Would you like a cucumber, oh wait, that's a zucchini

I did more training at work this week, but this time I got to do the cooking. It was fun, kind of terrifying when you look up and see a whole bunch of tickets hanging and you can't read the hand writing very well and you aren't sure how to make the orders. All things considered it went okay. None of the orders got messed up and everyone seemed happy and full when they left. Being a restraunt we really can't ask for more. Just happy costumers and really good food.

The most difficult part was not getting pickle juice all over the sandwiches. We use a lettuce leaf, an orange slice and a pickle as a garnish. It looks good, tastes good and has a bad habit of getting pickle juice all over the plate and coincidentally the sandwiches we put on the plate.

I guess this might have been more amusing if I'd already posted the stories about the espresso machine. That just means you get to anticipate the awesomeness. Hopefully that will get done sometime this week... I see you judging me. And I'd have to agree. Probably not going to happen.

Coming soon. Why adding avocado to a panini can make a mess.

Mishi 0, weird rashy thing 1

Mkay. So a couple of days ago a reddish looking sort of rash appeared on the back of my hands. It's very odd, it doesn't really hurt or itch. At least not noticeably more than the rest of my skin. But it really freaks me out. It wasn't raised, but now it is. To combat this situation I have decided to make pepper jack grilled cheese. Just kidding, well I am making that but not because of the weird rashy thing.

It's turned into a competition of sorts. I put a different antibiotic cream on each hand, to see which one would clear it up. After about four hours the clear winner was the Melaleuca stuff, I am not really sure what it is. The package says for ... I can't remember but rashes and cuts were on the list. The other stuff I used was Neosporin. It let me down. Granted I have no idea what Neosporin is actually supposed to be used for, I know it's used on cuts but that's about it.

NeosporinNoooooooooo!

Either way I am hoping the stupid thing clears up before I have to go back to work. We shall see.

To add horribleness to hurt (although it doesn't) I burnt my grilled cheese. Cooking fail. Not that I should be surprised by that. Trying to blog and cook at the same time is not a good idea. Just saying.

Silly Rabbit

Anyone who does not know how that ends must have had a sad, sad childhood. Either that or they have Alzheimers, which would really suck.

Trix are for kids.

 I bought a box of Trix cereal last week and was very disappointed. They stopped making the little cereal pieces in the shape of fruit. This is highly destressing because that was half the reason I loved the it as a child. They are now round swirly colorful balls that look a lot like Kix, only after someone threw up technicolor on them. It's a rather uncomfortable thought to have while eating breakfast.

Best cereal ever!

Does it make me a child because I eat Trix for breakfast? (please say yes and then tell me I can act like a child; play outside all summer and not have to work. It would be fantastic). I have to say that working full time blows. I don't understand how adults have to time to do anything. I get up go to work, come home take a shower and then pass out. It's not super productive. It's also kind of annoying because I was hired as part time and they keep giving me 40+ hours a week... that isn't part time. I would normally be down with more hours, but since I am trying to apply to grad school it makes it really difficult to get anything done.

Tomato soup on a new level

A level of epic nastiness.

A couple days ago I tried to make some homemade tomato soup. This idea mostly came about because we did not have any cans in the house and I am way to lazy to drive to the store and get some. I called a friend who is a really good cook and who also happened to have a can of tomato soup on hand. She read me the ingredients, all of which I had in my house. All I needed was tomato paste, water, sugar and salt. It's amazing how easy it is to mess up the proportions, making something delicious taste like monster bile.

Part of the problem was that I underestimated how much water would be needed to make the tomato paste palatable. That stuff is crazy thick. The soup would have turned out okay if I hadn't decided I wanted to add milk to it. After mixing all the other ingredients together I dumped in some milk. It didn't mix in well. The milk was still separated and the rest was gritty. Which is never a word you want as a description for tomato soup.

Thankfully the spices I dumped in made it taste pretty good, once you got past the gritty, protein shake texture. I forced some on my brother and he didn't think it was that bad, but the rest of the family refused to try it. Not that I blame them. If I ever get a craving for tomato soup I think I'll just go out and buy some.

Or maybe just try this. (photo)

The worst food ideas

It has been a very long time since I've had Cheetos so I remedied the problem by buying the knock off brand. It was a bad idea. The top part of the bag was burnt, the middle was delicious and the bottom ones were dripping in oil. Not even joking, I picked one up and oil dropped off the end, super nasty like. I am very unhappy with this latest food disaster. When I buy something I have a reasonable expectation for decency. It doesn't have to be great, but it shouldn't be nasty either.

At least when I am making food if it's bad I have no one to blame but myself. Food manufacturer's have entire departments just for R&D, along with sample testing and lots of other crap.

