Cooking Lesson #1

Last week I told myself that I was going to make 3 things before Kurt got home - a quiche, lasagna, and chocolate cheesecake. Well, last night I made a valiant effort in the kitchen and had, what I consider, moderate success. Moderate success meaning that nothing caught fire or gave me food poisoning. Here are a few of the things I learned:
(1) Read the whole recipe first. The recipe for the quiche went something like this- Step one - fry the bacon in a pan. Why would I do that, putting the bacon on a papertowel in the microwave is so much faster? Step two - use the bacon grease to ... Shit, hope olive oil works okay.
(2) A "dash" is a stupid measurement. What the heck is a dash?? I even tried to look it up in Wikipedia, not there. I know it's small, but how small? Because it was referring to red pepper, I erred on the side of caution and put in just a wee little bit.
(3) Aluminum Pie Pans are not the most stable platforms. I just barely avoided disaster trying to put the quiche in the oven (almost had quiche all OVER the oven) by deciding to use two hands at the last moment.
(4) Don't frown at a 30 minute cooking time. That's just about the exact time needed to clean up the mess you just made and prepare a dessert (in this case chocolate cheesecake - yum).
(5) Cup vs. Ounce. Now this is just silly. The cheesecake recipe called for 16oz of whipped cream cheese and 1 cup of sour cream. Why not 8 ounces of sour cream and make it consistent. I had to refer to the internet again just to confirm that 1 cup does equal 8 ounces, I'm not really into measurements.
(6) The cheesecake recipe said to mix the cream cheese, sour cream, and chocolate pudding mix with a strong spoon. What they forgot to mention is that you will need a strong arm to use the strong spoon. The cheesecake really turned out to be more of a chocolate flavored cream cheese, but that's okay with me, I like all kinds of cheese.
At this point I felt pretty good. The kitchen was clean, the chocolate flavored cream cheese was in the oreo pie crust (not a great crust to use, crumbles easily), and the quiche was in the oven looking pretty good. 30 minutes went by and I checked the quiche. Still looked pretty wet. I didn't like the idea of eating raw eggs so set the timer for 5 minutes. Still didn't look quite ready, so I set the timer for another 5 minutes. This time I took it out (with two hands) and cut a little piece out. It could still use a little more. 10 minutes later it wasn't burned and looked pretty good. I was very proud of myself. I took a picture for you. Then I cut myself a piece a took a bite. The quiche consisted of eggs, milk, spices, bacon, and onions. I didn't taste any of those, I tasted dough. The pie crust never cooked. Damn. The first step of the recipe was to put the crust in the over for 10 minutes or until golden brown. I was so worried about burning it I took it out after 8 minutes. So, to not let it go to waste, I ate the stuff off the top of the pie crust and just threw the crust away. It was alright, but it was essentially an omelet and I could have done the same thing in a frying pan with a lot less effort. You have to give me credit for trying though.
As for the lasagna... well after seeing that the "one step lasagna" took up two pages of directions, I opted to go for the REAL one-step lasagna, the frozen kind that you just put in the oven. We're having that for dinner tomorrow.

Cheese

I love cheese. I think all Erdman's are cheese-lovers actually. Except maybe Bob, he said something once about lactose-intolerance, but I think he was at least a former cheese-lover. Anyways, with Kurt and Micaela gone, cheese has gone from a dairy product to a meal for me. Last night for dinner I had a block (big block) of Dubliner Irish cheese and a glass of red wine. There's some nutritional value in that right? Since that wasn't all too filling, I had cereal for dessert (now a much more complete meal). But, I am determined to go grocery shopping at some point before Kurt gets home and to cook a meal from my new cookbooks that I hopefully won't make a mess of. I will let you know how it goes. Back to being lazy...

My turn to rant...

