Sunny Weekends...

Sunshine does a lot for the mood and this weekend was full of it. As much as I adore snow, there are times when it's nice to see the sun. I think there's definitely something to that Seasonal Affective Disorder in which depression sets in during the winter months. Spending some time outdoors in the sunshine does wonders for the mood.

It was a little too cold to spend too much time outside but Rory, Sookie and I had a lovely time taking walks around the neighbourhood. We took two each day: One in the morning, one in the evening. I think the pups were pleased to get out. It was a little hard going at times. Even though the sun was slowly melting the snow and ice, there were patches that were a little hard for two little dachshunds and one unsteady human to maneuver. It's not really even snow anymore- it's just snow coloured ice, much like the stuff you see on snowcones.

Yet each time we walked, there was less ice and snow. The grass, flattened and soggy, is starting to show again. The pups seem to appreciate being able to walk on the grass, wet as it is, rather than have to trundle through the snow. I can't blame them- it has to be cold on the feet.

It's been a nice weekend overall. It's the first one I've had at home in quite a few weeks which is probably why I enjoyed it so much. I love going to my parents' because I love seeing them but there's something to be said to having time in your own home to do what you want.

In my case, I took advantage of the time to cook. I now have a fancy KitchenAid stand mixer with pasta roller so today, I spent the day making ravioli. It was relaxing and fun, especially when I put my iPod on my iHome speaker set and had fun dancing while I kneaded pasta dough, made filling and, finally, put it all together in the form of cheese ravioli and butternut squash ravioli.

I even made the ricotta myself. I've seen them do it a few times on the Food Network and Mario Batali kindly provides a recipe for it in one of his cookbooks. It was ridiculously easy and twice as tasty as the stuff you buy at the store. Tonight, for dinner, I'm going to have homemade ravioli with homemade ricotta filling topped with homemade marinara sauce. It's a nice feeling to know that I've accomplished something, even if it is only making food. To me, cooking and making things in the kitchen is relaxing. The only time it's not is when it involves baking becaue I don't find that particularly relaxing. It's ok when I have time but it doesn't help that my oven isn't the best and so baking isn't as easy as I'd like. I do like to bake at my parents' house because they have a nice oven. Also, my dad likes kitchen tools and gadgets and they have almost anything you could need for a good baking experience.

I'm trying to get my kitchen like that. I'm getting there. Yesterday, I bought a fish spatula from Williams Sonoma. My good friend Saz was kind enough to give me a gift card for my birthday so I took advantage of it yesterday. I'm very excited about my spatula. I think I mentioned in my blog a while ago that I thought I might use my gift card for this and it turned out, I did.

I don't know why things like fish spatulas make me happy. It's the same content feeling as having a day where all I have planned is to make ravioli, walk puppies and relax. I think maybe that's one of the reasons I've been feeling blue: I haven't had time to just relax at home for an entire weekend.

Now the weekend is drawing to a close. The sun has set and it's dark outside. I don't know what the weather is supposed to be like this week. I did hear a rumour that more snow is on the way. I don't mind. I never mind snow. It's just nice to separate bouts of it with a little sunshine.

Sometimes, we just need a little sunshine in your life. It chases the Pootle clouds and the January blues away.

Happy Monday!

Self-Enforced Snow Days...

This weekend, like most, has just flown by. We had a minor snowstorm on Friday night which left us with six inches of snow. It was the perfect weekend to stay inside.

The weekend started with some strange, indecisive weather. All day Friday it rained but the temperature fluctuated. At any given moment it changed from rain to freezing rain to sleet and to snow. By the time we left work on Friday night, it was mostly snow and it was coming down hard.

For me, this was a natural excuse to make a run to Jungle Jim's. I needed groceries and if the weather got bad, I wouldn't want to go out. Voila...easy solution.

Also, since I have a guest, my good friend Saz, coming to visit next weekend, I promised to cook for her and I needed to get some ingredients in preparation.

Jungle Jim's was as useful as ever. I got everything I needed and even had time to do the usual fresh quail egg once-over. Alas, they still elude me. Still, I managed to get everything on my list as well as a few other irresistable options.

Saturday, I had intended to clean the house in preparation for my guest's visit. In the end, I actually talked myself into being only semi-productive instead of fully productive and instead decided to get the messy tasks out of the way and then spend Sunday cleaning up those messes as well as just general cleaning.

One of the messy tasks is laundry. I don't know about you but my laundry makes a mess. No matter how well I scour the pockets, somehow a tissue always makes its way into my laundry. It ends up getting wet and sticking to the clean laundry when I throw it into the dryer. Then, when the clothes are dry, the tissue sits, broken down, partially in the lint-catcher and partially, patiently, waiting until I open that dryer door to tumble out onto the floor below. Thus, I have a mess.

