Monthly Archives: January 2012

Litwol’s Cooking Challenge Meal #3: Cheesy Artichoke and Spinach Tortellini

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So, if you hadn’t noticed I kinda fell off the bandwagon with cooking everyday. In fact, everyday might have been a bit ambitious when you’re faced with temptations like going out for brunch with your friends on Saturday and having yummy leftovers in your fridge that you want to eat instead of making something new. But the point is not giving up! Right? Right.

Tonight’s dish was Spinach-Artichoke Cheesy Tortellini which came out of Rachael Ray’s Express Lane Meals. It was pretty simple thing to make, though I wish I’d have chopped the onion rather than using the grater like she’s suggested because it came out being onion mush and I would have preferred bigger chunks honestly, and I wish I’d thought to chop the artichokes before I started cooking because it felt like a race against time and I should have added some more salt, but otherwise it went rather smoothly.

In terms of eating, I’m of mixed opinion. It was a LOT of spinach and well… I’m a vegetable eating novice. I made it about halfway through my dinner and my stomach said, “If you eat any more of that green stuff, I am so going to projectile vomit over your keyboard.”

So, I ended up picking my way around the spinach for about half of my dinner. It wasn’t that it wasn’t good… but apparently that’s a thing that happens if you’re not used to eating veggies (or at least that’s what Phil tells me).

Leftover wise, a ton of it. I have an entire serving of tortellini for tomorrow plus an extra service of sauce which my plan is pretty much to use as dipping sauce with chips over the next few days.

I’m not sure I’ll try this recipe again for awhile, but it wasn’t all bad either.

Sound Saturday

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The other day an old high school buddy of mine (Hi Matt!) asked on Facebook if I had any bands he should listen to, and well… of course I do! I always have bands that people should listen to.

I’m not so good about doing regular series of things… but I dub this (and any other Saturday that I’m in the mood for this) Sound Saturday! The day of the week that I share five songs that I’ve been digging and that you should listen to, too. Some are old. Some are new. But, I hope you like them.


(CD / MP3)

1. Mike Doughty – Huffer and the Cutter

This song really is the crowning jewel off of Yes and Also Yes. I’m pretty sure it’s the creepy strings that do it for me.


(CD / MP3)

2. Angus & Julia Stone – Draw Your Swords

This one’s from their album Down The Way. They’re a brother and sister duo hailing from Australia who make some of the most beautiful, emotional acoustic music. This song literally gives me chills when I listen to it.


(CD
/ MP3)

3. Katzenjammer – A Bar in Amsterdam

Super fun girl pop from Norway. If I still had a car, I’d totally blast them while going down the highway.


(CD / MP3)

4. Oingo Boingo – Just Another Day

James and I were having a conversation the other day that more people ought to be listening to Oingo Boingo. So you know, you ought to listen to Oingo Boingo. Danny Elfman’s the man.


(CD)

5. Queen – The Prophet’s Song

This is probably one of my favorite Queen songs… It’s just so striking and beautiful. Yeah. All hail Queen.

What are you listening to these days?

Litowl’s Cooking Challenge Day #2: Chili

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I spent most of my life hating chili. Or at least, thinking that I hate chili. I’m not really sure to be honest… and I think that’s the truth of most picky eaters that remain picky into adulthood. I think there’s a point where some of us just give up and stop trying new things and just sticking to what we know is safe because… you know.. it’s safe.

I just know that chili was something my mother made every so often and while I liked the smell of it, actually eating it was another matter all together. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I think nights like chili night were the the times when I usually ended up eating spaghetti instead as a kid.

I discovered that I might actually like chili when my friend Linda had made a batch of it before Christmas and sent me home with some… and I just couldn’t stop eating it. It was so good!

Now, chili was something that I thought was an all day ordeal until I was reading the recipe in the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook which gave instructions for both a 20 minute version and a cook it for eight hours version. I had been somewhat prepared to cook it for eight hours, but upon further investigation those directions were for the recipe doubled so I figured… ehh… what the fuck, if I can make it in 20 minutes, I should try that.

The edible results? Well, they were about what I expected. You most certainly can cook an edible chili in 20 minutes, however your peppers and beans aren’t the melt in your mouth consistency that you get from having cooked the chili for eight hours.

I went a little heavy on the green peppers… partly because I like green peppers and partly because I didn’t read the recipe very carefully, seemed to work out fine… and I probably would have opted to put a tad less chili pepper in next time. I do tend to like things spicy so I went for the maximum recommendation… It was a little much, but at least my sinuses are getting cleared out.

