Heat wave

Tuesday night I suddenly came down with a sore throat and a bit of a cough. It didn't get much better during the day; in fact, by quitting time all I wanted to do was come home and go to bed. I did, more or less, but getting up every two hours like clockwork to cough and clear out the throat and sinuses rather defeated the idea of healing sleep.

I initially put the hot/cold flip flops during the night down to the whole peri-menopause thing, as it's fairly common for me to run warm, until I run cold.

Took my temperature this morning. My baseline is lower than most people's at about 96.9; a reading of 101.3 this morning is nothing to ignore.

So off to either the doctor's (my regular doc is off on Thursday - I'm hoping to get one of his colleagues) or a walk in clinic. Work is not going to be happy about me being out, but I have a nasty feeling this is the 'flu. With the the move last fall and the hours I was putting in at work, I never got around to having a flu shot.

Ack. Pass the kleenex.

Update: Three and a half hours, a breathing treatment, chest x-ray, EKG and blood draw later, I have bronchitis. Ugh. I will say this for the walk in clinic, they do give you a lot of information. Though it was a little tiring to keep telling people NO I'VE NEVER SMOKED IN MY LIFE. A follow up appointment with my own doc on Tuesday. Meantime, a Z-pack and some cough suppressants that aren't supposed to make me drowsy (but will according to the labeling). 

TWD: Baking with Julia - Rugelach

The first of the March recipes for the Baking with Julia challenge is rugelach - a small, rich pastry cookie filled with all varieties of rich fillings. In spite of my dislike of plums, and by extension, prunes, I went ahead with the more or less traditional prune, fruit and nut filling.

Have I ever mentioned that one of my favorite cookies to bake is spritz? The dough can be mixed entirely with a hand mixer, then stuffed in a cookie press and squeezed out onto the cookie sheet. No muss, no fuss.

In other words, the antithesis of rugelach making.

The dough is a soft cream cheese dough, needing several hours in the refrigerator before rolling out and filling. It's spread with a paste made of ground prunes mixed with a bit of sugar and nuts. Dried fruits (raisins for me) and nuts (pecans in this case) are spread on top. The whole shebang is rolled up, then chilled again.

As a final step before baking, the roll is brushed with an egg wash and the cut cookies rolled in a cinnamon-sugar-pulverized nut mixture.

I made a half batch, partly because I was afraid I wouldn't like them, but equally afraid I would, if you know what I mean.

Rolling things around filling is not one of my better skills; my rolls barely met on the other side, but still held together (for the most part) through baking.  To my surprise, they smelled absolutely delicious while baking.

The taste was a revelation as well. The sweetness of the sugar and cinnamon balanced out the slightly tart taste of the prunes, while the butter and cream cheese kept the dough soft and flavorful. They are very definitely a rich treat; one cookie is incredibly satisfying.

Will I make them again? Maybe, though I may try the apricot filling (naturally, I found dried apricots at the store today, since I wasn't looking for them anymore) or possibly chocolate (nutella, maybe?). My final result wasn't very pretty (these are the best of the bunch), but on the whole, they were worth the effort.

Tired Friday night

I've spent the day wandering from project to project, going grocery shopping and generally trying to leave the place cleaner than it was when I started. I'm not quite sure I succeeded.

One thing went right, though: cooking soup for dinner. The snowstorm was howling outside, and it seemed the perfect night for mushroom barley soup. Okay - that's a stretch. The soup was planned, in large part because it makes a lot and I can freeze the rest to have on hand for lunches. Still, the thick, hot soup tasted wonderful. Lots of mushrooms, barley, carrots,onion, celery and a few peppercorns to give it a bit of a peppery kick. Make a paste of flour and cooking sherry to thicken.

Since it needs to simmer a hour or so to let the barley cook, I took advantage of the time to rearrange the kitchen cabinets. Yes, my Friday nights rock. Moving the dishes around needed to be done, as did organizing the ever-expanding serving dishes and plastic container stash in the pantry closet, but it was the inside the pantry door canned goods rack that yielded the most gold.

Literally, if you have any idea what pecans cost these days.

The upshot of the process is that I could have cut back considerably on the canned portion of the Aldi run this morning. Now that everything is finally grouped together, I can see that I have not one, but two extra bottles of Worcestershire sauce. While I only have one package of chocolate chips (how did that happen?) there are two bags of sliced almonds and no less than three four of pecan halves.

