The Thing That Goes Doink

I've made it absolutely no secret here that I love to cook. I've posted numerous entries of either recipes or experiences in trying/making new foods.

I was talking to my family last week about my cooking (my brother and his girlfriend were up from Florida and as a result my mother invited her parents along with me and my husband over for dinner). It came up over the course of the evening's chatter, about how I had been cooking pretty much since I could read well enough to follow recipes. Hell, I got my first cookbook for my fifth birthday - before I started kindergarten.

I still have that cookbook, twenty-three years later. It's well used - the cardstock pages have warped and discolored due to years of spills - and I realized that I still default to it for lots of recipes. If I'm making brownies from scratch, I'm using this cookbook. Mashed potatoes? Muffins? Homemade "fried" chicken? A quick refresher on the finer points of cooking eggs? A strawberry butter to put on French toast?

I've managed to collect a number of cookbooks since - my husband and I have a great affinity for the basics along with a few niche ones. I have an entire cookbook for the slow cooker, another deals exclusively with snacks to serve with tea. We also look for recipes to try online. Blessed is the Internet that provides us with inspiration.

But it doesn't matter how old I get, the "kid's" cookbook that I got for my fifth birthday is still the one I go to for the basics. I've really been using it when it comes to steaming vegetables. No joke, the section is titled "Non-Yucky Vegetables" and gives you the proper cooking times for an assortment of veggies with the goal of getting them hot but not steaming the bejeezus out of them so that they're roughly the same consistency of baby food in your mouth. And even now it's a God send.

Sometimes wonder if I should have gone into culinary school rather than getting a B.A. in history...

Last night, my husband and I had some Steelhead that my father-in-law caught for dinner. It was a damn good fish, with the only problem being that not all of the bones had been removed and that the only real problem with cooking fish is that the whole house smells like fish when you're done cooking.

The stench of slightly burnt Steelhead permeated the entire apartment all night, and thankfully my husband had enough sense this morning to open up the dining room window to try and get some air moving around the apartment.

I promptly opened every sing window and the sliding glass door once I woke up.

There's still a slightly fishy odor in the air, which hopefully will be gone by the time it warms up later this morning and I'll have to close everything up. You know, in my opinion, if it weren't for the smell, fish really would be my perfect food.

Brought to you by cloves, cinnamon and tangerines. X3

I don't know when my mom started doing this, but as long as I can remember.

It goes a little something like this:

Take the rinds from oranges, tangerines or another citrus fruit. (Lemons are acceptable, if you want it lemony fresh.) Place in a small to medium pot.

Add a small handful of dried cloves. You can buy them pretty cheap in bulk foods.

Add a stick or two of cinnamon.

Add water.

Put on stove and bring to a boil over medium heat. Once boiling, turn it down to simmer and leave it there, adding more water when necessary.

Freshen ingredients as necessary by adding more rinds, cloves or cinnamon.

The best part is that it will humidify the air as well as make it smell nice. And it lacks any of the harmful chemicals commercial air fresheners contain. Apparently also works in those mini-crockpots that are specifically designed to be potpourri pots. I just prefer to do it on the stove because that's how we did it when I was a kid. :)

Today's scent is Versailles - reminiscent of King Louis XIV - from BPAL's Wanderlust collection. It smells like gilded red and gold citrus with amber, ruby roses, jasmine and orris, and reminds me faintly of baby powder. ^^;; It's not a bad scent, but I don't think it's for me.

In other news, I finally beat DotNW last night, after much swearing at the TV and Richter in general. After a couple of mystic artes (specifically, Lloyd and Zelos, because of the original ToS cast, they can do the most damage in single hits) I managed to finally beat Richter into submission. Oh yes, this also took me something like ten tries and forty-five minutes to officially pull this off. I'm hoping that on the New Game Plus I'll be a little more leveled up so that I don't always get immediately pwned by Alice or Decus, or Richter for that matter (even though you really only have to beat him once, all other battles do not result in Game Over).

I suppose I should start going through cook books trying to determine what I want for dinner this week. I'm not really inspired and there's nothing that I've really been wanting so I'm completely at an a loss.

Which is completely different from this recent, unexpected ass-hattery that LJ has been going through as of late.

Bah.

Anyway, today I started my second temp job. Nothing exciting - checking/sorting mail, answering phones, checking in appointments - and fairly easy going. Tomorrow will probably pick up, but I'm just glad that I had a slow day to ease myself in with.

Since I got off at three, I was able to come home and do some clean up (make the bed, do dishes, etc.) before starting dinner. A delicious dinner of tacos. With green onions and avocado and cheese and sour cream and olives...mmmmm. Tasty.

