvest gold!"

So, what other ridiculous show-stopping events could have kept me from baking a successful loaf of simple bread that doesn't even require kneading? Um, yeah, our house.

Aside from the yeast that was arching me, the house seemed to be taking its side. Perhaps the house is one of The Yeast's henchmen and agreed to arch me relentlessly until I gave up baking bread forever.

Perhaps. And perhaps I've started to lose it when I begin thinking that yeast and houses are evil superhero criminals creating diabolical plans to avenge me. Too much Adult Swim?

See, the bread dough wasn't rising. Or bubbling adequately. Or really doing any of the things that bread dough is supposed to do, like double in size for instance, and it was really starting to piss me off.

*Achooo* *Sniff* *Shiver*

Oh. Yeast needs heat to rise. Our house is not warm because we never turn on the heater. The yeast is cold.

THAT'S IT - The House is arching the yeast! Wait, no, I need to turn on the heater! OR, better yet, I need to put the bread on the bathroom counter, turn on the bathroom heater (we have one built into the exhaust fan) and close the door for about two hours.

TEE DAH!

The bread bubbles! The bread rises! Miracles happen! I don't have a really retarded arch nemesis!

Ew. Food in the bathroom.

And approximately 3 hours later (after rising and baking), I got loaf #1 that was not entirely fucked up.

And I look purty, too.

It wasn't perrrrrrrfect, sorta only rose right on one side BUT, it tasted ruuully good and looked pretty respectable. For bread, anyway.

You could take me home to mama, that's how respectable I am.

But if I'd had any notion of quitting while I was ahead with the whole bread baking business, Bubba put a quick stop to that. He is a bread loving man, dontchaknow, and as soon as the smell filled his nose, it was, let's say, ON.

I baked again - this time for our Ski Week Menu of Amazing Food - and it came out perfect. Like, I took at least 10 pictures of it perfect. And we ate every last crumb of it perfect. And I even brought some to my mom perfect.

Harvest gold is SO my color.

There's steam coming from the bread. Not that you can see it.

And if you ever wanted to eat the best meatloaf sandwich you'd slice up some leftover Cajun Meatloaf from this recipe of Pastor Ryan's and put it on some of this bread with some sharp cheddar cheese perfect.

I ate this over the cutting board like in the old days when we broke all our plates. Long story.

And when it was gone, I made some more. You know, because now that I've managed to make it right, Bubba has re-whetted his addiction to fresh-baked bread and will. not. be. without. it.

So, just to prove that I could make it again without horrible debilitating failure, last week I baked this loaf when I got home from my run.

Running and baking bread are obvious complimentary activities.

After which, we continued our celebration of Hey! I Can Bake Bread Again! by eating it every which way.

It was raining and we ate fondue while watching old Pink Panther movies. Obviously.

Bread and pseudo-butter.

We even served it to our bread-baking neighbors when they came over for dinner. For the record, they loved it, too. AND THEY'RE FANCY WITH BREAD. So, that means something. To me.

No one said anything about my tubTub though. Sad.

Anyway, that's probably enough about me+bread=luv 4 eva. However, here's the sum of shit I learned that might help you out if you haven't made this and want to:

1. I recommend SAF Perfect Rise Instant Yeast in packets. You can also get it at Trader Joe's.
2. I recommend King Arthur Flour All Purpose, Unbleached flour. You can also get it at Trader Joe's.
3. If you don't have the 6-8 quart heavy covered pot the recipe calls for, a crock pot pot and lid will totally work as long as they're the Oldie Hawn kinds with the removable ceramic bowl with the heatproof lid.
   
4. If you can't get the bread to rise or bubble, turn on the heater and put the bread close by.
5. Use a LOT of flour on the towel before you throw the dough ball on there. Trust me.

The end.

Food tastes best with ö in it.

There isn't any ö in Rouladen, but we were excited nonetheless.

OK, it's been two whole (almost) posts without any talk of food and I can't take it anymore and must now talk about food because OH MY GOD we had a German Feast the other night which deserves some attention.

Now, I don't know about y'all, but my life's history of German fare has been pretty limited. I've had the occasional brat, and a few fresh baked pretzels and lord knows I've had my share of beer, but I wouldn't consider any of that truly experiencing German food. Not even the German chocolate cake that I love with such great intensity that it hardly matters from whence it came because I wouldn't be able to hear the explanation over my loud munching and smacking.

