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!)