A couple of weeks ago I decided I wanted to see what happened if I cooked an egg inside of a pancake. The idea came from watching my brother eat fried eggs on top of his pancake. I wondered if I could just fry an egg inside instead of using a different skillet. Lazy is my middle name.

The first few times the yoke was not cooked, at all. It wasn't even a little solid. I can happily say that I am sincerely glad it was not me eating them. It took me several tries to get the combination of batter, egg and heat. Once I'd mastered cooking the egg fully without burning the pancake I tried one out for myself. It was pretty good, not all that exciting, but yummy.

On a completely unrelated note, here is a set of graphs that would have made my history teacher cry. Complements of xkcd.

Ninja Turtles

You scream, I scream, we all scream for Ice Cream!

Some time last summer... two summers ago? I bought an ice cream machine. And just this last week I actually used it. It didn't end up so great. The entire experience reminded me of the very first time I used my waffle maker... only with way less steam/smoke stuff.

Mummy dearest has several packages of ice cream mix stuff, it's all very fancy and there are like two instructions for use. Mix with 2 1/2 cups of whole milk and pour into machine. Somehow I managed to completely screw that up. Apparently it is freakishly difficult to follow orders in this house.

I asked mummy dearest if I could swap out the whole milk with 2% ... she told me to just use canned milk. And then she walked over and handed me a can of sweetened condensed milk. Not even close to the same thing. In all honesty I cannot deride her for her mistake because I have done the same thing twice before (I generally do that about once a year when making gravy, I will open the wrong can). If you have ever opened a can of sweetened condensed milk thinking it was canned milk it would probably have given you a scare. Sweetened condensed milk is viscous and an off white color ... it kind of looks like curdled canned milk.

Well I dump the entire can into the bottom of the ice cream machine, because my mother told me too, and she turns around and freaks out. So I pour about half of the stuff out and then dump in the rest of the package and some 2% milk. I popped on the top and turned the machine on.

About five minutes later it still looks the same. The mixture isn't mixing so I attempted to mix it with a spoon while it's still churning. This would be bad idea number three (#2 being the sweetened condensed milk, we will get to 1 in a moment). The spoon catches on the spinner thing and makes a really bad noise. At this point I decide it is better to just turn it off and mix it by hand (just enough for the stuff to actually be mixed in completely).

Ten minutes later and it still looks completely liquid. Nothing is starting to ice, it doesn't even feel that cold.

The instructions for the ice cream machine state that the bottom part (it's like a giant ice block that doubles as a churning bowl) should be completely frozen before attempting to make ice cream. This process usually takes over four hours. I'd had it in the freezer for maybe three hours (this would be mistake number 1).

Then my parents got all antsy because our home phone wasn't working... Turns out I had unplugged the phone in the kitchen when I plugged in my ice cream machine. The kitchen phone is the main phone system and if it is off no phones will work ... it was not my most brilliant moment.

All in all the mix is sitting in the fridge and the machine is in the freezer waiting to be completely frozen. I started this Thursday and I still don't have my ice cream.

praying to the porcelain god

This week kind of sucked. On Wednesday I woke up and found that I had eaten something that did not agree with me. At all.

This is a warning. The following story is rather detailed and disturbing (in a medical way).

Now that you have been warned I feel like I can explain exactly how crappy I was feeling. It was like something exploded in my stomach and it was going to find the fastest way out of my body. I woke up with the runs and spent the rest of the day hurling my guts into the toilet.

I hate vomiting. I have two very serious issues with expelling my guts via my mouth. 1. I already ate it, I don't want to have to taste it again. And 2. It goes against the natural rhythm of life. It's supposed to go down. Not come back up.

Plus when you throw up it causes all sorts of nasty side effects. Like shaking and chills and muscle fatigue. Which only makes sense, since your freaking body just made a herculean effort by sending stuff up the track backwards. It's not fun. I hate it.

I ended up puking about five to six times in a six hour hour time frame. Every single time I vomited up more stuff (I am assuming it was food at some point ... but it didn't look like it). Which was better then just stomach bile, but still nasty. I did not think it was possible to have that much food in my stomach and not have it mostly digested.

I crashed Wednesday night woke up feeling better on Thursday, but honestly I am not entirely sure what happened to this week. I am feeling totally fine now, but I lost like half a week between sleeping and puking my guts up.

Happy days ... except not. At all.

Happy Turkey Day!

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. Mostly because it hasn't been Hallmarked to death. It's just a nice day off with the family. And lots, and lots, and lots of food. Somehow, even though I have lived through 22 Thanksgivings, I still manage to stuff myself to the point of sickness. The intense desire to vomit hits spontaneously, I will be in the middle of finishing off my potatoes and WHAM I'll get smacked with nausea.

