10 Wonderful (and Food Related) Things about Ryan

Today is Ryan’s 25th Birthday!  I know, he’s crazy young, right?  This is the last year that we’ll both be in our 20s, so today to celebrate we’re going to: (1) consume 4 types of street drugs, (2) drink too much and feel no ill effects the next day, (3) meander in a liberal arts degree, (4) have low self esteem but not realize it until we’re in our 30s when we finally feel “comfortable in our own skin”, (5) feel the biological urge to have children without the financial assets to support children, and (6) belong to a group of five to six amazing friends who have wacky adventures, on and off again feelings for each other, but always have each others’ backs.

1. Ryan’s favourite food is my homemade pizza and sauce.  Awww.
2. Ryan has the metabolism I want.  I can’t resent him for it because I’m pretty sure he’s passed it on to our offspring.
3. Ryan has never said anything negative about anything I’ve every cooked.  The worst he’s ever said is that it’s decent.
4. Ryan will try any type of food.  At least twice.
5. Ryan prides himself of not being a picky eater.  He once gagged at the dinner table because he didn’t want to admit that he hated spanakopita.
6. Ryan will compose a song for almost any item of food he’s feeding to Walt.  Often the song involves a pun, a painful, painful pun.
7. Ryan supports me taking pictures of my food – both the food I make at home and the food I eat at restaurants.
8. Ryan will share his food even when he doesn’t want to.  As an only child, this is foreign to me.
9. Ryan buys potato chips and hides them around the house because I’m hard core addicted.  He brings the chips out when I’ve forgotten about them which makes me super excited.
10. The most vivid memory Ryan has of the day I went into labour with Walt is the pulled pork sandwiches we made for dinner that night.

Happy Birthday, Ry!

A Brief and Depressing List of Recent Failures

Well, the bright and shining examples of my culinary skill have been few and far between in the last three weeks.  Instead I hope for edible but often end up with mediocrity at best, explosions(!) at worst.  Here is a list that correlates with my ever decreasing self esteem:

• Not one, but two burnt batches of granola.  We keep eating it, however, because it’s too effing hot to make bread.  Every morning I have to pick the hard-as-rocks cranberries out of my cereal.

• Charred barbecued pizzas.  I made the crust by hand, simmered the sauce for hours, and then managed to burn the pizzas in 4 minutes on the barbecue.  We peeled off the doughy tops and ate those.

• Wild rice and broccoli casserole in the slow cooker (pre-explosion!).  This dish was the perfect manifestation of “meh”.  The best that Ryan could come up with is, “It’s filling.”

• Soggy Chinese cabbage salad because I couldn’t find organic ramen noodles so I subbed in sesame snack mix.  These do not hold up well with dressing.  The dish because even more of a fail when you accidentally buy the honey mustard flavoured sesame snack mix.

The only good that has come from this is that every time I complete a dish that is sub-par I feel like a failure.  And every time I feel like a failure I think of  Charlie Brown.  And thinking of Charlie Brown makes me think of Arrested Development‘s parody of the Charlie Brown walk.  And, obviously, Arrested Development makes me happy.

My Slow Cooker Exploded

Well mostly imploded, but it was just as traumatic.  This is very sad because during hot weather I’m addicted to my slow cooker.  This seems counter intuitive because using a slow cooker does radiate a great deal of heat.  But I’m crafty and have an extension cord, so when the weather gets hot I plug my slow cooker in outdoors.  Fancy? Yes.  Bear aware? No.

But back to the imploding.

Now this might have been somewhat my own fault.  I was making baked beans, but didn’t soak the beans long enough.  I though that the magic of the slow cooker would take care of that.  But it didn’t.  So instead of serving the dish for dinner that night, I decided to cook it on long throughout the evening and send it for lunch with Ryan the next day.  Then around 10:15pm we heard glass shattering.  I can honestly say in that moment I wished that it was the sound of a burglary, but instinctively I knew, however, it had to be the slow cooker.  At least with a break in, we’d have lunch for the next day.  And more sympathy.  And probably all of our stuff, because our stuff isn’t really good enough to steal.  Well, except for our baby.  Crazy internet people, please don’t steal my baby.

Ryan and I then spent the next hour cleaning up glass shards from our kitchen counter, floor, sink, and various organizational baskets that seemed like a good idea at the time, but not so much when there’s an explosion in my kitchen.  I’m not proud to admit that the whole thing was so depressing that I ended up going to bed, making Ryan take care of the disposal of the slow cooker.

So now we have a functioning slow cooker with no lid, which is how the magic of slow cooking happens (some believe that every time you open the lid on your slow cooker, you increase cooking time by 20 minutes).  In my attempts to be both frugal and environmental, I’m making an effort to not buy anything new unless I absolutely have to.  But I’m scared of a used slow cooker.  Especially since my list of slow cooker catastrophes as increased from two (fire, tackiness) to three (explosions!).  We’re hoping to buy a replacement lid, but, if that doesn’t work out, I’m not sure what to do with the remaining pieces.  All I can think of is small pet coffin.  Is that macabre or am I just thrifty?  For our dog, Newton’s sake, I hope I’m just thrifty.