Oh and some queso on top? Perfecto.

And, on top of that… there’s leftovers which I can freeze and eat in the future! Woo!

Well, Wasn’t I Productive

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As I’m sure you’ve noticed by now (or perhaps you haven’t if you’re reading this by feed reader), I created a new theme for the blog. I wanted something recognizably New York-y, and I figured a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge looking back toward Manhattan taken from Brooklyn Bridge Park. Probably one of the more stunning photos I’ve taken.

The font is IM Fell Great Primer which can be found on Google Fonts. Hat tip to Ryan from This Must Be The Place, it’s the same font that she uses on her blog and I just fell in love with it and had to have.

Litwol’s Cooking Challenge Day #1: Linguine in Peanut Sauce

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One of the results of that last post was my friend litwol set forth a challenge to inspire me to actually you know… cook things.

His comment on my last post:

All right. I’ll bite (ha!). I throw a 2 week challenge at you. Get it done and I’ll cover big healthy food shopping sprint at the end of it :) .

rules:
* Daily blogging what you tried, what you accomplished, and challenges .
* At least one Daily custom made meal (and none of that microwavable stuff).
* [optional] Bonus points if you invite friends over for own cooked meal (Maybe starting second week, after you had some practice (: )

So, today’s day one.

Tonight’s dish was linguine in peanut sauce. I didn’t stray from my old standard of pasta, but I’d never actually made a peanut sauce before and I’m pretty sure the only time I’ve ever had a peanut sauce ever is at a Thai restaurant and considering that I love me some peanut butter, I figured it was a fair shot of me liking it.

The recipe came from the Better Homes & Gardens cookbook and combined peanut butter, chicken stock, soy sauce, lime juice, red pepper and garlic.

First of all, I was excited because for a person who doesn’t cook all that much, I have some pretty nifty kitchen gadgets and high end cookware. Since minced garlic was in the recipe, I got to pull out my awesome garlic mincer.

My camera nearly bought it three times in the process of making this meal, which means I need to stop trying to take pictures of every step and put the camera away, I’m sure… but I did get a really awesome shot of peanut butter.

The sauce was actually pretty dead simple to make. It didn’t take me any longer to make this dish than it would have to make spaghetti with sauce from a store bought jar, the only real difference was I wasn’t sitting down to surf the Internet while the pasta boiled because I was busy making the sauce.

And then the finished dish… well… in the pan, anyway.

I half wonder if it would have been better with natural peanut butter and I sorta wish I’d been paying attention to the recipe before I went shopping and noticed that it had said low sodium soy sauce, because in the end it did seem like the sauce was just a hair too salty… I also think next time I ought to make it with chicken and some veggies because truth be told, just peanut sauce and pasta is pretty damn boring, it could have certainly used some variety… but, baby steps. I’ll get to conquering cooking meat. Soon.

Tomorrow… chili.

How is the Neurotic Nikkiana Ever Going To Learn to Cook?

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I was well on my way to writing a blog post about how I hadn’t been blogging when I wandered into the kitchen and realized that I have no food. At least… no food that I can prepare without going out and getting more food. So, I sat down with a piece of paper and started making my grocery list… which is when the anxiety started flooding my chest.

The list of things that I’d come up with were all things that I knew I would eat and I have the knowledge to cook without fear.  Hot dogs, hamburgers, lunch meat, refried beans and spaghetti…. oh, and butter and milk so I can make the Kraft dinner that I have something like 8 boxes of.   Stuff that’s incredibly simple to make, but you know… probably isn’t considered a great diet if that’s all you eat.

One of the things that I’d told myself that I wanted to do in the new year was learn to cook, and that I was going to eat at home more than I go out.

Partly, it’s a financial reason.

I would say that I had a bit of a wake up call in terms of becoming a responsible adult in the past week. I’ve had a couple of close calls in the past few months with my bank account having a low balance, but I’ve generally at least had enough money to make a grocery store trip to ensure that I didn’t starve before some more money came my way. However, this time around, I hadn’t been paying close attention and my account dwindled embarrassing low… Low to the point where you’re digging around in your change box for nickles and dimes to get on the subway to get to and from work because you don’t want to touch the money in the bank for fear you might accidentally overdraw yourself. Low enough that going to the grocery store was not really an option, I had to eat the food I had.

