Paella

This holiday season, Dad was able to get Mom to make his favoritest-ever dish: paella.  It's not a very traditional paella recipe, but it is incredibly tasty.  And also kind of expensive, so you might want to save this one for special occasions.
To make it, you'll need: 1 1/2 lbs boneless, skinless, chicken thighs; 1/4 C extra virgin olive oil; 2 14.5 oz cans diced tomatoes; 1 1/2 C Arborio rice; 3 C chicken broth; 2 Tbsp salt; 8 oz sea scallops; 1 lb fish cut up into chunks (Mom used grouper); 4 oz pimento; 1 15 oz can artichoke hearts; 14 oz raw shrimp; 9 tsp paprika; 1/2 tsp black pepper; 1/4 tsp red pepper; 1/8 tsp saffron; 4 oz sliced onions; 10 oz frozen peas; 6 rock lobster tails (if desired).

All this, minus the fruit, plus the peas and onion, which I forgot to get out.

In a heavy large pot or dutch oven, heat up the olive oil and brown the chicken.  Remove the chicken once it's browned and pour off any excess fat.
Add the onion and tomatoes to the pot and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for about 5 minutes, or until the onion is tender.  Stir in the rice, chicken broth, salt, paprika, black and red pepper, and saffron and then add the chicken back into the pot.

Let this come to a boil, then cover tightly, lower the heat, and let it simmer for 20 minutes.
When that's done, gently stir in the shrimp, fish, scallops, and peas.

Cover it back up and let it simmer for another 15 minutes.
Now gently stir in the artichoke hearts and pimento, and continue to cook until it's all heated through.

If you're also having lobster tails, go ahead and throw them in a pot of boiling water while your artichoke and pimento is cooking, for about 5 minutes, or until the lobster meat is opaque.

And you're really done!  You can serve this right from the pot, or you can dish it up on a big paella dish and put your lobster tails on top, all fancy-like.

Brownies

I said last time that I was going to make brownies this week and I generally try not to be a big ol' liar, so here they are!  Plus I'd told my friend that I was going to bring them for his half-birthday party, so I really needed to make them anyway.  It's really a pretty simple recipe and I haven't made brownies from a box mix since I found it.  What you will need is: 1/2 C butter; 2 oz unsweetened chocolate, chopped; 1 C granulated sugar; 1 tsp vanilla extract; 2 large eggs, lightly beaten; 2/3 C flour; 1/2 tsp baking powder; 1/4 tsp salt.  Plus, I threw in about a cup of peanut butter chips because they are delicious, though entirely optional.

And because a half-birthday doesn't come around every day, I got the good chocolate.

Heat your oven to 350 degrees.  Grease an 8" square pan and set it aside.  In a medium saucepan, melt your butter and chocolate over low heat, stirring constantly.  Once it's all melted, remove it from the heat and let it cool slightly.  Then whisk in the sugar and vanilla, then the eggs, and finally the flour, baking powder, and salt until it's all blended.

If you're going to add in peanut butter chips, or chocolate chips, or anything else that melts, let your batter cool a while longer before you stir them in.

Only a few melted peanut butter chips

Once you've done that, just spread the batter in the pan and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out with just a few moist crumbs attached.  And I seem to have forgotten to take a picture of the finished brownies, but I'm pretty sure you can guess what they look like.  Instead, here's a picture of my kitty investigating the package of mousies she got for Christmas last year.

Uh-oh, mousies, you better watch out! Hilda's gonna get you!

And that's it!  They may take a little longer to make than a box mix, but I think they're a lot tastier, so it's worth it.  Stay tuned for next time, when I try making something maybe a little healthier!