I do love German chocolate cake.

I mean, I doubt Germans sit around the table in their haus (Do you like my German word here? Stay tuned!) eating pretzels and brats and drinking beer all the live long day. They must have other things right? Sure they do.

Anyway, what I'm saying is that I knew there was more to German food than the few Americanized options I've experienced personally, and thankfully I have a lovely German friend who lets me pillage her orange tree and also wanted to cook us dinner.

And by us, I mean Bubba, Jada and I.

So, off to Elke's we went on Sunday night, for what was billed as REAL German food, OhmeinGott! (See! German word alert!)

Best part was that we were going to have Semmelknödle, which is made all the more delicious by the fact that it has an ö in the name, which is my favorite thing in all of German to say.

ö
ö
ö

What the F is Semmelknödle? Or the other things on the menu; Rouladen mit zwiebeln, gurken und speck? Well, let me just tell you since I TOTALLY speak German now (I do not):

I wish I still had Bubba's translation of this recipe. There were windshield wipers involved.

Rouladen is the German equivalent of Bubba's favorite foods ever rolled into one fabulous dish. Bacon, pickles and onions rolled in flank steak and braised in beef (and I suspect beer) broth.

Really now. Bacon AND Beef AND Pickles? My yes. It is the perfect storm of dinner.

An amazing cross section of deliciousnessocity.

Um, yes, please.

And for the Semmelknödle, it's basically a bread dumpling. And there's some spices in there, probably, too.

You can't be sad when there's Semmelknödle.

So, you know, typical German sounding menu: Meat wrapped in meat, some bread and OH! that's right - a vegetable: cooked red cabbage.

You have to love how Germans throw a vegetable in there and don't even try to NOT make it look like an afterthought. Now, don't get me wrong, I love cooked red cabbage, but it's not the LOOK AT ME I'M A FANCY VEGETABLE dish that, say, an arugula salad dressed with Lemon Pesto Vinaigrette might be.

What? Me? Self-congratulatory? NEVER.

Meanwhile, the "I'm not so fancy" vegetable looked very nice set out for our authentic German Feast meal.

All of this was gone after, like, 15 minutes.

Not that I noticed it much. Given the bacon wrapped in flank steak situation hanging out right next door on my plate.

Whatever - I loved it, is what I'm saying - and also I'm glad the focus of the menu was meat because who doesn't want their bacon wrapped in beef? Jerks. And also I think we've all heard just enough about my stupid salad dressing.

I ate this meal twice because I'm a wild animal.

And because Elke is quite the hostess, she also made sure to round out the authenticity of our meal by playing German pop music, encouraging us randomly spout our favorite German words (Scheibenwischer!)and letting her cat steal from my purse.

This is Tara. She steals.

Ok, so cat burglarizing isn't inherently German, but the cats (she has two) spent the better part of the evening trying to either make out with Jada (they love dogs) or stealing dog treats from my purse and it was too awesome to not say anything. You understand.

For the record, Tara (the cat you see here face down in my bag) stole three (3!) Puperoni treats from my bag, played with them on the floor in front of Jada's face for our entertainment and then conveniently left them unattended (wink wink, doggie) to go back for more.

We suspect that these animals are in cahoots now given the seamless stealing/passing/eating of treats that went on during dinner. I don't know how Jada bribes them, but I suspect it involves inter-species cuddling as these cats are always trying to groom her fur or kiss her nose.

It's a little bizarre.

ANYWAY.

We ate some very VERY very good German food (twice - we all had seconds - it was SO good) and then this chocolate banana bread I made when I forgot how much I love German chocolate cake and finally had a reason to make it. Whoopsy!

Oh well. I sorta bet it's not really an authentically German thing? Elke?

Hi. I'm made with prunes. Don't eat too much otherwise YOU KNOW WHAT.

For the record, the cake was fine. And I suspect that it wasn't GREAT because it was one of those switcheroo recipes that says Oh this is as good as the real thing but guess what there's something weird instead of butter.

And the weird thing was prunes.

Not as successful as swapping out butter for Greek yogurt (love you, Greek yogurt!), but not totally foul. In the future though, I will just use butter and leave the prunes for brooming.

You know.

And that concludes the German Feast Meal.

Lederhosen! Ok, that's the last German word I can think of.

Craft:along February - An example of my crazy.

