Halfway to Halloween
Oct. 18th, 2023 08:37 pmMonday went as planned, I woke up early and did some work, then drove to Whole Paycheck for special ingredients for dinners this week. I got myself a few more Koia shakes ;)
Back home I did more work and had therapy...probably one of my last therapy sessions. I'm keeping it through the next pay cycle but after that I want to see what my newly-obtained insurance will cover.
After therapy I HAD to go for a walk. It was in the mid 70s!!
Halloween decorations have started going up in our neighborhood.
Our neighbor's pumpkins across the street, and the house next door:


Someone even got one of those big Home Depot ghouls:

Pretty cool!
On my walk I found this gob of mushrooms.

It was cool and breezy and I loved it.
In the evening I drove all the way out to the Space Coast for trivia night with some friends at Playalinda Brewing Co.

These two work at Warburton Music; Kim is the owner of the pet squirrel that I got to meet while mouthpiece shopping at the store. Kim is a regular at this brewery and greeted pretty much everyone who worked there by name.
I'm not much of a beer drinker, but I got a 6oz pour of the Liquid Stupid, a 13.5% Belgian strong ale with honey, coriander, and orange. It was quite good and surprisingly sweet.

We didn't win at trivia, and I felt bad for my limited contributions. But we hope to try again on another trivia night, and hey, we never came in last!
Before leaving I picked up a 4-pack of their Key Lime Pie beer for Jameson. That sounds gross to me, but it was very popular and almost every table had someone drinking it, so it can't be THAT bad. Plus they don't usually sell it in cans so this was a limited-time opportunity.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday I was up early again to work. It was a beautiful 55°F so I had the screen open even though it made me shiver. It felt so nice!
After Jameson left I continued working and eating breakfast, then around 11am I stopped working to make the beef stroganoff. I wanted to make it ahead of time so I can work more in the evening, and spend time on other things.
I cooked the mushrooms in a cast iron skillet, then the floured steak, then deglazed the pan with red wine, then roasted the onions and garlic before adding all of the ingredients into the pan together, simmering them, and adding the sour cream and herbs.
Sounds good, right?
Well it wasn't. Because this recipe called for SKIRT STEAK.
I was so confused about that from the getgo, and should have listened to my instincts.
Skirt steak is tough and thin and lean. It's cheap stuff that you use for fajitas and quick sears and NOT simmering on the stove.
I couldn't understand why I couldn't just buy a decent steak or stew meat, sear it, and use that.
But like a good little brainless cog I followed the recipe to a tee. After all it was a Food & Wine recipe, those people know what they're doing, right?
Maybe they do, but I sure don't. The steak was so tough as to be inedible.
The sauce, noodles, and mushrooms were wonderful, but the steak was an absolute disaster.
And YES I cut it against the grain, I even looked up how to do it correctly. It was awful.
I was so angry and disappointed (I spent TWO HOURS cooking, and that's TWO HOURS that I could have been working and earning money instead) that after we ate I threw it all out, the whole thing. What a fucking waste.
I spent my night cleaning up the kitchen, throwing things into the guest bedroom for packing for tour, and working on Foodie Finds which is still not done because now I've hit Chicago and that will take AGES to narrow down all the great options.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday was the usual routine.
I was feeling frustrated and anxious again because there is just so much to do, and sitting perfectly still listening to nursing home interviews so I can get $20 seems like a massive waste of time right now. But it's my only income, and I've lost so much money this summer (like, thousands of dollars. THANKS FEDWRITERS!!!!!!) that I have to work as much as I can. Next week I definitely will not be able to make my 30 hours because there is just too much that I still need to do, and trying to squeeze it in between work hours has just been frustrating and hasn't allowed me to actually complete any one project.
Anyway, I worked for my usual 6:45-8:45 slot, then when Jameson left I had breakfast and slammed through making some sweet potato biscuits for dinner. I wanted to make them early because if they were a failure I could have time to pick up some Hawaiian buns or something at the store instead.
And of course, like everything else I've made from scratch this week, it was an abject failure.
Making biscuits is supposed to be one of the easiest quick breads you can do, but for whatever reason I just do not understand what it means to "cut in" the cold butter. Either I end up overworking the dough and getting chewy biscuits, or I try not to overwork it and then end up with huge chunks of butter that leak out of the dough and render the whole project inedible. This was the latter. I pulled the biscuits out to find them sitting in a puddle of liquid butter.
Why? I even grated the butter to make sure it was small enough and still cold.
Whatever. I threw them all away because I guess wasting food is my MO this week.
Then I went to Target for King Hawaiian sliders.
My other reason for hitting Target was to buy tour supplies. I had considered waiting until I got to Boise to stock up on things like dish soap, plastic wrap, wet wipes, etc, but the problem with waiting is that all of those supplies make a difference in your luggage weight, so it's better to start with everything you'll be carrying with you regularly. It ended up being kind of a lot of stuff, but when I got back home it meant I could run a "practice pack".
Cramming all of this...

