Taking a Day Off Does Wonders...

Sometimes, it's nice to take a day off from everything, even Mondays.

Today, I had a day off. It was a planned day off but it was a much needed vacation day and it put the week off to a lovely start.

I also took a day off from blogging. While I love writing this blog, sometimes I do debate giving it up just because it is a little bit self-indulgent and sometimes, I write crap. Then I remember that the reason I blog is so that I do, at least, get some writing time in each day which is something that, for a writer, is important to do.

My day off was because I knew I was going to have a busy weekend and I didn't want to rush back into reality straight away. I spent the weekend at my parents. It was the annual Citywide Garage Sale day in their town and, as has become our annual tradition, I went out and about with my sister and brother-in-law.

It was a very disappointing year as far as the sales went. All three of us came home with very little to show for our day spent traipsing from sale to sale. I don't know if it's because it's a bad economy and people are desperate to make a little money but much of the stuff was the sort of thing that really should have been put in the rubbish rather than sold. I know the old adage "someone's trash is someone else's treasure" usually is true but, in this case, it was really just...trash. For some reason, there were a rather large amount of people selling baggies full of hotel soaps and shampoo. That was a little...odd. I mean, sure I know they technically paid for them in the price of the hotel room but, really, those things are FREE. Thus, selling them at a yard sale is just a little bizarre and presumptuous.

There were also a lot of houses selling those "As Seen on TV" products that have one specific purpose and one purpose alone such as quesadilla makers, waffle cone makers and quick burger cookers. It's fun to see those because you know they were probably gifts that seemed like a good idea at the time but end up taking up a lot of space and being somewhat useless.

Even in spite of the poor show of worthy buyings, the day was fun and it was nice to spend time with my sister and meet her new puppy- a Brussels-griffon that slightly resembles a pug-faced alien.

The rest of my weekend was spent planning, prepping and cooking the Mother's Day dinner I was making for my parents.

It was a big task but, overall, I had a blast doing it and it turned out pretty well. It was a five course tasting menu as follows:

Amuse Bouche- crostini with Fourme d'Ambert*, shaved pear and toasted walnuts.

Appetizer- Grilled asparagus with prosciutto, parmesan crackers and lemon-garlic aoili.

Soup- Cream of zucchini with gorgonzola

Entree- Salt roasted black grouper with fresh herbs (mum) or pan seared Kobe sirloin (dad) server with roasted fingerling potatoes and pea puree.

Dessert- Chocolate eclairs with fresh cream and an assortment of European cookies.

There were also two wines and dessert aperitif.

It was a fun menu to plan and make. I wanted my parents to have a meal that they'd feel like was a treat. Overall, it was all about the timing and making sure everything was prepped and ready to go.

I think the meal was a success. My dad managed to eat two bowls of the soup and three eclairs in addition to the other courses. Mum seemed to like it and it made me feel like a real cook. The hardest part was making sure that when one course was being served, the next was being "fired" (to use a chef term (thanks, Tom Colicchio and Top Chef)!). That way, by the time the previous course was finished, the next was cooked, still warm and plated.

It was a challenge. Having a soux chef would have been nice but, at the same time, it was fun to get to do it all myself and see a good result.

I will admit I was rather tired when the dishes were washed and we were sitting down watching "Game of Thrones." It was a good tired though, one that made me feel like I accomplished something.

It was also for that reason that I'd already planned to take today off. I didn't want to have to cook and drive home to make it back to work and I wanted to have some time to just hang out with my parents and relax.

That mostly happened. With the exception of Rory having eaten something that disagreed with her that resulted in some rather vigourous vomiting, it was a nice day. I suspect she had a drink from my parents pond. Not pleasant to see or have to clean up. She's ok now.

We're back home after a nice day. The grass is mowed and I'm actually sitting outside writing this since it's actually not raining and is a lovely sunny evening.

