Frog and Goat

It’s just about 70 degrees here and there’s a lovely breeze floating through the house. I can’t say I like having Spring in Winter, but for one day it’s nice. I’d like some cold temperatures and snow but only if it’s going to stay cold. I hate this up and down stuff. Anyway, a quick rundown of food, food, food and then I have to go because The Niece is coming to spend the night and will be here shortly.

For Christmas Eve I made the black-eyed pea salad. I thought it was awesome and instead of the habanero it called for I used one of our Anaheim chilies because I knew no one at the party would want it to be that spicy. I was pretty disappointed because I don’t think anyone else tried the salad at the better-half’s family gathering. He and I ate some and enjoyed and we took the entire bowl of it home. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised because if you look up white bread in the dictionary that family will be smiling right back at you. Some of them didn’t even know what baklava was.

For Christmas we went to my sister’s for breakfast and she made her breakfast casserole which is a thing of beauty.

For Christmas supper we had the MIL over and we made pork loin with fennel, red skin potatoes and carrots. We also served green beans and rolls. She hardly ate anything and said even less. I hope the new year is better for her because it’s like having a zombie around. The holidays have never been her strong suit but her health and rapid decline is a drag for everyone involved. We’re hoping the deep brain stimulator and the change in meds will do good things next year. The pork loin was tender and tasty. We chopped some of it up last night and made pork fried rice. Also good.

For Boxing Day we had friends over for a meal of appetizers. If we were fancier we’d call it tapas. Here’s the laundry list of what we enjoyed:

Smoked trout pate (entirely homemade down to smoking the trout)
Fried oysters with chipotle mayo
Shrimp scampi
Fried manchego cheese chunks
Fried olives (stuffed with blue cheese and garlic)
Rumaki (bacon wrapped around mushrooms or water chestnuts)
Then we broke out the raclette grill and seared tuna, kielbasa and knockwurst. We also had the raclette cheese, of course, and two types of dried meats, cornichons, potatoes and marinated mushrooms.

Yesterday I spent some time making nuts, garbanzo beans and black-eye pea salad. The salad is for Christmas Eve and the others are for gift giving. The garbanzo beans have a blend of spices that could be considered Moroccan. The batch from yesterday was bland and more chewy than crunchy so I tried again today. I don’t know if they’re quite right yet but my taste tester will be home later today to let me know. Yes, I’ve tasted them but I’m still not sure. If these aren’t great I’m pitching them and deleting the recipe.

The nuts are ones I’ve mentioned here before–spicy, salty and delicious. The initial batch back in November was way too salty but yesterday’s batch was just right and today I made more with thyme instead of rosemary. I don’t need my taste tester to tell me these work.

I also made some candy and we’ll see how it turns out. The leftover bits that I swirled together in the bowl tasted pretty good to me but we’ll see. I’ve been trying to figure out how to duplicate Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Pistachio Toffee without having to actually work too hard at it. I saw Ina Garten make a batch of French bark the other day and, by Jove, a plot was hatched. I beat up some chocolate bars, poured in some chips and then whacked the nuts. I used a bag of toffee bits. I poured the melted chocolate out and swirled it about on my parchment paper and then I layered the bashed nuts and toffee bits into the top. It’s firming up on the kitchen table.

When it came time to wash the chocolate bowl, I realized that I’d also gotten chocolate on the oven mitts and the burner knob. All of that seemed so familiar to me and so I traveled down memory lane a bit to my time as a candy foreman at the local amusement park’s candy store. I remembered how we’d go after the huge blocks of chocolate with an ice pick and then melt everything in the microwave. I’m sure the chocolate quality was whatever the step above worst is but we more than made up for it in sugar.

We’d spend our days making fudge, washing dishes, getting supplies, making fudge, washing dishes, making candy apples, burning ourselves, washing dishes and sitting around in the back room making fun of the customers. I really haven’t eaten fudge since I worked there about 20 years ago (eep!). I guess after making 25lbs of it at a time all summer long you get over wanting it. Today while I was washing dishes, I made sure I didn’t smear chocolate all over my polyester, faux old-world costume.

I just checked my accounts at work/school and lo I noticed our paycheck drafts have posted already so I grabbed that number and added it to our Quicken account. This is the last paycheck that will be dinged for my tuition overage (bloody taxes). I also noticed the leave balance had been corrected to reflect the brilliant news that the Governor gave us an additional 8 hours of holiday leave this year. Because we were already going to be closed on one of the days we’d been allocated an additional 4 hours, our 8 hours look a little different than other state agencies. Someone evidently wrote a job to take care of all of the changes in leave slips. I am grateful to the programmer who got that job run before the winter break.

