Winter in Spring in a Hot Apartment

This afternoon Jen boarded a plane to Portland, Oregon, leaving me all alone. Those familiar with the blog know the wild exploits I get up to when Jen is away. There was that time I made an egg sandwich, that time I made some pasta and had some shiraz, that time I had a kale salad, that time I had some pickled herring, that time I mimicked the Dominoe's Bread Bowl Pasta, that time I cut my finger and had some leftover chicken, that time I made catfish with zucchini crust, and who could forget that time I made a weird chicken salad.

Yeah, I've had some wild times when Jen's been out of town. Now you can see why she's such a jealous woman. We have major trust issues and I take full responsibility for my part in that. We're working on it though. Our counselor says that every relationship is like a garden. We're just watering ours, brother. We're just watering ours.



Given my new passion for budgeting I opted to do no grocery shopping at all to make tonight's meal. I made this salad with leftover kale, kalamata olives, feta cheeses, and a vinaigrette made with whole grain mustard, lemon, Lyle's Golden Syrup, and olive oil.



I used up some old bread to make this grilled Gruyere sandwich with Sweet Smooth Hot mustard from SchoolHouse Kitchen. This is my all time favorite mustard and it turned what would have been a boring sandwich into a boring sandwich with delicious mustard!



As temperatures have plummeted down into the 30s this evening, I figured I'd warm up with this Backburner from Southern Tier Brewing Company in Lakewood, New York. I purchased this about a year ago and it's been just hanging around in my beer cellar waiting for a good excuse to be enjoyed.

It turns out our building, as is often the case, had issues with the heat turning temperatures extremely high throughout our living space even with windows opened on this wintery night. If I sat close enough to the open window I could pretend it was cold enough to really get the maximum amount of enjoyment out of this wonderful winter beer.



I made some granola the other day using the leftover grains I'd had from my last two batches of beer. I dried them out in the oven then added Lyle's golden syrup, Canola oil, crushed almond, and crystallized ginger. I also put in some dried dates which ended up hardening considerably in the oven in a turn reminiscent of last year's chestnut granola debacle. Luckily I don't think the dates have achieved quite the same tooth-cracking density as the chestnut pieces in that ill-fated batch of granola.

Next time I make granola with any sort of dried fruit I will just toss them in at the end.



I used a little of this granola on top of some yogurt with a little honey, flax seed, and sliced Ataulfo Mango, my mango of choice. I would have used this Atualfo Mango for our Week 19 pregnancy theme meal but they were sadly unavailable.

At times the granola is a bit too aggressively crunchy but at the end of the day it's tasty enough to give it a pass. Sure, I have to pick out bits of toasted barley malt out of my teeth at the end of eating but that's just the cost of saving money.

That amount of savings is going directly toward putting our boys through their first half-second of college.

Dinner With The World's Stupidest Man

Jen is away on a work-related trip so I tonight I came home alone to make dinner for myself. This was a good opportunity to continue working through our massive inventory of food which included roast chicken, one of Jen's least favorite leftovers.

I decided that I would give my injured fingers some time to air out, however, I didn't want to use them in the preparation of food given their state. I sliced up some mushrooms and tossed them in a hot pan with some butter to cook while I chopped up the rest of the roasted vegetables from the chicken.

Since I was using my ring finger (previously injured in a car door last Friday night) I was a little unstable and the unthinkable happened -- the knife slipped and sliced the tip of my finger.



So, here you have the current state of my hand. Two bruised and recovering fingers accompanied by a now bloody and bandaged third finger. Mr. Pinky, my fourth favorite finger, is still going pretty strong though.



I wasn't about to let a setback like that stop me from my mission. I tossed the chopped carrot, onion, celery, and sweet potato into the pan with some of the roasting juices, a little milk, and cream and let it cook down while I added some of the chopped meat. To finish it I threw in some peas.

While this cooked down I cut out some rounds of puff pastry and baked them in the oven for a few minutes. Finally I layered the stew with puff pastry to create this makeshift Napoleon of leftover junk from the fridge.

I got through the preparation of dinner tonight but it was really only because I was halfway through when I received my latest injury. I think tomorrow night I might need to go back to what I've been doing for the past few days -- boiled pasta or takeout for dinner.

