This weekend was pretty awesome. Thursday night, we hung out with Danny & Michel, since they were in town. I went with them to Vit Goal and had some awesome tofu soup with vegetable dumplings, and some insanely good rice noodle-y things in “spicy sauce,” which fortunately was not too spicy for me. Also, the rice noodle-y things reminded me of Beef-a-roni, which I used to love (before the whole vegetarian-vegan-vegetarian thing), so that was a plus. Then we went back to the house, where Greg and Jj met up, and we played Zombies. And then I took us all out to Cook Out, for shakes and fries. (Delicious!)
Friday, we ran errands and shit – Greg picked up some suits (for Danny’s wedding), we got ingredients for dinner (we were having Jj and Amanda over), I got some puffy paint (to make Greg’s slippers non-slip).
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And then we went to Total Wines & More and the awesomest thing happened! Like a year ago, Tiffianna introduced me to this delicious, delicious nectar, and I’ve been looking for it ever since. And I was under the impression that it was tokay made by the Victoria & Albert Museum – silly me! I *finally* found it, and it’s Yalumba Museum Reserve’s muscat, from Victoria, Australia. (But I recognized it the moment I saw it, and, seriously, this is the first time since I started looking for it that TW&M’s had it in stock when I checked.) SCORE! It is so good. (But I had a devil of a time getting a clear picture of it. I’d rather not use this picture, where it’s with the food processor and slightly dingy toaster oven, but it’s the only picture where the bottle was visible. Oh well.)
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So, anyway, we had Jj and Amanda over for dinner, and I made pierogi casserole, which is fucking delicious but very heavy. But also pretty damn easy. Here’s what you do: layer lasagna noodles, mashed potatoes (with garlic and chives), sauteed onions, and sliced cheese, then bake for 30 minutes at 350. Then you eat it and clog your arteries. (We had salad as a side, since the casserole was so…umm, indulgent. And by “indulgent” I mean “utterly delicious and yet bad for you.”) Then we played Illuminati (which Jj won) and Zombies again (which Greg won). And in the meantime I had four dark and stormies, and a goodly amount of muscat. I felt a little shitty the next morning, and I’m pretty sure it was a baby hangover, since that’s a shit ton of drinking for me. (For normal people, I’m under the impression it’s nothing, since we’re really talking 3-4 drinks worth of alcohol, all told. But for a lightweight like me, who rarely drinks, woo.)
Saturday, I totally meant to sew a dress, but it didn’t happen. I kind of fucked around for a while on other projects (like the Purl Bee Beret I’m knitting, or the necklace I made), and then I finally got down to dress-making, cut the fabric out, figured out how to sew it up (I don’t have a pattern, just an idea that might work, so I’m trying it out with fabric I don’t *love* – and I’m still undecided on whether I’ll actually wear this fabric in public) – and the tension on the sewing machine is fucked up. UGH. It looks like it’s the bobbin tension, too, which I don’t remember how to adjust, so I’ve got to find the manual or something and figure it out.
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So then I watched some Secret Agent and read, and cooked dinner. (Two nights in a row! What is the world coming to?) Greg requested the chicken with holy basil recipe from Hot Sour Salty Sweet, and we had Water Lilies’ Vegetarian Half Chicken to try. My first mistake was increasing the amount of nuoc cham I made. I figured more is better, since it’s so tasty. The recipe suggests quadrupling the first five ingredients, one of which is cinnamon. But then the next sentence (and of course I rarely think to read ahead) said something like “but the cinnamon, chiles, sugar and salt should be increased less proportionately – start by doubling, then taste and adjust as needed.” So I’d already quadrupled the cinnamon, and I figured I’d just triple the rest to even it out. So, THREE BIRD CHILES. What the fuck was I thinking? My next mistake was to use two bird chiles in the actual dish, in addition to the tablespoon of nuoc cham that’s called for. Actually, it was probably a mistake to use *any* bird chiles in the dish, since there were three in the nuoc cham, even if I *was* only using a tiny portion of the nuoc cham. After I added the rice noodles, it looked like there wasn’t enough sauce to coat them, so I splashed on probably two more tablespoons of nuoc cham.
