Common sense lessons you would think I’d have learned by now. When cooking something on the stove, steak for example, in a frying pan with very hot oil you do not want to be wearing sandals.
Which is similar to a lesson I’d learned years before, only involving cooking bacon as part of a breakfast and wearing only a bathrobe.
Ouchies.
Anyways, made steak for dinner and served it up along with some dinner rolls I’d been waiting half the day to rise and some cucumber, tomatoes and green peppers from the garden. Kind of impressed by the garden this year actually, last year I think I got one stunted green pepper and a couple of tomatoes from it. This year I have more tomatoes and cucumbers then I think I am going to manage to eat before they go bad, though still not much for the peppers.
Think I am going to have to move the pepper plants or maybe try something different with them next year, they either don’t like the amount of sunlight they are getting or the soil is complete crap where they are or something is wrong since they really should be doing better than they are.
Been getting back into cooking more, making steak a couple of times a week now. Playing around with some tricks on treating the steak ahead of time with spices and salt to flavor it and cooking it with hot oil (as in, oil that is very hot not as in spicy hot oil) which works out pretty well and is pretty fast at only a couple of minutes per side.
Got the slow cooker sitting out on the counter right now, planning to make chili in it later in the week if I can just settle on a recipe to use. Tricky because I want to try doing it with ground turkey and the recipes I have for chili that I really really like all use beef. Sounds like a simple switch but they really are very different meats and I’ve had bad luck in the past with just simple substitutions.
Thinking I might try a white chili later too, have a recipe for a really good one that I had when I visited some friends year ago that I’ve been meaning to try cooking myself.
Other than that, been watching Castle on DVD. Got Season 2 the other day and the show continues to be fun. Amusing little bits too when Castle (played by Nathan Fillion) dresses up for halloween as a ‘space cowboy’ and gets crap for it being a costume that he wore five years ago and that he needs to move on (referencing Firefly / Serenity). Show continues to be fun to watch.
Just finished watching season 1 of White Collar on dvd the other day. Another fun show, though I wish I’d gotten to it sooner because season 2 has basically disappeared entirely off of On Demand on my cable box so if I’ll have to wait for it to show up in re-runs, show up On Demand again, or for the second season to come out on dvd.
Other than that, spent the day caulking around some crown moulding. Initially, I wasn’t sure if crown moulding was going to be worth the effort but after seeing it… I have to say it looks really good. Only up in the master bedroom right now but thinking I kind of want to put it up in more of the upstairs of the house now. It’d probably not look as good downstairs, might make the lower floor (split level so slower floor is actually half-way underground) feel more cramped then it is.