If you're really lucky I won't blog about it.

Chicken Thalad

Tonight, with Jen enjoying all the fine cuisine of Salt Lake City hotels, I returned home to a fridge full of odds and ends and leftovers.



I put together this chicken salad with the remaining beer can chicken, broccoli, peppadews, salted lime cashews, and Maille whole grain mustard. I've gotta say that this was far tastier than I'd imagined when I was hastily throwing it together for a quick dinner.



For beer I had Estrella Damm from Barcelona. This prompted me to walk around my apartment, all by myself, repeatedly muttering: "Barthelona." This is one of those rare occasions I've found that it's possible to annoy myself.

Beer Advocate only gives this a 'C' rating. This is surprising because I found this beer to be quite enjoyable. Of course, the type of people who would register on Beer Advocate and review a beer are bound to find fault in most things in life. Beer is only one of those things.

It's for that reason that I've joined Beer Advocate to review beers! Of course I kind of despise the review and grading system of any food or beverage, but this is more of a way for be to more easily catalog the beers that I've had.

If there's one thing I like it's the needless cataloging of events in my life. It's like mother's milk to me.

Bachelor "Weekend" 2: The Revenge of the Leftovers

Jen was back from Salt Lake City just long enough for both of us to run off to Rhode Island last weekend. Upon returning home we were seized with an urge to have something light and moderately healthish for dinner. I use the term "healthish" which I just made up in place of "healthy" since the latter is a term that can always be contested by someone more self-righteous than one's self. For every vegetarian who consumes largely fried vegetables is another who roasts their vegetables. For every vegetarian who roasts is a vegan who abstains from all animal byproducts. For every vegan avoiding animal-related foods is one who eats only food that is raw. For every raw vegan is one who scoffs at any grain that has not been adequately sprouted. Etc.

So, before you launch into a tirade about how the quinoa I have made is not true quinoa because it is not sprouted and how I used a little (gasp!) olive oil in any of these dishes, please consider that I am not a health nut and I do not wish to engage in a sprouted grains arms race with you.



Upon returning we had a salad of baby spinach, quinoa, tomatoes (picked from my parents' garden), chives (also from the garden), fresh mozzarella, olive oil, lemon, salt, and pepper.



We followed this up the following night with chicken breast, baked potato, steamed asparagus, and more tomatoes from the garden. Profoundly boring and yet so relieving after so much Italian food, burger, and hot dogs.



As I run through the cleanup phase of the summer I have spent less than $100 on groceries in the first half of this month, working my way through the items in the fridge, freezer, and pantry. As Jen returned to Illinois to visit her family I treated myself to an even less interesting dinner than a mere chicken breast. I upped (or downed?) the ante by having a baked potato with Parmiggiano-Reggiano and kale tossed with lemon and olive oil.

Boring dinners will never be the same again.



With Jen out of town (and with it being the actual weekend) I had to work hard to regain my bachelor cred. Thinking quick browned some garlic and onion in a little olive oil then tossed in the remainder of the pepperoni I used for last week's English muffin pizzas.

I also through in the remaining spinach and some fresh basil with the pipe rigate to make this ridiculous dish that I call "Pepperoni Pizza Pasta." I think if there are culinary research scouts scouring the internet from Domino's or Papa John's I may be receiving a call any day.

Either that or an award of American Culinary Excellence. Could happen.



Since this was a high class dish I needed to pair it with a wine. Beer was far too common to accompany such a fine dish. That's why I picked this bottle of Shiraz from Oxford Landing. I've got to say it was quite delightful. Very peppery. Or was that the pepperoni? Or the pepper I used? Not really sure but I think the wine's excellence is because it was established since 1958. That's right, established since 1958. Other wines are established in a certain year. Oxford Landing enjoys the act of establishing so much that they are still doing it.

It also may have something to do with the 93% shiraz grape and 7% viognier. Personally I like a 91% shiraz and 9% viognier but I'm not going to split hairs. The wine was still quite good.

According to the back of the line I was not tasting pepper at all. It was red cherry, raspberry and liquorice.

Huh, I thought those flavors were coming from the pepperoni. I have a lot to learn.