Chicken and Broccoli Alfredo (done the easy way)

I've been kind of remiss in posting things this summer, due to a killer combination of the awful southern summer heat and the fact that my apartment isn't climate controlled.  I've got a couple of window units, but the kitchen has been around 90 degrees for the last month or so, which makes it awfully difficult to motivate myself to cook anything.  This weekend was a little bit cooler (it was only 87 degrees in my kitchen!) so I decided I'd try something pretty easy: chicken and broccoli alfredo.  There's not much actual cooking involved and it makes enough leftovers to give me lunch for most of the rest of the week.  All you need for this is a rotisserie chicken, broccoli, a couple of jars of alfredo sauce, and a box of pasta.

Cut up your broccoli into bite-sized pieces and boil it for about 5 minutes.  Shred up your chicken and add that, the cooked broccoli, and the alfredo sauce to a large pan.

Warm all this up over low to medium heat until it all heated through.  While you're doing that, go ahead and cook the pasta as directed on the box.  Once the pasta is cooked, drain it and return it to the pot.  As soon as your sauce is hot, pour it over the pasta in the pot and stir it all up so it's nicely mixed.

And that's it!  The sauce might seem like you've got too much, but if you plan on having a lot of leftovers and you don't have the extra sauce, your pasta will be kind of dry when you reheat it.  And having made this many many times before, I can tell you it does make for good leftovers.

That's it for this quick recipe.  Stay tuned for next time when I make homemade brownies!

Irene Courtney

I didn't talk about this at all on here at the time, but last August 24th, my Grammie passed away.  Today would have been her 97th birthday, so I thought it might be nice to write a bit about her.

Grammie was born June 22, 1916 in Dickinson Center, New York to Edgar Newland Aiken and Agnes Effie Stacy Aiken.

Edgar and Effie and KITTIES!!!!

Edgar and Effie also later had a son, Newland. 

I think this picture's kind of adorable

At some point, she met my Grandpa, John Courtney, through a mutual friend while he was working as a mechanic at a garage in Malone, NY.  They got married on September 7, 1943.

What a nice looking couple!

The had three kids: my Uncle John and later my mom and Aunt Mindy.

D'awwwwww!

Sadly, Grandpa died on May 29, 1967.

Grammie had a few different secretarial jobs in her life.  During World War II, she worked for Alcoa.  Later, she worked for a place called Adirondack Commercial in Malone, and finally for St. Regis Falls Central School.  She retired from the school in 1977 for health reasons.  She had a tumor removed that ended up with her losing half of her stomach.  Grammie wasn't expected to live very long after that.  It wouldn't be the only time she defied such predictions; much later she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma and, since she decided not to subject herself to going through the painful treatments she'd seen other go through, she was expected to live just a very short time.  It was more than a decade later that she passed away.

In 1990, she moved in with my family.  I, of course, thought this was absolutely great!  Now instead of having to go visit Grammie to get pies and cookies and things, she would be able to make them for me all the time (I was 9 at the time)!  And, for the most part, it was pretty great.  I got a great appreciation and some skill at baking tasty things.  She also helped me with learning how to drive, at least until she decided she was really too old to renew her license and let it lapse (seriously, as great as my parents are, they were NOT helpful at teaching me to drive.  Mom's method involved a great deal of screaming as if we were about to die and Dad is the most nit-picky passenger in the world.  To this day I am still very nervous when I have other people in the car when I'm driving).

Of course, Grammie didn't spend all of her time doing Grammie-type things.  She was a member of a couple of different clubs, such as the 4 River Valleys Historical Society, which she visited Italy with.  She also had a couple of close friends that she would go out and spend a lot of time with, especially Mrs. Anna Scott and Mrs. Dorothy Murphy.  She outlived both of them, and I think their deaths were a real blow to Grammie.

In order to alleviate that sad thought, here's Grammie with an umbrella hat

While I was in college, Grammie, Aunt Mindy and I all took a trip out to Arizona to visit Uncle John and his family.  It was a whole lot of fun and I'm mentioning it pretty much just so I have an excuse to add in this picture of Grammie and Aunt Mindy at the arboretum we went to.

