Innernets cookin'

As I mentioned a few posts ago, the cooking hormones have kicked in again. And even though I have shelves full of cookbooks (seriously, around 50 of them are taking up precious bookshelf space), I've been wandering the net looking for simple but delicious recipes. So far, I've tried out these three:
- chick pea salad. Perfect because it only calls for 4 ingredients. Making it takes all of five minutes.
- cold sesame noodles. Maybe not perfect, but damn good. Simplest peanut sauce recipe I've come across. BTW, I used vegetable broth instead of chicken, and I added carrots and dropped the scallions (not a huge fan of the onion family).
- maple breakfast loaf. Perfect because I always have the ingredients (in one form or another) on hand. Also perfect because it doesn't have eggs, which I hardly ever have in the house. Have I mentioned my egg aversion?

Here a few others I have bookmarked for future cooking runs:
- biscuit muffins - biscuits but without the pesky rolling-out part
- tuna pasta salad - I think I'd make it with the edamame. Could be good in a laptop lunchbox.
- eggrolls - not what I would categorize under simple, but it sounds delicious. Maybe I can con the Guitar Hero into taking over head chef responsiblity for this one.

And this one could be good, but I wonder if I would actually go to the trouble of making them. I think gorging on regular potato chips once in awhile is perfectly acceptable.

Cravings

I'm lusting after
... rich, fudgy chocolate brownies
... crumbly peanut butter cookies
... melt-in-your-mouth oatmeal butterscotch cookies
... greasy cheesy pepperoni pizza from Minsky's
... wheat thins and vegetable thins and, oh my god, triscuits
... melty cheese quesadillas with fresh guacamole
... hot from the fryer cheese-topped tator tots
... Cap'n Crunch and Crunch Berries and, damn it, Peanut Butter Crunch
... and a large Diet Dr. Pepper followed by a pitcher of margaritas to wash it all down.

Yep, the Doctor's feelin' kinda klassy today.

The doctor's cuckoo for the perfect outfit

I sometimes wonder if I might have a touch of OCD. Seriously. The people who know and love (and are sometimes highly annoyed with) me don't wonder this; they, indeed, know it to be a fact. My little case of obsessiveness manifests itself most prominently in one aspect of my life: namely, answering the question of what to wear. And although it sounds a bit like a joke, and, let's face it, it really can be, sometimes it's just very frustrating. Less than three weeks ago I spent two mornings in a row nearly in tears because after putting on and then tearing off half of my closet, I still felt like I didn't have that perfect outfit to wear and was reduced to boring mediocrity. On both occasions I arrived at work an hour later than normal. Keep in mind, people, that I only live fifteen minutes away from my office - my saving grace is flexi-time and approximately a billion hours of overtime saved up. Things have gotten better since then, thank god. I've done some shopping (losing weight had actually left some holes in the ole spring/summer wardrobe) and I've been really, really good about planning what I'm going the next day before I go to bed. That alone has been a huge help. But the whole thing makes me so mad at myself. It's such a superficial thing, and I know much of it has to do with my own securities about how I look (that's another month of posts in and of itself). And I'm also angry that I can't just accept this one thing about myself, that my brain has a bit of faulty wiring, and work with it instead of trying to fight it. So if you see the Doctor tripping over is today a black sweater or green t-shirt day, please don't judge her. She's not trying to be a fashionista bitch. She just didn't do her job of wardrobe planning the night before.

Good and bad

Some completely non-life-changing good and bad stuff from the past few days:

First, the bad: Veronica Mars got cancelled. Which sucks. Why oh why do TPTB have to hate us so much? Will the Guitar Hero and I be stuck watching According to Jim come fall?

And the good: My cooking hormones have kicked in again. Finally mastered a hummus recipe, baked some chocolate chip cookie bars AND made a kick-ass rice salad that you should go make now. Seriously. It's just rice, chickpeas, celery, dried cranberries, pumpkin seeds, tomatoes and parsley with a dressing of tahini, olive oil and lemon juice. So simple, yet so delicious. It's the type of salad that's perfect for a laptop lunchbox.

Now should I torture the Guitar Hero tomorrow with the fresh asparagus I picked up at the market?

American Idol I am not

Last night the Guitar Hero and I had some friends over for a little karaoke. And guess what we discovered? I suck. Really. I had the worse score of all of us on the little singstar game. According to singstar, I can't carry a tune to save my life. For those who have had the (mis)fortune to hear me sing, this might not come as the biggest surprise. On the other hand, perhaps my sad, sad scores had to do with my choice in songs. I guess I really don't sound like Mick Jagger or OutKast. I was somewhat better at the rapping parts. Maybe there's a place in the music business for a mid-thirties middle-classe white female hip-hopper with no street cred?
At any rate, I guess we can add this to the list of things I'm not any good at. Here's a partial list:
1) physics
2) sports, particularly those involving running and catching/throwing/hitting balls
3) finding the 8 count in dancing
4) singing

To offset my suckiness and save my self-esteem, here are a few things I'm good at:
1) acting
2) cooking
3) shopping
4) Trivial Pursuit

Sitcom moment

Hilarious sitcom moment today in the rather staid lives of the Doctor and the Guitar Hero. We were walking to the supermarket and the Guitar Hero kept complaining about how hot he was. We stopped so he could take off the sweatshirt he had on under his jacket and over his t-shirt, which is when he realized that while getting dressed this morning he'd forgotten to take off his pajama top. The extra layer he had on might explain why he was so hot. I thought I was going to piss my pants laughing. Color me weird, but I tend to take one set of clothes off before putting another set on.

Damn, it's May

I feel like the laziest frigging blogger. It's been almost two weeks since I've updated, and for that I'm sorry. We went to Paris and had an awesome time. Two words: Sephora; cheese. Damn, what more could you want of life? More on that later, once I've uploaded my pictures. Can I just say I hate the administrator function this damn laptop has? I have to jump through 45 fucking hoops to down- and upload pictures. Not cool. I am lusting after this cute mac.
Want it, want it, need it. If I go back to free-lancing full-time, it's definitely mine. It's called a tax write-off, people. If it were available in red, I'd already have it, that's how much I want it.

What else is going on here? I made some fucking delicious hummus. It only took me 6 years of trying. There are epic novels that cover shorter periods of time. You cannot, however, eat them.

I discovered this cool site, The Slow Roll. I could suggest so many films for it, but that might be because the Doctor's a bit of a film bitch. I can totally deal with crap films, and can, in fact, even enjoy them, but the mediocre ones make me crazy. Mediocrity's for jackasses, my dear friends. I think that one entence may have had two or eight too many commas. Once again, can't get the Kansas out of the girl.

Newest sucky thing about Hamburg: Blades of Glory is NOT showing in English. Bastards. Why's the city gotta be hating on me like this?

Got some ideas for some future posts. Let's see if the idea to fruition concept can come to pass...