Journal

Organized closet

So I have been looking for my camera stands, not that hard, but a bit. so I ended up cleaning the front hall closet. I separated each of our gloves and winter hats in boxes, and there is a box of scarves. A separate box of non winter hats (ball caps that I can’t remember the last time I wore, and other sun protections). I demoted some coats to the back.

2024 - Week 9 Cooking Results

Sausage

Restocked, All pork hot dogs, good things.

Creamy Chickpea and Sweet Potato Stew

Vegetarian, a nice combination of flavors and textures. The temperature dropped midweek to be quite a bit colder than I think we all expecting after cresting tot h lower 70s. Warming and good. I ate leftovers on Saturday after taking a break from cleaning.

Brown Butter Shrimp Noodles

Ended up making this on Saturday, relatively simple to do and a decent interpretation shrimp scampi. Made after a day where I kept looking for my camera stands, so I ended up cleaning out and organizing the front hall closet. While I didn’t find what I was looking for, it does look a lot better now which is nice. After a nap, a shower, I made this up and it was pretty good.

Taco Salad

Verde Sausage, a new version from Crooked Gap, is quite nice, and is nice and stands out, but added a lot less than I normally do for the purpose. It worked out quite well. I think I need to find some other purpose for this that can allow the meat to be more forward. Good add to the line up, though as I understand it takes quite a bit more effort to make, thus a bit more cost. Worth it, good taco salad.

Grilled Cheese with Mortadella

Cheese, Mortadella, butter, and a good bread. A good standard thing.

Sous vide Pork Loin (Saturday)

Plan Changes! I’ll make this on today.

2024 - Week 8 Cooking Results

Hamburgers

Lamb! Added a bit of herbs and spices, salt and pepper and some deliciousness.

Baked Potatoes

Used the rest of the potatoes that were in the bag I bought, before things started to grow to much. Bacon, butter, sour cream, salt and pepper.

Mac & Cheese

They had some Beecher’s Hatch pepper mac and cheese at our last visit to costco, so we picked it up. As a note, Beecher’s is part of the Sugar Mountain family of companies, which includes The Butcher’s Table, where my brother has worked for quite a while.

It was quite good, they make a pretty good mac and cheese.

Grilled Cheese

Much to my own failing memory delight, I accidentally ordered 3 loaves of bread. I knew I would have bread to make the grilled cheese, but as things started to come together on Friday, I had one through the food coop and two directly ordered from a baker. So I dropped two in gallon freezer bags then put them in the freezer used the third to make grilled cheese with beef bologna. Good sandwich.

One-Pot “Mary Me” Chicken and Noodles

I skipped over a couple of items. The sun-dried tomatoes, the chives. I replaced the heavy cream with half and half, cause I thought I has already used the only recipe that needed it. I got annoyed by the directions a bit. I juiced the lemon in and poured it in a glass, with the intent to mix it with some elderflower to have a nice drink, only to find I needed about half of it. But since it says, one lemon, zested, I just assumed it wanted the zest only and not the juice.

Even so, it was a pretty good meal. Since we are already married, I guess it works?

Buttermilk Pancakes

Good as always.

A conversation with a friend reminded me that I had some cinnamon soaking in vodka for a bit. My notes about it were simple:

83g cinnamon sticks
706g vodka
Started late 11/21/2021

I took them out on 2/23/2024, meaning it was soaking for 823 days. I sampled a bit and it has a strong cinnamon scent, but is not as spicy as cinnamon “whiskey" I’ve had.

2024 - Week 7 Cooking Results

Hamburgers

Beef, a bit of simple seasoning and good to go.

Taco Salad

I used the last Guacachile on mine between that and the leftovers, it was a nice add. I may have to thing about making the salsa my own.

Egg & Sausage Muffins

Good as always.

Breakfast Egg Bake with Sausage and Potatoes

The nose tickling continues! Even so, this came together well. I threw in some of the leftover jalapeño and green peppers from, the taco salad. Everything else came together quite will. I also used the green onion sausage, which is not quite breakfast sausage, but it still worked.

Creamy Peanut Noodle Soup

Made quickly before heading off to area 515’s game night. It was quick, easy and pretty good. The game night was fine, meet some of the people there, got a tour.