The TWD challenge for this week is rugelach (gesundheit), and the nuts, plus the prunes (!) and raisins purchased today will mostly be used up in pursuit of the perfect fussy cookie. Honestly, you have to make, then chill the dough. Pulverize the prunes and some nuts to make the filling. Plump up the dried fruit for the stuffing. Roll, stuff and cut the cookies, then give them an egg wash and roll them in a mix of cinnamon, sugar and more pulverized nuts.

All this for a prune filled cookie?

In between fussing with that tomorrow, the plan is to unpack the remaining book boxes, or continue packing up the old dishes and hauling them to the basement,or maybe cataloguing the spices (yep, I know for a fact there are duplicates there)...you get the picture.

Happily, I have no reason to go out tomorrow. Let the contractors and the city clear the roads and walkways, and the sun melt a bit of the accumulation - I'll be warm and snug at home.

Company Girl Coffee 030212

Good morning, or rather almost afternoon. No, I've not slept in, but have been running in various ways since just before three a.m..

Insomnia is a rare visitor, usually cropping up in the middle of the night rather than at the start. I woke up somewhere between two-thirty and three, went to the bathroom and proceeded to toss and turn the rest of the night. Not the type of start I wanted for a spur of the moment vacation day.

Still, so far, so good. I've been out to Panera for refreshment and a bit of Bible study, then to Aldi for a fairly major grocery run. My own grocery stop was planned, but between the last time I looked at the weather forecast at noon or so yesterday and this morning, our "rain changing to snow, light accumulation possible" changed to a "severe weather warning - six to eight inches of heavy, wet snow possible". That brought out all the nuts who need to stock up on milk and bread - after all, it may be a full eight hours before the streets are clear again (insert eyeroll here).

One of the reasons I took the day off was to start (continue, actually) on the March Madness Challenge Rachel Anne has suggested. I moved into the condo on September 28th. Most areas are unpacked and organized, except for the room that will become the sewing room - you know, the one I keep talking about clearing out so I can paint and put in new flooring?

Along with dealing with the rest of the cardboard cut down in the basement, clearing the boxes in the sewing room is my March Madness project. To shame me into working on it, I'm sharing this picture:

Now that I'm looking at it, I realize the largest stack of unopened boxes is barely visible, over near the wall on the right side. Fortunately, those are primarily sewing supplies that will stay in the room, in the closet that runs the width of the entire wall on the left.

Once I can get close to it.

As you can see, I've been in and out of several boxes, though I think my magical packing lists are still pretty accurate. The room is fairly large...if I remember my Pythagorean theorem correctly, it's about twenty feet from where the picture was taken to the far corner...that's a lot of boxes.

Those boxes won't empty themselves, so I'd better get at it!

For more Company Girl chatter, visit Rachel Anne.

Grammatically speaking

I saw this over on Facebook, and it had to come here:

My own pet peeve, grammar-wise, is the confusion of "then" and "than", seen more frequently than ever before, even in business settings.

What's yours?

This little piggy had...pork chops

With longer work hours and a firm commitment to eight hours of sleep a night, it's difficult to take the time to prepare a home cooked meal every night (well, I'm lazy, too, which doesn't help). It's much easier to pick something up on the way home, or graze through whatever is in the pantry.

However, I had the foresight to take a pork chop out of the freezer and throw it in the refrigerator to thaw this morning. Here's how to get dinner on the table in a little under forty-five minutes:

Take out toaster oven and put it on the counter. Test 9  x 9 pan to be sure it fits (it's ceramic and has built in handles). Turn oven on to 375 to preheat. Spray pan with nonstick spray.

Season pork chop with salt and pepper; place in a corner of the pan. Chop a couple of carrots and a potato into roughly the same size pieces (1 1/2" dice). Toss with olive oil to coat and add a hearty shake of Arizona Dreaming spice mix from Penzeys. Place in pan with pork chop; put the pan in the toaster oven.

Get ipod from purse and plug it into the dock; chose something peppy. Wander upstairs, change into workout clothes and sit on the bed, waiting for the heat to turn off so the room will return to a non-saunalike temperature. Climb on elliptical and start torture walking. When timer dings, fall climb down and stagger stroll to the computer to check e-mail.