Cacti!

The last few years of her life were pretty rough for Grammie, I think.  She could neither hear nor see very well.  She did become close with a couple more friends, though, and they would come and visit and the three of them would have cake or cookies and chat.  But her health did take a sharp decline.  Here's a picture from a few year ago with my sister's new puppy:

That dog has since gotten much bigger

And here's one some time later with her other new puppy:

That dog has not gotten any bigger

After several years of declining health, Grammie passed away in her sleep at home on August 24, 2012.  My parents were in Florida earlier that month and when my aunt called and told them to come home right away, the picked me up on the way north and we got there on the 23rd.  She never wanted to be put in a nursing home and I have so much respect for my parents and my aunt for being able to ensure that she never had to be.  I am also very grateful for Hospice of Jefferson County.  They helped take care of Grammie for quite a long time and when she died made things easier for the family. 

Grammie's funeral was quite nice.  We had the funeral mass at St. James Church in Carthage, and then loaded the old lady up in the hearse to bury her at St. Ann's cemetery in St. Regis Falls.  The funeral director followed my dad's car to the cemetery since he wasn't sure just where it was (Carthage and St. Regis Falls are about 100 miles apart).  He told dad that he could go as fast as he wanted, but I don't think he was expecting all the windy and bumpy roads that dad zoomed down going about 70 mph.  Grammie did not go bouncing out of the hearse, though, so it couldn't have been that bad.  I think the man was further scandalized by the priest who performed the burial service who came strolling through the cemetery wearing a cap and black jeans with a pouch of what looked like chewing tobacco in his back pocket (I think he might have ridden there on his motorcycle).  And you know what?  Grammie would have loved it.

My favorite thing about Grammie's funeral was something the priest said at the funeral mass.  "Irene was very sharp.  She managed to catch just about everything.  And whatever she didn't catch, she made up."  Yup.  I think that sums things up pretty well.

Christmas Day, 2003

Chicken Tetrazzini (and other stuff)

Wow, it's really been a while since I've posted.  It's not that I haven't wanted to write about anything, but since I went to Montreal I've gotten a new boss at work, and it's been, in a word, exhausting.  Don't get me wrong, the new boss is great, but he's also pretty much the exact opposite of my old boss and so it's taking a lot of getting used to.  My workload has also increased exponentially since we had a couple of higher-ups quit not too long before he started.  I did, however, get a temporary promotion to Interim Branch Manager (with a temporary pay raise!), which is great!  But there's no Interim-My-Old-Position, so I'm still doing all that work, too (or at least trying to).  Add to that the fact that it's the end of our fiscal year when things are extra crazy anyway, plus time for employee evaluations, which made me want to hide under my desk when I had to write up two of them (I now have to do eleven), and yeah, I'm stressed.  And stress makes me not eat and have trouble sleeping.  Which makes me depressed and adds to the stress.  Things will get straightened out eventually, though.  I just need to hang in there for a few more weeks until I get to go on vacation again (10 year college reunion!).  But you didn't come here to read about me being all "Waah waah, life is hard!", you came for a chicken recipe!  And here you go:

A while ago, I decided I really wanted chicken tetrazzini for dinner, but alas!  None of my cookbooks had a recipe!  After looking at a few recipes on the internet, I decided to try Martha Stewart's since I already had a lot of the ingredients.  I did change a couple things, though: 1. I still don't have any dry white wine, so I used extra chicken broth instead; and 2. My grocery store had lost power the morning I made this and I couldn't get any frozen peas, so they got left out, too.  Here are the ingredients for how I actually made this:

6 Tbsp butter; 1 lb. white mushrooms, sliced; 1/2 C flour; 3 C milk; 1 14.5 oz. can, plus 3/4 C chicken broth; 3 C grated Parmesan cheese; 1/2 tsp. thyme; 1 lb. angel hair pasta; 1 rotisserie chicken, skin removed and meat shredded; salt and pepper.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.  In a large pan, melt 2 Tbsp butter over high heat and add the mushrooms, seasoned with some salt and pepper.  This will look like an awful lot of mushrooms:

Before

But you will cook them for about 10 minutes, stirring them around frequently, until they get kind of browned, and they'll lose a lot of volume:

After

Transfer the mushrooms to a bowl and set aside.  In the same pan, this time over medium heat, melt the rest of the butter and whisk in the flour.  Stirring constantly, add in the milk and chicken broth.  Bring it to a boil, then reduce the heat so it's simmering and add in two cups of the Parmesan cheese and season with some salt and pepper, stirring until it's all melted.

So cheesy!

Cook the pasta in a big pot so it's al dente, drain, and put it back in the pot.  Stir in the mushroom, chicken, and sauce until it's all well mixed.  Divide it up between two 2-quart baking pans and put the remaining one cup of Parmesan cheese on top.

Now, you can cook both of these.  Or, if you don't think you could possible eat that much chicken tetrazzini before you either get sick of it or it goes bad, cover one of the dishes with foil and put it in the freezer for up to three months.  For the one you're going to eat right away, bake it at 400 degrees for about thirty minutes, or until it's nicely browned.  (And for the frozen one, if it's going straight from the freezer, bake it covered with foil at 400 degrees for about 2 hours, then uncover and bake another 20 minutes until browned or, if you've thawed it in the fridge first, bake covered with foil at 400 degrees for 30 minutes, then uncover and bake another 20 minutes until browned.)

I thought this recipe turned out pretty well, if a little bland.  I think if I make it again, I'll definitely have to add some kind of vegetable.  Maybe not peas, maybe broccoli or something (I like broccoli much better than peas).  And maybe I'll substitute a more flavorful cheese for some of the Parmesan.  I don't know.  This warms up really well, though, so that helps my opinion of it quite a bit.

Montreal

Last week I was lucky enough to be on vacation.  And doubly lucky in that I was actually able to go somewhere on my vacation: Montreal, Quebec!  Why Montreal?  Well, Muse is on tour and Montreal was the city that best worked out for me, my sister, and my brother-in-law to all go see them (they live in Central New York, which, relatively speaking, isn't that far from Montreal).  Plus, it had been over a decade(!) since I'd been up there and I quite like the city.  I also have a friend who lives there, so it was an added bonus to get to hang out with him.
I headed north to my parents' house on Saturday and Sunday Martha and Ed came and got me and we were off to the great nation of Canada (with a brief stop in Potsdam to go Eben's Hearth and see all the new construction at Clarkson)!  We didn't do much on Sunday except check in to the hotel and grab dinner with my friend, Blue at The Three Brewers (very tasty!).  Monday, though, it was time for a little sightseeing!  And me, being horrible about such things, only took pictures at the first place we went to, St. Joseph's Oratory. 

We were also lucky to have very nice weather

Blue had recommended we check out the oratory, but I also wanted to go there so I could get this picture:

Look at that lovely young couple!

And why did I want that picture?  Why, because I had this picture, of course!:

Look at that lovely young couple!

That would be my Grammie and Grandpa at the same spot, some many, many years earlier. 

We didn't go see the reliquary, but we wandered around most of the rest of the basilica.  It has a huuuuuge organ.

I don't even know how you'd play that.

And, naturally, quite a few pretty stained glass windows.

Ed said the color theme reminded him of the Scarlet Monastery

The oratory also has a museum, which houses approximately one bajillion versions of the nativity from all over the world.  They range from very simple depictions:

From Eritrea

To very fancy-pants:

Who knew Jesus was born in a very gaudy palace?  Thanks Poland!

From cute and simple:

Don't remember where this was from.

To horrifying:

Gaah!  Curse you, South Africa, marionettes are creepy!!

