Two Weeks Until:

SPRING BREAK! Okay, so I don't actually get a spring break, but I'm taking a week of vacation and tagging along with the hubby and his b-school section on their spring break. I've never really had a stereotypical spring break vacation -in college, we always had track stuff to do over break so I never got to go somewhere tropical and drink my face off. So I am looking forward to this. :)

I'm hoping to return to work with a bitchin' tan and improved flip cup skills. (Well, not that you can really improve upon perfection, but I'll try.)

Let the countdown begin!

Movin' On Up

I just moved in to my very own office! Finally, after six years of being a cubicle slave in one form or another. (Okay, so I had a shared office for a brief period of time at my job in LA. But that was only for a couple of months and we NEVER got ANYTHING accomplished in there because my officemate and I were always chatting!)

I think I'm going to get a couple of prints from the wedding framed and put them up in here. :)

YAY for finally having a door!

Ten Steps to Short Rib Heaven

I inherited exactly one "domestic wifey" trait, and it is that I LOVE to cook.

Fortunately, the hubby and I also LOVE to eat, so this works out well. In particular, the hubby LOVES Beef Short Ribs, so I decided to make them for dinner last night. And I don't intend to turn this into a recipe blog, but they came out so well that I had to share!!

Loosely based on this recipe from epicurious.com. However, I modified it quite a bit because I think cooking is more fun that way, and also did not feel like burning down our apartment building by setting boiling wine on fire.

Beef Short Ribs with Cab Sauce

Beef Short Ribs, 4 LBS (I used two, but four would have been appropriate given the amount of sauce I made!)
One bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon or other dry red wine
Shallots, 8-10
Garlic, 1-2 heads
Grape tomatoes, 1-2 C
Dried rosemary
Salt
Pepper
Brown sugar


(Oh YES, that is a double-wide bottle of wine. I used half of it for this recipe and, uh, not sure what happened to the rest. I'm classy like that!)

Step One: Pour wine into a small pot and bring to a moderate boil. Cook to reduce by half, about 25-30 minutes.

Step Two: While the wine is reducing, brown the short ribs on all sides in a large skillet over medium heat, about 2-3 min on each side. Do this in batches if they won't all fit in the pan at once!


When they're done, put 'em on a plate and set 'em aside.

Step Three: While the wine is reducing and the ribs are browning, prepare the garlic and shallots. Just peel 'em and cut any really big pieces in half:


And also wash your little tomatoes:


Step Four: Put the garlic and shallots into the pan that you browned the ribs in. Sautee until nice and golden brown, about 8-10 minutes.


Step Five: Your wine is done reducing now. Remove shallot/garlic pan from heat and pour reduced wine in. Add tomatoes, and let sit for a minute or two. Stir in salt, pepper and rosemary to taste.



Step Six: Put ribs in crock pot. Pour the stuff in the skillet over the top of it. Set on low and go do something else for the next seven hours.


Step Seven: Remove ribs from crock pot and place on a baking sheet or broiler pan. Set aside. (Mine fell completely off of the bone when I moved them. YUM!) Pour the rest of the mixture back into the skillet from whence it came. (Or a different skillet, doesn't matter!) Set aside and let everything cool off for a little while, about 20-30 minutes.

Step Eight: Your saucy mixture will probably have a nice layer of oil/fat on the top, thanks to that delicious fatty meat that cooked in it all day. Skim off as much of it as you desire, then return pan to medium heat. Taste the sauce. If it's too tomato-y or acidic for your taste, add some brown sugar. I added about a tablespoon. Reduce sauce to desired consistency.


(Oh god, YUCK, how badly does my stove need to be cleaned? Unfortunately, I didn't inherit the "likes to clean" domestic wifey trait!)

Step Nine: Turn on broiler. Place short ribs right up under there and broil until reheated through and nice and crispy on top - this should take just a couple of minutes. (I don't have a picture of this, and frankly I am pretty glad that I don't, seeing how dirty my stove looks in print. The oven floor is pretty much a graveyard of cooking projects past!)

Step Ten: Place each short rib on a pile of something nice and carb-y. I did a celery root puree (thanks to Kelly for the awesome recipe!) but mashed potatoes, rice, pasta, risotto...whatever would work. Top with sauce and serve! (I added a little spinach-strawberry salad, too, to give the meal some element of healthiness!)


That's it, just ten steps! Ok, so it's not exactly as easy as popping a frozen pizza in the oven, but for a dish that most people probably only eat in restaurants, it's not that hard. And cooking in a crock pot is always fun; you can just sort of put whatever you want in there and at the end of the day, everything melts together into a delicious mess. :)

Enjoy!

Size Matters

Q: What do you do when someone jacks your big screen TV?
A: Buy an even bigger one, of course!

Last December while we were away for the holidays, our apartment was burglarized. It wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been, but the assholes took our nearly-brand-new LCD TV. Fucking bastards.

Now, until very recently, I had never really understood why people got so excited about their damn TVs. For the first year after I graduated college, I didn't even own a TV. And a TV is a TV, right? The content is the same, does it really matter if you're watching it on a plasma or DLP or LCD? And honestly, who really needs 42" of screen?