Dear Donk,

Let me first be honest with the crafters out there and come clean about the fact that I sorta (totally) begged you to pick the fabric bowl as one of our projects this month. 

I did this because as soon as I saw it in my Reader, I knew I was going to make it anyway and wouldn't it be better for everyone if it was also a project I *had* to do for our craft along rather than just another project that took time away from things I should really be doing around my house like weeding the back .40 so that I don't almost die later?

See, I knew you'd all understand. Bless you.

It's just that I knew immediately that it would answer a question that had been plaguing me for a very long period of time. 

A very important question that'd had my brain achurnin', unproductively, for some months already. 

A question that would resurface every time I set the table for a nice din-din with Bubba. 

A question that was driving me slowly and ridiculously insane in a way that wasn't even related to the question's inherent ridiculousness.

Prepare yourself...

How can I make the tub of Smart Balance less ugly on my table?

Yes, people, this is the question that has been rattling around in my pea brain for, let's say, 3 months. In there with such other useful, world-changing gems like how to train the dog to wipe her paws before she comes inside and how to best organize the toilet paper under the bathroom sink to allow for optimum storage space saving. (Dog - 0, TP - 1!)

And now you see why I haven't gotten to more important things like world peace and reviving the economy - because I've been trying to make my dog's feet clean, the TP neat and the butter tub pretty.

Yeah, my frivolousity is sometimes amazing even to me. I know. Shame, eyerolling, etc...

But I know you're all curious to see what I did because deep down you've all wondered yourselves how to make that tub of Smart Balance (or Country Crock or whipped butter or whathaveyou and I don't want any lip about the fact that we eat this stuff, so can it) look less crappy on your table when you set it up all nice with proper utensils and maybe some clean linens, too, riiiiiiiiiiiiight?

Yes. You have. Just tell me you have because it will make me feel less like a jackass.

Smart Balance says, "Don't I look less ugly? Thank you."

I only used about 25 ft of cording (rather than the 50 feet the pattern called for) and all the scraps left over from a skirt and this trash bag (another frivolous brain pattern) to make it, including the two extra mini-handles to hold !TAH DOW! the butter knife.

Because, obviously, one can't have a butter tub TUB without a butter knife holder, can one? No.

So, totally excuse me for letting my brain run amok with table setting silliness instead of more important world-fixing things, but wouldn't you find this a more pleasing setting at which to dine than one set all perfect-like except with a giant tub of Smart Balance slammed down amongst the otherwise uninterrupted prettiness?

Again, just say yes.

See, you barely notice the butter tub, there. It blends, y'all.

And as long as I don't take the tub of butter with me in the car (where the trash bag lives) on a day when I'm wearing my Barcelona skirt sewn from that same Amy Butler fabric, no one will witness the extreme nature of my obvious and far-reaching Crazy.

And FINALLY my butter tub is pretty!

Yay. I'm insane.

xo

Finny

Not food + Road-knitting epiphany + Cows

FYI - I haven't blocked this yet, so don't make fun of my wonky stitching. 

If I didn't know me I'd think I was becoming a total fatty or something with all the food I talk about but I promise you that I am not. Becoming a total fatty, that is. 

Because, thankfully, I do other things besides cook and eat and bake and eat and master plan week-long ski menus full of meat and scary nachos and eat.

Really!

I've also been doing other things like reading ridiculous books about stupid teenage vampires (don't look at me like that, I'm already ashamed of myself) and running and planting fruit trees and crafting hoodies for Bubba and working of course also TAH DAH! knitting.

Because Finny's got to knit, or so I've heard.

Now, I'm not quite done with my main knitting project yet because I got sidetracked by an amusing crochet project from this month's Craft: magazine (lovelovelove) and I also ran out of yarn *thisclose* to the end, but I wanted to show you anyway if only because I'm a total show off and also proud that I THINK it will probably fit like all the pictures in all the projects (there are 332 going now) in Ravelry do. 

But if I don't talk about this project again or show you the final photos, don't you judge me, because all that means is that I finished it and it totally didn't fit and I'm shamefully frogging it to make it into something else one day, OK? 

As it turns out, I'm not so good with knitting to fit the first time around. But you know this. In fact, this project has been frogged twice already to get the gauge right. Which is ironic and retarded because I was so bold as to note on my Ravelry project page that I wasn't going to "knit a gauge, but thanks for asking."

I'm such an asshole.

