Merry
Christmas!!!!

Menu plan and housewifeliness

So my alarm went off at 5:30 this morning, and I've actually been a productive housewife so far today. I got my menu planned through Sunday, and I actually get to cook dinner for 6 nights in a row! I'm trying a few new recipes this week that I think are going to be FABULOUS. It's been a while since I've done much cooking around here, so it'll be nice to get some good, fresh, homemade food in our bellies. I'm also going out on a limb and trying steak again. I've generally not liked steak for my entire life, but I think I might be missing out, and the Pioneer Woman has a delicious looking recipe in her new cookbook that I think is going to be a serious treat for us. :) Without further ado, this week's menu!

Tuesday - Rib eye steak with whiskey cream sauce (The Pioneer Woman Cooks, page 166) and roasted garlic and new potatoes
Wednesday - Homemade pasta Alfredo (both noodles and sauce from scratch)
Thursday - Shrimp pasta in a foil package
Friday - White bean stew with Swiss chard and tomatoes
Saturday - Comfort meatballs (PW Cooks, page 172) and (forgive me) instant mashed potatoes
Sunday - Roasted asparagus with poached egg on toast with bacon

Man, I'm getting hungry just thinking about it! I'm also going to be whipping up a batch of chicken broth tomorrow. I still have to get the whiskey and the Swiss chard for tonight and Friday's dinners, but I'll be out running errands later, so I can pick those up then. This will be my first time ever purchasing whiskey. :p

Now I've got to finish up my laundry, switch the dishes in the dishwasher, go get my hair cut, continue sorting through my pile of randomness for Goodwill, and I should probably eat lunch sometime soon. I get to play with my camera today as well, as we've got a good-sized snowstorm headed our way. :)

Shoot Me

This week at work has been absolute hell for me. This is the week that we prepare for the ultimate in shopping days: Black Friday. The Day After Thanksgiving. Also known to those of us in the retail business as HELL. We generally aren't allowed overtime at the Wal Marts, but this week, if we volunteered to work on Thanksgiving day (which this glutton for punishment did), we are allowed darn near unlimited overtime. I don't like working more than my 40 hours/week, but getting paid more than $22/hour to do so is a pretty damn good incentive. Not only that, but the position that I hold in my store (Zone Merchandise Supervisor) easily will fill up more than that 40 hours/week on a NORMAL week, so this week is extra horrible. And it's so far from over that it's not even funny. I went in on Sunday morning (I wasn't even scheduled, but I had a lot of work to get done with planning), with the intention of only being there for 2-3 hours. 5 hours later....I finally left. Both yesterday and today, I worked over my scheduled shift. Not only do I get that overtime, but I actually got scheduled for 42 hours this week. I got SCHEDULED for overtime.

I'm ready to die. Today I spent my whole day out in the back of the store, taking "Black Friday" merchandise out of the boxes and re-palletizing it so that it's ready to go on Thursday. I live/work in Minnesota. It's November. I was actually GRATEFUL for the fact that it's been a warm November here, and was only in the 40's today. A little gloomy, but I didn't get too rained on. Tomorrow, however, I'm supposed to be doing the same thing. And tomorrow's forecast calls for snow.

If I survive my 50 hour week, I'm going to deserve not only a trip to the bar, but a much-needed vacation. If you don't hear from me for the rest of the week, it's because I'm rocking my awesome skillz at the Wal Marts.

Best. Husband. Ever.

So, yesterday, I wanted to go see the Pioneer Woman at the Mall of America, where she was signing her cookbook. However, I had something else that I had to do, and was very upset that I missed it. :( I got home from my other engagement to find a cute pink Hello Kitty gift bag on my chair. I opened it up, and not only was the cookbook in there, but Brian had stood in line for FIVE HOURS waiting to get it signed! AND, there was a really cute t-shirt that came with! I'll have pictures at a later time, as right now I'm making PW's meatloaf (OMG, it's wrapped in BACON!!!).

