Breaking Bread

I've been helping set up for Communion at church for about two years now, so I know breaking the crackers for Communion has a very specific progression.

I'll break the first matzoh sheet carefully, trying to get uniform squares of equal size. I'll carefully count each one, then estimate based on the number of sheets in a box if we have enough to cover the expected number we'll need.

This comes into play because despite the number of juice cups I'm expected to prepare, it's always one box of matzoh. Two hundred people? One box of matzoh. Four hundred people? One box of matzoh. I feel like it shouldn't work, but it does. So far.

The second sheet of matzoh I stop counting, but I keep trying to make it into squares. Halfway through the second sheet I realize, again, that matzoh doesn't break cleanly down the rows of fork marks.

Third sheet? Anything goes. Lots of triangles, long skinny cracker bits.

There are normally ten sheets in a box.

I'm on the second sheet now.

We'll see how it goes.

Chock Full O' Meat

Today I might have eaten the best meat of my life.

Of course, in the irony of the universe, it came in the most unexpected form - leftover meeting food.

I went to go heat up the lunch I had brought but I saw that trays were out on the leftovers table. The food was cold, but it was baked potato wedges and bacon-wrapped steaks so I decided to eat that over my soup. There was the usual salad, sliced fruit, and dessert tray, too, that always come with these lunches.

I should note here we simply don't get steaks in these lunch meeting lunches. I would say most often it's chicken breasts baked in some way, but they also run to mystery meat patties (which I actually quite like) and hot dogs (which I also enjoyed the one time we got them), with occasional forays into Indian curries and imitation crab lettuce wraps (which I don't like).

So, steak? Nuh uh. But these were freaking bacon-wrapped filet mignons. The Sharpie on the top of the tray cover said so.

And it was the tenderest, tastiest, most flavorful piece of meat I can remember eating. I thought I wouldn't be able to cut the meat with the plastic knife (based on previous experience) but I probably could have used a spoon. The flavor of the bacon and the mushroom sauce had permeated the entire piece of meat, and the bacon itself was crisp and not at all wibbly. And the flavor of the beef itself shone through like a champ.

See, I've had filet mignon before. I don't know how many times, but I've never been impressed. The texture struck me as slimy. There wasn't a lot of flavor. Until today I had actually settled on sirloin steak as my favorite (which is conveniently always the cheapest on a steakhouse menu).

So I wonder if this was a grade of beef I've never experience before. Grass-fed, or aged, or one of those other adjectives that has never before been attached to my food. It was unbelievable.

I have two theories on what happened. Either:

A) It was a mix-up and we got someone else's food by mistake. Or
B) The caterer somehow had leftover or excess excellent filet mignons she had to get rid of.

Based on the fact that "Bacon-Wrapped Filet Mignon" was written in four-inch letters on the lid of the tray, which the caterer would have seen when delivering the food, I think it must have been B. Also, the admin and I were talking about how good the meat was and she looked up the invoice to double check they only charged the regular amount.

Amazing, amazing meat.

The potato wedges were only okay.

Un-plugged, De-plugged, and Re-plugged

I am unplugged.

Today the electricians are at the house doing the first step toward re-wiring the whole thing: upgrading the service to 200 amps and installing a new circuit breaker panel. While I’m not sure I need 200 amps (my Google search was inconclusive), the panel had to happen because there wasn’t enough space in the existing panel to re-wire the interior rooms that need grounded outlets. All these things I’m learning. Also, the head electrician said installing a new panel would eliminate the fuse subpanel that the home inspector really didn’t like, so all in all it’s hitting several nails on the head all at once. So that’s worth not having electricity for a while (battery powered devices excluded, obviously).

Being without power today makes me realize how much time I spend watching TV and doodling around on the Internet, which is a little unflattering. So far (and the power’s only been off around four hours) I have written a thank you card to my grandmother for the Christmas money she gave me (“Thank you Grandma, I used it to buy a cordless drill and install lots of things around my house”), I read several pages of Harry Potter in Spanish and congratulated myself on remembering or deducing enough Spanish to understand it, I cut up a box full of memorabilia T-shirts as the first step of making them into one or more quilts, and I got halfway through a novel my sister left at my parents’ house to be donated which features a cantankerous cowboy who loves babies, like they all must do if you believe the romance genre has any basis in real life.

I’ve used my Christmas ice cream maker twice now and the ice cream is freaking delicious. I remember I made tortellini once by hand, which was excruciatingly tedious, and determined that the end result tasted just like store-bought except a little purer and cleaner so just buy the store stuff and put sauce on it and you’re even. But the ice cream, though it tastes like vanilla ice cream like you expect, is purer and cleaner in a delightful way. Enough that you don’t need chocolate sauce, which is a revelation. Normally I buy vanilla ice cream because I’m either A. putting it on something or B. putting something on it – never to eat on its own. The homemade ice cream is worth eating on its own. The little pamphlet that came with the machine has other interesting recipes to try, like coffee butter almond, chocolate mint, pumpkin pie, and raspberry gelato. I’d also like to look up a recipe for Thai Iced Tea Ice Cream because I think that would be delicious, and I finally found the Thai tea in Ranch 99 (segregated from the proper teas, past the coffee even, which explains why I never found it before).

