Walnut-Filled Bread

AKA Where You Goin' With That Flour?

OR What a Colossal Fucking Waste of Time

Look, I got this hand mixer on Tuesday, and I was basically trying not to spend any money til Friday when, you know, I was planning to get some money. So I chose the one thing that I had to buy the least amount of shit for. It was this loaf of bread with some walnuts baked in, and you braid the bread. I just needed some yeast (about $2) and some apple jelly (about $2).

I apparently also needed a fucking Pope-sanctioned miracle, a stove that doesn't suck, and a team of cooks to make sure I didn't fuck this up.

What I got was a 4-hour long ordeal that I never want to go through again. This is gonna be quick, kids. I've been putting off posting this for four days because I'm still pretty pissed about this.

Look! Very active yeast! (Very active yeast reminds me of very active politicians [feel free to insert your own fucking joke here. I'm serious. I hated this stupid bread. I hated it so much that I can't even pretend to make jokes when I'm typing about it.])



The apple jelly I bought was very interesting to the 16 year old who rang up my order. She was pretty impressed with how you could see right through it. The people at that store are pretty nice to me, even though I give them every reason to think I'm an escapee from the psych ward that's not too far from here, so I'm not going to make fun of her. Anyhow. Jelly:



And look, I used the mixer on the dough:



And the dough would not stop sucking up more and more flour. Every time I put the damn flour away I had to get it back out to make the dough not be a sticky, runny mess. I fucking hated it. Serious. Here is the before:



And the after:



I was pretty pissed off by this point, so after I let it rise for the prescribed amount of time, I tried to cheer myself up:



Apparently I succeeded in pissing off the dough. The dough and I were not friends at this point, we were mortal enemies locked in combat to the fucking death.

Anyhow. Stuffed it with the walnut stuffing:



Ran out of walnut stuffing:



And improvised:



(If you have to ask why the fat girl who is trying to quit smoking has a seemingly endless supply of Reese's peanut butter cups, you should be commended on your ability to navigate The Internet all on your own.)

Braided the nut-filled bread:



Made the other two strips of nut-filled bread into my first initial, in my futile attempt to make the bastard shit dough bow down and obey me:



The balls of dough are the ones with the Reese's cups inside.

So I set my oven for whatever the book said, and set the timer for 20 minutes. The book said to bake it for 30, but cover it with foil for the last ten minutes, so I set it for 20 "no-foil" minutes. This part basically still pisses me off.

I came back 20 minutes later and my bread looked like this:



Fuck you, dough. Fuck you. You too, stupid oven. You conspirital bastards. Fuck.

So anyhow the Reese's balls were gross, the nut bread braid was gross, and I threw the whole thing out. Damn. The bread was cooked through, but it tasted gross. It tasted like if you have a mouth full of stale, generic white bread and a mouthful of rotten walnuts. Fucking nasty. It looked good, though:



But damn. Damn.

Lesson learned: A "scant" tablespoon (of the nut mixture) means a not-full tablespoon. Also, dough is an asshole.

Disgusting

So I got yelled at - again - for being rude to the guests. I thought some lady was asking me my name, and I said, "It's Meg." Apparently that's not what she was saying. I don't speak mumble-ese so I got written up.

My district manager - the tool with the goatee - says that I come off as mean and rude. So I smile more at people. Sometimes it's a maniacal smile because the guests do shit like walk off when I'm trying to give them directions, or ask me where the bathroom is and then act like "Straight ahead, it's on the left" is the stupidest answer they've ever heard. But I smile, so whatever.

This morning this lady comes in - obviously a crazy cat lady, with the pet products show across the street - and she wants to use the code to get into the computer room. I explain to her (with a smile on my face) that the code is only for after hours, and from 7-5 I'll let her in, she can check in at my desk and I'll walk her down there.

She comes out of the computer room to get a note pad and pen (not a big deal at all), and I get up to walk her back down to let her back in (not a big deal at all), and she says "Oh, well, I know the code, I can use that," and rattles off the code. I said, "That doesn't work during the day. From 7-5 I'm happy to let you in there." And then she says that she thinks I'm mad at her. She seems to take it as a personal affront that I stand in the doorway a second to make sure her computer is logged in and ready to go.

What the fuck? What the fuck did I do to this fucking bitch to piss her off? I apologize profusely, not because I'm actually sorry but because I don't want her to complain about me. She's the kind of bitch with nothing better to do than write mother fucking complaint letters. Fuck.

