High Holy Mass of Contradictions

I’m making a pizza (not the one pictured, although DON’T I WISH!), and I don’t have any music playing. This is most unusual. As I wander over to the laptop to remedy this situation, I thought I’d ask those of you who are music lovers and foodies: do you always have music playing while you cook, sometimes, never, or what? How does your music enjoyment interact with and overlap with your food enjoyment?

Originally published at Sticky, Sweet, & A Little Overdressed. You can comment here or there.

I made beef-style seitan on Sunday and stir-fried it with broccoli for dinner last night, and just ate leftovers of that for lunch. I am very pleased with the results. Yes. Very pleased.

That is all.

You may know this already, but one of the great undocumented features on Amazon.com is the ability to track the price fluctuation on items you "save for later" in your Shopping Cart. Nearly every day, I hit Amazon and click on "Cart" to see what messages appear to let me know if an item's price has increased or decreased (and they only appear the first time you access your cart, so don't miss them!).

One of the items I've been tracking for a while is this Cuisinart 14-cup stainless steel food processor. Its retail price is $400, but the average Amazon price over the past few months or so has been about $180-190. Once or twice, it's dropped to about $170, and I was sorely tempted to spring for it. But I always held off hoping it might go even lower one of these days.

Today it's down to $149.99. Moreover, Amazon is having a promotion for $25 off when you buy $125 or more in their Kitchen & Housewares department.

Needless to say, I sprang.

(Clearly lots of other people are springing too. As I write this, this item is the #2 seller in Kitchen & Housewares.)

All told, I spent $126.95, and that's including one-day shipping (only $3.99 with Amazon Prime) so I can get it tomorrow and play with it over the weekend. Whee!

Now I'm eyeing the KitchenAid Stand Mixer Attachment Pack set which is down to $89.99 when the lowest I've ever seen it drop before today was to about $120. I don't know if I'll really need most of those attachments when I'll already have a really good food processor, and I'd have to put in some extra hours to cover my spending spree. But I'm wondering if it'd be worth having.

Originally published at The Bee Hive. Please leave any comments there.

You know how I was talking about ordering that CSA basket from Plumgood Food? Well, it showed up Thursday and it was a bounty of vegetables. Something like 20-25 tomatoes, 20-25 okra, 8 ears of corn, 3 cucumbers, 3 leeks, 1 zucchini, 1 crookneck squash, 1 red bell pepper, 1 green bell pepper, 1 head of cabbage, 1 eggplant, and 1 cantaloupe. It barely fit into the fridge. And then I got overwhelmed by the idea of how to cook it all up and not waste any, so over the weekend we only ended up using, like, 2 ears of corn, 2 tomatoes, and the cantaloupe. I planned to make a big pot of ratatouille but it was always too much to think about.

Well, I’m home sick today but I had a little energy, so while I was taking a break from writing use cases, I started chopping some vegetables. And once I had the eggplant, peppers, zucchini, and okra chopped, I didn’t feel like going any farther. So I tossed them gradually into my big frying pan and sauteed them. The outcome is this:

I don’t think the picture does it justice. I tasted it a few times as I was finishing it up, and it’s amazing. I hardly added anything to it — just a healthy dollop of safflower oil at the beginning to get the juices goin’. It’s all veggie-flavor-power from there, baby.

And the bad news? After that little victory, I started to attack the tomatoes and found out they’re nearly all bad. Well, all the ones that the cats hadn’t already eaten since Thursday, that is.

Oh well. I have delicious eggplant stir-fry to enjoy for lunch for the next several days, and I’m happy.

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My cilantro plants were sky-high, so I was curious to try this cilantro pesto recipe stashed away in my recipe files. I made it last night, and Karsten said he felt like he was eating at a fancy restaurant in Monaco. Not sure about that, but it is pretty tasty.

( cilantro pesto recipe )

Karsten is hard at work putting the finishing touches on the verse melodies for "My Evil Twin." I feel like I should be working, too, but instead I've been messing around on LiveJournal.

I might do some baking today. It would be a good excuse to have the oven on and hover near it, basking in its warmth. We're going to a dinner party tonight and it would be nice to be able to bring a dessert along. The hostess says the menu includes a Chinese broccoli dish and a squash soup -- so what should I bring for dessert?

Also, could I possibly be more excited about getting together with tubenerd and oiran tomorrow? I don't think I could.

OK, wanna see a cute kitty? You know you do.

I did a whole mess of grocery shopping before lunch. Ate lunch, prepped veggies, and concocted three different soups:

• a brothy veggie-bean soup with TVP and Old Bay Seasoning, so it has a somewhat seafood-y quality about it


• split pea soup with carrots and imitation beef flavoring


• sweet potato and carrot soup with peanuts and black beans, blended until not quite smooth

I'm excited! This means I can eat soup for lunch for the rest of the week and still have leftovers in the freezer. Yay!

Had a happy surprise last night. I roasted a spaghetti squash and some diced beets, and when I forked the strands out of the squash and mixed them in with the beets, it made such a lovely swirly yellow-y orange-y red dish. And it was delicious!

Next time I'll throw some coarsely cut green bell peppers in, too, and it'll look all harvest-y.

Yum!

I left the office at lunch to work from home the rest of the day, and while we were eating lunch, toastytuft mentioned that he had a craving for sweet corn muffins. So I made them. They were not very sweet, though, so maybe I'm not such an ideal wife, unless it really is the thought that counts.