Hey Good Lookin...

Lemme tell ya' 'bout what I got cookin'.

Once a week I go to my local Safeway(which is a pretty crappy one) and spend $100 on the week's groceries. It's funny, every week I am within $3 of my budget. Then I go home and cook. And cook and cook.

And I love it.

This little guilty pleasure of mine has been going on for a couple months. I cook and freeze food for the next week. This weekend I cooked for two weeks because of the move. This week I tried something new, however. I didn't use a single recipe. Which worked in some cases and screwed me in others. So here is my journey in the kitchen.

First up was Rice Krispie Treats. Pretty basic, Rice Krispies, Marshmallows, Butter and Chocolate-Peanut Butter Chips. Then it was on to cornbread. One batch was very simple an basic. The other I added Anaheim Peppers (not-so-spicy) and Cheddar cheese, too.

Yeah, totally forgot the whole salt thing. I'm really trying here!

So I moved on to enchiladas. For these I used ground turkey, refried beans and Cheddar cheese.

My two very authentic ingredients? Corn tortillas ($2.50 for 90!) and that Mexican spicy sauce.

Oh well. Time for chili!

New Baby in the Family!

The boy and I have a new baby. And I didn't even have to go through morning sickness!

You see, in the boy's time, B.M. (before moi), he had a dog. Circumstances lead to the dog being cared for by his mother up in Seattle. Well, this week we got word that his mom would be unable to care for said dog anymore and the boy needed to come claim his baby.

An overnight drive to Seattle in my new car yielded the delivery of our new bundle of joy.

Get this- on Tuesday the new car had 650 miles on it. By Thursday it hit 2600!

I just looked at the speedometer in this photo. Hmm.

The boy did clean the car upon arrival and is covering the next oil change, so I'm really not upset.

Her name is Katana. 7 years old, Rottweiler and Yellow Lab mix. Sweet as can be. Loud ass bark. Know a TON of tricks. Not so fun fact: Severe hip dysplasia. Actually has a plastic hip.

"In dogs, there is considerable evidence that genetics plays a large role in the development of this defect. There might be several contributing genetic factors, including a femur that does not fit correctly into the pelvic socket, or poorly developed muscles in the pelvic area. Large and giant breeds are susceptible to hip dysplasia, and Cocker spaniels and Shetland sheepdogs are also known to suffer from it...It is most common in medium-large pure bred dogs, such as German Shepherd Dogs, Labrador or Golden retrievers, Rottweilers and Mastiffs, ..."

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip_dysplasia#Causes_and_effects


There, see, you learned something.

The good thing is, she seems pretty used to it, not in much pain. The darn dog took me for a walk today!

And I'm off to study this condition and the correct care of it. Any feedback would be appreciated.

Miss-Adventures with M.

Seriously, who's idea was meringue anyway? What an awful idea.

One is not supposed to begin one's blog with bitching, I'm sure. After all, this is supposed to be an attempt in making my life sound (read) interesting enough for you to continue reading after you have googled some random word and serendipitously come across my not-so-little world. Right? So the last thing desired is an almost housewife complaining about the complex world of meringue. Which is entirely too complicated to spell after a bottle of Pinot.

But I digress. A lot.

I have been trying to conquer the world of clean, naked spatulas (no grease!) egg whites (NO YOLKS) and sugar for about a week and a half and I am about ready to scrap the whole project. Except I have a sweet tooth the size of Paris Hilton's credit card bill to feed.

Apologies to those of you who googled "Naked Paris Hilton" and got me.

First I tried M. cookies (merangie is too hard to spell. Okay? We like M. better!). Simple ingredients, egg whites, check, sugar, check and cream of tartar, kinda check. You see I have an occasional craving for dessert mints, which are mainly cream of tartar. So I figured those might work.

I chopped up the dessert mints and added them to my egg whites. The roommates must have thought I was doing coke, after seeing grainy white powder left on a cutting board...

After adding all the ingredients together and cooking them for about 4 hours I got great cookies- on the outside. The inside was liquid. Nasty overly sweetened liquid oozing all over my counter.

Apologies to those of you who googled "Nasty Naked Paris Hilton" and got me.

Today, after a couple of other failed attempts at M. I tried again. This time it would be M. over a vanilla pudding pie. The first two ingredients were easy, a pre-made Graham cracker crust and instant vanilla pudding, thank you very much, Safeway. However, "instant" and "just add water" M. do not exist. So, once again, I tried. I used real cream of tartar (five bucks!), clean egg yolks and extra fine granulated sugar. I whipped it all together and added te M. on top of my pie. After a few minutes under the broiler, I thought I was done.

Just kidding. I had created crunchy M. And not in a good crunchy way. I mean a the-sugar-didn't-melt-for-squat sort of way.

Sigh. I'm going to Baker's Square.