Dressing Skanky

Last Friday:

me: ok, we're going out with all your cool kid friends tonight. Should I dress skanky?

jeff: um...only if you want to.

me: well what would constitute skanky?

jeff: well if you really want to be skanky, you would get one of those dresses Michael designed over and over again. That would be skanky.

me: DID YOU JUST MAKE A PROJECT RUNWAY REFERENCE?!?!?

jeff: yes.

This is why I love him.

I'm a Horrible Person

Why, you ask?

Because I made a whole batch of oatmeal cookies while Jeff is on a "diet."

Here are my defenses:

1. This is what happens when you leave me home alone for a whole evening
2. While getting dinner together, I discovered an open bag of chocolate chips and thought "man, since our apartment has gone from being cold enough to need a sweatshirt, sweats, and socks to being hot enough to walk around naked, these chips are going to melt into a big disaster"
3. Then I found a bag of craisens! 
4. It was punchfork's idea.

Recipe

The Good Housewife

Even though Jeff has been working full-time freelancing this week (woohoo for money and the universe working in mysterious ways!) and doing his crazy workouts with Greyson and Danny, he's still finding time to make me delicious food. It usually doesn't happen until about 7 at night, but it's still delicious.

Jeff has become obsessed with the Pioneer Woman blog ever since he made that AMAZING meatloaf (he also loves the amount of pictures they take, which he then insists I do as well). So both of these recipes come from there.

Deliciousness #1: Corn/Cheese/Pepper Chowder

This was good. It was really good the next day. It was also pretty easy. Per our the-less-ingredients-the-better MO, this recipe was pretty simple, but really good. The hardest part was watching Jeff cut an onion while trying to talk on the phone at the same time.

Also, check out our awesome grown-up plates and bowls! (Grown-up is code for more than 3 that match that aren't made out of plastic)

Recipe here. Our tweeks: Jeff forgot to mention we needed bacon when we went to the store, so it didn't have any. Also, we added a lot of pepper. And extra cheese, because that's how we roll. And even though bread bowls are delicious, we just went with a fresh loaf from the local store.

 

Deliciousness #2: Pasta a la Vodka

This is a great way to get slightly buzzed by dinner, especially when you're impatient like I was and didn't let the booze part of the booze fully cook off (btw, the 42 degree below vodka mentioned here: excellent. very smooth and dangerous). And made lunch the next day awesome.

This recipe also had about 7 ingredients. There was a long discussion over whether we could get away with using half&half instead of heavy cream because the half&half cost 99 cents and the heavy cream was like 3 bucks, which was finally resolved with a call to Nani, who said for this circumstance, it was fine. The Pioneer Woman mentioned that it might be too thick at one point, but since we didn't actually use cream, it was fine. And even though it says quite boldly not to do this substitution, I thought it was delicious and we saved 2 bucks.

Recipe here. Our tweeks: we used half&half instead of cream. Added a little more tomato paste than the recipe said to.  And then we thought it was a little bland, so we adding some oregano. And as always, we added about twice as much cheese as it told us to.

Jeff Needs to Drink More

A conversation Jeff and I just had:

jeff: so, pasta alla vodka tonight?
 

me: dude, this vodka has to bee good. look at their wiebstie http://www.42below.com/ [when I bought this vodka for the recipe, Jeff had accused me of not knowing how to buy vodka because he was wary of what this would taste like since I had never had it before]
 

jeff: ok well i do plan on tasting it before I dump it into my dinner
 

me: VODKA SHOTS!!!

me, a few seconds later: are you going to wait for me to get home?? or are you just going to be plastered when i get there??

jeff: uhh when are you getting home? i'm not getting home til at least 6

me: well then i'm going to beat you home. thats boring. maybe I'll be plastered by the time you're home

jeff: maybe. better save me 3/4ths a cup *chuckle*....plus a shot for tasting

me: dude, we dont have any shot glasses!!

jeff: yeah i know

me: how have we been LIVING?!?!?

jeff: ... guesstimation?

me: no, the correct answer is we've been living in the adult world where we know that shots just taste nasty and we can get plenty drunk off something that actually tastes good
 

jeff: like mango orange + vodka?

me: exactly...or a long island. man those things are good

jeff: ok if you are going to make those then you better have one ready for me when i get home

me: i would need about 4 more kinds of booze to make one of those. do you know what is in a long islnad??

jeff: ok go get them and while you're at it pick up some beer...yes like 6 shots of whatchamacallits and iced tea right?

me: there isn't any ice tea in an long island you noob

jeff: lemonade

me: nope 

jeff: well sorry i'm not a master womanly drink mixologist 

me: long island = all the clear stuff and shot of coke

Clearly the moral of this story is that I need to get Jeff to drink more alcohol.

