Archive for the ‘ Food ’ Category

This Actually Happened

Author: Erika

Dec 9

"We taste like chicken!"

I was on the phone with one of my favorite people last night, chatting merrily and cooking dinner when Wes walked through the door after taking the trashcans out to the curb.  I didn’t pay him much attention because of the multitasking already going on, but something caught my eye and I turned to behold something sitting in a bag on my dining room table.

Something….Pale.  And…Fleshy.  And…Oh my sweet cracker sandwiches, are those legs?!

Wes, noticing my regard, whispers, “It’s a rabbit.”

Fighting the urge to vomit (the legs, the twee little legs!) I tell my friend I’m going to have to call her back as there’s a dead bunny sitting on my table.  She takes the news admirably in stride, as she’s awesome like that.

I, on the other hand, can’t bear to look at the thing without my stomach twisting.  I hang up the phone and turn to Wes, asking why on Earth he has a dead rabbit.  He explains that our neighbor (you may remember him as the one I thought was a ghost) just killed the rabbit and wanted to give it to us as a gift.

Now, I’d already known that our neighbors raise rabbits for eating.  Shoot, they make their own beer and wine and grow veggies in their backyard.  They’re cool people.  I just suppose I wasn’t prepared to see a skinned, decapitated rabbit.  I guess I’m just one of those people who needs to prepare for that sort of thing.

It’s the uncanniest thing.  I don’t get squeamish about dead chickens and I handle raw beef and pork with nonchalance.

Bunnies are different, you guys.

So now the rabbit is floating in some brine in our fridge, and our neighbors are going to come over later tonight to help us eat it.  I’ve never eaten rabbit, but I assume it tastes like chicken.  What doesn’t taste like chicken, you know?

I’m just so sad, though.  I so badly wanted to be the kind of girl who can field dress a deer and behold a dead rabbit sitting on her table without batting an eye.  But that’s definitely not me.

I’m more the kind of girl who has to vacuum up spiders with the long extension hose in order to feel properly removed from the carnage.  The kind of person who, if taken deer hunting, would probably miss on purpose.  The kind of lady who feels bad when birds run into her windows and then wonders if that gives them a headache.

In short, I’d never survive on my own in the wild and thank goodness for grocery stores.

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Filed under: Food

Snow Day

Author: Erika

Nov 22

I can’t believe my life sometimes.  The house is quiet, this my first day of being a stay at home mom / wannabe novelist, and the snow is pouring down thick and fluffy outside my window while I recline on our couch and sip hot cocoa.  I’m fairly certain this qualifies me as the luckiest person I know.

This small respite comes at a perfect time.  We are approaching the end of NaNoWriMo (I’m sitting pretty at a little over 49,000 words) which has had me hopping all month, I quit my job and the last two weeks have been filled with last-minute projects and culling through resumes looking for my replacement, and we just hosted Thanksgiving dinner for my side of the family at our house last night.

It’s been a busy month.

But now a snow day.  Snow days always feel like a bit of a gift.  Perhaps that’s because they used to mean no school or work.  I don’t think that’s the only reason, though, because even Aidan seems extra mellow today, content to snuggle and read books and scoot around the floor.

As for Thanksgiving, it went really well.  It’s the first time I’ve ever personally been responsible for preparing the Thanksgiving meal, and hosting the holiday at my house felt like a rite of passage.  Wes and I forswore turkey in favor of making truly finger-licking-good ham, and I made green bean casserole and mashed potatoes.

In lieu of spending my morning swearing obscenities at my inept attempts at pie crust, we bought these really luscious pumpkin cakes from Whole Foods (a local natural foods market with a killer bakery) and took it easy.  My mother and her husband brought my step-dad’s famous Sweet Potato Pie (seriously SO GOOD) and my grandmother brought her equally famous Hot Cross Buns (they taste like the holidays).

It wasn’t a fancy affair.  We ate off pretty paper plates to cut down on dishes, and neither Wes nor I can really claim we slaved over the meal, but everyone enjoyed the food and there were no empty bellies at the end of the night.  I’d say that qualifies any Thanksgiving as a success.

So now I’m home with a sleeping baby, a couple open bottles of wine, a whole pumpkin cake, and about ten pounds of leftover ham.  If Wes comes home and finds me collapsed on the couch in a pile of pumpkin cake crumbs with a discarded ham hock and empty bottle of wine as a pillow, you guys will know why.

