Four days off work and what did I do with all that extra time? Cooked and cleaned. I didn't play any video games, hardly spent any time on the computer, and I didn't read more than 100 pages of the book I'm reading. Who am I? When did I turn into *this kind* of grown-up? I'll have to make up for it by slacking off for the rest of the week. I EARNED IT.
I did enjoy the cleaning though (I KNOW). I hauled, no exaggeration, probably around 30 garbage bags of STUFF out of our apartment. A few bags of books were sold to a used book store ($70!!), a lot of it was donations, a bunch of it was recycling, and a bunch of it was just trash. Four garbage bags were full of blankets that I put out in the alley on New Year's Eve for the homeless people who dig through the garbage back there - I was glad to see the blankets were gone by morning. The apartment is still quite dirty (OMG THE DUST), but I have to say I feel a lot lighter, like I myself have lost a bunch of weight just by getting rid of a bunch of stuff we didn't need. Our fire safe is organized, all the photographs in the house are scanned into the computer(s), our closets and under-bed-storage are cleaned out and organized, the Christmas decorations are put away in new plastic storage bins, and it feels So Good. (My 19 year old self is sitting back in 2000 rolling her eyes at current-me, because I am just SO UNCOOL OMG.)
I also did a bunch of cooking. I made (and froze) a giant crock pot of pulled chicken, another of chili, cheesecake swirled brownies, pork burgers, and a partridge in a pear tree Jacques Pepin potatoes. (Thank you to Jonniker for recommending those potatoes. YUM. They are right up there with Pioneer Woman's crash potatoes in the list of potato-dishes-I-want-to-marry. If only the legislature would get off their collective asses and make human-vegetable marriage legal!)
Which reminds me, have I ever mentioned that I meant to start a food/cooking blog once upon a time sometime last year? The amusing part being I'm not actually a very good cook. I mean, I'm not bad enough to end up on Worst Cooks In America or anything (is anyone else watching that show?). I get along fine, but I'm not at all in the league of food bloggers. The idea was to write the blog as I learned to cook, sort of showing how-to-learn-to-cook. But I didn't really learn much in the kitchen last year, so I suppose it is a good thing I didn't actually write that blog. I do have (poor quality) photographs of several things I do cook stored on my computer in case I ever change my mind.
All this food talk, and I'm totally planning on having popcorn for dinner. So much for my grown-up self.