I also had to shovel my driveway so that when the time came, I could get out without sliding backwards into the ice mountain that the plows had left at the end of my driveway. I actually like shoveling snow. First, I get to be out in the snow. Second, it's great exercise and third, it's useful. Unfortunately, it means when I come in, even if I wipe your boots on the mat, I still manage to make a mess. My problem is that even though I try to put my trouser legs inside my boots, they always find a way to come out. They end up getting snowy and when I go inside, the snow melts, leaving and unintended trail.

I also needed to make ravioli. I promised Saz I'd make her butternut squash ravioli. Since it's a messy process that I haven't quite perfected yet, I thought it might be quicker and less embarrassing to premake the pasta and freeze it. I was feeling ambitious so, in addition to the butternut squash ravioli, I decided to make a ricotta and herb stuffed ravioli too. I made two batches of pasta dough- one regular flour, one semolina. Naturally, no matter how hard I tried to make my flour 'well' deep enough to hold the eggs as I gently beat them, I ended up having a slight eruption of my pasta volcano anyway. It means runny egg that tries desperately to escape from the flour but you can stop with some simple flour scooping. In the end, as long as you knead and tidy the dough, it all works out. I just wish I knew the trick to preventing Mount Versuvius every time I try to make pasta dough.

In the end, I spent about four hours making ravioli. You see, I have a little pasta maker that rolls the dough into a nice flat strip. I also have a nice ravioli press that you use to layer the dough, press indentations into it, add the filling, add another layer of dough and then use a rolling pin to press the dough so that the edges are defined and you can gently pull them from the press. Unfortunately, my pasta machine isn't quite as wide as my press so I can only make five ravioli at a time instead of ten. It's slow going. Fortunately, I had my iPod on. Also, it's fun. Four hours later and I was no longer mocking the ugliness of Croc shoes but understanding just a little why chefs wear them in the kitchen.

Still, even though I'm slightly obsessive compulsive about keeping my work area clean and tidy when I work, I'm messy with flour and some of it ends up on the floor.

So, when I did clean on Sunday, it was well worth it. My house is clean, shiny and comfy. I'll try to make it last until after my guest leaves but I have feeling I'll have to at least run the hoover around again.

I even managed to watch the Superbowl. I'm still sort of horrified/amazed that I actually did that. I quite like football, a fact which both amazes and astounds me. I wouldn't say it's nearly as fun as watching England do well in the World Cup but sometimes American Football can be quite exciting, especially when you know what's going on. It took me almost 15 years of leaving here to even begin to comprehend that so maybe that's got something to do with it.

Also, during the Superbowl, you're supposed to drink beer and eat bad food. Well, I did drink some beer and I attempted to make Superbowl food. I started out well- tomatillo salsa and tortilla chips. I had the salsa in the freezer from when I made it a couple of months ago. It was pretty tasty. Then I decided to cook. I thought about making a dip but somehow I ended up with a pancetta, egg and butter lettuce baguette. It was super tasty but not very Superbowl-y.

Now it's over. The Colts lost, the Saints won. As a Colts fan, it wasn't a great game for my team. They started out well but didn't do so well after half-time. Yet, if there ever was a team that I almost didn't mind beating us, it would be the Saints. After all, their running back, #25, Reggie Bush, used to play for USC and as a USC Trojan fan, that's not such a bad thing. Also, the team's from New Orleans. Not so long ago, New Orleans was Haiti...so a couple of years later, winning a Superbowl is pretty impressive.

So, it's Sunday night. Tomorrow morning looms closer than I'd like, the thought of my alarm going off into the darkness of my room, beckoning me to get up and go to work does not fill me with joy. It's hard to feel joyful on a Monday morning. It means that the weekend is absolutely, without a doubt, over and the world of the work week has the power...at least until Friday.

But then it's a three day weekend and my best friend is coming to visit. We are supposed to get more snow between now and then but I'm hoping it'll be the accent to her visit, not a barrier.

All in all, though work is the pesky problem that lies between now and fun, I can't say that this past weekend wasn't fun. Though it was still productive, enforcing a 'snow day' on myself was a pretty nice little treat. There's nothing like staying inside, looking at the beauty of the snow and making ravioli to make life seem good.

Happy Monday!

Purple Fingers and Decent Mondays....

We made it through another Monday. That's always an accomplishment, I think. Today wasn't actually a bad Monday. We had another birthday lunch for two of my coworkers, my boss was working from home and I got a lot done. Ignoring the fact that my boss doesn't like it if we work from home but often chooses to do so himself, there really wasn't too much to complain about.