Additionally, my tuition waivers were also pushed through the system over the weekend. I love it when a chron job eliminates nearly $3000 from my student account. I’ll raise a glass of something to technology workers later today.

We went to a party last night. I can’t tell you the last time we went to a one. I mean we’ve been places to have dinner with friends but a bona fide party with booze and a table laden with food is not something we’ve done in awhile. We’re an old married couple.

The party was hosted by a classmate and I really expected there would be more folks from our program. There were no other classmates so either I’m a “special” classmate or the others didn’t show up. The professor who runs our program was there with her husband and we spent quite a bit of time talking to them. It was nice to talk to the professor about things not related to school. Her husband tells a good story.

My friend’s house is about 40 miles away from ours so it was a bit of a trek. We stopped at Cielito Lindo on Forest Hill for dinner and even though the restaurant is no where near our house, I’d go back if only to eat their salsa. Smoky with a hint of spice. I had tamales and the better-half had steak tacos in corn tortillas. They offer black beans and a black bean/carrot/corn salad as sides (they also have refried but when black beans are an option I don’t have time for refried). The better-half ordered the black beans and I got the salad. Excellent sides.

As we were wrapping up our meal, I asked the better-half if he picked up the gift bag for my classmate because I hadn’t. We had that deer in the headlights look and I said we could run home. So we booked it several blocks down the road until I finally! had the idea that we should consult Google to find the nearest ABC store. My classmate had suggested several types of gin to me when I asked what I should try to break my dislike of that particular spirit. He’s the one who turned us onto Hendrick’s Gin. I had purchased a bottle of Bombay Sapphire a few days ago and I hate going to a party and not taking something especially since this classmate and I had worked together all semester on a project and had spent enough time together to get invited to his long-running, end of year bash. Showing up empty handed was not an option.

We pulled over and the better-half googled ABC shops. We found one not too far away. We raced in and grabbed a bottle and a gift bag. The clerk asked if she should just put the bottle in the gift bag and I said that would be perfect since this is an “oops we forgot our other gift and this is the substitute”. She laughed and sent us on our way. The Blackberry Storm saved our butts last night.

My boss had a meeting today and as soon as she got back to our building she told me to go home. She was going to send one email, water her plants and then she was splitting too. I had just finished something that I really wanted to get through and not leave for two weeks so the timing was perfect.

I’m so glad to be off from work. We’re going to make oyster stew for dinner to celebrate.

I got to work this morning and there was a bottle of adult egg nog on my desk. I have no idea if it tastes like ass or like angels singing, but who cares. There was a bottle of booze on my desk this morning.

We’re having our end of the year holiday party today at work. We’re abuzz with cooking, decorating, and all the associated happy hoo-ha.

Someone who used to work here full time is back for a meeting and is staying for lunch. We used to get on quite well. Lately when I see her she asks about The Niece and then tunes me out. To the outside observer I’m sure it seems like she’s interested but I can tell she could give a sh*t what I say. So, my thought is why pretend? I’m never going to give a long-winded answer. I usually tend towards a short and funny tale and then I move on because I don’t ever want to be one of those people who will not shut up about the children in her life. Yawn.

This may be overly dramatic but I have become a placeholder for this person. I’m the only one in my unit who gets to work before 9 and so this former co-worker had to speak to me because I was the only one here but I know she’d rather talk to the actual parent in our group. I’ll bet the contents of my wallet that she won’t have the I could give a sh*t look on her face when they sit together at lunch and chat.

I’m so glad I grew up and ended up right back in high school.

At least the garlic mashed potatoes cooking away in the crock pot smell delicious.

The Niece’s parents are out of town this weekend and I have to go pick her up from school in just a little while. My mother is going to babysit Lil’ Elvis since there’s the rule that all children who spend the night at my house must be 3 and potty-trained. I don’t mind an occasional diaper but it’s not my idea of fun to have to deal with one first thing in the morning.

I really have no idea what’s on tap for the weekend. I know we have to go pick out a Christmas tree. I’m not sure if The Niece has ever done that, but I do know she’ll get to ride in the front seat of the truck. And that’s huge. Don’t worry, we can turn off the airbag. The big worry is me stuffing my fat ass into the tiny jump seat. I may end up stuck in the cab of the truck for the weekend. I’m sure the better-half and The Niece will bring me a blanket and a cup of cocoa.

I was recently shown this picture of a POW flag flying at Guantanamo.