Quarantine Cooking: California Dagwood

I'm grateful for living in a beautiful state.

I think I've posted before that sandwiches are my favorite, and I feel like avocado and sprouts seems to be a Northern California, a foodie haven, hippie specialty. Hence, the sandwich I call the California Dagwood.

And no sandwich is complete for me unless there are also salad greens like mesclun and arugula.

And home preserved pickles.

When I'm retired, I will eat a sandwich every day for lunch.

Getting Creative with Leftovers

I had leftover rice noodles and peanut sauce and shrimp from Vietnamese spring rolls. And leftover butter lettuce from hamburgers the previous night and leftover blanched green beans and sugar snap peas and petite green peas from the paella. I thought I was going to use the shrimp in Louie salad and then make Asian pork meatball to finish off the rice noodles and peanut sauce and then make a small paella to finish off the vegetables. And then thought well that's so much more work and that's dumb. I dumped the rice noodles and shrimp and produce into a container and then topped it with even more greens or herbs of chopped scallions, Thai basil, and cilantro.

I also didn't have enough peanut sauce to use on the salad, but luckily a bottle of Japanese miso dressing to extend it.

No sad lunch.

Crafting and Cooking Forever

I just splurged on 4 glass food-oriented Christmas ornaments--they might arrive after Christmas, but no matter. I'm thinking of decorating another tree with just my favorite ornaments though it would entail moving a chair into another room or getting rid of it?  I dunno. My foodie Christmas tree might then just be up next year. 

Before my wreath decorating, I had mixed up ground beef with ketchup, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, Old Bay, granulated onion, granulated garlic and panko into footballs then browned them in a little canola. I removed the meat from the cast iron and set it aside. Next I softened and caramelized chopped onion and mushroom (forgot garlic! but that's okay it was inside the meat though in powder form) in the meat drippings with additional butter and fresh picked thyme. Added flour to the onions and mushrooms and broth to cook down and thicken into a gravy. Turned off the stove and plopped the meat into the mushroom gravy and covered the cast iron with a glass lid. Cooked an additional hamburger patty sans onions or salt or spice for my dog. Peeled and cut potatoes for boiling. Mixed frozen French cut green beans and some French fried onions with a can of cream of chicken soup and a few tablespoons of milk in a glass casserole dish.  ALMOST done dinner.

I had bought two pineapple ornaments last year that dismayed me--they were rather large and disproportionate for my pencil tree. I decided to use them to instead embellish two Christmas wreaths for my nephew and niece. I decorated a wreath for Josh already last weekend, but it looked a bit barren. Balls! It needed more balls. Better I think with more balls. I also hot glued some more citrus slices. Josh will also get a boozy gift basket for making more piña coladas. 

For my niece I used the girly pink pineapple and wanted pink glass balls, frosted and matte and shiny, to further decorate but alas could find none. I saw some wooden DIY ornaments at the craft store and decided to break out my pink acrylic paints and find pink glitter.

I really like them. And they light up. Win win. I found live wreaths for only $20 at Grocery Outlet and bought 3. I want to turn them from meh to marvelous. That bow had to go!

Cute methinks but I think it still needs something something. Therefore, I'm picking up some glittery pink balls I found online this morning at Target.

And since I'm here in my school's city, I'll stop at its Target and look for more rose-colored glass balls. I've got two more wreaths to decorate--a rustic Christian-themed one for my brother and a rustic and muted pink or pale rose one for myself with a couple of embroidered samplers of Christmas greetings like "Home (in quarantine) for the Holidays" and "fa la la la la, la la la la" and "Merry & Bright." You get the idea. 

And then it was time to get dinner on. Every dish except for the mashed potatoes just had to be put into the oven.

Green bean casserole because when one has only cooked Thanksgiving for two and reduced it to turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and one green vegetable, one brings into the rotation after the holiday those sides that were missing. Also one has to improvise when you don't have cream of mushroom soup and why am I writing in third person? I think my can of cream of chicken soup was for another recipe, and so I was happy to shop my pantry. Also I already had mushrooms in the Salisbury steak.

All that prep allowed me to pop the green beans and Salisbury steak into a 450 degree oven for 30 minutes. The mashed potatoes actually took longer than the half hour I anticipated. What the heck? It actually took 40 minutes to get these dishes on the table though I did also chop chives to sprinkle atop the mashed potatoes.

This time I actually cleaned the rim while plating. And spooned cranberry orange relish on to my plate to continue that Thanksgiving vibe.

And now what am I gonna cook tonight? I do have more mushrooms and some leftover cooked Italian sausage, which will make for a tasty white pizza. I can bring leftover soups and a bit of crab to lunch tomorrow and make a seafood pasta dinner for tomorrow evening with the rest of the crab. My obsession on what to make for dinner occurs alongside my need to craft. More wreath decorating tonight.

The Craft of Organizing and Wreath Decorating

Sometimes but lately a bit more often, I get the urge to de-clutter, which for years meant I would just re-locate one pile of mess from one room to another. And then I turned my workplace into craft storage. I brought yet another box of fabric to work and found these finished and unfinished Xmas projects--like a cute tree skirt (but where is its matching runner with snowflakes?), a potholder (and I'll stitch another or even an oven mitt from the rest of the hexies and hey they don't need to be the same size or can be ginormous and I can give them to my sister-in-law).