...into this.

Usually I travel with two suitcases, but because I have the larger trombone and because I have to fly back and forth from Orlando for Candlelight this year, I wanted to consolidate more. My large suitcase has plenty of room, but weight is the problem. The initial "practice pack" weighed 51 pounds, but I know how to fix that: remove my wool peacoat, which weighs 5 pounds. Easy peasy. I may still offload a few more things, or ship my mutes to save space, but at least now I know that I can take one suitcase this year.
For the rest of the day I did work, then when Jameson got home I assembled my little sliders.

It's just precooked low-sodium ham steaks ripped into pieces, then grilled in the air fryer, topped with arugula and a blackberry balsamic drizzle. I melted some cheddar cheese onto half of them as well, and used both sweet rolls and pretzel rolls. Both were really good but I liked the sweet rolls more. The only thing that I "made" here was the sauce, it was blackberry jam, balsamic vinegar, mustard, whole peppercorns, a bundle of basil, and a Serrano pepper stewed together on the stove until thickened, then strained. It was REALLY good. Next time I'll chop the pepper up a little more to get more spice. There's a lot of the sauce left over so I'll use it on some chicken, and the other half of the extra-firm tofu I've got hanging around.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Tomorrow is Thursday.
Jameson has the day off (good for him! He gets a break.)
I have to work as usual, and although I didn't plan a meal I did promise to make mini apple tarte tatin for us.
We'll see if it turns out, or if it ends up in the trash like everything else I've made this week.
Back home I did more work and had therapy...probably one of my last therapy sessions. I'm keeping it through the next pay cycle but after that I want to see what my newly-obtained insurance will cover.
After therapy I HAD to go for a walk. It was in the mid 70s!!
Halloween decorations have started going up in our neighborhood.
Our neighbor's pumpkins across the street, and the house next door:


Someone even got one of those big Home Depot ghouls:

Pretty cool!
On my walk I found this gob of mushrooms.

It was cool and breezy and I loved it.
In the evening I drove all the way out to the Space Coast for trivia night with some friends at Playalinda Brewing Co.

These two work at Warburton Music; Kim is the owner of the pet squirrel that I got to meet while mouthpiece shopping at the store. Kim is a regular at this brewery and greeted pretty much everyone who worked there by name.
I'm not much of a beer drinker, but I got a 6oz pour of the Liquid Stupid, a 13.5% Belgian strong ale with honey, coriander, and orange. It was quite good and surprisingly sweet.

