Sad day

One of the best things about living in New Jersey is that we have tons of options for amazing bagels. Like if you live more than 75 miles outside of the NY metro area, you most likely don't know what a bagel should taste like. The price of flour is on the rise! And with the $3 slice, also comes the 90 cent bagel! The place I get my bagels at previously charged $8/dozen, and now I'm paying close to $11! This is going to make a major difference in my nonexistent monthly budget! And I can forget about the baker's dozen they used to give me, which is still actually printed in the menu, but I never get, and I feel weird asking for, even though I'm a much more assertive person than I used to be. These people are dealing with the flour shortage, after all!

Because I frequently buy and eat bagels, another large part of my life is spent buying cream cheese. It's out of control! It seems like I'm seriously making special trips to the fancy Hoboken grocery stores for more cream cheese 2x a week (at $3 a brick!) because I'm about to run out, Katie can tell you that this is true.

I actually think I might need to start a BJs membership even if it's only for cream cheese and pickles. Does anyone go there who could tell me if they sell half-gallon tubs or anything like that? Or maybe I should just buy a cow so I can make it myself. That could definitely be cheaper, after all, Matt does have a backyard.

One time someone bought Matt a children's book for Christmas called "I Like Bagels," as a joke because he's Jewish, but little do they know that he actually LOVES bagels, and I look at the photos in the book all the time!

I'm trying to make an effort to cook with foods I haven't before. Hence the kale and chard adventures. I bought butternut squash yesterday, and I'm searching for a recipe now. Just from searching, it seems like you're supposed to make soup with it, which I'm not really feeling for this week. I'll probably make this since I have all the ingredients and I love roasted vegetables, and it will be simple and great.

Defeat

I was just looking back through my posts so far and what was supposed to be an exciting new project to motivate me to follow through with my hobbies and connect with strangers over the Web (heh), and it seems I've been a miserable failure at every turn.

Remember my herbs? Yea, they all got mold and died. What about my scarf (from the same post)? Remember that exciting and ambitious project? Well, I knitted about 1 more foot of length, and then realized I'd dropped a bunch of stitches a dozen rows back and had a big hole in it, and I would need to pull out a few hours of work to fix, so I haven't touched it for a month and a half. It's also March now, and I'm not really feeling the need for a scarf like I once did, so I'll probably forget about it. How sad is that??

Also, I'd love to share with you all the lovely tilapia I made last week, and my awesome recipes for basics like chili and a vodka sauce (two different things), but my camera is mysteriously not working, so I'm the kind of person now who makes her delicious food and gobbles it up, but never takes pictures of it or discusses in detail how/what I did (the original purpose of the blog, hence the ingenious name).

Anyway, I'm going to try to be better, I was just feeling kind of sorry for my lazy self and needed to share it with the world (or just my bf and maybe my sister).

Hah!

super bowl = who cares

I am the best girlfriend ever. Thursday and yesterday I made shepherd's pie and then pulled pork sandwiches upon requests. If I was your girlfriend, you could just be like, "Anna, I feel like eating meaty casserole topped with crispy mashed potatoes tonight," and I'd be like "Coming right up, you!" The shepherds pie was meaty and juicy.





I cooked the pork in cider vinegar for 8 hours and then mixed in BBQ sauce, honey, mustard, and soy sauce, and it was the best thing I've made in my entire life. I also made delicious mustardy, non mayo cole slaw and collard greens.





I heard Wet Hot American Summer the musical might be coming out!

That's all, I have to watch 3 more episodes of Seinfeld now, (the real love of my life)!

Major food update

This week was all about cheese for me. On Wednesday, I attended my favorite event of the week, "Cheesy Wednesday"! So, you order a beer and it comes paired with a plate of cheese, bread and grapes. Amazing -- I know, right!? I'll blog more on that later because I enjoyed myself too much and cannot write intelligently on this matter.

I love cooking seasonally, and I really wanted to try using some different greens for dinner than regular, boring ole' spinach. So I picked up some kale, swiss chard, and bok choy to use this week. Friday I made the kale. So easy, so cheap, so delicious!! All you need is: One bunch of kale, two cloves of garlic, one red onion, red wine vinegar, and olive oil.

Exhibit A:


I chopped the kale into strips and let it cook in boiling water for 10 min. Then I sauteed some red onion in the olive oil until it was soft, after which I added the garlic. Once it was smelling delicious and I could barely stand it, I added the kale to the pan to warm it back up. After a couple more minutes, it was done! I splashed on some red wine vinegar, and served it with herb-crusted chicken and wild rice (no big deal):



On to further, more important matters!

We hosted a fondue extravaganza/feast for the people I knew would appreciate it most. Melting Pot has nothing on me! Seriously, you couldn't pay me to waste 5 more hours of my life at that place for the pathetic excuse for fondue for which they have the audacity to charge you like $90/person.

Matt's not into the classic emmenthaler/greyeur combo because it's too "tangy," so I did gouda/smoked gouda with garlic, Amstel Light. Soooooooooo good. I also had like three times the amount of dippers, that were 100x better than what the ridiculous Melting Pot offers, and it took me 700x less time to make.

We dipped pumpernickel and semolina bread, broccoli, asparagus, cauliflower, pretzels, green apples, grapes, and salami. I blanched the veggies for a couple minutes (key. Someone report this to MP). I bought the meat ends at Shoprite for the salami and was only charged like 2 dollars for a pound of salami (normally like $12/pound if you want to have the packaged sticks).

So, FIRST, I chopped everything up with a huuuge knife:



Then I melted the cheese and we ate for like 2 hours:



It was amazing. We're going to do a Guinness/aged cheddar fondue next!!!

One last thing. I would pay double or maybe triple to see any of the movies featured in Seinfeld (except for The English Patient). Prognosis Negative? Sack Lunch? Count me in!!!