Too Hot To Cook

I didn't cook anything new this week. I did cook..but nothing new. It's been so hot and I'm uninspired. Today I went to lunch at one of my favorites, Modern Apizza in New Haven, with the gals. I had sliced tomato w/ basil. Delicious.

Back from New Orleans
I was in New Orleans for about 6 days last week for the American Library Association Annual Conference. It was very hot and humid for most of the days. I didn't have much time for sight-seeing but I ate a lot of good food. Here is a picture of Shrimp and Grits from Emeril's NOLA Restaurant. I also posted my photos on flickr.

This is Cool: Two different Colored Flowers, One Plant

I haven't cooked for two weeks. I've been really really busy. Luckily I have a lot of leftovers in the freezer.

So, isn't this cool? I started out with this plant in 2006 and now I have 6 large plants from it. Some of the flower are white with purple splashes and some have morphed onto just plain purple flowers. This potted plant is ready to be separated into three plants. I think I have to wait a while though because I'm waiting for others to root. My office is starting to be overrun with violets.

Walt Disney's Chili and Beans

This recipe is from Mickey's Gourmet Cookbook from 1994. I've been wanting to try a new chili recipe and I haven't cooked anything from this book yet. I think I gave this book to my grandmother for her birthday when I was in college (might have been the earlier edition). I couldn't find it when she passed away so I ordered another copy from half.com.

All of the recipes in the book are from restaurants in the Disney restaurants, except of course the one I picked. This is supposedly Walt Disney's personal chili recipe. I have never used dried beans before and that was an adventure. The recipe calls for 2 pounds of ground beef and 2 pounds of dried pink pinto beans. I think it has to be a typo because after soaking the beans overnight, you're supposed to put them in a 2 quart sauce pan with 2 inches of water covering the beans. There's no way that you could possibly fit that many beans in a 2 quart sauce pan, let alone add two inches of water to it. So, I had to fill the 3 quart sauce pan up with what looked like half of the beans and I discarded the rest. Then I just barely had enough room at the top for a little under 2 inches of water. At the end when I combined the meat with the beans, it seemed like there was a high beans to meat ratio, maybe 60 percent beans and 40 percent meat. If I made it again, I would definitely use less beans.

I thought it tasted alright. You have to cook the beans with onions for 2 hours and simmer the meat with garlic, celery, canned tomatoes, chili powder, paprika, and thyme for an hour. Then you combine everything for another 30 minutes. I got tired of waiting after two hours and just combined everything and made a bowl for myself. I suspect it will taste better tomorrow. I think it's a decent recipe and it's pretty healthy.

I Googled "Walt Disney Chili and Beans" and several different recipes came up. This site has the closet to what is in the book: http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/15/WaltDisneysChiliAndBeans65030.shtml



This is what it looked like when I combined the beans and the meat mixture->

This week I weeded one cookbook off my shelves. I'm getting rid of Willard Scott's All American Cookbook. Most of the book is made up of anecdotes and the few recipes that are in it don't appeal to me. They seem to be a little unhealthy, too.

Guinness Brownies

I don't remember how I came across this recipe but it's from about.com. Here's the link: http://homecooking.about.com/od/dessertrecipes/r/blbrownie1.htm

They are super rich and chocolatey but I don't think I will put it in my recipe collection. This is kind of a cake-consistency brownie. I'm more of a fan of the chewy kind. It was weird putting Guinness in the batter. I don't think I mixed it long enough because when it came out of the oven, it looked like a science experiment. Maybe it was the beer making it rise. I don't know... When it cooled the bumps settled and it was flat.

Sort of Tandoori Chicken

This week I chose the Bristol, Connecticut Hospital's cook book from 1988 called Tastefully Done : What's Cooking? at Bristol Hospital. (I don't know why the question mark is where it is in the title. I took this from my late grandmother's house when we were cleaning out her things when she passed on. This is the first time I really looked at it. I'm thinking I won't want to cook most of the recipes. So, it's a candidate for weeding from my "collection".

