Dinner #2 - Brad cooks!

Oh how I love my husband's spring break. Let me count the ways.....1) He remembered how to cook! 2) He remembered how to clean! 3) He had time to go to the movies. TWICE! In one WEEK! 4) He washed the car! 5) We went out for drinks. With FRIENDS! (oh...and he also managed to make time to go to Amoeba Records and Rockaway Records twice EACH. But record stores, now that's hardwired into his DNA. If he ever gets struck with the Alzheimer's, he'll probably forget my name, but still be able to describe in great detail all the best record stores in a 50 mile radius.)

When he wasn't reliving his 90's nostalgia kick (he got a Tori Amos album for pete's sake!) he was cooking dinner for us! One of Brad's dinners this week was Lentil Minestrone. Oh and how beautiful and delicious it was. He used up some lentils we've had in the back of the cupboard and some collard greens that I bought in a fit of produce delusion. 9 times out of 10 when I buy a vegetable I'm unfamiliar with, it usually ends up in the compost pile after we scrape it's rotting corpse from the bottom of that drawer in the fridge. But I buy anyway. I think to myself: "Collard Greens - I don't know how to cook these, but I'll buy it anyway in hopes that I'll get struck with an amazing recipe for collard green brownies." (Note -- no such recipe struck me this week. I'll keep you posted for the future veggie inspired desserts). Needless to say, I was happy when Brad told me he needed a 'bunch of greens' for the recipe. Another dollar saved from the compost!

It turned out delish. We ate it with some crusty bread and shaved parmesan and I enjoyed a glass of rather cheap white wine (gotta love a student's salary!). We picknicked on the living room floor. The lentil minestrone warmed us. The wine warmed me even more.

I give his minestrone a 4/5. Anytime Brad cooks, though, he's very thorough and meticulous when it comes to following recipe instructions, so his dinners usually come out in top form.

With all the work he was doing around the house, I had extra time to work on my garden! Next spring break I might just have to rent Brad out to the highest bidder. Any takers?

Dinner#1

For dinner last night I had to use up four potatoes. In my fridge loomed a scary site -- but I managed to find a large hunk of monterey jack cheese, which looked promising. In the door I found a jar of Trader Joe's pesto I forgot I bought (almost as good as finding a $5 in your jeans). Conveniently, there was also the necessary dairy products that are almost required to make baked potatoes really tasty (butter, milk, sour cream? Hells yea.)

My go-to book for awesome recipes is the wonderfully helpful "New Best Recipes" by Cooks Illustrated. In it's pages I discovered Twice Baked Potatoes. I normally don't like baking potatoes in the oven, mainly because I think about dinner right about the time that I'm hungry for dinner....not the best timing, but when have I had great timing? Plus, heating up the entire oven for over an hour just for potatoes seems a little energy wasteful.

There recipes for Twice Baked potatoes has some variations that I'll try another night -- Indian spiced? with pine nuts? (I've even made a variation with crab - so tasty.) But this version was substituting regular cheddar with monty jack and adding pesto! Zing! Dinner is on.

They turned out well, even though the process did take about 1.5 hours total (baking potatoes 1 hr, scooping out inards and mixing with yummies, 20 min, the twice baked part -- another 15 min). I'll definitely make them again - and maybe for company.

Twice baked potatoes might make a fine meal for some vegetarians I know, but I like some green with my meal. I've had a mini-obsession with Brussel Sprouts ever since Figueroa Produce has started selling them for so cheap and fresh. Brad cooks them much better than me, but he had just given his first lecture at USC, so I thought I'd give him the night off. The problem with that is my penchant for not reading recipes all the way through. . . which lead me to conveniently skip the part that told me to 'trim the bottom of the sprouts'. Whoops. This apparently helps them cook more evenly and absorb more flavor. NOTED. These turned out tough and not as flavor as when Brad cooks.

All in all a good, tasty, veggie laden meal that filled us up. 3.5/5.