So she comes out of the computer room, and I apologize again. I said, "If I seem a little rude, I apologize, please let me know what I did or said so I can improve my customer service." And then she sees that I have my human genetics book out, and suddenly she wants to dote all over me with, "Oh, you're going back to school! Oh, isn't that wonderful? I'm so impressed! Oh, you're getting your degree!"

I would put up with this shit from my mom, because I love my mom and I know this is how she talks, even if it gets on my nerves. This lady was way over-doing it, and she was actually kind of doing it like you would talk to a child: "Oh, you put your shoes on the right feet today! It's that wonderful? I'm so impressed! Oh, you're growing up!"

And I had to sit here and be patronized by this stupid bitch for seven or eight minutes like this. She was cutting into my Friday morning appointment with Kathryn Tucker Windham, and I really wanted to quit talking about going back to school for some shitty associate degree that won't mean much more than my 10-year-old GED when it comes time to find a new job in February.

I was disgusted with myself. It made me feel gross and dirty, sitting here letting her speak to me that way instead of sending her off with my usual firm but polite, "You're all set. Let me know if you need anything else, here's my card. Have a great day!" And the more she talked the more I felt bad for her. I was getting paid to talk to her, I wasn't really interested in anything she had to say. And sitting here acting like I did give a shit was basically lying to her, but I had to do it so I could keep this shitty, thankless job until February.

I'm disgusted with myself now. If my shitty fucking bank decides that I can actually have the money I deposited last week, I think I'll take a cab after work to pick up my car instead of waiting til Tuesday. I could use a nice, relaxing drive right now.

Quiche Lorraine

So I was reading this article about feeding yourself on $15 a week. He mentioned quiche. I've never had a quiche before, but my friends speak highly of it. I wouldn't know a quiche from a bag of caviar. But I had some eggs, and my handy dandy Betty Crocker book, so I had a go at it.

First up was the crust. Flour, salt, shortening, water. Easy! And so:



I don't have the fancy tools that normal people have, so sometimes I have to substitute. Here, I substituted the "cutting shortening into flour" trick that I watched my gramma do, and my mom showed me eons ago:



Lo and behold, after adding some water and getting kind of nervous, it became dough:



Now, like I said, I don't have the nifty tools other people do. Here, I substitute a pint glass for a rolling pin:



Worked pretty well, eh?

Well, I had to roll all that dough back onto the glass to lay it on the pie pan. That wasn't going to work, the glass was way too short. So I substituted again:





And now the crust is trimmed up and looking fine:



And I used the leftover crust to make some, um, cinnamon sugar squares or something. I don't know. It seemed like a good idea at the time:



While the oven was heating (because God forbid I should remember to turn it on before shit is ready to go in it), I started cooking the bacon. I can't fry bacon, I have some sort of deficiency. So, I substitute. I love my George Foreman grill:



While the bacon was cooking and the oven was heating, I mixed the eggs, milk, and, um, something else. It called for a dash of nutmeg, but it's cheaper to buy spices bagged instead of in a jar, so I got the bag. You can't get a dash from a bag, so I just took a teeny pinch. Like so:



And the oven's heated (you can tell when it stops making the popping noises. Also, there's sometimes a "fwoomp" noise.) So, in with the pie crust and cinnamon sugar squares. Meanwhile, the bacon's done!



So I take the bacon drippings and cook the onions til they're soft but not brown. I was going to stop about three or four minutes before I actually did. I was worried I might start browning 'em. But I figured, hey, I kind of like brown onions, so I'll keep cooking 'em. Most of my problems with cooking comes from worrying about over-cooking, and as a result, under cooking. I digress. Onions got cooked. Bacon got crumbled into the egg/milk mixture. Cheese and flour were added, and though the onions looked like they might be a bit much for the amount of mix that I had, I threw them in there anyway. Would Betty Crocker lie to me?



Ding! The crust is done. I don't want to get crazy here, but I think that looks like a damn fine crust:



The cinnamon squares, however, looked pretty shitty. They tasted even worse. Lesson learned: don't be putting the sugar on some dough and blithely throwing them in the oven. In the future, maybe put some butter on there and then sugar 'em when they get out. These were basically gross.



So one thing led to another, you know how it is. The whole shebang went into the pie pan, and it looked like it could actually be something resembling dinner.



Betty Crocker suggested that I use some foil to cover the crust so it doesn't burn. Well, the most important ingredient when I cook is "holy shit, please do what you can to not fuck this up," so the crust was foiled.