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Filed under: Food, NaNoWriMo

Up (or maybe down) A Creek

Author: Erika

Oct 20

My oven looks like this, but on the inside.

I miss my oven.  Lo, do I miss my oven.  It broke a month ago, and we’ve since had someone come out to diagnose the problem and recommend a course of action.  A course of action that requires the simple replacement of a part.

A part that no one in the universe has, aside from the direct manufacturer in China.

Wes’ brother, who is a contractor, ordered the part for us from his supplier.  The problem is, the supplier won’t get a shipment of these until the end of November.

All of this wouldn’t be an issue, except for the fact that we’re supposed to host Thanksgiving dinner for my side of the family here.  And they’ll be here well before that elusive part ever shows up.

How in Sam Hill am I going to cook Thanksgiving dinner without a fracking oven?!

We had a good menu planned, too.  A very oven-intensive menu.  I was going to look past the fact that we don’t even have room for all the people who were coming over, and instead just focus on making enough food to distract them from the lack of adequate seating.

Now, though.  Well, I do believe this is what most experts consider being up the creek without a paddle*.  I just keep looking at my oven, trying to turn it on in the futile hope that it will spontaneously decide to get over its malaise and start working again.

Alas, no dice.  The unexpected side effect, however, has been a dearth of baked goods spilling forth from my fruitful oven.  The beginning of fall is always my favorite time to bake, and we can usually expect to gain a few pounds in the month of October thanks to my pumpkin bread, peanut butter cookies, and general love of all things baked and sweet.

This year, though, we’ve been rather subdued in that area.  I’m craving a fresh pumpkin pie like no one’s business, but then again, when am I not craving pumpkin pie?

So that’s the state of affairs of my appliance.  Riveting stuff, I know.

*Wouldn’t it be a good thing to be up a creek without a paddle?  You only really need a paddle when you’re trying to go up-river, but if you’re already up the river, isn’t that kind of a bonus?  You can just float down the river with the current, right?  I guess you might need a paddle to steer, but who says you can’t just dangle a leg out the side of your boat/canoe/kayak to give you a shove in the right direction every one in awhile?**

**Maybe we should amend the saying to be “down the creek without a paddle, with a desperate need to go up the creek”.  It doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as nicely, but I’d venture to say the truth is worth a bit of verbal wrangling.***

***Unless the creek in question is s*** creek, in which case…Ewwww.  I don’t care if you do have a paddle, if you’re up or down s*** creek, I’d say something’s gone horribly wrong.

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The Party of a Decade

Author: Erika

Aug 2

For those of you who have gotten married, you know how, in the weeks leading up to your wedding, you plan and anticipate and dream and it feels like the day takes on the gravity of a small sun because it’s imbued with all the thoughts you heap onto it in the weeks and months beforehand?

And then the big day is upon you, and you keep telling yourself to slow down and savor the moments but it’s nigh impossible and before you know it you’re getting dressed and kissing friends and family members and walking down the aisle and then it’s mazel tov and cake and riding away into the sunset?  And you’re so tired you can barely keep your eyes open?  And then you wake up the next morning feeling like a tidal wave deposited you in bed the night before?

That’s kind of how I feel about Wesley’s birthday party last weekend.  On a much smaller scale than a wedding, but it did take a lot of planning and scheming, and it feels like it was over so quickly!  For however quickly it felt like it was over, though, I know Wes had an excellent time.

Wes means businessThere was beer (featuring custom beer labels printed by my awesome company, naturally).  All company pimp-age aside, the custom beer labels I had printed for Wes’ party were a lot of fun.  There were four labels, and each featured a Wes Fact, such as:

-Wes can kill a housefly using only a dishtowel…And his mind powers.
-Wes once faced off against Jimi Hendrix…Jimi Hendrix wept.
-Wes killed a dinosaur in hand-to-claw combat…And then carved it up for dinner.

I also had custom water bottle labels printed featuring Yoda and Malcolm Reynolds (from Firefly, for the uninitiated), and those were silly and fun.  At the very least, it gave unintroduced people at the party something to chat about!