When I went invetigating in my cupboard for my options, they were pretty limited. I had two cans of refried beans, a package of spaghetti, about five servings of spaghetti sauce left in a jar, a package of saltines, peanut butter and Marshmellow Fluff… oh and about two handfuls left of Cheerios. Everything else I had in the house required either milk or butter to prepare. I had neither.

I tried not to worry too much about it because I knew I’d be paid soon… but the check I was expecting didn’t come. When I inquired to the folks I’m currently employed by, we discovered that the reason I hadn’t recieved my check was because I’d transposed to digits of my house number in my address.

Oops.

I ended up getting paid on Monday, which of course… was a holiday, so I couldn’t cash the check till Tuesday, blah blah blah. So, I’m not poor anymore. I can afford groceries now. Get to the point, Nikki.

*deep breath*

The point is I realized the importance of keeping extra food in the house, and that my parents perhaps aren’t crazy for having enough food in the house to be prepared for a small apocalypse.

I probably wouldn’t have made it the entire week if Anna hadn’t fed me Cheerios and sausage on Monday and James hadn’t fed me hamburgers on Thursday and Sunday. (Thank you, guys, by the way.)

I also realized that I have spent an ungodly sum of money on eating out in the past year, largely because I want to eat better food than I know how to prepare on my own and I’d like to spend far less on food overall.

So, you know… it sort of stand to reason that I ought to learn how to cook.

The grocery list still stares at me, and it’s now been two hours since I started making it. I feel utterly lost about what to do next. I’ve thumbed through recipe books briefly, thinking maybe a recipe would jump out at me that I could buy ingredients for, but instead the anxiety gets more and more intense. I am paralyzed with fear over this cooking thing.

I thought maybe chili would be a good place to start until I realized there are literally five million bajillion recipes for chili and then realized that I just want to make chili that I know I’ll like and if there are that many different ways to make chili how do I know that’s the one I ought to make. HOW DO YOU MAKE THESE DECISIONS, PEOPLE!? WHAT IF I MAKE THE WRONG ONE!?! Supposing I do manage to pick a recipe and then I get home and then I’m too tired to cook and I then get too afraid to try something new and now I have all these vegetables that I’m too afraid to do anything with and then they rot? (Believe me, that happens pretty much every time I buy vegetables).

Do you see the level of neuroticism that goes into this whole “learning out to cook” adventure and I end up giving up because the anxiety level is just too stinking much for me to be able to cope with? How do I not make the excuses? How do I give up the fear? That’s one I haven’t quite figured out yet…

Music Review: Dare Dukes – Thugs and China Dolls

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There are really some connections made on this here Interwebz that when you start to follow the trail of how they were made in the first place, you just find yourself saying, “Well, damn, son… that’s abstract.”

Such is the case where I find Dare Dukes‘ new album “Thugs and China Dolls” in my hot little hand.

When Dare sent me a message on last.fm back at the beginning of November saying that I’d posted a song of his on my blog awhile back and wondered if I’d be interested in reviewing his upcoming album, I found myself scratching my head a little bit. Well, of course I want to review the album… but who is Dare Dukes? Certainly I would have remembered if I’d blogged a song of his… Right?

So, I did what any self-respecting nerd with a last.fm account would do… Check to see if I’d ever listened to this guy in the first place. And I had. Twice, in fact.  Which lead me to conclude that I most likely had listened to him on thesixtyone, an indie (mostly) Internet radio website which I listen to with stunning irregularity these days, but for awhile was quite enamored with…  and then I realized, that up until maybe about a month ago, all of my last.fm listening habits landed on my tumblr because up until like a month ago, I just had all of my feeds pointing there… so that’s probably how I had featured him without knowing. Crazy, eh?

So, at any rate… “Thugs and China Dolls” ended up in my mailbox for my listening pleasure.

The first thing that struck me as I was listening to the album was Dare’s voice. He’s got a unique one…  in that sort of way that I fear that some people might call initially grating, but trust me… it grows on you. Also, I couldn’t put my finger on it who he reminded me of for the longest time…  James had suggested Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse,  but I thought that was a stretch at best… I decided today he sounds much more like John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats.

Meet You at the Bus by Dare Dukes

Before I’d gotten my hands on the entire album, I’d been listening to the single, “Meet Me at The Bus” on pretty frequent repeat. The track boasts Thayer Sarrano (Of Montreal) on piano and the same horn section that was on TV on the Radio’s most recent album and some rather excellent harmony that you can’t help but find yourself singing along to.