Now, my oven is kind of, well, bockety. The numbers on the knob are mostly worn off, and I don't think they actually correspond to what's going on in the oven anyhow. So I set it for what I hoped was 325, and set the timer for 35 minutes. It was supposed to cook for 35-40 minutes, or until a knife inserted near the center came out clean. The timer went off, I checked on it, it was still in a fairly liquid state. I set the timer for five more minutes and checked back on it. I did this about six times. For serious. It took an extra half hour.

But lo and fucking behold, it was a quiche.



It was a little undercooked. I think I need to get one of those oven thermometers. But it was fantastic, cheese and onion and bacon bits - holy crap,it was the best thing I've eaten all week. It more than made up for the mashed potato casserole from last week. I'm going to try it with tomatoes next week, but first I have to figure out how to roast 'em, since that would just add to the liquid. I think it might be good with some bell peppers, too, but I don't want to get too crazy here.

I'm getting my hand mixer this week, so there will be some mad crazy frenzy of whipped things forthcoming. That's fair warning.

Stupid hat

So it's October in Chicago, and despite our high of 88 today, winter is going to be on us quicker than TMZ on Britney's panties, so I decided this year I'd be prepared. Instead of struggling from place to place playing chicken with frostbite. A nice scarf, a cute hat, some gloves. You know, winter stuff.

Since I quit smoking, I'm knitting like a crazy woman these days. So I figured I'd start with making a hat. Nothing fancy, just an easy peasy knitted hat. So I got my old copy of Stitch n Bitch, found a hat pattern, and got to work.

This is what I ended up with:



Which is fine for a newborn, but it's too dinky for my noggin:



So, I tried again. This time I added 20 stitches, so it was 84 instead of 64. It was a bit of an improvement:



But still looked kind of silly:



After all, I'm a pretty far cry from your average skate board hero.

So I'm trying it again, this time with 100 fluffy blue stitches and little more attention to detail on the stars. Third time's the charm, and all that.

Deep down inside, though, I think I could totally pull off wearing that dinky hat.

Vanilla Pudding

Last night I decided I wanted some kind of dessert to reward myself for having to choke down the mess I made on Monday. I flipped through my handy dandy Betty Crocker cookbook and found that I had the ingredients for vanilla pudding.

Oh yes. It was pudding time.

Seemed pretty straightforward, didn't need a double boiler or anything fancy, just some eggs, flour, sugar and vanilla extract. So, I got to work.

Now, I know you folks think I'm screwing stuff up all the time, that maybe I'm not following directions or I'm taking shortcuts. This isn't the case. So I took pictures of each step so show you what was going on. Some of the pictures were re-created after the pudding was done, because there's a time for stirring the pudding and there's a time for taking pictures, and those two don't always coincide. Some were taken as I was cooking, because there are some things that can be done one-handed, and done well. Amiright, fellas?

Fist up: dry ingredients. Flour, sugar. Easy peasy:



Add three cups of milk:



Cook until bubbly, then cook for two more minutes. I don't really know what they mean by bubbly. The reasoning was, if they wanted it boiling or simmering, they would have said that. So I figured they meant when the little bubbles come up around the edges, like so:



Add one cup of this mix to two beaten eggs.





Done. Add this mix back into sauce pan. Got it. So, add one tablespoon of butter or margarine and 1 1/2 tsps of vanilla extract:



Pour it into a bowl and chill for four hours.



Yeah, that looks pretty gross. But it doesn't really look any worse than the picture in the book, so it must not be so bad.

Well, as we all know, patience is just another virtue that I don't possess, so I took a taste of it before I got it in the fridge. It wasn't very tasty. Kind of bland, really. I didn't have anything interesting or appropriate to put in it, so I broke up and melted a Reeses cup and cooked it in there.



It didn't taste any different at all, so I put in two more. I was feeling pretty good about this idea, but it still didn't really taste different, so I just put it back in the bowl and back in the fridge.

Two hours later I decided to try some.



Mmmmmm.

I got about halfway through what I had there in the bowl and started getting sick to my stomach. Way, way too sweet. Still didn't taste like chocolate at all, or peanut butter. It tasted like sugar free, fat free, generic pudding mix that might have passed its expiration date.

The good news is, I put some Parmesan/Romano cheese stuff on the mess I made on Monday, and it tasted fine.

Cavemen. No, seriously.

