Spaghetti, Salad, Bread and Brownies

Yesterday, I made spaghetti and served it with some French bread, salad with a Balsamic vinaigrette, (not vinegar-ette, Sandy!) and some brownies for dessert. After seeing Anne Burrell make Bolognese sauce on her show, I decided to alter my usual recipe and try some of her suggestions.

Earlier, I had taken half a pound of smoked sausage out of the freezer and let it thaw in the refrigerator. (I had chopped it up before I put it INto the freezer.)



Here I am browning the sausage a bit. Then I scooped out the sausage, and placed it in the bottom of my crockpot while the chopped garlic had a quick turn in the skillet before joining up with the sausage. Then, I added 18 ounces of tomato paste to the skillet, and cooked that for a bit.


Once, the paste had a brownish-red color to it, I added 2 cups of red wine and 1 cup of water. I stirred that in and let it cook until the wine/water mixture had reduced by about half.



Then, I added poured this INto my crockpot on top of the sausage and garlic from earlier, and added three cups of water, some salt, pepper, a couple of bay leaves, and some dried Italian herbs. Yes, I do have basil growing in the Areogarden but, but Mr. Hairball has asked me to leave the basil alone for the time being. It seems I plucked off more than I should have a few days ago to make some basil-garlic vinaigrette. *sheepish grin*

I set my crockpot on high, and I left the lid ajar by about an inch so that the water could slowly cook off. I periodically added a cup of water and let it cook back down throughout the day. I fished out the bay leaves and adjusted the seasonings a bit before serving.



After I got the sauce in the crockpot, I made some French bread dough in my bread machine. After the bread machine finished its dough cycle, I shaped the loaves, left them to do their second rise, and baked them in the oven.



Mr. Hairball loves to eat crusty bread with just a small dish of olive oil for dipping. I forgot to take a picture of his bread plate so you could see the cut bread, so here's what it looked like on my plate of spaghetti. This bread would also make wonderful garlic bread!





I decided I wanted a Balsamic vinaigrette for the salad, so I mixed this up. The picture is at angle as I was trying to not have the cabinets reflected on the surface of the dressing.



It's just Balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper, garlic, olive oil, and brown mustard. I used a 3 to 1 ratio of olive oil to vinegar, a tablespoon sized blob of mustard, four cloves of peeled garlic, and salt and pepper to taste. I buzzed in up in my mini-food processor till the garlic was pretty finely chopped.


This is Mr. Hairball's salad. He prefers mozzarella cheese on his salad unless it's a Caesar salad.

A few days ago, I made some brownies. Mr. Hairball ate them all and asked me to make another batch. So I made a double batch which will hopefully last until this weekend. This picture is of the first batch.



I based this recipe on one from Domino Sugar.

This is for a single batch for an 8x8 pan. It doubles nicely. Use a 9x13 pan if you make a double batch.

Brown Sugar Brownies

1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) plus 2 Tablespoons softened butter
2 eggs
6 Tablespoons Dutch-process cocoa (Hershey's Special Dark works well in these)
1/2 tablespoon (1.5 teaspoons) instant coffee
1/2 cup AP flour
1 cup whole walnuts or pecan halves

Preheat oven to 325F. Grease a 8x8x2-inch baking pan. In a large bowl, beat sugar and butter until fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Beat in cocoa, instant coffee, and flour. Spread batter in prepared pan. Sprinkle nuts over the top evenly. Bake for 25 minutes. Cool in pan and cut into bars.

Pizza, breadsticks, and pot roast

Some more recent recipes.

Pizza and breadsticks- I used Judy's recipe from Judy's Kitchen this time. Judy is going to be competing in a recipe contest this weekend so keep her in your thoughts and prayers as she makes her way to Branson, MO.

Earlier, I did some posts about whether garlic will inhibit the yeast action when added to pizza dough, here and here. I did add four cloves of minced garlic, and substituted 1/2 cup of semolina and a 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour for 1 cup of the bread flour. I saw in the comment section of her blog that someone had suggested replacing 1/2 cup of the bread flour with semolina flour.