Probably the Most Amazing Meatloaf EVER

So a few weeks after I make my meatloaf, Jeff finds this recipe. Now, as I'm drooling while looking at the image, I can't help stick up for my meatloaf. My meatloaf is hearty and gets the job done of filling your stomach, while this meatloaf is....well it's all gourmet. And you don't make gourmet meatloaf. That's just dumb.

Man was I wrong.

How it went down: 

This wasn't our usual 5-ingredients-are-best recipes. Look at how many ingredients there are! At this point I would have said it was too complicated and moved on with life. But Jeff was determined. (also I want it known that this started because of that package of pork that Jeff bought strictly because "it looked good")

So then Jeff spent about an hour finely chopping up all those veggies, until he got this

Which turned into this

Breadcrumbs were then added to the mix. Ok, at this point I was like "um...this looks like it's going to be one big meatloaf..."
"It'll be fine." Jeff's signature line.

Then it was time to touch the meat (and mix the veggie, breadcrumb into it...and there's an egg in there which is making it look funny)
At this point, I was like "we're going to be eating meatloaf forever"

This is Jeff's "eww, I'm touching meat face"

Then we poured it into the pan. And I was right. Look at that thing!! It's monsterous. That is a 13x9 1.5 inch thick meatloaf. This, we learned an hour later was a good thing.

Why was the fact that it was that big a good thing? Due to a combo of it being delicious (and by delicious i mean AMAZING) and us not knowing how to put down the fork, gave us six servings. SIX! We are massive pigs. But here's the thing: unlike regular meatloaf that is meaty and fills you up rather quickly, this was light. I'm pretty sure there was more veggies in that thing than anything else. So it was really to put that much of it away.

It's not about how far you got into the movie...

This morning I woke up at 4 to the sound of the same 30 seconds of music repeating over and over again. This I knew was a sign that Jeff was passed out on the couch rather than sleeping with me (that jerk).

So I get out of bed and go out in the living room, where, true to form, Jeff is sleeping on the couch. But that wasn't the crazy part. The crazy part was that the music that was playing on repeat was the main menu music to HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF BLOOD PRINCE!!!

Now, since it was 4 in the morning, I didn't say anything, I just woke him up and walked back to bed. This morning was a different story:

me: so….what were you watching last night? without me!

jeff: well if it makes you feel better, I only got through about half of it because it's so long. That movie is way too long.

me: but you watched it without me!

jeff: we can watch it again.

This of course, is not the point. The point is that jeff watched a Harry Potter movie WITHOUT ME. And he not only watched it without me, but it was his first time watching that specific movie, and I wasn't there to pause it every 10 minutes to launch into a long detailed scene from the book that they skipped (I'm sure Jeff didn't miss this).

This is how recipes are passed down in my family

Saturday afternoon, I am on the phone with Nani

me: Nani, what goes in your meatloaf. I've looked all over the internet and these recipes have way too many ingredients in them.

Nani: Well lets see...meat

me: how much?

Nani: well how much meatloaf do you want?

me: enough...how about a 1 1/2 lbs of meat?

Nani: that works. Ok, so meat, crackers, salt, pepper, worshtich... sauce. That's it.

me: awesome. Thanks

Tuesday night, I am again on the phone with Nani

me: ok, now how do you make meatloaf?

Nani: ok, so first you wash your hands and dump everything into a bowl. Oh, and I forgot to tell you an egg.

me: well luckily I bought eggs for something else.

Nani: ok, good. Now smush it all together.

me: well how much of everything?

Nani: ok, one sleeve of crackers, the whole onion...

me: I don't have an onion. You've never mentioned an onion.

Nani: I didn't? Well shoot. Ok, do you have an onion soup packet?

me: As a matter of fact yes.

Nani: ok, use 1/2 of that. That should work.

me: ok, I've got meat, crackers, an egg, onion packet. How much worshtich...sauce?

Nani: well you probably don't need it since you used the onion packet.

me: great.

Nani: ok, now you smush. And that requires actually touching the raw meat.

me: oh, I can touch the meat. I'm so over that now.

Nani: What?!?! That's crazy.
[I should now interject that this used to be a problem for me. Up until very recently, I did not touch raw meat. It was gross and slimey. I have since gotten over it. I have shown that raw meat who is boss]

me: ok, thoroughly smuched together. How long do I cook it?

Nani: well it depends on what shape you mold it into.

me: ok, I'm just going to stick it in for 30 minutes and check on it after that.

Nani: yeah, just cook it until it's done.