We have a cafeteria here in the hotel. It has a TV, and usually at lunch time it's playing CNN. For the last two weeks, it's been playing Maury Povich. I would change it, but the glazed expressions of the hotel employees at they stare at the screen trembling with excitement to find out the paternity results makes me think that snapping them out of their semi-comatose state wouldn't be safe.

So, I sit and try to read my history book while the trash on the TV screech and holler and point accusing fingers at each other. For two weeks. I can actually hear my brain cells dying. They make little popping sounds, something between Rice Krispies and bubble wrap.

I mention Maury Povich because I think those missing brain cells are what made me decide to watch "Cavemen" on ABC. You know, the guys from the Geico commercials. The half-hour insurance show.

I thought I should watch it basically so I could bitch about how awful it is. It's fun to bitch about things when you're bogged down with work and school and life and the only time you get to vent is on your stupid blog that nobody reads.

I'm shocked and ashamed to say that the first episode was actually pretty funny. There was no talk of insurance. There was talk of cars, but only because one guy, Nick, was leaving the gym and one of the other guys needed a ride. The plot was that Nick was dating a homosapien, which is apparently huge in a bad way, and there was a lesser plot about one of the other guys (who had just moved to town) who wouldn't get off the phone with is ex-girlfriend.

Doesn't sound like much, but the one-liners and wit here well played and there are tiny injustices toward the cave men that echo injustices toward certain races and cultures in the world today. The landlady yells at Nick because his roommates are making "that primal grunting noise." She keeps calling him Joel, he keeps insisting he's Nick. She says, "Oh, hahahaha. Really? You guys should think about wearing a colored ribbon in your hair or something."

Doesn't sound funny, but it's delivered flawlessly and actually got a smirk out of me.

Pilot episodes don't always account for what a show will be (see "What About Joan"), but this one was pretty decent. There's nothing else on at 7:00 on Tuesdays, so unless you plan to *gasp* read a book on Tuesday nights or something, this would be a safe bet.

Mashed Potato Casserole

So, in the popular Betty Crocker Cookbook, there's a recipe for something called Mashed Potato Casserole. Pretty straightforward, mash up some potatoes, brown some meat, cook some veggies. This is the sort ofA thing I could handle.

So I got a bag of potatoes (on sale - 8 pounds for 99 cents, a fucking bargain and a half) and peeled and cooked up three of 'em. I made mashed potatoes. I want to make it clear that I did not screw up some mashed potatoes.

The recipe said to use frozen green beans, but if you don't have that just some mixed veggies will do. So I cooked up about half of a 17-oz bag of veggie medley (carrots, cauliflower, and broccoli) for about 10 minutes like it said. I browned some meat. It said to boil some stewed tomatoes with other ingredients like Worcestershire sauce, the already-cooked veggies, and, I don't know, other stuff from the recipe. Nowhere in the instructions did it say where to put the meat, so I put it in with the tomato mixture. It seemed to make sense.

I thought I had tomato paste, but it turns out it was tomato sauce, but fuck - it's all just pureed tomatoes so I put the sauce in. I also thought I had a regular casserole dish, but it turns out that went where ever my potato peeler went, which essentially is someplace called "not my fucking kitchen where it belongs." So I put it in a kind of lasagna-type dish. I guess it's a casserole dish. Depends on who you ask, I guess.

Anyway, it said to put the mashed potatoes (which I did not fuck up) in dollops on top of the tomato mixture, and said "add paprika (optional)." I don't have any paprika, so I opted out of that. I turned on the oven (I'd forgotten to do it earlier) and that's when I realized I forgot to put the onions in the tomato mixture. I just kind of drizzled them on top, tried to poke them into the mix but damn! I'd just gotten done boiling that mess, so that was basically painful.

I threw the mess in the oven for 20 minutes, cleaned up all the dishes, and awaited my delicious not-from-a-box dinner.



Holy shit, what a waste of time. It's bland, the veggies (cooked for 10 minutes as instructed) were still hard in the middle. Not crisp, but hard. The onions on top thing kind of worked - they were the best part of the dish. The mashed potatoes, cooked uncovered as they were - got a crunchy and chewy outer texture. The stewed tomatoes were still cold inside, despite having been boiled and then baked for 20 minutes.

Maybe next time I'll double cook everything. Maybe next time I'll triple check all the ingredients, and stop cooking as soon as I realize that I don't have the proper stuff. Maybe next time I'll figure out how to cover the mashed potato peaks in foil.

