Oh! Four Tuna!

This redefines the state of ROFLMAO. I laughed so hard I cried. And, if you have headphones, it's safe for work.

(Thanks to Nicol for putting this on her blog, and apologies for "stealing" it. But it's too good not to.)

R.I.P. Cheeky Monkey

After several years of faithful (and often unremitting) service and comfort, my Cheeky Monkey hot water bottle from Sophie bit the dust this afternoon. He will be missed.

A memorial service was held this evening at curbside.

Coco Bud

Well, ok, more like "Coco Negra Modelo"--it's what was in the fridge.

I'm batching it for the next several weeks while J's in Florida, so today--knowing that my overwhelming work would get the better of me by evening, and that I'd be kind of lonesome too--I picked up a couple of chicken thighs. I wanted to get breasts, but I figured organic chicken was worth the price (it was), but the life of a grad student being what it is, thighs are about all I can afford right now. But never mind that--they were divine.

By the time I started swearing and flinging books around (gently--wouldn't want to startle the kitty!) I'd just about decided to do a coq au vin, but couldn't be arsed to go down to the wine shop. So I figured I'd just stew the chicken with celery, carrots, onion, and a bit of garlic--and then spotted some leftover beers from the other night. In I fecked one, and the result was gorgeous--well, to eat, not to take pictures of, or at least, that's my excuse for not breaking out the camera before I scarfed down most of it.

I made it pretty much the way I made coq au vin a few months ago in Cambridge, except for the beer, and I also didn't thicken it at the end. Again, couldn't be arsed.

The Book I'm Not Reading: don't even ask.

Recent Cooking Endeavors, Etc.

It's been a hectic week, and the next two are likely to be just as bad, if not worse, as I get ready to take my Irish translation exam and revise and defend my dissertation proposal. But once I leap these two hurdles, I'll officially be ABD.

Anyway, despite the busy-ness, we've eaten well:

Last weekend, J made pizza crust, and so we had pizza several times this week. This one is vegan:


Then, Friday, I made another batch of granola. I've been doing this off and on since I lived at Twin Poplars, where Rowena showed me how. This batch is particularly tasty: in addition to the oats, oil, and honey, I put in raw sunflower seeds and dried cranberries. The trick with making granola, I've discovered, is to make sure to soak the fruit for a little while before toasting the whole thing--otherwise, the fruit gets hard and dry.


Lately, we've gotten some nice wines from the local wine shop, whose name--I'm a little embarrassed to say--I don't think I've ever noticed. It's on 7th Ave between 14th and 15th, and the folks who work there are nice, helpful, and have good senses of humor. But my not remembering the name of the shop is only indicative of the problem I have remembering the names of wines I like, so I'm going to try to begin taking pictures of the labels and posting the pictures here with a little commentary, however minimal.

The one on the left is, I think, my favorite since I've been back in NYC, and it was perfect with the pizza. The one on the right wasn't particularly memorable--nice enough, but nothing stuck in my mind about it. We also had a nice French one, but that bottle got recycled before I thought to take a picture of it.

In other news, I started some parsley and marigold seeds indoors yesterday. Not much to see right now--just wet brown dirt in a container. I haven't ever had much luck starting plants from seeds, probably because I tend not to pay attention to when and how they're to be sown, but I have some hopes for these. I'll be curious to see how the marigolds do--I saved the seeds from last year's, but have no idea whether the seedlings I bought last year were hybrids or what. Possibly they'll do nothing, but we'll see. Next on the list are basil, arugula, and whatever else strikes my fancy. I'll buy rosemary and lavender already started, I think.

And finally, the kitty doesn't want J to go on her next residency:

Bye, J--we'll miss you!

GI Joe PSA Parodies

J discovered these the other day, and we've been getting a huge kick out of them. Definitely bizarro, and some are definitely not safe for work....





There are lots more on YouTube, as well as the original PSAs.

The Cabbage Rolls of Bliss

Yesterday afternoon, I randomly started thinking about the cabbage rolls my mother used to make very, very occasionally--perhaps because they involved multiple steps, and multi-step recipes weren't generally the Done Thing in our house. They involved ground beef, cabbage, rice, and tomato sauce, and they were much better than the sum of their parts. Then I thought about the vegetarian ones Veselka makes...but then a bag of potatoes started grabbing my attention, and I decided a baked potato would hit the spot and be much less work.

But then, alas, I wasn't pleased with the vegetable accompaniments available at the store, except for the cabbage, which winked at me, and I thought, "What the hell." Good thought.



I think I managed to come pretty close to Velselka's version, though mine would have been even closer if I'd had regular stock cubes on hand. What I had were tomato-herb cubes (Kallo brand--in general, their stock cubes are my favorites, but I have never seen them for sale in the US; for an all-purpose vegetable stock cube bought here, my favorite is the Rapunzel brand), which accounts for the reddish color.

First, I cooked a cup of brown rice with the stock from one cube. After that was done, I sauteed a bunch of "baby portabello" mushrooms, a shallot, and a couple of cloves of garlic, and added that to the rice with some extra salt and some fresh dill. While that was going on, I had a large pot on the boil to soften the cabbage leaves. I stuffed 'em, smothered them with a simple thinnish gravy (butter, flour, stock), and baked them for a little over half an hour, spooning the gravy over the tops occasionally.

We et them with baked tofu in front of Firefly. Divine. And I still have a good deal of cabbage left for something else. Braising, maybe? If it were a bit warmer, I'd consider making my first slaw of the season, but we'll see.

Finally, A New Post: Bean Thing and Pepper Distress

No, folks, I haven't sworn off blogging like An Briosca Mór--I've just been in transit since the day after my last post! But I'm home now with a vengeance, grounded by the nasty cold that seems to have made the rounds: J seems to have had it in Banff, and most of my DC circle was in various stages of it when I was down there last week.

Of course, head colds are a great excuse for using hot peppers in everything: the other night, I made a chipotle black bean soup and jalapeño cornbread, and last night, I made a bean casserole using the leftovers of the soup, plus more jalapeño peppers, onions, garlic, a can of red beans, and some leftover tomato sauce from J's brilliant Sunday night pasta. It was fabulous, and reminded me of Twin Poplars days, when Rowena made some version of bean casserole frequently.



Unfortunately, mixing hot peppers and a head cold tends to intensify one of the occupational hazards of capsaicin, and I wasn't careful enough getting the jalapeño juice off my hands, and these were more potent than I'm used to jalapeños being. Luckily, I didn't rub my eyes, but I did blow my nose, and somehow my fingers came into contact with the inside of my nose rather than the tissue. YIPE! Damn, did that hurt. I raced to the bathroom to try to wash off the burning juice, but the soap only compounded the irritation, and spread the pain to the previously unaffected nostril.

(By now, you're wondering why I'm writing in public about the inside of my nose, but bear with me--this is a public service announcement!)

So I came back into the kitchen, swearing and saying OW, and knowing that I wasn't going to enjoy my dinner with my nose burning off from the inside. But the Internet is a wonderful thing, and so for all-y'all out there who might someday suffer such a thing, I'm here to say that rinsing off the juice with vegetable oil does do the trick. Some Q-tips, some olive oil, and voila, no pain!

And the kitty looked on....