I hate cleaning

Which is why I don't do it often, I guess.

But we have company coming next weekend (hubby's old college roommate) so we had no choice.

Cleaned the bathrooms, washed the floors, cleaned up the bedroom & living room. Kitchen is still a disaster area, but I'll get that this week. Also need to run a vacuum, but that's no biggie.

I could go on about when I found out a few months back at a family party that I'm the only one - besides his mother - in the Man's family that does not have maid service. That really, really needs to change soon.

The hubby also tackeled Mt. Washmore that's been piling up by his side of the bedroom. Glad to see that.

Also sewed my one beadspread that got ripped... about two years ago.

Then went to Kohl's to get totally cute but impractical shoes for me, and new Dockers for the Man.

Dinner was Portillos (hot dogs and beef sandwiches).

I promise to be a better Hausfrau tomorrow.... gotta do the weekly shopping, and also needed to prep a couple pantry staples from the Bouchon cookbook. Garlic confit and tomatoes confit. Garlic will be used in a hummus recipe for the 4th, maybe also a garlic aioli for the 4th. (For the 4th, going off to my bro in law's house in the morning to watch a parade that goes right past the house, then to my mom's in the evening where they shoot off fireworks across the street. And apparently, to my mom, the phrase "Why don't you do sandwiches for the 4th this year?" means "Why, yes, I'd love to BRING the sandwiches").

Might do the Frogs Legs from the Bouchon cookbook this week. At least that is the plan right now. A girl can hope, right????

More adventures in crap-tacular food

If I may plead my case.... it's been a mentally exhausting week at work. And a late week at work.

On the drive home, knew my options for dinner was limited. I always have stuff to fix breakfast on hand, and I knew I also had some frozen clam strips (shut up... they were on sale and the trashy take-out food part of me has been craving Long John Silver's since they closed the nearby one a year ago). I was thinking about stopping at the store, but the traffic in that direction was just horrid, so I just drove straight home.

Hubby said he could go for the clam strips. Decision made, then!

Whipped up some cocktail sauce and tartar sauce, pulled some "garlic" fries from Trader Joe's out of the frige (just regular fries with a garlic/parsley sauce packet thing... pretty tasty addition if you drain off the damned oil) and fired up the oven. It was nice to be able to use the oven, with the temps in the 90 for the past few days, I haven't been in the mood to turn on the oven.

Also steamed some broccoli. I need my veggies.

Not bad, overall.

I'd hoped to do the Tomato Confit from the Bouchon cookbook tonight, but since they take 6 hours, well, that wasn't going to be happenin'.

I might do them on Saturday... have to wake up early to bring my car in to have the breaks looked at (don't ever buy one of the newer model Merc Cougars. I swear, every year since '99 I've had to have the breaks done) and the rest of the day will be spent cleaning, which should be interesting, since we're low on cleaning supplies. Sigh. Might be making a run to Target at lunch time tomorrow, unless I decide that going to the farmer's market is more important.

Garden report..... got one strawberry that is half red. Hopefully tomorrow it will be all red and I will be happy to have the first non-herb "fruits" of the garden.

And another day that blends in to the next.....

Very unexciting day.

At work, Wednesday is "meeting day". Usually at least two, sometimes up to four, hours of the day is spent in meetings. Not as bad as some companies I've worked at where about 10 hours a week were spent in utterly pointless meetings, but still puts a crimp in the day where you don't end up getting much done by the end of the day.

Which, of course, meant today I had to get a set of documents & help files out to review, and get something finalized and sent over to our translation company (that is based in Sheffield UK, so now running at like half power with the recent flood conerns).

A highlight of my day was lunch.... had the last of the Tuna Tartine I mixed up on Sunday. No worthy bread in the house, and I knew I wouldn't be able to run out at lunch time to get anything, so I just diced the egg and radish and mixed it with the tuna. Gotta say... even three days after the fact and sans the bread, it was still darned good (and for me to like something WITHOUT the bread... that's big!!)

Come home late... just mentally drained (it happens a lot on this job, we have to think about a lot more things than most tech writers need to). I knew I pulled chili out of the freezer last night, and I knew I also had tortillas and cheese, so some totally unimaginative chili quesadillas formed in my mind.

Got home, got the mail, brought in the trash cans (garbage day), cleaned up a little in the garage, went to check my plants out back (we had hail today) and I've got about 12 real tomatoes growing, and too many grape tomatoes for me to remember the number. And the first strawberry has started to turn red. Weeee!!

Came back inside, changed the clothes, pulled out the fixin's for dinner. The hubby walked in, looking beat as hell (it's been busy at his work too.... like us, understaffed!) but then saw the chili and his face lit up.... he asked if we were having chili cheese dogs. I took a quick look at some buns I had, they appeared OK, so I promised chili cheese dogs. Hey. I am a HausFrau after all. I like to make my man happy with dinner (well, sometimes, lol).

