kitchen witchin

[dragonlady7]

via https://ift.tt/2X4ECOi

I wasn’t really doing any witching. I keep meaning to get into witchcraft, and never did, but someday, maybe I will. We’ll see.

Anyway I was having a really gross-feeling day, all full of unhappy feelings and the certainty that I was a Human Waste Of Space &c &c, and it only belatedly occurred to me, as I groped for but could not find the correct word for “drinking glass”, that it’s likely a time of the month issue. (I get anomic aphasia and a lot of mood instability at a particular point in my cycle that I can’t possibly ever predict, possibly because of the aforementioned… 😐)

But I got off my ass and did the kitchen things I’d been meaning to do.

Firstly, I’d been given a bunch of chicken feet at the end of processing. The lady who usually takes the most of them isn’t coming because of pandemic fears. Her father-in-law is coming, and takes some, but his freezer’s full. So one of the other ladies was taking the rest, and I asked if I could take a couple, meaning to give them to my coworker for his dog. “Please,” she said, “take– as many as you can–” so I took a gallon Ziploc bag full. (We can’t sell them, because we remove them in an unsanitary setting– if we had room to do it in the clean room we could sell them but the way the line is set up, we Do Not, so they are a members-only kind of benefit, and one popular enough that I’ve never benefitted before.)

They immediately didn’t fit in my freezer, which needs cleaning out, so they went right into the fridge for me to deal with this week. For lunch I consolidated down some frozen bao and ate the ones that didn’t fit, which made some room in the freezer. Then I roasted the chicken feet and the onions in the basement pantry that were starting to get gross, to preheat the oven.

Bonus: There’s a spare oven in my basement, and at this point it works better than the oven in my kitchen, and also it does not reside in a room I’m paying to air-condition, but rather in the basement which I’m paying to dehumidify, and having an oven on tends to dehumidify. So… I fully recommend, if you can, having a spare oven in your basement for the summer, it is the fucking best. I had to pitch multiple hissyfits and inconvenience several people in order to get it but I mostly don’t regret it despite how terrible that was, because having it is so awesome. (Also, huge bonus if you like to do immersion-dyeing, as the laundry sink is right there. Awesome.)

Then I put together and baked a batch of the King Arthur Flour Cream Scones, for which I’d specifically purchased cream. (I could have used milk and butter, and would do that next time, as I perpetually have too much milk going off and wind up keeping jars of it in my freezer and it’s stupid.) They need to chill in the freezer for 15 minutes before baking, and my work had meant there was room for them. Hah!

That gave the feet time to be done, so I pulled them out. I’d had to divide them in half to fit them into roasting pans, and so I brought up one pan, and threw it into the pressure cooker with the bag of Stock Trash I keep in my freezer– the bones from everything we eat, plus the ends of onions, the tops of carrots or beets or whatever, the trimmings of vegetables of all kinds. Topped that off with water, set it to pressure cook 30 minutes on high, and went to put the scones in. I pulled out the other, larger pan of feet, which is now cooling on the oven in the basement.

While the scones were baking, I cooked half a package of smoked jowl. (We’re out of bacon, at the farm, but we have a bunch of unsellable packages of jowls, which is an area of the pig that gets sliced into bacon, but these were too fatty. They are perfect to use to brown onions in.) I browned the rest of the dodgy onions, and then used the milk that’s about to go off to make a huge batch of béchamel sauce, which I’m going to convert into sauce mornay by adding shredded cheese once I get off my ass, and then I’m going to put together two casseroles of mac and cheese, one for now and one to bring to MM’s house this weekend. I doubt she’ll like it– she hates bacon– but her kids and husband will love it. And I’ll like the one I make for me, so.

The scones are done and I just had one with a big glass of chocolate milk and maybe I still feel like a garbage human but I am a garbage human with a whole bunch of food I didn’t have before, so that’s at least an undeniable victory.

None of my problems in life are solved, but I have scones now. So there.

Comments

[chamerion]

1. That all sounds delicious,
2. An oven in the basement is the dream and I'm very glad you prevailed in your quest to get one, and
3. I hope you feel better soon.

[dragonlady7]

ha, the quest wasn't so much getting one, but keeping it-- it's been disconnected or moved around, and while I can move an oven myself, I am not confident connecting gas lines. But i have prevailed, and it works, and it rules.