C Is for...

...Cooking!

I love to cook. In college I enjoyed the nights when we skipped the caf and used the dorm kitchen. Better yet was senior year when we had our own apartment and our own kitchen. We weren't amazing cooks. Some company had come out with Chicken Tonight sauces. So, we had a lot of shrimp cocktail and chicken cacciatore. Nothing terribly exciting, but it was homemade, so it was good.

When I moved out on my own, my mom took me out to buy a set of pots and pans and she gave me my first cookbook.


I love this cookbook. This does not contain any groundbreaking recipes, but it was a great starter cookbook. Now, when I want comfort food, I go back to these dishes. With a bunch of years cooking experience under my belt, I can improvise much more. There's a shrimp and angel hair pasta casserole that I still occasionally make. Before, I would have had to have all of the listed ingredients. Now, I do a lot of, "I can use this, instead of this," and end up with something that feels the same but is radically different.

My cooking skills have grown, as has the cookbook collection.


It actually outgrew the bookcase and a portion is now housed above the sock yarn basket.


And then there are the magazines (Cooking Light, Everyday and Real Simple subscriptions (housed below the knitting book collection).


We keep our cookbooks in the living room instead of the kitchen because they're really reading material. I'll sit on a Friday night while watching TV, perusing the books, looking for ideas for the week, and making my shopping list.

Gotta keep the spice cabinet stocked. (These are just the savory spices...baking spices, honeys and specialty blends are on a lazy susan in another cabinet.)


And my nice countertop stove (where all the soup comes together). Peeking out from the corner there, you can see the bottles of balsamic vinegar lined up. I think there are 5 right now, including white, cherry and at least one high end bottle. (I tried getting a shot of my awesome wall oven, which once died while cooking the Thanksgiving turkey, but it's stainless, and reflects the flash in an awful way.) The pitcher belonged to my Nanny. When she moved into my folks' house I claimed this. It's old. It's stained. And I wouldn't make iced tea in anything else.


My sister, known around these parts as The Kid (despite being 27), just got married this summer. She and her husband (The Boy...he's 22) have tight finances. A few months ago, it got really bad, in large part due to their love of fast food. They were 10- and 15-dollaring themselves to death...financially and in terms of their heath. My folks worked with them to try and get their budget under control. As the big sister, I felt I had to try and do something. Luckily, I have a wonderful Geek Boy who goes along with all of my ideas. The Kid and I signed up for Dinner by Design, one of these come-spend-two-hours-preparing-frozen-meals places. For a few months we treated them to a freezer full of meals. The Kid and I had a great time together. Almost every day she would call me and tell me what they had for dinner and how good it was.

After two months, I got the hang of how the whole DbD thing worked. Now once a month we go grocery shopping together. We get everything she'll need for a month's worth of meals, head back to their apartment, prepare all of the meals and stuff her freezer. Some of it is simple stuff. We make hamburgers or put chicken and marinade in a ziplock bag. It can be a little difficult since The Boy is a very picky eater. But we've managed and we'll keep doing it.

So, C is for cooking: for the fun of putting together meals for myself and Geek Boy; for varied reading on a Friday night; but most of all, for time well spent with The Kid and the chance to know she and The Boy are saving some money and eating healthy.

I can't let this post go by without a C is for Cats.

Skitty

Fret

B Is for...

...Beer.

(Please don't say this surprises you.)

I sometimes feel funny about my beer snobbish-ness. There's something very high-falutin' sounding about going to visit a winery or going to a wine tasting. But a brewery tour or beer tasting just makes you sound like a lush. Probably a hold over from way back when, when those who ruled were from the wine-producing countries like France and Italy, and those up in the malt-growing, beer producing area were the "worker bees."

It's something that I enjoy and I'm learning not to apologize for it. Sometimes I get to use my beer knowledge for things like impressing my uncles. Like yesterday when my uncle was talking about a case of Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA someone gave him for his birthday. I suggested he savor it, since the hops shortage means it may not be around for much longer. My mom just shook her head. "It's hard enough to see you drinking beer. But now you're an expert."

I don't drink a lot of it, rarely more than one or two in a sitting, but I drink what I enjoy. Monk's Sour Flemish Ale is right at the top of my list. Along with Dogfish Head Peche (once again, thanks, Tina).

We took a tour of Flying Fish Brewery in New Jersey yesterday. Lots of fun. The guys who own it are very down to earth and make a great product. I've always liked their Abbey Dubble (Belgian beers are always a favorite). One of their current seasonals is the 4-pack pictured, Imperial Espresso Porter. It's delicious. Roasty with a little coffee and chocolate flavor. It almost matches the memory of the holy grail of beers (we need another trip to Toronto).

Most interesting thing I learned yesterday, and a good reason to continue my affection for small breweries, Flying Fish employs Goodwill workers for all of their package assembly. They send all of their packaging materials to a local Goodwill employer and the people in the program put together the boxes and carryalls. It's not a huge thing, but it's nice to know they look for ways to be part of the community.

We'll be heading to a mid-winter brew fest in a couple of weeks, and even managed to score tickets to the Meet the Brewers "after-party." Can't wait for that. In the meantime, I'll head down to the cellar and see what's good for Super Bowl watching.

A is for...

...alpaca.

My souvenir yarn from our cruise last year. We had to take a ferry between Washington and Vancouver Island. On our return trip, we had some time to kill and some Canadian money still to spend. So, I hung out with the bags while Geek Boy went into the shop to get some sodas and munchies. When he came back, he handed me our Canadian cash and told me, "They have yarn." Inside I found a basket full of alpaca from Villa D'Oro. I got 9 ounces. No idea what the yardage is. And still no idea what I'll do with it. But it's a great memento of that trip.





...aunts.

This is only two of the six I have (the third person in the photo is my mom, aunt to 14, aunt-in-law to 5, great-aunt to 6). My aunts are all very different and have given so much to me in their own ways. MB is the closest in age (not counting J, who I don't call "aunt" because she married my uncle only a few years ago, and is just 3 years my senior, and I love her dearly) and the one who used to set me up on blind dates. B is my godmother and crafting mentor and leader of family insanity. H is the one I would talk to about things I couldn't talk to my mom about. K is the silly one. R is the nice one. I can't imagine not being close to them. And, being an aunt myself now, it's one the best things I get to be in my life. I love the Chickpea and Geek Boy Jr with all my heart and any time I spend with them is the highlight of my week. They're still little. I just hope that as time goes on, I will be as good to them as my aunts are to me.