As you can see from this photo taken of the dough after the second rise, I got an excellent rise with the addition of the garlic.

I used half the dough to make a pizza the other half I made breadsticks out of using the method that Rosie Hawthorne had suggested in one of her posts on homemade pizza



I topped the pizza with pepperoni and some breakfast sausage that I browned up earlier and packaged for the freezer. I want to try this again without the whole wheat flour and see how that comes out. Mr. Hairball liked this a lot.

Cola-Braised Pot Roast- The recipe calls for fresh rosemary but, I didn't have that so I substituted some fresh basil from our aerogarden.



I keep forgetting to talk about the aerogarden. We currently have nothing but basil growing as Mr. Hairball is looking forward to fresh pesto and emjoys adding fresh basil leaves to his salads.

Then I peeled a head of garlic and put the cloves, the basil, salt, and some olive oil in my mini chopper and buzzed it up until the garlic was finely minced and inserted this mixture INto the slits in the roasts. I used two smaller roasts because it's just the two of us and that way I have another roast for another day. After the second roast was cooked, and had cooled for an hour, I packaged it up and put it INto the freezer.


Garlic basil mixture stuffed INTo the slits. It's hard to not get the mixture on the surface while doing the stuffing.

The recipe calls for a dutch oven which I don't have so I used my cast iron skillet for browning the meat and making the gravy and cooked the roasts in the oven in a 9x13 Pyrex dish.


Browning the roasts before they go INto the oven


Making the gravy

If you are a diehard foodie you probably shouldn't read this next bit.



*spoiler space*





Last time I made mashed potatoes I based them on Anne Burrell's recipe. I had some leftover from that meal, so I froze them for another day. Now, when you defrost mashed potatoes they are going to be a bit watery so, I mixed in some instant potato flakes to thicken them back up. Instant potato flakes are a good thickener for stuff like that so I like to keep some on hand.

About to mix in the instant potatoes...



Mr. Hairball really liked this and talked about it for days. He even said he liked it better than his Grandmother's pot roast which is very high praise as she is an excellent cook.

Pie, cookies, and bread

Here's a quick post about some things I've made recently.

Lemon Pie-


I made a graham cracker crust and a double batch of Alton Brown's Lemon Curd and poured it IN to the crust and stuck it in the fridge.

Then later I made up some whipped cream and served it with the pie. It's not the prettiest pie but, if you like lemon then you will really enjoy the taste.

"Peppermint Bark" Chocolate Cookies- I first made these back in January and Mr. Hairball and his co-workers loved them. I made the softer version where you use all brown sugar instead of a 50/50 blend of white and brown. Follow the link to see the recipe and some pictures.

Bread- I make all of the sandwich type bread for my household in my bread machine. Here's the recipe I'm currently using in case anybody else wants an 100% whole wheat bread that works well for sandwiches. The recipe also has instructions for making it by hand, or in a stand mixer with a dough hook. Just click the picture to enlarge so you see the text.

For those of you in drier climates, be prepared to increase the amount of water. I've added as much as 1/2 cup of extra water on days when the daytime humidity here in Hairballville is in the single digits. I suggest cutting this bread on the thin side as it will really fill you up!

Pizza and breadsticks, part II

My regular readers know that I recently made some pizza with minced garlic in the crust to see if the garlic would retard the rising of the yeast. Here's part II of this fascinating series. Take a chug of vodka and yell Whoot!

Oh, sorry... wrong series there! Earlier this week, I did see that episode of SHCWSL where Sandra looks deep INto the camera and says "Baking is my absolute specialty"which had me giggling like a five year old at the absurdity of that woman. If baking is her specialty then I'm a ninja!

*Composes self and attempts to look very serious*

Okay, well I decided to try making pizza again and not delete the pictures with my itchy trigger finger. I'm using Rosie Hawthorne's pizza crust recipe for this experiment in case anybody wants to try this at home.