Bachelor "Weekend"

August has started out, pretty much, in an effort to reduce our grocery spending whilst cleaning out the fridge, pantry and freezer. Like all cost cutting measures this has meant a decline in dinner enjoyment. Luckily for Jen she was out of town much of this week on business so I had one of my now infamous bachelor weekends. A bachelor "weekend" for me consists of leaving the house only to go to work and eating at my computer desk. Jen is safe to not worry about me getting involved in anything more nefarious as I am far too lazy.



On the first night I finished off the pork dumplings Jen made for Chinese New Year. They were still very good if not a bit freezer burned. It wasn't so much the extra-long freezing time of six months as it was the
St. Patty's Day power outage that took its toll on these little guys. But with enough tamari and sweet chili sauce even freezer burn can be masked.

Kinda.



Jen was kind enough to leave me with a huge batch of cookies the night before she left. This left us with about ten eggs left in the freezer. We generally only use eggs in baking and maybe go through ten a year in other applications. Jen is usually against the use of eggs in non-baking applications. She'd be just as likely to server herself a bowl of baking soda than make an egg for breakfast.

Still on a pretzel roll kick I made myself a lunch sandwich on Wednesday with cheddar from the world's greatest least expensive cheddar producing countries: England Australia! I fried up some Canadian bacon, sliced some tomato, and fried an egg for the top.

It was quite delightful. If you have the ingredients, I highly recommend this for a rainy day brunch.



For dinner I used up some leftover tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, and English muffins from the freezer along with a stick of pepperoni that's been residing in our crisper long enough to owe us at least a few hundred dollars in back rent.



This bachelor "weekend" was brought to you by Kronenbourg 1664, La Première Bière Française. In the time Jen has been gone I've put back four of these bad boys. That's right, four! I guess that's why back in my college days they used to call me, "Four Beers in Four Days Beaudry!"

I guess in some days I've never grown out of my wild and reckless college years.

Two Can Play at This Game

Nate makes much of his wild and crazy bachelor nights at home, but I suspect he's been pulling the wool over everyone's eyes as to how mild said nights normally are. Tonight and tomorrow night, my spousal unit is away at a work team-building exercise, and I am living the bachelorette existence of my former years. Nate's evenings? Well, allow me to share a sample text from earlier today, while he is left on his own:

"Imagine me, [redacted name] and [second redacted name] shoveling rocks into buckets as [third redacted name] stands on a scale with no pants on. I'll explain later."

My evening? Well, I ate some ravioli, drank a beer, and relived college by watching "The Broken Hearts Club" on Netflix on demand. Wooooooooo! And now that I'm thoroughly nostalgia-fied, I'm going to do some ironing and maybe watch Doris Day movies. And wait for the explanation about the rocks/scale/no pants thing, of course.

Beer & Kale: The Bachelor Life For Me

Jen elected to go out to see the Mets tonight. I guess they're a baseball team or something. Personally, I've never heard of them. I think she might be making the whole thing up. One thing is certain: it's time for a killer bachelor night!



Those who follow the blog will be well aware of my past bachelor exploits. I can't believe I'm sharing my wild and crazy bachelor hijinks here on this blog. What if Jen were to read this???

I decided that the best way to celebrate my bachelor freedom was with a healthy salad of raw kale! That's right. Raw kale, dawg!

I combined some kale, strawberries and baby spinach then tossed with balsamic, olive oil, salt and pepper. I topped this all with chopped almonds and crumbled goat cheese.



The perfect An accompaniment to this healthy dinner was Thomas Hooker Munich-Style Golden Lager. This beer was available in only 12-packs so I was a little hesitant to give it a try. After trying it I predict a second 12-pack on the horizon. The proceeds from the 12-pack are going to some charity or another but pay that no mind, it's worth it just for the beer. Being a local brewery (to us, anyway) I'm always in favor of supporting them and this beer, much like their Blonde Ale, comes extremely highly recommended.

To top all this off: some playoff hockey. What can I say, I'm a rebel. I would have watched my DVD of Felicity: Season 1 but I let my bro borrow it. It's okay, I'm borrowing his home manicure set so I will just have to be happy using that in the meantime.

When the cat's away, the mice will play.