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.