I wish the feeling would build gradually so I could have some warning that my stomach was approaching full capacity, but noo. I am just not that lucky.

I am also really bad about the whole "thankful" aspect of the holiday. There is delicious food sitting less than a foot away, why would I waste time talking about what I am thankful for when I could better spend that time cramming food down my face?

On a completely unrelated note. I want to smack myself. My sister has an Amazon Prime account, which allows up to four people to use the same account. Well, thanks to her, I have an Amazon Prime account now. Not that it does me any freaking good. Amazon Prime is only good because it comes with "free" two-day shipping. They do not do weekend deliveries, so when I order stuff on Thursday night I don't get it until Monday.

Tuesday I ordered some stuff, completely forgetting that Thursday was considered a holiday.

Now I wont be able to see what happens in the second season of Whitecollar until Monday. (I have a wedding I am going to this weekend. I leave tomorrow morning around four a.m.)

You are allowed to feel sorry for the ungodly hour I am waking up to get to my best friends wedding. Pitying is allowed, so are presents.

Do you want my muffin top?

Once again I found myself in a very awkward situation while writing a letter at  Starbucks. The previous awkwardness can be found here.

It was a Sunday evening and the place was packed. I mean there were like four chairs available in the entire cafe, and three of those were at the bar. Which I feel is really weird. It makes since for a bar to have a bar, but a cafe having a bar is a little weird, at least I think it is.

Anyway. I choose to sit at the bar because it is the only place where I can sit without being slammed between two other people. A few minutes later a guy comes in and sits down, leaving one seat between us. This is normal, expected behavior for people. You don't sit next to strangers unless you absolutely have to, most of the time I choice to take my food to-go if there isn't breathing space. Some people do not understand the term "shower regularly" Or "ever" for that matter. Eww.

Um... where was I?

Oh yes. The awkward Starbucks encounter. Well the girls working, behind the bar (obviously) knew the guy and started talking with him. I, for the life of me, cannot help but join conversations so I ended up talking with them. We where discussing one of the girl's paintings, it was really good and thought it would be nice to give her some encouraging words. Artists always love getting compliments. Even if they say they hate it, secretly they love it.

Well the guy is eating a muffin. He sets it down and turns towards me. Then he says, "Do you want my muffin top, it's the best part?"

What the hell am I supposed to say to that? Seriously?

Sadly enough I ended up taking it because I was really hungry and on my way to the firing range and I didn't want to end up accidentally shooting someone because I was hungry.... worst excuse ever. That and it looked delicious. Kind of like this, but better.

Sprin cleaning... in the Fall?

My parents went to my dad's high school reunion thingy this weekend and my sister and I took the time to do some much needed cleaning. As in there are scaryly close to moldy things in the fridge, quick throw them away before mother thinks of some dastardly recipe to use nasty food in. It's really not as bad as all that. Most of the time my mother buys stuff and assumes it has been eaten before actually checking when she goes to buy more stuff.

Okay, so it really is that annoying. This house never has any staple food so it's difficult to cook. I can't even expound on how often I eat burritos. Not that there is anything wrong with burritos, but when that's what I had for lunch and supper and then lunch the next day, I don't really want to eat burritos again for supper.

And since my mother never wants to throw anything out my sister and I raid the pantry, fridge, freezer and deep freezer for food we feel as gone bad/will never be eaten. And then we throw it away *gasp*. But seriously it makes me super grumpy.

Also, never, ever, for any reason should you ever buy syrup that is sugar free. Ever. Do not do it. This is for your own good.

Mkay. On to the funniest song I think I've ever heard. It's "I will find you" by Clannad. Yes it is as creepy as the title implies. Mostly I just thought this would be a great song for my BFF who is getting married. Do it. Play this song at your wedding, it would be hilarious.

Another creeptastic choice for wedding songs is the other stalker song, "Every breath you take" by Sting and the Police... I think. I am not really sure, Google was a tad not helpful in this matter.

And that is my creepy stalker song quota for the year. Seriously disturbing stuff there. But really funny. I can' help but laugh hysterically the entire time the song is playing. Especially the song by Clannad.

Seasoning fail

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. -Mark Twain

The last few days have been evil because I am waking up around 6:30 a.m. and not being able to fall back asleep. Which means I spend the rest of the day in mildly caffeinated stupor of "hmmm ... Did you say something?"

I decided last night that I wanted to make sweet potatoes. This has ended badly on several occasions. I do not believe this to be one of them. Although the seasonings were a little off.

