January 28, 2007

Weekend Warrior

Like every 9 to 5er I have a two day weekend. Unlike every 9 to 5er, my weekend consists of Friday and Saturday, because I work a four hour day on Sunday. So really, I guess you could say that I have a two and a half day weekend. This weekend I made good with the time I had extra.

It began with running all my errands on Friday morning. I stopped by work to get my paycheck and deposited it at the bank. Next, I grabbed one of my FOUR W-2s from a previous employer, who is still a friend and visited for about an hour. Then, I dropped off the recycling and swung by the library. Lastly, I went grocery shopping.

Grocery shopping involved spending lots of money and way to many cans of green beans (my favorite vegetable). The cardinal rule of grocery shopping is never shop hungry. It's past lunch time, and you'll notice that I didn't start with breakfast. Grocery shopping was done from the pit of my stomach. I was thinking about dinner.

As soon as I arrived home I began chomping on lunch while making dinner. I was that hungry. I made Crockpot Chili. And wouldn't you know someone completely insane wrote the recipe. I'm gathering all my ingredients and I'm dumping them all in the pot as I go along. Except for the meat, I always put my meat in last, so A) it doesn't touch the bottom of the pot and stick there while it cooks. B) So if I screw up there is at least a chance of 'fixing' it prior to the meat germs getting all over everything. Anyway, I've got everything in the pot except for the meat and I'm double checking, (ha!) alright I'm reading for the first time the directions, which state, " brown the meat and drain the fat. Add all ingredients. Cook on low for 4 to 6 hours."

WTF?! I am using the Crockpot so that I don't have to do ANYTHING other than plop it into a bowl. Screw that, I dumped it all together and cooked it a little longer. Tasted just fine to me!

I was still hungry after eating lunch and starting dinner that I made a strawberry cheesecake with a sour cream glaze. It would have been a plain cream cheesecake with a sour cream glaze, but I ran out of plain cream cheese. It also tasted just fine. And I have a new cooking goal. I want to be known for my cheesecakes. My father's grandmother as her pumpkin pies, my mother has apple pie, her sister has chocolate pie. I want cheesecake. Not unfortunately, this will require lots of test cheesecakes.


During all the down time on the cheesecake (they take all day to cool off), I decided to use my food processor to make bread. I've had the processor for several years now, and have yet to make dough in it. Plenty of cookies, but no dough. Did I mention that I went shopping hungry? So here we have the dough rising.

Homemade Challah bread....mmmmmm...

My husband got home and we ate the chili. By this time, however, I was in full Suzie Q Homemaker mode. Plus, I had this fabric for a couple months in a drawer with the intention of making curtains out of it. It was 'naturally' scalloped along one edge so I only had to sew up three sides. Please, note that I am not a fantastic sewer, as it took me months just to get one curtain up. So this curtain does not have a liner and I could not care less.

Curtains up or down?




When I woke up Saturday, Suzie had not left town. So, I decided to take down ceiling fan and light that is too long for the ceiling. M has to duck when he walks through the room and sometimes he forgets. This is not a project I suggest for the faint hearted or the weak shouldered.

The dog wouldn't walk though this disaster zone until we cleared a path to her food bowl.

It took all day, but we got it up.

1 comment:

Abigail said...

Holy crap you were a busy woman!
Your curtains are better than mine.
Ours are mostly as insulation so I just took some fleece, cut it to size, sewed one end over and stuck the curtain rod through the loop. I'm jealous! (btw, I like up)

Cheesecake is definitely something good to be known by, I love making cheesecake almost as much as I love eating it! :D