lookingforlissa

Escape your life for a little while — come play in mine.

Posts Tagged ‘The domestication of Lissa’

The Domestication of Lissa progresses apace

Posted by Lissa on November 2, 2009

Dinner last night:

Delicious, drool-worthy pulled pork sandwiches on Italian bread.  (We used a fancier brand of barbecue sauce than normal — Kansas City Style — and you could TASTE the difference.)

With steamed broccolini.*

For dessert:

Made-from-scratch pumpkin pie.**

With homemade whipped cream.

Holy COW I’ve come a long way from Velveeta Shells ‘n’ Cheese!

That is all.

 

*The real stuff, not that broccoli rabe shyte.

**No, I didn’t stew my own pumpkin, I used the canned kind.  I also didn’t grow my own cane sugar.  I still consider this made-from-scratch!

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Odds ‘n’ Ends

Posted by Lissa on October 20, 2009

On the way to the Shootout at the Jay G Corral:

LISSA:  (spotting cows) “Moooooooo!”

MIKE:  “Oh, are there doggies?”

LISSA:  (completely blank)  “Whaaaaaaa?” (Long pause.)  “Ohhhhhhhh.

***

Sunday was one of those Patriot games I’m quite, quite sure was better seen on our TV than live-in-person.  After a while, though, it just got sad.  Why don’t they have a Mercy Rule in football?

***

Is there a MA law about buying more than one gun a month?  I vaguely remember such a law, but I don’t know if it’s applicable here.  Anyone want to save me the Google-fu?

***

Mike got inspired by the wretched weather this weekend and attached plastic insulation sheets over our screen doors.  The living room does seem warmer and less drafty!  Of course, I am smart enough to tell Mike that, regardless of whether it’s true.  My one big regret was that I didn’t have any beer in the fridge to hand him afterward.  So sorry darlin!

***

Tried a new recipe from my favorite cookbook (thanks Mom!)!  Lessons learned:

1) Stuffed chicken is YUMMY, but takes longer to prep than I thought it would

2) Broccoli rabe is DISGUSTING.  It is NOT the same as broccolini.  It tastes like stale, bitter broccoli with a dash of quinine and a touch of mold.

Proscuitto-wrapped chicken stuffed with basil, fresh mozzarella, sundried tomatoes and garlic

***

We did it.  We waited until the cat was sleepy and unsuspecting and then we shoved him into the Mickey Mouse costume.  Pix will be ready for Halloween!!  (Jen from Wisconsin — you should TOTALLY dress Elvis up like Elvis!!!!)

Happy Tuesday!  Don’t freeze!

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NOT A NETI!!

Posted by Lissa on October 14, 2009

Despite what you might think, this -

Neti pot

is not actually a torture device.

Seriously.

No, you buy it on purpose and voluntarily pour water up your nose.

If you’re insane.  Which apparently I am. :)

For those who aren’t familiar with it, the blue rubber instrument of pain up there is a neti pot, and you use it to pour water up one nostril and have it come out the other one.  No, you do not do this in lieu of saying the fifteen rosaries the Father assigned you for penance, or because you let the dog get into your wife’s shoe closet and he picked a pair of Christian Louboutin’s for his next chew toy.  You do this to wash ucky stuff out of your sinuses.

(Of course, the water you’re using to wash the ucky stuff out will, itself, be left behind as an ucky substance.  You feel quite waterlogged afterwards.)

I tend to get head colds a few times a year.  I can often fight off the worst of it by chugging tea-with-honey, gargling with salt water and religious use of Dayquil/Nyquil.  Often . . . but not always.  A few of my friends SWEAR by that-there neti contraption, so I gave it a try.

PANIC.  Utter panic the first time water started flowing up my nose TO DROWN MY BRAIN.  It didn’t even gross me out; I was too busy hyperventilating while sternly reminding myself that I was NOT in fact drowning.  It feels like water filling up your ears, mixed with that-time-you-got-pulled-under-by-the-riptide-at-the-beach-and-thought-you’d-drown.  It’s horrible.

I can’t say I noticed any great sinus improvement, either, but I’ll keep trying for a little while.  A week, maybe.

And if there’s no improvement, I’ll just move up to shoving bamboo splinters underneath my fingernails.

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Dressing

Posted by Lissa on September 2, 2009

My sister came over last night with a double-handful of dresses and about six pairs of shoes and a purse.  She has since decided that she should quit her job and become some celebrity’s personal shopper — the woman PWNS eBay, b*tches.