Anyway, so I have had to frog it twice and so I'm on my third try now and it's looking like it might fit. At least based on my stretch-it-over-my-boobs-and-torso-in-its-half-finished-state fitting method, anyway. 

Yes, I'm very technical.

When stretched across my boobs this is much more flattering. BOOBS. I said boobs.

My big dream is that this will be part of my YAY! Spring is here and I can wear tank tops and flip flops and skirts again as though I haven't been wearing them all winter like a fool! outfit. Because you know I always hatch up one of these outfits to celebrate the first day of spring like some kind of child.

And YOU KNOW I've already built the outfit in my mind of which this tank top will be the crown jewel. Not that the outfit will be fancy and involve jewels or anything fruity like that, but you know what I mean.  So, prepare thyselves to rejoice with me when this thing fits and I love it and can wear it to work in The Supah Spring Day #1 Outfit.

Also, I had a knitting epiphany while we were driving halfway across the country to ski. A knitting epiphany, to be exact. 

See, when I knit things that involve patterns with multiple rows of instructions, even if multiple only = 2, I have to keep looking at the pattern to make sure I don't fuck it up, which I most certainly do if I assume I've got it ,which, most certainly, I do not.

And my refer to the pattern every other stitch method requires me to keep the pattern close by, which, while knitting on road-trips, means it gets tucked under my left thigh with its top corner precariously close to dipping into Bubba's coffee in the truck's cupholder.

Not ideal, but it's what I had. Until we drove to Colorado last week. And I realized that HEY! I sit in the passenger's seat and HEY! there's a fucking glove compartment on the passenger's side and HEY! What if I open the compartment, tuck the top of the pattern in there and shut it?!

OH MY GOD IT TOTALLY WORKS.

Awesomeness. I have innovated road-knitting. 

At least for myself, probably the last person in the whole wide world to put this specific two and two together. 

What scenery? I see no scenery. Just this pattern and all its YOs and SSK and what not. DON'T DISTRACT ME.

And so now you know what I do to contribute to our road trips when I'm not sleeping, attempting to be The Navigatress, losing the ongoing road-game of Cows on My Side, hunting around in the backseat for snacks or generally bugging Bubba while he tries to transport us safely to Snow.

(For those of you who want to play Cows On My Side, it goes like this:

Drive somewhere with someone else in the car and sit on opposite sides.

When you see cows on your side of the car, you yell COWS ON MY SIDE! and get a point.

When you see cows on your friend's side of the car, you yell COWS ON YOUR SIDE! and they lose a point.

When you see a cow crossing sign, you yell COW SIGN and they lose 5 points.

The person with the most points at the end of the drive wins. 

This is a game for simple people. Enjoy.)

I do this because I'm self-involved. Enjoy.

UPDATE: If you wanted to be interviewed but didn't leave your email address, please shoot it to me at finnyknitsATgmailDOTcom so I can send you your questions. Stupid Blogger doesn't give your email unless you have it listed on your Blogger profile, so there are a few of you for whom I don't have an email address. Sorry, y'all.

I like to consider Kristin at Going Country something of a kindred spirit. Not because we lead similar lives (hardly, she's on a farm in NY and I'm in a suburb in Silicon Valley), but because we have a lot of weird things in common which I find amusing.

I won't get into all those here because it's none of your beeswax, but I will say that one thing we have in common is our interest in ourselves. Like, I am very interested in ME and she is very interested in HER and in that we have bonded in a way that only two very self-involved people can.

A weird awkward way that involves swearing and the sharing of cocktail recipes. Whatever.

SO - what I'm saying is that when she offered to interview readers with questions that SHE would make up for THEM, I saw it as a perfect chance to:

A. Challenge her to create questions to which she did not already know the answers.

B. Spend some time talking all about my favorite topic, Me. Yes, we know I'm very self-involved, so don't look at me all like that.

Turns out the whole challenge thing wasn't a challenge for Kris - because she's that way and so now I'm here to make good on my part of the deal in which I answer her interview questions for your amusement and my own.

Please to enjoy.

1) What one song always reminds you of a particular event or time in your life? And what was the event or time?
Cyndi Lauper's, "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" reminds me of riding in the back of my mom's car on the way to swim practice. Every time I hear it (which, granted, is rare these days) I can practically smell the chlorine in my nose.

2) What's your favorite thing about your husband?
In addition to the fact that he's SUPER handy and can fix nearly anything, he is also THE most hysterical person I know. The fact that he vowed to devote the rest of his life to entertaining me with his hilarity is very satisfying.