I dumped in way to much cinnamon (the bottle is not conducive to shaking out small amounts), and then only a little bit of cumin, turmeric, and curry powder. Then I cut up a garlic clove and dumped that in with some salt.

Once again I put in to much water and got water logged sweet potatoes. Still the weirdest thing ever. But they smelled amazing.

Epic post part one

So, it has finally arrived. But not really.

Thanksgiving break was pretty epic. I managed to not only get my finger sliced open by Biter(my renaming of the family dog) but I also broke a toe and rolled my ankle(on a flat surface, I was walking along and then Bam, I am on the kitchen floor with a borderline sprained ankle).

I really wanted to make sweet potato curry ... but that didn't happen. I did get in trouble for making egg gravey with cumin, at first I thought it was because my sister didn't like the taste(true) but she was only mad because I use up all her cumin... oops. My brother really liked it, so I am considering it a win.

A few pieces of advices for people who never consider life, because otherwise they would not need it.

Dogs bite. Unless they are trained, puppies do not magically train themselves.

No matter how hard headed you are, a hard back book is harder. I would not suggest putting one one your pillow, when you go to bed you will have forgotten about it and it will hurt.

When offered the choice between a couch (not spelled coach) and a bed. Take the freaking bed. Even if the bed is in a moter home that could potential freeze at night. And anything is better than sleeping the in back seat of a car. Seatbelt buckles should die.

I have other stories about break (paint fumes) some of them are funny (the dog) some of them are awkward (eyeballs) some make me look like a terrible person (My poor editor in chief, You are awesome!) but I am to lazy to tell those now. What? I have to safe something for epic post 2.

Cooking Fiend

I love Barnes & Noble. Love it!

I just got three new cookbooks for super cheap. Ubber excited. Why?

Because I now have a curry cookbook that has recipes for curry powder, so I will never again have to buy curry powder in a can! Although I still probably will. I will be documenting all of my adventures.

P.S. I will still be doing my epic post. It will be awhile though. Life caught up to me and it is not willing to let go.

Revenge of the Slow Cooker

More like, My revenge on the slow cooker! My Previous attempt at cooking sweet potatoes was a small disaster. This time I prevailed. Not only were the potatoes edible, they tasted pretty good. I ended up preparing them the same way, but instead of filling the slow cooker with water I only put a dab of water in the bottom and let them cook all night. Most delicious sweet potatoes ever.

Cheese paste stuff

I was starving and wanted comfort food, and instead of macaroni I wanted crackers and cream cheese. Well the little corner story didn't have cream cheese. But they did have Joan of Arc: Brie, Soft Ripened Cheese, Double Creme.

Me, being the epitome of stupid, thought this was close enough to cream cheese to work... so not true. I should have realized from the epic failure of a box that it was going to end badly. It was a round box thing, it didn't close right from the get go and after opening it and taking out the plastic wrapped "goodness" it was definitely not going to close again.

Well the first few steps were odd I didn't think it was going all that bad. That was before I unwrapped the plastic covering the wheel of cheese. Under the wrapping was a weird white cardboardish surface. No tabs, to "cut here" lines. Just a solid white smoothish surface that resembled partially recycled paper. I pulled a little chunk off... there was soooo no way to peel that sucker off. One option down, I tried to pull more off and found that under the recycled cardboardish stuff was a hard chunk of cheese.

I am not a rocket scientist but even I realized that this particular substance was in no way shape of form a soft cheese. There was the distinct possibility of soft cheese under all of the protective cardboardiness hard stuff. I know this because the middle was squishy. Not squishy in the "rotten nastiness" sort of way, it was squishy in the "delectable fillings in a French pastry" sort of way.

Eventually after much sitting and staring and avoiding homework I decided the best way to get to the much anticipated smooth cheesyness was brute force. I was gonna tear that package open and show the bitch that designed the stupid contraption how a college student deals with things that piss them off late at night when they are hungry, angry and needing to simultaneously sleep and work.

It work. Broke in half like a charm. It was the darnedest thing. I finally had the cheese I wanted to spread on the crackers.

And it was fucking nasty. I was expecting smooth delicious fattening artery-clogging cream cheese. What I got was brie, which is not bad, it's just not cream cheese and should never be confused as such. I will never make that mistake again. Hopefully.

Jokes and sweet potatoes

Three sweet potatoes/yams have been sitting on my desk for almost a month. I have been meaning to go over my friends apartment and bake them, but I never have time. One of my friends told me that if I stuck them in a slow cooker with some water, they would be edible. My sister also agreed with this assessment, so began the perilous journey of sweet potato soup.