I'm using my bread machine to make the dough here. INto your bread pan, place the following in whatever order your machine specifies:
1 egg
1 packet yeast ( or 2 1/4 tsps if you buy yours in bulk)
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup water
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 cup bread flour
****1/2 Tablespoon garlic powder **** Hairball's addition

Set your bread machine to the dough setting, turn it on, and watch it knead for a few minutes.Then add in more bread flour a Tablespoon at a time till a nice dough forms that the three bears would love. (Not too wet, not too dry, just right.) Let your machine go through the dough cycle.


This is during the rise, about ten minutes before the cycle is over.




Once the dough cycle has finished, remove the dough and pour a little olive oil on your pan and plunk your dough on your pan. Do you like a thin crust or a thicker one? If you like thin then cut your dough in half and follow Rosie's directions for thin crust pizza with bread sticks and if you like thicker crust then omit the bread sticks while following her directions.



I browned some fresh Mexican chorizo. Okay, some of you are saying you've never seen chorizo that looks like the above picture. Homesick Texan has a great post about making your own fresh Mexican chorizo if you are interested. Dr.Bacon also sells it frozen and we got some of his to try once we eat up what I still have in the freezer from the grocery store.





I baked the pizza just until it got a little color, (especially on that left side! LOL) and then pulled it out to do my toppings. I made my pizza sauce from a can of tomato paste and mixed in some olive oil, salt, and pepper. Next, I nuked some pepperoni for 40 seconds like Rosie recommends.( It really does help reduce the grease on your pizza! )I used a semi-ho bag of grated mozzarella and some Parmesan that I buzzed up in the food processor earlier. Then I put the pepperoni and browned chorizo on top and slid the pizza into the oven as per Rosie's instructions. Watch it more carefully than I did though as mine got a bit toasty on the edges! It looks like the chorizo burned on the top but that was actually okay it just looks funny in this picture.



For the bread sticks, I followed Rosie's instructions except that my dough already had olive oil on it so I didn't use any butter on them before sprinkling on some of the Parmesan. Next time I'll do the butter. If you like your bread sticks on the salty side, you may want to put a little salt on top before baking them.

Once again, the garlic didn't seem to retard the yeast. Just how much garlic does it take?!?

Can you put garlic in your pizza dough??

I have no pictures for this post due to user error. I thought I had uploaded all the pictures from my camera to the computer so I erased them on the camera. Duh!

I've been meaning to get back in the habit of making homemade pizza again and have been collecting recipes from my fellow bloggers for pizza dough. Judy of Judy's Kitchen has one on her blog that looks good and Rosie of Kitchens are Monkey Business makes and blogs about her homemade pizza on a regular basis.

I remembered reading somewhere that too much garlic can retard the action of the yeast so caution should be used when making bread doughs that contain garlic. I figured since Rosie makes pizza on a regular basis, that she would be a good person to ask about where the line is about how much garlic can you put in your pizza dough and still get a good rise. Rosie emailed me back saying that she had never heard of this but, was aware of sources that report that raw garlic cloves have the ability to cure yeast infections. (That form of yeast is Candida albicans and the yeast normally used in baking is Saccharomyces cerevisiae.) Rosie suggested that I just try it and see what happens and to please share my results with her.

I should have split the dough up so I would have a control but, I was feeling lazy so I just dumped in four large cloves ( like maybe six normal sized cloves) of minced garlic to my dough as it was mixing in the bread machine and let it go through its paces. I peeked in at the dough and it appeared to rise just like any other yeast dough I've made. When the machine finished, I had a nice, smooth, silky dough that was ready to be made into pizza. I smooshed out the dough on a baking sheet, and baked it at 425F for a bit till it just started to get some color. Then I pulled it back out of the oven, and topped it with tomato paste mixed with salt, pepper, and olive oil, mozzarella cheese, and Parmesan cheese. Next, I put on some pepperoni, and some leftover crumbled up hot pork breakfast sausage . It was most tasty!

In conclusion, if garlic does inhibit the action of baking yeast, then you have to add more than I did.