3) What's the single best food or dish you've ever eaten?
Quattro fungi pizza in Rome. Hands down. I think there was some fucking truffle oil on it, too. Just to make it all the more ridiculously good. I ate the whole thing even though I was so stuffed and was sitting at a table of extremely hot Italian men. No shame.

4) What's the worst food you've ever cooked yourself?
Tofu. Stupid boogery, goopy, "Martha says it's good so try it" tofu. Sucked ass, that tofu. And, as such, so does Martha.

5) How (or from whom) did you learn how to knit?

I learned from instructions I printed off the Internet. Which is how I ended up knitting "the weird way" instead of "the normal way", like everyone tells me. For the record, The Continental/German/Traditional Method is not "the weird way". YOU'RE THE WEIRD WAY.

And now you know some more ME things because, obviously, I don't talk about ME enough on MY blog.

I should be ashamed of myself, but I'm not.

However, in the name of fair play (and in an effort to not be a total beotch), I wanna interview one of you guys, too. If you'll have me, of course. I do love to know all about you lovely nice people who come here and brave my bitching, even if it's just so I'll know to whom I should direct the police later when you become a stalker.

To play Finny's Going to Ask You Five Potentially Embarrassing and Inappropriate Questions game:

1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me! I'm not afraid!" or something similar.
   
2. I'll email you five questions that will likely have questionable content or swears.
3. You then update your blog with answers to my questions (no editing the questions) and link back to the original post.
4. And you can decide whether you want to include this explanation and offer to interview someone else in that post.
5. If you go this route and people want to be interviewed, you do it.

So, if you don't blush easily or like the challenge of truthfully answering sketchy questions, feel free to indicate your interest in a Finny interview in the comments. If you just want to comment but don't want to be interviewed, I totally will not take it personally because I would be wary of me, too.

xo

When being A/R is totally helpful

So, not sure if you saw any of the photos from our recent road trip to Steamboat, but there are a lot of food-type pictures in there and those food-type pictures represent my A/R-ness at its most extreme.

See - Bubba and I are always working on how to make our trips *perfect*. It's a completely hopeless undertaking because we both know nothing will ever be *perfect*, mostly because we're both a little neurotic and like to bitch as a sport, but we strive for this perfection nonetheless.

Our ski trips are no exception.

Last year, while the snow was *perfect* and the accommodations were nearly *perfect* (shitty too-bouncy bed), there were a few things that were less than perfect. Like, the drive was a holy terror and shaved AT LEAST 14 years off my life (and I wasn't even driving) due to its complete and total icy and stormy shittiness and our nightly apres ski (Fruity Term Alert) meals were good but not Amazing.

And since we can't do fuck all about the weather (Although this time our drive was way easy. Thank you Mother Nature for sparing us your bitchiness.), we thought we'd try our hand at Amazing Food.

For us, Amazing Food to Be Enjoyed Post Ski Activities sounded a lot like:

BBQ Brisket & Beans
Smoked Pot Roast Soup
Super Scary Nachos
Grilled club sandwiches on home baked bread
Cajun meatloaf and mashed potatoes
Birthday Cinnamon Rolls with Orange Zest Frosting
WT Cherry pie
Bubba's Filthy Breakfast That I Do Not Eat

And then the obligatory daily cocktail hour that gets earlier and earlier in the day depending on how long it takes the sore muscles to cry out for mercy from the ski lift. For the record, Cocktail Time arrived at the lunch hour on Thursday AND Friday because we are wimps and/or boozers.

So, how does one go about securing the Amazing Food to Be Enjoyed Post Ski Activities Menu? One begins cooking her fingers to the bone in friggen December for the Jan-Feb trip and then shoving full one's freezer to its fullest capacity so that one can remove its entire contents into a cooler for the long haul across the western US, that's how.


You know I'm talking about me and cooking, right? Yes. Right.

So, to make real this dream of Amazing Food to Be Enjoyed Post Ski Activities, I began the baking/cooking/portioning/labeling/freezing process back over the holidays (remember those things? ew.) so that we could live our dreams of Amazing Food to Be Enjoyed Post Ski Activities in the snowy week of our ski fantasy at the end of January.

It takes a lot of dedication and combined insanity to bring a dream this gluttonous to fruition, dontchaknow. But it's worth it when I consider that I test-drove a lot of recipes and their freeze and reheatability for the benefit of myself and others.

