Not Exactly a Day of Rest

Tonight was our first installment of Urban Family Get-Together. It's a great idea, and guarantees us, if we'd like, to see each other on at least a monthly basis. However, it also required me to bring food. It's part of the point: see each other and bring dishes so we can all get fat and taunt each other. My dilemma was that I didn't want to just buy something at the store to bring, because that would make me feel like I was letting my friends down, like I couldn't even be bothered to be in the kitchen for my dearest and nearest. The thing is, I do not like being in the kitchen. I do like going to the fridge and grabbing some bubbly water or a Coke. Or walking through the kitchen to get to the garage to mosaic. That isn't so bad, but actually making food? I don't think so. Ugh.

A year or so ago, The Boy invited me to meet some of his friends at a Mongolian BBQ downtown. It was a really weird experience that I did not participate in other than to defend why I wasn't participating in it. Everyone else just grabbed a bowl and piled it high with various veggies and chose some meats. Then they handed it to some guy who cooked it on this odd metal surface. A vegetarian would be very sad because there was no cleaning between each bowl of random meaty stuff. Then the stir-fry guy would hand back the bowl and every one would wander around to some station to make their own sauces. It was so fucked-up. Why spend the money going out to eat, if you were required to figure out what ingredients went best together? That is so lame. I could do that at home. Just throw a lot of shit in to a skillet and hope for the best. And I am not good at doing that at home, so why would I go somewhere to get the same experience, but be humiliated by doing such a poor job in front of people? That's so messed up, but I guess some people really enjoy making up a dish and just have someone else heat it up for them. I bet Twit loves the Mongolian BBQ.

In high school, I had to make dinner every night, and have it on the table by 5pm. My parents got me to do this by letting me drive the car. It was almost not worth it. I hated it so much. My mom would leave something out on the counter indicating what she wanted me to make. She has her college degree in "Home Ec." I'm so not shitting you. She was very proud of them, and because of this really specialized degree, she made sure we ate a balanced dinner of a meat and two sides (generally a starch and a vegetable, or two vegetables). Desert was usually canned peaches or something like that. I hated food until I got to college. It seems that in home ec., my mother was taught to just heat the food, not season it. So I had spent a life time being forced to eat microwaved frozen peas with a pat of butter on top, or some beans, same way. All so gross. God. I hate to think back to those days. We ate steak almost daily, and I totally did not like it. Why? Because it was just cooked meat. Didn't even have salt on it. Now I love steak, but shit of I know how to cook it. Once I escaped the house, I didn't do much cooking ever again. Except for every now and again I made short ribs or fondue. I could handle that. Now I can do that and make corn pudding, sangria, and these little spinach hot cakes. I maybe do this three times a year.

Today I made caprese. I chose grape tomatoes because they are pretty damn tasty this time of year. I bought some basil in a bag, a container of fresh mozzarella balls and a pretty red onion. I thought I could just run stuff through the food chopper, but it made the tomatoes more like salsa. So I sat for over an hour and deseeded two pints of grape tomatoes. Talk about boring. I watched the last two episodes of Grey's Anatomy while doing this arduous chore. Crappy TV seemed appropriate to the job. I did use the food chopper for the onion and basil. I dumped some balsamic vinegar and EVOO in with everything and cut up the moz balls. Then I used a fair amount of salt, and would have totally added more if I was just making it for myself.

I was so nervous that my little urban family wouldn't like it. But damn, they complimented me and kept eating it. A very proud moment for me. I am now stuffed with a lot of bread and caprese. There was a lot of food there, but I was too full from all that tasty bread. It was an awesome night.

Here is a picture of my caprese:



The Boy is bleating in to a trumpet right now. This is an instrument he has yet to master. I can hear him spitting and puffing. He's totally going to have a brain aneurysm if he keeps that up. I asked him to please stop, and that if he wants to practice, he should only try it when I'm not home. I said it with the nicest voice possible.

The rest of my afternoon was all about the mosaic. I managed to gash my thumb pretty deeply early on, but persevered. It is getting hard to photograph. It is too long and I'm not that tall, even when standing on a chair it is hard to get the whole piece in the frame. Today, I'll just post a close-up of the part I am currently working.

Day 12, 2.5 hours, mix of Dead Milkmen songs (I'll probably listen to them again, because those songs are really fucking awesome to listen--makes me laugh and takes me out of obsessing over a piece of glass).



Here is a little sneak pic at me and what I wore to the party tonight. I'm standing on a chair in the garage trying to get a better angle for the mosaic. I'm absolutely wearing this again to work tomorrow to make life easier when I get up at 6am.