It was tasty, I’ll admit that, but it was spicy as hell. I had a dark and stormy with dinner – thinking I’d get a little buzz on before we went to the show (more on that in a minute), Kathy’s Happy Place and all that. Well, the Thai basil chicken and rice noodle whatever was so fucking hot, I gulped that d&s down in like a minute. Greg brought me some ice water, because I couldn’t do anything other than pant and fan my mouth, at that point. Then he brought me some actual milk, since it helps counteract spiciness. (Or so I’ve heard, and it did seem to help, although it was fucking disgusting to drink. Jesus christ, I am not a fan of cow’s milk. Narsty.) So my tongue felt better, but then I started feeling really dizzy and out of sorts and totally fucked up: a spice high. And now that I’ve had one, I have to say I am not a fan of spice highs, either. In my opinion, they are pretty fucking miserable. Greg had to help me walk to the bedroom to lie down, I was so wobbly and ill. But it dissipated after a while, which was good because we had a show to go to: Unearth! We got there a little earlier than we’d planned on, so we went to Slim’s for a bit, and then back to the Lincoln for the show, which was fucking awesome. And I especially enjoyed all the front-row fans who did the little “weedly-weedly hands,” and all the stage-divers who got dropped on their heads. (I’ll post a little video of “weedly-weedly hands” next time.)
Oh, and also? Here’s pictures of the Fig Beret on:
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(And p.s., I am appalled at how yucky the mirror is in the first shot. Time for some cleaning!)
GAGG: 21.42 miles
I didn’t really push myself this morning, but I did get up and exercise, which is better than I’ve been doing all week, so good on me.
First things first: Andy, the brand we like best is Water Lilies, and they actually call it “Chicken Beast” on the package (I hear it was originally a misspelling, and they never changed it). There’s also a decent fake chicken (patties and nuggets) that Whole Foods carries, but I haven’t been to WF recently to check what brand it is.
I did, however, just get back from Eastern Market. We successfully obtained some of the fake ham. In fact, she hadn’t even opened the new shipment yet, so she opened it and then had to dig all the way to the bottom for the ham, as it was mixed in with all the other fake meat. It is CKfoods brand Vegetarian Ham, and I will let you know how it is. We also snagged another fake meat we haven’t had before: Water Lilies Food Inc. brand Vegetarian Half Chicken. I’m pretty sure this will be awesome, since I love their Chicken Beast (which are little nuggets of awesome goodness). I’ve also had their fake fish (we used it in the mawk pa, and I liked it), and their fake duck (which I didn’t like, but everyone else loved – we think I didn’t like it because it was too realistic for me, but that’s probably a recommendation for people who like duck and want a vegetarian option). We also got more Thai basil, some tofu jerkey for Greg, baby bok choy, and some canned lychees. I didn’t get them, but I did notice frozen kaffir lime leaves, frozen curry leaves, and frozen chopped galangal – all items I have previously tried to find, without success, and now I know where to go for them. Awesome.
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On our way to Eastern Market, we passed the house with the chickens – and a little chicken (a baby chicken? a young chicken? it wasn’t a chick) was running away! It ran into the street a bit after we passed it. 
It was kind of funny in the car, though, because I was all, “Aw, look, Greg, a baby chicken! A baby chick- GREG! OH! OH! IT’S RUNNING INTO THE STREET! THE BABY CHICKEN’S IN THE STREET!” Well, Greg thought it was funny then, and looking back on it now, I can see it was funny, too. But at the time I was really worried about that chicken. (Although it wasn’t running into the main street, but the driveway for an apartment complex, and it wasn’t in danger of getting hit, because no one was coming out of or turning into the driveway.)
I don’t have a new episode of Skeeter’s Reality Show to post today. Sorry. (I know you’re devastated, right.)
And now I’m going to go knit on a sweater. (I’m *so close* to being done with my SWS beret, but I need one last ball of yarn for like two or three more measly rounds, and I just don’t feel like running out to AC Moore this weekend.)
