Thursday, December 22, 2011
when multi-tasking goes bad
When I tried to bake gingerbread biscotti * and the super smoky jalapeno-flavored bacon I ordered on the internet that always makes the entire house smell like bacon for an entire day at the same time.Now, I'm all for adding bacon flavor to pretty much everything, but... just... no
*even if you're not a big fan of gingerbread (I'm not) these, drizzled in white chocolate baking stuff are so amazing. For reals.
Labels: suzy fucking homemaker
Monday, December 12, 2011
Since my life has suddenly turned into all-self-promotion-all-the-time, I'll just put this link here
http://www.facebook.com/DropDeadQuirkyit's the fan page for my etsy shop and it contains links to the insane amount of press I've gotten this weekend - Huffington Post, BoingBoing, The Village Voice (!!!) to name a few... I don't know if I need to hire a press agent or a workshop full of elves.
(also, in case anyone was wondering, I am super duper uncomfortable with this stuff - I don't like the self-promotion, I don't like tooting my own horn, I don't like networking, I don't like cultivating contacts - but I figure if so many people get famous/notorious for filming their worst behavior/making terrible music videos/sleeping with Tiger Woods or Charlie Sheen, why can't I parlay this into something awesome like a book deal or a plate of free tacos?)
(also, part 2, electric buggaloo - this whole experience has cemented my policy of not reading comments on the internet as I am superduper fragile and CANNOT handle even anonymous commenterscalling my stuff a "waste of time and thread" or "fail" - WORDS HURT, Y'ALL and it's seriously everything I can do to NOT lash out and reply to stuff like that)
Labels: first world problems, suzy fucking homemaker
Friday, December 09, 2011
I'm kind of having this kind of day -
basically, I stitched something a couple of months ago and posted it to Tumblr and it got a bunch of "likes" and I was happy because I have a delicate ego and am grateful for any and all validation.
A month or so later, it got reposted by someone else and got more likes and my cold black heart grew just a tiny bit warm.
Then about 2 weeks ago, someone ELSE reposted it and it got about 5 times more likes than ever and then it was getting featured on more and more websites (including, but not limited to the Huffington Effing Post!!!!) and the next thing I know, it's kind of a full-time job and I'm surprisingly able to buy Christmas presents with money earned from art (and I kind of have a waiting list that will probably carry me through February because I'm too
so... really this post wasn't anything other than an excuse to post that picture of Milhouse and procrastinate on the stitching I should be doing...
Labels: "awesome" ends with "me", random pop culture reference, suzy fucking homemaker
Thursday, October 13, 2011
my day in photographs
Drive to San Luis Obispo for an appointment *cough* psychiatrist *cough*. Find myself at a stoplight staring at a this random Native American statue raising the roof in the middle of some industrial area.
See a flower-festooned No Parking sign, park my car in the parking lot and run over to take a picture.
Take the elevator up to the second floor and spot the following pillow on a couch in a lobby shared by 4 or 5 different businesses. (here's the thing - if decorative pillow theft is such a HUGE problem in this tiny little lobby that you have to write this on every single pillow, just GET RID OF THE FUCKING PILLOWS)
after the appointment, stop by the beach because it's on the way home and it's about 90 bajillion degrees this week
See a seal out in the water and get so excited that I actually squeal out loud "OMIGOD, seal!!!!"
come home, decide that the house isn't nearly hot enough and make a loaf of no-knead bread in my brand new Dutch oven. (I will forgive it for making the house even hotter because the bread is THE SHIT)
Labels: I take pictures, le crazy, suzy fucking homemaker
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
The More You Know
Apparently, you're supposed to purchase pork belly "with the rind removed".I was not aware of this when I purchased my pork belly and I ended up with pork belly with a rind.
Do you know what that rind consists of? They call it a rind like it's the white part of the orange that you don't eat, but it's really the skin. The epidermis of the pig.
Do you know what pig skin is like? It's like squishy leather and if you run your hand over it, you can feel where the bristly hair used to be. Also, those nubby little pieces of skin on one side? Nipples.
Fortunately, by the time I identified the nipples, I'd already mixed up the salt cure rub and was already too far into the bacon-making process to turn back just because I was skeeved out by swine nipples.
Also, fun to learn, that rind, that pig skin doesn't just peel off like the skin of a orange, it's on there, it's attached and you will probably go through three different knives just trying to separate them before you finally drag out the Thanksgiving electric knife.
