Soup Days

I love comfort food for cold days. This weekend was no exception, as I made mushroom beef barley soup for the first time. I made a double batch and it took over three hours to finish cooking. There was enough soup for four nights of dinner (and Josh has HUGE portions) and lunches for one day. I'm a very big fan of making food with the intention of producing leftovers, so I don't have to cook several days in a row.

It turns out that the soup is better the next day and becomes a thicker soup because of the barley. Very tasty with some crusty bread.

Snow!

The kitties are happy to see snow again. This morning, we saw that snow has finally stuck to the ground and these fat, fluffy flakes are drifting down. It's mornings like these that make me want to stay in bed with a couple kitties and a good book.

Long weekend cooking

On Friday, I had a grand plan to make a fancy filet of beef bourguignon dinner. Josh has been taking a rough intersession course (a whole semester crammed into 8 days) that lasts from 5-9 pm after a full day of work. I got home at 6 and spent the next two hours cooking dinner. It turned out to be very tasty and nothing was really very hard. Unfortunately, I ate dinner alone, as Josh didn't bother to inform me that he was at a bar with some fellow Teaching Fellows and coworkers until he arrived home around 1:30 am. It's okay; he stumbled around the kitchen until he found the beef bourguignon in the fridge and heated a bowl for himself. I was amazed he managed the heavy pot without everything crashing/splashing to the floor.

I wanted a Sunday brunch this past weekend due to a weird craving for good pancakes or french toast. Josh refused to go to brunch, so I had to make my own instant pancake mix. I now have a stockpile of my own pancake mix for lazy Sundays. On Sunday morning, I mixed my "instant mix" with the buttermilk, eggs, and smidgen of butter. I also had only one nonstick pan, so I had to use my stainless steel pan in order to serve pancakes in a reasonable amount of time. I was a little wary of the stainless steel because I didn't feel like scraping encrusted pancake from said pan. However, I'd seen an episode of Barefoot Contessa where she made pancakes in a stainless steel pan. With a thin layer of butter, the pancakes didn't stick one bit! I was pleasantly surprised. The pancakes turned out lovely and fluffy, although our maple syrup sucked a little. I'm wondering if the blame lies in its organic nature or its Canadian origin. Give me Vermont maple syrup any day!

To pee or not to pee?

Josh and I went to my cousins' house to celebrate our grandmother's birthday this Saturday. Whenever we get together, we usually play games like Pictionary, Guesstures, or mahjongg. Since two of my three cousins have gotten laptops, they've taken to leeching off a neighbor's unsecured wireless signal. It becomes difficult to participate in a group activity when one or more people are fixated on their laptops.

Anyways, we wound up playing Pictionary because the grown-ups got to the mahjongg set before we could. On one of the rounds, Josh pulled a card and it was an all-play, so my cousin looked at it too. She said she couldn't do it because she didn't know what the word meant, so Josh thought we had an awesome advantage. Her teammate told her to use the "sounds like" method, but she didn't know how the word was pronounced either. I told Josh to help her out, so he did, and we lost that round.

What was that pesky word? Toupee.

Josh said to everyone, "This is why we had an advantage! She was probably wondering, 'What's a to-pee?'"

After dinner, we got a shot at the mahjongg set. Josh has been pretty determined not to participate in mj, but after 5 years, he finally gave in and started learning how to play. My mom even wrote out the numbers and symbols for him. In our second game, we noticed a few rounds in that Josh had an absurd amount of tiles in his hand. He should've had 13 tiles, but he had 18! That's an entire row from one of the walls you draw from! Jessica and I started cracking up when we realized. We kept laughing and laughing while Josh was sitting there with no idea of what was wrong or so funny to us. When we were finally done laughing, our stomachs hurt. It was awesome.

Squeaky Wheel

Josh bought me a gift card to Bliss for Christmas. He tried paying for overnight shipping, but it was taking forever, and it turns out they'd never shipped it. I canceled the order, figuring that we could save the $30 shipping fee and pick up a gift card in person. Then Josh made another order to surprise me, replacing the first. Late last week, the first order arrived, showing that the order was never cancelled and that if I didn't call soon enough and get someone who knew what they were doing, we'd wind up with a second non-returnable gift card. I checked Josh's credit card and it showed that there were three charges! I called right away to complain and when I got to a supervisor, he apologized, explaining that the statement was showing the temporary authorizations. He canceled the second order for me and then offered to send me free Bliss stuff for my trouble!

He wound up comping me the head-to-toe spa in a box, which actually costs $175. It arrived at my office today in a big blue box, less than a week after I complained! Josh says I really made out this year for Christmas: All-Clad roasting pan, Bliss gift card, and a box o' Bliss stuff. I can't wait to make my appointment!

New Year's Roundup

Going back to work today was awful after having over a week off. I really appreciated that time though, and used it to relax, see my family, go shopping, and just decompress (just in time for the new year).

This past Saturday, my brother came into Manhattan so Josh and I, along with some of our Brooklyn cousins, went out to meet him. Unfortunately, someone wanted to go to the Jekyll and Hyde Club. We had gone when we were a lot younger and it was fun then, but when you're over 12, the amusement factor decreases exponentially. The food is really expensive for your standard Applebee's type cuisine and they charge an extra $2.50 per person as an "entertainment charge." They're also pretty sneaky as they don't make their menu prices available on their website or on Menupages. If it weren't for the excellent company, I would've chalked the whole day up as a waste.

We all walked to Rockefeller Center to view the tree and take pictures like tourists, laughing as we got lost in the crowds and accidentally walked into the Radio City ticketholder jam. We didn't have any plans and wandered aimlessly in the area. The low point occurred when the idea of going to a Best Buy to play Guitar Hero 2 came up.

That night, I made a blueberry cake for Dave's NYE party. It was a hastily-planned affair, and everyone was supposed to bring something for dinner. Josh and I brought the only ready-to-go dish, my turkey lasagna, which Josh finally helped cook. Unfortunately, we made the lasagna at his parents' house the day of the party, and his mother kept comments like, "You don't shred the mozzarella? You use 9 noodles? I use 12. You don't use spices in your sauce? Aren't you going to put the ricotta on first?" I wanted to run away and Josh kept saying, "There's more than one way to make a lasagna, Mom."

The NYE party lasted until 4 a.m. I was bored for the last few hours when the guys were just playing XBox. At least Marc was there to provide instant piano music and "The Ballad of Dave." I wish I'd had a tape recorder that night.

Happy new year!