Night off?

Usually, Friday night is my "night off" from all hausfrau-ish duties. We get takeout and I'm freed from the kitchen for the night.

Tonight, we got Chinese food.

I always forget, with Chinese food, we usually eat off our regular plates (not the plastic ones) and the counter always looks like a disaster area with the leaky containers and all the drips and globs as we dish out our food. And then putting all the leftovers away, yadda yadda yadda.

So the dishwasher is going right now, and the counters have been wiped down. For the second time tonight.

When I got home, I got started on making some regular guac and some Roquamole for a party we're going to tomorrow. A double batch of Roquamole plus the regular guac used up 14 avocados (only 1 bad one in the bunch I bought). An hour total to make both the dips and get cleaned up.

I've also had some of Michael Ruhlman's version of veal stock going over the past few days. Few days? Yes. I know, I could just easily start this and leave it in the oven overnight or while I'm at work and then deal with it and get the process done in a day... but I have a very unnatural fear that unattended cooking will start my house on fire. Whenever I leave something in the crock pot while I'm at work, I have to check the suburban paper's website a zillion and a half times during the day to make sure there are no reports of townhome-engulfing fires in our complex. Leave a gas stove on overnight? We'd be dead by morning. I'm as sure of this as my hubby is sure if he stepped one foot in Australia, he'd instantly be bit by one of the zillion poisonous creatures there and die. You don't question this kind of belief.

So, I just broke down the cooking of veal stock over the course of the week... get home from work, simmer a couple hours, then throw the pot in the downstairs fridge to pick it up again the next day. Right now, I have my initial veal stock and the remouillage sittin' in the downstairs fridge, waiting until Sunday when I'll actually have the time to reduce them down.

We've got the party tomorrow afternoon, and on Sunday morning we're going out to brunch with the in-lae family for father-in-law's birthday. Actually a decent brunch, so that is good at least. Undecided if I want to try and get some grocery shopping done quickly tomorrow, or just wait until Sunday afternoon. In any case, Sunday dinner is probably going to be something easy and simple like roast chicken. I could also use the chicken bones... my homemade chicken stock, um, stocks, are low. (Although another cooking project this week was to use up some duck bones I had in the freezer, so I now have 9 cups of duck stock I also need to deal with).