Sick sick sick

The past three weeks I have been sneezing.  No biggie.  Actually somewhat unusual for me.  I have lived my life with sinus issues (thanks mom and dad!) and they generally manifest themselves somewhat further back in my head.  Recently everything has been up front in my nose- hence the trigger to sneeze.  But I felt fine.

Friday night that suddenly changed.  It was a gorgeous day (50 degrees = tropical madness) and I got out of the hospital before 6:00p (miracle of miracles!!) and celebrated by taking Luna up to the park.  I came back, sat on the couch, and suddenly realized that everything that had been happening in my nose was now settling into its proper home: my sinuses.  Not.  Good.

Enter Saturday.  Saturday I am definitely feeling more and more sinusy.  I sort of just want to lie down because clearly my sinuses have been draining all night and now my ears and throat hurt.  But we were too busy on St. Patrick's Day to actually celebrate (we ordered pizza) and Andrew really wanted to have people over and make some corned beef on his one day off.  So we cleaned the house (well, Andrew cleaned and I picked some things up and then had to sit down for a while).  And I begged Andrew to make the Irish Soda Bread for fear that my sinuses would be contagious and I would enviral the delicious buttery goodness of the bread.

Chris and Dave came over (and later, Chance and Chance's twin brother and Laura joined us) and we partook of fattening traditional foods.  And it was good.  And we watched Iron Chef America and then started a marathon of Ghost Adventures (when Andrew discovered what I had turned the channel to, he actually almost fell over because he was rolling his eyes so hard).  And although I was still not at my full game, I was ok.

And then I suddenly realized that I was feeling much much worse.  Much worse.  And every single joint ached.  Including my hips.  And since I had to get up and go to the bathroom anyway (in Soviet Russia, fluids force you!) I went ahead and took my temperature just for kicks.

99.1

Not an impressive temperature per say.  Except that I haven't actually had a fever since Jr. High.  Whenever I feel like I might be feverish, the thermometer usually tells me I am actually in the 97 range.  Very frustrating in High School by the way.  So this is an honest to God fever in my world.  And enough to make me feel like death warmed over and then smeared with poo.  And then punched in the face.

So today I am going to recoup and hopefully not have to take a sick day tomorrow.  Wish me luck.

My house smells vaguely of curry

Last night for dinner I made Curried Butternut Squash and Red Lentil Soup from the fabulous food blog: Eat Live Run.  It claimed to serve 4.  Instead it made 4 gallons.

Well, I may be exaggerating....but still.  It was quite a bit of soup and a good portion of it is now in our freezer awaiting further rainy days.  But it is so pretty and delicious that I will definitely make it again- just a quarter of it...

Here is the recipe:

• 1 medium yellow onion diced
• 1 (3lb) butternut squash peeled and cut into chunks
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tbl minced ginger (I found a squeeze tube of this in the produce section and now I need to find many more uses for it- I had forgotten how amazing ginger smells!!)
• 1 15 oz can of diced tomatoes
• 1 cup red lentils (fun fact: when you get them wet, say to rinse them, they turn into cement which is very difficult to dump from one container into the next)
• 1 qt chicken or veggie broth
• 2 tsp curry powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

The best part?  You don't have to worry about how even and bite sized your cuts are.  You blend it all together at the end so prettiness in prep doesn't count- it ends up pretty in spite of your inability to cut things nicely!

And now for some pictures of the process:

Some of my ingredients- check out the tube o ginger!

First step: saute the onions in a bit of olive oil until nice and soft

Nice aromatics: ginger and garlic

Dump the garlic and ginger in and saute for a few more minutes- remember that garlic burns a lot faster than onions!

Add the butternut squash and mix it up, then add everything else in with wild abandon! Please note that the lentils are not falling happily into the pot.  No, we had to add some water to the bowl and work loose the now hard-as-rock lentils.  They came apart as they cooked thankfully!

Oooh yeah.  So full of goodness.  Bring this mixture to a boil.

Then reduce heat, cover, and let it simmer away for 20 minutes until the squash and lentils are nice and soft.  I was dubious that it would only take 20 minutes.  And I was pleasantly surprised when my spoon hit a squash chunk and it melted in half.  Perfect!

This is tricky.  Transfer the soup to a blender.  Now: blend it up.  The exciting part of blending hot soup is that if you fail to remove the middle part of the cap to let steam escape, the entire lid will try and explode off of the blender.  We kept the clear thing partially on and covered it with a dish towel.  The spatter is because it is too full- and this was only half of the soup!

All smooth and delicious now!

Second half of the soup ready to be blended.

Look at that technique!  Look at that concentration!

We transfered it all back to the Dutch oven because it is prettier there.

All gone!  The sandwich too!

