The Not So Fun Things in Life

My friend blogged recently about how sometimes people don't blog about the less than exciting parts of life. I guess I'm one of those guilty of keeping the not so fun things to myself. (except ranting and raving about how much I hate school...or the government...or other things that I hate.) I am not trying to put on a "my life is perfect and wonderful" front, but there are some things I don't really feel comfortable blogging about on a public site.

Even now, I really want to skip over some things in my life and get on to the things that made me laugh. This time though, I feel guilty doing so. So I have to blog about the not so fun things in life as a way to move on.

A couple weeks ago, my uncle died suddenly. Probably due to the shock and due to the fact that she was living with my aunt and uncle when it happened, a week later, my Grandy passed away. 

She was 91 this last Saturday and we were sure she was going to live to be 100. She was completely healthy and probably more fit than most of us. So it completely blindsided us all. She passed away in her sleep.

I spent most of the following days in the denial stage of grief. Being in Utah and not Arizona made that easy because nothing felt real. It also made the funeral much more difficult because then realization hit me like a ton of bricks, if you'll forgive the cliche. 

So that's where I was this weekend. In Arizona, for my 90 year old grandmother's funeral. 

I didn't really want to talk about it...but I also didn't want to keep blogging like nothing had happened.

My sister made this collage. I stole it from her. 

A Bad Time to Make Apple Butter

Don't get me wrong, I made apple butter and it was a fantastic success. Sort of, but I'll get to that later. The biggest problem with my apple butter is that I started it Saturday night before bed. I woke up to the smell of apples and cinnamon the next morning only to realize that "crap. it's fast Sunday". We don't have church until 11 so I spent about 2 hours smelling that before church and then after church, 3 hours later, I walked in the door to have that smell hit me in the face.

THEN I took it over to Andrew's aunt's place so I could can it and I had it on my lap right in front of me with the lid off (because it needed to cook with the lid off for a couple hours).

It was a hard fast Sunday. =P But hey, all my Christmas presents are done :)

At any rate, the apple butter was really good and SUPER easy. Apples were on sale for 59 cents a pound last week so I thought "hey, why not". So I bought a couple pounds of Granny Smith Apples, and about 1.5 pounds each of Gala and Macintosh apples. The Macintosh apples were kind of an accident because I meant to buy Golden Delicious, but it turns out Macs are good for apple butter. Probably because they are so soft.

The recipe I used can be found here.  I doctored it a lot though.

I used several different apples because I figured that would give the butter different layers of flavor. I used mostly Granny Smith because they are tart and I wanted to avoid over sugaring the recipe.

I only used 2 cups of sugar vs the 4 it called for and split that between white and brown. (1 cup white sugar, 1 cup brown). Next time, I'll probably go so far as to only use 1 cup sugar total because it was still quite sweet.

I doubled the spices as well and then added about a teaspoon of nutmeg and allspice. As the cooking went on, I just added cinnamon to taste...which means I was too lazy to get out my measuring spoons and I accidentally poured like half the bottle of cinnamon in. =P It tasted good though. :)

I HIGHLY recommend using one of those spiral apple peeler/corer/slicer things to do the prep work. I peeled all the apples by hand and then cored them with a paring knife and it took forever and made my hands hurt. I chopped them in my food processor before putting them in my crock pot.

The last step calls for cooking 1 hour with the lid off but it took mine 2-3 hours before it was ready. Then I bottled it up in 8oz jars and processed it in a steam canner for 25 minutes. They all sealed. There's really nothing like the sound of lids popping when you pull them out of the canner to put a smile on your face. :)

And no, I didn't take pictures. I would have...but it was fast Sunday and I didn't want to stand over the crock pot more than I had to. =P

In other happy news, Andrew and I went to Barnes and Noble for our date on Friday. I don't really know if I can call it a "date" because when we go to the bookstore, we both go completely different directions and only meet up when we're done...but that's what it was. =P

Anyhow, in the cookbook section I found the same book that I used for my commercial baking class. This is the book that has the recipe for pumpkin souffle that I really loved and I had written down so when my mom suggested I sell to book back, I foolishly did. The problem is that the recipe I have written down is for a commercial scale so it calls for ridiculous things like 24 eggs, and 3 and a half pounds of flour. (actually I think it's even bigger than that...we had to make like 200 souffles.)

