Cop Out...

Yep that's right, I said COP OUT! Did we eat the crock pot extravaganza the next day? NOPE! Me and Roomie had had enough of the kitchen and had a jonesing for a burger. Where'd we go? THE HAT! If you live in So. Cal. or Vegas, you know all about the delish-ness that is The Hat. They are famous for their pastrami sandwiches and mile-high chili fries (no joke it's crazy what these guys do to a chili fry).

So I probably should have mentioned earlier that my Roomie is a total veggie freak. While eating meat (usually chicken) happens now and again, the food of preference is veggie related. If you read my first post you well know that veggies are my sworn enemy and I'd rather go to the dentist AND the gyno at the same time than eat them...especially squash. UGHHHHHHH!!!! So as we have roomed together for the last month and a half, it has been a practice in patience and experimentation for us both to dine in the same house and not make multiple meals. Trying to save money, we try to make one dinner to share and have leftovers for lunches and what not. We've had more hits than misses, which is good and both of us have opened our minds to things we probably would not have tried prior to meeting. Thus, my voyage into eating more like a grown up. I still like what I like, but am trying to find ways to do it more healthfully as well as incorporate more fruits and (gulp!) veggies in my diet. Roomie swears it will help my digestion and such, so we will see. (Note I'm opting out of writing a blog about my bathroom habits to see if this notion turns out to be true. *LOL*) So for weeks, I've been on a pilgrimage to try and eat some sort of veggie and fruit with at least my dinner if not more. I've done quite well so far although as I pointed out in earlier writings, I'm a purist, I like things a certain way and rarely waver from that mode. Salad, the dreaded salad, smells like ass (and not in a good way) in my book and my friends think it's hilarious. I truly believe that lettuce is the devil. I've sent many a bag of Taco Hell back before even opening it because I can smell the gooey nasty cheese encrusted iceberg lettuce percolating in my warm tacos. GROSS! I know so many people that LOVE salad...they try in vain to extol the virtues of this health food on me...but the message is lost the moment the "green" smell hits my nostrils. Not to mention the smells of goopy dressing dripping from the wilted leaves...(excuse me while I gag a bit at the image). So no salads for this chick. Oddly enough though, I discovered that I can not only handle but ALMOST enjoy (now) baby spinach (no stems) with sliced granny smith apples, cashews, and dried cranberries. Weird right? So that has been my "veggie" for dinner in most cases. Roomie has a rule about having some sort of fruit on the table to follow dinner, a habit that wasn't as hard to follow as I thought it would be. I like bananas and granny smith apples so those are my fruits on the table. Now and again when strawberries are on sale I'll eat those too. BABY STEPS PEOPLE! I'm a work in progress!

Now that you know about the veggie wars that go on in my house and how I've been trying to adjust, I can tell you that I have been doing well believe it or not. I am still working on things liked cooked veggies outside of corn and potatoes (Yes I know, keep the starch argument to yourself, I don't care, I love them.). Point is, I'm getting there. After weeks of really pushing fruits and the dinner salad I found I was hungry more often. Also I read somewhere that my waking constantly at night and heartburn may be curbed if I ate a light snack (containing protein) later in the evening. After moving in I found that we ate dinner much earlier than I was used to when I was a grazer prior. Which might explain why I had sleep and heartburn issues more regularly after moving in. So I tried it, ate a few Triscuits and cheese about an hour or two before bed and what do you know? IT WORKED! I tend to sleep much better through the night with no tummy or heartburn issues. So with all these changes I'm finding that I'm eating smaller meals with more content, but a little more often and things seem to coming along well.

With all this better eating, I didn't even think about what going to The Hat might do to my better balanced system. I was seriously PMSing and wanted my junk food in a bad way. Mind you I don't drink Pop all that often and much prefer unsweetened iced tea. So there we are at The Hat, and we both ordered (which I've never done) double cheeseburgers (mine is plain of course), fries for Roomie and onion rings (extra crispy) for me. It's funny.. I don't like onions, but love extra crispy onion rings that are thinly sliced (that way the onion doesn't slide out). This plan sounded good in the moment...and for once I decided to forgo the iced tea and got excited over strawberry Fanta. You see where this is going I'm sure. I would say about halfway through the artery clogging, deep fried goodness we were feasting on I felt it. You know the feeling...the pressure in that spot between your chest and tummy, then the burn. Did I stop? Hell no! I put down that whole burger, half my rings (the "small" comes in a giant paper bag), all my deliciously strawberry-ness Fanta and died a sweet fast food death. It was so good...hit the spot completely in more ways than one. We both crawled to the truck and drove the short distance home. Bloated and uncomfortable does not quite cover it. We prayed for relief. Roomie decided to go fuss around the yard in an effort to work some of the bloat away (Yeah right...there was farting going on out there, you can't fool me!). I lay on the couch and held my gut hoping for relief. Then we thought we would flush away the badness with drinking copious amounts of water...all that did was waterlog our bloat further. Needless to say neither of us slept well that night...and as I drifted off to a uncomfortable sleep I could hear Roomie in the hallway telling me "you know it takes like 3 days for red meat to work its way through your digestive system". Thanks for the warning (NOW) Captain Obvious!

