Reading. School. Cooking. Shutdown
10:28 PMOctober has been an interesting month. Since I work for NASA, I was placed on furlough when the government shut down for 16 days. For a while, I had no idea if I was getting paid but I guess this is why parents and financial professionals say to have enough savings to last you a few months in case things like this happen. I'm so glad I listened. It turns out we are mostly likely going to be paid so in the end it was a nice two weeks off of work.
During that time, I took a trip out to Staten Island to visit my cousins and my baby first cousin once removed (or nephew, to make things easier). Gotta say, much cuter in person. But still absolutely adorable in photos.
Seriously, how can you not love that face? Adorbs
The rest of the time, I mostly cleaned, cooked a little, read some books, worked on my grammar course.
Let me just say one thing, re-learning grammar as an adult really sucks. Seriously. It's pretty horrible and I've probably made a million grammar mistakes in this post but this forum is kind of like my location for brain-dead ramblings. Okay?
Here's a bit of what I cooked and what I did with pictures, because really, who wants to read what I write? Not me :P
I can't remember when I made this but it's a beef, bean and broccoli stir fry with cauliflower mash
This was bison marinara with zucchini spaghetti
Baked chicken tenders with mustard and a soy and miso dressing
The one following is what I cooked tonight so I included a few more steps in my process
First I sauteed some portobellos and then tried to char some bell peppers on my gas stove. Did not work. Ended up placing the peppers in my saute pan and just letting them go and get charred
Then I placed them into a plastic bag to sweat and for the skin to loosen. I didn't cook them for a long enough time so the skin didn't peel off. Ended up just leaving the skin as is.
Portobello went on top of a bed of arugula
Then I roasted a large boneless pork loin roast which was about 2.5-3 pounds. I covered it at first with honey (delicious), salt, pepper, rosemary, cardamom (was supposed to be fennel) and chopped garlic. I then placed the roast fat side up and scored it to allow the fat to get melty and for the garlic and spices to get into the meat.
Then I made a sauce of marscapone cheese, lemon zest, lemon juice, parmesan and cardamom. Spread that onto half of the loin (I cut it open to check for doneness) and on the other half.....
I placed a couple slices of pancetta. Should have put more!
Yum!
I got this recipe from the Winter section of Under the Tuscan Sun which is one of the best travel memoirs that I have read recently. It's so much better than the movie, much more descriptive of the village and the trials of renovating an abandoned villa. It definitely made me dream of buying a villa on a sun-soaked terrace in the Italian countryside and drinking wine while soaking up the sun and harvesting fruit and olives.
Sigh.
Seriously, read it. You can almost feel the sun radiating through the book.
And, she includes recipes!
Now on to other things:
The girls at my church threw a beautiful, bug themed shower for our wonderful friend Joellen. I was in charge of making favors and received a suggestion to make these little ribbon ladybugs which were then glued onto clothespins (for ornaments or decorations) and attached to little bags of gummy worms. It was a bit of work because my neurotic side kicked in and forced me to make the bugs more complicated than they needed to be. But they're super cute!
However, that totally pales in comparison with the spread that was at the shower! I am so impressed and so jealous that I missed out on the actual shower. My only contribution was to finish stuffing, closing up and wrapping the twine on that football in the center of the table (it is a bee hive, not an actual football...)
Finally, my ten year high school reunion was held on the first weekend in October.
Seriously, ten years.
Where did the time go...
I made some placecards for the food, menus for the bar, signs and placards with fun facts from 1999-2003.
It was probably not wise to end on that note because now, I feel old.
Going to go yell at some kids to get off my lawn.
(Just kidding, I don't have a lawn. I live in a condo)
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