Abstract:

Yep, those are bowling pins

Silly:

If you can't tell, those are snowmen.  USA, keepin' it classy!

Overly complicated:

This is just one side of this one from Germany, and the whole thing is this busy.

And just plain pretty and tasteful (this was one of my favorites):

Don't remember where this was from, either.

There were a lot more, and I took pictures of many of them, but I think you get the idea.

And since this is where I stopped taking any pictures, I'll just kind of gloss over the rest of the trip.  We went to the planetarium next, which was super neat.  We got there in time for the English presentation and the played around with some of the interactive exhibits for a while.  Then it was back to the hotel and dinner at the Irish Embassy Pub & Grill where Ed got their peanut butter bacon burger, which I find the concept of to be horrifying, but Ed said it wasn't bad.

Tuesday!  I was in rough shape from trying to keep up with people who have longer legs than me and who also have been running races.  But, I hobbled along and tried to keep my complaining down to a minimum.  Ed really wanted to see the Formula One race track out on Ile Notre-Dame, so we headed out there.  He thought it was pretty neat.  I thought it was a road and thus not particularly interesting.  La Ronde is out there, too, but unfortunately doesn't open until May, so no roller coasters that day.  After wandering around the track for a while, we all decided we were pretty tuckered out and headed back to the hotel to rest up a bit for the concert that evening.  We stayed at the Hotel Espresso which, while not the fanciest of hotels, was reasonably priced and about two blocks from the Bell Centre, so we were able to just walk on over for the concert.  And the concert was sooo great!  Our seats were pretty high up, but we were off to the side of the stage, not all the way across the arena, so we could still see pretty well.  It was a lot of fun!  The 2nd Law isn't Muse's best album, for sure, but those boys sure can put on a show.  Poor Blue had originally planned on going with us, but got stuck having to go to class, so we hung out for a while after the show.

Wednesday!  Time to leave Montreal and head back home.  Blue took us to breakfast at Chez Cora where I had an incredibly delicious crepe full of raspberries and cream cheese.  And then it was time to go.  Unfortunately, we hit road construction and a huge detour, so it took a lot longer to get back than anticipated, but we went straight to Stefano's where we had garlic knots and pizza, which made it all better.

Thursday!  Back to Virginia!  Ugh, that's a long drive.  But I stopped in Richmond on the way for dinner with my friend Josh, so that made it a lot better (and also allowed me to avoid the worst of the traffic on 64).

Friday!  Yeah, I didn't do much.  I played Dishonored and did a little housework, and that was about it.  And Saturday it was back to work.  I really had a great time in Montreal.  Hopefully I'll be able to get back there (and/or Ottawa) again sometime before another decade goes by.

Chicken Stir Fry

Today's "tasty recipe with about a million ingredients" is chicken stir fry!  There's a lot of prep work involved, but once you have everything chopped, minced, sliced, and grated it's pretty easy.  Here's what you need: 2 C broccoli florets; 1/4 C peanut oil; 2 Tbsp minced garlic; 1 Tbsp grated ginger; 1 onion, sliced; 1/2 C chopped scallion; 1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into 1/2" chunks; 2 Tbsp soy sauce; salt and pepper; 1/2 C chicken stock.

Cook the broccoli in a pot of boiling water for about 2 minutes and then drain it and set it aside.  Over high heat, put half your oil in a large skillet.  Swirl that around for a bit and add in half of the garlic and half of the ginger and stir that around for about 15 seconds.  And in the onion and stir that around for about 2 minutes.  Now toss in the broccoli and scallion and stir it all around for about 5 minutes (your broccoli should be tender, but don't let it cook so long it gets mushy).