This Tandoori Chicken recipe from page 78 looked pretty good and easy. You just had to marinate it overnight in yogurt, vinegar, and spices. I mixed up the marinade last night and baked it tonight. It was okay. The recipe said "brown vinegar" and I stupidly thought that meant balsamic vinegar, but I think it meant malt vinegar. I could really taste the balsamic and I don't think that was how it was supposed to taste. I don't know if I'll make this again. It was okay, but I'm not sure I want it again. I'll eat the leftovers, of course. I got kind of lazy and made Rice-a-Roni with it instead of using basmati rice. As you can see, I wasn't too lazy to garnish it with lemons ;)

Busy Week

I've been so busy this week I decided I'm not going to cook any new dinners. I have been cooking dinner every night except tonight I went to a place called Thai Flare in Naugatuck, CT. It was decent for a Valley restaurant. We don't really have high cuisine in the Housatonic Valley. I was the only one sitting eating in the restaurant. So, I suspect they do more of a takeout business. The few people who came in for takeout kind of looked at me funny.

Anyway, I went to Naugatuck which is like 15 miles from where I live in Derby to attend an author talk at the public library there. The author was Mike Shalin and he was talking about his recently released book Donnie Baseball : The Definitive Biography of Don Mattingly. The program was supposed to start at 6:30 but there were a bunch of men buying the book so it didn't start on time. I was a little disappointed that the librarian who put on the program didn't ensure that it started on time. I guess that's just me, expecting everything to be perfect. It was a little annoying watching all these silly people trying to talk to the author and just wondering when it was going to start. When it finally started, it was a very good program. It was interesting hearing the stories of a reporter and his life following baseball teams. I don't think the book got a good review so I didn't buy a copy for myself. (I might check it out of the library later) I bought one for my friend Mary's son because he is a huge Don Mattingly fan. I kept thinking when I was driving home that I had my picture taken with Don Mattingly when I was in high school and what an awful haircut I had in that picture.

For cooking something new this week, I chose a muffin recipe from Yankee Magazine's Country Inn Breakfast Cookbook. There's no ISBN or copyright date in the book. The listing for it on Amazon says it's from 1970 but I don't believe that. I think I must have gotten this bundled with a copy of Yankee Magazine or free with a subscription. If I subscribed it would have been in the late 1980's or early 1990's. I have a lot of these small magazine type cookbooks. I really need to go through them and decide if I am going to keep them. I am definitely going to keep this cookbook. I made the Raspberry Lemon Muffins on page 34. The recipe says its from the Richard's Bed and Breakfast in Narragansett, Rhode Island. I think these muffins are one of the best recipes I've made for muffins ever. I just ate one when it was warm so I hope they taste just as good when they cool tomorrow. I am going to bring the remaining 11 that are left to work so I don't eat them all myself. I used fresh raspberries instead of frozen but the recipe says you can use either. They also have a delicious pecan strudel topping that finishes them off very nicely.

Sassy Meatloaf

So, this week I didn't feel like cooking at all. I had cereal for dinner last night and Monday night I think I continued eating my lentil stew from last week. I have so much lentil stew now. I hope it freezes well. Forcing myself to cook tonight, I decided to go for meatloaf. I don't really have a favorite meatloaf recipe. It's not really something I cook that often. I think I have a few good recipes that make pretty tasty loaves. One of them is Jacques Pepin's recipe that calls for ginger and I think ground turkey from his "Simple and Healthy Cooking" book.

Since I'm cooking new recipes, I chose Sassy Meatloaf on page 217 of "Simply the Best : 250 Prize-Winning Recipes" from Weight Watchers (1997). The recipe looks pretty healthy. You use lean ground beef, oatmeal, plum tomatoes, mushrooms, shredded carrots and salsa. It tastes pretty good. I don't know if I would call it "sassy" though. For a side dish I pan-cooked some spinach with olive oil and a clove of garlic. I think I overdid it with the garlic because the garlic taste was pretty strong as I was eating the meatloaf. The recipe was tasty though and now I have five more servings of meatloaf. I am going to try to put them in small freezer bags and hope that they don't break up when I put them in the freezer.

