Foul Bachelorette Frog Recipe #1- Whatever Pesto

As some of you may know, my husband has been out of town for a month for school/work related things. As such, I’ve become a bit…let’s say negligent with my eating habits. Basically, if I’ve been working all day I come home and just throw something into my mouth to make my stomach shut up, and then chase it with a mug of green tea because green tea makes everything healthy.

In celebration of my husband coming back home for the Easter weekend, I’ve decided to post a series of recipes entitled “The Foul Bachelorette Recipes,” named after the meme that I feel I have been embodying for the past month (warning: if you google it, most of them are nsfw). I have made this first one twice in as many weeks, each time with different ingredients. This pesto is great on pasta, fish, chicken, and also makes a great pizza sauce.

WHATEVER PESTO

Grab a food processor/blender cup and add:

1. GARLIC- At least a clove. This is mandatory.

2. A HANDFUL OF SOMETHING LEAFY- The traditional ingredient is basil, but I have used everything from spinach to carrot tops. Try to pick something mild tasting; I once made a pesto with 100% arugula and it made me want to rip my tongue out

3. SOME NUTS- Again, tradition says you use pine nuts, but those things are a bazillion dollars a gram. If possible, use an oily nut like a brazil or a walnut…you can use something drier like an almond but you may need more oil. Speaking of which…

4. A GLUG OF OLIVE OIL- You can use another neutral flavoured oil if it’s all you have, but olive is preferred.

5. SOME SHREDDED HARD CHEESE- A parmesan or romano or whatever else. You could attempt to use something soft, but it may gum up your mixer

6. WHATEVER ELSE YOU WANT- Some people add a bit of lemon juice to give it some tang, but I prefer to use balsamic vinegar. Feel free to add other blendable flavour enhancers like sundried tomatoes, peppers, etc.

Put the lid on and whiz the crap out of everything! If it isn’t blending very well, add some more oil until it forms a smooth, only slightly chunky sauce. Enjoy!

another food post (popcorn butter)

so, this is the butter I put on my popcorn. I may be delusional, but I think it kind of tastes like truffles (the fungus kind).

3/4-1 cup salted butter
5 cloves of garlic
1/4 tsp vinegar
2 tbs nutritional yeast

stuff you will need: saucepan, heat resistant spatula, cold bowl (over ice water if you are fancy)

1. heat the butter in a saucepan at medium low heat.

2. While that’s melting, grate the garlic so that it’s pretty fine

3. Once the butter has melted, add the garlic

4. stir it pretty frequently to keep the garlic from sticking to the bottom and burning. cook it for a moderately long time (like 5-10 mins). Basically, you’re waiting for the butter to brown. Yes! The butter is supposed to turn brown.

5. Once the butter and garlic have browned, take it off the heat and pour it into the cold bowl (and the amount of brown is up to you. i like mine pretty toasty, but you can take it off the heat whenever it’s any sort of brown. it’s pretty nice when it’s an almost auburn colour. However, this stuff WILL burn if you leave it on for too long).

6. add your tiny amount of vinegar and stir. you need to add it when it’s warm so that the more volatile compounds will evaporate.

7. Add the yeast flakes. If you are wanting to eat popcorn immediately, pour some on and have a go (not all of it, unless you’re wanting to give yourself a heart attack). If not, let it cool, give it a stir to mix in the chunky bits, and stick it in the fridge.

oh gosh, is this a food blog?

I hope not.

Gather ’round children! Today we are going to make BUTT MILK PANCAKES!!!!

*crickets chirping*

But Jessica…you have an English degree! That’s a typo, right? There’s no way we’re going to use actual butt milk!!!

Of course we are, citizen! Why wouldn’t we use butt milk?

Uhm. Because it’s milk that I forgot and neglected and left in the back of the fridge, so I’m pretty sure it hates me. Oh yeah, and because it SMELLS LIKE BUTT!!!

Pssssshhh! Oh ye of little faith! Do you not know that butt milk is a perfectly acceptable substitute for buttermilk in almost any recipe?
A word of warning though: Don’t use your butt milk if it is a strange colour or has chunkies. Then it is no longer buttmilk…it’s become its own species.