At least this is how I'm justifying being so A/R and little piggyish, so just work with me.

The test drivers:

(Also, ignore the heinous dishware. It comes with the condo and we, apparently, do not share a taste for decor with the owners. Right down to the dishes that are too big to fit in the cabinets and weigh one hundred pounds each. Whatever.)

BBQ Brisket & Beans

Bubba set up the smoker with the sole purpose of creating smoked meats for this trip. Included in the smoke-a-thon were two briskets, a half dozen chicken breasts, a pan of beans, a pork shoulder and a pot roast. Bless this man.

After we sliced (and sampled) some of this goodness, I packaged/labeled/froze it for the express purpose of bringing it on this trip. To say it was *perfect* would be an understatement. I would say it was at least swoon worthy and I wouldn't have blamed Bubba for taking the brisket to bed with him and giving me the couch. It was just that good.

Smoked Pot Roast Soup

So, when the Day When Smoke Will Rise Again came, we threw a pot roast on there that had come as a gift from my folks' during the raiding of their chest freezer over the holidays.

This was not a mistake.

For one, smoked pot roast is a fine, fine thing (I'll post on this later. Promise.) and Vegetable Beef Soup made from smoked pot roast is, um, otherworldly? Pants-peeingly delicious? Extra nummy? I don't know. It's just real nice. And when you've spent the day slamming down snowy runs in zero degree temps (Ok, one day the board read 1 degree. Whoopy.) and you're wild animal hungry, this soup takes on metaphysical dimensions of goodness.

Also, there was salad.

Super Scary Nachos

These are only scary because this was an appetizer. Because we are ravenous beasts after skiing all day (or, in my case, 3/4 of the day because I'm a wuss) and need a snack to keep us from eating each other's limbs before dinnertime.

The guac poo swirl on top is the result of me squeezing it full-strength from the package. Sometimes pre-made is OK.

Grilled club sandwiches on home baked bread

I might be the last person on earth to make the No-Knead Bread, but I'll make up for it by baking it weekly until I die. If only so that I can relive this sandwich and soup experience. Really now, is there anything superior to a pimped out grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup on a frigid snowy day?

No. No, there is not.

Especially when your pimpiness comes in the form of turkey, bacon and home baked bread. Blah dow.

Also, there will likely be a future post where I show you all the bread-porny ways that we're loving on this bread. It's not right we love it so much.

Cajun meatloaf and mashed potatoes

I rolled the dice on this meatloaf recipe from Pioneer Woman instead of making my own tried-and-true recipe and I absolutely loved it to little tasty pieces. Bubba was kinda meh on it until we had it for Amazing Food to Be Enjoyed Post Ski Activities dinner with some mashed potatoes and bread. I will talk more about this meatloaf in a future post that will likely draw attention from the authorities given the amount of sexy talking I plan to do about meats and loaf and spiciness and sandwiching.

Birthday Cinnamon Rolls with Orange Zest Frosting

You're all familiar with these cinnamon rolls (also by Pioneer Woman because I'm a slut for her) by now and how I successfully froze the giant dough recipe into individual pan size doses for future use. Well, one of these doses came with us on vacay and baked up for Bubba's Birthday Breakfast under some of my special made frosting. It was special in the sense that it was the last frosting left in the WT can and I'd mixed in some orange zest before we left.

WT *can* be delicious.

WT Cherry pie

To continue with our WT theme (really, it is our whole life, but who's checking?) Bubba requested Birthday Cherry Pie. But since there aren't any cherries on the tree right now and when in the world will I have time to make a pie crust, we opted for the WT version.

Ingredients: 1 can of cherry pie filling, 1 package of frozen puff pastry dough
To make: Grease a cookie sheet, place one sheet of frozen dough on the sheet, pour pie filling on top, turn up the sides, put the other sheet on top, pinch the sides together, bake according to pastry dough instructions. Done. Go WT out on the couch in front of CNN.

Bubba's Filthy Breakfast That I Do Not Eat

He ate this two days in a row and it consists of one English muffin, two slices of cheddar cheese, a few slices of bacon and some type of cooked egg with a LOT of pepper. I do not eat this filthiness because I loathe plain eggs. However, he did make this for me without the egg and it was great. The egg is the filthy part. To me. Because I'm some kind of loser according to the egg-eating authorities of the world (Bubba).

