Monday, January 30, 2012

Lamb Stew Three Ways


Lamb Stew: The Original Dish
Spousal Unit made lamb stew with polenta. He went out and got the lamb and everything. He got stewing lamb, which is very different than what I get. I usually get lamb shoulder. Spousal Unit didn't know that, though, so he asked the butcher for stewing lamb. What we got was some very tasty meat, but with a lot of bone, grit and fat mixed in. That meant that we paid for a lot of stuff we didn't eat.

The thing with stew, though, is that you can stretch the leftovers.

For example, for lunch today I had the sauce and veg part of the stew on polenta.

Then for dinner, we had fried polenta with leftover lamb meat -- kinda like a lamb-and-polenta hash.

Lamb Stew: Hashed
Lamb Stew: The Microwave Dish

For dessert we had homemade chocolate chunk cookies. They were supposed to be chocolate chip cookies, but I didn't have enough chips, so I took a Lindt 70% chocolate bar, smashed it up, and used the shards in lieu of chips. I guess that means that they were chocolate shard cookies. 
A shard of a chocolate shard cookie

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Irene's Starchfest: Spaghetti and Potato Salad

The trouble with being back in the office after a week away sick is that you end up having to catch up on a bunch of things (like all the meetings you were supposed to have) and the small things -- like taking pictures of your food -- fall by the wayside.

And it's too bad because I had some pretty damned tasty food this week: take-out butter chicken; pasta with meat sauce; and, of course, lots of coffee.
At least there wasn't risotto, too.

Thankfully Irene sent me two pictures of her eaten meals.  Unfortunately, she didn't tell me much more than what was in the plates.  She just sent me two emails: one titled "Spaghetti and meatballs" and the other "Potato salad".  She didn't expand on it.  I can only assume that she had some kind of midwinter nervous breakdown that resulted in a carbfest.

Did you ever see the movie "Big Night"?  I'm guessing you haven't because I'm the only person I know who has seen that movie.  It's this movie about two Italian brothers who open an authentic Italian restaurant in the US (New York?  I don't know) in the 1950s.  The movie opens with this scene where this couple orders risotto and spaghetti and they're disappointed that the risotto is just rice and the spaghetti is meatball-free.  Then they order more spaghetti to go with the risotto, which is, like, not done.  The brother in the kitchen flips out and is like, "Do they want some mashed potatoes with that?!"


This spaghetti wanted the company of meatballs.
Anyways, I thought of that when I saw Irene's pictures. 

At least Irene didn't make risotto.  Or maybe she just didn't take that picture.   I imagine her eating some kind of leftover hash made of potato salad and spaghetti-and-meatballs, with some risotto mixed in for good measure...maybe she's huddled on her sofa, wrapped in a caftan, watching Days of Our Lives as she eats it as snow falls outside.



But that isn't like Irene.  She most likely had some nice wine with it, or some sparkling water and then went out to work on a video project about the joys of cold climates.




Monday, January 23, 2012

A Spicy Soup and Spicy Conversation!

After a week of feeling like ass, home sick, I'm back at work, but still not 100%.  I needed soup.  I went out and got myself soup and sandwich from the panini place down the road. The soup was spicy Thai carrot soup. It was thick and spicy, just like today's lunch conversation. The only difference was that, unlike the soup, the conversation was not in good taste.

Lunch in the trash, just like the conversation.
Today we discussed porn. Yes, porn.  We discussed people viewing porn on an airplane. We discussed people submitting digital-to-analogue conversion bugs in porn movies.  We discussed five guys watching porn in a van. I shut down the conversation by asking if the guys in the van were watching gay or straight porn. Apparently you don't ask guys that.

Anyhoo.

After lunch, I solicited Silvia for a bland coffee in one of the Common Use Office Cafe au Lait Cups. I had forgotten that Silvia made bland, tepid coffee.  That long espresso tasted like mildly coffee-flavoured warm water.  It could dampen all passions.  It was like the antithesis to the lunch conversation.
The espresso's so cold, Blue Mug has turned away to the side.

