Corner of Bourbon & Division

I miss cooking. I don't get to do it much these days, beyond very simple meals that aren't much beyond boiling water (either literally or metaphorically). Bean automatically dislikes anything I cook (except for that one time he actually liked the shrimp I made, which was a glorious moment for me, let me tell you!), and because I've always tended to cook larger dishes most of what I make ends up uneaten unless I'm the one eating it. So it usually languishes at the back of the freezer until I remember that we have it and pull it out to thaw.

I actually bought myself two exciting books just before Christmas so that I could step up my game, especially with spices. My cooking ranges from "okay" to "pretty good," but I have no real knife skills to speak of and I'd love to be able to produce really delicious meals. I'd also like to learn the basics and theory of cooking, so that I can create my own dishes rather than always having to follow recipes when I want to make something special. Of course, since I have very little time, I haven't been able to do much more than glance at the books. There's no opportunity and very little incentive for me to cook at home. Our freezer(s) still hold a fair bit of stock from our last big cooking day, and at those times the recipes are all pre-established and leave no room at all for creativity. Don't get me wrong, I love our cooking days: they save a lot of time and money and the meals are usually quite tasty. They are a valuable resource for the whole family because we're generally pretty busy and it lets us eat regularly without having to worry about it too much. It does mean that I don't get to cook much by myself, though.

I can't really cook for myself in Ottawa, either. It took me years to build up the current stock of spices and pots and pans and tools we have at home, and a good chunk of that is also from when pdaughter when we combined our kitchens. All I have in Ottawa are a large pan, a small pan, a large pot and a small pot, and some very basic kitchen tools. Whisk, spatula, serving spoon. I have one knife, a vegetable peeler, a colander and a cutting board. Nothing in my pantry save the very basics (flour, sugar, coffee, tea) and the flavoured syrups I got as a Christmas present.

It feels wasteful to buy new spices since I already have them all at home, not to mention that even if I buy the cheap ones, it's a lot of money to spend on things I already have and am unlikely to use up even if I cook every week for two years. Furthermore, because I only have the use of one cupboard and one shelf in the pantry in the kitchen, I simply don't have room for that, or for more tools. I can't even keep extras in my bedroom because there's no space there, either. It's all rather frustrating.

Maybe if/when I move to a better place I'll be able to cook some more. Maybe bring some more of the pots & pans we don't use from home. I'll have to play it by ear.

I totally intended to make a real update tonight, but it's been a hell of a day. We had the same amount of messages as usual, but every message was accompanied by three or phone phone calls. All of the callers had questions that revolved around the following themes:

Hi, someone said they sent you a message for me. Have you received it yet?

I just sent you a message for $person. Did you get it?

When do you think you'll be getting that message I'm expecting from $person?

Oh, you did receive the message I sent two minutes ago. Great! When will you be passing it on?

That message I sent you five minutes ago? Yeah, I know I didn't mark it as urgent, but I want to know why the intended recipient hasn't received it yet.

As soon as you send the message, can you send me an email to confirm you've sent it? (Note: we don't do this, ever, because it quadruples our workload)

Etc. All. Damn. Day.

By the end of my shift they were dancing on my last misbegotten nerve, and I was only too happy to get the hell out and come back home.

I had a bit of an adventure trying to make instant rice to go with my pineapple teriyaki pork. Apparently I am a rice hipster, and can only cook long-grain or basmati rice. Instant rice is baffling. I managed not to completely ruin it, but sheesh. Dinner turned out okay in spite of it.

I am so tired that my eyes are burning. I will need to call it a night rather than get any more writing done. I'm hoping that the weekend at work will be quiet enough to allow me to get in some more writing. Obviously work needs to come first, but when it's quiet my boss has made it clear that I can pretty much do what I want so long as the work gets done properly and efficiently. He's a really good guy, and very laid-back about things, unlike my previous micro-managing mind-game-playing nightmare of a boss. So that's a win.

More tomorrow. :)

It's nearly 9pm and we still have two dishes left to cook. Aie.

We got to a late start this morning, since everyone was bone tired. pdaughter and I got up at 7:00 instead of the usual 6:00 or 6:30 (though I think she was awake before then), and then Bean had to be prepped for school, breakfast had to be procured, etc. We also had a few items missing for the cooking day from yesterday, which we ended up picking up over the course of the day as needed.