 

(Not) Headless Chicken - The aftermath...

Hey folks, I figured I'd update you on the headed chicken fiasco that was my Wednesday. As promised, I ran my butt to the "regular" grocery store and bought some boneless, skinless "safe" chicken breasts for my fabulous crock pot extravaganza recipe. Remember the text I sent my roommate upon discovering the (Not) Headless Chicken? Well shortly after returning from the market with the new chicken, my roommate phones me asking "what is up with the head attached , not eating text?" I explained in my best whiny, distraught voice about the traumatizing chicken showdown. The laughter that exploded through the phone could be heard for miles I'm sure. With my pride a little bruised I shouted "oh yeah, well guess what, you get to deal with headed chicken when you get home!" All I could hear was a croaked "Ok" through the laughter and then the hang up tone.

While dinner that night had been intentionally planned for later in the evening (my roommate wasn't getting home till later due to work) our over enthusiastic crock pot that usually cooks in record time, decided to take it's own sweet time with the new chicken. So the "meal" as it were wasn't complete till about 9pm...just in time for roomie to get called back into work. The dinner was just about ready, but not something that could easily travel. *Sigh*

Breakfast burritos it was! Sounds easy enough...yeah I have this little issue that crops up when I am talking and doing other activities such as driving, cooking etc...things that require some undivided attention... I lose track of what I am doing, where I am going or generally miss the boat altogether. Well what should have been a quickly scramble a couple eggs and throw whatever left over was in the fridge into it and send roomie on their way dinner didn't turn out so. It turned into shredding old potatoes (who knew they could last that long?), sort of cooking said potatoes ( I say sort of as they sort of congealed into a wad of potato that resembled a dirty snowball.), and then chopping (not my forte, Gordan Ramsey would scream, swear and kick me off the show the minute I lifted the knife.) onions, tomatoes and mushrooms to dump in the mix. Rather than 2 eggs, I absentmindedly used 6, which meant I needed to use more of the other ingredients too. I end up thinking "wow...I'm actually doing that plan ahead thing". You know the one...the one I always see on Pinterest where you make up a shit load of food and freeze it for "stress-free" morning meals for your family. So then I started thinking I was a breakfast burrito rock star. That was until I realized that A) I don't like mushrooms, tomatoes, or onions in my eggs let alone most of my food (see my first post regarding the "rules"), and B) because of A. I would not be eating any of this food I just cooked and C) Roomie was about to be eating a truck load of breakfast burritos for every meal.  So we proceeded to pull out every type of tortilla we had in the fridge (we had several kinds given the neighbor has recently started doing store deliveries for a mom & pop tortilla start-up.) I made corn tortillas, flour tortillas, whole wheat flour tortillas, low carb wheat tortillas, large tortillas and alas, small tortillas. Using up the majority of the Tupperware available in the house, the breakfast burrito assembly line began. Tortilla, eggs mixture, sprinkle of cheese and a line of salsa verde (YUCKKK IT'S GREEN!!!), roll it up and in the container it goes. I wrapped a few in foil for the road since roomie really needed to get outta there as they mistakenly thought the wait for food would be short. *LOL* Righhhhhhttttt.... ;)

Bout the time roomie left...guess what? Crock pot extravaganza was done! BASTARD!  I tasted the concoction that had taken so much time and effort to create. How was it? Well you know that moment when you've been working on the meal so much that you don't even want to eat it anymore? Yeah that was me. At that point, all I cared about was that the chicken was cooked to the point that no one in the house would get any raging stomach chaos that would most certainly clog up the septic system with angry uncooked poultry rage. Besides, we are almost out of toilet paper and only have less than a quarter of a box of Kleenex in the house, so no stomach issues are allowed at this time.
Giving up and staring wearily at the now very large mountain that was my dishes in the sink, I packaged up the remaining burrito supply as well as the crock pot extravaganza and off to the fridge they went! I pushed them way back so I would not have to look the spoils of my efforts in the proverbial eye. Meanwhile, I pulled out some left over tomato soup and ate it with some crackers, had an "awwwww it's ok" cookie and got cracking on the dishes that were multiplying like rabbits in my sink. I realized while washing the dishes (Yep, hand washing!) that I think I used every fork in the house that evening. I'm so very afraid of getting bubble guts or worse from eating or coming into contact with undercooked chicken that I used a new fork every time I checked the crock pot! I probably always overcook chicken for the same reasons. Which begs the question...why is that the Olive Garden can make the most tender, tasty chicken dishes that you don't even need a knife to cut? Meanwhile I either under cook  to the point that the chicken gets up off the pan/grill on it's own, flipping me off as it walks away or I overcook it to the point of gaining door stop status? These are the things one thinks about while hand washing dishes.  So after finishing the small country that was my dishes, I called it a night, vowing that we would in fact eat the crock pot extravaganza tomorrow come hell or high water.

