By jen
Ten Reasons I Have Been A No Blogging Bitch…
- The Holidays reek havoc on my ability to blog
- Daughter No. 3 was sick for over a week Ears became gastro intestinal became wheezing blah blah blah.
- Had house guests for two weeks
- Had shopping to do
- I am a lazy bitch and once I am in my jammies and click play on the first episode of NCIS in my queue I am DONE.
- The mourning phase for my 30s lost started early
- Television is more fun than anything else.
- I have been reading obsessively
- The world as a whole bores me.
- Did I mention I love my jammies and the bed?
By jen
Hope everyone is safe and sound, today is January 1, 2009… holy shit.
I AM FUCKING TURNING FORTY TOMORROW!
By jen
We actually exhibited some control this year… yeah I said, control.
By jen
John Walsh and his family can finally know some peace…
Hollywood, Fla., Police Chief Chad Wagner announced Tuesday that the department had concluded that Ottis Toole, a serial killer who died in jail in 1996, was the man who kidnapped and decapitated the young boy.
Click here to see photos related to the case.
The announcement brought to a close a case that had angered the Walsh family for more than two decades, inspired the television show about the nation’s most notorious criminals and triggered changes in how authorities search for missing children.
“Who could take a 6-year-old and murder and decapitate him? Who?” an emotional John Walsh said at Tuesday’s news conference. “We needed to know. We needed to know. And today we know.”
Adam Walsh would be around 33 year old now had he not been brutally murdered. Nearly three decades have past and still this child’s name is a household word. John Walsh’s dedicated and unrelenting need for justice as a father has brought about changes which make all our children safer and for that reason his son’s memory will forever mean something. I cannot even wrap my brain around what sort of pain and grief this family has endured from finding out their son was missing to discovering the way he as murdered. May this give them some closure and some much deserved peace. God bless…
By jen
I could personally remove his balls with a rusty pair of hedge clippers then choke him to death on them. The world is full of pieces of shit. Explain to me again why we cannot get the death penalty for baby rapists?
Pharr Texas: Child Writes to Santa begs for Sexual Abuse to Stop
PHARR, Texas — A 9-year-old girl’s letter to Santa Claus asking that a relative stop touching her and her sister has led to the arrest of a 55-year-old Pharr man on charges of continuous sexual abuse of a young child, according to a newspaper report.
Andres Enrique Cantu, 55, of Pharr, remained in the Hidalgo County Jail Monday night after his arrest Friday. His bond was set at $100,000. It wasn’t immediately clear if Cantu had an attorney.
The girl wrote the letter Thursday and turned it in at Cesar Chavez Elementary School, The (McAllen) Monitor reported. It wasn’t clear whether the letter was for a school assignment.
The newspaper did not identify the relationship of the man to the girl to protect her identity.
The charge against Cantu is a new one, created by the Texas Legislature last year. It is part of a series of changes to the penal code called Jessica’s Law, designed to heighten punishments of sexual predators.
If convicted, Cantu could face 25 to 99 years in prison.
By jen
Flashpoint
Ok, my TV OCD is in overdrive as I have documented a few times in the last weeks. First it was Sons of Anarchy, then it was fringer, then it was Life, then NCIS etc. Well, I was reading an article about the mid-season replacements on CBS and it appears they are bringing a show back from the summer called Flashpoint. I do not even remember it, but it is about a police tactical unit and well snipers, guns, and bombs are always going to get my attention. Looked it up and found out it was a Canadian show CBS picked up for the slow time that received really great feedback etc. Of course I have spent the last week seeking out the episodes online and found the first nine or Season 1 but then I found something called Season 2 pre-airs. I think maybe this is still first season stuff that maybe didn’t show everywhere, I am not certain. Nonetheless I watched all 13 episodes. They are all good, first few are definitely “Canadian” in style and appearance. I love Enrico Colantoni in just about everything I have seen him in. Mostly I am having a Mark Harmonesque moment about this Hugh Dillon guy. Oy…
Anyway back to the show…
It gets a bit corny at times and I cannot seem to get past the fact that Amy Joe girl who was the original Pink Power Ranger is one of the snipers but the show gets better as it progresses. It also appears to have gotten more money for production because it begins to look like a really slick CBS CSI type show in the final four episodes. Anyway, worth a watch when it comes back on after the new year.
w00t! Back to the jigsaw puzzle.