By the end, you will be covered in little bits of pig fat and convinced that if this doesn't turn out to be the best bacon ever, you're never going to experiment in the kitchen again. Ever.
Labels: suzy fucking homemaker
Sunday, October 09, 2011
you know what's awesome?
Knowing you forgot something as you're leaving the grocery store then getting home and realizing that it was rice noodles which you need for the pho you were planning for dinner and thinking that you're going to have to use freaking Top Ramen in your pho which will be kind of weird and sort of take it out of the realm of pho and into the realm of cobbled-together-recipes-I-make-because-I'm-too-lazy-to-go-back-to-the-store but then finding an unopened package of rice noodles that you bought a month ago just so you'd have it.Yay for being ahead of myself. And for pho.
Labels: first world problems, suzy fucking homemaker
Monday, October 03, 2011
No, I most certainly did not spend most of my morning today driving around down in search of pork belly.
And I didn't spend slightly more than $30 (plus shipping) on one of those hideous naked rain oil hanging lamps from the 70s off of eBay yesterday.Okay, maybe I actually did both of those things, but in my defense, the pork belly is going to be made into homemade bacon, which... who even knew you could make homemade bacon? And as soon as the curing salt I ordered off of eBay gets here, I'm going to haul that Flintstone-sized hunk of pig out of the freezer, coat it in some other spices and make the hell out of some bacon*.
I have no excuse for the lamp, though. Nor do I have any place in the house to put it.
*And that had better be some good bacon because I had to take my life in my own hands by venturing all the way across town** to the Hispanic grocery store which is decorated like Tijuana and where they look at me like I'm from another planet every time I go in there because I'm the only person not buying cow stomach and cactus leaves. Although this was the only grocery store butcher that didn't look at me like I'd just ordered marinated kitten when I asked for pork belly.
** this is, of course, relative "all the way across town" here is about a 10 minute, 5 or 10 mile drive. In a major city, that would have taken me an hour.
Labels: first world problems, suzy fucking homemaker
Thursday, September 08, 2011
Vegans can fuck right off
So, due to my ongoing issues with depression, I've pretty much got zero interest inI got the right kind of tofu and a pie crust and put it all together this afternoon (when I was home alone, I didn't want anyone poisoned by the idea of tofu in a dessert before trying it).
On the plus side - it didn't taste like tofu.
On the negative side - it was gross. Very gross. It was like eating chocolate-flavored styrofoam. Except less appetizing.
On the semi-plus side - I laughed until I was crying when I finally fessed up as to why the pie had an odd texture.
Vegans, stop trying to pretend that your gross, cruelty-free foods taste as good as or better than real food, okay?
Once again it's just proven that vegans are just... I can't with them. Especially vegans who claim to be herbivores because they love and/or respect animals too much - you know what, if you're not smart enough to be able to like animals and understand the concept of the food chain, you and I have nothing to talk about. If animals weren't put here on the earth for us to eat, they wouldn't be comprised entirely of meat, they would be made of stone or quinoa or something else non-edible like that.
Labels: le crazy, suzy fucking homemaker
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Have you ever had one of those days where one tiny detail of the day just changes your whole perspective?
I mean, it's crazy how one tiny little thing can happen and make you question every aspect of your life, make you just say "wtf am I doing?", make you realize that you really have to change your life.Today, I'm doing my prep work for dinner, chopping veggies, boiling potatoes, turning on the oven for bacon and I reach into the meat drawer in the refrigerator for the ziploc baggie of bacon.
As I'm thinking that I can't remember the last time we had bacon, I pull out the lump of pork and realize that something seems... off. I unfold the delicious streaked meat and, to my horror, find a furry little colony of mold.
Mold. On bacon.
That means that fatty handful of salty, porky deliciousness was allowed to sit in my refrigerator for long enough to sprout mold.
When did I become someone who lets bacon sit, uneaten, long enough to mold?
Sometimes it's like I don't even know myself at all.
