Faux-versary.

It's been exactly one month since H. and I tied the knot, and life has been perfect. H. isn't working for Memorial Day, so we have a three day weekend to spend with each other and hang out and pretty much just be lazy for once.

After work on Friday, H. and I watched the prequel to The Silence of the Lambs, called Red Dragon. It starred the Hannibal guy, the guy from The Illusionist and Fight Club who is very famous but I can't think of his name right now, and some other people we recognized but couldn't place. It was ... interesting. I wouldn't say that I liked it, but I didn't hate it either. I wouldn't watch it again, but at the same time it was cerebral and enticing to watch, because you wanted to figure out the plot and everything. I told H. we can watch Silence of the Lambs, but we might hold off on that for a week or two. Don't want too much horror crowding my brain waves whilst I sleep.

Saturday was the bulk of our lazy day, and Sunday we went to JcPenny's to buy H. some work shirts and pants. He wanted some short-sleeved dress shirts, so he can look fancy but still be comfortable in the heat. I thought the store was in the nearby mall, but I was wrong, and we drove to the next nearest store.

The nearest store was in another mall, some fifteen minutes from the first. The parking lot was fairly empty, but then it was Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend. We walked through the entrance, and about fifty feet later came to the main hall of the mall. In front of us was JcPenny's, but what was more interesting was the complete emptiness of the main hall. Immediately, both H. and I said something about a post-apocalyptic zombie attack, and we hurried into the department store. The store itself was nice; kind of old, but filled with new merchandise and wares. We noticed an escalator leading downward - this was odd, as we walked into the mall on the main floor. Rather, it's the main floor of the earth, and the thought of seeing the underbelly of the store was thrilling. Taking the escalator down, we passed by the children's section and headed for the home section, walking through the lamps and frames first. We were the only two people down here besides the workers, and it was nice having it all to ourselves. Even if there was the feeling of being buried alive (it's been a long time since I've been in a glorified basement, and I felt a little claustrophobic). We looked at window treatments, heavy curtains, and sat down on every couch they had set up to test for comfortableness.

When we were done goofing around, we went back up to the main level and out to the main hall. As we were walking around, we noticed that there were only four stores open, and one was having a store-closing sale. Everything else was either wired shut or boarded up and desolate. H. commented that it would be neat to buy the whole building, move out the remaining stores, and convert it into a paintball course. He'd have some old car overturned at the entrance, open up all the stores and put objects to hide behind and whatnot in them, then rent out the building to random people or teams for them to use. There were a lot of windows, so we'd have to treat those with black paint, otherwise it would be easy to see people running around. Neat idea, as long as it makes us money (cha-ching!).

For our fancy faux-versary dinner, we had Chip-o-top-lays, Chipootles, Chipotle. I tried to pick the least spicy ingredients, and it was very tasty up until I got one mouthful of something so spicy it made me nauseous. Thank goodness we decided not to eat at the restaurant, and we had milk on-hand in the apartment. I just hope that the other half of my barbacoa bowl doesn't have a spicy surprise for me during lunch today.

I forgot to show you how our pot roast turned out! I think I cooked it a little too long, because it was falling apart a little too much for me, but the taste was great.

Bad picture, but here's the remaining half that we didn't eat the first night. Underneath the brothy liquid are some potatoes, carrots (need to add more of those, so good!), and onions. I underestimated the amount of salt needed to flavor the amount of liquid, so we just sprinkled some on before eating. I have a chronic fear of oversalting things, but I'm trying to remedy that.

Today we're planning to pick up a Costco chicken and turn it into either chicken salad or chicken enchiladas. Deciding between the two is never easy, but I doubt H. and I could two whole chickens before they went bad. C'est la vie!

Baker's Man.

Upon receiving our care package of wedding goodies, the first thing on our list to do was make ravioli. Probably because it was lunchtime and we hadn't eaten lunch yet. Our ravioli endeavors were hindered only by one ingredient that we didn't have: semolina flour. Having never heard of it before, I was unsure whether a regular grocery store would carry it around here. In fact, Fry's does! H. set to making the dough while I mixed up the fillings.

 

The process starts off with H. rolling out the dough to cover the frame of the ravioli maker. Then, H. gingerly picks up the thin dough and places it on top of the metal frame. That white portion H. is holding in the first picture then gets placed on top of the metal frame, making a ravioli maker sandwich. Pushing down on the mold creates little pockets for the filling. As you can see our first filling choice was mushrooms, spinach, and feta cheese. It smelt so good!

 

Our second filling consisted of ground sausage, smoked sausage, olives, and mozzarella cheese. Yeah, that was one deliciously fragrant dish. Once the fillings are nestled in their little pockets, another strip of rolled-out dough is laid on top, and I set about to sealing the raviolis.

The last step is letting the ravioli dry on a heavily floured pan for a couple of hours. Seeing as we live in a desert, it only took an hour or so total to dry. You see those marbled raviolis? Well, some of the ravioli dough ripped the first time we made them, so H. just rerolled whatever we couldn't pick out of the dough (spinach is surprisingly stubborn). I kind of cherished these ones; I think they're chef-like.

Next, you plop the dried ravioli into a pot of boiling water for a few minutes, and BAM. You have fresh ravioli! I would show you a picture of this, but they were too delicious to think of photographing them. Super delicious.

Over the weekend we also dabbled in the art of crepe making. I was in the mood for a mid-afternoon snack, and I suggested we try out a dessert crepe recipe in the cute little crepe book we have now. An egg, some milk, a little salt and sugar, and a touch of flour later, we had some gorgeous crepes. But that's not all! I also made those brandied apples for an added kick. When we sat down to eat them, I couldn't decide which I liked more, the crepes or the apples!