By jen
Ok, Target was a not quite a nightmare but by the look of the sales staff it had been so prior to my arrival. We got home and I finished with my Christmas decorating, yay Jen! I will post pics later when I find the right thing for over my fireplace. You know, my 12 foot ceilings are fabulous until you realize you have something like 7×5 in the way of space on the wall above the mantle. Oy…
Back to food…
I hate peas unless they are in a pasta salad. That said, Hubby loves peas and I decided to be a good wife and make some. True to most things, the simpler they are the more in love everyone is with them. I took four pieces of thick cut bacon and rendered it down with an onion. I drained three cans of Le Sueur Very Young Peas and saved the juice. I drained two cans of mushrooms and tossed the juice. After all the onions and bacon were cooked down I added the peas and mushrooms, tossed them about a bit with some creole seasoning then added the pea juice back along with some chicken stock. Let that cook about an hour on low and ooooooh it was good. That coming from a person who hates peas.
There was very little of the peas left over after the meal.
I also made cranberry sauce from scratch for the first time ever. This shit was yummy as well.
Cranberry Sauce:
- Took two bags (6 cups) of fresh cranberries
- Juice and zest of six (small) oranges
- 3/4’s cup of Graham’s Six Grape Ruby Port
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 tbl cinnamon
- 3 tbl cornstarch
In a small saucepan combine cranberries, orange juice and zest, port, sugar and cinnamon. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to simmering and cook until cranberries are tender, stirring occasionally. In a small cup make a slurry with cornstarch and 3 tablespoon water. Whisk cornstarch mixture into cranberry sauce and cook, whisking, until sauce thickens.
I am going to get some bagels and cream cheese and eat this stuff for breakfast. It is tart but sweet and I loved it. I still like the jelly kind in a can, but this was really nice and smelled fantastic.
We had company for dinner and they did not come empty handed.
Rocio and Carlos came with their daughter and brought a Pernil (pork shoulder roast) and Arroz con Gondules. I didn’t get a good pic of the pork, but it literally fell off the bone and we didn’t cut it because you could just fork off what you wanted.
Lee and his wife and son came as well. Lee brought boneless beef ribs and rice and beans as well. Lee is a grill God and his Trinidad heritage means he can flavor some food.
Yummmm
We also had Pie! I love Pie!
Apple crumb
Rocio’s Cheesecake which her mother said tastes like medicine… we thought it was pretty good. heh…
I love Costco Pumpkin Pie… the best $5.99 you will every spend.
Costco Pecan Pie, which was good but had too much filling. Notice my fabulous 4 inch thick end grain chopping block? That is my “find of a century” last year. It weighs a ton, is about 18×18 and cost me a big whopping 18 bucks! Yes, 18 bucks. It was originally $125. Yay me! It has a slight “defect” on the side no one can really see.
We also knocked out a bottle of Graham’s Six Grape Port and a bottle of Benjamin Australian Tawny Port which is almost as good as the Taylor Fladgate 10 tawny but not quite. I should have bought more port.
Anyway, it was a really nice day. I didn’t stress and the kids played without bringing down the house. After everyone left around 730 or so I unrolled the jigsaw puzzle the girls and I have been working on for a few days and we unwound a bit. Daughter No. 1 who had been home since Tuesdays was off to see her Granny and Granddad today for the rest of her long weekend and Hubby and the rest of us girls just enjoyed out day and ate leftovers… lots of left overs I am stuffed. I will make a gumbo either Tomorrow or Sunday with the turkey and some Andouille sausage I picked up last week and I will freeze the left over cornbread dressing and Mac & Cheese to be enjoyed over the next few weeks!
