yoga, books, movies, tv & too many crime procedurals – not necesarily in that order
Which for me just means my other job. I’m actually doing double duty tomorrow: 9-1 shift down the mountain, back to Pb to work 3-11(ish). In additional awesome work news, I won’t have a day off work until Christmas which means hella bonus cash for the holidays. With any luck we can buy our new front door before the new year!
Tonight’s dinner-cooking was inspired by my email inbox again. I did a variation on Meatloaf Wellington – made my usual meatloaf (1.5-2.0 lb ground beef, 1 pkg French onion soup mix, 2-3 T of A1, 1 egg, breadcrumbs) and after I cooked it for about 45 minutes, I drained the fat. Then I took a package of crescent rolls and unrolled them, layering them over the top (and slightly overhanging the sides) of the meatloaf and cooked another 15 minutes. It was FANTASTIC and will definitely be added to the regular line up. I didn’t make a gravy and, because I knew I’d be using the crescent rolls, I baked it in a small round casserole dish and angled the beef in away from the sides. It worked really well.
The other day I got an email about a southwest chicken bake using green chilis and tortillas. I sauteed diced chicken with the two shallots leftover from Thanksgiving and 1/4 of a red onion, salt, pepper and some cumin. I took 5 small cans of diced green chilis and put them in a bowl with 1 small jar of salsa, 1 can of kidney beans and about 1/2 c of chopped frozen spinach. Just before combining with the chili mixture, I added the remainder of a package of frozen corn. Stir everything together and then I put a tortilla on the bottom of a round casserole dish, filled it with the chicken mix, topped it with cheddar cheese, then continued layering. I topped it with a tortilla and cheddar cheese. Bake for 1 hour at 350. It made enough that I have dinner for tomorrow and leftovers for the weekend, plus a casserole that I put into the freezer for baking later.
Considering I won’t be home from 8am until almost midnight tomorrow, I’m feeling pretty good about my advanced prep skillz. Now I just have to clean the kitchen before I leave for work in the morning.
The old hard drive remains impervious to my efforts to access files. I’m searching for things which will let me at them but in the meantime the only thing I’m really MISSING is my holiday card list from last year. Damn and blast. I was quite proud of myself for having done that, too. This year I’ll upload it to Google docs and save myself this sort of aggravation in the future.
TV this week has been awesome. The Glee midseason finale was about as close to perfect as you get on television, plus a fantastic closing number. Criminal Minds cranked it up a notch by forcing a leadership decision. Also, the killers who want to pretend to date their victims still creep me out the most. The Mentalist was great tonight and it was nice to see the chemistry returning to normal. The odd insertion of a new Red John team didn’t really ever fit right for me but Jane is funny enough that I didn’t care.
I’m still plugging through East of Eden, though I’ve been distracted by work lately and not making as much progress. I’ll take it to job 1 tomorrow and get some pages in while it’s slow in the afternoon.
Mom is headed to Mexico this weekend. I hope she has a great trip – she deserves it. My next (last?) holiday task is to bundle up cookies and mail them out.
I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this before but I’m on a couple of email lists via the magazine website Real Simple. My favorites so far have been the recipes but it’s rare for me not to click through the emails now. They’ve done a good enough job with interesting (and relevant) content that it’s one of the only email newsletters I recommend.
The recipe email I got today was for Chicken Souvlaki. I don’t plan my meals a week at a time. It’s not that I’m a picky eater but sometimes you get a taste for something and then whatever you’d already planned doesn’t sound very good. Et cetera. What I do is stock staples regularly: chicken, ground beef, onions, potatoes, cilantro, parsley, lemons. I use coupons and sale papers, and keep an eye out for deals on additional things (crescent rolls in a can, boxed couscous, rice, yadda yadda). What that means is when I get an email like the Chicken Souvlaki one today, I can make a quick (and inexpensive) trip to the grocery to grab what I maybe don’t have on hand and then get cooking.
I first had souvlaki in Greece, on spring break during my semester in Italy. Martha Boomer and I sat in a tiny restaurant in the sun, only a couple of other people in the place, and I ate the most amazing Greek salad and souvlaki EVER. I’ve tried recreating it a dozen times but there must be something in the way they cooked the pork or how long they marinated it or something. While I’ve come CLOSE I’ve never managed to duplicate it.
This recipe was phenomenal. It used mostly things I had on hand – the only thing I was missing was dill so I didn’t bother running to the store. I substituted a pinch of dried cilantro and 1/4 teaspoon of lemon juice. I also used Greek yogurt rather than just plain yogurt. Not perfect tzadziki sauce but pretty darn good. Because we live at high altitude, our cooking time is a little different. I browned the chicken well on both sides, pulled it out of the pan and cut it into much smaller pieces, and then returned it to the pan with the lid on. It turned out perfectly. I also didn’t put olives in the tomato salad as neither Husband nor I are huge olive fans.
The chicken had GREAT flavor and my half-assed tzadziki is a keeper. Because there’s just two of us, we have extra tomato salad and tzadziki so I’ll make more chicken on Friday so Husband can eat the leftovers for dinner.
Speaking of Italy, I spent some time this afternoon framing photos of the area where I spent that semester overseas. I also had some great pics of Rome and Venice that I’m in the process of printing for the dining room.
Tomorrow is another day off so I’m going to pack up some cookies and (hopefully) finish with the pictures. My hard drive cover arrived today, too, so that means Dead Toshiba Surgery!