As it turns out...I DO. Holy crap, was that TV amazing. It was a 42" LCD and even after owning it for two months, my jaw dropped every time I turned it on. Freaking amazing. And now it's making jaws drop in the home of some thug. (Or sitting on a pawn shop shelf, probably.)

So the hubby and I have been sans TV for the last two months. This has given us the opportunity to revisit all of the debates and dilemmas we had when we were TV shopping last fall. Does having a top-notch brand matter? Can we really tell the difference between 720p and 1080p? And...was our last TV really big enough?

YES, YES and NO. :) However, in the interest of not spending all of our disposable income for the year, it was agreed that we'd have to compromise on one of these three points: brand, picture quality and size.

Well, my amazing hubby scouted out a phenomenal deal online, wherein we are getting the SAME AWESOME TV we had before, but TEN INCHES BIGGER! Behold, the Sharp Aquos 52" LCD:

Fifty-two-freaking-inches. DROOL. To be delivered next week. I can't wait!!

And yeah...the part of me that loves reading books and brisk walks outside just died a little. :)

How Very Romantic

So, how did I spend my first Valentine's Day as a married girl? In the company of a medium cheese pizza from Pizza Hut.

Normally I fly home on Thursday nights, but this week I had a meeting on Friday morning that I couldn't get out of. Not that the hubby and I had any grand V-Day plans. Personally, I view it is one of the dumber holidays out there. Watching the news one morning this week, I heard a newscaster introduce some fluff piece on V-Day: "Only 24 shopping hours left until the most important day of the year for couples." Are you effing serious? GAG ME. That is almost as bad as Christmas music before Thanksgiving.

Now, the Fourth of July - that is a holiday I can get behind. No exchanging of overpriced gifts, no ridiculous music, no sappy greeting cards. Just a day off of work to chill in the sunshine and drink beer. Or St. Patty's Day - really, the only proper way to celebrate is to set aside a day of your life to get hammered. All holidays should be so simple and enjoyable!

Anyway...it's been a rather long week and I am very much looking forward to relaxing for a couple of days. :)

Major Nerd Alert

You know, I really do wish I had some crazy stories to share. But things on the homefront have been relatively tame recently. I don't know if it's the cold New England winter that's driving us to stay in the comfort of our cozy apartment, or what. But the hubby and I have had more movie nights than crazy drinking nights lately.

Take last Saturday night, for example. We had a nice dinner out and upon our return home, the call of pajamas was stronger than the call of the bar. It was a perfect night to watch a movie, even with our sadly depleted supply of Netflix DVDs.

Enter: the Internet. Netflix has been advertising a new feature where users can watch movies instantly online. We decided to give it a shot. Over a couple of glasses of wine, we pored over the selection of movies available...which was, shall we say, eclectic. I don't know if it was the Pinot Noir talking, but when we came upon one such selection, I burst out in excitement: "THE NEVERENDING STORY!"

I know you guys remember this movie. The one with the enormous flying dog with the pearls on its back? Oh yeah. We were going to spend our Saturday night watching The Neverending Story. Last viewed in: 1987.



And so we did...and enjoyed it. Is was SO BAD that it was GOOD. Honestly, though - what were the people who made this movie smoking? (And where can I get some?)

Basic synopsis: a dorkish kid, Bastian, gets bullied on the way home from school. He takes refuge in one of those dusty old bookstores that only exist in movies, because if they existed in real life they would never have any customers at all. He steals a mysterious looking book, against the advice of the shopkeeper ("This book is NOT for you!") and takes it to the attic of his school (because every elementary school has an attic, right?) where he proceeds to spend the night reading the book. As a nasty thunderstorm shakes the shutters of the attic, Bastian is transported into the story itself, which takes us to Fantasia. "The Nothing" is consuming Fantasia, and only a human child can save it. (Wherever will they find one? I hear elementary school attics are flush with supply!)

The Nothing. Pretty heavy shit for a kids movie. I know. :)

Remember Atrieu? I totally had a crush on Atrieu. Is it seriously okay to show that much chest when you're, like, ten years old?


We have, of course, Falcor, the aforementioned dog-like creature. What child of the 80s DIDN'T want their own Falcor? I know I sure begged my parents for one!


Hello, creepy Giant Stone Turtle. I don't remember your name - we must of been on our second bottle of wine by the time you appeared in the movie - but you were pretty cool. Although I think you were kind of scary when I was 7 years old.


And of course, who can forget the Child Empress? When I was little, I wanted to BE the Child Empress. Beauty AND power, all by the age of eight. What more could a girl ask for? I think I wanted to be her almost as bad as I wanted to be Winnie Cooper.


So that's about as exciting as life has been lately. Hopefully I will have something more entertaining to report on in the weeks to come!

In the meantime, remember...DO WHAT YOU DREAM! Hehehe.

Back

So, it appears that I have more readers than I thought I did.

This sort of freaked me out, so I stopped posting for a few weeks.

But you know what? Whatever. I'm not stupid enough to post anything on here that I wouldn't defend to anyone who would read it or, ahem, copy and paste it elsewhere on the internet. In the words of the incomparable Torrance Shipman, BRING IT.

I've missed writing and commenting with y'all! Can't wait to get up to date!