In the category of Phnee Is A Colossal Fuckup, we had a bit of a chicken disaster; i.e. I cooked more of the chicken than I was supposed to cook beforehand. A LOT. Like, we're talking inability to do basic math AND complete lack of reading comprehension on my part. It's as if I read the paper and my brain said: "Nope! We're not doing that!" and did something completely different.

pdaughter helped me go through the recipes, and we managed to salvage the situation without my having to go out and buy a ton more chicken to get us through the day, but it was a close call, and we still have a bunch of cooked chicken that we need to figure out what to do with.

This is my brain. It is full of metaphorical holes. We had about five different conversations today that went: "We have talked about this before. We agreed on it. You [i.e. me] stood there and nodded your head and told me it was a good idea, and now you have no idea what I'm talking about." So poor pdaughter is frustrated beyond words, because she doesn't want to treat me like an idiot, but it sort of ends up that way if she assumes I'll forget everything we talk about. I have a doctor's appointment on February 19th, so now it's just a countdown until the day I'll be able to ask a medical professional about this stupid memory/cognitive fuckery. (No, autocorrect, I did NOT mean "fakery," stop changing it!)

Otherwise, today has been super pleasant. I love cooking, even though these marathon sessions are exhausting. If I ever win the lottery, I plan to spend my days writing and cooking and maybe gardening. Possibly knitting occasionally. I also got my car back from the shop, which is awesome. It's so weird to see the GSCVO without the huge dent in her bumper, but I like the look. It's very sleek.

I will have a longer, more detailed food porn post about the cooking day later on, complete with photographs. We're still cooking, though, so that will likely happen tomorrow. Bean is in bed and quiet after a late bedtime (naps really mess with his sleep schedule, alas), and so now we need to put together those last two dishes and stash everything away in various freezers in the house.

I am looking at the coming week, and it's making my head spin a little.

Work is making me stay late tomorrow for a 5pm mandatory meeting. I am unreasonably annoyed by this, because even if they are paying me overtime (double time for the first time in my life!), that time is mine and why couldn't they at least schedule it in the morning so as not to mess up my whole day? D:

That means that I won't be home until probably 9:30 or even 10pm, and that annoys me too. For one, I really like being home before Bean's bedtime so I can see him before he has to rush off to daycare the next morning. For another, the temperature is meant to go up tomorrow, and I wanted to get out there and shovel the snow off the back balcony before it freezes again. At 10pm I'm pretty sure it will be too late, though I intend to get out there and try, at the very least.

Tuesday morning I'm bringing in the car to be repaired. I don't know if I mentioned the minor fender-bender in which I was involved on December 4th, but the short version is that I'm getting the bumper replaced on my vehicle. Yay! Ish. The appointment is for just before 8am, so that means I have to be up early (well, for variable definitions of early: compared to waking up at 4am for work, this feels like sleeping in!) in order to get there on time.

The rest of Tuesday will be taken up with errands and grocery shopping and ingredient preparation for a cooking day on Wednesday, and in the evening I'm meeting up with the Capricornucopia boys to talk scripts and get this year's show on the road. That means another late-ish night, and likely another night of not being there for Bean's bedtime, which sucks but can't be helped. Capricornucopia is once a year, and that time of year is necessarily busier as a result. Besides, it's always so much fun when it all comes together that it's well worth it.

Wednesday is the big cooking day that pdaughter and I have planned for the month. Last year we had a few very successful cooking days, using the menus from Once A Month Meals, formerly known as Once A Month Mom. The idea is to do enough freezer cooking to last an entire month. It's no longer free, alas, but we signed up for a month and are busily downloading as many of the menus and recipes as we can, and Wednesday will be our first trial run with us both living in the same house. Beforehand it was always a little complicated because we had to work out transportation and Bean-wrangling, among other things. Wednesday, though, Bean will be at daycare most of the day, so we'll be able to get a lot done without worrying that he's swinging from the chandeliers somewhere. ;) Or, more accurately, coming into the kitchen to try to "help," which more often than not includes shoving his hands between the produce I'm chopping and the extremely sharp knife I'm wielding. /o\

Then Thursday it'll be time to do my weekly cleaning of the kitchen and bathroom, do some laundry, then turn around and head back to Ottawa. Busy-busy-busy.

I'm off work, but I'm sick, yet again. This time it's in the form of a cold, which was really nasty over the weekend and is insisting on lingering far past its welcome. This poor health kick can stop anytime it wants, really.

So today the plan is to stay home and curl up in my bed. I may do some writing, too.