And that concludes the Look at All The Food We Ate on Vacation post for February 2009. I realize it's probably mind-numbing and a little bit sickening, but this is how we live our lives as you well know so I don't expect a bunch of lip from the likes of you.

Instead, wouldn't you like to tell me your favorite vacation meal? What in the world do you break down and make when only AMAZING will do? I like to know so that maybe we can work it into a future vacation binge.

And in a future post, I will ask more questions and there will be an interview involved. I know you're intrigued.

Adopt a Crop update:- A recipe, already.

It all happened so fast.

I kinda knew that the winter edition of Adopt a Crop would be hard-pressed to produce something which would be packable and shippable, but in my haste and excitement to get it on the road, I just figured I'd deal with that later.

Hi, Later!

So, instead of trying to find a wilty gross way to prize someone with Arugula/Rocket/Roquette somethinrother, I'm just going to share a recipe here for everyone. It's the best I can do, so if you have a better idea on how we can all go about celebrating the fact that we went from seed to salad in a few week's time (Farmgirl - I realize I'm ripping you off here with this but sometimes I'm very unoriginal and so I hope you forgive me.), you just tell me all about it. And then I'll think about it briefly before deciding to go back to my original plan of just posting recipes for everyone to use.

Because it's not always about winning a prize, OK. Gah!

Anyway, for the update part:

I seeded two new rows of the arugula before Bubba and I left for our ski trip (Yay! We're home! I never want to drive again!) because the first two rows were looking all mature and delicious. I knew they'd be ready for a giant salad when we got home from skiing all day and eating all night, so putting in two more rows would mean we'd have an extended harvest if the weather would start acting like winter instead of late spring and I wouldn't have to contend with the anxiety of taking down my whole crop at once for two enormous Broom Salads. You know what I mean.

And don't you know it, I came home to find that the first two rows were downright bushy. And don't you also know that I didn't take a picture of the bushiness because WOO I was already picking our salad. Sometimes, I find it hard to control myself around salad greens and now you know something else stupid about me that I bet you could have lived without.

Whatever! Stupidity abounds!

And while I didn't do anything remotely amazing with the arugula itself, I did pull together a dressing that is, dare I say it, The Best Salad Dressing Ever. Yep.

At least, for the moment it is. Until I run out of Meyer lemons or begin hating pesto or make something else that makes my taste buds sing when paired with my beloved arugula or something catastrophic like that.

Until then though, this is my The Best Salad Dressing Ever. Yep. It is also part of one of My Favorite Dinners Ever. Yep. because nearly everything in this dinner was either grown in my backyard or sprung forth from my very hands.

Like, the pasta is homemade, The Best Tomato Sauce Ever. Yep. in which it is tossed was homemade by me from my own garden's produce, the arugula and tomatoes in the salad are from that very same garden, the Meyer lemons are from my wee tree and the pesto is from the last basil harvest of the season and has been sitting idly by waiting to be a part of this dressing for some time now.

SO - if that's not a reason to be at least one of My Favorite Dinners Ever. Yep., then I really don't know what is.

Moving on...

Finny's The Best Salad Dressing Ever. Yep.

Ingredients
Juice from 1 Meyer lemon
1 T homemade pesto (or otherwise)
3 T olive oil
1 T kosher salt
1 T fresh ground pepper
2 big handfuls arugula
3 chopped tomatoes (small)

Sometimes Meyer lemons are best when they're old and hard on the outside. I think, anyway.

To make
In a large bowl, whisk lemon juice, pesto, salt and pepper. When thoroughly blended, add olive oil 1 T at a time until completely blended.

I didn't even try to make this pretty.

Then toss in TO THE VERY SAME BOWL a couple big handfuls of freshly picked arugula right from your garden WOO and a few of the last tomatoes (chopped) from your garden WOO and toss to coat.

Yeah. Those are tomatoes from the garden. Still. They taunt me from their bowl. Jerks.

Then just go ahead and serve it up with your second pass at homemade pasta which came out way better than the first time because you remembered to flour the dough as it was being cut and did NOT let it wad up into a big sticky pile from which individual noodles could not be retrieved. Don't forget to mix yourself a nice cocktail, too.

Enjoy, my pretties.

Let there be snow

We gave up on our try-a-new-ski-town-every-year plan after only three years because last year we went to Steamboat Springs and it was all we ever wanted in a ski town and more.

