• Our DirecTV thing is out again. It had been not picking anything up, so they came out and, as TCB says, “replaced everything except the wire in the walls.” Now, it’s just not picking up HD, and keeps dropping, then finding, satellite signals. They’re considering it part of the same problem, elevated our complaint, and will be out here in the next day and a half.
• My Singer 2932 uses plastic class 15 bobbins. It’s not in the manual, it’s not on the Singer website, it’s not on the bobbins that came with the machine, it’s not on the parts list from Singer. I found the info (after at least hour of online research and a trip to Hancock’s) on SewVacDirect’s website, in the product listing. Using class 66 bobbins causes jams.
• We put up lights outside for the first time. It’s exciting. Most of our cul-de-sac put them up, too. We’re so festive!
• I’ve been very busy with my sewing machine! I made a new front door curtain and some door snakes. I’m hoping to get ahead on baby shower gifts next, since it seems that nearly everyone we know is reproducing.
• I really need to find some tights for cold-weather running. Ran just a few miles on Saturday and nearly froze my knees off. With a Holiday Tour of Indiana coming up, running is only going to get colder.

For Practice Thanksgiving, I made a butternut squash casserole and it was ok, but I could see room for improvement. So, for real Thanksgiving, I made it again with some improvements: more nutmeg, more pecans, less butter and sugar, replaced some apples with pears. It was tasty!

4 cups butternut squash, in roughly 1-inch chunks (about 2 medium)

2 firm pears, in roughly 1-inch chunks

1 tart apple (granny smith), in roughly 1-inch chunks (I used a fairly large one)

6 tbs butter

1-2 tsp ground nutmeg

4-6 tbs brown sugar

3/4 – 1 cup pecan pieces

Mix the fruits and squash in a large casserole dish. Melt the butter and sugar, add the nutmeg and pour over casserole. Sprinkle nuts on top, bake at 350F for 40 minutes.

Then, because I had made a bunch and it didn’t all get eaten, so I looked up my last butternut squash kickasserole and got the idea to remix it with some curried ground beef, dried peppers and chipotle corn. Again, tasty. I liked the way the rogan josh and the nutmeg went together.

About half of the original butternut squash kickasserole

1/2 lb ground beef

rogan josh curry seasoning

part of a small can of chipotle corn (or regular corn, it’s all good.)

onion, diced (optional, and to taste)

small handful of dried green peppers

Brown the beef (and onion), add curry to taste about halfway through. Sprinkle the original casserole with extra curry, stir. Add the corn, peppers and browned beef mix, stir again. Bake, covered, about 30 minutes at 350F, or until heated through. Serve with an extra veggie or starch.

Finally, because we didn’t have enough left for a full meal for both of us from the leftovers, I remixed it a third time with some leftover rice and pizza cheese. The rice diluted the curry nicely and enough that the cheese was a good compliment. TCB thought that cheddar would have been better, but I liked the less-fatty cheese with it, since there was still so much butter left in the dish. After this remix, we only had enough left over for a lunch!

about half of butternut squash kickasserole remix

about 2 cups of precooked rice

1/2 cup pizza cheese (or a parmesan-mozzerella mix, or whatever cheese you happen to have on hand)

Bake the original dish, covered, about 20 minutes at 350F, so it’s mostly heated through. Add the rice, stir, and sprinke the cheese on top. Return to the oven for another 15 minutes, or until the cheese has melted.

My disappointment with the kickasserole remixes was mostly due to color. The nuts added a nice crunch, and the orange & white original kickasserole was brilliant, but once the brown items got added in during the remixes, it became a little blah in color. The white corn was nice, but the small size of the corns kept making me think that there were tiny teeth in it (note to self- add larger corn pieces next time.) I would have liked to have seen another color in the remixes besides brown and curry-tinted white, but I’m not sure what I would have added. A nice green side salad?

This year, I’m especially thankful of my family (exxxpaaaandeeed family!) and friends, and that we got so see so many this year, and that so many traveled to see us without incident (besides babies on the way now. Not saying that seeing us was the cause, but several to many are expecting at the same time. I’d like to think that the wedding was at least a relaxation point.)

I’m also thankful for my (our) health (esp. in uncertain insurance futures), my potential uninsuance benefits (if approved), and.. that Cheetos are gluten-free.