BUTT MILK PANCAKES
enough for 2 adult humans

Stick a pan on the stove and set it to 3 or 4

Combine
1 cup butt milk
1 egg
1 tb oil
1 tsp vanilla
in a medium sized bowl. You may notice that the mixture smells like butt. Don’t despair! (and probably don’t let your dining companion smell the bowl lest they decide McDonald’s is a more acceptable breakfast choice for them)

In a separate bowl, combine
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tb sugar

Dump these dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and stir!  All of a sudden, the butt smell will disappear and turn into weird pancake batter smell (I don’t claim that the smell of batter is pleasurable. I have heard it compared to the smell of a certain male human bodily emission…however I do claim that it smells better than butt)

This mixture can take a good beating, and it’s pretty customizable, so don’t freak out. The thicker the batter is, the fluffier and cakier your pancakes will be. If you prefer more crepe-esque pancakes, feel free to add a touch more milk. If the mix is basically glorified cloudy water, well you did something wrong. Add more flour until it resembles batter (google a picture of pancake batter if you are confused)

Dump about a third to a half cup of batter onto your pan.
OH WAIT! I have some pancake making wisdom for you. If you like smooth-topped pancakes, like with an uninterrupted golden sheen like Taylor Lautner’s face skin (sorry, dated pop culture reference), DO NOT GREASE YOUR PAN. If you use a non-stick pan, you shouldn’t have to grease, and the pancake should just pop off. However, if you would like your pancake to look all rustic like the surface of the moon , feel free to grease it up with oil or butter. The difference in pancake skin texture has to do with the way the fat conducts the heat and blah blah SCIENCE THINGS.

When the pancake starts bubbling in the middle, flip it. Wait approx. 2.38 minutes and then flip onto a plate. Consume immediately.

 

Carbonara For One

I am eating this AS I TYPE

Ingredients:
2 Slices Bacon
Half an Onion
One Clove of Garlic (which I forgot in mine…oooops)
A frond of Kale
One Egg (preferably a good egg with a bright yellow yolk)
One Tablespoon of Parmasan Cheese
Enough long pasta for one person
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Dice bacon and onion. Chop kale into bits. Smush garlic. Cook the bacon in a pan over medium heat until it’s almost crispy. Dump the garlic and onion in.
2. Get a pot of salted water boiling. Basically, for this all to work, the pasta needs to be the last thing done, so get all the other business ready or almost ready before the pasta goes in.
3. Beat the egg and parmasan cheese together and set aside.
4. How is the bacon/onion/garlic (aka holy trinity) doing? Hopefully the onions will be all caramelized and sweet by the time the pasta is done. If things are looking a bit sketchy, add a pinch each of sugar and baking soda (SMALL PINCH) to the onions to get things rolling. Throw the kale in at some point so that it’s not raw when you eat it, but whatever.
5. Okay, so when the pasta is done, drain it, and then dump it back into the pot. DON’T PUT IT BACK ON THE HOT BURNER, instead put it on a trivet or an unused burner. Dump the eggs in and stir it all around. The hot pasta will temper the eggs and make it turn into a yummy sauce. Dump the bacon entourage in, and eat it…maybe even out of the pot if you are klassy. 

Getting Older

Oh dear. It seems as though I am aging. What’s up with that?

This past year has been pretty intense. In January I turned 23, which for some odd reason made me feel super old. Almost 25, which is halfway to 50….basically I felt as though I was almost 50. Makes no sense.
When I was young and dumb, I thought 23 was the age when I would start having kids. Kid-having is still a huge anxiety-triggering idea for me so, combined with my final semester of university, the first half of 23 for me was pretty much a disaster.
Aside from feeling horribly behind in my life, I also have been feeling physical signs of aging this year…or at least perceiving cosmetic changes. It’s pretty weird because I’m outgoing and seem to have it pretty much all together (maybe? I’m not sure) but I am SUPER self conscious about my potential appearance.

It’s weird. I’m pretty lazy with regards to my appearance, but I reassure myself that if I put some time into it, I could be pretty good looking. However, my newfound Neil Patrick Harris-esque forehead wrinkles (ugh), mom-thighs (super ugh), and leathery skin (thanks, Prince Rupert sunshine [???]) have shaken my confidence in my hotness potential.

But then I think about it for a bit…I can’t be young forever. I can’t be part of the target ‘hot’ generation forever, and to be honest, I don’t really want to be. Sure, soon I’ll get to the age when advertisers start trying to sell me girdles and bifocals, but by then I will have gained enough wisdom and confidence to not be fazed by them.

Probably the best reminder that youth isn’t everything has come from one of my co-workers. She constantly rants about her romantic endeavors, sexcapades (double puke), and how everyone hates her. The highlight of her week was getting a new Iphone, and she constantly reminds me that every guy who looks at her secretly wants to bang her. Her entire existence seems like a giant chore to her, with all the drama and stuff.