We made some sandwiches (turkey and cheddar with homemade bread!) and they were very filling so we couldn't eat very much soup in the end- a real bummer considering how much is leftover AND how tasty this was.  I love the kick the cayenne gives this soup and I love the surprising complexity of flavors.  It starts out very squashy and then all the other elements start coming through.  Delicious!  I have trouble eating soup without chunks so bread or crunched up pita chips are a must for me.  This might be very very good with chunks of sausage and maybe some noodles or rice for something to chew on.  

All in all, a great weeknight dinner.  Especially a weeknight that is cold and rainy and crappy.  This is an excellent comfort food!

Dinner tonight

This blog entry is brought to you at the request of my husband, who wanted to make sure I recorded the recipes I used so he could eat it again in the future.  Isn't that sweet?

So the menu was:
*Oven-fried chicken
*Quinoa with apples and cranberries
*Leftover french bread (home made!)

Unfortunately this was all eaten before I thought to take pictures, so you will just have to imagine the delicious images in your mind.

The Quinoa is what knocked Andrew's socks off, so I will start with that.

• 1/2 c Quinoa (rinsed)
• 1 c chicken stock (home made in our case.  That makes me sound so much more gourmet than I probably really am!)
• 1/2 of a granny smith apple chopped into reasonable sized chunks
• A good handful of dried cranberries
• A shake of cinnamon (1 tsp if I had to guess)
• A dash of cayenne pepper
• A squirt of honey

All of this is brought to a boil and then allowed to simmer until the liquid is all absorbed and the grains are translucent and the outer shells have separated.

If I had to do it again, I may have given an extra dash of the cayenne and added some salt- it was just a bit too sweet I think.  But Andrew made numerous happy noises while eating it and insisted repeatedly that I write down how I did it.  Maybe I shouldn't show him this entry...I wouldn't want to become redundant!

Now for the chicken, which was MY favorite part of the meal.

• Two chicken breasts, pounded flat and cut in half to make 4 manageable chunks
• Salt
• Chile Cocoa (this was in Andrew's stocking and I was excited to try it out)
• Flour (I used whole wheat flour and threw in some flax seed meal)
• Bread crumbs (I made this with the heel of my first- very dense- loaf of wheat bread.  I filled it out a bit with commercial bread crumbs and also threw in some flax seed meal because we need more omega 3s in our life)
• Oil
• 1 egg, beaten with a small amount of water

The base of this recipe is from Cooking Light- it gives me my most consistently cooked chicken and is delicious.  I use it all the time- adding various flavorings to the flour and bread crumbs (I often put garam masala in the flour, or I put mustard in the egg wash and dried onion in the bread crumbs.  The possibilities are endless!  This is the first time I have pre-flavored the chicken with anything besides salt). Making sure the chicken is nice and thin means that it cooks quickly and evenly so you end up with perfectly done chicken that doesn't get all dried out in the process.

You pat the flattened chicken dry (actually, I patted it dry before taking the mallet to it since the bag I was defrosting it in had a leak and it was wetter than most chicken) and salt it a bit.  Then sprinkle the cocoa mix over the first side pretty thickly.  Dredge the cocoa'd side in the flour and cocoa the exposed side since it is staring up at you anyway.  Then finish coating the entire thing in the flour.  Shake off the excess flour and dip it in the egg wash.  Then dredge the chicken boobie in the bread crumbs.  Repeat for all of the chicken chunks.

Meanwhile, of course you've been heating some oil on the stove in an oven-safe pan and it is all hot and ready for your breaded chicken boobs.  You have also very cleverly pre-heated the oven to 425- good for you!  Fry the breasts until one side is brown and tasty- it doesn't take very long at all.  Then flip the chicken over (I sometimes have to add a bit more oil at this point because I never put in very much to begin with and it disappears fast) and pop the whole kit and kaboodle in the oven for 10 minutes.  Voila!

Andrew thought the chicken was just a bit dry (a result of the breading- the chicken itself was quite juicy and perfectly cooked.  Thank you Cooking Light!) so we had a spoonful of apple butter on the side to dip it in.  But I really enjoyed it just alone- you could really taste the cocoa and the subtle bite of the chile side of the mix.  

Obligatory New Year's Post

New years.  That magical time of year where millions of people around the world vow to lose weight, work out more, work less, and make tons of money.

Last year, my goals were as follows:

• Don't be such a fatty-fat
• Be a better wife
• Continue to get through vet school without going crazy and running pedestrians down on campus.

I can safely say that I accomplished two of those goals.  Over the course of the past year I managed to lose almost 20 lbs (of course, thanks to the holidays and the orgy of over-eating I just engaged in, I am back to the "need to lose 5 lbs" point).  I also most certainly did NOT go crazy and run people over.  I have had some fairly spectacular breakdowns over the past year, but those happen.  Especially in the final year of vet school. Was I a better wife though?  I sort of think it is unlikely.  Sorry Andrew.  :(

Onto slightly less moody subjects, how about I think about some goals for THIS year?  This new year of 2011.  My year.  Here it goes...