I tried on quite a few of them, but settled on the first one I grabbed:

gold!

It narrows perfectly at my waist and ends above my knee and I feel quite, quite fabulous while wearing it.  She also brought over a sparkly black-and-gold purse; strappy black high heels complete the look.  THANKS, Jenny!  I promise not to spill wine on it.  Well, I promise to try really really hard not to spill wine on it.

Of course, it was amazing that I could fit into any of the satiny confections after our dinner — chicken and pasta and Julienne’d onion and cucumber with  tzatziki dressing.  (Dressing.  Get it??  Good lord I need more coffee, I’m actually amused by the pun.  Oy.)  The dressing is made of Greek yogurt (fat-free!) and mayonnaise (light!), so it definitely carried the official Mike Does Not Like stamp.  You also throw in lemon juice, salt, pepper, and freshly pressed garlic — that part surprised me.  I’m not used to dealing with raw garlic; it smells and tastes all wrong.  Happily, when you mix it with all the other stuff it just tastes sort of tangy and zing!-y.

Chicken tzatziki pasta

Thank god Jenny helped me eat it, ’cause I’ve got about four servings left in the fridge.  Who wants to come over and have dinner with me??

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The problem with reading too much

Posted by Lissa on August 13, 2009

All my life, I’ve been a bookworm.  My sister was two years older and always passed along any good books assigned in school, so I was always at least two years ahead in reading level.  I used to smack into lampposts and trip over things because I always had my nose stuck in a book.

I wasn’t always reading Shakespeare, mind you.  (In fact, I’ve read shamefully little Shakespeare, something I really will have to remedy some day.)  No, I got my start with Garfield comics.  My poor family — I can’t even begin to guess how many comics I “recited” to them, describing what happened in each panel complete with exact dialogue.

There are certainly a number of advantages to being a bookworm.  My grammar is acceptably decent, even though I never studied grammatical rules.  I can’t diagram a sentence to save my life and I’ve no idea what the present progressive is unless I translate the meaning from Spanish, yet I’ve corrected mistakes made by lawyers at Ye Olde Financial Company.

The best part of being a book-lover is that you’re rarely bored.  I don’t mind eating a meal by myself, in a restaurant or at home; a book is company enough.  I can tolerate long waits at the car shop if I’ve got my nose buried in a book.  I have a friend whose brother, while college touring, packed his X-BOX to hook up to the hotel TVs; what else was he going to do at night?

And now that I have a Kindle, I’m even more in love with reading.  It fits nicely onto the shelf of the elliptical machine at the gym so I can read during my morning workout; it gets whipped out when the line at the fish counter at Shaw’s is moving very slowly; it makes the glacial pace of the post office tolerable.

At any time, in any place, I can sit down and be happily absorbed in a book.

And that’s one of my problems.

There are some people who are frenetically busy and jittery, who clean constantly.  There are some people who just don’t feel comfortable if the area around them is untidy.  There are some people who clean when they get bored, who vacuum and dust as a means of alleviating ennui.

Why can’t I be one of those people?

Hell, I had a friend back in high school who, when given a bit too much of the party refreshments, would feel a desperate need to CLEAN.  (That was awesome for the rest of us, by the way.)

I read someone like Their Wicked Stepmother, who wakes and has coffee, a load of laundry and breakfast before I’m usually awake in the morning, and I’m in awe.  Lyn insists she’s not a neat freak; that “My general rule is: vacuum twice a week, mop once a week, bathrooms scrubbed once a week. Everything else as needed.”  (Crap.  When was the last time I vacuumed the bedroom?)  Meanwhile, I just want to curl up on the couch with my cat, my husband, a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, and my Kindle.

Obviously, part of becoming a responsible adult is learning to balance what you want with what you need to do. Furthermore, I’ve no doubt that when human kittens (eventually) join our family, my leisurely book reading will become a thing of the past as I struggle with diaper rash (Milk of Magnesia works!), bodily fluid expulsions and the sixth sense that tells small children EXACTLY when you’re either eating or resting.  (I helped raise two younger brothers.  I pretty much know what we’re in for.)

I know a lot of my readers are bookworms as well.  Tell me, y’all — how do you balance your household chores with your desire to gobble down books?  Got any tips for me?  (I hope the answer is not books on tape.  I’ve only listened to a snippet of one, once, and I wanted to gouge out my eardrums.)