Chicken fried steak with gravy and mashed potatoes

A few days ago, Mr. Hairball and I were discussing what to have for dinner tonight and what we have on the freezer to work with. I told him that we have some chicken tenders, some hamburger, a ginormous beef brisket, some smoked sausage, and some tenderized round steak aka cube steak. (Can you tell that Mr. Hairball is a huge carnivore?)


Mr. Hairball remarks that he feels that his blood has just been screaming through his arteries lately and asked what could we do to slow it down? I said that I could make some chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and gravy like Mama Hairball makes. His eyes lit up as he said that sounded great. So the decision was made that we would have chicken fried steak for Monday night's dinner.

Foods can be called by different names in different places, so here's a link to exactly what I mean by chicken fried steak.


What I'm making is about 85% Hairball family recipe and 15% Hairball likes to try new things.

First, we need some potatoes.



This is approximately two pounds of potatoes. [Probably more like three!] Some of them are obviously red and some of them are supposed to be Yukon golds. You will soon see that the "Yukon golds" look pretty pale inside instead of that nice gold color. Very different from all the Yukon golds I've cooked with in the past. I did wonder if they were really white potatoes while cutting them up.



Here they are all scrubbed and cut up with about 6 cloves of peeled garlic in with them. (I don't normally peel potatoes when I make mashed potatoes.) Notice how white they look. Here's a picture of a Yukon gold for comparision.
I recently watched an episode of Secrets of a Restaurant Chef where Anne Burrell made some yummy looking mashed potatoes and decided to incorporate some of her ideas.

I also washed and tore up some lettuce so Mr. Hairball could have a salad. I'm kinda burned out on salads right now so I had broccoli instead.



The one on the left is skim milk and an egg and the one on the right is flour, salt, black pepper, and some garlic powder. You dip the tenderized round steak or cube steak into the flour then the egg and then back in the flour again.



Here's the steaks ready to be fried. It's in black and white because I opened the package ONto the sheet pan and there is some blood visible. I know some people like Mr. Hairball have a very low squick threshold regarding blood so I thought it best to be "artistic" and make it a black and white picture.



Here are the steaks in the pan frying away. Now this gonna be squicky for some of you! When you see blood coming to the surface of the meat, it's time to turn them over and let them cook on the other side.



Sorry about the size. Hope no one has nightmares about a giant piece of chicken fried steak chasing them! Don't flip out about the black spots. Small portions of the crust will fall off from one batch and remain in the pan and adhere to later batches. Since they've been around so long they will be quite dark. This piece is a good color to shoot for while frying your steaks.



I boiled the potatoes until they were tender, drained off the water, and added a stick of butter to the pan. Then, I warmed up about 6-8 ounces of fat-free half and half ( I didn't realize that I bought the fat free version) for about 45 seconds in the microwave and added it to the pot with the potatoes, garlic, and butter. Anne did her potatoes with a food mill but I don't have one so just mashed them up with a potato masher and stuck a lid on them while I was making the gravy and nuking some frozen broccoli.



I am not the world's best gravy maker so I'm always a little nervous when it's time to make the gravy. I poured out all but about 2-3 tablespoons of oil and added the seasoned flour left over from the meat. I didn't have that much seasoned flour leftover so I added a little more flour to the pan. Then I stirred and let it cook until the color got to this stage.



I added in some fat-free half and half and stirred until smooth and let it cook until it reached the thickness that I prefer. It will get thicker as it cools so keep that in mind.



Here's Mr. Hairball's plate minus his salad. He made up a vinaigrette (not vinegar-ette Sandy!) and mashed up some of the purple basil from our Aerogarden with some coarse sea salt and mixed that INto his vinaigrette. I didn't see everything he put in but I know it had red wine vinegar, extra virgin olive oil, salt, black pepper and the aforementioned purple basil.