In short, it's been a good Monday. I don't say that very often so I'm glad to say it when it does happen. Tomorrow, it'll be back to work and the daily grind but, for now, I have a few more hours to enjoy a day off.

I'd say that there are far worse things in life!

Happy Tuesday and, as always, thanks for reading.

*Fourme d'Ambert is a delicious, creamy French blue cheese that is my new favourite even if it is a wee bit stinky.

Potlucks and Rain....

It's turned into the type of evening where you just want to curl up inside, watching the rain fall heavily outside while your air conditioner fights the mugginess outside.

All day, it's been threatening us with a storm, coming over cloudy and blocking out the hot sun. It passed over all day. I got home from work and faced the reality that I really, really needed to mow my lawn. Just as I was getting the mower out, I noticed the sky was threatening a storm, once again. It's amazing how one side of the sky can be blue with puffy white clouds and the other side can be grey and ominous.

I managed to get my back lawn mowed with only a few tiny raindrops. The rain stopped and I went to the front lawn. It started to rain just enough to leave dobbles on my t-shirt but not enough to actually make anything wet.

Then, as I came inside to shower after getting all hot, sweaty and grass-covered, it started to really rain. It's been raining heavily on and off since then and it's the type of rain that makes you glad to be indoors.

Still, the rain held off for the barbecue at work which was...good?

I say that somewhat fasciously because they ended up setting up all the food in our kitchen/break room. This is on the second floor. They had the grill downstairs in our parking lot where there is a picnic table and carried the burgers and hot dogs upstairs for us to eat. Then we had to sit outside in the parking lot. There were plenty of chairs to sit. However, it was very, very hot and muggy and sitting there sweating while you eat is not the most pleasant experience.

The barbecue ended up being shorter than any I remember. The food was...interesting. It seems that I am a little out of sync with my coworkers as far as cooking goes. I made my pesto with a Mario Batali recipe and my zucchini salad from Giada de Laurentis. The caprese was just me knowing what makes up a caprese salad and putting it together. It seems that the cook du jour in the office is Paula Deen.

Now, I have nothing against Ms. Deen. I find her immensely likeable. She's a sweet, funny, blunt southern lady who loves to cook. She uses a lot of butter. I mean A LOT of butter. I've seen her cook and, well, I have to say, she's not for me though I'm sure, for her audience, she's perfect.

I once watched her make omelettes in a ziploc bag by putting a lot of beaten egg and a ton of meat and veggies in the bag and then boiling it. It came out looking like aeroplane food. Since then, I admit, I'm a wee bit dubious of her recipes.

Today, however, Paula Deen was all over the picnic in the desserts and the macaroni and cheese.

I love macaroni and cheese. I like the box kind but I like to 'gourmet' it up by putting in some herbs, adding some cheese to the top and then baking it in the oven. Ms. Deen uses sour cream in her mac and cheese.

I don't like sour cream. I've tried. It just does not please my palette very much.

Of course, I am not being a snob and saying the food was terrible because it was wasn't. Sure, I still have to get used to the idea of Strawberry Pretzel Cake which I think is strawberry pudding and/or jello, whipped cream and pretzels. It doesn't taste bad, it's just..weird. It's like something you'd see in a Quickfire Challenge on Top Chef when the contestents had a mystery box containing four unaligned ingredients and they have to make a dish.

I know, I know...Top Chef again. I can't help it. Tom Colicchio is still in my head.

No, the food wasn't bad. It was just a mishmash. That's the thing with potlucks. You never know what's going to show up. It was an interesting array today with only one crock pot- very rare for a midwestern potluck. More than anything, it made me feel like I stuck out like a sore thumb with my high falutin' Italian salad trio. I should have gone less Batali, more Paula Deen.On the plus side, at least I wasn't the only Food Network inspired cook. Also, the chicken pesto and the caprese went over well even if I wasn't terribly pleased with the marinaded zucchini. It wasn't my best dish and it would have put me at risk for elimination on Top Chef. Eek gads.