Labels: and I'm not even on Ambien, I'm a jackass, suzy fucking homemaker
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Sometimes things don't work out exactly like you think they will
Because I'm a big fan of food (both cooking and eating it), I watch a lot of Food Network - the other day, I saw someone cooking a pizza on a grill and figured that I might want to try it - I mean, I'm pretty ace in the kitchen, but I've never attempted outdoor cooking - how hard could it be, though, right? And I had all those gorgeous tomatoes from the neighbor's garden and a pizza with slices of tomato and big slabs of mozzarella sounds like a pretty spectacular dinner, am I right or am I right?So I whip up a batch of my super easy pizza dough and cart it and some olive oil outside to the barbecue. I haphazardly brush some oil on the grill, stretch out the dough a little and toss it on. A couple of minutes later, I decide that I should turn the dough over so the other side gets all toasty and a little charred, then I was going to toss on the tomatoes and cheese and let it cook - easy enough...
or so I thought
apparently I should have turned the grill down and let it cook for a bit longer before trying to flip it (since it's not a pancake)
Still, there were some decent-sized pieces, so I figured I'd at least get some appetizers out of it.
and they were really good, in a rustic kind of way.
So pizza on the grill with fresh tomatoes and mozzarella? hell to the yes
me operating the grill? maybe not
Labels: I take pictures, suzy fucking homemaker
Monday, August 15, 2011
Okay, whose brilliant idea was it to bake broccoli for dinner? (mine)
because now the house smells like butt.In other news, baked broccoli is delicious.
Labels: suzy fucking homemaker
Friday, July 22, 2011
Fun fact
If, on Friday afternoon, you cut up a couple habanero peppers for the Jamaican jerk marinade for the pork that will be Saturday's dinner, your fingers will still contain considerable amounts of habanero oil on Friday night when you go to remove your contact lenses (even if you wash your hands 95 times and rub them with milk, oil and baking soda like the internet suggested).
speaking of cooking, the other day I decided to start a food blog (like everyone else on the internet), it's new and I'm sure I'll abandon it within another week or so as soon as I find something else shiny and new and interesting.
Labels: suzy fucking homemaker
Sunday, May 15, 2011
so, apparently we're not leaving California at the moment - the dude got the job offer for the thing in Washington, but the offer wasn't awesome enough to lure us away from here.As much as I do truly love it here, I was kind of looking forward to living nearer to a bigger city and a bigger airport and an Ikea, oh, and my sister, of course - and I had kind of sort of mentally broken up with* California and was kind of sort of excited about moving and learning a new city...
But alas, one drive down our stupidly lovely coast and I'm in love with the state again.
We are talking about moving, though, buying a place since now is pretty much the only time in the history of the state when anyone who isn't a kazillionaire can afford to buy - and I suppose, if we're staying forever and ever (or at least a couple more years), might as well live somewhere where I can paint the walls.
And looking for a house is super fun, I'm actually not super picky with houses - sure, I tend to prefer mid-century modern architecture and/or slightly older homes in neighborhoods where no one has a pit bull chained up to their front porch or fifteen cars up on blocks in the yard, but other than that, if a house has a garbage disposal (our rental house doesn't and it drives me NUTS) and has a master bedroom that isn't an add-on, thus not matching the rest of the house and possibly being poorly built and/or having crappy ventilation (our rental house, the house we owned in Savannah AND our last house in Phoenix all had that), and a fenced backyard for the pets, I'll be a happy girl. Oh, and if it had a refrigerator that didn't freeze the fuck out of everything in the bottom half of it, that would kind of be nice, too.
Although, the next time this house needs some stupid expensive repair, I might go ahead and rethink the ownership thing...
*I'm good like that with pretty much everything, once I see the finish line of something, we're pretty much done - like when you have that "oh" moment with a person**, or when you know you're going to get fired from a job, or when your favorite tv show jumps the shark.
** you know, when you meet someone and you get along great and you're considering adding them to your instant messenger or and then you find out that he or she is vegan or a Republican or batshit crazy or just boring as hell - right after that moment, *poof* magically over them and they're deleted from my phone and my facebook
Labels: first world problems, suzy fucking homemaker
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Sometimes you just never know.
The other night, my Siamese cat jumps up onto the part of the kitchen counter that's open to the living room, shivers a couple of times and lets out a rainbow of barf right across the Kid's backpack."See?" says the dude. "That's why I tell you not to leave your stuff on the floor."
The Kid stops looking grossed out and looks confused. "Because the cat might some day projectile vomit on it?"
"Exactly."
~~~~~
And today I found out why it's important to always clean up the dinner pans right away - because you might be washing a pan from the previous night's chicken piccata and and a dried up piece of angelhair pasta will jam its way deep under your thumbnail and make you drop the pan and yell "MOTHERFUCKER" right by the open kitchen window.
