stoutfellow

I like all three of the Chex cereals. (Corn, Rice, Wheat: I refuse to acknowledge any others.) I like Wheat Chex rather more than the other two, but I don't want to lose my appreciation for it by eating it too often.

Likewise, I like to keep cheese around for my sandwiches. I particularly like Gouda, Swiss, and Vermont cheddar (and asiago, but SnS doesn't sell it in sliced form any more), but again - and I think the problem is even more serious for cheese - I don't want to grow jaded on any of them, so I also buy half a dozen other kinds. (I like the other kinds too, just not quite as much.)

I solve this problem by alphabetical rotation. I just finished a package of Gouda, so today I bought some Havarti; when that's done, I'll move on to Lorraine. Likewise, I cycle through the Chex cereals alphabetically. (During my recuperation, I violated this; Wheat Chex has lots of iron, so I bought that at every opportunity. But I've gone back on rotation now - Corn Chex today....)

Does anyone else do this, or anything like it? Does this strike anyone as weird? (When I mentioned this to W, he expressed surprise that I could always remember which cheese I'd most recently bought, but it's probably easier for us singles than for a family man like him.)

1) The beef and barley soup is pretty good, if a bit heavy on the stomach. I ate two helpings yesterday and had a... restless night.

2) I took Gracie to the groomer today. It's still a bit chilly (today at least) for short hair, but she seems pretty chipper. She didn't want to walk on the way home, so I had to carry her over all the intervening major streets, but once we got back into our neighborhood I put her down and she trotted along with me. It'll be Buster's turn tomorrow.

3) On the way back, I stopped off at Books-A-Million. Didn't buy too much: four F/SF (Weber, Briggs, a couple of 1632 anthologies) and two histories (A Short History of the English Reformation and the fourth volume of Caro's biography of LBJ). Still, it's enough to keep me busy for a while.

Break's almost over, and I've got several stacks of papers to grade before Monday (Tuesday, if I push it). This weekend, for sure.

When I made the peanut stew last week, I forgot that Ash Wednesday fell in that week - which meant there were two days, Wednesday and Friday, when I wouldn't be able to eat the stew. As a result, it lasted a bit longer than expected. I ate two helpings yesterday, and finished it off for lunch today. Good stuff; a little hotter than I usually like, but very tasty. (Also messy. I spilled stew on three of my shirts last week.)

Today, I decided to make a batch of beef and barley soup. The recipe called for medium pearl barley - which, apparently, Shop'n'Save doesn't carry. When I asked a stocker about it, she gave me a "Say what?" look, but promised to talk to her supervisor about ordering some. Not before Tuesday, though, so I'll have to get the barley somewhere else. I think I'll run over to Schnucks and/or Dierberg's tomorrow.

(I'll admit that I'd never seen pearl barley at SnS, but then, I'd never actually looked....)

Well, the things I was worried about seem to have resolved halfway decently; there's still a chance of a blowup or two, but it seems much diminished.

We've got another winter storm en route. It's only the southern fringe of the monster that's headed for the Northeast, but we're looking at 5-8" of snow over the weekend, starting Saturday evening. I guess I'll have to make my weekend grocery run on Saturday - Sunday will be impossible. It's supposed to be clear on Monday, but I wouldn't be surprised if the campus was closed.

The Post-Dispatch seems not to be getting my message. When I paid my final bill, I carefully did not check the "resume service" box. Nonetheless, I received papers Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday I called them to officially cancel and let them know I was getting papers; they apologized and said they'd take care of it. Yesterday and today I received papers again. Maybe I'll try again to get through to them next Monday. I'm certainly not going to pay for these unwanted gifts.

I didn't feel like cooking last weekend, so I've been letting Marie Callendar feed me this week. I like their chicken piccata, enough so that I'm going to look online for a recipe. Definitely going to get back to cooking this weekend.

I have to say I was a little disappointed by the Savory Slow-Cooked Grains. It was certainly edible, and from time to time tasty, but, in comparison with the two dishes that preceded it, it seemed rather bland.

Tomorrow, I'm going to try my hand at jambalaya. The Betty Crocker recipe calls for 7-8 hours at Low setting - which is too long, under the circumstances - or 3-4 hours at High, in either case followed by one more hour after some ingredients are added. (I'm assuming that the final hour is to be at Low setting, which seems to be the default.) I'll have to fix a bunch of rice on the stove top toward the end. I'll probably dump the rice and then the jambalaya into my big cooking pot once they're all cooked. (I use that pot for refrigerator storage, during the week or so that dishes usually last; the slow-cooker instructions specifically say not to use the cooker's ceramic insert for that purpose.)

We'll see how this one comes out.