Still, at least I didn't attempt to make dessert.

Because we all know on Top Chef, when you make dessert, you most often end up going home.

Happy Wednesday!

Too Much TV on an Impressionable Mind

It's already Sunday evening. I hate that Sunday evenings signal the closing of the weekend. It's been a rather nice weekend too so I'm sorry to see it pass.

I think the puppies will be sad too. They really like weekends where we get to stay home instead of going to my parents' house. Of course, it doesn't mean that they've quite learned the concept of 'sleeping in' yet but we'll work on that. I actually did get to sleep in until 8 a.m. on Saturday although technically, since Rory woke me up at 6 a.m. to go out, it wasn't continuous sleep. Today, she woke me up at 7 a.m. and there was no going back to bed.

On early mornings, I tend to be rather productive. I just think I need to train myself to go to bed earlier so it's a little easy to get up and be productive. Since I had a friend staying over last night, I got up and made the batter for crepes. It's sort of my 'thing'. Being a singleton Monkeypants is mostly fun but I do occasionally wish I had someone to cook for on a regular basis. Thus, I tend to like to cook for guests because I get to use my kitchen gadgets. I got a handy immersion whisk at a yard sale last week so I got to use that for the crepe batter. It's a fabulous device and it takes out all the lumps.

Since I had a guest in town, it meant a trip to Jungle Jim's. Because my friends tend to read this blog, they're generally curious about this grocery store which has me so enamoured. I like to give tours. I think Jungle Jims actually does official tours but I think mine isn't so bad. I think I'm quite informative and I offer the added bonus of being able to explain what odd-looking food items are. Thanks to the Food Network, I have become quite well-versed in weird ingredients.

I have learned that the Food Network has also made me into a bit of a culinary snob. I don't mean that I have high falutin' tastes. I mean that I tend to drop culinary terms into everyday explanation and not even realizing I'm doing it. For example, my friend asked me about making soup so I started to talk about the mirepoix. Naturally, she was, like, "uh, mirror-what?" Then she was looking around my kitchen and found my prep bowls so she asked what they were for. So I explained mise-en-place to her. The thing is, I don't actually mean to sound like a pretentious want-to-be-chef. I just watch far too many cooking shows. Worse than that, I watch the competitive reality cooking shows like Top Chef and The Next Food Network Star in which the contestants are young bucks who are all trying to out-chef each other. They make things like coulis and sabayon. They have fancy cooking technique terns like brunoise .

I am impressionable. I'm also obsessive. When I'm fascinated by something, I tend to absorb like a sponge. I can't actually do the things I'm learning about, necessarily but I like to know what they mean. It's annoying, even to myself.

Once upon a time, I was very anti-reality programming. I used to think it took jobs away from writers because they didn't need writers on these shows. Now, thanks to the slippery slope that was begat from watching Iron Chef America, I have fallen prey to the lure of competition, particularly that in the kitchen. Curses.

Sadly, my knowledge won't get me very far in my real life. Working at a software company puts a damper on the need for fancy cooking knowledge. It does help at Jungle Jim's when I'm browsing. I discovered that they have duck confit there. I'm always seeing that on Top Chef.

It's sad that TV has such an influence on me. However, I think, for the most part, those that I end up feeding don't particularly mind as it usually means they'll be eating something non-vile and, hopefully, tasty.

Still, for now, my flow of guests has come to a slow for a while. While I love having my friends stay, it will be nice to have some time to get some stuff done at home. For example, I have visions of turning my somewhat-unappealing family room into a Tuscan villa room. Of course, I'm not very good at decorating.

Maybe I should start watching more decorating shows.

Happy Monday!

Therapeutic Weekends...

I can't believe the weekend has slipped by already. As always, it went by so fast, it seems like it was just Friday. Nevertheless, it's another Sunday evening- albeit a slightly chilly one- and it's almost time to settle down for the night before having to get up again for work tomorrow.