I skinned the first sweet potato and it was the weirdest thing ever. It looked like a giant orange rock. No joke. I thought I had found some mystic stone that would imbue my slow cooker to always make great soup, but alas no, that definitely did not happen. After cutting up the first naked sweet potato I realized that only one would fit in my itty-bitty teeny-weeny white-ceramic pretty. Okay... that was stupid. But yeah, the one sweet potato filled up the entire slow cooker.

I wasn't sure how much water to put in, and so I filled the slow cooker almost to the top, so all the slices where touching water, if not submerged completely. Did I already mention how small the slow cooker is? Yeah it's tiny. About a third the size of a normal slow cooker. It is a one person serving size. Unless it comes to sweet potatoes, than it's not.

Supposedly it takes around seven hours to cook sweet potatoes... that is unless you put to much water in the slow cooker. Than it only takes about two hours, and you get water tasting sweet potatoes. Weirdest thing I have eaten in long time.

With some salt and butter and mashed up (which was easy since the water-logged slices fell apart) it wasn't the worst thing I have ever tasted. It was just a weird consistency, it was not the same as when they are baked.

Anyway. On a completely unrelated note a friend sent me this link and I wanted to share it because it was so funny. For any one who has/or will participate in NaNoWriMo this should give you a smile.

nano wrimo

Enjoy the jokes at another's expense.

My crazy family

I went home last weekend to see my siblings, who I haven't seen since Christmas. At least we all haven't gotten together since Christmas ... a long, long time ago. It was back when I was in high school still. Not all of my sibs were there. One of them is still in India doing her thing. She should be back next Christmas though.

I ended up sleeping on a little foam pad on a hard wood floor, not comfortable. My sister is staying in my room until the basement gets finished. Not like that really matters because I am going to college out of state. I forgot that during the summer my dad works freaking early in the morning. He would be up everyday before six. That is a time I constitute as evil, unless I am winding down for the night. Mommy also decided it was time to can things. The kitchen was then always steamy and filled with gelatinous mixtures in cans.

Well glass jars. I never understood why it is called caning when the stuff is put in a glass jar. Shouldn't it be called jaring? I am going to coin this term.

She jared apricots and cherries, made apricot jam, blueberry jam, cherry jam, cherry and blueberry jam, blueberry syrup, and cherry syrup. It was a confusing day.

This week was also camp meeting. My parents camper sat up on the mountain all week while we ran around doing necessary things - Shopping! It was great. But camp meeting. It was great. Our camper really enjoyed sitting up there that week without us staying in it. We have a great camper that can watch itself for a week. We did end go up on Saturday to have a family picnic. In the late afternoon, during a meeting, some people around the fire pit decided they wanted pop. Since we didn't have any a guy got up to go grab a cooler. He brought one over. It wasn't his. We didn't know whose it was. His reasoning "It's a church function so it's not stealing." We agreed with his logic.

He got the wrong one. It was filled with water and diet pop. Digging in the bottom produced a few drinkable beverages. He then had to run it back to the camp ground he had borrowed it from since the meeting was getting out.

My sister is going through a divorce and I found out this weekend how they had decided on who got what. The have a huge collection of movies so they divided them up into three piles: his, hers, ones they both want. The took the both pile and divided it by playing rock, paper, scissors. I was flabbergasted. Best. Idea. EVER!

If I ever became a judge working through a messy divorce case I would totally make them do rock, paper, scissors. At least for somethings.

The joys of beings broke

In high school I thought I understood what it felt like to be broke. I didn't, I did understand what it felt like to be locked in a mental institute though. I did not understand what being broke really meant until this last year. I took so many things for granted as a child, I really want to be back at that state economically, when I can take things for granted. Like clean clothes, it is expensive to wash clothes. Or books, I love books, but they are fucking expensive. Toilet paper is something most people take for granted, (I have a mild paranoia of being stuck in a bathroom without toilet paper).

There are still things I should value more than I do, like education, but whatever. There is now one thing I will appreciate more, cooked food. It is so nice to be able to walk into a room that has already cooked food. It is also really nice to have normal food. I am going home for the end of this week, and I didn't want to have a bunch of food spoiling in my room when I was gone, so I didn't get any groceries this week (that and they are really expensive) so for lunch I had the pleasure of eating a peanut butter cheese sandwich. That was all I had in my room. It was gross. The only reason I tried it was because a friend had recommended it.

It didn't help that the bread was an everything bagel from Panera. Don't get me wrong, I love Panera, but the toppings were a bad idea. I think it would have been better had the cheese not been melted... it was just a gloppy mess that sort of glued my jaws together. Not pleasant.

I am looking forward to going home and having real food.