Haven’t done one of these in a while

• Flowchart to help you decide where to eat
• Free PDF for cute coin purse
• Updates on Anissa
• Kale Chips. Sounds like something to try!
• How the H1N1 vaccine is made

Today, Abby and I made awesome chili for the folks at Dad’s Garage doing the tech rehearsal for Invasion: Christmas Carol. She found a recipe that is, appareantly, the world’s best vegetarian chili, and then we added meat to part of it, and more spice to part of that. In the end, we had 3 batches, ranging from least to most spicy. Least and most spicy had meat, least spicy had beer in it (makin it a non-option for me.) It was cool, because I like some heat and I helped spice those two that I could, making the veggie chili medium spice to the other meat chili’s hot spice (included japalenos, so the spice was more than the chili powder.) I really liked the veg chili and the spicy chili mixed together- perfect amount of spice for me!

The cast gobbled it up, it seemed to be really appreciated. I know Abby and I each had a few bowls after working on it all afternoon without snackage. Also, I learned that avacado on chili is pretty tasty. (Not something I would have put together: I need to use avacado more in my cooking, I forgot how tasty it can be!)

Just for AB fan-boy Dad: Lucky Yates is in the show, and he thought our chili was fantastic; came back for seconds on the spicy stuff.

So, not much going on here. I’m still job hunting, though I did finally register with the Dept. of Labor, so I’m going to be living off the Man for a little while. Hopefully, I can pick up some contract work (or a full-time job) to make things a bit less stressed around here. Our cable went out, so we’ve been playing a lot more games at night, working puzzles together and playing more video games together, which has been pretty awesome, though we didn’t really like that we missed the ANTM and PR finales in one week. Ok, maybe just I missed seeing the ANTM finale, but still. Boo, timing.

But yay, more doing things together! Since TCB has been pretty bummed about his dissertation stuffs (the last reader on the paper is dumb, but has that piece of paper that says she knows everything, so what she says goes for a revision and defense delay, even if another, higher reviewer is the expert in what she disagrees with, still has to be totally rewritten and sent back out to committee to be rewritten again), he’s been at the machine shop most days, and when we get together at night, it’s been a lot of “I did stuff on the truck engine!” and “I cleaned some stuff and ran!”, so playing games together has been great. I’ve especially enjoyed the Scrabble games. And especially especially enjoyed the games since our bedtimes are now based on when we’re tired, not on when I have to get up, so that pre-bedtime reading and discussion is usually not happening. Yeah. In short, I like playing the board games.

P.S. Anybody in need of a really great Flex/Flash (actionscript 2&3)/ColdFusion developer that’s also awesome at picking up extra programming languages and likes the artsy part of development? Let me know, please.

Practice Thanksgiving was Saturday night, and I tried out a butternut squash + apples casserole. It was ok, but the recipe definitely needs some tinkering before becoming a kickasserole. Not knowing how much chopped squash I’d get out of each whole squash, I got extra at YDFM and ended up with only 1 extra. Hooray! So Sunday night, not wanting turkey for every meal, I used the extra one in a colorful kickasserole: ground beef, butternut squash, garden red & yellow tomatoes, green pimento peppers from the front yard, pinto beans and dried GF bread crumbs. After the experience with mush-bread before, I made sure to toast those bread crumbs well! I also threw in some smoked paprika, sweet paprika, chili powder and dried marjoram. It all barely fit into my dish!

Result: Good and colorful, but I wasn’t expecting my pinto beans to already be spiced, almost like soup beans. I was glad that I had already added smoked paprika so the smokiness in the beans wasn’t a surprise when eating. I didn’t have much cheese, maybe a scant 1/4 cup, so I also sprinkled chopped parsley on top before serving, which was very tasty.

• 2 c. dry bread crumbs
• 1/2 lb ground beef
• 1 small butternut squash, peeled and chunked
• 1 can beans (I used pinto beans, but would have preferred black beans, if we had them)
• 1 can corn
• 1-2 cans stewed tomatoes (I used 1 can + several small fresh tomatoes from the garden)
• 1 green pepper, chopped
• paprika (sweet and smoked)
• chili powder
• 1-2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/4-1/2 c. water
• herbs of choice

Optional Garnish:

• Cheese
• parsley

Brown ground beef, then add the sqaush, spices and water near the end of cooking, stirring to distribute the spice and herbs. Let simmer for 5 minutes, then add the pepper.

Add the mix in the pan to the casserole dish along with the drained corn, beans, bread and tomatoes. Mix well and cook for 30-40 minutes at 350F, covered.

Uncover, add any cheese desired, and bake uncovered for 5 more minutes before serving, adding fresh toppings at the last minute.