Mr. Hairball



Here's my plate. I was starving and did eat every bit of this!
The fat-free half and half did add a little sweetness to the gravy and potatoes but, can I just tell you? It was very good. [If you have any chicken fried steak left, pop those babies on a sheet pan and place in a 350F oven and bake for 10-15 minutes or so. When you open your oven, you should hear sizzling. Cut into one and make sure it's good and hot. If you still have taters and gravy left, you can heat those up in the microwave or on the stove. The gravy will need some milk/cream/whatever stirred INto it to thin it back out. If you don't have any taters left then how about a nice hot chicken fried steak sandwich?]

Almost forgot, here's a picture of some 100% whole wheat bread I made today.



I'm bummed that it has those bumpy things on the top. I cut into the bread and sampled some, and the bread is quite good even with the bumps. Mr. Hairball kept pointing at the bread and saying [Arnold Schwarzenegger] it is not a tumor [/Arnold Schwarzenegger] until I kicked him out of the kitchen. *rolls eyes*

[edited to add: The bread is very tasty! Here is the recipe I used.}

Bacon on my mind....

After reading 50sgal's post about making pancakes with bacon fat, I've had bacon on the brain.

Part of that was because I knew I didn't have any more squirreled away in the little freezer and was reminding myself to be sure and get out some cash to buy bacon. I do most of the shopping but, Mr. Hairball is usually the one who buys our bacon and hamburger from the local university. Most of the year, they have a store in town open on Friday afternoons that is near his office so it's very convenient for him to go by there. The bad part is that they don't carry the full line at the store in town so depending on what you wanted to buy, you may have to drive out to their lab.

Mr. Hairball checked his email on Thursday and had a email from them reminding their customers that the in-town store will not reopen until the 23rd but, the store out at their lab would be open. We drove out to the lab planning to only buy bacon as we still have several pounds of hamburger in the freezer. After we were warmly welcomed, we were told there had been a run that day on bacon and they only had one package of maple flavored pork bacon and one package of beef bacon left. NOOOOOOOOOO!!! They promised me they would have more available on the 16th. We were told that the beef bacon is lower in saturated fat than the pork, and most customers who try it prefer it to the pork bacon. We decided to go ahead and try the beef bacon as neither of us likes maple bacon. I decided to go ahead and get some flank steak as well. ( I'll make some braciole with it.)

So on Saturday Mr. Hairball made breakfast as usual and served me some of the beef bacon. It was really good so now I have to decide if we should switch to the beef since it's quite tasty and better for us, or stick with the pork bacon. It should be noted that the beef bacon is only available out at the lab so it's not as convenient since one of us would have to make a special trip to buy it. I need to decide by Friday as I'll be going back out there to get some bacon and I'll probably splurge and get some pork tenderloin as I saw a recipe back in November that I wanted to try. Now if I can only find that magazine....

We watched an episode of Iron Chef American Sunday night and the secret ingredient was BACON! Can you say spooky??

I received a ginormous early birthday package from Mama Hairball on Friday. Inside was a bread machine to replace mine that sadly went to breadmaker heaven after 14 years. She had mentioned to a friend of hers that I wanted one to replace my dead one and her friend said she had one that had only been used a few times and would be happy to have it go to someone who would use it. Mama Hairball asked if I would mind if it was used and I chuckled and said that it was not a problem as Mr. Hairball and I love great deals on used stuff and free is a very good price!

I tried it out on Sunday by making a simple cheddar cheese bread and so far so good. The real test is seeing if it can stand up to making 100% whole wheat or mostly whole wheat bread. That's what finally killed my old one off!

Enough rambling for now. Have a good day everyone!

Shoppin' at the Ultra-Super-Duper-Gigantico-MegaMart

Mama Hairball sent us a generous gift card for Christmas this year. [Sandra Lee] Whoot!! [/Sandra Lee] We opened it a week before Christmas and decided to wait till now to go shopping as being surrounded by stressed out Christmas shoppers puts both of us in a really bad mood.

So today we had a late lunch/early dinner at a local deli, returned books to the library, updated our car registration with our new address, and went to the Ultra-Super-Duper-Gigantico-MegaMart (USDGMM). Hells bells, if it was that busy when we arrived today at the USDGMM, did we narrowly miss something like this!?!