C3PO USB

So, I'm nonchalantly doing my thing on the internet and reading someone's blog ( I don't know who's.... I just click around ), when she mentioned buying curtains from Urban Outfitters. I thought - well, I don't NEED curtains, I stopped shopping at Urban Outfitters YEARS ago, but HELL! why not.

And that's when I saw these ! C3PO USB drives! I wish it was Christmas again so I could buy one for my brother and for my hubby.

Shucks.

A Cat Haiku

Linus Henry, cat
Likes my jalapeno plant
More than my warm lap

An Equation

New Car + Pajamas + Morning Off = Happy Brad

....A New Car!!!!

Oh Boy. Oh Boy. Oh Boy! We bought ourselves a new (to us) car!! A 2008 Pontiac Vibe, which is identical to the Toyota Matrix, only thousands cheaper. Hazah!

In attempting to be smart consumers, after looking at The car once, we went across the street to a different dealership looking for a better deal. The salesman tried everything, from getting us to lease, buy a brand new car, and even took us around the lot 3 times in hope of 'hooking' us. After we explained the deal on The car, the mileage, the price, and the financing, he whispered to us "Go buy that car." I'll post pictures of our actual car when I can, but for now, this is from Pontiac's website.

We're so excited! Not that we don't LOVE the Corsica, but this new one is going to be the car in which we bring our babies home from the hospital!

Brad graciously let me drive it home from the dealership. Somebody sure did raise him right.

Cool white t-shirt

There are few things I like more than coming into my slightly cool home after a warm walk on the sun-baked streets of my LA neighborhood and slipping into a plain white T-shirt. Ahhhhh.

Organic White House

Check out this website that encourages the new First Family to plant a garden on the White House Lawn. eattheview.org

My Diner

I'm not sold on Los Angeles. The winter's not winter - I'm from the East Coast (capitalized, thank-you-very-much), really the Mid-Atlantic, that nether world of Maryland where no one will claim us. When I lived in the South, everyone assumed I was a Yank. When visiting New England, people claimed I had a Southern accent. You just can't win when you're from the great small state of MD! But we DO have seasons. Seasons that I can get down with. Just when you're really done sweltering from the terrible humidity, fall breaks the heat and releases you from the stress of having to take at least 2 showers a day, because you immediately start sweating after the first one. And then winter comes, and you curse it because blah, blah, blah there's ice and it's cold and my lips are chapped and my hands turn to to the coarseness of a paper grocery bag...but at least it's different and you have lots of excuses to spend the day wrapped in a blanket drinking hot things in mugs and praying that it snows so you'll have a good excuse to be late for work, but of course it never does because you're in the Mid-Atlantic which is halfway between Antartica and Florida (approximately) and it only really gets that cold and precipitous roughly 3 times a winter, if you're lucky. But it's a change, is the point I'm trying to make. A change that kills ants and other squirmy things so they don't climb into your kitchen and try to attack your freezer on a balmy January day. Which is what they do when you live close to Mexico.
Which really is where I live these days, and will for the next few years, thanks to hubby's job/perpetual schooling, so I'd better learn to like it and get over the whole seasonal thing (I do prefer deciduous trees....but that'l be another post.)
One thing that is helping me get over my aversion to this coast is the local coffee shop Brad and I have discovered. The Coffee Table in Eagle Rock is blissful. Free refills, helpful staff, good diner food, it's what I crave. We are always glad to find a coffee shop that is successful and not struggling (we seem to always work at the flailing ones) and we seem to end up at the Coffee Table at least once a week, which consumes the meager 'going out' part of our budget, but it's well worth it. It's always nice to have that one place you can count on.
Like last night, we got a little adventurous and tried out a Chinese place. If I knew a good Chinese swear word, I would insert it hear, but I don't, so please just use your imagination. Our food was expensive and made us feel overstuffed after three bites. And if there's anything I hate it's not getting your money's worth. If there's anything I hate even MORE is not getting your money's worth and feeling like crap after.
I always feel like I get my money's worth of The Coffee Table and rarely feel like crap, so I'm going to go with that. LA's got my Luke's, my Caffe Pronto. Life out here just might be bearable.