And soon I'll be heading over to sideshow_ericka's place to meet kitten!Mal. At least I think the kitten's name is Mal. I think that's what E said. Well, I'll find out soon enough.

Today was a good exercise day, and by good I mean that I actually wend down the the gym and lifted weights and tried to up the weight in a few areas without hurting myself. So far so good. I can feel certain muscle groups starting to tighten up, and while it might be a few more weeks before the flab starts officially going the way of the dodo, I know that I'm starting to make a difference.

Saint Patrick's Day was pretty easy going. I spent the bulk of the afternoon and evening cooking. I also watched The Quiet Man. I find it amazing that even though I've seen the movie multiple times, I still find something new in it. I was planning on watching The Boondock Saints after dinner with my husband, but a slight miscalculation with dinner made that a no-go. However we watched two episodes of Burn Notice with dinner and tipped our hats to Fi. There's now half of a corned beef brisket in the fridge that will be chopped up with potatoes and turned into homemade corned beef hash on Saturday.

Prep for SakuraCon is nearly complete. This weekend my husband and I are going to get the oil changed in my car, as well as put air in the tires and vacuum the interior. I'm also going to make sure that my copy of The Bad Girl's Guide to the Open Road also makes it into the glove box, as interesting reading material for the drive may stave off boredom (playlist ideas, road games, best uses for condoms!). I'm also going to be washing my car here in a few days because it's "EW GROSS." I haven't washed it since I bought it, and I bought it in late October. So yes, we're talking about five months worth of dirt on my car. However, a wash and wax is in the immediate future so my poor little car won't look so pathetic. I also should look into putting the window cling on as well. I'm heading to Seattle - I should put as much WSU crap on my car as I possibly can. (I already have the license plate cover.)

Short of packing my suitcase, I'm ready to go to Seattle. I even managed to get the printer working so I've even printed off my pre-registration form. All that's really left to determine is where we're meeting up with the people we're caravaning with.

Dinner tonight is a pretty low-key affair. I'm making white chicken chili in the slow cooker. I'm wondering if it will thicken up any, because right now it resembles soup. If it retains its soup-like consistency, I may just make some rice and serve it over rice, ala Red Beans and Rice (except these are white beans and chicken). Either way, it'll be pretty damn good.

On the writing front, I'm gearing up for Script Frenzy. I need to learn my way around Celtx, but I have about two weeks to do that. I'm also working on Fire Emblem fic, using the infamous 100 Themes. What the hell - I do some of my best work with prompts. Also, it keeps me writing and most of them are one shots. WOO!

Annnnnnnnnnd, that's about it.

So I randomly decided that I wanted fresh baked cinnamon rolls this morning. There's nothing wrong with that, I like to bake/cook. And I was determined to do this by scratch. No tube cinnamon rolls for me!

The process started at a little after seven last night, because the recipe I found online is for overnight cinnamon rolls. Make them up the night before so all you have to do is proof and then bake them the following morning. The recipe I found came from Food Network's site, from one of their top "celebrity" chefs. And by "celebrity" chef I mean Alton Brown who decided to go to culinary school after coming up with an idea to make a cooking show modeled after Julia Child, Mr. Wizard and Monty Python (which is a winning combination in my book!). However Brown is notorious for his use of appliances, like a stand mixer with a dough hook.

My apartment kitchen is large by apartment standards, but too small to properly house a stand mixer. So.

I was kneading dough for about ten minutes last night to get the dough to the proper consistency. And then spending two hours waiting for it to rise. Then spending half an hour rolling out the dough and then putting the filling in and cutting the rolls to put into the pan. It was about ten when all was said and done. The rolls were covered and stuck in the fridge until I pulled my butt out of bed this morning to proof the rolls in the oven. Proofing actually went pretty well, considering all I had to do was put a cookie sheet with boiling water under the rolls in the oven. After about half an hour they were ready to bake, and thirty minutes after that, I had freshly baked cinnamon rolls. Which smell fantastic. The cream cheese frosting was also made this morning while the cinnamon rolls cooled.

By the way, all this was done while watching Bond movies on Bravo. And the 30 Second Bunnies James Bond medley. (As a result, "The decoder weighs ten kilos. Make love to me James!" is currently stuck in my head. >_o) 

Anyway, I have the Mazda now, I just need to get one of the title holder's to sign off on it.  I left her a voice mail so hopefully she'll call me back within the next fifteen days - or else I have to pay a fee.

How is it that I do not have a recipe for cinnamon rolls?  I'm fairly sure I have a cream cheese frosting recipe (that's how I like the icing on my cinnamon rolls).  But I do not have a recipe for the cinnamon rolls themselves.

Clearly I need a new cook book.  On that must include a recipe for cinnamon rolls.