My Friends Love Me and Other Wordlessness

My two loves, birds and cooking.

Things I Have Been Accused of Lately: What is "Being a Such a Guy?"

Things at the hovel have pretty well deteriorated to pre-wedding conditions. Dishes are piled high in the sink, random take-out cartons litter the living area, and my kitchen generally smells like burned onions and failure. February has been a bit of a tough culinary month for me. My living quarters look somewhat like this:

Okay, maybe not THIS bad...at least I don't have Formica counters. Wait...*facepalm*

Since the Puck-cake incident, I have been pretty much on a cooking strike. As such, the consumable food in the house has changed from fresh and leafy to powdery, processed and/or once leafy, now black and rotten. "Meals" have since become quite unusual at the house. Jon is a big boy and can fend for himself in a bachelorish-like fashion. He has no problem eating a can of soup and being done with it. I, on the other hand, ate this for dinner the other day, okay 2 days:

Chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.

Followed by a "sandwich"

More ice cream

16 straight TIVO'd episodes of "How I Met Your Mother" (HIMYM)

Jon finally had to say something when he caught me eating the following over the course of an evening:

One individual size serving of mac and cheese

-Eaten in front of TV during HIMYM.

One fun-size pack of Peanut M&Ms

-Eaten 30 minutes later while sitting under a giant load of  fresh-out-of-the-dryer laundry....who am I kidding, it was dirty laundry that needed to be sorted.

One single serving size bag of Doritos 

-Eaten 1 hour later while trying to understand "Labyrinth" while not being high, and trying to remember why I loved it so much as a kid.

~~~Passed out on couch from carb overload~~~

Woke up hungry 2 hours later and had...

One slice of buttered toast.

-while trying to get motivated to shower for the first time that weekend, and do a blog post for you guys. Eaten while walking down the hall to the computer room.

~~~I'm staring at my computer's blinking cursor...stomach growls~~~

"You know what I need?" I ask myself.
Self: "Some G.D. Self-esteem?"
Me: "Besides that."
Self: "Better personal hygiene?"
Me: "Shut up! I'll shower later."
Self:  "Bacon!?"
Me: Exactly!

~~Sneak back to kitchen as I have already been chastised for eating nothing but garbage for a week~~~

During a commercial Jon hears a sizzle in the kitchen.

J: "Whatcha' cooking babe?"

Me: "Nothing, I'm on strike."

J: "Ok, I just thought I heard something going on in there."

Me: "mmhmmm"

(His nose must have been really REALLY stopped up. How the hell can you not smell bacon.)

I make myself 4 1/2 pieces of bacon and sneak back to the computer.

Jon's spider senses start tingling. He knows something is up. The smell of bacon always lures a scavenger. I'm deliriously om nomming my bacon in the back when suddenly he sneaks up behind me and scares the piss out of me.

J: "What are you doing!"

Me: "Blogging..."

J: "Is that bacon? Did you just fry yourself up a whole plate of bacon?!"

Me: "No..."

J: ~with a hint of disgust~ "You are such a guy." (Not meant as a compliment)

THEN he does the unthinkable, he tries to steal some bacon. The boy is obviously crazy.

Important Digression: When birds of prey make a kill, they do something called mantling to make themselves look bigger and scarier to potential threats. It is basically a bird giving other animals "the bird". Mantling looks like this:

Look at me protecting my noms! Now leave me & the cheezeburger in peace & no one will get hurt!

I do not know what came over me at that very moment, but I mantled over my bacon with my arms like wings and yelled "CA CAW CA CAW!!!" at the top of my freaking lungs. Seriously, I'm not making this up. God knows what the neighbors thought was going on. Jon did not take my threatening posture seriously and I was forced to do what any threatened animal would do. Violence ensued.

I told that bitch to back up off'a my bacon!

It wasn't pretty, but I kept my bacon. However, I started feeling a little guilty for being a greedy bitch, so I broke down and gave him a bite. Then I had a realization: When you're biting your spouse and not really sure why, something needs to change. That's it kids, I am back on the wagon. More cooking adventures coming soon.

Back from the dead (or from the Wedding)

Hello sad sad readers who enjoy posts of kitchen mayhem. I am back from the brink of wedding insanity. I'm a little thinner (20 lbs to be exact!), and a little (read  A LOT) worse for wear. I am now also Mrs. V. If you know the story of why this blog was started, please know that all has come to pass according to luck and divine mercy/intervention. No, I have not learned to make the world's most divine Czech Kolache, but I have gotten kudos from Jon for a "solid B effort". (Which I just discovered was posted exactly 1 year earlier than our wedding date). And because J has such low low standards, he has settled and taken me for his wife. On a side note, the "Solid B Effort Kolache" and other Kolache tales made it into the Matron of Honor's speech. Ha!

Now let's get down to business.

The wedding cake was not as tasty, nor did it turn out exactly as I hoped. It was still more delicious than any other wedding cake I have ever tasted and was beautiful enough to fool the masses. Even the staff at the cake place were eager to see how it came out. Here is you some food porn:

Me to Cake Place: "Like Martha Stewart's version but with white birds and turquoise wind blowing the flock up the side of the cake



Somehow the birds are now flat to the cake. Not much flying.

Thanks to some very generous friends and family, I have a pretty awesomely stocked kitchen. I was lucky enough to get an awesome stand mixer, bread machine, gourmet cooking pots, and Wustof knives from Williams Sonoma. I got drawers full of misc. gadgets to play with. Much cooking-related joy abounds.