Running Around Like a Chicken With Their Head Cut Off..Or Not

I have cooked more in the last month and a half than I probably have the majority of my adult life. So when I was getting stuff ready to make this awesomely easy crock pot chicken recipe just a bit ago for a later dinner tonight, I thought "I'll be done in no time!".  

Ummm...Yeah... so I've been venturing to the Asian markets in the neighborhood and am finding all sorts of goodies to try. Those that know me well know what a huge feat this is for my picky palate. Well I bought a whole chicken yesterday at a new market, which I have done before (but not at that particular market). I thawed out the chicken this morning, and went to open it up and prepare it only to find..(I gulp hard and try not to hurl as I write this)...THE HEAD WAS STILL ATTACHED! (Along with other various odds and ends including a feather or two.) I screamed, dropped it back in the bag in the sink and tried valiantly to screw up my courage to deal with the headed poultry oddly staring at me. Sadly, I admit I could not. I texted the roomie and said we would not be eating said fowl this evening.

Not wanting to be wasteful, I debated how to remove the offending bird and return it to the freezer/fridge/anywhere but in front of me. Finally I came up with a plan. I saw the neighbor kid who mows the grass and such for the property and asked him if he could help me. He said yes, and I told him he couldn't laugh until after he left my house. After staring for a moment, he got all serious and said "Yes Ma'm". I hate that phrase. I'm determined not to be old enough to be called that yet...Ma'm is my mother, and grandmother, not me! So I brought the young lad into the house and showed him the crime scene that was my sink. He snorted, choked down the giggle and proceeded to wash his hands in the other sink and deal with the dead offender. He thinks I didn't hear him as he quietly whispered "Brawk Brawk" under his breath as he returned the headed chicken to the fridge. Little smart ass, I like his style *LOL*.

Soooo...back to the store I go. I think I'll be safe and do some good old white girl boneless, skinless, chicken breasts from Ralph's. Bon Appétit!

The "Rules"

Welcome to my online portal into my kitchen missteps and mayhem. After working in Student Housing at colleges for the majority of my adult life thus far, cooking has never been a high priority for me. I always had a dining hall or cafeteria in which to dine, where someone other than me put in the time, effort and creativity to daily meals. My biggest decision was beef or chicken, fried or no? Don't get me wrong, I have some definite thoughts on food: 
1.   Nacho cheese is a food group. * Note the philosophy in #3.
2.   Bacon, definitely...it's the candy of all meats.
3.   Cheese makes everything right with the world.
4.   Hot Sauce on everything. 
5.   Green (food) mean NO!
6.   Icy cold milk is a special kind of euphoria.
7.   Lettuce is the devil - it smells like ass and not in the good way. 
8.   There are NO good salads, ever.
9.   I abhor most veggies save for corn and potatoes.
      (Shush up all you veggies/vegans who will now lecture me on the starch factor
       of my chosen favorite veggies!).
10.   Deep fried goodness is a comfort food.
11.  I should have been born Mexican because I could live off the food.
12.  I have Mad juice love, but only singular juices...no "blends".
13.  Apple juice gives me what my students used to call "bubble guts".
14.  Beer is a food group. 
15.  Allergic to Blackberries.
16.  Simply put, I'm a purist. I like what I like, and don't often stray into variation 
       unless I'm positive that it may taste good.

So that's me in a nutshell. Broken eggshells and all. And to put the lecturers who are waiting with baited breath to extol on me the virtues of healthy eating, save it for another unsuspecting schmucks blog, that's not what this space is about. I will say that while I'm not the vision of healthy vegetarian or vegan eating at its finest, I am making more of an effort to eat more healthfully and mindfully. It doesn't mean I don't enjoy my nachos (YUM!) or In-n-Out Burger (plain with cheese please) now and again. So eat up, I'll be sharing with you my newly acquired cooking antics, how Pinterest can be your friend or your worst enemy and my stumbling blocks to well planned meals. 

As the famous Julia Child would say.. "Bon Appetit!"