Dinner

Instead of being Negative Nancy again tonight and blogging about things I don't like, I'm going to focus on the positive and share the recipe for an awesome cold pasta salad, courtesy of the latest edition of Everyday Food Magazine that I made for dinner tonight. It's easy, super delicious, and it made me feel like I was at a summer picnic, instead of sitting in my kitchen on a ridiculously cold and windy February night.

I can't find a copy of the recipe online, so here's what I used: a pound of shrimp (raw, not frozen), about three quarters of a box of medium sized shell pasta,an entire English cucumber (halved and thinly sliced), about a half cup of finely chopped fresh dill, and a sauce made of 2 tablespoons each of lite mayo, lemon juice, and olive oil with a teaspoon of dijon mustard - seasoned to taste with salt and pepper.

I was leary about making this dish, because although I love most of the ingredients, I loathe mayo and mustard. I was one of those kids that ate sandwiches dry and stuck to ketchup on my burgers. Now that I'm older, I use it in cooking but s
till sometimes gag at the smell of it alone. I think it was the lemon and dill combo that drew me in. Double yum.

First, the pasta is boiled in salted water about six minutes, until it's al dente. Then, the shrimp goes right into the pasta water and cooks with it for another 4-5 minutes until all the poor little decapods are pink.

While the pasta and shrimp are doing their thing, I chopped up the dill and the cucumber. I love English cucumbers. For one thing, they're not waxy like their common cucumber bretheren. They also have smaller seeds, which reduces the bitterness, and supposedly they're also easier to digest. Bonus!

Next, I mixed all the wet ingredients together. The sauce itself is a little bitter, but I promise you that once you add it to the other ingredients (especially the dill, which balances everything out perfectly), it's very mellow and subtle.

Not bad, if I do say so myself.

Pictures are forthcoming, as long as Snapfish decides to cooperate and accept my mobile uploads sometime relatively soon.

Things I've Tried To Like, But Just Can't #2 - Led Zeppelin

There is a lot of really shitty music floating around the world at any given time. In fact using an array of extremely scientific measurements, I've come to the conclusion that for every really great band in the history of the world, there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 456,876 horrible, wretched bands attempting to drown them out.

Led Zeppelin isn't one of those bands. They're not too sexy for their shirt. They don't wanna sex u up. They don't think it's fly when the girls stop by for the summer. For the summer. I'm pretty sure they've never wanted to see anyone's thong.

I just don't like them.

I've always been a fan of what we now call "classic rock." Yes, I was born in 1981, but my formative years were also spent listening to music with my Dad, who was, and still is, a 60s/70s rock devotee. Rolling Stones, Allman Brothers, Warren Zevon, Springsteen, Hendrix, Cream, Creedence, Pink Floyd, BTO and ELO - that's the stuff I was raised on.

My Dad used to put on In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida to get my little brother pumped up before little league football games. And you know those infomercials for the Time Life 70s music collections? I could have written that shit. I am well versed in the era's music, lest you think I'm just some youngin' who is incapable of enjoying a band before my time.

That being said, I just don't like Led Zeppelin, and I'm not really sure why, just like I'm not sure why I don't like lima beans or PT Cruisers. I've tried to like them, fully aware of their place in music's history, but at about the 30 second mark of every song I've just had enough of the repetitive guitar riffs and Robert Plant's over-affected voice dragging every note out until it implodes.

I've gotten into discussions with Led fans who just cannot believe I don't like the band and try to convince me that I should just give them another listen. If you're one of those people, please rest assured that I just listened to a medley of their songs, and I am sorry to announce that I still hate your favorite band.

Things I Have Tried To Like, But Just Can't #1 - Birch Beer

1. Birch Beer - I am a thirsty lady. It's possible that I'm part camel, as I've never done my full family genealogy, but I have a constant need to be well-hydrated. At work I go through three or four 36 oz. cups of water a day, plus my morning and afternoon tea, which is so sophisticated of me. When I get home, I'm ready to pollute my body with various carbonated diet sodas, because they're kind of like drinking water, if you accidentally dropped in some bicarbonate and artificial sweetener and food coloring. Hey, I'm a flawed human.

My weapon of choice has traditionally been a nice can of the fizzy stuff, mostly for the portability factor, but also because it eliminated washing a glass at the end of the night. I know, my sloth takes on new and desperate forms by the day, doesn't it? Anyway, although we recycle I still realize that a case of soda contains a lot of wasteful packaging, and they're nowhere near as cost efficient as bottles are, so I made the switch to 2 liter bottles at Jeremy's urging. In an effort to get me all gung-ho about saving money, he even bought me a cute little mini-jug to drink my soda out of which solves at least the portability issue. He also took advantage of our local Acme's 10 for $10 sale on 2 liter soda bottles, giving me a menagerie of options that I never explored when I was strictly an aluminum type of gal.

I breezed through the Coke Zero and Diet Sierra Mist and all of the other run-of-the-mill varieties, but I purposely ignored the bottle of Pennsylvania Dutch Diet Birch Beer. For one thing, I didn't like the way the bottle looked. It's a ridiculous reason, but this company has clearly not redesigned their label since the 70s. I was secretly nervous that this was a forgotten bottle of soda, left on a truck somewhere in Lancaster for three decades until someone discovered it and tried to unload it during Acme's 10 for 10 sale. I was also nervous about the slogan - "Old fashioned taste, old fashioned goodness." How, I wondered, does old-fashioned taste? Like dust? Mothballs? Senior citizens? I shudder to think.