Friday, January 20, 2012

Days of Soup and Tea

I've been sick all week.  ALL WEEK.  All week I've been working from home, sipping soup and drinking tea.  I've drank so much Peppermint Amour tea that I never want to see the stuff again.  I actually eventually sullied my My Lian Dieter Braun tea cup with that crappy Immunizer Tea from David's Tea.  You know, the one that's supposed to be a citrusy, minty, zingy tea, but is actually closer to the pot-pourri I got as a free sample from Crabtree&Evelyn once in the 90s (it made my undies smell of nothing, incidentally).

All week, I had variations on red lentil soup.  I made my own rice and red lentil soup one day, and then I made wheat and red lentil soup from a package another.  I made enough to last me a few days.  Now I never want to see red lentil soup again.
My wireless mouse liked warming itself against my lentil soup.
On the upside, I finally made that croissant pudding.  Actually, I instructed Spousal Unit to make it as I was indisposed, lying on the sofa under a pile of used Kleenexes, the toddler gleefully making a mess around me.  

Spousal Unit did a crappy job of it.  He thought that the pudding was done when it was still molten.  It wasn't.  The pudding has to rise and look like a soufflé for it to be done.  So I put it back in the oven and waited, all the while sniffling and feeling like someone had taken a cheese grater to my throat.  It eventually rose and I went to bed.  The next day, I tasted some and found that Spousal Unit put in so much booze that I was able to taste it in my stuffy state. 

I had some with coffee (which I had in my cutesy cup because I couldn't be bothered to get a proper espresso cup). I spilled the coffee, though.  I assume it was because of the booze.
"Now look what you've done!"

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

SOPA Blackout

I decided to do the SOPA blackout thing.  I don't know all the details, and I probably should look it up, but I'll trust Wikipedia on this one.

I'm also not sure why I'm bothering given that, like, on average 0 people visit this site every day and no one would notice if this blog were shut down because it links to youtube videos or something. 

Oh well, whatever, nevermind.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Hello, It's Tea Again

I keep thinking that that Todd Rundgren song, "Hello It's Me", is actually "Hello, It's Me Again". I don't know why. I even checked the lyrics and nowhere in the song does he say "again".  Maybe I secretly think that he's been calling this chick up all the time to discuss whatever problem they're having -- which appears to be either that he's in denial about being in a relationship, or she thinks she needs to see other people and he's like, what?...I'm not sure.  It's probably some 1970s-open-relationship-shag-carpet problem.

Anyways.

I'm at home drinking peppermint tea, which means I'm under the weather. But I'm still working, dammit! I keep writing a rewriting this doc to the point where it's stopped making sense. But that might be the Tylenol speaking.

Everything tastes better in cute cups.
However, I am getting a chance to use the new Ritzenhoff My Lian Dieter Braun teacups Spousal Unit got me for Xmas. They don't appear to be available in Canada, so I'm going to assume they cost him a lot. He probably shouldn't have spent that much money on cups, even if they are The Cutest. And they are somewhat matchy with my Ketto Design mug, which has apparently been discontinued (things you find out when looking for a gift for someone). Today my mug held a cup of Starbucks Via Columbian, which is marginally better than Xmas Bleuch.



Sunday, January 15, 2012

The Ulterior Motives Behind My Croissants Purchase

I bought croissants for the first time in a while.  I was on my way home from the grocery store when I decided that I'd stop by the local pastry shop.  The pastries they make are OK, but their croissants are pretty damned tasty.
I used to not be able to get croissants on a Saturday.  They used to make a few in the morning and then let them run out.  Presumably this was because morons were running the place.  The front-of-house was staffed by a bunch of disinterested and dopey-looking private school girls and I assume the back-of-house was staffed by similarly disinterested people.  

But things changed recently.  Now there  are these eager young'uns at the counter who are somewhat above HS age.  They may confuse chocolate croissants with almond croissants, but at least they don't have a chit-chat about what Taylor wore yesterday to the mall while you stand there waiting for them to acknowledge your existence.  