I'm very pissed off at mechanics today. When we got the Grand Cherokee from Kurt's mom it had the brake light and the ABS light on. She had her mechanic in Podunk, PA look at it and he couldn't figure out what was wrong, said her brakes were fine. We got the car and knew that the anti-lock braking system wasn't working, but we thought the normal brakes were okay. Then we started hearing this horrible grinding. We knew something was wrong so we called the Jeep dealership and made an appointment for the next morning. They took a look and said that the computer for the anti-lock brakes was bad and that's why those two lights were on. Repair cost: $600 (ouch). We told them to go ahead, brakes need to work properly. A day and a half later I got another call, it wasn't the computer that was bad, it was the pump (which caused the computer to go bad). Updated repair cost: $1000 (double ouch) and three more days. It was during that same phone conversation that I asked the guy if he had a chance to look at the brakes (refering to the sound). His words were very similar to this "Yeah, we took a look and they are at #### (some number), that's ## under the legal limit so they are fine." Being the retard that I am, I didn't check the receipt to make sure that it stated that they had checked the brake pads/rotors and that they were good. I picked the car up and drove it a block down the street. It didn't feel right. When I pressed on the brake pedal my foot almost went to the floor before I felt it start breaking. I took the car back and asked them to look at it. The mechanic said he could bleed it again, but he had already done it twice, and it was probably just because of the new pump (which has nothing to do with normal breaking). I trusted them and I drove the car up to PA and back over the weekend. When I got back I noticed that there was still that grinding sound and it was a lot worse. I took the Jeep to Meineke today. The driver-side rear brake was metal to metal, absolutely no pad left (no exaggeration, I kept the old pad). That's what was causing the grinding noise, needed a new rotor now too. Also, both front rotors were at the point where they would fail an inspection (but just barely). Repair cost: $500 (getting old). Finally, they informed me that the reason that the pedal was going down so far was because there is a leak in the Master Cylinder, he got out a flashlight and showed me the fluid leaking down. Repair cost: $500 (decided to defer this repair for a little bit). That's when I got angry. Those shady mechanics at the dealership flat out lied!!!! They told me they check my brakes and they were "fine" when in fact, they were horrible! And they blew me off when I told them about the pedal going down so far. I'm pissed, but I'm not a confrontational person and Kurt is just scarier looking, so when he gets back I'm sending him down to the Jeep dealership to raise hell. It's just too bad I don't have anything in writing about having them look at the brakes. On a good note, I did spend a lot of time today educating myself on car brakes and now I have a pretty good idea of how they work and what to look for so I won't get screwed again.

Blah...

Life is very boring without Kurt and Micaela here. I've realized that I have zero self-motivation to do anything. I tend to come home from work, make myself something to eat (mostly stuff that just goes in the microwave or toasteroven), and then sit down to watch Cash Cab, How it's Made, King of Queens, Everybody Loves Raymond, then the Colbert Report and then it's time for bed. That would be okay, except there are so many other things I should be doing. When Kurt and Micaela left, they left quite a mess behind and in the past week I've added quite a bit to it. But what reason do I have to clean up? I can just do it this weekend (isn't procrastination great?) That's what I thought last week, but ended up driving to PA to spend the weekend working on the loft. I have a load of laundry that I've had to wash three times because I keep forgetting to put it in the dryer. I do the dishes purely to keep the house from stinking. I eat a lot of cereal and milk starts to smell after a day in the sink. I just feel so LAZY!! The funny thing is that when Kurt and Micaela get home and there is a ton going on and I'm dying for a chance to sit and do nothing, that's when I'll do the chores. I don't get it. But anyways, have to stop typing because Harry Potter is calling and I want to finish before someone spoils the ending for me (I know I'm not the fastest reader in the family so don't you dare tell me!).

Levels of blondeness

I've reached a new peak - try to top this one. What happens when you go to slam a car door shut but forget to move your head out of the way first? You get this:

I was cleaning the trash out of the pocket in the drivers door and went to close the door but didn't move fast enough to get out of the way. The inside of the door hit my face really hard and it hurt! I even heard something crack and my upper teeth on that side went numb for about 5-10 minutes. How the hell do you slam your face in a car door!!!! I don't think I could replicate the incident if I tried. It's been about a half hour now and it still hurts a little and will probably bruise. Luckily that part of your cheekbone is pretty strong so I don't think I broke anything. If I did though, I would blame it on my blondeness which has reached a new level - something to be proud of, huh?

Not the only blonde in the family...