Of course, this making my own ice cream will only likely recur when Costco sells heavy cream for $6 a half gallon. $4 a pint at Safeway is not going to cut it. Plus, I have about two gallons of ice cream in the freezer right now so those have to get worked down. What? I have priorities in life.

Out of curiosity, I wonder how much dust and crumbs has to get into a laptop keyboard before it stops working.

Obviously, blogging freestyle like this turns into the stream-of-consciousness writing my college roommate Catherine was the recipient of when I used to write her letters during down times in a summer internship. Beyond a lengthy diatribe on the audacity of Lifesavers to change the green colored candies from lime to watermelon and describing a (male) chemical engineering classmate as a Canadian ice princess I have no idea what they said, but Catherine said they entertained her whole family and that she would keep them, meaning I can never enter politics in case she unearths them.

This past week I’ve been experimenting with Asian noodle dishes (hence the Ranch 99 visit mentioned above). I was trying to re-create the chow mein I liked at the Zen restaurant I went to with my sister, so I bought dry chow mein noodles, fresh chow mein noodles, and then on a whim also got fresh ramen noodles and yakisoba. The fresh ramen I wouldn’t get again because while the broth was tasty and the noodles had a good texture the noodles didn’t have any flavor themselves, unlike 10 cent ramen in the package. And this cost over ten times as much, so that’s an obvious choice. I do enjoy yakisoba. Yesterday I stir-fried some onions, cabbage, and bean sprouts, and then added tofu I had marinated briefly in grated ginger, garlic, and soy sauce (having learned the tofu has to have something added to it or it’s worthless squishy lumps), and then added the yakisoba noodles and seasoning packet as recommended. I enjoyed it. And the chow mein recipe I tried that used hoisin sauce was very good too – just not like the restaurant. Next I’ll probably try a recipe that uses oyster sauce and honey, but I foresee this going down the road of pad thai where I learn how to make decent versions, just not the one I want to make (and therefore give up, never to try again).

Now, later, I can say that I had an eventful evening. Since the electricians packed up and left around five I have had them come back and had PG&E out too! Separate issues. One of the light switches the electricians installed didn't actually switch off the light fixture, so the owner of the company came back and fixed it, which I appreciate (he gets a good Yelp review from me). I don't blame them for not getting it right since the power was off, it was dark in that bathroom, and there are two light fixtures going to one switch so it would have been easy to miss a wire. The other thing was that while I was checking out the new circuit panel I realized I smelled a little gas coming out of my meter. When I called PG&E they didn't just reassure me that that is normal, which I wanted them to do, but they did send someone out within an hour who did detect a small leak (unfortunately reinforcing my worrywart tendencies) and fixed it. He also checked all my gas appliances for gas leaks and said they look good, which I did appreciate.

So now I'm going to have some ice cream, watch the Work It pilot because a guy from church whose mother I know is a writer on it so I'll give it a chance despite it being a blatant Bosom Buddies rip-off, and go to bed early.

I like this electrician. He's always calm and never gives me the impression my wiring is going to burst into flames and kill me in my sleep.

That's what Google is for.

House

A month after the move and the house is finally presentable (meaning I stopped using the third bedroom solely as a place to throw empty plastic bags).

Here is the living room:

The dining room, with today's Ikea addition in the background:

My bedroom:

The smallest bedroom, now the craft room:

The third bedroom:

And the piece de resistance, the kitchen:





Which my sister aply described as "It's as if Ronald McDonald barfed in here."

I spent my vacation days before Christmas doing my Christmas baking, which went more quickly and smoothly than I remember it ever going, yielding (clockwise from top) peanut brittle, chocolate chip cookies, divinity, snowballs, "fire candy" cracker toffee, from-scratch brownies, almond toffee, and candied walnuts in about eight hours of total work.

This year my sister finally declared my divinity the equal of Mrs. Barnes', our next door neighbor who passed away when I graduated high school (the exact day of my graduation, so that was memorable). The secret was to use artificial vanilla flavoring rather than natural, and to only use half the amount in the recipe.

And since the holidays it's been projects all around the house. Not major ones, since the stove (a generous housewarming gift from my parents) was delivered midway through the Christmas baking and the electrical service/new circuit panel work happens next week. But a lot of little ones. One was the living and dining room curtains, which I found for a steal at Ross but the blue dining room curtains had to be hemmed and the gray living room curtains had to be lined because they were unexpectedly transparent.