Oh yeah, I forgot: GAGG: 17.93 miles
Someone’s lazy ass managed to get up and exercise this morning.
I’ve forgotten to mention some of the weekend activities. Probably my favorite thing was, Friday night after eating that delicious dinner, we took our Cafe du Monde (with condensed milk) and drank it on the back porch, while it was raining torrentially. We lit some candles, too. It rained quite a bit Friday, so I was happy as a pig in shit, basically. I love rain, and getting to sit outside and enjoy it, with delicious coffee no less, was a real treat. Also, it’s finally starting to feel like Fall, which means soon I’ll be able to use my…what the hell is it? It’s not a chiminea, it’s not really a wood stove… Well, I guess it’s a mini wood stove, maybe. Anyway, soon I’ll get to go sit on the porch and have a fire in the mini wood stove thingy, and it will be delightful. Yay!
Saturday, Greg played drums with Wedlock at the Borders in Cary. (Or maybe I should say *a* Borders in Cary? Is there more than one in Cary? I don’t know.) That was cool. Afterwards, we dropped the drums off at home, I grabbed a sweater (Fall!), and we ate some late dinner, then ran out to Open Eye Cafe, where Anode Glow was playing. (Anode Glow is Don and Jj, and Jj is in Wedlock.) Their set was all improv, and it pretty much kicked ass. Also, I had brought my scrap sock yarn blanket to fidget with (I’d had nothing to fidget with at the Wedlock show, and I still enjoyed it, but I am very fidgety), and worked on it, and I dare say it’s looking pretty neat. Don said something about their music being “music to knit by” (I didn’t correct him because I knew what he meant and I didn’t feel like being pedantic just then), and I will say that a couple times, I was actually crocheting faster than I normally do, and I do think the music had something to do with it. Who knows.
Anyway. The great thing about Eastern Market (where I buy the awesome, awesome chicken beast), which is also the (slightly) bad thing about Eastern Market, is that the very nice lady, once she realizes you’re vegetarian (or vegan, as the case used to be), will make recommendations for you. And they are awesome recommendations. This is (slightly) bad because it means I go in with a small list, and always come out with more than I originally meant to get. But it’s all delicious, so it’s not really a bad thing. Friday, I got the ingredients I needed, but I also picked up some vegan dumplings and some fake fish. (I also got a tip to come back next Friday and get some fake ham, as she’s getting a new shipment in. You better believe I will.) Since we had half the Thai basil left over after Friday, as well as some vegetarian nuoc cham and plenty bird chiles, I set about finding a suitable recipe to use those and the fish. Last night, we made aromatic steamed fish curry, aka mawk pa. It’s fucking incredible. (And the fake fish was delicious, although I had my doubts since the fake shrimp was not my cup of tea. But the fake fish I heartily recommend.) The book (Hot Sour Salty Sweet, of course! Go buy it.) recommends serving the curry with rice, but we just fried up some rice noodles in a little peanut oil and vegetarian oyster sauce. Holy crap. And we have leftovers. Yum! Here’s the fish curry:
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I told Greg I’d cook a special meal for him this weekend. As is almost always the case when I make such a promise, he ended up helping me cook quite a bit last night. I hadn’t really read the recipes as closely as I should beforehand, and there was quite a lot of prep work and very little actual cooking time. And since I hadn’t done the prep work beforehand, but was doing it as I went along, well, two cooks were definitely better than one, and Greg got sucked into helping make the dinner that I’d meant to make all by myself for him, so he could sit on the couch and have a beer or something. Since he’s the primary cook in the household, and I thought it’d be nice to give him a break. Ha. Anyway, the food was incredible, and it all came from Hot Sour Salty Sweet, a cookbook I can’t recommend highly enough. (Also, it’s sister cookbook, Mangoes and Curry Leaves. You need these cookbooks, trust me.) We had sliced cucumber with steamed snow peas, steamed baby bok choy, and steamed bean sprouts, as a salad/side vegetable. We made vegetarian nuoc cham (Thai fish sauce – fricking delicious), and used it in the two main recipes: stir-fried chicken* with Thai basil, and noodles** with greens and gravy. We used *”chicken beast” and **rice “flakes” (these square rice