Journal

2024 - Week 45 Cooking Results

This week has been exhausting. I took multiple anti-acids early in the week because my level of anxiety was so high that I just couldn’t pay attention to the world around me. We went and saw the movie Election on Tuesday night. I am on the strongest level of prescribed acid reducer, already, so this is not a common experience. My anxiety appears to have been justified,while I spent the rest of the week, and now, in a general funk. I guess people would rather be lied to and blame their problems on others, then care about the people around them and actually try to solve problems. I have deleted a number of podcasts recently because I really don’t want to listen to people blame storm.

Sausage

All pork skinless brats from Crooked Gap. Good things

Meatloaf (Minor Adjustments)

I used green onion sausage (1 pound) and ground pork (2 pounds), but the rest remained about the same. This is always a good meal, I also made some mashed potatoes to go with them. I spent quite a bit of time eating meatloaf sandwiches, which was quite good.

Buttermilk Pancakes

These are always quite a good thing.

Pumpkin-Gochujang Pasta

So I sort of doubled this, however, that didn’t make sense, I should have doubled the pasta and only done half again of the sauce. So it was kind of too saucy. Overall, not to bad, but just kind of a mess.

Tangy Chili Pork Noodles

Made before, made again, skipped the chili crunch, as I shouldn’t be eating things with small seeds. Good things.

2024 - Week 44 Cooking Results

Sausage

Back to thee wonderfulness that is Crooked Gap & Grade A Garlic brats.

Pork Burgers

Bacon and pork combined into patties from Crooked Gap. Not the first time we’ve had them, nor will it be the last.

Turkey and Bean Chili

I used fresh onions and peppers, added an extra can of beans and tomatoes. Swapped chili powder with chipotle powder. With all that, it was a good dish.

Thai Chicken Soup

Skipped the mushrooms, as Shannon is not usually a fan, I had to make a special trip to get lemongrass, since the ones I had became a bit to woody. I followed the rest of it pretty closely, filtering the broth. With the added items of scallions and serrano peppers, it made for a good soup again.

Meatloaf (Minor Adjustments)

Delayed until Sunday.

Buttermilk Pancakes

Also Delayed. As a note, my favorite buttermilk, Kalona, was no longer available at the Hy-Vee I go to. However I was able to pickup some at my local food coop.

2024 - Week 43 Cooking Results

Sausage

We had a smoked pork sausage from The Good Butcher, and it was quite nice.

Smoked Chorizo Tacos

I wasn’t exactly sure what to do with smoked chorizo, which was one of the other sausages that I got from The Good Butcher, but this seemed fitting. The Smoked chorizo infused the beans and onions that I combined them with a nice mildly smoky flavor. This was a pretty simple thing to put together.

Chicken Jambalaya

I made this last night, which was pretty easy to do. The combination of the water and the rice makes me think that they wanted to get a lot of starch out of the rice but I’m not totally sure, I should probably read the article. Boiling the 3 quarts of water took the longest. Even though I had Andouille Sausage in the freezer, I used the one I picked up at The Good Butcher, rather then the chicken one they had called for. I had everything else before the rice finished cooking. That being said, it still turned out quite good. I added a bit of Lola’s to it and was quite happy.

Macaroni and Beef

I used mass market ground beef, for this, rather than defrosting some beef. Since I planned on making it Sunday after seeing back to the future and I wouldn’t have time to defrost beef (I don’t like doing a forced defrost, just a nice gentle slow defrost in the fridge). I used the whole pound of noodles and adjusted as I saw fit, which made something probably a bit different. Still good though.

On the home front, we had to escalate some home repairs from yeah we should do this, to this must be done ASAP. The one segment of the electrical panel melted and created a bit of a fire. This was related to the split breaker that powered both the bathroom upstairs and the family room in the basement, where I work from. After getting electricians out to check on things, they moved the wires from the fried breaker to the garage breaker and stated that they were not sure how long this would last.