Relax for a few, started dinnner. After I plopped the dogs in the water (I'm a Chicago gal.... we reheat them in water!) I went to get the bus to steam them a little... and of course, all the parts covered by the printing on the package had turned south. Damnit.

So, a little thinking... and we ended up with chili cheese dog quesadillas for dinner. Very Semi-Half-Assed (tm) but in the end, it worked, it was tasty, and the hubby was in a better mood after dinner. All is well.

I did work out tonight, but have otherwise been a sloth with all the good Wednesday television... Ghost Hunters, Footballers Wives, Rescue Me (that one hurt..... Chief!!!). Still have to watch the last couple minutes of Footballers Wives but I know the nutter Amber goes all "Kali" on Bruno and ends up in the looney bin, and the return of Tanya!!!! Wooooooo!!!!!!!

I think the Men of Hell's Kitchen offically became Hell's Bitches

... c'mon.... grossed out at eating pigs fit, herring and tripe??? PLEASE!!!!!

What a bunch of mutha-fucking pansy ass pussies. And I meant every word of that.

Seriously.... eating some tounge, some liver, some stomach lining, a couple of preparations of herring that I have been seriously craving lately.... and it's time to hurl chunks??? Get over your chicken-breast loving asses and be a fuckin' man about it!! Jeebus.

Not an interesting night in Casa de la Hausfrau. (It's Hausfrau... which is feminine.... la is still right, right? Ugh. Too much timing editing foriegn languages today at work) I thought today was going to be a busy dat at work, so this morning I plunked the fixins' for a pot roast in the crockpot before I left for work this morning. I was happy I was awake enough to be chopping onions this morning, I've had episodes of When Kitchens Attack trying to do that before.

Lunch was my tuna tartine ala the Bouchon cookbook. My presentation was not as fancy, I mixed my olives with the tuna, and kinda wished I'd also just mixed in the egg and some diced radishes. For my tastes, it'd be better as a true tuna salad and not having to spend 5 minutes assembling my lunch in my cubicle, lol. But it was still DAMNED tasty and the best tuna I have ever had. WOW.

I did have to run out and buy bread.... damned you humid weather, the toasts I made last night were soggy and gross by lunch time. All was good though.

All partied out....

It was the 1st birthday party for one of the nephews today. (We'll actually have another first birthday party in August). Fun, but it takes a lot out of you.

They actually had a really cool setup... http://www.luckylous.com/ did a "New York Style Hotdog Cart" thing. Hot dogs, burgers and fries right there, meant the bro in law & sis in law didn't have to do any of the cooking, and there guys even do the cleanup. Sweet! They also had a snow cone machine for the kids.... yeah... one of 'em was up to 7 snow cones by the time the snow cone machine departed. It was fun.

Rather uneventful for a party for that side of the family... lots of beer was consumed (and my sis in law made some pretty good sangria-type thing) but I think all the adults are finally a little too old for the old-school jackassery that they used to specialize in.

Oh yeah. Was going to bring an appetizer type-thing... found an online recipe for mini cheese calzones. Yeah. Lesson learned, the final product can only be as good as the sum of its parts. It was easy, and it sounded good enough to my post-work brain last week (and gimme a break, at the time I thought I needed something that would be OK to sit out in 90 degree weather)... store bought pizza whack-a-dough around string cheese. Was easy enough to do, but when I sampled one out of the oven and tasted it... just... ew. EW. Odd sweetness to the dough. Not good. I plated them up, still debating, and before we left I just decided to leave them. They'd probably be good with REAL pizza dough, but these were just nasty.

And, sadly, the recipe I used as a source was damned crappy and I now have two extra tubes of pizza dough in my fridge. Damnit.

But, felt better that when we got home, I started the prep for the tuna tartin from the Bouchon cookbook, so I can have it at work this week for lunch. Mixed the tuna and fixins, sans the herbs, which I just chopped, and have everything prepped so I can just grab the parts tomorrow and assemble at lunch time. But MAN... the tuna mixture already tastes good. Oil packed tuna really does make a huge difference. Coming out of the can.... it just even looked like tuna from when I was a kid. Actual chunks and not total mush.

Ok. Off to watch the Tivo'd Vegas Dream Dining special. Sigh.

Someone.... please... get Sandra Lee under control

Yep, add me to the list of the many, many, many people out there that cannot stand Sandra Lee.

Don't know who she is?? My husband calls her "Stupid Cooking Lady." If you've ever been flipping thru channels and landed on Food Network and see a blonde woman cooking, and watched for a few minutes until your mind put together all the off and gagging flavors she's putting together, the horrible execution of dishes, and the sheer insanity of it all.... that's Sandra Lee.