Most importantly, I was able to secure four croissants, two chocolate croissants and two cheese danishes on a Saturday.  I also bought a caramel donut, which was a "new feature".  It was an impulse buy.  They had samples and a zillion of them on the counter, calling to me.  

Anyways.  I had the donut and half a chocolate croissant with espresso, made with my home Bialetti.  That was a fucking tasty donut!  The dough was soft, but not mushy and because it wasn't super-sweet, it countered the oozy sweet caramel insides.  It took a lot of willpower not to go back and buy a dozen of them.

Now, you might wonder how two adults and a small toddler can eat through all that flaky pastry.  Well, the answer is that I deliberately bought too many croissants so that they'll go stale and I can make Nigella's croissant pudding.   OK, I make a variation on it that doesn't involve cooking sugar (instead I just add maple syrup, because maple syrup is awesome and I live in Canada and I can get it all the time). But I'm looking forward to that in a day or two, once the croissants are nice'n'stale.  

Friday, January 13, 2012

Breakfast, Lunch and The Redemption of Silvia

I am going to admit something:  I don't care how much everyone says that oatmeal is filling and full of protein and complete and whatnot, but it doesn't fill me up.  I'm, like, hungry about ten minutes after I've eaten a big bowl of the stuff.  So this morning, with my oatmeal and OJ, I had scrambled eggs.  Hopefully the oatmeal's cholesterol-busting abilities negated the cholesterol from the eggs.
OK, oatmeal, mop up that cholesterol!
But whatever.  I wasn't hungry until lunch, which was a good thing because the snack closet was totally bare.  I'm talking all-the-Ritz-crackers-are-finished bare.  I'm talking people walking in my boss's office mid-meeting to eat the chocolates on her desk.  BARE!

A guy brought in a whole apple pie and it was gone in less than 5 minutes.  By the time the people who weren't in the breakroom got the email announcing the pie, it was gone.
Morning brew, water, lunch, snack and afternoon espresso.
For lunch I had leftover fig, mascarpone, parmegianno, prosciutto and honey pizza that I obviously didn't make myself.  I mean, who the fuck keeps mascarpone in their fridge?  And would you buy mascarpone just to make a pizza?  No. Oh, if you don't know what mascarpone is, it's this cream-cheesy Italian cheese that is probably as fatty as butter.  No amount of oatmeal could have undone the cholesterol in that pizza.  

I finished the meal with some crackers I had brought from home (in the paper plate) and an espresso I made using Silvia and the cheap-o Aiello coffee I bought at the grocery store next to the office.  Anyways, I have determined that the problem really is the Black Cat coffee because the cheap-o coffee made a really good espresso.  I even made one for the guy who used to sit in the cube next to me.   Yeah.  Desktop Espresso looked kinda lonely today.

Chartreuse Mug is up to something...

Have your been imbibing?

Chartreuse Mug has got that look again...that look that says she's up to something no good. What's she plotting?

I tells ya what she's plotting: she's plotting the ousting of the Starbucks VIA Xmas Bleuch.

This morning she held within her greeny-yellowness an incredibly weak long double espresso courtesy of Silvia and the Black Cat coffee.

Finally, Silvia and that coffee is good for something. And I, for one, welcome our new morning coffee overlord.

Death to Xmas Bleuch! Long live Silvia's weak long double espressos!

Long live Chartreuse Mug!

Monday, January 9, 2012

Coffee I Have NOT Drunk, or Silvia Sits Abandoned

Silvia, Silvia, Silvia.  You have alienated the whole office with your persnickityness.  You were so awesome at first.  You brought the office together in a quest to make the perfect espresso.  But then the engineers found that they couldn't make a perfect espresso with you.  Nothing worked.
     
Silvia, Rocky and Kleenexes for their tears.
As you know, engineers don't like to admit that they can't do something.  So instead of all of them saying, "Yeah, we don't know how to make a good coffee with this thing", they're saying "It's too much trouble" and "The coffee's too strong".  

And that's why Silvia is sitting unused in the break room.  Alone.  Unloved.

How Much Yoga Do I Have to Do to Burn Off My Lunch?

