Another week, down the tubes...

Well, last week was a looooong week.

There was one company that I interviewed with that I was on the fence about, and they came back and made me an offer. For their offer, it was no contest, no way would I take that job. I gave them a counter offer (first time I've ever done that) figuring they'd tell me to get lost. I was surprised when they came back, meeting my offer (for the most part.... I will loose 3 paid vacation days from what I have now).

So I was stressed about that all week... do I take it? Do I continue to see how long I can ride it out at my current place? Or do I just keep looking waiting for the absolute perfect opportunity?? I suck at decisions like that.

So, being stressed about that, I was just not having the best week. And the hubby ended up working late every night but Friday, so he continued his grumpy streak, and I was dealing with unpredictable dinner times. Fun. I can't even remeber what i made every night. I know one night we had gyros and eggs (cooked gyrps meat served with sunny-side up eggs), one night was South School BBQ sandwiches, and um... stuff. I know we ate every night, so I know I was cooking!

>On Saturday, the hubby had to go in to work, so we got up at a fairly normal hour. I had a couple cups of coffee, watched some Food Network, and then headed out in to the world. I hit Trader Joe's to stock up on stuff for Thanksgiving (making two pecan pies, sweet potatoes and maybe green beans to bring over to the in-laws), then hit Tuesday Morning and was delighted to find a Built NY 3-bottle tote. I've wanted a two-bottle one for awhile, and didn't even realize they made a three bottle one. Now that the in-laws have come to realize it's not a sin to have a couple glasses of wine, we usually go thru 3 bottles on holidays.

Last night was a repeat of the Lighter Chicken Parmesan that I've already made before. Man, that stuff is good. Tonight was Seafood Lasagna since they had snow crab on sale at the store this weekend. I don't use canned crab as the recipe suggests, this time I used some snow crab, and packages of those teeny little salad shrimp.

The starting goods..... sans the scallops that were still in the freezer....

This thing? ROCKS. We got them years ago with a Lobster gram, it's the best thing for getting in to seafood that is still in a hard shell.

A half hour later (my hands are in slow and clumsy mode lately).....

I was not happy with the fact that the salad shimp, which were also on sale at the grocery store, were not cleaned very well. Lots of really black veins. Oh happy me. I'm usually not bicthy about having to clean out shrimp, but not those small little salad shrimp fuckers. I did clean out a few, but a lot of them went right in to the trash.

I also added some scallops - had a pound of bay scallops that have been in the freezer for awhile, and this seemed like a good place to use them. I also made some garlic confit and used that rather than raw garlic, and added a couple grates of nutmeg to bechamel.

While I was cooking them, they gave off a lot of liquid, so I used that in place of some of the chicken stock in the recipe. I also ended up using an old stash of homemade chicken stock. Yay, more open freezer space!!

I also had a huge brain fart when making the lasagna and totally forgot about the cottage cheese. I was using no-bake noodles that I had soaked a little before I started assembly. It'd have been easier, with my mistake, if I hadn't soaked the noodles since dis-assembly to get the cottage cheese in would have been easier. But I did manage to do it.

The lasagna before it went in the oven.......

And the mess I had to clean up while it was in the oven....

The lasagna when it came out of the oven....

I was worried about the no-boil noodles not haing enough liquid, so I covered it cooked for awhile. Um, BOY, was I wrong. When I checked it after 40 minutes, it was still a soupy mess, so back in to the oven it went (luckily I was way early when I put it in the oven, so dinner time was still on schedule).

Looked back at the recipe and realized it was a soupy mess because I didn't use enough butter/flour in the bechamel. Whoops. I used 1/4 cup of each, it calls for 1/2 cup. D'oh.

Served with some steamed asparagus and garlic bread (had leftover bread from yesterday - Italian semolina bread, which I haven't had in YEARS). Despite being soupy, the taste was great.