So we grabbed a cart, did our stretches and jumped into the fray. So what exciting things did we buy today? We bought some candy canes that were on clearance, a lamp, a lampshade, one of those things that turns on lights when it gets dark, a ceramic crock and stand for bottled water, a plastic storage container, a silicone BBQ brush, a plug in LED light strip for under the kitchen counter, and a bathroom shelving unit. We had a few other things in mind that we were unable to find at our local USDGMM. We talked about maybe going across town to the other USDGMM but, an old injury of mine was starting to hurt so we decided to call it quits for the day.

Tomorrow I'll make some spaghetti and if you are interested in more details about that, then skip down to the last paragragh of this earlier post. *smacks head* In reading over the post I am linking to, I realized that I should be more specific about the garlic bread. Please don't put any almond paste, ricotta cheese, or bizarre extracts on your bread! *grins*

The shrikes are chuckling right now and the rest of you are scratching your heads. Have a good week!!

Menu for 12/15/2008

Mr. Hairball has requested that I make him some crusty bread that is good for dipping into olive oil. With that request in mind, I have put together the following menu:

Pasta with walnut sauce topped with skillet roasted chicken, salad, and cuban bread with seasoned olive oil for dipping

Nigella Lawson's Pasta with walnut sauce
6 ounces shelled walnuts
1/2 clove garlic, minced ( I add several more cloves)
1 slice bread, crusts removed
2/3 cup whole milk
1 ounce grated Parmesan, plus more for garnish
3 to 4 tablespoons olive oil (preferably Ligurian)
Salt and pepper
2 pounds any flat short pasta
1/2 cup chopped Italian parsley, for garnish

Put a large saucepan of water on to boil, and toast the walnuts in a dry frying pan until they begin to make a nutty aroma. Put the bread in a bowl and cover with the milk. Put most of the toasted walnuts (reserving about 1 ounce for garnish) into a blender along with the garlic, bread soaked in milk, and Parmesan. Blend until it turns smooth and creamy, then pour in the oil and season well with salt and pepper before blending again.

Pour into a bowl, and set aside. Add pasta to boiling water with salt and cook for the required amount of time. When pasta is al dente, reserve a cup of the pasta cooking liquid and then drain the pasta, but put it in to a large bowl while it's still dripping slightly with water. Sprinkle a little olive oil over the pasta to prevent it sticking together, and then add the walnut sauce, mixing it into the pasta (splash in a little pasta cooking liquid to make the sauce less thick if needed). Roughly chop the remaining walnuts and toss them over the top along with some more Parmesan and the chopped parsley.


Skillet roasted chicken- source unknown
The original recipe called for bone-in and skin-on chicken breasts and then you made a white wine based sauce for the chicken. I decided that I liked the chicken but preferred other sauces so I just started combining the chicken with other sauce recipes till I found ones I liked. Also, after trying this recipe with boneless skinless breasts, I decided that I preferred the harder texture of the exterior of the boneless breasts after roasting when combined with something like the walnut sauce. YMMV.

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts cut into 1 inch strips
salt and pepper
1 tsp vegetable oil ( I usually need more than this)

Adjust oven rack to lowest position and heat oven to 450F. Pat chicken dry with paper towels and season liberally with salt and pepper. Heat the oil in a 12 inch ovenproof skillet*** over high heat until just smoking. Add chicken and cook until light golden brown on both sides. Place the skillet and chicken in the oven and bake for 15-20 minutes. Remove chicken from oven and cut into the thickest piece to make sure it is cooked through. Cut up chicken into bite size pieces and place on top of the pasta with walnut sauce before you add the reserved walnuts, Parmesan and parsley.

*** If you don't own an ovenproof skillet, then use a preheated metal baking dish for the oven portion of the recipe. If you don't own a large enough skillet to brown all the chicken at one time, do it in batches.