As I said, it's a cool night out there. When I drove to my parent's house on Friday night, it was 83 degrees, windy and stormy. By Saturday morning, it had cooled down to 45 degrees and it was a bit of a shock to the system. The wind had changed direction and blew cold instead of sultry, humid air.

Nevertheless, even with cool, windy weather, it was a lovely weekend. I had originally planned on taking my parents out to eat in celebration of Mother's Day. The problem is that now that I have learned to cook somewhat, I have this horrible habit of looking at a restaurant menu and being slightly outraged at how much they charge vs. how much it would actually cost to make. In addition, my parents live in a small town outside of Fort Wayne, Indiana. The only restaurants in their town are fast food or down-homey type of places. There is a Mexican restaurant but that hardly seemed like the place to take them for a really nice dinner. So, we would have had to drive to Fort Wayne which generally takes at least 45 minutes each direction to get there. If you're driving that far, you have to watch it if you want to drink wine. All in all, it just ended up seeming like it would be a nice idea to cook for them. Naturally, I made sure they wanted me to cook for them because there's nothing worse than offering and making someone feel like they HAVE to say yes.

But yes they said and so I attempted to make them the type of fancy meal we would have got if we'd have gone to one of the finer restaurants in Fort Wayne. It was also a lot of fun to cook. I find cooking slightly therapeutic these days and after an absolutely horrible day in the office on Friday, I was ready for some food-therapy.

I ended making four courses-
1.) Stuffed mushrooms with blue cheese and herbs
2) Pea soup with mint
3) Salmon with rosemary, baked in a salt crust with roasted baby red potatoes and sauteed green beans with garlic.
4) Tiramisu.

There was also wine because I tend to think wine goes rather well with food. Actually, I tend to think wine goes rather well with everything.

I'm pretty sure the meal turned out quite well although I did learn that if I'm going to serve mass amounts of food, I should learn to make my portions smaller. We had to wait for dessert until we had enough room in our stomachs for it. Still, it was so much fun to come up with a menu, go shopping for ingredients and then prep and cook them. I felt like I was in my own version of Top Chef. Even though I'm not a chef. Also, I wouldn't be the top chef. But on that show, they get to make a menu and then go to Whole Foods to buy their ingredients. They have a much bigger budget on that show than I did but I think I still managed to do pretty well with the ingredients although not at Whole Foods because there is no Whole Foods near my parent's house.

It ended up being a fabulous way to spend my Saturday afternoon/evening. While I was cooking, I got to talk to my mum which is always lovely. The puppies played outside and inside and the day passed very quickly. I've found that secret to a successful meal is planning and preparation. If I make my menu then plot out the timeframe I need to get everything done when I need it done, it makes things go well. I know, I know, I believe this qualifies me to be an official nerd/geek, whatever your term of choice. Yet it does work and it works well.

After dinner, I provided entertainment in the form of the movie "Crazy Heart" which my dad had been wanting to see. It was a decent movie, very slow and I admit, it seemed like it was very similar to "The Wrestler" only instead of wrestling, there was country music. Jeff Bridges was good though so it wasn't the worst thing I could have rented. If I'd wanted the worst thing I could have rented, I would have asked my sister to pick. She has this uncanny ability to find the absolute worst movie in the Redbox machine and rent it. This is how we ended up watching "Bruno" on New Year's Eve and watching Sasha Baron Cohen's penis talk.