It's even snowing again which, of course, makes me very happy. It was a nice beginning to the evening. Since I had lunch out, I didn't want to make anything too heavy for dinner. Since I'd made out menus for the week last night based on ingredients I have, I picked something light to make: Stuffed mushroom caps and roasted beet and parmigiano bruschetta.

I have to say, I might just be in love with cooking. The stuffed mushroom caps are always fun to make. I usually buy the big caps from the grocery store when they're reduced because they're near the expiration date. As long as you use them quickly, they make an inexpensive appetizer. I never use a recipe but more of a formula. I brush the caps with melted butter. I suppose you could use olive oil if you wanted to be a bit healthier but the butter adds a really nice flavour. Then I take some type of cheese, add some breadcrumbs to soak up a little of the oil when the cheese melts, an aromatic, usually chives, garlic or sweet onion and most often a herb to finish off the flavour, usually something that goes well with the cheese. Tonight, I made Fontina stuffed caps with garlic and fresh basil. I have to say, they were absolutely delicious. The roasted beet and parmigiano bruschetta was a Mario Batali recipe (naturally.) It, too, was tasty. I love roasted beets, they're sweet and juicy and when you add caraway seeds, it brings out a whole new flavour.

The only slight problem is that now I have purple fingers. To be fair, it's more like neon pink because I've scrubbed my hands rather a lot. I also had a bit of a purple kitchen as well as a bright red sink. It actually looked like I'd murdered someone when I washed the bowls and plates I'd used to prepare the beets. It was sort of interesting, if a little gory looking. I'm also a wee bit afraid my mouth is purple. Beets are delicious but they're messy.

Then again, I'm probably the messy one. I often make a bit of a mess while I'm prepping. I do clean between each prep though because I like my workstation to be neat and tidy- another lesson I learned from Mr. Batali.

What I don't get is those TV chefs like Giada and the Barefoot Contessa. They use their hands to prepare ingredients and yet they never seem to have a crumb on themselves. Also, they chop onions and their eyes don't water. I've read up on how to chop onions without crying and I've tried everything. However, I have overly sensitive eyes to begin with and by the time I'm done chopping the onions, my eyes are streaming, my nose is running and I can barely see.

I'm sure those TV chefs have artful editors who make sure the messy hands aren't shown, that the scenes are cut between sections so Giada and her fellow TV cooks can actually wash their hands before they continue. Me, personally...I'd rather see their hands messy. It makes them a little more relatable.

Yet there are some cooking shows that do let you see the mess. I watched Worst Cooks in America again last night. Anne Burrell taught her team to make pasta dough. I've watched her make that dough countless times on Iron Chef America when she was Mario Batali's sous chef. She's a pro. There's a technique to making pasta, you see. You make a pile of flour and then make a deep well in the middle, deep enough that you can crack eggs into it, swirl in the flour as you gently beat the egss. All of this has to be done without breaking the well which slowly forms a dough.

Last night, Anne Burrell's "students" were sent off to imitate her technique and make their own dough. I watched as one of her team attempted to make the well. I saw, immediately, that it was too high and deep and I knew what would happen. Sure enough, as the "student" tried to swirl the eggs into the flour, the sides collapsed, the eggs spill out and it was like a volcano erupting as the "student" tried to stop the eggs from escaping and ending up with a giant mess.

I knew what would happen because the first time I tried to make pasta, I, too, made a high and deep well. It was Mount Eggs erupting over my kitchen counter. I still managed to catch them and make it into a dough but it was pretty hairy there for a while. Now, I've learned to make a high but wide well into which I can crack the eggs, still have room to beat the eggs without collapsing the walls of the well and letting the eggs run away.

My point is that even though these are supposed to be the Worst Cooks in America, it was rather nice to see someone on television screw something up that we can all relate to possibly having done. I'm not a huge Emeril Lagasse fan; I used to like him but his "Bam"-ing got a little annoying and overdone and I lost interest. However, one thing I did like about him was that there were quite a few times when he broke a cake or did something wrong and he'd keep going, often laughing about his catastrophe.

It's always nice to know you're not alone when you do something silly. Of course, I don't think I've ever quite seen anyone on the Food Network stain their fingers- and possibly their mouths - with beet juice so maybe I'm alone in that. I'm hoping I can get it off. Otherwise, as Lady Aero suggested, perhaps I should just tell my boss I have contagious Pink Finger Disease and take a sick day.

Maybe I shouldn't take leftover beet bruschetta for lunch then....just in case.

Happy Monday!