We didn't win at trivia, and I felt bad for my limited contributions. But we hope to try again on another trivia night, and hey, we never came in last!
Before leaving I picked up a 4-pack of their Key Lime Pie beer for Jameson. That sounds gross to me, but it was very popular and almost every table had someone drinking it, so it can't be THAT bad. Plus they don't usually sell it in cans so this was a limited-time opportunity.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday I was up early again to work. It was a beautiful 55°F so I had the screen open even though it made me shiver. It felt so nice!
After Jameson left I continued working and eating breakfast, then around 11am I stopped working to make the beef stroganoff. I wanted to make it ahead of time so I can work more in the evening, and spend time on other things.
I cooked the mushrooms in a cast iron skillet, then the floured steak, then deglazed the pan with red wine, then roasted the onions and garlic before adding all of the ingredients into the pan together, simmering them, and adding the sour cream and herbs.
Sounds good, right?
Well it wasn't. Because this recipe called for SKIRT STEAK.
I was so confused about that from the getgo, and should have listened to my instincts.
Skirt steak is tough and thin and lean. It's cheap stuff that you use for fajitas and quick sears and NOT simmering on the stove.
I couldn't understand why I couldn't just buy a decent steak or stew meat, sear it, and use that.
But like a good little brainless cog I followed the recipe to a tee. After all it was a Food & Wine recipe, those people know what they're doing, right?
Maybe they do, but I sure don't. The steak was so tough as to be inedible.
The sauce, noodles, and mushrooms were wonderful, but the steak was an absolute disaster.
And YES I cut it against the grain, I even looked up how to do it correctly. It was awful.
I was so angry and disappointed (I spent TWO HOURS cooking, and that's TWO HOURS that I could have been working and earning money instead) that after we ate I threw it all out, the whole thing. What a fucking waste.
I spent my night cleaning up the kitchen, throwing things into the guest bedroom for packing for tour, and working on Foodie Finds which is still not done because now I've hit Chicago and that will take AGES to narrow down all the great options.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday was the usual routine.
I was feeling frustrated and anxious again because there is just so much to do, and sitting perfectly still listening to nursing home interviews so I can get $20 seems like a massive waste of time right now. But it's my only income, and I've lost so much money this summer (like, thousands of dollars. THANKS FEDWRITERS!!!!!!) that I have to work as much as I can. Next week I definitely will not be able to make my 30 hours because there is just too much that I still need to do, and trying to squeeze it in between work hours has just been frustrating and hasn't allowed me to actually complete any one project.
Anyway, I worked for my usual 6:45-8:45 slot, then when Jameson left I had breakfast and slammed through making some sweet potato biscuits for dinner. I wanted to make them early because if they were a failure I could have time to pick up some Hawaiian buns or something at the store instead.
And of course, like everything else I've made from scratch this week, it was an abject failure.
Making biscuits is supposed to be one of the easiest quick breads you can do, but for whatever reason I just do not understand what it means to "cut in" the cold butter. Either I end up overworking the dough and getting chewy biscuits, or I try not to overwork it and then end up with huge chunks of butter that leak out of the dough and render the whole project inedible. This was the latter. I pulled the biscuits out to find them sitting in a puddle of liquid butter.
Why? I even grated the butter to make sure it was small enough and still cold.
Whatever. I threw them all away because I guess wasting food is my MO this week.
Then I went to Target for King Hawaiian sliders.
My other reason for hitting Target was to buy tour supplies. I had considered waiting until I got to Boise to stock up on things like dish soap, plastic wrap, wet wipes, etc, but the problem with waiting is that all of those supplies make a difference in your luggage weight, so it's better to start with everything you'll be carrying with you regularly. It ended up being kind of a lot of stuff, but when I got back home it meant I could run a "practice pack".
Cramming all of this...

...into this.

Usually I travel with two suitcases, but because I have the larger trombone and because I have to fly back and forth from Orlando for Candlelight this year, I wanted to consolidate more. My large suitcase has plenty of room, but weight is the problem. The initial "practice pack" weighed 51 pounds, but I know how to fix that: remove my wool peacoat, which weighs 5 pounds. Easy peasy. I may still offload a few more things, or ship my mutes to save space, but at least now I know that I can take one suitcase this year.
For the rest of the day I did work, then when Jameson got home I assembled my little sliders.

It's just precooked low-sodium ham steaks ripped into pieces, then grilled in the air fryer, topped with arugula and a blackberry balsamic drizzle. I melted some cheddar cheese onto half of them as well, and used both sweet rolls and pretzel rolls. Both were really good but I liked the sweet rolls more. The only thing that I "made" here was the sauce, it was blackberry jam, balsamic vinegar, mustard, whole peppercorns, a bundle of basil, and a Serrano pepper stewed together on the stove until thickened, then strained. It was REALLY good. Next time I'll chop the pepper up a little more to get more spice. There's a lot of the sauce left over so I'll use it on some chicken, and the other half of the extra-firm tofu I've got hanging around.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Tomorrow is Thursday.
Jameson has the day off (good for him! He gets a break.)
I have to work as usual, and although I didn't plan a meal I did promise to make mini apple tarte tatin for us.
We'll see if it turns out, or if it ends up in the trash like everything else I've made this week.