Something’s Cooking (It’s Me)

This week’s theme was all about food (and fun)

I was lucky that last weekend the grocery stores had some really good sales that allowed me to make some delicious recipes, starting with last Sunday night when, for the first time in weeks, I made a hamburger. Nothing too unusual like the Bob’s Burgers I used to do once upon a time and would like to do again, just a well-seasoned cheeseburger made with Jarlsberg cheese and served with fries.

We’ll be having bacon cheeseburgers tonight to use up the last of the Jarlsberg.

Then on Monday night it was time for sausage ravioli in a Parmesan cream sauce with roasted Brussels sprouts:

Tuesday . . . I think Tuesday was leftovers of some kind, or maybe takeout, but Wednesday brought about tender chicken, seasoned mashed potatoes, and slow-cooked green beans with onions and bacon:

Thursday I was at work trying to think of some ways to use up some vegetables that were going bad. I took an extended lunch break to get some beef chunks and threw them in a marinade for 3-4 hours. When I got home I put the veggies in the oven and the meat in the cast iron pan. The result – “Greek style” marinated beef cubes with roasted Mediterranean-style vegetables and a carrot/sweet potato medley:

Friday was kielbasa and fried potatoes at Krystal’s request; I did not take a picture this time, but please enjoy this older picture of the same dish:

Saturday rounded things out with pork spring rolls, mandarin orange chicken, and yellow rice:

But the real star of the show Saturday was dessert, which I’d started making at 11:00 in the morning. I’d found a recipe earlier in the week that I wanted to try, but I knew it would be time-intensive and so had to wait until Saturday to try it. There were challenges: I couldn’t source all the ingredients in my hometown and had to use some substitutes (or the ingredients were prohibitively expensive!!) and in the baking process there was some spillage in the oven directly on the element causing smoke to vent out. I was also working with active yeast for the first time in over two decades; I think the last time I used it was making pizza crusts with my mom (I do not use yeast in my own pizza dough).

The effort was worth it and the end result spectacular tiramisu-inspired cinnamon rolls:

I’ve a few online friends that follow along my food adventures, and at the end of the week one of them said

Nice! You have outdone yourself (and everyone else) this week . . . you gotta slow down now, you’re making the rest of us feel bad. 😜

Adam S.

The good news for everyone else is that the stores didn’t have nearly as good sales this weekend, so it’ll be a lot of the same stuff as a usual (not this week) in the coming days.

What inspired the cinnamon rolls, you may be asking? Well, I changed my calendar from January to February and it asked me a question:

Now, although I answered “tiramisu”, one could make the argument that I am both a cinnamon roll and tiramisu, and that got me wondering about crossover recipes. I also posted the question across all my social media accounts, with tiramisu and eclair being the most popular answers, but also with two incredible Dome Cake friends (hi, Megan and Ciarán, I am SO GLAD you’re here and in my life).

I posted other things this week. Namely, I’ve stoped posting daily song lyrics and I’ve started posting daily “holidays”, something I already do at work. Maybe I could use them as short prompts to post here as well – what do you think?

Anyway, this week there was

• Curmudgeon Day (which seemed to set the stage for the entire week)
• Yodel at Your Neighbor Day, with one friend telling me that evening she and her coworker randomly yodeled at each other throughout the day, which in turn made my day!
• Scotch Tape Day (stick to it; you’ve got this!)
• Change Your Password Day – (posts should contain at least fifteen letters, one capital letter, one number, one special character, and may not be copies of the last six posts)
• Change your Windshield Wipers Day
• Carrot Cake Day
• Homemade Soup Day

Again, I’ve planned to make burgers tonight, so sorry I won’t be observing soup day today.

This week was also Imbolc (also called Brighid’s Day) for those who observe:

I’ve thought about doing monthly musical roundups of what I’ve been listening to – have to game the Spotify Wrapped results early and often, after all. Here’s what January looked like for me:

I did have a few people ask me if I was going to watch the Super Bowl because apparently Taylor Swift’s boyfriend is playing and she might be at the game. To settle this once and for all let me be clear: I am a Swiftie, but not even she could convince me to watch American football (or go on a cruise, for that matter). I did see this image and found it funny, though:

More political things happened this week and you really should be calling your federal representatives and senators to oppose KOSHA as well as calling your state and local officials to protects trans rights and the rights of all members of the LGBTQIA+ community.

Sometimes one has to laugh from falling into spiraling despair, and this week someone asked what outfit we’d wear to the Constitutional Crisis; I chose K2’s look from our Cyberpunk: RED game (still on hiatus):

Our D&D game continues to be amazing. This last session had some intense reveals that you can read all about on my character wikia page.

I mentioned last time that I had submitted a conference proposal. Friday afternoon I got an email with the tentative conference agenda – and my proposal is on it – huzzah! But what I had envisioned as a panel is in actuality a solo presentation – help!?!

Thankfully I’ve already got someone who’s volunteered to act as a mentor, so hopefully I’ll be better prepared than if I just sat in my own anxiety about it.

Oh, I nearly forgot two other kitchen shenanigans:

While making the dessert rolls, I grew certain I’d misplaced a whisk attachment for my mixer before remembering it has one because two cannot intertwine in the mixer.

Then, when trying to store the rolls, I spent half an hour looking for the pie carrier that some years ago I accidentally set on a warm stove element, melting it.

But after a such a full week, can I be blamed?

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Well, I think that about wraps the week up for me; what have you been up to?