noodles). Greg loves the Thai basil noodle dishes that Chai’s and Penang have, and I was trying to approximate that, only there’s no *one* dish in Hot Sour Salty Sweet that’s just like those dishes, so I made two – a Thai basil dish, and instead of serving it with rice, we made the noodle dish. It was pretty damn excellent. Although, even though the noodle dish was fantastic, I think next time I’ll just soften up some rice flakes and mix them in with the Thai basil recipe, and then we’ll have Thai basil noodles. Awesome. For dessert, we had iced Cafe du Monde with sweetened condensed milk – heavenly. I’d intended to also make fried bananas for dessert, but we had so much food already we decided to leave off the fried bananas and have them today for breakfast. Which we did (and again, Greg helped immensely – I made the batter, but he did the frying, since the peanut oil had behaved questionably at high temp last night, smoking a little worryingly), and they were delicious. We also had some more coffee with condensed milk. Here are the bananas we couldn’t finish:
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I’m excited that the iced coffee recipe is so easy, because it’s a nice substitute for all the masala tea I’ve been drinking lately, which I think might be upsetting my stomach. (I seem to have a food allergy – not the sort of allergy that makes you sneeze, but the sort that gives you stomach upset and dizziness and makes your throat a little sore. And I’m afraid I’ve narrowed it down to either the T-plus masala mix I’ve been using, or the “snore relief” throat spray I tried recently. I’m hoping it’s the throat spray, because I love me some masala tea. And I drink it without problems at Sitar, but it’s possible they use a different masala mix, and that there’s some weird spice in T-plus that’s aggravating me. But it’s so yummy.) Anyway, it’s also nice that it’s so easy to make because I’ve still got quite a bit of condensed milk in the fridge, waiting to be used. (I’m also thinking of tracking down a recipe for seven layer cookies – they use condensed milk, don’t they? And Greg’s never had them.)
I’ve been busy, crafting-wise, too. I’ve managed to start and finish a couple smaller projects – I’m still working on the Elfine socks, and a couple (two, I think) top-down raglans are still on the needles. But I made a Fat Bottom Bag out of SWS stripes, and I love it. Then I made a beret from a Lion Brand pattern, out of Woolease Thick & Quick – I’ve only got a picture of it flat at the moment, but I’ll get a proper one of it on, later. Then I decided I liked the SWS enough to make a beret to match my Fat Bottom Bag, so I cobbled together the stitch from the bag (herringbone half-double, IIRC – I’m too lazy to check the book right this moment) and the general directions/idea from the Lion Brand pattern, and a little ripping and redoing, and it’s turning out well so far. There is a noticeable line along the round-joins, but it doesn’t bother me enough to do anything about it, and I like how it’s coming along. Unfortunately I did way too much crocheting on it last night, and my hands and arms are pretty unhappy today, so I’m barring myself from needlework today. (Which is killing me. But so are my hands, so I’m just going to read today, and let my hands take it easy. Well, after I’m done blogging.) And I’ve also been working here and there on my scrap sock yarn granny square blanket.
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And here’s a picture from two weekends ago (I think, I’m pretty sure), when I moved a bookshelf from my craft room to the living room, and finished shifting and shelving books. Here’s Skeeter “helping” me (by which I mean he sat on the bookshelf for a good forty minutes and watched me rearrange books):
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And tonight, Greg’s got a show with Wedlock, at a Border’s in Cary. That’ll be fun. But until then, I’m reading. Awesome.
GAGG: 16.32 miles
I ended up staying home today with some gnarly stomach upset: frequent bathroom trips, headaches, chills, dizziness, the works. The only reason I got on the Gazelle in the first place is I was only just beginning to feel a little off (just a headache and a little dizziness), and I chalked it up to not being fully awake yet. It really hit hard about fifteen minutes after I finished, and I ended up taking some immodium and ibuprofen and getting back in bed. Skeeter was awfully sweet, and actually snuggled with me for a bit (as opposed to just sleeping on the bed with me), and now I’m feeling much better.