Do you remember The Raccoons? You know, that Canadian cartoon about a bunch of scrappy raccoons that prevented some evil aardvarks and their piggy minions from ruining their forest? Of course you do because I'm talking to myself here. I mean, I even remember that the theme song for The Raccoons was called Run With Us and was sung by a chick that I confused with Alanis (pre-Morissette). I also remember that The Raccoons debut was on some education kids show about fitness.

Of course, I also seem to remember that that guy from The Guess Who was somehow mixed up in all this, so it might not be totally accurate.

Anyways.

300 Calories?
The point is that on this fitness show, some old guy and a pig would demonstrate how many minutes of physical activity you'd have to do to burn off the calories in foods. Like you'd need to do half an hour of jogging to burn off a chocolate bar.

And full-fat yogurt, too!
This is salient because today, before lunch, I went to the gym. In a fit of post-New Year's resolution fanaticism, the gym posted the expected number of burnt calories per class. The yoga class I attended boasted 300 to 600 burnt calories. That probably took care of the VIA Xmas Bleuch, cheese string and Japanese rice crackers I had in the morning, but it was all negated by my lunch of leftover black bean and sausage soup with avocado I had after the class. I did, though, opt not to drink one of the millions of cans of Sprite currently sitting in the office fridge, so there's that.


Sunday, January 8, 2012

Fart Food


I remembered to take pictures of the black bean and sausage soup only after I washed the dishes. 

For once that the stupid soup turned out well -- and it was Spousal Unit who made it!  Dammit! -- I forgot to take pictures of the empty plates.  The soup was garnished with avocado cubes and everything.  
Soup is No Longer Served

I think the reason why the black bean soup came out so well was because of the pork fat in the sausage.  I think if that sausage hadn't been in it, Spousal Unit's soup would have tasted just as bland as my totally vegetarian version usually does.  But that's why they make Tabasco sauce.

 


À la recherche du pain perdu

In French, French toast is called "pain perdu" because it's made with old, stale bread (pain=bread, perdu=lost).  Spousal Unit and I are big fans of making French toast out of the stale bread hanging around the house.  Today we made French toast with some week-old sourdough bread.   
We use three eggs.  Many people will tell you to use fewer, but we find that three eggs for half a loaf works.  We also add maple syrup in the batter because a bad cook told me to do that once.

The bad cook in question was the original cook at the vegetarian place I used to frequent when I was in grad school.  She made these gawd-awful wraps and chickpea mushes that gave vegetarian food a bad name.  The only thing she made well was French toast.  One day I asked her the secret of her French toast and she said "maple syrup".  She put maple syrup in the batter.  That made the bread caramelize and gave it a woodsy-sweet taste.

She eventually left -- or was fired, I don't know.  She was replaced by this fantastic cook who turned the place around and totally made it happening.  He got rid of the wraps and added black bean burritos and hemp burgers and blueberry upside-down cake and brownies and then this local celebrity started hanging out there because he was in love with the waitress, but then she left to be a nanny somewhere and he stopped coming and then I graduated and the place was sold and it's probably totally different now.

Anyways.

Because of that first gawd-awful cook, I started adding maple syrup to my French toast batter and never looked back -- except for that time when I made Nigella Lawson's doughnut French toast, but that was because her boobs told me to.

Friday, January 6, 2012

Business Park Grocery Store Rotisserie Chicken

I didn't bring a lunch today.  At lunch, I asked the new guy in the cube next to me if he wanted to go grab lunch.  He said sure, but where.

Do you, fictitious reader, work in a business park?  If you do, you know that there are a zillion places to eat, but you have to drive there.  In other words, there is no wandering around and browsing the restaurants; you have to know where you're going when you get into that car.  And that's why me and the new guy in the cube next to me -- let's call him Al -- that's why Al and I spent the next 15 minutes naming all the places nearby and why we didn't want to go there.

We ended up at the grocery store.  We really wanted burgers, but the burger place is within walking distance of a large hardware company and it's always packed.  So we settled for rôtisserie chicken from the nearby grocery store.    It was not Gordon Ramsey's chicken.