Labels: adventures in shitty parenting, suzy fucking homemaker
Friday, April 01, 2011
I've finally broken the bacon dessert barrier
I've finally figured out a way to incorporate bacon into dessert.
*vanilla ice cream, caramel syrup, whipped cream and bits of candied bacon scattered throughout.
(inspired by the bacon sundae that Denny's is offering, except that has maple-flavored syrup on it and... no, Denny's, just no. Maple is for breakfast, caramel or hot fudge are for dessert.) (Also, Denny's is calling this celebration de bacon the Baconalia, which is a play on the word bacchanlia, which refers to drunken Roman orgies, and... while I took Latin for 3 years in high school [and had my fair share of drunken times at Denny's in my younger days] and can appreciate the reference, I'm wondering whether or not the average Denny's customer will get it.)
*this picture is reason # 90 bajillion why I don't think I'll ever have a food blog, a lot of the most delicious food in the world isn't much to look at and is even less impressive in a picture. Also, my kitchen has shitty lighting.
Labels: suzy fucking homemaker
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Most Ill-Equiped Grown Up EVER
The other day, The Kid asked if he could have a couple friends come over on Saturday.The thought of people coming into my house strikes fear into my gut because
1) I
and
2) I have to clean
But I feel bad about The Kid being an only child and I try to encourage him to be a non-hermit, so I said it was fine.
Saturday arrives and I buy snacks and make cookies and pizza and the usual "mom" stuff - then it turns out that both the kids are going to spend the night.
Ugh.
They're nice kids and all get along and have tons in common with The Kid and I'm totally fine with kids being here, but we don't have a guest room or guest bed or futon or inflatable mattress or any of that stuff. So I tear through the linen cabinet and turn up 4 pillows (at least 3 of which have been dog chewed), an old feather comforter, 4 small blankets (like the size you keep on the couch to keep your feet warm), 2 child-sized sleeping bags and 1 normal-sized sleeping bag (which has been dog chewed).
I guess, for kids, it will be okay, one of them can sleep on The Kid's bed and the other two can make little blanket/sleeping bag nests on the floor, but if any of y'all plan to come to visit... I can recommend a nearby hotel, mmmkay? Because I'm a terrible hostess*.
*Not a terrible hostess? My stepmom - when my sister, brother and I went to Florida in January to see our stepmom, she had beds ready with fresh sheets, fresh piles of towels, fresh washcloths, extra toothbrushes, extra saline solution (and she doesn't even wear contacts) and anything else one could need - she was better equipped than a freaking hotel and this was about a week after her husband had died. It's like I'm still waiting to get the notification in the mail that I finally qualify as a grown-up.
Labels: suzy fucking homemaker
Thursday, March 17, 2011
I effing love food puns
(Yay for Trader Joe's.)
I also love corned beef - cooked all day until it's all tender and falling apart - some cute baby potatoes and mushy (in a good way) carrots on the side - yum.
Labels: suzy fucking homemaker
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
I'm practically e-famous (here, too) (no, not really)
Labels: "awesome" ends with "me", suzy fucking homemaker
Friday, March 11, 2011
That is the correct answer, Sir
Me: OMG, me and my creepy Gene Simmons embroidery thing are going to be the featured artist and project for the embroidery section of this craft website*!!!The Kid: Do you get anything for it?
Me: Just the warm fuzzy feeling that comes from knowing I'm awesome.
The Husband: Except that we already knew that.
*yes, I'm a member of a craft website (and more than one doll website), shut up, I've already admitted that I'm a dork
Labels: "awesome" ends with "me", suzy fucking homemaker
Thursday, January 27, 2011
so... unexpected side effect of losing my dad?Losing my kitchen mojo (which I totally got from him).
I used to be able to whip up a delicious meal out of nowhere, regardless of what was in the refrigerator.
Now, I've got a refrigerator full of food, the usual stuff I always get, and I couldn't put together an edible meal to save my life. Tonight? I made baked spaghetti and, for some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to mix store-bought sauce with cream of chicken soup and toss in some chopped green peppers and carrots. It was terrible, like something out of a school cafeteria.
Since my dad died, I've only cooked one thing that wasn't totally gross, and that was the croissants I made IN MY DAD'S KITCHEN.
I'm either going to need to move in with my stepmom and do all my cooking there, or get the family used to microwaved stuff. And, perhaps, consider investing in a fire extinguisher, just in case.
Labels: suzy fucking homemaker