Sinfully Delicious

World's simplest recipe, but absolutely delicious and one of Brian and I's favorites. I love when he makes these lovely little things. There is absolutely nothing exact about this recipe (the measurements, the cooking temp/time, anything. Make it your own.)

1 lb ground sausage
1/2 lb Velveeta
8ish pieces of frozen garlic bread (You know, like the Pepperridge Farm stuff)

1) Preheat oven to 350ish.
2) Brown the sausage
3) Drain the sausage
4) Mix sausage and Velveeta in pan, just enough to melt the Velveeta.
5) Bake the garlic bread pieces for 5ish minutes, just enough to get them a little crispy. (If you're feeling particularly gluttonous right now, go ahead and eat a spoonful of the Velveeta mixture while you're waiting. YUM.)
6) Flip the garlic bread and bake for another couple minutes, just to get them a little crispy on the other side.
7) Top the garlic bread with the Velveeta/sausage mixture and bake for another 5ish minutes, until the bread is good and crispy around the edges and the fake cheese/sausage mixture is fairly set.
8) Eat it. Feel fat. Love it.

Hmmm....

I think I forgot how to blog. It's been so long since I've just regularly blogged, that I don't remember what to do any more. I don't just readily talk about my day. I'm gonna go ahead and try this:

Today, I cleaned my house. It sucked. I did a shitload of laundry. It sucked. Made fucking amazing potato soup for dinner. That didn't suck. Tomorrow, I have to go to work. That'll suck.

The End.

Make this tonight!!

Tonight for dinner, I made this delicious gnocchi dish. I'd never cooked with gnocchi before (and didn't know how to pronounce it either!), but this really was delicious! And it's really filling. Oh man, is it filling! I substituted the spinach for the chard, since SuperTarget doesn't have chard, apparently.

Skillet Gnocchi with Chard and White Beans

Make it for dinner tonight!!

Halloween Hijinks

Yummy dinner that you should make!

I made this for dinner tonight, and it's DELICIOUS. Very simple, but the flavors are out of this world! Brian liked it, and he's not even real big on spinach. Give it a try!

Beans with spinach and sun-dried tomatoes

Happy Birthday, Becky

It's Becky's birthday today. She'd be 26, so it's her golden birthday. I miss her so much. I'm having a few beers and painting my toenails and remembering all of the great memories that we made together. :)

Need a new name for Menu Plan day

My menu plans are returning! However, since I've started a new position with different hours, it's not necessarily getting done on Saturday morning any more, and I'm no longer doing all the cooking! Brian's getting his turns at least twice a week now too. So I'll update them as often as possible, and they won't necessarily always be for an entire week. I think I need a new catchy name for my menu plan posts now though, since I can't really use "Menu Plan Saturday" anymore.

Anyways, here's my current menu and grocery list:

Monday - Salads (I know, original, right?)
Tuesday - Salsa Chicken
Wednesday - Fettuccine with zucchini (Brian's cooking)
Thursday - Soy sauce wings and fried rice

My list this week also included supplies for making sandwiches, as I'll be bringing my own lunch the next couple days, and a few other items that weren't necessarily "needed" for those 4 meals.

Meat:
Deli sliced ham (Market Pantry) - $3.49

Veggies:
Romaine lettuce - $1.99
Alfalfa sprouts - $1.99
Green onions - $1.19
Zucchini - $1.07
Radishes - $.99

Dairy:
Muenster cheese (Market Pantry) - $2.29

Shelf-stable foods:
Honey (Market Pantry) - $3.19
Western salad dressing - $2.03
Instant rice (Market Pantry) - $3.39
Bread (Sara Lee) - $1.99

Grand total: $23.61

Now, I'd love to tell you that that's all I bought. But that would be lying to you. My actual total came to $70.70. I also bought a couple shirts and a few pairs of undies, and Coke products were on sale, so I got some Diet Coke for me and Caffeine-free Coke for Brian for $3/each. We're also complete Reese's fiends, so I got a huge bag of the mini Reese's cups. However, I did find out that you can get 5 cents off your total if you use a reusable bag! I was pretty psyched about that. And tomorrow, Brian will be getting more ground beef and chicken wings from Costco, which will tack even more onto the total. So don't let that piddly $23 fool you, that's just the actual meal food that I got from SuperTarget.