Also of concern was that, from my limited understanding, a birch is a tree. It is not a tasty treat. I think they make toothpicks out of birch pulp, and not only are toothpicks not a weird reddish color, but they do not have bubbles. I took a quick look at the ingredients - carbonated water, caramel color, natural and artificial flavors, aspartame - run of the mill soda stuff, but no birch. So, I cautiously open the bottle and pour some into my little jug. It behaves like normal soda. So I take my first sip.

Oh. My. God. All the sudden I'm Colonel Kurtz in Heart of Darkness. THE HORROR! THE HORROR!

Birch Beer is the Devil's Nectar. It is one of the most foul things I have ever tasted in my life. Birch Beer tastes like someone took a perfectly good vat of Root Beer, and then dissolved a couple hundred beef bullion inside of it, liberally sprinkled some Mrs. Dash, and then shook the whole thing up and sent it to Amish Country, where it was re-packaged as this Birch nonsense. I'm not exaggerating when I say that there were flavors that hit my taste buds for the first time, and those flavors made my taste buds very angry.

For those of you that enjoy the Old Fashioned Taste, more power to you. Personally, I'll stick to nice watery domestic pilsners - the kind of beer that actually rewards me with a nice buzz for putting up with its mediocre taste.

Tune in for the next installment of - Things I Have Tried To Like, But Just Can't - Led Zeppelin!

If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet

Today is absolutely gorgeous. It's not even eight in the morning yet, and it's warmer than it's been in months. By "warm" and "gorgeous" I mean that it's hovering around 50 degrees, but I'm at the point in the winter where fifty degrees makes me feel like wearing flip flops and opening windows.

Don't get me wrong, I love living in a climate that has four distinct seasons, it's just that midway through each of those seasons I get so sick of it that I count down the days until it starts to change. Spring and fall are okay for the most part, but I start wishing for warm cider and sweaters around late August, and flowers and sunshine around this time in February. In a perfect world, we'd have a white Christmas and then the next day it would just start to hover around 65 degrees.

My lack of updates hasn't just been laziness, although that's certainly part of it. We're in the process of renovating the spare bedroom where the computer lives, and since we haven't joined the modern age and bought a laptop, my husband's computer is precariously perched between a desk turned sideways in the middle of the room and a small printer table in the corner. We've moved out some unwanted furniture, gotten rid of my defunct computer (victim of a nasty virus that left it nothing more than a really big and expensive word processor), and will hopefully start painting next weekend. I'm excited to get another room crossed off my list, and even more excited that our bedroom is next up. Adios, nasty faux Berber carpets!

I started doing our taxes this week using a couple of online programs, and I was shocked at the number I was getting for our return because it was significantly lower than I expected. I brought everything over to my Dad yesterday for him to double check, and it turns out I was right. Our sharing a residence but unmarried. I understand the concept, obviously. Although our credits and deductions are roughly the same, as a married unit our income puts us into a higher tax bracket, thus we pay more. There's no use complaining about something I cannot change, but I'm going to do it anyway. It sucks.

Don't get me wrong, I understand why it's necessary to fund organizations that act for the greater good. I am a Democrat for crying out loud. And while I don't like everything that our tax dollars are allocated to and I hate the fact that because I work in city limits I pay city taxes (none of which I am eligible to have refunded) to a city that can't control their crime or clean their sidewalks when it snows, I'm not Thoreau here. I trust that by electing good government officials, my tax dollars will (directly or indirectly) be going into programs that are necessary and efficient.

But COME ON! We have the same bills and responsibilities that we did last year. We have the same house and mortgage and all other things considered, and yet our refund was halved just because we're officially married. I did some research online and found other people questioning this flaw in logic that penalizes newly married couples and discovered that it's been a hot topic of debate for years, so far as that in lower income brackets there are measures in place to counteract the difference. That's great, and that should happen, but what about the middle level brackets? We're not rich by any means. We live in a 900 square foot house and clip coupons and spend responsibly like every other family. Stupid.

In happier news, today is my Mom's birthday and I'm proud of myself for making her favorite dessert, Banana Split Pie. My Grandma used to make it for her, and it's been years since we've had it. I felt bad that Mom always takes the time to bake cakes for all of us, and then we throw a candle on a store bought cake and call it a day. I think this will be a nice surprise. Here's the recipe, if you're curious.

1 stick of margarine
2 eggs
1 3/4 c confectioners sugar
5 medium sized bananas
1 tsp vanilla
1 square of grated baker's chocolate
graham cracker pie crust (I used pre-made, but if you're ambitious you can make your own)

I mixed the margarine and sugar on low and incorporated a single egg at a time in about 2 minute intervals. Then, I added the vanilla and 4 of the 5 bananas and turned that sucker way up for about 10 minutes. Added the chocolate as the last step and the poured everything into the crust. Refrigerate overnight. Garnish with slices of the reserved banana before serving.

Two notes: I just checked the pie and it's still not 100% set yet. I won't be serving it until around 6pm tonight, but I may have to pop it in the freezer for a half hour or so before.

Also, yes, this pie has raw eggs and is not baked. If you're pregnant or have immune system issues you may want to skip this one. I'll admit that it gave me pause as well as I was making it, but our family has been using this recipe (and others containing raw egg) for decades. If you've ever eaten raw cookie dough or had eggs sunny side up, this really isn't that different.