She reminds me that, while my skin is slightly more wrinkly than it was five years ago, age brings depth and tempers the soul. I love that I can hang out with other women without seeing them as threats. My stable marriage may not be full of drama, but it is full of support, and it’s amazing how much time I’ve saved not obsessing about guys over the past six years.

Oh man, this post is way too serious. Here are some weird age-related things I’ve started to do:

1. Moisturize. This is such a weird concept. I take olive oil, like from the grocery store, and stick it on my face, and it makes my skin less oily. So strange. I’ve found that actual moisturizers are a) super expensive and b) give me pimples, so yay for the cheaper way being the better way.
I’ve also started to lotion all my other skin too, especially my feets since, now that I stand for 8 hours a day, they are starting to look like my father’s.

2. Hydrate. Not only do I oil the outside of my body, but I water the inside. Taking care of myself is quite the process. Edmonton is so dry, so I can seriously drink a ton of water and it just evaporates out of my body. So messed up.

3. Wear make-up. Not all the time, of course. One strange thing I’ve been doing is pencilling my eyebrows. I never realised how awesome it looks. Even though I have pretty intense brows, filling them in makes them look more…polished? Feminine?

4. Go to bed before midnight.  When I was a youngin, I used to have these Sims 2 nights with my friend Chalene where we would stay up until 6 am eating Ruffles chips and playing the Sims. Then we would wake up around 11 am and eat either bbq eggs and hashbrowns or old chinese takeout for breakfast.
Oh man.
A month or so ago, Chris and I had a huge fight that lasted until about 4:30 am, and I had to go to work at 9 the next day. It was a disaster. I was so messed up, and throughout the day I kept wondering ‘what’s happening? I used to be able to function after staying up until 6. Even a few years ago, I could do exams on only 3 hours of sleep.’

5. Watching what I eat.

This one deserves its own post based on the fact that I’m starting to not be able to have cow milk, which is an unmitigated disaster. Sure, I still sometimes eat pizza pops for lunch, but my body now hates me afterwards. Ugh.

Age, my friends. It’s killing me.

A recipe (?)

Well, I really like to cook, so I guess I should post some recipes since Christmas is coming and all that. My problem is that I don’t really follow recipes and just make stuff up, but most of the food I make doesn’t need to be measured anyway.

Basically, the key to cooking without a recipe is knowing the specific function of each ingredient so that you can monitor how much you need. With a cake that’s pretty iffy, but these are great to get you started on the chill cooking path.

Tasty Peppermint Patties

Some butter (couple tablespoons…melted and cooled)
Veggie shortening (I know, it’s weird, but totally necessary. I used about 1/3 of a cup)
Icing Sugar
Vanilla
Peppermint Extract
Chocolate melting wafers
(Optional) Dark chocolate

1. Beat the shortening and butter together until all combined and stuff. Should look pretty whippy. The shortening is a must because it stabilizes the filling and adds that perfect ‘artificial too good to be real’ smoothness that store bought stuff has. The butter is for flavour and is melted to keep the filling from being too dense.

2. Add some vanilla (A touch. Vanilla is crazy strong). Add some peppermint extract (Ditto).

3. Add some icing sugar (about a cup) and beat it in. Add some more. The icing sugar sweetens (duh) and gives the filling body. You’ll be going for a nice fluffy frosting consistency.  If it’s loose and tastes like a bowl of Crisco, add some more icing sugar. If the icing is too stiff AND too bland, add some more peppermint or vanilla. My peppermint was like five million years old or something, so I had to add over a tablespoon to get it strong enough, but that’s atypical. If you want to lighten the consistency without flavour, drizzle a TINY amount of neutral oil like canola to improve the texture. 

4. Beat it for longer than you think you should. The beating will help the sugar crystals start to break down which will result in a smoother filling. Once that business is done, scoop it into a piping bag or plastic bag or something and make a 1cm diameter hole in the piping end. Cover a cookie sheet in wax paper/parchment/a Silpat and squirt little flat poops onto the sheet. Dip your (clean) finger in icing sugar and pat the little pointed tops of the poops down so they look like patties (like the name, omg).

5. Stick that sheet in the freezer (wow, I am so demanding). After about 30 minutes or so, stick the melting wafers in a bowl and microwave in 30 second increments (stirring after) until melted. I often add in some real chocolate at this point to add flavour while keeping the stability of the wafers without having to temper it. We’ll have a discussion about the properties of chocolate later…Bottom line is, don’t microwave all in one go or you’ll burn it and no one wants that. 