However, I feel the gem of the album is the lovely yet melancholy “Lament of the Subway Rider” with it’s accordion and haunting strings. I absolutely adore the chorus…

I want a stereo lover
Broken like in a country song
We’ll help each other suffer
Pretty like a sing-a-long

Maybe it’s just that I’ve have a love like that.

Dare Dukes’ “Thugs and China Dolls” goes on sale January 16, 2012 on Bandcamp. For my fellow New Yorkers, he’ll be at Union Pool in Williamsburg on January 25th at 9pm. For tour dates elsewhere, check his schedule.

Lethargy Has Set In

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It would seem that I’m coming down with a cold or sinus infection or some sort of such illness.

For me, getting a cold almost always coincides with a deadline.  I don’t know why… it just seems to be the way it is. A project is about to be due and the next thing you know, I’m blowing snot rockets… so you know, it figures that the project I’ve been working on is due on Friday so even if I’m feeling like death warmed over, I’ve got to haul my ass into the office.  I don’t dare do a work from home day or else I’ll just spend the day passed out in bed and not actually do any work…  which is honestly what I’m going to want to do.

One of the things I hate about when you’re first getting sick is when that lethargy just hits you.

I mean, right this moment I’m not really all that sick… I have a headache and my left sinus seems to be a little clogged and it hurts a little when I swallow, but all things considered it’s not that bad. I feel under the weather, but I haven’t hit that blow out drag out sick point.

So, I feel conflicted about what I want to do with myself in this given moment… There’s the part of me that’s like, “You’re sick and you’re tired, you ought to put the computer down and go to bed,” and then there’s the other half of me that’s like, “You’re not that sick, it’s only 9:15, you should at least stay up until 11…  don’t abort your nightly routine just because of a little headache! Talk to some friends, read some blogs, watch some TV!”

I really should cave on that sleep bit…  It’d probably serve me better than sitting here writing a blog post about how I feel lethargic.

Mr. Pitt’s Socks, Progress

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IMG 3613Mr. Pitt’s Socks in Numma Numma The Usual, Red Bartlett Pear

So, my yarn bin is currently sitting in the middle of my bedroom floor. Admittedly, this is not a good place for my yarn bin because well… it’s the middle of my bedroom floor. I just haven’t gotten around to figuring out exactly where it’s home is because I feel like it’s original home…. my closet, ended up being a rather unsuitable place for it because… well… out of sight, out of mind… and if I want to spend more time knitting this year than I have in the past two, it makes much more sense for the yarn to be out where I can see it.

So, yeah… it’s still in the middle of the bedroom floor.

I mention it because every time I walk past it, I find myself kicking myself for starting this sock. I have so many beautiful yarns in my yarn bin that would make beautiful socks, and out of all of those beautiful yarns I decided to pick this one. Boring shades of brown…. and then to make it even more boring, I picked a pattern that’s knit three, purl one. Epicly boring boring boring.

But….  you know, I got it into my head that I should make a pair of men’s socks…  so I cast it on.  I”m not even sure why I’m knitting men’s socks.  Sure, I have male friends I could give them to when they’re done, but I don’t really have a man in mind for them… but I’m not worried, I don’t think these socks are going to be hopping off the needles at any sort of rapid rate, I’m sure I have at least until next Christmas to decide! Ha!

Holidays Over, Finally!

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I’ve been trying to write a holiday reflection post since sometime before Christmas and well, I sorta want to give up on it because this year the holidays were just hard and there’s that part of me that doesn’t want to talk about it.

It probably doesn’t really help that there were a bunch of things said and done in the past two weeks that fall into the Realm of the Unbloggable.

The holidays just didn’t feel like the holidays this year.

I didn’t go home at all because I didn’t have the money. I worked straight through the past two weeks.

I spent Christmas Eve with Linda and Brian and watched the Louis CK special for the millionth time (it just doesn’t get old).

I spent Christmas Day with James and we watched a bunch of standup comedy and had hot dogs with macaroni and cheese for dinner and then I gave him the gift of an epic anxiety attack which left me exhausted for the next 24 hours.

Whee!

The lovely Prof. Rowen (whom you can find contributing along with other fine folks on the ever wonderful blog Modern Mythology) came to visit for New Years weekend. We had some awesome Belgian food at Petite Abeille on Friday night, hung out with Anna on New Years Eve and went out for drinks and on New Years had a late lunch/early dinner at Chimu Express… Good times, great conversation… but man was I hungover on Sunday.

So, at least New Years was good.