On the other hand, my kitchen, though large for an apartment, is rather ghetto. I know that the electric stove works, but the oven is another story. I have yet to bake anything in it since coming home from the honeymoon. My dishwasher is crap, it is literally being held together with trash bag twist ties right now (ties implemented by the previous tenant I might add). The top shelf threatens to fall any moment. I know I should have the landlord come do something about it, but I just can't handle one more thing on my "to-do" list.

Tonight starts the official "We are saving money by cooking at home" post-wedding challenge. The goal: Pay off 3 loans (student, car, wedding/honeymoon) in 1 year. I am to cook 5 days a week, Jonathan is to cover 1. He has agreed to do the bulk of other chores to even the work load. We wasted a lot of food pre-wedding during our "courtship" time or what not, so we have decided that each week we sit down and plan the following week's menu and shop for those ingredients only instead of having random supplies. This week was $60. I know that is a lot for a week's worth of groceries, but we had to buy a lot of staples (ketchup, mustard, toothpaste, toiletries) because we have been out of the country 3 weeks, and we used/did without all of this stuff pre-wedding so it wouldn't spoil while we were gone. So we now have milk, bread, eggs, flour, meat, and a variety of veggies.

I have started recording the Food Network's "America's Worst Cooks" and am watching and trying to learn as much as possible. I thought I was bad until I've seen some of these folks. I'm thinking about applying to be on the show nonetheless. We'll see how that goes. Williams Sonoma also has cooking technique classes for free throughout the month, so I am thinking about crashing some of those as well.

Until then, may your meals fill your belly without leveling your kitchen. Here are some wedding and food related escapades from our honeymoon in New Zealand. More to come later. Enjoy.


Mr. and Mrs. Jon V



Nom noms left for us at our honeymoon suite!



Ribs!!!

Tui Beer and Apple Cider

Weddings Make Women Lose Their Minds...

I recently had my first bridal shower, and let me just say, "It is official, I have lost my mind." I got the bright idea to let everyone else handle the food for the shower except the little mini fondant cakes I wanted to make. Well, naturally it turned out a huge mess that went down something like this:

T'was the Night before the shower and all through the kitchen
women were cursing, and screamin' and bitchin'!

Mom lost the fondant cookie cutters, and my bright idea to use cutters to make little round cakes didn't pan out. The cut-outs just crumbled into little pieces everywhere. My aunts, who were hosting the shower, were ready to give up and buy store bought cakes. I could not bring myself to give up though, so I made a plea to start over making cupcakes instead. We tossed out the two, crumbled cake-messes that we had attempted to turn into something cute and respectable, and dashed off to the store for cupcake holder thingys. Well, my mom did because she was so upset about losing the fondant cutters that she needed to clear her head.

I, on the other hand, set about to rolling and cutting out fondant circles in preparation for later. So, after a few more hours of baking, we had some cute, little fondant-covered cupcakes. Mom went out and bought more little cutters, but we failed to get pictures with all the cute designs because we had 40 cupcakes to go. So basically you see the base coat here:

I somehow managed to get fondant all over my feet. Don't ask me how.

Because I was sucha horse's ass about having these things meticulously perfect, my lovely aunts went about other pressing duties...

Aunt Loyce, finger sandwich extraordinaire! (and Official Butt Swatter. Apparently I tried to help too much.)

Acting as sous chef, housekeeping, and family matriarch was Aunt Pat.

Official title: Watermelon Fruit Bowl Maker

Between the four of us arguing for an hour, we finally decided on my Grandmother's buffet as the official tea holding location. (The theme was a tea party.)

Me and Mum share a spot of tea.

Then the party started, it was craziness. The cupcakes and sandwiches were hoowarfed down in no time because 31 of the 37 people invited showed up. Let me just say that this was NOT AT ALL EXPECTED because:

a.) I'm a horse's ass and a bad friend. So naturally, I didn't expect that many people to come. What a surprise this was:

That's not all of it either, there are packages behind me as well.

I also had an incredible game planner. She took tired, old shower games and breathed new life into them. They were hilarious and fun for all!

Glee fanatic, Gingerific gal-pal Samantha (Matron of Honor Extraordinaire!)

Here is a picture of one of her games, where people had to memorize what was on my apron and try to remember when I left the room. The person who remembered the most wins. Knowing that I love to cook, she made everything cooking related, and bird-themed, like the wedding. Truly awesome!

Fabulous!

There was the inevitable opening of gifts, in which I tried hard to make it interesting so people didn't get bored out of their minds. There was the bow incident...

A near disaster with Jon's mother grew concerned when I mentioned that he and I had to argue about registering for some towels. I had said that I knew standard towels wouldn't fit around him because he is such a big guy.  Side Note:  He wanted to register for one towel for each of us, and ones that were so small that it wouldn't go around him. I insisted on "bath sheets" and added a few more to the registry behind his back. Seeing Jon's mother's uneasiness my mom calls out, "How do you know a regular towel won't fit around him..."

 Thanks Mom for calling me out. (Sam saved the day: "Ummm, hello! THE POOL!")

I was totally embarrassed and tried to hide in said bath sheet.

 So other than that, all went well. When the boys started sneaking around for a sandwich, they found all the food gone and had to fend for themselves. I got a kitchen full or neato gadgets that I am itching to try out. I am thinking up my next challenge as I type...something involving using every new gadget I just got and chronicling its use here. Whew what a day! I couldn't have imagined a more perfect shower. It was beautiful, I felt beautiful. I felt so loved by all the special women in my life.