Last Friday Kurt and Micaela left for Pennsylvania for two weeks. Kurt was going up there to fly and get a lot of his annual flight requirements out of the way. Micaela was going up because it's a lot more fun with Grandma than it is at summer school. They packed Friday morning and left after I got home from work. I was actually a little excited to have a weekend all to myself to get the house cleaned, ride my bike, go to the pool and swim laps, and to just relax. Then I got a call Friday night. Kurt asked what my plans were for the weekend and then asked if I felt like coming up to PA for a night - he had left his helmet and flight vest in the closet. Oops. Those things are kind of crucial to flying. Being the good person that I am, I woke up at 6am on Saturday, did a quick clean of the house, threw in a load of laundry, bought car sickness medicine for the dogs and was on my way. It's not a bad drive, about 6 hours if there's traffic. The only thing that sucked was that I was in a rental car (Jeep is in the shop for bad brakes) that didn't have cruise control. I realize now that it's a necessary feature if you're going to be driving a lot. Overall, it turned out to be a nice weekend. It's good to know that I'm not the only one in the family who has blonde moments.

Blonde Blog 4

I had a long day at work today, although that's hardly an excuse for the following comments that I made this evening on the way home from having dinner with our neighbors:

Mike (neighbor)- "look, there's a rainbow. I can see all the colors - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet"
Jason (his 7yr old son) - "I didn't know there were 8 colors in a rainbow"
Liz - "yup"
Mike - "no there aren't, there are 7 - ROY G BIV - way to go liz"


later on we're driving home and we missed the turn to the neighbors house (other side of the loop...)


Mike - "Kurt, why don't you just drive around the block?"
Kurt - "it's just easier to flip a louie"
Liz - "what's a louie?"
Kurt- "Mike, tell her what a louie is"
Mike- "it's a u-turn to the left"
Liz- "well, then what do you call a u-turn to the right?"
Kurt- "have you ever made a u-turn to the right?" (huh, maybe that's my problem...)

Fun in the kitchen

Can you guess what that is a picture of? No, it's not dog poop. For the first time in a while we were having a normal boring weekend. Micaela has a list of 100 activities that she has to do this summer and one of them was to make something in the kitchen using measuring cups. We hadn't been grocery shopping in a long time, so we decided to see what was in the cupboards. We thought we had what we needed to make brownies. We had bakers chocolate with an easy recipe on the back of the box but not enough chocolate squares. Luckily the hershey's cocoa powder had a note that said it could be substitued for baker's chocolate if you just add oil. Well, with Micaela helping me, 3 tablespoons of powder and 1 tablespoon of oil, didn't quite come out right. Or at least I think that's where we went wrong. It may have been the stick and a half of butter, I'm not quite sure that was the right amount. Anyways, the consistency never got to looking like brownie batter, but I'm not smart enough to know what I had too much or too little of, so we just threw it in the oven and hoped for the best. When it came out I knew something was wrong since it was kind of sloppy and oily. I let it cool for a while and it started to look a little better, but when I took it out of the pan it came out like you see in the picture above, strikingly similar to dog poo. The good news is that with extra oil, butter, whatever it was that we had too much of, it still takes fantastic. And I'm sure it's good for us (or at least Micaela who needs some more meat on her bones). One of these days something will come out right :)

Socialites

So I haven't really been updating my blog lately, but Mari's done a good job of covering what's been going on, so you can just read hers to catch up. Now that you've done that... you know that Kurt and I have had a lot of time alone lately. You would think that with Micaela spending the week at Mari's and then going up to PA with Grandma and Pappy Weaver after her birthday, that Kurt and I would be partying it up not having to pay for a babysitter and all... not quite the case. We had all these good intentions of going to the gym together, going to Busch Gardens, playing tennis (even though neither of us have a clue), etc. and what ends up happening? I read a 200 page book in 2 days and Kurt reformated his computer again. We lead exciting lives. We have enjoyed cooking outside though and having beer/wine and cigars and just relaxing. The weather is perfect right now, reminds me of CA. We expect to do a lot of cooking outside, drinking beer and just doing nothing when we go out to CA next year, so get ready.