Saturday, February 28, cooking, shopping, and a lesson learned.

This is a couple of days rolled into one post. Friday wasn't a very interesting food day, I made chicken artichoke spaghetti, which is tasty, but not something I haven't made many times before. I diced and cooked two chicken breasts in a little olive oil with some italian seasoning, then dumped a huge jar of spaghetti sauce over them, then added a drained and chopped up jar of marinated artichokes. Added yet more italian seasoning (I love it!), then simmered it for about 20 minutes, finally adding a whole bunch of shredded mozzarella cheese. I boiled up a pound of angel hair to serve it over, and it became Friday dinner, Saturday lunch, and part of Saturday dinner as well. It's really very delicious, and all the more so because I haven't made it in a few weeks. 

Saturday was the last day for last week's Meijer sales, so I went out just long enough to pick up the items I wanted from the circular. I did very well, picked up a five pound pork shoulder at 99 cents a pound, a dozen chicken drumsticks at 89 cents a pound, and a nice rope of beef sausage for 1.50. I did also buy another bunch of boxes of blueberry tea, still on clearance sale. It's pretty good, and I made four boxes last two weeks and a little more. I also got  another six pounds of apples for the dehydrator, some thin spaghetti noodles, and two packs of Cincinnati Chili mix. If you don't know Cincinnati Chili, it's very weird stuff, not really like chili at all, but very watery and sort of sweet, and served over spaghetti noodles and with lots of shredded cheddar. M is wild for the stuff, so I'm going to see how it tastes when made at home. I got some shredded cheddar and cream cheese on sale, and a bunch of canned mushrooms for my next few pot roasts, then finished it off with two family sized bags of sale tortilla chips, one for each of us. It came out to 44 dollars total, which is really not bad, especially with all that cheese and meat. I do have to economize and make sure that the rest of this period's shopping reflects the fact that I already spent so much.

Last night I tried something new, making jalepeno corn bread  by adding extra stuff to a Jiffy mix. The texture was really good, separating the eggs and whipping the whites to stiff peaks adds a huge amount of volume and lift to the bread, and I soured my milk with a little vinegar instead of buying buttermilk. Unfortunately, I forgot all the rules of not being a dumbass in the kitchen and didn't wear gloves when I was dicing the four jalepenos for the bread. Owie, owie, owie! By the time the bread was in the oven, my hands were in agony. Washing with Dawn didn't help, so I wound up going on the internet for more remedies. I ended up washing my hands in vegetable oil, peanut butter, baking soda, rubbing alcohol, apple cider vinegar, astringent, and some other things I can't even remember. In the end, I don't know what worked, but after an hour or so, it felt mostly better. I can still sort of feel it today, though. (That's one big reason I didn't post this last night!) Next time I make the bread, I think I'll skip the peppers and add parmesan cheese instead.With a texture like that, cheese would be awesome.