I had a slow start to my day. I looked for job listings, I sat on the couch, I ate lunch… I felt a slug day coming on and was determined to fight it. So, I started making my list for Practice Thanksgiving, then realized I’d need a better estimate of attendees before purchasing the turkey. And I needed to decide on the second, in-bird stuffing. So, I wrote RSVP reminders and made an appointment to get my hair cut. Progress!

Then, I started on the basement. Oh, man. Basement. I got about half of it cleaned while I watched a movie down there. I’m going to have to find another exciting-but-not-intellectually-involved movie to watch tomorrow while I clean the other half. Something along the lines of “Galaxy Quest” or “National Treasure” (both of which I’ve already watched this week.)

So, it’s dark by this time, I’m hungry and I’ve been cleaning all day, so I feel finished. I didn’t expect TCB home for another hour, at least, so I started some rice and thawed the brats without a plan in mind. I mean, I guess “brats and rice” for dinner is kind of a plan, but not really a good one. TCB gots home and wasn’t thrilled with my half-assed plan, so he sliced up the brats into medallions and quarter-pieces. I grabbed the chinese eggplant from the fridge and cut that up into similar sizes (love the eggplant. $1 for two large ones? yes, please!) These items, we dumped into the large pan and started cooking them on medium heat. And then, because they needed to be eaten, I also chopped up the large garden tomatoes that I harvested this week, which were surprisingly solid. I thought I’d play with ketchup and mustard on bratwurst flavors, so I sprinkled bavarian seasoning over the sizzling eggplant/brat mix. I liked this mix because of the herbs, but mostly because of the crushed mustard seed in it and my lack of separate whole mustard seed.

So! The brat/eggplant mix had browned nicely by then, so I turned the heat to it off, TCB got out the deep casserole dish, I dumped the tomatoes into the pan to heat up a bit, then stirred it all together with a little more bavarian seasoning, a dash or two of aleppo pepper, and some lemon peel for extra “brightness.” I tried a different method of mixing my casserole, too: layering. Instead of my previous method, dump it all in and then try to mix a full casserole, I layered rice and stuff, stirring after each complete layer. This worked out really well, especially with the soft eggplant.

Result: Tasty! The tomatoes were spectacular but, as the gardener, I may be biased. I liked the larger pieces of eggplant and the smaller bits of brat: the former stayed together better and were nice and meaty when I bit into them, and the latter browned better and were more evenly distributed. I think that a crunchy veggie, like green pepper, would have added another color and texture, but I was ok with today’s result in my belly!

Recipe:

• 1 package bratwurst (we used staduim brats), sliced into rounds, and then those slices, quartered
• 2 large chinese eggplant, sliced (or about a pound of sliced mushrooms, just add them later)
• 2 cups brown rice, uncooked
• 4-5 large tomatoes, diced (1-2 cans of diced tomatoes, drained, I think)
• Bavarian seasoning (or about a teaspoon of whole mustard seed, curushed, and the herb mix of your choice)
• lemon zest (or juice, whatever ya got)
• aleppo pepper, regular pepper, salt, all to taste
• optional: crunchy veggie

Cook the rice.

Brown the brats and eggplants over medium heat. When that’s nearly done, add the first round of seasoning, stir. When the brats are browned, turn off the heat, add the tomatoes, add any more mustard seasoning, add the lemon and aleppo (also add the crunchy veggie.) Start heating the oven to 350F.

Start layering the rice and meat mix in the deep casserole, stirring after each complete layer, until all mixed. (I didn’t fit about a half cup of rice in the dish, which was fine.) Bake, covered, for 20-30 minutes.

I’m trying to chill the f out. I know that I haven’t been entirely happy with my jorb, and I know that I’ve been waiting until all the happily required travel this summer/fall to start looking for a new jorb, and that this layoff has just forced my hand a little sooner that I’d expected, but I’m still, this weekend, having a hard time of thinking about this as a 2-week paid vacation, with semi-paid vacation afterward.
I really don’t see this as all bad, I see that as a potential opportunity for some awesome (though, if you are in need of a flex/flash programmer with extensive knowledge in working with Eclipse and also knows coldfusion/another scripting language, lemme know), but I’m having a hard time divorcing myself from the “gotta have a job!” mentality and the “Maybe you should like what you do!!!” mentality.

Trying to make the weekend a “chill the fuck out” moment, and make myself enjoy it, because it’s not lost time if I do or don’t.

Ahh, and another one bites the dust. Reason for ending: same as the other ones, but they at least fired us all a month ahead of time, so we avoided that "end of the month surprise!" talk.

(That’s 3/3, if you’re keeping track.)