I'm just teasing her and she knows it. It's endearing that she has this ability. She gets it from our dad so it's not her fault. Also, the Redbox, while convenient and cheap, isn't exactly the best source of selection. Since they closed all of the movie rental places in my parent's town and all they have is the Redbox or Netflix, there's not much choice in the matter. While I think both methods of movie renting are convenient and easy, it's not the same as going to a video store and wandering around, reading the backs of DVD's, smelling the microwave popcorn even through it's cellophane wrapper and wondering if it would be bad to buy a large packet of Twizzlers to go with whatever you rent. Even though places like Blockbuster became outrageous with their rental prices, I still think there's nothing like going to a Blockbuster and having a wander around. You could check out the new releases or take a trip down memory lane by looking at the older movie selections they had. I mean, you can't rent classics like "Gremlins" or "Point Break" from the Redbox.

All in all, it's been a very nice weekend. The puppies and I are home now, ready to sit down for the evening and start to wind things down. I'm hoping this week in the office is going to be better but given our office politics, I'm not holding my breath. I'll try to make the most of it and keep reminding myself that my life is not my job.

And, if not, there's another weekend only five days away.

Happy Monday!

The Rediscovered Joy of Cooking...

I haven't talked about cooking for a while. Mostly, I think I've been waffling on about Spring and puppies and Dog Whisperers. I apologize if I get tedious sometimes. My life is a little....routine at the moment in order to train the puppies so pretty much, those three topics are the things that are most prominant in my life.

I have managed to cook though. It took me a little while with the puppies. They don't quite get the concept of cooking. At first, they hid from the clanging of my pots, the chop of the knife and the beating of the meat. I have a nifty Mario Batali meat tenderizer with which it is remarkably fun to hit pieces of meat. It's also quite therapeutic.

Nowadays, the puppies tend to sit in the doorway while I cook. I've been slowly getting back up to speed and actually cooking proper meals instead of fast, easy stuff. Tonight, for example, I made Asparagus all Milanese as an appetizer (thanks, Mario!) and balsamic glazed cipollini onions (thanks, Jungle Jim's) with Swedish potato sausage for a main course (thanks, Sweden!).

It turned out delicious and it put me back in the mood to cook. It's not that I haven't felt like cooking but sometimes, you get to the point where it seems like a fair amount of effort to chop, slice and dice and you find ways to make dinners without that.

It also helped that I managed to get some great deals on some Mario Batali cookware this weekend, thanks to an invitation-only boutique my friend invited me to join. Mostly, the boutiques are clothes and accessories but every now and again, they have a good one. When they had a Mario Batali boutique, I was, naturally, excited. Sadly, by the time I had a chance to log in and see what bargains were to be had, I was a little late for some of them. When they sell out on the site, they're sold out.

Still, I did get a rather nice saucepan and an apron and my mum got a nice 4 qt Dutch oven. I made her buy it in chianti red since Mario's signature colour, persimmon, is the accent in my kitchen and I'm a wee bit possesive.

So, combined with new cookware and good ingredients, the urge to cook has struck me. It also helps that I've been watching reruns of Top Chef: Masters on Bravo. Unlike the regular Top Chef, the Masters version is very...classy. Instead of young chefs all vying to be 'Top Chef', Masters focuses on well-established, quite well known chefs who, if they win, will receive a $100,000 donation to their charity of choice.

The difference between the regular version of the show and the Masters version is the attitudes. Whereas the regular version focuses on competition which tends to get quite mean and snarky, the Masters version focuses on skill; the chefs admire each other already and have nothing to prove other than some friendly competition. Except Michael Chiarello who tends to remind me of a used-car salesmen, the competitors are actually really respectful of each other and pleasant to watch.

And...they can really cook. I'm not huge on Mexican cuisine. I like it but it's not one of my favourites but, I tell you, Rick Bayless makes me want to eat Mexican food.

All in all, lately, I've been hungry again. I want to learn new things about food. Since Jungle Jim's has managed to supply me with almost everything I have wanted to try- except, perhaps, Chanterelle mushrooms- I've been spoiled. I have yet to try truffles but until I get much richer, I might have to wait on those.

So, with a fridge full of ingredients and a desire to try something new, who knows what I'll come up with tomorrow.

But that's half the fun.

Happy Tuesday!