6. Let it cool a bit, but not enough that it gets hard because that would be dumb. Take a few of the frozen pattie insides from the freezer and, one at a time, dunk them in the chocolate. Use a fork to fish them out, and stick them on another cookie sheet to harden.

7. Once the are hard, they’re done. I like to eat them frozen, but not frozen is cool too because the filling is super fluffy and spooges out.

Wow. That seems a lot less complicated in my head

 

Not a super deep post

So I work at Sears, which sometimes blows, but one really super cool thing is that I get lots of free and discounted stuff. In the past I’ve talked about how I seem to attract various possessions like soap etc…well recently I’ve been attracting perfumes, and I need a place to record how much I like each one.

So my assessments come from an initial whiff and a secondary whiff sometime later. v. scientific.

Jessica’s Les Grande Parfum Reviews (i m so fwench)

L’Air Du Temps- Nina Ricci  ***

This smells a lot like an old Lush fragrance called “Fever,” which is basically like a mixture of rose and dusty jasmine that’s been stomped on. Really bruised floral, kind of decaying but in not a gross way. Dirty-ish.

Pleasures- Estee Lauder *

Pretty much weirdly bland yet gross. White floral, wildflowers, initially smells like bug spray. I can catch a slight whiff of something nice, like a spicy musk, but very faint. Kind of smells like cheap “perfumed” bath salts…maybe attempting to be lilac. Failing at that. I snurfed this one a lot because I wanted to figure out why I disliked it. I dunno man…it’s so non-offensive that it’s putrid.

Truth or Dare- Madonna **
In order for you to understand my confusion with this scent, I have to explain how it’s marketed. The ads are various black and white photos of Madonna looking sexy/tough, and the bottle is all geometric with a studded lid. I expected it to be musky and dark and instead…it smells like ultra sweet cough syrup. Crazy sweet lightly spiced, cloying (is that a thing?). Could almost be a vanilla jasmine, but a very bland one.

Lovestruck- Vera Wang **1/2
This was nice. Sweet, but unabashedly so, like Sweetarts or someother dextrose based candy. Mellows into an artificial grape-esque scent, but not bad per say. Not really for me, but not nasty sweet like the Madonna one.

Lovestruck Floral Rush- Vera Wang * 1/2
Hmmmm. Initially very much like a fruity grapefruit chewing gum. As to be expected, it’s basically Lovestruck with florals added. Disliked it more as time went on.

Sensuous Nude- Estee Lauder **1/2
Initially notes say “sweet, spicy, toasted marshmallow.” Morphs into “sweet toasted lipstick…medicine cabinet?” Oh dear. I don’t know, I kind of like it…”kind of” being the operative term. I wouldn’t spend money on it. Seems like it’s trying to be too many types of attractive, like an attractive mature woman wearing a teenager’s clothes. Oh man, that was weird. I’m tired and my nose is confused.

No. 5- Chanel ****
Classic. At first spray it was too much for me: “INTENSE & old fashioned.” However, after a while I snurfed it again and I got this crazy rush of vague memories from when I was super young…like I’m pretty sure either one of my grandmas or my mum wore it at some time. I can see why it’s so popular…it’s quite amazing. Way too heavy for me, but super complex and nice to sniff. Spicy and MUSKY like woah.

Inspire- Christina Aguilera ***
Non-offensive, soft, melony. Makes me smile, reminds me of when I was 10 for some weird reason. I think a friend’s mom wore it or something. There’s an underlying musky armpit smell which is strange but doesn’t pop up that often. Seems like a good starter scent.

Happy Heart- Clinique **
Weird, non-offensive, hint of weak spice, beachy?? (Like that Seinfeld episode with Kramer and the beach perfume except not quite). Starts off as green apple and bug spray…

Hello Pretty- Mark **
Cherry blossom and medicinal bubble gum. Weird hints of soya sauce (wut?)

Cool Water- Davidoff **1/2
Kind of nice. Starts off like dishwashing liquid, reminded me of the science centre bubble fluid. Mellows into something like the Ikea candle section…like berries and apples.

Miracle- Lancome **
Very ladylike, roses, white wine, faint lilac. Doesn’t mellow well…feels like it’s missing a bass note. Open floral, sort of like hydrangeas if they have a smell…? I don’t know, that’s just what popped into my head.