I'm all behind the concept. I practice it often. I call it "Semi-Half-Assed Cooking (TM) ". Canned stuff, a little help from the products now available in most grocery stores.... if you're someone who works a 9-5 job, you really almost have to take shortcuts along the way to get food on the table. But there are ways it can be done well, and well, Sandra Lee does not do that.

Today's new episode was just totally out of control. "Watch Sandy remake recipes from Mario Batali and Bobby Flay." This meant unrinsed canned beans, spice packets and just WRONG WRONG WRONG.

Let her keep attaching mango slices to chicken to make it "look like a zebra". Continue with the many cocktails. But stay the hell away from not just pretending to be like a real chef, but being BETTER since you're half-assed results are better than theirs because they're half-assed.

There is a time for half-assed cooking. Get home at 7pm from work and just too damned tired to think about picking up fast food... bring on the half-assed cooking! Pull some cheese tamales and chili out of the freezer, warm tamales thru, nuke the chili, dump chili on top of tamales... ta-da!! Dinner is served!!

I guess that's the thing that drives me the most nuts about the show. Half-assed cooking should not pretend to be anything more than half-assed cooking. And every show of Semi-Homemade is presented as dishes she's serving up for a party or company. Please. You have to wonder about the mindset of someone who claims to love entertaining, yet won't put a decent effort in to it to proove that you do enjoy it and you value the company of your guests enough to make a fuss.

And this episode struck a particular chord.... I'm a cookbook lover. And, actually, Bouchon is the first resteraunt cookbook I've ever purchased. I've had a horribly terrible, disappointig and heatbreaking breakfast at the Vegas outpost that did still give a glimpse to know that with some better line cooks, this stuff could be awesome. And really, as often as we are in Vegas, I've tried to get the hubby to try it with me but he finds it all way too fussy for his tastes. So... with the cookbook, I can at least try the stuff at home. And if I blow it, it's my own damned fault!!

There are some things that will be Semi-Half-Assed (TM) while I cook from it. Onions confit? They'll be done in a crockpot. I've been doing them that way for years (based off a recipe from Lara Brody's "Slow Cooker Cooking" - great book). Total high-end ingredients? Wish I could, but I live in the real world with a mortgage and car payments and I can't always go top-dollar.

But, I have enough respect for the book, Thomas Keller and the recipes to know damned well that the way it's being done as described in the book is the right way to do it. In any cookbook, that holds true.

It would take a particular brand of insanity to do something like the Trout with Hariots Verts and Almonds using canned green beans and a spice packet, and still call in inspired by Thomas Keller. I know little of the man itself, but I think for any human proud of their craft, it'd be gounds for having the person hunt you down and admister a swift and brutal beat down.

And I can take Sandra Lee ruining traditional recipes. All said, it's kinda fun to watch her do it, in the whole reality show "I'm sooooo much better than her" way. But when she tries to drag other people down... it's disturbing. It's disturbing that these talented chefs are reduced to that (no doubt due to selling their souls to the Food Network somewhere along the way) . It's disturbing that SHE really thinks these recipes are of the quality of the name associated with them. And it's most disturbing that people may actually make this recipes and NOT explore the work of the real chefs.

Wooo... VEGAS!!!

Fuck the Hausfrau duties.

We've booked the next Vegas trip. Yeeee-haw!!!

At this point, there is no plan to rent the Shelby Mustang again. Unless Hertz has the new one by the time we leave. So if no car.... that means no Rosemary's this trip (I'm starting to think I'm cursed) and no Liberace Mueseum. I can live with that, I don't think those places are going away soon.

I'd like to hit the Imperial Palace auto mueseum again. Who knows how long IP will be around.

Sad that the New Frontier and Margarita's Cantina will be gone. I know that place probably isn't going to find a home anywhere else on the strip. Guess we'll have to find a new Friday night meal.

Reeaaaallly want to hit Enoteca San Marco (Mario Batali & Joe.... I won't even try because I *never* spell the last name right.... Lidia's kid, lol) for a lunch or something. The Hubby has been informed of this, and I think he might go for it since the dress is casual.

Really hoping that I'm not just using the slot & video poker machines like reverse ATMs again. God that sucked. Might try to see if I can get an actual seat at a blackjack table to play with some real live humans. We'll see if I work up the courage.

Um. Yeah. Busy day. Stuff happened. Burgers and Crisp Zucchini Coins (Cooking Light recipe, oldie but a goodies) for dinner. Man did Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip SUCK tonight. I think I'm finally ready to let this show go.

EEEEEEEEE!!!! VEGAS!!!!!!! And crap. Gotta bribe the mother in law to come over and water the plants while I'm gone. I don't want to come home to dead plants!!