Today's culinary experiment, another slow-cooker dish, was labeled "Mediterranean Minestrone Casserole". It seems a bit too liquid to deserve the name of "casserole"; it's more like a good thick vegetarian stew, with tomatoes, garbanzos, carrots, green beans, onion, garlic, and a variety of spices. (The recipe called for "Italian seasoning", which I didn't have and didn't want to buy; I went online and found a recipe, and made a little bottle of the stuff.) Very tasty.

Meanwhile, it's 22-0 at halftime. Go 'Hawks!

Today has been a long day.

Last night, I stopped at the Chef Shoppe on the way home, and bought a rolling pin, a pastry cutter, a pastry cloth, an apple corer/slicer, and a new pie pan. When I got home, I decided to put off making the pie until this morning. To get to work in time for the pot luck, I had to leave the house no later than 9:35; so I set to work on the pie at 7:30. The schedule slipped immediately, when I couldn't find the pie crust recipe I'd used before. Several minutes of panic were ended by the realization that Joy of Cooking would certainly have a recipe. The equipment, by and large, functioned well (although I once again overestimated how much apple I would need), but there was more time-slippage, inevitably. The pie came out of the oven at 9:20. By 9:35, it had cooled enough that I could put it in a carry-bag without burning myself.

The pot luck ran from 11 to 1, and was quite good; there were several tasty salads, several variations on the theme of sloppy joes, and quite a few desserts, including my pie. I wasn't quite satisfied with the pie; the filling was fine, and the texture and cohesion of the crust was OK, but the crust needed to be a little sweeter. (By the time I went home, around 4:30, all but one slice of pie had been eaten, so I guess it was acceptable.) There was also much conversation, and one of my retired colleagues gave me several files worth of material for a class I'm teaching next semester. (Portable drives are wonderful.)

I had a 2:00 appointment with my Senior Project student. His project is being written using Scientific Workplace, a WYSIWYG front end on a TeX engine; the university has a site license. While waiting, I decided to take another look at his latest draft; I pulled up SWP, and was informed that contact with the licensing server could not be made, and I could only use SWP in view-only mode. I brought this to my chairman's attention, and he began calling around, trying to find someone who could fix it. My student arrived, and we sat for a while, talking about his project and waiting for the server to come back online. Finally, word reached the appropriate technician, and SWP became fully accessible again, around 2:40.

My student and I spent the next two hours editing his paper. I finally gave him a list of a last few edits and left - the bus would be leaving soon. His final revision landed in my inbox about half an hour ago, and I've passed it on to the next person in line.

I'm tired, and it's only 6:30.

(On a more pleasant note: I downloaded Nelly Bly's Around the World in 72 Days, and have been reading it the last two or three days, in between other works. She's very entertaining - the best kind of journalist.)

Five hours proved to be a reasonable cook time. I won't say that the stew was delicious, but it was quite good, and I expect it to be better in the days to come.

Unfortunately, I didn't make pie. I forgot that I would need shortening and didn't buy any; the shortening I had in the fridge was two years past its best-if-used-by date. I'll pick some up tomorrow.

So, no pie a la mode; but the a la mode part was still possible. There's a small bowl of vanilla ice cream at my elbow as I type these words.

:rubs belly:

Today, I went over to Shop'n'Save to buy the ingredients for this year's Thanksgiving feast. I found most of what I was looking for easily enough, with one exception: okra. I finally asked a stocker about it; he told me that they usually had it, but it hadn't been in stock for a few days. (I asked him what it looked like, remembering the leek incident, and he showed me a picture.) I bought the rest of the stuff, went home and put it away, and headed out again.

Next try: Schnuck's. After a cursory look-around, I again consulted a stocker. "Nope, we haven't had it for a couple of weeks now. I don't know why." I thanked him, and girded my loins for the rather longer walk to Dierberg's. There, without even needing a stocker's help, I found OKRA! I stuffed what looked like enough into a bag and headed for checkout.

The cashier peered at the bag and asked, "What is this?" "Okra!" "Okay. I don't see it very often, so I had to make sure."

I guess gumbo is not a major culinary item around here....

1. After months (years?) of absence, Haagen-Dazs has returned to the shelves of Shop'n'Save. I celebrated by buying two pints.

2. Today, as I was preparing to take the dogs for a walk, Gracie was running around me so excitedly that she actually spun out. (Only momentarily, and no one was hurt.)

3. Gemini, the eighth and last book in the House of Niccolo series, is back in print, and I finally have a copy, which I've begun reading.

4. I finished reading my first e-book, Andrew Lang's Blue Fairy Book, which deserves a post of its own. I'm close to finishing The Pickwick Papers, which I last read when I was in fourth or fifth grade, and I truly wonder how much of it I understood then. (Somewhere around here I have the book report, in pencil, which I wrote back then. Perhaps I'll dig it out.)

5. Classes resume week after next; I'll be teaching Calc II and the Euclidean and Non-Euclidean Geometry class. I've been lazing all summer, and will have to start getting back in gear. I'll probably go onto campus three or four times next week, just to warm up.