I use this cookbook often. So, maybe I should have chosen another cookbook to find a recipe so I could try to de-clutter. I actually set one cookbook aside for donation last week if you can believe it. I think it was something I picked up in a dollar store when I was in college so I don't know if it really counts. At least it's not taking up space on the shelf anymore.

Weekend Recap

Friday Yankee Game - surrounded by obnoxious adolescent Canadians screaming "Let's Go Toronto" in my ear. I've been reassured by my ticket rep that I won't be surrounded by middle-schoolers for the rest of the season but so far I'm 3 for 3. So, it doesn't look good.

Saturday Cracker Barrel and Buffalo Wild Wings (unhealthy choices, eh). Watched "Red" and "Megamind" both were good.

Sunday - walked 16,000 steps in the city. Went to the auto show. I don't recommend Mickey Mantle's restaurant on Central Park South.

Lentil Stew

I just found out that Comcast is making everyone get a cable box to go digital instead of just plugging the cable right into the TV. I got my new cable box tonight from UPS. The instructions said that it could take 45 minutes to initialize your new equipment. So, I chopped up the veggies for this stew and set it up to simmer while I tried to hook up the cable equipment.

I chose this recipe from the Betty Crocker's Choices Cookbook, copyright 1993. I have had this cookbook all these years and I've rarely used it. Since I'm trying new things, I thought I'd better find something I want to cook in this book or donate it.

The stew turned out pretty good, the new Cable equipment didn't. Now I'm stewing literally while I eat my lentil stew that I have to take a half day off of work Monday to wait for the cable guy.

New Choices Cookbook gives little symbols at the top of each recipe so you can see how healthy each recipe is. This one says it's low calories, low fat, low cholesterol and high fiber...almost a full house of healthiness. The one thing it doesn't say is "low sodium". I didn't think 1/2 tsp. of salt was much though.

This is the first time I've tried a recipe that uses the spice mace. It is pretty good. The stew is a little on the spicy side. I'm not sure that the recipe is something I would really crave but I might cook it again.

What can I do with this blog?...
Sometimes I feel like deleting my blog because it's so boring and I never update it. I need to post more often or just give up already. Tonight while I was cooking dinner, I thought that maybe if I cooked a new recipe once a week, that would give me some motivation to blog about something. I have like 50 cookbooks. Don't those de-clutter guru's say if you haven't used it in a year, get rid of it? I can't bring myself to get rid of my cookbooks either so maybe this will serve a dual purpose.

I'm actually baking something I've never baked before right now. It's a Beer Bread from Tastefully Simple. It's basically a mix that you just add 12 oz of beer or soda to the mix and that's it. I had a sample earlier in the month when I attended a fundraiser for Ovarian Cancer. I chose to use Guinness for my beer to add. The batter smelled really good. I just have to wait until it cools to see how it tastes. Technically it can't count as a recipe but at least it's something I've never done before.



...Later...I was a little worried that the Guinness wouldn't be carbonated enough but the bread is really delicious and you can definitely taste the distinct hint of stout in the bread. Now I have to bring this to work tomorrow because I can't be eating all these carbs.

Okay, let's see if I post next week.

I'm ready for baseball

http://tocej.webng.com/yankees.html

Getting a little Christmas Busy here:

I went to CVS yesterday and I got a lecture from the cashier about how much I was paying for Christmas gift bags ($1.99!) She kind of chastised me for not saving my Christmas bags from last year. I was so annoyed, I said "I didn't get any Christmas bags last year". Why are the cashiers in this town all up in my business???

