A long, strange trip

I'm surprised at how much more often I'm compelled to post here when I'm writing about the food I make. I've always liked to cook, but I didn't really branch out to try some more complicated things until I moved out to Illinois. For the longest time, my menu consisted of steak and pasta, some quesadillas, the occasional chicken parmigiana and scrambled eggs. That all started to change when we moved to Palatine. On Easter Sunday 2009, Stacey suggested I make huevos rancheros for her, her brother and me for breakfast. The experiment turned out well , and I started to make it more regularly as a special breakfast treat, breaking up the monotony of cereal and other simpler breakfast foods. I tend to make the dish a bit differently for Stacey than I do for me. For her, I put everything in one big pile: I layer the corn tortillas, pile the refried beans (an addition from the first version), the eggs and the salsa over the tortillas. She cuts it up and eats it with

Normally, when we have clam chowder, Stacey takes up the cooking. In my continuing attempts to branch out, however, I decided to take a shot at it.  When I cook a new item, I like to use a recipe, unless I'm just making up new ways to season chicken or steak. For clam chowder, I was going to want to use a recipe. I asked Stacey to send me one and she complied , because she likes it when I'm cooking dinner when she gets home from school.  Unfortunately, instead of a chowder, it ended up a little too think. I used too much flour, not enough half and half. It was more of a clam, onion and potato oatmeal.  The "chowder," of course, is on the right. On the left is my garlic bread, which I usually make when we have a soup or salad of some sort. Take a loaf of Italian bread, slice it up (I usually get 12 slices or so), butter the bread and season with garlic salt and some red pepper and toss it in a toaster oven. Viola.  I'll have to make the chowder a

Hey, it's my first attempt at blogging with photos from my phone. Hopefully I don't delete anything. Dinner last night consisted of some chicken (for me, salmon for Stacey) and a dish found on the New York Times Recipes for Health blog: wild rice and brown rice stuffing with apples, pecans and cranberries . While the prep work was a bit overwhelming - I was relieved when Stacey got home do she could help with the pecans - the end result was a great meal, and we've got leftovers for the next couple of days. Updated (from my laptop) to include the link to the recipe. 

Wow, so while trying to post a blog via Blogger on the iPhone, I somehow managed to delete the previous post about my cooking. That's really annoying. So, as I said earlier today, I've been cooking more often with Stacey taking classes. Tonight, while Stacey was sick in bed, I made some things. Dinner tonight was pretty simple: baked penne. I was low on sauce, so I only put it as the top layer. I cooked about three servings of whole wheat penne and placed a layer on the bottom of the pyrex. The bottom layer got covered with some crushed red pepper, hot sauce and cheddar and mozzarella cheeses. Another layer of penne followed, which got covered in marinara sauce and more cheese. Stacey said it needed some oregano and some basil. We live, we learn. And after dinner: I think this was some of my best work. I through in some cinnamon, and it really popped. Hope everyone enjoyed their dinner. If you're near Queens and you want some chocolate chip cookies, stop o

This is a test, this is only a test, of blogger for iPhone. If this was an actual post, it would be a lot less humorous.

I've gone so long using only one email address, I must have gotten complacent. Obviously, this is not the ideal situation.  I woke up this morning and checked my email via my iPhone around 6:30 this morning. After having some coffee and some breakfast, I sat down at my laptop and went to access my email, with the intent to start sending out resumes. It worked for a while.  Then, I got this message:  " We are currently working on your account because an error occurred with your mail storage. Your account data and messages are safe. However, you won’t be able to log in until our team is finished.  We can’t predict exactly how long this will take, but if you are still unable to access your account in 48 hours, please contact us..."  48 hours? OK. And, according to a search via Twitter (hey, it IS good for something!) shows me I'm not the only one affected . But still, it sucks.  I've set up a secondary email address to send out resumes until Google

It's been a long time since I've written anything other than a cover letter. Frankly, while I try to change things up every now and then, there's very little creativity that goes into writing one of those things. "Dear Sir or Madam, as the case may be, I'm awesome. Hire me. I know you won't, it's OK. But I'm trying to pretend that all hope is not lost here, just to save some face. Thanks for pretending to take the time to review stuff, Me." Hmmm. I may use that next time I send something out. Today, I shall try to write, because it's Wednesday and why not? Because I enjoy torturing myself, I will post what I write right here. In fact, I'll just write here. Maybe. It sure beats applying for jobs, but it's not as much fun as playing video games, so I'll do some of that, too. I'm babbling. Good bye.