Anyhow, since I technically already have the recipe, I didn't have any qualms with quickly copying it down into my phone and now I can make pumpkin souffles. :)

Looking through that book again, I can't believe I let my mom convince me to sell it back. There are so many good recipes...but it's 70 dollars. :(

Someone, We Don't Know Who, Gived Us A Present

I was saying that in my old Japanese teachers voice as I was typing that, oh the joys of learning transitive and intransitive verbs. Then I realized I wrote "us" and then I was hearing Gollum's voice.

Speaking of Gollum, The Hobbit comes out soon. I'm somewhat excited. I would be more excited if I didn't have to pay out my nose to go to the movies these days and if studios stopped splitting movies into multiple parts! I was able to wait until Harry Potter 7 part 2 came to theaters before finally breaking down and watching part 1...but I'm not sure I can wait with this one if they're going to split it into 3 parts. Geez. I'll have a cane before it's done.

Anyhow, this morning I woke up and got ready for school and as I was opening the door, it was really heavy. I noticed a bag was hanging on the doorknob. Intrigued, I looked in the bag and there was a bottle of Orange Juice and a bag of doughnuts. Not just any doughnuts either, MAPLE doughnuts.

So whoever left us breakfast on the door this morning, Thanks! And they must know me because I love maple doughnuts and orange juice! (typically not at the same time because then the orange juice tastes funny) I suppose it also could have been a lucky guess. But all the same, it made for a good start to Friday.

Now of all the crazy random things, I'm sitting out at the front desk, subbing while the regular secretary does interviews. One of the interviewees came in while we were all talking about snow and winter and white Christmases. I've never had a white Christmas because the only Christmas that it has snowed in Utah while I've been around, I was on my honeymoon in Seattle.

The interviewee said she was from Seattle and we were kinda talking about that when I said my husband was from Bainbridge. Well, long story short turns out she's from Andrew's home stake and she came to our reception. Ha. Shows how much I remember from my reception. =P

Small world. Funny small world. =P

The Life

I know I posted today...but I'm posting again. Mostly because I write as things come to my brain. Sometimes I can file them away for later. (Sometimes MUCH later, since I only just posted about my birthday.) But sometimes, I have to write as I'm experiencing.

Right now, I'm sitting on the couch in my ghetto snuggie (which means I'm wearing my bathrobe backwards =P) drinking hot cider, with the heater next to me, and listening to the wind blow past the window and the leaves fall to the ground.

It's basically amazing. The only thing that could make this better would be a Kotatsu. The tables they have in Japan that have a heater underneath and a blanket on top. I wish America had those. :(

And actually having Andrew here would make it better. He's at a friend's house doing a lab that is due tomorrow.

I'll just have to watch a movie. Or maybe I'll watch Psych. Or maybe I'll fall asleep here listening to the wind. :)

Curry Udon

I asked Andrew today if it was weird that I cried during UP! and he said yes. Dang it!

Whatever.

In other news, I went to the store yesterday and got 5 and a half pounds of apples. I am going to make apple butter. I'm really excited.  :)

Yes, my world revolves around food. Even my english teacher noticed. The last essay I wrote was about the Paleo Diet (By the way Kaylynne, I got an A on that one. Thanks!) and this one I'm writing now is about eating red meat. Even though I'm trying to convince people to eat meat sparingly in this one...its kind of hard to be convincing because I am arguing with myself. But yeah, 2 papers in a row about food. Go figure.

And because I know you all want to know when I'm ACTUALLY going to make something instead of just saying that I'm going to make something, I made curry udon the other day.