Notes from this week:
1) Salads might seem like a cheap idea, but they can add up, especially if you prefer store-bought salad dressing (which my husband does, I might be trying some homemade stuff). They are great if you're keeping them basic and you already have some of the toppings to go on there. (We already have diced ham in our fridge, as well as some Salad Toppins and a few different bottled dressings.)
2) I will probably be trying to bring my lunch more often, at least on the two days a week that I work until 8. I brought my lunch to work yesterday, but it was a pretty small portion and I was starving, so I went and got Chipotle instead. Mental note: when packing my own lunch, make sure to bring enough food!
3) As much as I love to cook, I'm really enjoying having Brian take on some of the cooking responsibilities too. He usually has to pick what he's going to make, and he's been finding some good recipes. Tonight he made a really rich cheese soup in our slow cooker. He is becoming a serious pro at the slow cooker. I think he'll do really good making the Fettuccine with zucchini on Wednesday.

Ultimate Fail Bread

The best way to kick off a new blog is with an embarrassing story, right? So why don't we start there?

Today, I got the crazy bug up my butt to bake some bread. Now mind you, I've done very little bread making in my culinary career, but a friend posted a nice easy no-knead bread recipe on her Facebook page. Can't go wrong with that, right? Right? ....RIGHT?

I got going on it, and within minutes, I was mixing up my batch of bread. My first mistake was not mixing it long enough (which I didn't realize at the time). The recipe called for it to be baked on parchment paper, but I don't do much baking, and as such don't have any parchment paper in my house. I found a package of waxed paper that said "Great for baking!" on it, and figured I'd be alright.

(Now, at this point, some of you might be snickering that I'd make such a rookie mistake and can already tell what's coming. If that's the case, quit laughing, keep reading, and stop being an asshole. Kthxbai.)

So I lay out the waxed paper, and shape my loaves of bread on top. Let it rise for 20 minutes, then pop those bad boys in the oven! I go back into the computer room, and within seconds, I smell something that reminds me of my Grandma's house at Christmas. (No, not my mom's mom, that makes the greatest food ever; my dad's mom. The one that makes sauerkraut hotdish for every holiday and burns dumplings. Yeah, that Grandma.) I race back out to the kitchen and see smoke pouring out of the oven. I pull the door open and yank out the pans, one of which has very obviously singed edges all over the waxed paper. Before I can get the fan going and the windows opened, the smoke detector in the hallway starts beeping, soon followed by the one in the bedroom. Dammit. I got the fan turned on, the smoke detectors turned off, and went back to my lumps of dough. I sprayed the pans with Pam and flopped the "loaves" back onto the pans and peeled the waxed paper off of them.

"Still good! I can work with this!" I thought. I popped them back in the oven, and baked them for the remaining time. At the end of the baking time, I pulled them out of the oven....and I had bricks. More fail. I tried everything I could to make them edible, but it wasn't going to happen.

I will definitely try this recipe again, and learn from my mistakes this time, but this particular instance was just reeking of baking FAIL.

Here I am!

Well, here I am at my new home over here at Blogger. I have a few reasons for making this switch, but the biggest one being that it's next to impossible to get non-Xanga readers to read a Xanga blog. It's a lot easier to hold yourself accountable to regular posting if you know you're being read, and as much as I love my Xanga readers (who I very much hope will follow me over here!), I think I can expand my audience a little better in this venue. You'll see a lot of the same kind of stuff I was posting before my hiatus, cooking, photography, random home improvement projects, and other inane tidbits from my life. I'll do my best to make this blog as interesting as I possibly can, and hopefully that will keep me posting and you coming back. :)