Wander back downstairs into the kitchen. Use a fork to test a carrot to see if it is done. Remember (too late) that said carrot is hot. It's ready.

Put everything on a plate and chow down.

The carrots and potatoes should have a nice crispness to the outside, but be softish on the inside. Check the chop to be sure it is cooked to whatever the current "safe" temperature for pork is this week (I kid; the new correct temperature is 145 degrees, revised from 160 by the FDA back in March 2011).

The unfortunate side effect of this uber-efficient dinner making is that I now have plenty of time tonight to go balance the checkbook, which is long overdue. I'll say this much, though - pork chops will be on the next grocery list for sure.

Et tu, Donald?

Packer Donald Driver is apparently about to be announced as a contestant on Dancing with the Stars. Oy. For the next ten weeks, all we will hear on the local news is "extended coverage" of his fancy footwork.

Unfortunately, professional athletes generally do very well on the show.

On the plus side, it should push coverage of Ryan Braun's reinstatement off to the side. Cute as he is, the constant coverage is becoming wearisome.

Company Girls Coffee 022412

Good morning, gentle folk! Hot chocolate is the special of the day, in honor of the first significant snowfall of the season.

I never thought it would be almost the end of February before I said those words. Freaky, freaky winter.

Busy-ish week. The best way to get a taste of it is to look through some of my previous posts.

The great andouille hunt/adventures in gumbo making
Here we go 'round the roundabout (and the follow up)
Paczki and King Cake
A trip to the quilt shop

For those of you who asked about the cheese and sausage shop, their website is here. Note that they do ship all over the country =). Shipping methods, though, are dependent on time of year for some of the warmer/colder states. The shop carries an astounding array of products; the selection on the web is a bit smaller.

If by chance there is a cheese you are thinking of ordering, but would like a review of first, I'm sure I could force myself to go buy and taste a sample. For the purposes of a review, naturally. If you are interested in ten year old cheddar, my (accidental!) review is here.

Lots of possibilities for the weekend. I think I'm going to skip canasta, but still have a hair appointment (never ending, it seems) and a couple of church-related functions that i may attend. The new church is located in an arts community, and has events designed in part to draw people from the next door (again, specifically designed and rented to artists) apartments. Should be a good time.

Flakey!

Snow, glorious snow! Thick, wet, heavy snow - good for packing, weighty for shoveling, sloppy for walking or driving. The kind of snow that sticks to vertical signposts and coats all the tree limbs until they look like some glittery, twisted wedding cake ornaments.

Apparently, the weather front twitched, moving about fifty miles farther north than expected, changing our snow totals from maybe three inches to almost six. Since this is the first significant snowfall this season, a few reminders are warranted:

• For heaven's sake, brush the snow off the roof of your car. Having snow chucks fly off your roof while at freeway speeds is dangerous to the cars behind you. If you are too lazy to walk around the car so you can clean off the entire roof, invest the nine bucks in a van brush; you can reach the entire roof from one side of the car.
• Four wheel drive? Slow down. While 4WD is a great help plowing through the piles and ridges of snow in an intersection, it will do nothing if there is ice under that snow. Four wheel drive does not make you accident proof.
• Drive for the conditions. That means slow down. While you may be winter-driving certified and more than capable of handling your vehicle at speed through six inches or more of snow, chances are the people around you are not. Your weaving around them at faster than the prevailing speeds may well cause an accident.
• On the other hand, don't drive too slowly. If you insist on driving fifteen miles under the speed limit (and ten under what everyone around you is doing), please have the courtesy to move to the rightmost lane. All the way into that lane, not into the half-and-half position.

In honor of the snow, I'll use the winter dishes tonight, break out the hot chocolate and light the fire. After dinner, unpacking a few boxes of books in front of the fire (with more hot chocolate) sounds like a glorious way to spend a snowy evening. Have to enjoy it now, as the temps the next few days guarantee this will all melt by Monday.

Semi down

Remember those roundabouts I was complaining about - how they are on dark country roads and sneak up on you?

Well, yeah. This accident happened at one of the three mentioned in that post.

It's still pretty dark at five-thirty in the morning, and the semi driver missed the signs and the roundabout itself. The speed limit prior to the slowdown is fifty-five, and I'm willing to bet the semi was moving at least that fast.

Roundabouts - one of our less fortunate imports from Britain.