Maybe next time I'll just heat up a frozen pizza and hope it doesn't set my apartment on fire. Lower goals = higher chance of success. Win.

We interrupt this blog for a slightly embarassing poetry moment

>

It's not what I want
But it's where I want
The edge of the ocean, the deep blue lip of the world
Away from you, away from them,
just old dilapidated me in this old dilapidated place.

3 hours a day makes me a professional's professional

Strolling down Jackson in the bowels of Oak Park, I can hear the roar of the airplane overhead and the roar of the blue line behind me. To the untrained ear it's the same noise, the same roar, the same swift, onward motion.

There are subtle differences. The airplane soars over, going somewhere - running away and leaving it all behind. Just like your daydreams, or the latest love of your life. Full of escape and possibility and perky attendants, the plane has had enough and is leaving for better climes.

The el clatters along, rattling, jarring you to the bone like roller skates on old sidewalks or the fathomless pit of your soul when you realize you've made the biggest mistake of your life. The el, cranky and ornery and mean, rumbles through the night. Staying its ground. Getting the last word in.

Woodstock!

Some friends and I went to Woodstock yesterday. No, the one in Illinois, where they filmed "Groundhog Day." We made some other stops. More pics here.









Here's the flash show:

Grand & Milwaulkee

There's a strange blue building on the corner of Grand & Milwaukee that seems to attract some interesting graffiti. I took some pics of it & the surrounding area. I have a whole thing here that I wrote to go with it, but it'll have to wait til tomorrow:







Here's the flash thing:

The little things

So every time someone needs to access the internet at my hotel, I walk them down to the computer room. On the short walk down the hall I explain to them the price for printing, that they can come to me with any questions, etc.

Just now this complete tool came by and I told him how much we charge for printing. He said, "You guys are RAPING me." I ignored him completely and just kept talking.

We got to the door and I was in the middle of saying, "The first computer on your left is ready to go online." I got as far as, "The first-" and he pulled the door. It's locked. I had the key card in my hand and refrained from explaining to him that I'm walking him down there specifically to unlock the door. He dropped his arm to his side. I continued, 'The first comp-" and he pulled the door again. I stopped talking and looked at him out of the corner of my eye like maybe he was some sort of imbecile who needed help putting his pants on the right way every morning. He looked back at me like I was giving him some sort of quiz full of trick questions. I reached across him and held the key card up to the reader to unlock the door, but it was pretty hard to keep from laughing right in his face.

Oh, yes, it's one of those days when the little things are everything. Real coffee from Dunkin Donuts, a $5 tip from some jackass customer two hours ago, being able to watch the WGN news in the break room this morning - these are the things that are making this extended weekend the finest kind that it can be.

Oh, no! Not Uncle Ben!

Well, apparently I'm not one of those people who learns from my mistakes. Remember those brownies that I FUBAR'd? Well, kids, tonight it's Uncle Ben. Not just plain old Uncle Ben, but Uncle Ben Boil-in-Bag - the easy stuff. The stuff made for morons who can't figure out how to cook rice. Morons like me.



First, let me explain. I used to measure out the water to make mac n cheese. I mean, if it called for 6 cups or quarts or whatever the hell, and I couldn't find the right measuring cup, I didn't make mac n cheese. This went on until I was seventeen, and my best friend at the time explained (very slowly) that the water is drained so it doesn't really matter how much water you use, as long as it's enough to just cook the noodles. It was another two years before I quit cooking them in a big pot like you would use to make chili for six people. For serious. To this day I get kind of nervous making it in a sauce pan.

So, when the directions on the box said "In a 2-qt. saucepan, submerge unopened bag of rice in 4 cups of water," I figured - fuck it, you're just gonna drain it. So I got the biggest sauce pan and I filled it up with water, let it boil, and I put in the bag. 12 minutes later I took the bag out, opened it up, and poured the rice on a plate. Then I covered the rice with some of the sauce from the frozen Sesame Chicken mess that I was making and settled in for a delicious dinner. I scooped up a nice forkful of saucy rice and I was absolutely crushed when every grain in my mouth crunched between my teeth.

Stupid rice. So I just ate the chicken. Then I noticed something. The rice, it looked like it had little...well...look for yourself:



Doesn't it kind of remind you of that scene in "Lost Boys" where first it's rice, then it's maggots, then it's rice? Yeah, this basically looks like a maggot with a full stomach to me. Sorry, but it does.

So much for sesame chicken. If I get any kind of appetite back, it's gonna be Pringles for dinner.