I will also be making soup, and cooking a chicken that will otherwise go to waste. The cold got me up at 4:00 this morning, and although I tried valiantly to go back to sleep, it didn't work, so I puttered around all morning and tidied.

The exciting point of my day, to give you an idea, was switching out the cat litter for something less expensive. The cats seem okay with it so far.

I am watching the new Hawaii 5-0, and enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would. It's a lot of fun, and I very much like the actors in it, so it's an all-around win. :)

I am taking a page from owldaughter's book and writing a weekend round-up. It'll be easier than going back and writing individual entries.

Friday

After work I headed out to pick up my costume for Sunday's party. I got a car from Communauto, went to Laurier st., got the costume (lost my little paper, but they were nice and understanding) and drove back to get my dry cleaning...

...

... only to realize that I left my wallet on the counter of the costume shop across town. There was swearing. Lots and lots of swearing. It was 17:00, right in the middle of rush hour on a Friday afternoon, and I think I may have aged five years from sheer stress. I lucked out: they found and kept my wallet for me, and on my way out I met my old friend B, whom I hadn't seen in a very long time. So, bonus. I even managed to pick up my dry cleaning with five minutes to spare before the place closed.

After that I hied myself to the Parental Units' for dinner, where W., the mother of my childhood friends, had also been invited. We had a very nice time, although W. was in fine form, which meant I had to run interference for most of the evening because she seriously gets on my father's very last nerve. Damages his calm something fierce.

Went home and collapsed, after watching a couple of DVDs.

Saturday

Awoke on Saturday morning, feeling god-awfully tired and wondering what god I had angered that I would feel that tired after sleeping for so long. Then I saw that it was 10:00 and that I was LATE. So I jumped out of bed in a complete flap and made a beeline for the phone to call luvenditti to let her know I'd overslept and was going to be late. She answered the phone and sounded bemused, but agreed to meet me a bit later than we'd planned. She called back about three minutes later to see what the hell was wrong with me, and by then I had figured out that I wasn't late, but that my alarm clock was poorly set.

Not a great start to the day, but things improved swiftly after that. Saturday was a cooking day with Lu. I am not allowed to discuss much of what we cooked, because it is part of the Soopar Seekrit Menu for her next dinner party, but let me tell you it was SINFULLY DIVINE, OH GOD.

We also made stew and meatloaf and pizza. So. Much. Food. In between bouts of cooking we also watched part of the latest episode of Glee (meh), Eastwick (cute) and The Mentalist (so much love).

After the day of cooking we called it an early night. Turns out spending all day cooking is tiring. I went home, watched a few episodes of Supernatural, and then turned in for the night.

Sunday

I got up early-ish to do a minimal amount of tidying before tcaptain and maya_banana came for breakfast, and then realized belatedly that I had nothing for her to drink, since she can't have tea or coffee. One hasty phone call later, and they agreed to pick up some orange juice. They arrived resplendent in their costumes, and we set to breakfast with enthusiasm.

Breakfast was not a success. I was off-beat the entire time, and managed to burn the pancakes and came rather too close to setting fire to my kitchen for my own comfort. Luckily they were very understanding with me, and the bacon turned out delicious, so it wasn't a total waste.

maya_banana helped me get into my costume, since it's one of those Victorian dealies that hooks together in the back, and once I was all put together (photos will be forthcoming as soon as people who took them send them to me, I promise!), we headed out to Hurley's, where the murder-mystery Blood, Sweat and Gears was taking place.

I had a blast. I was playing Priscilla "Prissy" Swinton, who was invited to this scientific exhibit along with her husband Dunstable. The guy playing my husband never showed, but it turned out not to matter. I decided that Prissy was an amiable twit, and so I wandered around being insipid and saying stupid things in the loudest, most fatuous fake British accent I could muster. I *broke* people. Repeatedly. My rule of thumb was to think of the most inane thing to say at any given moment, and then to say that. It worked like a charm.

By the end of the evening I was exhausted. I have no idea how the people running the show managed, because it felt as though I had been there for ten hours instead of four. It was a great time, though, and I understand that there will likely be repeat performances in the future.

Unfortunately, the Scots are still here, so no updates for now. I'm having a great time, though, and I'll miss them terribly when they're gone.

I made them their first lobster ever tonight, in a court-bouillon. Very successful lobster, if I do say so myself. Then we had pastries from Le Pain Doré, and tea, and watched three episodes of "Escape to River Cottage" which they thoughtfully burned for me and brought over from the UK.