For the curtains I also had to mount a new curtain rod in the living room, which was not, in theory hard, but the instructions said that if the rod would be over 48 inches it should have support brackets placed around 30 inches in between. It came with four support brackets so I put two on the ends and two evenly spaced in the middle. When I went to hang the curtains I then realized the brackets keep you from pulling the curtains closed! I had to remove the two inner brackets and put up a single bracket in the center so the curtains would close. It's obvious now.

Another lesson I learned (which is the acceptable corporate euphemism for "another mistake I made") was with the blinds in my bedroom. The blinds that came with the house wouldn't open or shut, and they would fall down if you tried to raise or lower them, so I found a set for under $11 at Home Depot I could put up. I carefully and tediously installed the mounting hardware, then put in the blinds, then went to put the caps on the hardware that actually keep the blinds in, and at that moment realized that the hardware was on 90 degrees wrong. That had to be re-done.

I also re-caulked the tub in the big bathroom, re-cleaned the other shower so I could use it while the main tub was drying, and fixed my toilet twice. It had been making funny noises before Christmas but it stopped filling completely, so Nathan diagnosed it as needing a flapper and a fill valve. I did that, but while flushing the Fluidmaster fill valve as it says in its directions, the water supply valve beneath the toilet started to leak. Panicked, I found instructions online on how to replace that too, so after another trip to the hardware store I changed that as well. Of course, when I talked to Nathan that night he said that's totally normal and it takes care of itself, cementing that I should call him before worrying about things. But after that the fill valve kept leaking water in sporadic, audible dribbles. I gave up and bought another valve at Home Depot and replaced it again. Luckily that eliminated the problem entirely! Plus, the Korky valve was tons easier to install than the Fluidmaster valve so I recommend it. Not only was it easier to adjust it to the right height for the water line, they had helpful drawings for the right placement in the tank and useful information at the end about it being normal to see water coming out of several locations of the valve. If the Fluidmaster had had the same instructions I might not have worried about it and replaced it. Boo Fluidmaster.

My thumbs still kind of hurt from installing the water supply valve on the toilet since that required some heavy wrench tightening. I think that's more man territory. Or I need better wrenches.

Unpacking, You're a Wiley Devil

Okay. It might be a month later but "moved in" still means "my possessions are technically inside the house". The furniture is roughly in place since the carpets have been installed, which was the hold-up, but there are still unpacked boxes in every room. I did find which one had my pencil cups a few days ago, so I can stop using the single pen I had in my purse.

I'm surprised at how indecisive I am about furniture placement. Not so much in the dining room (which is incredibly straightforward) or the bedroom (which only holds a bed and a dresser and therefore has few options). But the living room is too full of both possibilities and constraints. What ended up winning out is that there is only a single grounded outlet in the room so all the electrical equipment has to be near that, plus my TV isn't big enough to have the couch all the way across the room. So it's a bit odd, with the couch floating in the room and two bookcases behind. But then, I think it might look better without boxes and odd tables around, too. And the pink curtains...

Yesterday Nathan and I went to the Christmas in the Park in San Jose and went ice skating for the first time. I got the hang of it after a few times around the rink and then promptly fell flat on my back as punishment for my overconfidence. I am developing an excellent deep blue bruise on my butt from that. I'm hoping I'll be able to sleep on my right side again in a few days.

Christmas really snuck up this year. Hopefully it goes well and puts a good cap on the year 2011: The Scourge of Grandpas and House Buying. I copped out and did all my shopping online but I haven't started any baking yet. That will be accomplished the two days before Christmas, which I took off of work. I have said I won't do my normal tray of 10+ candies and cookies, but I've said that before. We'll see what happens.

Move

I am moved in.

Moving is stressful. While I'm good at organizing things ("detail oriented", they keep telling me at work) this has been quite the feat. But on Saturday friends from church, my parents, my cousin Justin, and my boyfriend Nathan (who I don't believe has been mentioned before) loaded up all my stuff and hauled it over. I had been hauling over small loads since the house closed but there's only so much a Corolla can do. I need to find my cards somewhere in all these boxes and write thank you notes.

Or I could buy cards. That's much more likely to be successful.

Right now I'm living with everything arranged temporarily because I'm getting new carpet next week and don't want to put too much furniture or stuff on the floors that would only have to be moved again. The new carpets are required because the ones here are very, very strange. Whenever they installed the current rugs they decided that it would be a good idea to use a four-inch thick carpet pad, with the result that the floor tapers down toward the wall like a trapezoid. And I think they smell weird: I keep getting a whiff of something off but it's not the bathrooms or the heater and it gets stronger if I get closer to the floor. I haven't wanted to really shove my face into it for obvious reasons.

Now off to sleep on the floor!

Mortgage Ahoy

I'm getting the house.

I'm about 60% freaked out, 35% worried about the amount of work required before the end of the month to paint, get the electrical fixed, and move, and about 5% excited.