Today, for instance, I got up at 9 am, showered, went grocery shopping, came home, and immediately started cooking! To be sure, I have the game on, and I'm making meals for the week (more about that later), but still, not a lot of chill time. Especially when later today I have Mediterranean homework, MUST work on my mask if I plan on wearing my costume to the local Renaissance fair, I want to get some painting done (trying to create a decent painting to use as a Christmas present...if I could only paint as well as my sister!!! I need to find some drawing classes out here but I haven't yet), German homework, and I was hoping to find a few minutes for my thesis. It's less objectionable when I just dedicate 20 minutes to it at a time, and I feel good for having worked on it, and feel better for not spending a whole day screaming at it.
Grocery shopping was gorgeous today - I found a 20 pound turkey for $11.50!! Frankly, all I wanted to do after that was this:
But I continued shopping, and got enough food for the week (helped out by the $3.70 chicken I already had reposing in my freezer) for a grand total of $39.46, a whole $0.54 under my weekly grocery budget!! I love it when I can do that. That turkey, by the way, is destined for Thanksgiving. I'm having people over, and trying to assemble what I can now (I need a roasting pan, gravy tureen, etc etc) to defray expenses so I won't have to pay out seven zillion dollars all at once come late November.
Right now my chicken is defrosting (if I had the brains of a lizard I would have put it to defrost last night, but I didn't) in a bowl of cold water, and I have butternut soup simmering away on the stove. I'm making evil plans to make a good deal of butternut soup this autumn (so healthy, and so yummy!) but perfecting my own recipe. One day, perhaps I can have my very own recipe book! I'd love to make a few pennies that way. I've been feeling pretty broke lately, but I haven't been paid since June 1st and I don't get paid til October 1st, so I've been living off my savings and praying I can swing it!
I'm going to be good and save the chicken bones for stock (which I will probably make tomorrow after work). That way, next week I can make pork and saffron rice, which I have been CRAVING ever since we had that freak cool spell two weeks ago. Mom says she's made it with brown rice and nobody noticed the difference which is so huge, because I'm trying so hard to be healthy, but I need yummy in my life. Life without yummy is life not worth living!
I also opened a bottle of white wine which turned out to be ghastly (I need to remember some things are on super-sale for a reason) and will turn at least some of it into a white wine sauce tonight, with whole-wheat pasta, ham and green peas. I think I have enough ham for two meals, so I might make a big fat batch (and use all the wine) and get a dinner and two lunches out of it. That way I can save all the roast chicken for this week's dinners, and use the butternut soup as lunch and/or dinner starters, or even a midnight snack.
I also want to start eating more vegetarian, as I grudgingly admit that the way meat is currently farmed is one of the major contributors to global warming (grumble grumble don't want to be a hypocrite grumble grumble) so butternut soup is hitting that trigger too. I will never give up all meat, (or even most, I'm sure) so don't even try!! I am interested in trying my hand at black bean and quinoa meatballs, but that'll be next week at earliest, I think. I need to think of some kind of sauce to use with them. Tomato based, I'm sure, but I don't want to cop out and just do something too simple. I'm kind of thinking I should use the excuse to go to the local farmer's market and get pumpkin and try some sort of pumpkin puree or something...
Seriously want to make mashed potatoes tonight, but I am going to be good and resist so that I don't turn into a hippopotamus. Will make them one night this week when I sautee some of the roast chicken with onions, peas and barbecue sauce. Sounds a little crazy, but it's yummy enough for a tired graduate student.
Okay, going to go make some cornbread now, partially to eat with my soup, partially to practice for Thanksgiving. I've never made it before, and I have real Americans coming over, so I need to get it right!
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