weekend update

[juldea]

Well, my weekend worked out mostly well (snafus on Sunday...)

Slept in (until 10:30!) Saturday and then headed to the MBTI shindig held for me by siderea. alexx_kay, learnedax, and tpau also showed up. I ended up typing as a shaky ENTP - I identified a lot with some of the NF readings done at the end, and my J/P split was fairly even. Interesting considering my original (several years ago) INTJ typing. Still, I got some useful results, and had a good time. Oh, and some good food!

londo called me during the meeting to let me know that he had ended up at brynndragon's house and could be dropped off where I was, meaning we'd see each other this weekend (which wasn't the plan originally). So we met up and I took him along to the movies with Adriana. We saw Shrek 2. (It was awesome. Go see it. I want to see it again already. :P) Then there was Thai food and Adriana let us drive her van home, since it was past midnight and the T had stopped running.

We woke up Sunday and returned the van at noon. We grabbed the green line to Lechmere and went fabric shopping at Sew-Low (on Cambridge St. in Somerville) and Sewfisticated (on 28 in Somerville). Found some awesome tie-dye print, but we were reluctant to buy without an idea of what I was going to do with it. There was the idea of making him an entire suit, but I couldn't find (in the pattern books there) any patterns with actual suit coats involved.

We pondered various activities afterwards, but ended up resigning ourselves to returning home. I got it in my head that I wanted to cook, not just make something from a box or a bag, and found a recipe online that claimed to be yummy and quick. Unfortunately, it completely failed on the latter half - beginning with washing dishes to clean up space in the kitchen, cooking ended up taking at least 2 hours to complete. That had left me on edge (I don't like wasting time, especially time that could be spent with londo), and then add in the reappearance of My Ant Masters in the kitchen... I snapped and got all emotional. But my boyfriend is awesome, and some quality snuggling time (with a couple episodes of Babylon 5) brought my spirits back up.

Went to bed at 11, and rolled out at a hideous 5:45. Thus starts another week.

Comments

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Did the link to the recipe not work? Here's the text:

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
4 potatoes, thinly sliced
1 pound boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into cubes
1 (10.75 ounce) can condensed cream of chicken soup
1/2 cup milk
1 onion, chopped
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
2 cups frozen broccoli, carrots and cauliflower combination
1/2 teaspoon dried parsley
1/4 teaspoon dried marjoram
1/4 teaspoon dried basil
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Instructions:
Heat oil in large frying pan over medium high heat. Cook potatoes, stirring frequently until tender-crisp. Stir in chicken and cook until no longer pink. Reduce heat to medium. Stir in condensed soup, milk, onion, and garlic powder. Arrange vegetables on top and sprinkle with parsley, marjoram and basil. Cover and simmer over low heat until chicken is cooked through and vegetables are tender, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in Parmesan.

Thawing the chicken took 20 minutes, although I did that while cutting the potatoes and onion (perhaps I'll get faster at chopping things the more I cook?) Then the cook times took longer than advertised - 10-15 minutes for the potatoes, then the chicken was added in for a brief time, and after everything was together and the lid was put on it was simmering more 15 minutes than 5 before the frozen veggies were hot.

I like the style of cooking, I just wish it'd take less time. I know that if I do a little planning the chicken-thawing won't be a problem (set it in the fridge a day in advance, or something) but getting all the ingredients washed and chopped really makes a dent in things. I could use canned or frozen for everything, but what's the health in that?

[ex-dervish821.livejournal.com]

Actually, depending on how fresh your fresh produce is, frozen can actually be healthier.

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Really? Explain! :)

[ex-dervish821.livejournal.com]

Frozen vegetables are picked when ripe and very quickly frozen and packaged. While frozen, they don't lose much nutritional value. Fresh vegetables may be shipped from far away, and have lost much of their good stuff in transit.
Also, stuff that's not in season, while it may be available, might be not as healthy as its frozen counterpart.
I think it's just a matter of looking -- if the fresh broccoli looks kind of anemic, maybe it's better to go with frozen.

[juldea.livejournal.com]

This seems to indeed make sense. Thanks for the tip.

[caltren.livejournal.com]

Heh. Yah, that happens sometimes. *sigh* I hates it when it does. I tell ya though, pan roasting is the quickest way to cook something. :-) That's more a beef, pork or fish thing, than a chicken thing. :-) As for chopping, yah, it's like everything else. You get better at it the more often you do it. There's some basic knife skills to learn--http://www.foodtv.com has some tutorials, or you can look for a weekend class at the college (or wherever there's a decent cooking school in the area) on knife skills. It's pretty cool/fun stuff!

And yah--fresh food is always better imho. *grin*

[juldea.livejournal.com]

I could use a lesson in pan roasting, I suppose - I never make beef, pork, or fish because I have no clue what to do with them. I've figured out how to cut up chicken and make dishes like the above, or stir fry, but I'm pretty clueless when it comes to the other meats... (I try to stir-fry with beef in the same way I do so with chicken, and it never comes out quite right.)