Cuban Bread-recipezaar.com
1¼ hours | 25 min prep 2 loaves

2 cups whole wheat flour
2-4 cups white flour
2 tablespoons yeast
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon salt
2 cups hot water (120-130 degrees)

Mix the 2 cups whole wheat and 2 cups of the white flour together. Add the yeast, the sugar, and the salt.Pour in the hot water and beat for 100 strokes (or 3 minutes with a mixer).Stir in the rest of the flour until it is no longer sticky. Knead it for 8 minutes.Put the dough in a metal bowl that you have sprayed with cooking spray.Cover it with a damp towel.Let it rise for 15 minutes.Punch it down.Divide it into 2 pieces. Shape each piece into a round loaf and put them on a baking sheet that you have sprayed with cooking spray. Cut an x in the top of each loaf. If you want you can brush the top with water and put sesame seeds or poppy seeds on top.Put the pan on the middle rack of a cold oven.Put a pan of boiling water on the bottom shelf. Heat the oven to 400 degrees.Bake the bread for 40-50 minutes or until it is deep golden brown.
Note: If you want to use your food processor, put all the dry into the bowl. Turn it on and slowly add the water until the dough forms a ball. Let it spin 20 times. *** Be careful with using your food processor with this recipe. Mine was straining a bit at the end.

Hells bells, I got carded at the Mega-Mart!!! *faints*

Well, the lease is signed on the new apartment and we have taken some things over already. I'll be doing this throughout the week and leave the bigger things for when we get the moving truck and Mr. Hairball's minions. I stopped by my local Mega-Mart and bought some drinks for said minions. Hopefully in between drinks, pizza, and cold hard cash, the minions will be adequately compensated for lugging our furniture up and down the 'stairs of doom'.

I bought some Shiner Bock as well since that is the usual beer served at gatherings among Mr. Hairball's colleagues. As I was checking out at the Mega-Mart with the beer and several varieties of soda and some bottled water, two gentleman got in line behind me and started unloading their cart. The cashier then sheepishly turns to me asks me for my ID since I was buying beer. *snorting laughter* This was absolutely hysterical to me even after I saw that the register was prompting the cashier to do so if the customer appeared to be under 40 years of age. Um, just barely! *grins* Then the two gentlemen behind me told me and the cashier that they picked her lane because they liked my choice of beer! *big grin* I decided not to burst their bubble by letting them know that I haven't even drank a beer in years and will give whatever is left to one of Mr. Hairball's colleagues.

Tomorrow's activities will be: taking back the inspection papers so I can get the mail key, stopping by the moving truck rental place to verify our reservation and adding a dolly to it, taking several packages to the post office to be mailed, and making the above mentioned 9000 trips between the old and new place to take smaller things over.

I pulled out some chopped up smoked sausage out of the freezer today. In the morning I need to chop up mass quantities of garlic (We love garlic!!) and saute half of it in some olive oil, add some red wine and the smoked sausage, and let that simmer for a while then dump that in my trusty crock pot with some tomato puree and various seasonings and let it simmer all day. I need to pick up some romaine lettuce and crusty french bread and a couple of other things I forgot to get when I was at the dreaded Mega-Mart. For the bread: mix up the rest of the chopped garlic with some butter, a little olive oil, grated Parmesan, and Italian seasoning. Slice up about half of the french bread, spread with the garlic mixture and put it under the broiler for a bit after your spaghetti is boiled and drained. (It's your bread so play around with it and put whatever you want on it.) DON'T FORGET THE BREAD AGAIN AND BURN IT LIKE YOU DID LAST TIME AND TRY TO PASS IT OFF AS CAJUN STYLE!! Sorry, I'm not so good with the broiler! * Hairball shakes her fist and gives her broiler the stinkeye* Caesar salad is some tasty goodness with this spaghetti. Unless I get a burst of energy and make up the dressing tonight, I'll just ask Mr. Hairball if he'll make up some of his "measuring is for sissies" vinaigrette for us tomorrow night or *looks both ways and whispers* use some of that bottled salad dressing I have squirreled away in the pantry.

A good week to all and to all a good night!