I just posted this picture on facebook so I thought I'd post it here, too. I made these cookies for a party the library is having for our student workers tomorrow. I've been trying to get over a cold for a few weeks and I was headed to Stop and Shop to buy some store-bakery cookies and I just couldn't do it. Most of the time they just are so gross and stale or they don't taste home-made. So, you might as well buy chips-ahoy. Anyway, I made sure I didn't breathe on anything so hopefully they will like these cookies. One christmas party down.....

Why I Love Self-Checkout

Tonight at Walmart:

Clerk: Oh I love Tabasco Sauce. This weekend I had pizza and beer and I put Tabasco Sauce on every slice. I really love it.

Me: Sounds good.

....

Me: Credit

Me: Credit

Clerk: I need to see the card and your ID. (Stares at ID for very long time gives back ID, stares at credit card)

Clerk: Why does this say Marriott on your card? Do you get points with that?

Me: Yes

Clerk: Well that's a nice hotel but don't you think it's too expensive?

Me: I guess mutter mutter mutter.

Fun Thing I read at work today:

Law about cross dressing and adultry from the Connecticut Statues in 1796. It's clearer if you click on it, I think.

You Know You Need a New Camera When.......

My friend May and I went to the World Premier of the 2009 World Series DVD at the Ziegfeld last night. It was sooo cool and almost made up for not getting World Series tickets. John Sterling, Michael Kay, Susan Waldman, Joe Girardi and Brian Cashman were there with the World Series Trophy. I realized that my camera sucks really really bad. Everyone else had cameras that could take pictures in the dark and up close way more than mine. I'm getting a new one soon.

It took 12 days for this response:

Hey Jackie,

We have about 14,000 partial plan holders and we only put on sale about 2,000 tickets per game in the pre sale for the world series. These events that take place at Yankee Stadium during the playoffs are considered Major League Baseball events and not Yankee events. Major League baseball is entitled to a certain amount of tickets which we have no control over. In prior years when there might have been more tickets available was not the case this year due to the fact that we have less seats in our new stadium and take into account the amount of premium seats we now have compared to none in the old stadium. Unfortunately the only advice I can give you is to periodically keep checking Ticketmaster for releases but there is no guarantee in that. If you have any questions please let me know.

S.A.
Ticket Representative
New York Yankees Yankee
Stadium Ticket Office

Boo MLB, Go Yankees.

Last Saturday I went to the Bronx Zoo with my friend, Diane. I took this picture of the lions. The male lion had been walking around before I took the picture. Oh well.

This is so Awesome!

Tonight I was trying to kill time before going home because I knew there were going to be roofers on top of my building and I didn't want to sit through the noise. So, I went to Barnes and Noble and I was just going to pick up a cross stitch magazine and then I remembered that The Lion and the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney was released today. I went and "read" it. The graphics are so beautiful, I bought it. I don't have very many picture books. This one is so great. I put "read" in quotations because it's a wordless picture book and of course you can still tell the story by the pictures.

Adios Geocities....

Okay..I spent the last hour or so deleting my files on Geocities. I had my account since 1997, I think. I can remember it like it was only yesterday, everyone was all excited about getting to make a web site and they had to learn html! You used to find a "neighborhood" and your web site had a sort of street address. I found some really old pics of myself in my files I had saved there like this spiffy Glamour Shots pic of myself. Remember back in the late 80's how everyone just had to go to the mall and get their Glamour Shots? My mom went with me and she wore a western outfit in hers. I remember that because she has it hanging on the wall still at home.

After my post last night, I did some more thinking and I thought I would like to still have a web page so I can post things like my Yankee tickets and it can be a starting page to all the other junk I have out there. Oh sorry, this week we are calling it "cloud computing". I looked at some free web servers. First I tried Weebly. I didn't like it at all. I couldn't figure out how to just type in html. I know things are getting easier for people who don't know how to develop their own sites. But jeez. I gave up. Then I found Webng and it seemed to be retro enough for me. It's got a banner ad on top which is slightly less annoying than the side ad's that were on Geocities. Anyway, I went with that. So this is my new url: http://tocej.webng.com/. Nice!