So…my Christmas gift to me hasn’t arrived yet! I’ll have to amplify more on this later…I think all the shipping carriers, whether it’s the Post Office, UPS, FedEx, DHL or anyone else…I think they have some sort of conspiracy against me!
Well, after a bit of patience, my newest food item arrived! A lot of you know me well from my no holds barred eating…but only a handful of you know that on the flip side, my cooking skills are really pathetic! I have driven myself to make that change and two landslide victories of the past was making tiramisu and also a German chocolate pie. But in general, I’ve sucked when it has come to taking raw food ingredients and turning it into an FDA-approved meal. You say that a lot of foods have already been approved and inspected? Well you haven’t seen what I can do. The only thing I have reliably been able to do is pour cereal and milk into a bowl (and sometimes I spill the milk in the process!).
Well, I have gotten better and my latest tool to help me is something interesting. It’s called a pressure cooker and I know my Mom and a couple of the “older” generation have some experience with it around here. While it may have been used before, I was probably to young to care. Now I have one, and the concept of pressure cooking was intriguing and mind-boggling at the same time.
This past Friday, Christine and I decided we’d give it a try and put the pressure cooker through it’s paces. Advantages are supposed to be reduced cooking time, use less heat (power/electricity) and also be a healthy way to cook meals. It was interesting to say the least. Our self-diagnosed ADD kept us riveted to the pressure valve on the top of the cooker. Hopefully I’ll try to expand on the mechanics of the pressure cooker some other time.
We had a recipe for a barbecued pot roast and after wheeling around Wal-Mart in search of some key ingredients (and me running into a pole) we had a freshly cooked pot roast, some corn and brown rice. The pot roast was an instant success and I was beginning to like the potential that I saw in the pressure cooker. There were just two minor downsides…first is that the pressure cooker seems to require much more attention to make sure you maintain the cooking pressure, not good for our self-diagnosed ADD. Secondly, being a rather large piece of cookware, it is a bit of a challenge to clean…especially if you don’t want to ruin the polished stainless steel exterior. To add to the challenge, you had to do some slight disassembly of the lid to clean it and instead of letting it air dry I wiped it immediately to keep droplets off the exterior.
Anyhow, that was the last meal for some time Christine and I would both jointly work on. On Saturday night, I took her out to Carrabba’s (our original Kamikaze plan didn’t work out, didn’t know Mesquite loved sushi THAT much) and we tried something new each. I also got to finally try their tiramisu. I loved it…but I think I still like Pazzo’s better, but I had just finished my own brownie dessert so that may have affected the taste.
With that all done, it was time for some oldies memories…I will have that as February’s video of the month on my MySpace, so stay tuned! This afternoon, I helped Christine carry all her packed stuff out. It was almost like heading out for the Navy again, but this time it wasn’t me setting off. Christine was going to be starting classes at Texas Tech in Lubbock and was getting ready for her drive.
At this minute she’s nearing Lubbock and I wish her the best of luck. We did one game of Stab-Boing before she left, and it was a quick one…her turn was up first, she put a sword in and Hard Gay flew out, game over! Ah well, we’ll have a rematch when she returns. Anytime now, my six hours of being her command/support center online will be wrapping up. Of course, my phone will be met with silence as I wonder what happens to her and go on a Jack Bauer rampage, setting ablaze everything in Lubbock and from Mesquite leading towards there. Everything shall be normal though! My Talking Head may be out of commission for a bit as I let her have my computer microphone and I need to find a suitable replacement.
A quick note, Chip has arrived and succeeded in doing me a favor in finding a suitable replacement microphone…so hopefully sometime I’ll update my site’s Talking Head. I hope that every now and then I’ll get Christine on voice chat and we’ll see what’s going on with her. Yes, that sounds like a good idea! Anyhow, Christine is now over there and getting herself situated. Have a good semester and it’s time for me to get ready for work tomorrow…ugh…
