Just In Case Y'all Didn't Know This

It's that day, so I figure I ought to make it abundantly clear.

I have the world's most awesome husband. I am more lucky than I have any right to be, in this area (well, in many areas, but this one in particular at the moment). I love him every day, but, well, today is all about love, and it gives me an excuse to gush about it with impunity.

And while I'm on the subject, I've noticed it's kind of trendy on my friends list right now to apologize for liking Valentine's Day, or to go out of your way to make it clear that you're celebrating LOVE, and not the commercialism of the holiday. So let me take this chance to make my point of view clear:

I am, in fact, choosing to take today to celebrate love in all forms. I love my husband, I love my friends and am grateful they're in my life, I love my life and my career, and even on some particularly good days, myself. But crass as it may seem, I also love heart-shaped boxes of chocolates, desserts colored pink with raspberries, bouquets of flowers, gifts wrapped in red tissue paper, and cards with hearts and kittens. I wouldn't want them every day, but once in a while it's nice to wallow in over-the-top silly romance.

But back to my husband. I spent way too many years while I was growing up being told that I was unlovable, that I would always be alone, that nobody would ever want me. I feel so incredibly lucky that that turned out not to be true - it feels almost greedy and unreal to have something so far beyond that. I have someone who loves me, yes. But more than that, I have someone who treats me with respect, who is smart and believes I am too, who tells me that I'm beautiful and reads out loud to me and is willing to learn to dance with me and knows just how to kiss me and so many other things that I can't begin to list them. I never imagined that I could have something like this. And on top of it all, to have him be my best friend also.....

I am truly blessed.

Cookbook Project, Books #149, 150, and 151

"Blender Cook Book," Better Homes and Gardens

This is another hand-me-down from my mother, and one of the last in this project. It's older than I am, and I admit I have been procrastinating on using it. Partly because until recently I didn't respect my blender, and partly because the recipes in it are scary. But after actually finding it useful for a few recipes I have learned to love my old, creaky, seventies-olive-green blender, and I hoped that would give me the impetus to actually find something worth making in here.

My original plan was to chicken out and make one of the beverages in the first chapter - blenders are great for making smoothies, and while one of my personal guidelines is to never drink anything with calories, well, the project is here to challenge me. But after realizing that most of them called for Kool-Aid, Jello, buttermilk, or strawberries (the one startling exemption being the "tomato soup sauerkraut drink), I accepted that that wasn't going to work. Ultimately, after many attempts at flipping through the book and trying to find a valid and edible option, we wound up making Cheese-Sauced Meat Loaf (a blender recipe because it uses the blender to mix up the panade - not entirely gratuitous, but close).

It was meat loaf. Not the best I've ever had, since I'm used to adding a lot more seasoning to my meatloaf mix, but not bad, and the cheese sauce was okay. Definitely edible, and the meat loaf itself worked even better as burrito filling the next day, when I could pile it high with salsa and chilies and actual cheese. I won't make it again, but I find the book far too amusing to get rid of. It's a conversation piece, if nothing else.


"Mrs. Witty's Monster Cookies," Helen Witty

This is a cute little cookie book that we *think* belongs to my husband, and he is pretty sure was a gift from his mother, unless it happened to belong to a former roommate who left it behind. This is what happens when you own close to 200 cookbooks. Sometimes I think they breed. The only solution to this is keeping my excellent cookbooks next to each other, in the hopes that, perhaps, Julia Child and Williams-Sonoma will choose to spawn a series of paperbacks about fancy cakes, instead of cross-pollinating the Family Circle ca. 1970's alphabetical books and leaving me with twelve volumes of Legumes In Aspic.

Anyway, back to the cookie book. It's been in my better half's collection for as long as I can remember, and I think I've used it at least once before. It's a cookbook. It has recipes for cookies. There's nothing wrong with it, but it also doesn't stand out from the several (dozen) other cookie cookbooks I have.

But a little while ago I had a friend over for lunch, and wanted to make a sweet treat. And I still had this book to use, so it seemed like a perfect match. Of course, I didn't want to make something boring, like chocolate chippers or oatmeal cookies, and I wanted to test-drive the book by making something that seemed unique to it, so I wound up making Toffee Toppers, a layered bar cookie with a basic cookie dough base, a butter-and-brown sugar layer, and chocolate icing.

They probably would have been better if we'd had the patience to let them cool to room temperature; instead, they were warm, gloppy, and messy, but that's not always a down side for cookies. They were also a little sweet for my tastes, but otherwise not too bad. Worth having experimented with, and decent enough that I'll try some of the other recipes in this book. The supersized peanut butter chocolate chip cookies sound good....


"Favorite Casseroles," Betty Crocker

And, of course, the glossy checkout lane booklet. Every post needs to have at least one, or so it seems. This is one that I bought myself, but I've had it for years and have used it plenty. I got it back while I was in vet school and was still building up my cookbook collection, and the recipes in it are simple, inexpensive, and straightforward, mostly one-pot meals - perfect for a poor grad student with little to no time on their hands.

I wanted to try something I hadn't made from it before, though, and we had some leftover lentils and barley from another recipe. Between that and the long days I've been working, we decided to make Bistro Lentil Barley Soup, an alarmingly straightforward crock pot recipe.

This was pretty darn good. I need to remember to cook with barley and lentils more often, since they're both inexpensive and tasty, not to mention fairly good for you. The flavors wound up blending well, so that in spite of having about half a dozen ingredients, it had decent taste and complexity, especially when served with a little bit of spicy mustard as a garnish. Good, quick, hearty winter food - this recipe is a keeper, and so is the book.