The Return of the Xmas Bleuch

Dammit, Silvia and Rocky!  Because of the two of you I've had to go back to drinking Starbucks VIA Xmas Bleuch in the morning!  Because of you, I needed to down it with a stupid sesame-poppy-seed cracker and water.  But this morning the water cooler was out of order, so I had to drink the tap water and THAT tastes like water with dissolved metal in it.  Fie upon you Rocky and Silvia!  Fie!
Chartreuse Mug looks pretty pissed off.
I tried, Silvia&Rocky.  I tried.  I even looked up stupid online videos about how to use you.  You know what I found out?  I found out that you, Rocky, never actually dispense the right amount of coffee.   So I tried eyeballing the amount of coffee that was going into Silvia.  But no dice.  NO DICE.  The coffee was still weak and revolting. 

I surmised that possibly it was the coffee.  But the coffee is fancy-ass Black Cat Classic Espresso coffee!  It's supposed to be The Shit

Being the good little former-scientist I am, I decided to just try my own coffee in the Silvia.  You may remember (if you exist) that my coffee had made the office a little insane when I made it initially.  I expected the same effect this time.

Alas, this was not the case.  I made a double with my coffee and it was OK.  It was way, way better than with the fancy-ass Black Cat coffee, but it still wasn't the same syrupy-strong cup that the Silvia made initially.  Nor was it as tasty as the coffee Desktop Espresso made. 

Obviously something has happened to Silvia in the past two weeks that I've been away.  And obviously Black Cat Espresso is not The Shit.

As such, Silvia&Rocky's Evil Empire has been defeated by the scrappy Desktop Espresso Team.  For now, at least.

Which One's Han Solo?

Thursday, January 5, 2012

A Grainy Day: Rice Crackers and Wheat Soup

The office was closed between Xmas and New Year, so it it's only been open since Tuesday.  When I returned to the office today (Thursday), I didn't expect much from the snack closet. I figured it hadn't even been stocked, especially since half the engineers were still on vacation.  But no, the snack closet was stocked -- with the bizarrest food ever!  

There were weird ranch-flavoured baguette bites, the stupid sesame-poppy-seed crackers, Costco brand granola bars, two-bite cinnamon rolls (!) and Japanese-style rice crackers.  Oh, and in the fridge there was some kind of onion dip that Linda, The Office Manager and God of the Snack Closet, said was the bestest thing ever.  I'm sure it tasted great, but it included such tasty ingredients as monosodium glutamate, so I stayed away from it even as she scooped some into Jim from QA's plate.   

Instead I ate the rice crackers and sesame-poppy-seed crackers.  What's left here are the nori-covered crackers that I hate.  Nori tastes like dead fish.

For lunch I had leftover wheat and lentil soup.  It was from a package.  I thought I was buying red lentil and barley soup.  Instead it was wheat.  Whatever.  It was edible.  
Not Barley Red Lentil Soup



Desktop Espresso To The Rescue!

I returned to the office today and found that (1) the Rocky Doser/Grinder and fancy-ass coffee had arrived and that (2) no one was making espressos with the Silvia.

Bad Silvia! Bad!
I figured that, you know, I'd give the old girl a whirl.  I tried 5 times to make an espresso.  FIVE TIMES!  And each time, it sucked.  I blame the Rocky Doser as well as Silvia.  The doser never put out the right amount of coffee.  Ever.  And Silvia?  Even with the right amount of coffee and the right tamping of the stupid coffee, it made a shitty coffee.  It was cold.  It had no crema.  It was bitter.  Maybe the coffee sucked.  I don't know what it was but by 2pm I had had enough!  It was time for Desktop Espresso to come to the rescue!

The Undisputed Champ!
I made some coffee with Desktop Espresso and it was tasty!  I gave some to the guy in the cube next to me (who is now in the cube down the aisle from me, thanks to a cube reshuffling) and he was very happy!  He hadn't had an espresso since Silvia had displaced Desktop Espresso as the coffee maker of choice.

By the end of the day, two more people had approached me about getting in on the Desktop Espresso coffee.  Take that, Silvia!  I knew that Desktop Espresso had nothing to fear!