Shiny new goals:

• Become a doctor (ZING!)
• Find a job in Kitsap County and have an income such that I can pay off my gargantuan student loans AND buy groceries with enough money left over to occasionally buy books without going into guilt seizures.
• Re-lose 5 lbs
• Never buy bread again.

Wiki-WHAT?  Never buy bread again???  That's right people.  I got a bread maker for Christmas.  Christmas afternoon while Andrew was cleaning the entire kitchen and house and talking loudly about how we needed to clean things, I nodded gravely and then proceeded to make a huge mess carefully measuring ingredients out for my first loaf of bread.  (Did I mention that I should try to be a better wife?)

I wish I could say that my first loaf was the pinnacle of human achievement in bready goodness, but it was actually pretty dumpy looking and quite dense.  I suspect that this was due to the fact that my yeast has been kicking around in the freezer for a year and may have finally given up the ghost (although up till this point it was doing fine in pizza and bao dough).  It may also be that I didn't use bread flour- just all purpose since that is what I had on hand.  

The bread tasted okay though.  I have had it as a grilled cheese sandwich as well as a pbj sandwich and they were both fine.  My next loaves will be better though.  Provided I remember to get some fresh yeast and bread flour!

**Edit: additional goal is to be more proactively involved with the household budget.  Also to agree with Andrew's goal: To not suck.

Loving Vegetables

...albeit somewhat reluctantly

Part of my internal goals for this garden were to help me love vegetables more. Homegrown, in season, fresh, heirloom veggies are to store bought, well traveled, out of season, grown-for-easy-shipping-rather-than-flavor veggies as looking at a Monet painting in person rather than seeing a fuzzy picture in a book without your reading glasses.

We successfully ate many spinach salads plucked fresh from the garden and they were great. Ditto for the Mesclun Mix of salad (also great on sandwiches). My Latah tomatoes are of a less flavorful variety than some of my later bearers but they are delicious in salads and on sandwiches and I am contemplating drying them for winter stews. Onions clearly belong in everything and potatoes are nature's most perfect food so neither of those have been a problem. My biggest hangups remain some of the green veggies: cooked spinach is still a crime in my mind (it's a texture thing, plain and simple); zucchini is only good in bread or (as I just learned) cookies; cooked broccoli is limp and slimy and I'd rather just eat it raw with ranch.

Today I am changing all of that. Well, except for the cooked spinach- I stand firm there. Apparently the keys to my loving zucchini and cooked broccoli are 1) barely cooking them; and 2) combining them with stove top stuffing. Last night I lightly sauteed some green onions, diced zucchini, and diced ham in a small saucepan, then cooked the stuffing according to the package directions after I had transfered the goodies to a bowl. I topped it with a chopped tomato that warmed in the stuffing and it was fabulous!! Today for lunch I have a slight variation: ham, zucchini, minced onion, and a small amount of the first (!) broccoli from our garden. Oh, and more tomatoes. The broccoli was barely in the pan for a minute when it turned the perfect shade of bright-go-light-green so I took it out while the onions, zucchini, and ham continued to soften and pop. The results: YUM!

Further adventures of the domestic goddess...

Update on the gnocchi: weird and sort of gross. I am not a huge fan. Making it was fun though! Now, most gnocchi is made using potatoes but I chose a ricotta gnocchi which is apparently a popular variation and I happen to love ricotta. So you make it using ricotta, eggs, and parmesean. This particular recipe was for a spinach infused variety and since I happen to have pureed spinach in my freezer I went for it. But just in case spinach-ricotta gnocchi was disgusting I divided the batch into three: the largest portion to be made with spinach puree, the middle portion plain, and the smallest portion to be made with beet puree (which is gross in pancakes but has a gorgeous color nonetheless). Then you add enough flour for the gooey crap to be workable as dough (but no more or the gnocchi will be dense and yucky) and shape the result into little football shapes that get boiled and sauced. Labor intensive but fun. And the result...well, Andrew liked the beet gnocchi best, surprisingly enough. And I am sort of on the fence. We both think they need some more textural interest. Like meat. Or SOMEthing. But I have a feeling the leftovers in our fridge will go bad before we can bring ourselves to pull them back out.