I hope everyone had a great holiday and if it was even half as nice as mine I know you did. Christmas season is upon us and if the insanity in the news today with the shoppers is any indication, it is going to be a doozy.
By jen
Ok, I took some pics and they will follow. Shitty phone quality but still you can see the outcome. Everyone had a great time and everything was DELICIOUS. I will include a few recipes because they are meant to be shared with the mankind after how amazing they were last night.
First: The Turkey That Made Angels Weep at its Glory…
This is what happens when you brine a turkey for over 12 hours then roast it…
I have never brined a turkey but I swore yesterday I will never make a turkey any other way.
Brine: 1.5 gallons water, 1 cup kosher salt, 1 quart apple juice, 3 oranges and four lemons cut and squeezed into the liquid, one cup brown sugar, black pepper corns, four sprigs rosemary, four sprigs thyme. Put it all in a garbage bag and the bag in the roasting pan then plopped in my 20 pound bird breast down and tied it up. Left it in the fridge overnight.
Baking: Pulled it out of the brine in the morning and it was plumped up. Dried off and stuffed the cavity with an onion, an orange, and two lemons then trussed the bird up tight so it was a nice consistent shape for even baking. Shoved it in a baking bag on top of four stalks celery, four carrots, a quartered onion, two sprigs of rosemary and thyme. I didn’t chop or skin anything other than the onion. I just wanted the veggies for the gravy which I will talk about later.
Baked the bird for exactly three hours and it was 180 degrees everywhere it was suppose to be. Removed it from the bag, wrapped it in foil and put it aside for later.
The gravy was excellent and I admit I got the idea from Tyler Florence on Food TV. I dumped the contents of the bag into the roasting pan and tossed in a couple of smoked turkey wings I bought at HEB and let it roast like that in another 30 minutes. I put the pan on the top of the stove over high heat, took out the turkey wings and added a slurry of flour to the veggies and drippings. Cooked it until thick and added some stock to make it go further. Strained it and had a glorious gravy that literally I could drink out of a mug.
We also had Cornbread stuffing. I have never made cornbread stuffing so this was a first and it was delish.
Sausage, grannie smith apples, and leeks were the magic in this recipe. Mmmm good.
Now the much anticipated and lauded star of the meal was Jennifer’s Death by Mac & Cheese…
That is what we start with. The recipe is as follows:
- 2 pound bags of large elbow mac prepared and set aside to cool. I douse em with cold water then toss a little olive oil to make sure they do not stick while I do the rest.
- Shred one pound blocks of the following cheeses: Sharp cheddar, Monterrey Jack, Guyere, Jarlsberg, Swiss, Mild Cheddar.
- One 8oz bag of Asiago shredded
- 1/2 large block of velveeta shredded or chopped small.
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 1 cup half-and-half
- 2 cups milk
- 1 stick butter (for roux)
- 1/3 cup flour (for roux)
- 3 eggs
Directions:
Beat eggs and toss into elbow mac in a LARGE bowl.
Spray two large casserole dishes or disposable metal ones.
Melt butter in heavy pot, I use my all-clad dutch oven because I hate splash.
Add flour and whisk until bubbling and barely starts changing color. Just long enough to cook the flour.
Slowly add milk and cream and half and half whisking to dissolve into roux.
Start adding shredded cheese and stir stir stir….
If it starts getting too thick add a bit more milk and keep stirring. I usually end up with about another 1/2 cup or so of milk going into the mix.
Add 3/4’s of the cheese to the sauce and make sure the asiago gets into the sauce, the other cheese are more melty. The sauce should be thick but still liquid. Add some milk if you are worried it is too thick. Once you have all this added to the sauce toss the rest of the cold cheese in with the bowl of mac and mix it up.
Pour the hot cheese sauce over the mac fold it until everything is coated… should look like this:
My recipe will give you two like this…
Bake for 30 minutes at 350 uncovered.
If you want you can bake it longer and get a little brown on the top… we prefer it without the brown, though it is good that way.
I will write another entry after I run to Target for Christmas Tree Lights… The Cranberry Sauce was TO DIE FOR as well… soon!
