Another Fail

I've been trying some new recipes lately with most of them coming out, well...crappy, inedible, flavorless, just plain old yucky. Maybe it's because the books that I'm using are the cheap how to save money on groceries books? I don't know, but I tried one out of the new book I got last week, the 5.00 dinner book, and it sounded good in print, but was definitely not good on our forks.

The recipe was for baked chicken with acorn squash, very easy to fix, just put bone in chicken breasts in a baking pan with some orange juice, rosemary, garlic powder, salt and pepper. Then you peel and chop up an acorn squash, put it in the pan, sprinkle with a little brown sugar, and bake it alongside the chicken for an hour or so. The chicken tasted like chicken, nothing special, but the acorn squash was absolutely inedible. Something about putting it in orange juice made it taste really bitter and tart. So that recipe was a total bust.

I did make some really good cookies, though. I got a bag of whole wheat flour and there was a recipe on the bag for whole wheat chocolate chip cookies. I didn't have any chocolate chips but did have a bag of white 'chocolate' chips so used those instead, and used splenda instead of the sugar, and I Can't Believe It's Not Butter sticks instead of real butter, the calories in the fake butter is the same as real butter but the fat content is about half. So with whole wheat flour and splenda we can pretend that these cookies are really healthy!

Here's the recipe:

3/4 cup granulated sugar (or splenda)
3/4 cup packed brown sugar ( or splenda brown sugar blend)
1 cup butter or margarine, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 bag (12 oz) chocolate chips (2 cups)- I think I only used 1 cup of the white chips and the cookies are plenty chippy, just put in however many of whatever you want. M&M's would probably taste good, too. Or butterscotch chips. Or whatever.

1/ Heat oven to 375. In large bowl, stir sugars, butter, vanilla, and egg until well blended. Stir in flour, baking soda and salt (dough will be stiff). Stir in chocolate chips.
2/ On ungreased cookie sheets, drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls about 2" apart.
3/ Bake 8-10 minutes or until light brown (centers will be soft). Cool slightly, remove from cookie sheets to cooling racks.
Makes 3 dozen.

I don't know what got into me to actually make cookies yesterday, but I was in a kitchen kind of mood and had been in there cleaning after I had gone to the grocery store. And cookies sounded good. And they were.

Cat's in the Cupboard

An open cupboard door is not necessarily an invitation, kids!

When I was discussing quitting walmart and doing etsy full time last year with Keith, I told him 'think how much more stuff I'll be able to get done if I don't have to work at walmart?'
And he bought it! HAHAHAHAHA!
I promised him more home cooked meals and a cleaner, more organized house. HAHAHAHAHA!
I bought some fancy lock together drawer organizers for the kitchen. Did I immediately take my fancy new organizers and go clean out those kitchen drawers? NO!
They sat there on top of the dryer for oh, about 3 weeks or so, and last weekend I finally took them out of their plastic wrap and ORGANIZED MY KITCHEN DRAWERS!
It's amazing how much crap you stuff into your drawers just to get if off the counter.
And it's also amazing how many little labor saving kitchen utensils we buy in the hopes that we will enjoy cooking a little more. Those little corn holder things shaped like ears of corn that you stab into the ends of the corn on the cob so you won't burn your fingers? But you still burn your fingers trying to stab those little holders into the corn? What a pain in the ass those are-you reach into your jumbled kitchen drawer looking for a melon baller and instead get stabbed with a corn shaped corn on the cob holder. And why do I have a weird little cheese slicer? We buy our cheese pre-sliced. Always.
So, into the trash went a lot of these little not so helpful kitchen helpers, and my drawers got organized. We put our silverware into a different drawer so now I keep opening the wrong drawer looking for a spoon.

Remodel This!

We have been living in an in the middle of remodeling house for...oh, maybe six months, a year? It's hard to remember when Keith started all of these projects, it seems like we have always lived this way. We have living room carpet, but no hallway carpet or studio carpet, or kitchen floor. The kitchen is halfway painted and there is no door on the pantry...although that does make for easy access when you need a snack. This is the breakfast bar that Keith had in his head ever since he bought this little house-1000 square feet of it. The island was originally turned around parallel with the window wall and just sat there like an afterthought. It was almost as if the builder said: 'hey, these people may need a little more counterspace so lets just stick an island in the middle of the kitchen so they have to go around it every time they want to get from the sink to the pantry'. So, Keith turned it around and built this breakfast bar/room divider. The kitchen feels a lot roomier now, and it is handy having a place to sit for breakfast or lunch.
He hasn't done much more for the past month, I think he has a little adult ADD-he will start a project and almost but not quite finish, and then he's on to the next, leaving a trail of unfinished projects in his wake. The backyard shed from last summer is still not painted.

Torn Up Kitchen

This is the latest home improvement project that my husband is beginning. Now, when I say beginning remember the garden shed and the craft room that are still not finished. Our house is very small with one of those great room floor plans, meaning that the kitchen is part of the dining room which is part of the living room. Yes, one 'big' room. Or small, considering our house is 999 square feet. The island in the kitchen originally was parallel to the counter with the sink, making it necessary to go around it every time you wanted to get to the other side of the kitchen where the pantry and trash cans are. Meaning that you would either sqeeze in between the end of the island and the refrigerator or step out into the carpet area of the 'great room', or as we like to call it the 'not so great room', usually leaving a trail of drippings from whatever it is you are trying to get to the trash can. Now why don't you put your trash can under the sink you might ask? Because it doesn't fit!
So, anyway, my husband decides that he wants to see if he can turn the island around to make more floor space in the kitchen and also make it look a little more like the room is separate from the rest of the not so great room. Amazingly enough, it worked.But moving the island required tearing up some of the nasty dripped on carpet and the lovely stained linoleum. So now part of our kitchen floor is concrete. With a big crack running through it.
His idea for the island is to make a breakfast counter on the side that faces out with posts and shelving running up to the ceiling to give the illusion of the kitchen actually being a separate room. After using my visualization skills, I think this is actually a good idea. The kitchen already feels larger and some extra shelves would be great for my little kitcheny doo-dads that currently are sitting in a box somewhere in the garage because right now I have no place to put them.
So, maybe in oh, six months to a year, we will have a new custom built island room divider breakfast counter thing. Someday.