I'm definitely making these again over the weekend in larger quantities. Maybe I'll add strawberries! I'd also like to try the non-dessert crepes, so perhaps crepes will pop up in our meal plan for next week.

Tomorrow, I'm intending to make our first pot roast using our new slow cooker. I'll be trying out Brittany's recipe, and I'm pretty darn thrilled about that. In somewhat related news, I found avocados for 0.50c each! Pot roast and guacamole don't usually go together, but tomorrow they will!

Day Four.

Quick health update: I has none. It's day four of this "wicked cold", as H. puts it, and it's gotten bad enough that H. went out and bought me a whole slew of medications. Nasal spray, vapor-rub, mucinex pills, peppermint tea, spiced chai tea, and beer. The beer is a medication that H. uses to put up with my grumpy self when I'm sick. His three words to describe me are cute, pathetic, and grumpy. I think the first one is supposed to cancel out the other two, even though they are pretty true to form.

Remember when I made hamburgers (when I thought that the cold would go away with a hard dose of Nyquil)? Well, I had some leftover meat mixture - ground beef with chopped onions and mushrooms - and after receiving my care package containing the remaining wedding gifts, I'm thinking of making ravioli on Sunday. There can't possibly be two days worth of cold left in this virus (fingers crossed), and H.'s been itching to try out the ravioli maker we got. I think he might be almost as excited as I am for this contraption. He's already thought out his first ravioli: bacon and mushroom. I'll probably make him add something else to make it a little more sustaining. Personally, I can't wait to try spinach, mushroom, mozzarella raviolis.

Another item in our care package is a crepe maker from dear E. I'm hoping that tomorrow I'll have more energy (I feel like all I do is take naps and drug up) to make dessert crepes with brandy apples. Since we happen to have both brandy (it was on sale at Costco!) and apples. And sugar, but that's a staple. The recipes for the crepes and the apple topping are in this cute little recipe book E. got me to go with the crepe maker. I didn't know that crepes could be used for so many things!

Once I'm right as rain, I'm intending to pull out the dead gladiolas sitting in that planter box. In my twisted mind, I figured that since I didn't have the new flowers to plant, there was no rush to pull out the glads. I'll most likely need a large garbage bag to aid in throwing those plants away. But, once it's done, I can put new flowers in - specifically, the flower favors from our wedding! I'm particularly excited about them, because they say on the back they don't need direct sunlight, which is what our apartment lacks. So expect to see oodles of pictures of sprouting seedlings.

One recipe I found on the interwebs recently (yesterday) is for something that looks so tasty it could be used as a bribe.

Caramel Pecan Brownies | Lemon Sugar

I've made something like this before from a box, and while that was pretty good, I can't wait to try them made from scratch. The recipe is over on a blog called Lemon Sugar, and I might have bookmarked her website so I can look at tasty things every day. It'll be like tightrope walking between good and evil, trying to not eat all of the brownies before H. gets home from work.

Now if you'll excuse me,  I'm going to go rip out my throat.

Cough Cough.

Apparently it is easy to catch a cold in the desert. Three days in, I've got a scratchy throat and plugged ears, and I think my sense of taste is all but gone. The last part is particularly sad, seeing as how I made burgers last night for dinner and couldn't really tell if they were any good. I was kinda proud of them (along with the homemade chips), and H. liked them, so that's good. The only thing I'd change is I would make them thinner. I thought they would shrink vertically when they cooked, but instead they shrunk horizontally.

Tonight I'll probably have something that's easy to make, something like soup or pizza. Who am I kidding, I'm definitely having pizza.

One thing I've learned from being married is that you really get to know the delivery man. Even though most of our wedding gifts were delivered to the front office, he's been diligently delivering the stragglers for the past three weeks. It seems like he comes by every other day, but it's probably more like twice a week. In particular, I've learned not to say Thank You more than twice in the entire greeting. It gets awkward when he says Thanks, then you say Thank You, and now you've just thanked him for thanking you for accepting packages. One Thank You is enough to cover the physical exertion of bringing a package up a flight of stairs. Also, if he offers, get him to move the packages into the apartment. At first, I was all Stranger Danger!, but then I realized that he's being a gentleman and knows that the boxes are heavy to lift. And people said chivalry was dead!

If this post seems flighty, chalk it up to cold medicine. Seriously, I feel like my head is detachable and floating in the invisible clouds in the apartment. Which makes me feel quite tall, if I do say so myself.

Dangit.

Somehow, I managed to slam my elbow on the pointiest corner of my nightstand last night. I was reaching for my water bottle, and ended up with pain. Also, I managed to dig this pointy corner into the muscle that attaches at the elbow. I woke up many a time last night because I had rolled over and bent my elbow and the pain just woke me up. The worst part is that despite the amount of force I used to slam my elbow into that corner, there is no visible bruise. Nothing! Now I feel like a cripple and I don't have anything to show for it. Except that empty bottle of Advil over there.

This afternoon, I discovered a huge bug in the corner of our laundry room, on the ceiling. This provoked the creepy crawly feeling, and even now (hours later) I feel like another one of them could appear out of nowhere. Thank goodness we have a vacuum (HUGE thanks to J&E), because there was no way I was going to actually squish it with my hand or a kleenex. Although, now I feel like the bug is alive inside the vacuum. I'll get H. to look at that when he gets back.

I feel like I need to add something girly to this post. It needs something springy as well. Enter gorgeous dress that I will probably dream about. If only I wore more dresses, I could purchase this and wear it all day every day.

Ready for Ranunculus | Modcloth

Here's a look at what's for diner: tuna casserole. This time I didn't use chicken broth to boil the noodles. Now H. won't stop inhaling it.