Now my more recent cooking adventures have been better. Last night, in spite of the heat, I made chicken braised with onion, carrots from our garden, a turnip, and (best of all) potatoes from our garden. Now, the potato patch is not yet ready to be fully harvested, but I snuck in like a thief, slid my fingers under the dirt, and pulled out some awesome potatoes. And I felt a lot more down there (*Squeal*). It was soooo good! Tonight I made chicken marinated in lime juice and then cooked with that same lime juice, lime zest, brown sugar, cayenne pepper, and mango chunks. Not as good honestly. It burned a little bit, was extremely limey (after several hours soaking in the juice of two limes, who wouldn't be?), and the mango got all smooshy but fibrous at the same time. Not appealing. Andrew liked it but I couldn't eat it all.

Speaking of the garden, we had our first tomato! Tada! It was a big Latah tomato and quite tasty. I had it on a sandwich after eating the first ceremonial slice (with salt). And more are on the way! Hopefully I will be ROLLING in tomatoes soon.

In other domestic news about the house, we have embarked upon a monstrous cleaning adventure. Over the weekend we cleaned our room AND the closet. I can proudly report that we have unearthed a lot of clothing we had forgotten about entirely, and now have a useable closet. We also have three boxes of clothing and a box of books for a garage sale some friends are having in a few weeks. Go us!

Domestic Goddess (?)

I am feeling all domestic right now. God knows why. The past three nights running I cooked dinner. Sunday night I made Northern-White Girl-Jambalaya for 7. Monday night I went adventurous and cooked Chicken Kiev - this was tricky. It involved creating an herb/lemon butter (using parsley and onions from our garden), then butterflying two breasts and pounding them flat, then putting a chunk of the herb butter on each breast and rolling them up like a burrito in the hopes that the melting butter wouldn't explode out of the chicken like a bursting dam once they got hot. Then they got dredged in flour, dipped in an egg/dijon mustard wash, and rolled in bread crumbs (during which I was praying that my pathetic chicken breast burrito-style lumps wouldn't fall apart and doom me to butterless chicken). Then they went into the oven (toaster oven since it was 400 degrees in our apartment). They definitely dripped butter for most of the time in the oven, but considering I was imagining a butter waterfall of epic proportions (you know that scene in The Shining where the elevator doors open and blood pours out? Like that.) dripping was ok. They turned out fabulous! Andrew contributed to the domesticity by making fried plantains sprinkled with lime juice and salt- which I declared he could make for me any time! Then last night I made red beans and rice with sauteed chicken breasts and corn muffins. Tonight I plan on making spinach and ricotta gnocchi with home-doctored tomato sauce.

Also, yesterday I cleaned the entire kitchen and did all the dishes.

What is with me?! I need an apron or something...

In other news, the garden was a mass of weeds when we came back from vacation and it is still in the process of being reclaimed. Our first tomato is probably 1-2 days from pickable perfection and I cannot wait! We have 6 viable tomato plants at the moment, and one replanted seedling that survived the weed onslaught. I have visions of tomatoes dancing all over my counters. Also the potato plants are falling down. Presumably this means they are now putting all the energy into making delicious starchy tubers just for me! Or they have the plague. Either way.

On the school front, I just emailed a clinic in Coos Bay Oregon about an externship there on one of my last remaining school breaks of EVER. Wish me luck!!

The final countdown....isn't that Queen?

Well folks, I am nearly done with my first year in Pullman.  I FEEL done because I finished Anatomy...although I still have 5 more finals to study for.  It is hard to feel motivated when the smelly monkey that is anatomy is no longer breathing down my neck...Plus I must say that I am SO GLAD to no longer smell like the anatomy lab.  But in any case, here is my schedule for the next week:

• Monday: Nutrition
  
• Tuesday: Immunology
• Wednesday: Pathology
• Thursday: Neuroscience
• Friday: Physiology

Today I am working primarily on Nutrition with a hint of Immunology for spice.

In other news, I am trying to figure out my life beyond vet school.  Just as far as hobbies go.  (No worries about Andrew- married life is glorious) I think it is important for me to cultivate interests beyond vet school.  Sadly, I am so unorganized and generally messy that it is difficult.  But what I would like to do is this: continue to work out (I have kind of fallen behind on that of late, and I should get back on the proverbial wagon), get out on hikes more (this primarily applies to summer time as it is hard with school schedules to justify a trip like that), garden (specifically, herbs), and cooking.  I find I am liking cooking more and more.  I like playing with spices (hence, the herb obsession), I love cookbooks, I enjoy making things from scratch.  I think the brownies exemplify this.  I have a recipe for low fat brownies that involves chopping up squares of semi-sweet chocolate and I feel like a real cook when I am doing that.  Very strange, but true.  The unfortunate thing about that, is I hate doing dishes and I have a small kitchen.  None of that is conducive to stretching my legs as a cook.  But at the end of summer we will be in a great new place with much more counter space and (hopefully) a wee portable dishwasher to make our lives easier.  Also, I will get to paint. :D