Samurai Wes 1I also made sure Wes got to pulverize a pinata with a samurai sword.  He’d heard about a party where this was done (albeit the adults were fully trashed when it happened, thereby making it awesome and life-threatening) and declared it a fantastic idea, so I knew I had to arrange for it to happen at his party.

Sure, a few people might think it’s ridiculous for a full-grown 30 year old man to beat the crap out of a pinata with a sword, but those people are obviously not the kind of people who would understand Yoda water bottles either.  Needless to say, the pinata was felled and Wes felt like quite the conquering hero.

My friend Nicole took a picture of Wes holding the decapitated head of the dragon pinata and looking completely insane, so that’ll be fun to use for blackmail later.

What was really incredible to me, though, was the way all our family and friends helped make the day happen for Wes.  Throughout the day, I looked around and constantly saw someone grilling or cleaning up or setting up, and it made me feel so humbled and grateful to have so many people in my life who are willing to work hard on a Sunday afternoon to make my husband’s birthday the best day possible.

So that’s that.  Wes is 30, he won four games of volleyball, vanquished a dragon, and ate the world’s biggest cupcake:

The big cupcake 1

Game, set, match.  He’s officially been inducted into his 30′s, and who knows what could happen when the induction itself is so silly?  He met and married his wife, started and flourished at two careers, bought a home, bought three cars, and had his first child during his 20′s.  The bar’s been set pretty high, but as long as he doesn’t meet any other future wives in his 30′s I reckon they’ll be just as if not more awesome.

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Filed under: Blogging and Geekdom, Food, Just plain nonsense

Lightweight

Author: Erika

Jun 7

Every Saturday, I leave Aidan is Wesley’s care and escape for what I like to call “Erika Sanity Time”.  It’s a time for me to sit down, read a book, and relax without running the risk that a tiny little human will need me for anything for at least an hour.

I usually set up camp at a cozy Starbucks near my house, but a few weeks ago the weather was nice so I decided to enjoy a margarita out on the patio of a local Mexican restaurant.  I’ve enjoyed a few alcoholic beverages since Aidan was born, but Wes has, at my request, made them all pretty light.

This margarita was not light.  But I didn’t know that until it was too late.

There I am, murder mystery novel in one hand, empty margarita glass in the other, and I take stock.  I’m feeling nothing.  No buzz, not drunkity, nothing.

Curious, I figure they watered down the margarita or something so I order another one.  I figure, “Hey!  I’m relaxing, who knows when I’ll get to do this again, why not do it up right?”

Well, a quarter of the way through the second margarita the first one hits home.  And I am plastered.

Wes texts me to ask if I’m having fun and I can barely type back.  I self-correct my hundreds of little typos and assure him that not only am I drunkity, I’ve solved the murder mystery to boot.

Now I have a little bit of a problem.  I’m hammered, sitting in a public place, and, because I never really did any partying in my youth, I’m not really sure what to do about it.

So I start shoveling tortilla chips into my mouth like I’m a bulldozer operator on a Friday afternoon.  In between mouthfuls of tortilla chips, I pound glasses of water.  Over the next hour, I receive no less than three scornful glances from the waiters, who all watch me inhale the chips with something like disdain and disgust.  This doesn’t matter, though, because my intoxication level drops from drunkity to merely slap-happy.

I estimate that I’ll be safe to drive in another hour or so, so I gather my things, pay up, and hit the grocery store.  Where I discover something magical: Shopping is approximately 1000% more fun when you’re slightly buzzed.

The same annoying people were still there, but I just didn’t care.  I floated through the aisles, admiring the pretty displays and really taking the time to examine the different products on the shelves.  I smiled and made polite chit-chat with the clerks and cashiers I crossed paths with.

By the time I sobered up and climbed into my car, my grocery shopping was done and I couldn’t have been more relaxed.  Let this be two lessons to you:

  • Lesson the first: If you’ve recently been pregnant, you are a lightweight.  One margarita ought to do it, lady.
  • Lesson the second: If you find grocery shopping (or crowds {or the exorbitant price of food}) as stressful as I do, maybe go grocery shopping with a little buzz.  Or, conversely, if you run into a total grumpus at the store, try suggesting to them that they hit the bar before hitting you with their shopping cart again.

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Filed under: Food, Just plain nonsense
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