So, off we go, to visit Ski Town USA, full of cortisone and heavy with new board and ski boots.

Say it with me now, let there be snow.




Photos and video updated regularly. Given we don't break something important.

Talk soon!
Finny

So I totally ordered a pasta maker

I guess pasta "maker" is not the right word, because it's not like it actually "makes" the pasta, but that's what the box said and calling it a pasta "roller" sounds kinda retarded, but either way, I have one now.

I still feel the tiniest bit guilty about buying such a proprietary (and fucking heavy - good lord!) kitchen device when I can barely find room for the ice cube trays in the cupboard when they're not in use, but after using it once, I know I'll go back into the cupboard for this big beast fairly regularly.

It also helps that I made a giant dough recipe the first time out of the box, so when I do decide I want to crank out some spaghetti or whatever, I can just thaw a dough ball, roll it out and press it through the machine in a few minutes instead of having to do the whole mix, wrap, rest, roll thing.

That's a little much.

Especially given that when I set out to make pasta what I'm usually thinking is I'm going to make something easy so I can focus on my cocktail.

Pasta for dinner is not usually an announcement that garners any sort of awe in this house. Sort of like saying let's go out for dinner when all you're doing is going to Del Taco. Which would never happen in this house, of course.

Anyway, about that machine, for those of you in the market for one of these machines or those interested in why the hell someone would spend $25 on a machine that makes something you can readily find at the grocery store for cheap. (For those of you staring at me in disbelief, please recall my history with overwrought projects.)

This machine, the Pinzon 5-9-Inch Pasta Maker, is quite the effective little gadget.

My first impression when I took it out of its box was something like HOLY HELL this thing is HEAVY. Which is a good thing, because for $25 I was sure I was going to get some rinky tin piece of crap that would mangle under my unskilled hands.

Um, no. This thing will out live us all, I'm pretty sure, and is definitely built to withstand at least a low-grade nuclear attack.

Clamp it down to your countertop and you're pretty much set to roll dough until every arm in your house has been exhausted.

Also enjoyable is its simplicity. There's just the four parts (base, rollers, handle, clamp) and the directions are mercifully short. Basically, you can identify the parts and their role in the whole pasta making apparatus, so it's just a matter of putting the right things in the right holes.

Which sounds sexy and inappropriate but is neither.

Either way, I got this thing out of the box, assembled and clamped satisfactorily to my countertop in under 5 minutes which is something of a record for me given my undying love and devotion to instruction manuals.

After rolling my one dough ball out to a proper width, I rolled it through the machine (I did a test roll first, which I discarded, according to the instructions in the ever important manual - don't forget!) and Tee DAH! had created a lovely sheet of pasta of consistent width with very minimal energy expended.

This took all of 20 seconds.

The only bummer here is that it is SO fast while also being SO enjoyable that you really will want to just go buck wild rolling pasta around in this thing to the point where the hungry wolves in your house will come stomping into the kitchen to find out what happened to dinner and how come you're wearing a full length gown made of (very thin) pasta dough.

It's that fun!

Anyway.

Once I was done admiring my nice thin sheets of future dinner, I rolled the dice on the actual cutting rollers for the fettuccine and produced, in one pass, a pile of fresh pasta the likes of which had never been seen before by my kitchen.

Do not underestimate the addictive power of the pasta maker. It is like heroine with a handle.

But then for the actual cooking of the pasta. I was afraid, people.

It was fresh and doughy and I was worried about putting my stringy delicate babies into a pot of big mean boiling water for fear of what it might do to their squooshy exteriors, but I was worried for nothing because it worked just like I hoped. Specifically, nothing got goopy or weird and the final product was edible and, frankly, kinda cute in a rustic way.

This is what pasta looks like in the wild. All rustic and natural.

And to celebrate this edibility, I treated the pasta to a date with Pioneer Woman's Pasta alla Vodka sauce. Truly a match made in heaven when paired with the, now ever-present, brussels sprout side dish brought to us weekly thanks to our farmshare and Dig's easy going recipe.

And to think, Bubba hated brussels sprouts until I made this.

Anyway, that's my piece about the whole do I really need a pasta maker/roller issue. As it turns out I do not NEED it so much as I enjoy it thoroughly and use it to produce superior tasting din-din for myself and Bubba.

Plus, just TRY turning a sheet of pasta into spaghetti without immediately making plans to do it again. It's impossible.