Hypnose- Lancome *****
NUMMMMMM! I love this one so much, I have actually bought a full bottle of it for real monies. Starts off sweetly with a spicy fennel edge and mellows into a sweet and spicy with a very light citrus note and jasmine. Strangely enough it always makes my mouth water even though it’s not super food-y.

So…It seems like I like very “full” scents like Chanel No 5 and Hypnose, that are all spicy and thick. Hmm…. I still have a few more to do but my nose feels like it’s dying.
 

 

 

Moving (bad things)

Moving blows. It combines so many sucky things.
1. Packing

Normally I love packing, like if it’s for a sweet trip or something. I like cramming tons of things into a tiny suitcase. It’s a bit like magic I guess, like those crazy tents in Harry Potter where it’s all “i’m small on the outside AND BIG ON THE INSIDE BWAHAHAHA” but with a suitcase so not as cool. However, I only really like doing one suitcase at a time, which is probably why I squish so much into it. Packing in boxes isn’t as neat because they are so rigid and smell kind of funny and give me paper cuts, and having to pack everything I own is super not fun because I have lots of dumb stuff like hangers and taxes and textbooks instead of just clothes and tiny bottles of shampoo. When I try to move, I look at all of that stuff and I’m like “do I really need this….*tilt head slightly to the side*…?” and then I try to throw everything out, which is really stupid.

2. Cleaning

If packing an apartment is like undressing a person, cleaning one would be like showering a person, except if instead of a shower you had to use toothbrushes. Wow, that metaphor went somewhere weird… Cleaning is normally my least favourite part of a day, which is weird because it’s not my least favourite part of moving.

3. Saying Goodbye

I suppose saying goodbye isn’t that bad anymore because it’s not like the olden days when all they had to communicate were letters and their mouths. Now we have phones, texting, Skype, and all that good stuff that it so easy to use but it super hard to remember to use. Saying goodbye nowadays isn’t really saying goodbye to a person, it’s more like saying goodbye to their physical presence, their hugs, smell, etc. Even though we can communicate with each other over long distances, saying goodbye still sucks. ACTUALLY I think it sucks more because now there is a guilt attached to it. Goodbyes are prolonged now…instead of simply being physically cut off from a person and cutting it quits, now we have to promise to keep in touch, halfheartedly text for a month or two, have some Skype dates that mostly consist of staring at each other, maybe send a few letters if we’re keeners, and then real life gets in the way and pfffft.

4. Travelling

Travelling for over 2.5 hours sucks balls, using any means of transport. If we could just teleport, moving would be so much better, but then I suppose we would have no reason to move in that case.

5. Paperwork

Moving as an adult blows because there are so many things to change and lot of forms and paperwork to fill out. I love how government departments don’t talk to each other so I have to fill out a billion forms for everything and it all goes to relatively the same place. I lied…I actually hate that. Moving to a different province is even worst because in Canada all the provinces hate each other and refuse to cooperate so now tax things are different, health care is different, utilities are different, and they hate our car. Oh, and the time zone is different, but that has nothing to do with paperwork…or does it?

5a. Paying money for things that aren’t useful or fun.

I suppose this goes without saying.

6. Unpacking

Normally I super love unpacking because it’s a bit like getting presents and knowing that you’ll like every single thing you open, but a problem arises when there is a lack of storage in your new place (ie where I am right now AKA the place with the weird closets). It becomes less like putting on a favourite sweater and more like squashing an obese person into a twelve year old’s tank top (where am I getting my metaphors from today, geez…???). Currently my apartment has half of mine and Chris’s wardrobe all over the place=one normal person’s wardrobe, and I’m trying to magically make all the clothes fit because I’m a wizard, except I’m not.

…and that’s the worst part of moving.

I’m not a wizard.

 

 

epic-fail-photos-autocowrecks-jon-snow-is-confused-by-your-modern-technology

MTE Jon.

BLOG ALL THE THINGS

So I have a tumblr now. Well, I’ve had one for a while, but I’m actually posting stuff on it now. 
It’s become mildly successful because of a picture I posted of a sim deer disliking sim Peeta from the Hunger Games. I don’t really know what to make of all this. It’s kind of weird, because the tumblr is all about me playing the Sims 3.
So I play the Sims.
Then I blog about it.

I’m so ashamed.

If you want to follow me through two additional blogging platforms, my tumblr is here and my twitter is here (WARNING: I don’t tweet anything exciting…but then again, does anybody?).