We put in temporary rules to make sure that we don’t overload that breaker, and so far, so good. There is a heavy duty cord, that I had used for the window unit air conditioner, in the past, and Shannon runs that from something on the main circuit through our bedroom and into the bathroom to use here high energy devices. We’ve shut down most non-essential things in the living room (extra work laptop)

to prepare for replacing our electrical panel, our exhaust flue for the water heater was moved to be further away from the panel. The fine electricians did a double check after my photos to make sure that everything was ok, and now we are ready when our energy company is ready. This should be quite the update, and I’m looking forward to having something that is labeled correctly, and not having a panel that has been stated by multiple electricians as “those are untrustworthy”.

2024 - Week 43 Cooking

Made a short, Shannon supervised trip, to The Good Butcher, a new butcher shop. I’ve had some of their cured sausages purchased at the Cheese Shop, but they opened yesterday. I bought a nice selection of things, had ideas for other things there. We’ll see how this goes.

2024 - Week 42 Cooking Results

This past week I spent quite a bit of time just being there, as my brother recovers from a surgery. We had a good time wandering around the metro area, stopping at places he likes or that he thinks I like and a restaurant that he goes to from time to time. I ordered out (some excellent pizza, some very good hand pies) a bit and used what we bought grocery shopping to make breakfast lunch and dinner.

Beef Stew

Using what he had, and what I bought, I made a nice beef stew. I may have been a little intoxicated to taste well enough, so I had to salt it enough, after he tasted it, and added a bit to much apple cider vinegar (my bad, but not too too much just a bit much). I used some leftover (!!) American Wagyu beef that he had, potatoes, onions, carrots to make for a nice dinner and Lunch the next day.

Goulash

I adapted this a bit, because i used pork, instead of beef, as he eats / cooks a lot of beef. And I used more paprika then anything I saw called for (half smoked, half hot). I bought some cultured sour cream for this purpose and then forgot to add it, until I was eating it, so I gave him and myself a bit of a dollop, then added the rest of the sour cream and left him with quite a bit of leftovers.

I think he’s got a pretty good start on recovery, and I hope it goes very well. Shortly after I left my parents had flew in to took over, at a bit more of a distance (I stayed in his apartment, they will not be). I had quite the layover in Denver, so I caught up on work for that day, and after eating, worked in a coffee shop, in the airport, for a few hours. Got to a good stopping point a good hour 15 minutes before my flight. I was able to charge up my laptop from the morning’s use and also get my new backup battery charged up for the most part. I got home a bit after 10:PM and once I got off the flight I called Shannon to come get me.

I’ll miss just hanging out, shooting the breeze, making jokes and just being there with my brother, but I also slept well in my bed last night, with Máni between us, and this morning I woke up to Loki sitting on top of my side while I finished sleeping.

2024 - Week 41 Cooking Results

Squash Lasagna

Not the one I have made previously, but certainly a good recipe. I made have added a bit of extra cream cheese, as paying attention can be hard. Worked out well. I did have to microwave the pumpkin a bit, as it wasn’t quite done in the oven. I may have burned myself a little but in the rush to get the pumpkin off. I also added some La Quercia prosciutto, and some coppa I think. quite good.

Sausage

All pork hot dogs, quite nice.

Grilled Cheese

Mortadella, and some lightly smoked cheddar. I’m getting pretty good (knocks wood) at getting a nice buttery golden brown on the bread.

Green Onion Sausage Pasta

Used some leftover pasta and some other pasta. and made a nice fridge emptier. Good things.

2024 - Week 41 Cooking

This week will be mostly normal, next week, however, will be a bit of a change up. Saturday I head to Seattle to help my brother out during and after his first week of surgery. I’ve heard quite the range of things about the surgery and just being through the adaptations that I needed to go through with my own issues. Hopefully I can be a bit of a help, and get him in a good pattern so he can move forward. He’ll be helped by our parents and sister going forward as he is not supposed to drive for that first month.