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Almost ready for the bloggershoot tomorrow morning

Posted by Lissa on August 1, 2009

Just one more batch to go!

IMG_0647

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The opposite of Fail – happily ever after!

Posted by Lissa on July 29, 2009

Plus an official LookingForLissa product endorsement! We were seriously cynical about the THIRD pot-and-lid combo to be delivered — all three within seven days, mind you! — but they wrapped this one in a helluva lot of bubble paper and it got here just fine.  Hooray! Lid 3

I swear I came *this close* to tap-dancing while singing Hosannas to the heavens.  Of course, Rajah doesn’t really approve of tap-dancing, so I refrained.  Also that tap-dancing around a very-obviously-breakable casserole dish didn’t seem like the greatest idea.

And now, your product endorsement!  So far we’re two-for-two with our new cookbook, 29 Minutes to Dinner (Volume 2) by the Pampered Chef.  (Mike:  “So are they pushing 29 because it’s *so much better* than those THIRTY minute meals?”  Yes, Mike.  Yes, they are.) Anyway, we’ve tried two recipes from the book and so far they’ve been amazing successes.  Here’s the first one we tried, Pan-Seared Chicken Breasts with Creamy Lemon Sauce: Cheekons = Goot They’ve got some very smart techniques for saving time and labor, y’all.  Many of their recipes call for cooking the meat (especially chicken) in the microwave for the first half — gives you a head-start, you don’t have to stir it, you don’t lose moisture — before braising it, or pan-searing it, or whatever.  Then you take the juices from the microwave dish and mix it with lemon juice, lemon zest, spices and a can of Cream of Chicken soup (reduced fat works fine) to make the creamy sauce.  You dump the spinach in the colander and then drain the orzo over it — keeps the orzo from slipping out of the holes and wilts the spinach in one easy step.  AND, it looks pretty!

We tried the Braised Cabernet Chicken last night and it was excellent.  Again, as soon as you have the bacon frying, you pop the chicken in the microwave.  The sauce was surprisingly simple and you only had to use one pan, but it came out better than other (far more complicated!) chicken marsala recipes we’ve tried in the past.  (They’re silly for recommending potatoes on the side, though.  It went over egg noodles.  Duh.)

Now, I’m not saying that you can make these recipes in 29 minutes or less, as they claim.  I can’t do it with Rachel Ray recipes either.  (I will never chop and dice and slice things as quickly as a real chef does.  I also prefer to carefully transfer things from one pot or pan to another.  Thus, prepping and cooking takes me much longer.  On the upside, I still have all ten of my fingertips and an absence of massive burn scars on my forearms.)  Nevertheless,  each recipe definitely took less than an hour, which is quick enough for me.

Moo Shu Pork with Mock Mandarin Pancakes tomorrow!  Let’s hope to keep the streak alive!

P.S.  I also highly recommend the Calphalon 3-quart casserole dish.  If you can manage to get your paws on one that’s not broken.

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Lissa’s Recipe File: Chicken Penne alla Vodka

Posted by Lissa on July 20, 2009

Hmph.  I wouldn’t call it a Domestication FAIL — I do have a whole category of that, you know — but it didn’t turn out the way I wanted it, either.  Well, that’s what happens the first time you make a new recipe (shrug).

Got this from a friend of mine (my comments in italics)

Prep time: ~15 minutes (yeah f*@%ing right!!!  Maybe YOU can mince two large shallots and a whole head of garlic in fifteen minutes.  Not so much me.  If you’ve got a sous-chef or you’re trying out for Iron Chef America you MIGHT manage in 25.  Maybe.)

Cooking time: ~30-45 minutes (closer to 30 than 45, if it helps)

Ingredients:

  • 1.25lbs boneless, skinless chicken – cubed
  • X cloves of garlic – very finely chopped
  • X shallots – very finely chopped (garlic and shallots to taste)
  • Two large cans petite diced tomatoes – drained (really, really drain these suckers — I mean pour them into a strainer and press gently with a spoon.  Just up-turning them and shaking will not do the job.)
  • Crushed red pepper flakes – a little or a lot (I used one tbsp or so and couldn’t taste it, so I sprinkled more.  That was a mistake.  Sticking with one tbsp next time!)
  • Basil (yeah, so, this basil never shows up in the recipe instructions below.  Add it or don’t add it, knock yourself out.)
  • Olive oil (about three times round the pan)
  • ¼-1/2 cups of vodka
  • 1 1lb box Penne
  • 1-2 cups heavy cream (unless you’re cooking for Mike, who really dislikes cream sauces.  Hmph.  I held myself to about a quarter cup.)

