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

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.

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.

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!"

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.

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.

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.