day off

I am off today, off off off. That means I stayed up late last night getting the laundry started, and have already dived in again this morning. I did some writing last night. I have prepared to do some sewing today. Mostly, I will sort laundry and do pre-cooking for busy days this week. (I have plans for chicken casserole, then chicken soup; I also have plans for colcannon and possibly beef barley soup, all to be pre-prepared and then reheated during the week.)

I shouldn't complain; 40 hour weeks are great for the paycheck, and the store manager has been beyond sweetness itself with my schedule. This coming week, I have Sunday off, which is unprecedented and wonderful, followed by a normal-person schedule of 9-5 Monday thru Friday, which means that I can go Saturday to College of Three Ravens in Rochester and, most importantly, to the after-party at Dave and Liesl's. Woo hoo!! I gotta finish stitching the fur onto my sideless surcote, though, and that means I gotta figure out how to do it.
Which-all means I won't have any idle days off at home next week so I best get this laundry sorted and taken care of, which means-- off I go!!

But first, an aside:
Custom Brewcrafters' Double Dark Cream Porter is fucking fantastic, I should just mention. I picked up a twelve-pack of their Brewmaster's Assortment or whatever it's called, and Z has been drinking his way through it pretty much one daily. The others have been like, you know, it tastes like beer, that's nice. But this porter? Wow! So good. So I recommend it. (It's sort of local-- another Honeoye Falls joint-- so if you don't have these where you are, never mind.)

another recipe

Colcannon
Approx 1 1/4 lbs potatoes
3 cups thinly sliced cabbage
1 cup leeks, chopped-- or onions
1/2 c scalded milk
4 Tbsp butter
salt and pepper
Cut potatoes into one inch pieces. Cook until tender. Meanwhile, saute cabbage and leeks in 2 Tbsp butter. Add water if needed. About 10-12 minutes. Drain potatoes. Place potatoes with cabbage, mash, stir in milk, and remaining butter, and salt and pepper to taste.

I chopped and browned a pair of Polish sausages before I put the leeks and cabbage in to saute, and so reduced the butter a bit and used sausage fat instead. I've also had this with diced ham in it. I used the water the potatoes were boiled in, and added a chicken buillion cube, to moisten the cabbage and leeks, since they were so bulky and didn't really cook down in just the butter/sausage drippings. I used too much potato water, though, so it wound up pretty gloppy; still, it's stiffened as it's sat, and it wasn't bad.

Tasty, sticks to your ribs, is actually pretty good for you. Cabbage is, like, insanely nutrient-dense for how cheap and easy-to-store it is, but I just don't have enough recipes that present it appealingly, so I'm glad to have this one, a recent acquisition from my mother. (I don't know where she got it; she read it off to me.)

This recipe only takes about half a cabbage, though, so you've got to have something in mind to do with the other half of a cabbage. I mean, that's a good thirty cents' worth of groceries right there!! Wouldn't want to waste it. I'm going to attempt some sort of soup. Sometime in the next month before the rest of the cabbage goes bad.