Turn the heat down to medium and remove all the veggies.  Add to the pan the rest of the oil, garlic, and ginger.  Stir that a bit, then add in the chicken.  Turn the heat back up to high, let the chicken cook undisturbed for about a minute, stir, and keep cooking the chicken, stirring occasionally until the chicken is no longer pink.  Should take about 5 minutes.  Now put all the vegetables back in the pan, stir it around, and add in the soy sauce.  Sprinkle it all with salt and pepper and add the chicken stock.  Keep cooking on high, stirring and making sure nothing sticks to the bottom of the pan, until the liquid is reduced a bit (say around a minute).

And you're done!  I recommend serving this over some nice jasmine rice.  You can also put whatever else you want for vegetables.  I just happen to like broccoli.  Enjoy!

Goulash

Normally on Easter, I like to have a delicious boiled ham dinner made by my mom.  Sadly, that hasn't happened for the last several years, what with my folks living several hundred miles away and all.  Rather than make that myself, which would result in about a ton of leftover ham (you need a good sized ham for it to turn out really well), I decided to try something new: goulash (which also resulted in a ton of leftovers).  This is another slow cooker recipe, which means the only very busy parts happen at the beginning, assembling the ingredients, and at the end to finish it off.  The middle part involves mostly just hanging around playing through the fantastic Bioshock Infinite.

What you'll need for this recipe includes: 1 1/2-2 lbs stew meat, but into 3/4-inch cubes; 1/2 C beef broth; 3 Tbs paprika; 1 1/2 tsp salt; 1/2 tsp caraway seeds; 1/4 tsp pepper; 3 onions, chopped; 2 cloves of garlic, chopped; 1 14.5-oz can whole tomatoes (undrained); 1/4 C cold water; 2 Tbsp flour; 6 C cooked noodles.

Goulash fixin's!

In a large skillet, cook the meat over medium heat until it's browned (about 5 minutes or so).  Drain and transfer to the slow cooker.  Now mix in everything else except for the water, flour, and noodles.  Break up the tomatoes a bit with a fork, too (and watch out, because they will squirt you!).

Put the cover on and set to low heat for 8-9 hours.  At the end of that time, shake up the flour and water in a tightly covered container, and stir the mixture in to the rest of the stuff.  Re-cover and turn the heat up to high for 10-20 minutes, until the whole thing thickens up.  While that's going on, cook the noodles.  Serve the goulash over the noodles, and you're done!

Magazine Wall of Underwater DOOM!!!

At the library I work for, we have a wall with fold-up shelving that houses our magazine subscriptions.  A few years ago most of these shelves ended up being empty due to budget cuts and it somehow became my job to beautify the area so it didn't look so depressingly empty (though we've since mostly bounced back with the number of our subscriptions).  I used to try and do seasonal displays, but since I can no longer be sure I'll be able to get to it often enough, I switched themes a while ago.  First I did the End of the Dinosaur Age, with a giant meteor coming down from the sky (which was made by my incredibly talented coworker) and dinosaurs stuck in tar pits.  Next up was Deep Space, in which the giant meteor was re-purposed into a comet, there were some planets, a UFO (also made by my coworker), Sputnik, and about a million sparkly stars I punched out of a corrugated glitter sheet.  This time, I decided to go with the Deep Sea.  First, here it is in all its glory:

Way down there in the right corner, I've got part of a giant squid lurking.

Hi there!

A little further along are some of his tentacles waving around.

Those are some pretty fine tentacles, if I do say so myself!

I hope things go ok for that whale!

Hello.  I am a whale.

Up at the top, we've got a school of creepy jellyfish.

They actually look kind of awesome from a distance.

The first of my coworker's contributions to the wall is this absolutely fantastic submarine:

Followed by some perpetually angry angler fish:

And my faaaavorite thing that she made based on an offhand comment of mine:

Her reward from me was a copy of Bioshock for her very own.

And finally, a somewhat smaller giant squid that I made:

Hello.  I am a squid.

I think I'm pretty good at making squids!  I'm sure I will find endless uses for this talent throughout my career.  Now I need to start coming up with ideas for the next display, which will go up a few months down the line.  Anyone have any ideas?