Directions

Add olive oil to large skillet – warm on low/medium

Sauté garlic and shallots – brown very lightly – DO NOT BURN (because there’s nothing sadder in a kitchen than to spend fifteen minutes carefully mincing garlic only to burn the whole mess.  No, didn’t happen this time, but has happened in the past!)

Add tomatoes – sauté for a decent while over medium heat

Add vodka – simmer down (yes, simmer down) until at least half in volume (YOU simmer down.  Schmuck.)

Add red pepper flakes to taste

Start penne in boiling water – keep for ten minutes  (box says eleven minutes, but what do I know. . . )

Add chicken to the now medium hot pan, at the same time as the pasta – until cooked (DO NOT COVER!!  I was afraid the chicken wouldn’t cook through, so I covered the pan for a few minutes.  When I lifted the lid some wicked kitchen elf had snuck over and added an entire cup of water to my sauce!  . . . at least, that’s what it looked like.  Boo!)

When penne is finished drain, add to pan

Add cream to pan over very low heat, stir!

Serves 4-6 people

The result?  Not quite a meh, but I wouldn’t call it a yay.  The watery-ness of the sauce was kind of disappointing; I almost forgot to drain the tomatoes at all, and shaking them quickly over the sink just didn’t cut it.  The dish wasn’t TOO spicy, but adding that second helping of red pepper flakes meant that you didn’t really taste the minced garlic and shallots – a great pity.  (They smelled absolutely killer while VERY lightly browning, seriously.)

Oh well!  For a first experiment, it was Okay.  I’ll heat up the leftovers using a saucepan, which should help evaporate some of that extra liquid.  Next time will be better!

Oh, I almost forgot — serve with fava beans and a nice Chianti.  (Evil grin)  No, no, just serve with some green veggies and whatever wine you like.  Enjoy!

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A perfectly decadent breakfast

Posted by Lissa on July 18, 2009

Take one toasted Light English Muffin.

Top one half with melty creamy peanut butter.

Top the other half with sweet tastebud-caressing dulce de leche.

Alternate taking bites from first one, then the other, pausing after each to savor the complimentary deliciousness, then wash down with fresh-brewed coffee.

This is the sound of me purring . . .

P.S.  Our crockpot cooks pretty hot; I’ve found that four hours, not eight hours, is more appropriate for one can.  YMMV!

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Hamburger? MINE!

Posted by Lissa on July 6, 2009

Hamburgers are, of course, an integral part of any Independence Day celebration.  As far back at 1777, American patriots slaughtered their revolutionary cows, chopped at their flesh with sabers and molded the resulting beef into delicious flame-seared patties.  (As opposed to cooking them on gas stoves, which didn’t exist.  Or George Foremans or Cuisinart Griddlers, which also didn’t exist.)  Yes sirree, revolutionary Americans knew that the one sure way to stick it to that British poofter King George III was to enjoy a mouthwatering ground beef patty — the British, you see, don’t HAVE ground beef.  They chewed on their clearly-lacking mincemeat pasties and just burned with envy.  Just ask Rachel Lucas.

Really, is there anything that can beat hand-pressed succulent pure-beef patties?

Why yes, there IS!  Glad you asked :)   Even better than pure-beef hamburgers are STUFFED hamburgers.  Mike lined the bottom of the press with ground beef, then we sprinkled the middle with fixings and added more beef on top before gently compressing.  Only problem was, we wanted different stuffings.  Mike used thyme, rosemary, minced garlic and onions in his, while I wanted just onions and ketchup in mine.

Yes, KETCHUP.  On HAMBURGERS.  It makes sense.

Unless you’re Mike.

He adamantly refuses to put ketchup on his cheeseburgers.  (I think it’s a texture thing.)  So when you have one patty that holds ketchup, and one that blessedly does not, how do you tell them apart?

I suppose I could have put a piece of foil or wax paper in the baggie.  Or put an X on one.  But really, what fun would that be?

IMG_0610

Did y’all have fun on your holiday weekend?

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