I also found these coordinating fabrics for a mermaid-themed quilt, again which I need to sew before the babies I know all grow up. I think it's time to give my 2-year-old grandniece a quilt for her to drag around to play spaces and for napping.

And I've actually started getting rid of unfinished projects, half-baked ideas, and wishful thinking because finally I'm been getting real with myself and can be okay with a creative endeavor that's not gonna happen. Two weeks ago, I cleared my bedroom floor to make room for a new dresser and because I purged, all foldable clothes fit in its drawers--no more storage containers for clothes not in season.

    

I love not having to step around stuff and am sure the hubs appreciates it hugely. Last night I cleared my dining room table and began getting ruthless again with getting rid of books. I've got piles of books TEMPORARILY as I read them and return them to the library or give it away to someone else to read. Below are cookbooks I wanna pore through over the winter break, a quilt book to inspire or draw design from for that mermaid quilt with lots of negative space, and magazines that I give to my friend Malak after I've read them. The magazines also contain some quotable quotes on their spines to Instagram.

My stack of journals and sketchbooks to be shelved on my bookcase as I get rid of books.

A stack of current and upcoming winter reading.

Three stacks of books at my bedside. Not too shabby. I justify all the books for work. I am a librarian after all.

For the past month, I've felt disappointed by people. And really it's not them, it's me and my unrealistic expectations. A neighbor whom I excluded from my bubble because I was freaking out over all the infection rates and hurt, made a dig at me, saying she was avoiding people (me) who are neurotic and negative (and I wondered if she was projecting because I find her emotionally draining). Perhaps she's right though. I don't regret breaking up with her, however. I'm appreciating the alone time, the very precious and little time I have after work to create and cook and decompress. I think my insecurity at not being enough is always getting in the way of me telling my story and my self-awareness and in the way of knowing that life is imperfect and messy and sometimes heartbreaking, making it all the more important to practice self-compassion.

Cooking and Ceramics: Creating Comfort for Chilly Evenings and Adventures in Glazing

We've only 2 and half more weeks until winter break, and I'm hoping to jump into my other hobby of sewing in that upcoming time off. In the meantime, I've been cooking for comfort because the hubs complained about last night's dinner of lobster bisque and bread and salad ("Soup again?" Umm, dude soup was two nights ago. Last night we ate leftovers which didn't have to be soup). It all started with a mini loaf of sourdough bread that a neighbor gifted us which called for soup. I remembered the roasted Anaheim chili peppers I had in my fridge as well as the couple jars of bone and vegetable broth I made and the odds and ends of celery and onions and leftover heavy whipping cream. I did make a run to the store for leeks and artichoke hearts. I suppose I shouldn't undertake the risk in this pandemic of going to the grocery store so often, but if I didn't, I'd go stir crazy from being so cooped up. Over the winter break, I'll be walking to the supermarket instead of stopping by after work.

Most of my cooking starts with sautéing aromatics in butter or olive oil or both, and I began with the cream of artichoke soup first. Into the pot went the leeks and onions and then eventually the garlic.

Next the artichokes and one jar of bone and veggie broth. I also started my second soup pot with sautéing just onions and garlic.

And then throwing into that second soup pot, the green chilies and another jar of bone and veggie broth while letting my first pot of artichoke soup come to a furious boil before turning it down to a simmer.

And then doing the same to my second soup pot. At Duarte's Tavern in Pescadero, if you can't make up your mind between the cream of artichoke soup or the cream of green chilies soup, they'll pour half of each side-by-side into your soup bowl--and so that's what I did. I liked both though I wasn't expecting the slight bitterness of those green chilies, which just made me recall of Filipino roots of ampalaya or bitter melon in a soup. I riffed on Duarte's recipe however by topping it with lump crab meat. Hubs said he wasn't going to eat his soups that way though it did gratify me that he ate both.

You can kind of tell from the picture above that the artichoke soup is on the left and the green chilies soup is on the right. I like having options, and I like having it all it seems.

Over the weekend I also went to a wreath decorating workshop fundraiser for multiple sclerosis. I thought I was going to bring some cooking utensil tree ornaments and then embellish with cinnamon sticks and citrus slices, but then discovered these two rather large glass pineapple ornaments that I was going to use to give and use as decoration for gift wrapping. I asked my niece and nephew whether they liked piña coladas, and Josh said yeah. And so the wreath below is for him and his family, along with a basket of additional bottles of rum and cans of pineapple juice and coconut milk.

And there was still a good bit of afternoon for getting back to ceramics. I had quite a few glazed pieces to photograph for my Pottery Log. Below are two salt crocks I'm going to gift the niece and nephew along with canisters of pink Himalayan salt.

I'm loving the combination of pink and brown. Below is a speckled buff mug on which I played with low fire glazes and underglaze. I decided to adhere a decal of medieval sailing ships on the runny blue glaze.

Below is another speckled buff mug that looked so plain with just gloss white glaze, and so I adhered a few red poppies.

So much fun! I affixed more decals just this morning.

I've still a bit of bisque ware that also needs glazing, and so yeah more of that brown and pink combination coming. Mama bowl below.

Papa bowl is an even deeper pink.

And a sweet-looking pink for the baby bowl.

And wrapped up some speckled buff mugs to use and show off at work.

And then it was home for more leftovers.

Baked a Thanksgiving Pie with the last of the turkey, gravy and mashed potatoes, eaten with a side of cranberry orange relish.