I made it for my birthday dinner. The fact that it was my birthday and the fact that I made my own dinner for it are completely irrelevant. It is curry udon. With homemade udon noodles!

Udon noodles are pretty easy, and really fun for kids to make (I would imagine...they were fun for me...). There is a TON of gluten development in making udon so you can't knead it with your hands very much. Just rolling it out was a chore and my arms were sore the next day. Instead, you put it in a plastic bag and STEP on it. :)

It's so much fun! You should try it sometime.

The noodles themselves aren't complicated. Just flour, water, and salt. But if you make them, don't be like me and forget that they're going to swell up in the water. I cut them sorta thin I thought but they were HUGE after I cooked them. =P Next time I'll cut them to only 1/4 inch. =P

Is UP! an Emotionally Traumatizing Movie? ...Or is it Just Me?

 Andrew and I watched UP! on Friday and I forgot how that movie just rakes your emotions across the coals. It's AWFUL! The first part with Carl and Ellie had me completely sobbing and then when I thought it was over, Russell starts talking about how his dad never comes to his scout stuff anymore and what they used to do together. When he talks about watching cars from the curb and eating ice cream and then says sadly, "It sounds pretty boring, but I guess it's the boring stuff I remember" I just wanted to throw myself at the TV and scream "I'LL EAT ICE CREAM AND COUNT CARS WITH YOU, RUSSELL!!!"

Ahem. Then when I finally get over the sadness at seeing this adorable little fat Asian kid sad because his dad is a jerk, Dug shows up on the porch even after Carl is mean to him and says "I was hiding under your porch because, I love you". I lost it. Nothing like the unconditional love of a dog to get your eyes wet and nose running.

Curse you movie. Curse you.

Gourmet Popcorn

I received a comment a while back that I hadn't posted anything about food lately. I will call your attention to exhibit A.

Actually that's a crab and not exhibit A. The exhibit A I was looking for, I couldn't find and that crab just made me smile.

Anyhow, the reason there hasn't been much food (which I realize no one ACTUALLY cares about, but my fingers are flying over the keyboard now so there is no stopping me) is that it was really really really hot in my house over the summer. I've already posted about that and now it's happily 72 degrees so I would really just rather forget it.

Anyhow, I didn't turn on the stove all summer if I could possibly help it. Long story short, no food.

But now I can turn on the stove and even though the size of my kitchen is really starting to get to me, I'm cooking a bit more. But that's not REALLY what I want to talk about.

I want to talk about popcorn. Gourmet popcorn.

When I was a kid, we'd get "gourmet popcorn" in a tin at christmas and it was usually cheese, caramel, and regular. Not really gourmet. Now gourmet popcorn has at least a FEW more flavors. There is a place in Seattle that we go to that is like the Baskin Robbins of popcorn, 31 flavors. (I've never counted, don't hold me to that). Anyhow, it's good and I like it. (Even though I usually opt for something caramel anyhow.)

The other day, I got a groupon in my email (Actually I think it was an Amazon daily deal thing...whatever) for 15 dollars for 35 dollars worth of "gourmet popcorn". I thought to myself "hey! I could get a lot for that!" so I go to the site.

WRONG.

The smallest tin you can get is like 40 dollars and it's not very big. My heart fell, no popcorn for me. But I still looked around the site to see what flavors they had. All their flavors were caramel popcorn, drizzled with some chocolate, and coated with oreos or nuts or whatever when the chocolate was still warm. That's it! Someone just marketed the Mormon's FHE treats!

So forget you gourmet popcorn. I can do that! So I found a couple caramel corn recipes online and now all I need is chocolate and toppings. I'm going to make my OWN "gourmet" popcorn. And do you know how much a bag of popcorn kernels is at the store? Like 1.50. Do you know how much that makes? Like 50 quarts of popcorn.

So that's it. I'm gonna make gourmet popcorn and it's gonna be great. Has anyone else seen this so called "gourmet popcorn"? I really think a lot of these foods passing as "gourmet" could easily be made at home. Any ideas?