Comfort food

It's too depressing; it rained _hard_ today, and still the leak in my roof is not yet fixed. Apparently the roofer will be here tomorrow. They did come, to check it out, and replaced the batteries in my CO alarm (though in their work slip, they said "CO2 alarm" ... I rather hope not), and nicely put back the chair I'd used to rip the damn thing from the wall.

I emptied about 1.5 cups of disgusting water from the cookie sheet I'd laid out to protect my closet. But that's a dreary picture. Instead, here is some homemade stock I'm heating up for my dinner. Freeze in those giant muffin tins (bought for only this purpose) and then you can pop them in zip-lock bags in approximately 1 cup servings!

May 20, 2008

Last night - another interruption. #$% #$%^ CO alarm. The batteries were low and it let out a piercing beep every 30 seconds and woke me up at half past midnight. Grr Arrrgh. I fiddled with it and it stopped beeping and went back to bed. 3 hours later it began again, and this time I ripped it's guts out. Grrr. Arrrggh

Looking forward to vacation!

May 18, 2008

This evening, as I was preparing for bed, it was raining, and I heard the unmistakable sound of a leaking roof; drops hitting the ceiling in my walk-in (well, theoretically) closet. So I called the apartment’s emergency number and waited around for them to call me back.

Turns out they don’t do roofs and I’ll have to wait for Monday, when they could get a roofer out.

Grrr. Arrrggghh

May 11, 2008

Mother’s Day weekend. I drove up to Boston for Mother’s day and gave her my Mother’s day present: 2 hours of my labor in her attic, helping her sort out things to keep, things to sell, and things to pitch. I also helped her drop off hazardous waste, books for charity, and garbage and recycling to the transfer station.

In one of the trunks in the attic, was a collection of plush animals that Kevin and I had through our childhood and teen years – one of which is shown in the picture above and I think will have a better home with a certain small someone. It’s handmade by Mrs. Suhrbier (her son Wayne was in my elementary school class) and she makes the most amazing creatures out of fabric which you can see here and here.

I named it “Curiosity” and have never been sure in my mind if it’s a boy or a girl.

May 6, 2008

Well, the Broad Street Race was miserable. Everyone else had fun; the fact that I did not was entirely my fault for:
• A) Not training properly
• B) Ignoring my memories of the previous Broad Street Races I’ve run and how much allergies slay me this time of year. And this year my allergies are worse than any previous year


I suppose my memories would be a little less negative if I hadn’t been struck by a migraine later that afternoon and spent the next 12 hours whimpering in misery and flirting with the idea of calling emergency services to relieve the agony.

The migraine is also my fault; my two known triggers are interrupted sleep and dehydration. With allergies, I haven’t been sleeping well, and the allergy medication I took before the race dries me out and I didn’t drink enough during the race. It’s been a good 5 years since I’ve made that mistake before – hopefully it will be even longer before I do again.

Anyway, I’ve recovered and used the lovely beets and beet greens I got at the Farmer’s market (I love, love, LOVE beet greens) to make a beet risotto that was fantastic, though not quite as good as the beet salad Nat and Tim introduced me to. This was a recipe I got from Gourmet via www.epicurious.com and the original recipe can be found at the link.


But the recipe I used was modified in the following ways:
• I roasted the beets ahead of time (peak allergy season, I am not running the risk of under-cooked beets)
• I took the advice of the other users of the recipe and added the greens late to minimize their cooking time
• I used Prima-donna* instead of Parmesan, as that’s the hard cheese that I had on hand.

I had not been anticipating at all how BRILLIANTLY the end result would be colored. Very Christmasy

*Prima Donna is a mild cow's milk cheese made in the style of a Dutch Gouda. As compared to a four- or six-year Gouda, Prima Donna has a distinctly softer, subtler flavor. It has an ivory rind with slight rose blush; bright, crunchy texture; and sweet, nutty flavor with a distinct caramel aftertaste. Pair Prima Donna with bigger reds such as Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, or Zinfandel.

May 3, 2008

Well, let us see how this whole blogging thing works out. I give it pretty good odds that there will be a few erratic entries, followed by a very brief period of religious entries, to be concluded with complete abandonment.
But I’ve been thinking about it for a while and might as well try it out – if Nat can do it, surely I can give it a stab!
I know that the blogs that I most enjoy reading are focused and topic defined; I am not so well focused – scattered is probably a more accurate description of my interests – so expect a shotgun approach to posts. Perhaps a focus will drop into view when I get comfortable.

I’m really racking up the reasons to abandon all interest, aren’t I?

Today was the opening day of the Collingswood Farmer’s Market. I have not been to a farmer’s market in New Jersey, and miss the Westwood and Santa Monica Farmer’s markets that I went to while in grad school, so I stopped by after picking up my bib for the Philadelphia Broad Street Run. (It’s a 10 mile run down Broad Street that draws a large crowd and would be a lot of fun, if it were not peak allergy season for me and on top of not sleeping well, I can’t breathe properly. I’m only running it this year because I shanghaied 5 other colleagues from work into doing it and feel I should show my support).

It’s a smaller Farmer’s market than I expected, but it’s still early in the season, and I got more than I needed. I picked up some oyster mushrooms, arugula, cilantro, and beets (with greens!!!). Since I’m running 10 miles tomorrow, I fried up a slice of bacon and sautéed the mushrooms and arugula and tossed it with some fresh pasta for dinner. Yum!