Life is awesome, and now I must go collapse into bed.

I had an epic battle to the pain with the chicken I wanted to roast today.

1- Burnt the rice for the stuffing.
2- Cut open my finger cutting up bits & pieces for the stuffing.
3- Nearly dropped the chicken.
4- Got tackled by four cats all wanting the chicken for themselves.
5- Put the chicken in the oven but forgot to stuff it.

The chicken is now roasting, but egads! Cooking shouldn't be this strenuous. :P

Okay, I'm back from the gym and I'm not quite dead. I just put on some water to boil to make egg salad, and chopped up a bunch of rhubarb (store-bought, I'm afraid: my own rhubarb should be ready to harvest some time next week I'm guessing) which is now simmering on the stove.

Tomorrow I'll be home all morning, so I'm going to roast another chicken with which to make meals for the rest of the week. I have fruits and muesli and yoghurt (I wanted to buy vanilla and got plain by mistake. Oops!) for a snack/lunch. Maybe if I have time tomorrow I'll try my hand at making homemade granola bars while the chicken is roasting. I'm pretty sure I have all the right ingredients on hand.

I should probably do a load of laundry while I'm at it.

The garden looks really good after all of yesterday's work, so I am quite pleased with that. The apartment is getting back to normal, slowly but surely. I still haven't put my books away (bad Phnee!), but my kitchen is looking much like its old self, only better because of the paint.

After that I'm going to put away my books (that's going to be interesting, since I think I want to re-organize my whole library), sort out my summer/winter clothes which are a shambles, and find homes for all the little piles of clutter that seem to spring up all over the apartment when I'm not looking.

So, yes. Exciting domestic stuff all around, as you can see. Thrills abound, etc.

One day back at work, and it's like I never left. So I came home, heated up some chili (which is divine, by the way, thank you for asking: I added in some hot peppers whose name escapes me, and some spicy Italian sausage, just because I could), and am treating myself to a White Russian (see icon). I may have a second one. I may need to buy more vodka at this rate. Never let it be said that I am not true to my mother's heritage. It's proper Russian vodka, too, none of that shitty Absolut stuff.

I am recovering from a day of too many people talking to me all the time and forever and ever amen. People I had to listen to, because that's my job. By the end of the day, though, I was snarling at the phone as it rang. I did my job courteously and professionally, but in my head all I could think was "Shut up and go way! Shut up shut up shut up NO I WON'T RUN THOSE FIVE PLATES FOR YOU AGAIN BECAUSE YOU WEREN'T PAYING ATTENTION THE FIRST TIME, YOU ASS!" Not that the guys were being addle-pated idiots today or anything. ;)

If these little breaks away from work drive anything home for me, it's just how much of an introvert I really am. Sure, I like seeing all my friends (love you all: mwah!), but most of the time I spent in the last ten days was alone time. I puttered on the internet, I ran errands, I wrote letters, I read books and watched some movies. Essentially, I recharged after months of dealing with people. Droves of people, in my space, all the freaking time.

Human contact is good for me. I know this. Left alone for too long, my mind starts going in circles and occasionally tries to kill me. So, not good. But on the whole, seeing friends once a week is more than sufficient for my "seeing of other human beings" quota. Less if it's a large group of friends or a particularly extroverted/exuberant friend. Not surprisingly, most of my friends are introverted to varying degrees.

I think this might be a large part of why I'm no good at relationships. Who on earth wants to be saddled with someone who can't stand human contact for at least 50% of their waking life? On the plus side, it's not like I hate being on my own. I love having my own quiet time, and I like my own company: I'm pretty interesting, after all, and I can make myself laugh like no one else can. ;)

But yes. Other people are work for me, with friends and family being pleasant work and with other interactions being just work. Even pleasant work takes its toll, though, and there are days when picking up phone messages or looking at email seems like a daunting task, never mind actually responding in a timely fashion. Since not doing it guarantees I'm going to lose important friendships (my parents will never give up on me, thank goodness), I've been making slow but sure progress over the past few years, and I disappear less than I used to, but I still do disappear occasionally.

Work doesn't help by keeping me constantly busy and exhausted and away from home, so that by the time I get home it's late and I have no energy and have only a few hours before I have to turn around and do it all again.

Why am I writing this? I have no idea. Maybe it's the vodka. Time for me to start winding down for the evening, since I have to go to work tomorrow. You're all shocked, I know, but there you go.