Could I do it?

Let’s see.

I need to bend the rules a bit here: I need a few days to average it out. Also, seasonings were not counted, so all my spices are considered free.

I haven’t done this math yet, so let’s see how this goes:

We were at the Farmer’s Market last weekend and something at the piggy store caught my eye. I spied some “meaty backbone chunks”…mmmmm….meaty chunks. It was only $1.19 per pound and looked rather meaty. Assessing porcine anatomy, I figured that these pieces were not going to be gristly or anything; in fact, they looked downright lovely. A low and slow approach would render them heavenly. I scored about 6 1/4 lbs of the good stuff.

Total spent: $7.42

I cooked the meat on Sunday. It got seasoned with salt and some of Ruth’s Savory Seasoning. Several hours later, I checked it and the meat was bubbling away in its own juices; practically begging me to shred it apart and allow it a longer simmer. I happily obliged.

What to serve with it???

I also had wanted to make sauce. 2 big cans of tomatoes, 1 can of tomato paste and half an onion came to probably about $4.50. Of course, I ended up freezing half the sauce, so, for this experiment; the expense was only $2.25.

We need pasta! $1.20 because in NC people don’t know how to properly discount pasta.

Throw in a head of lettuce for a salad: $1.49.

1/3 of a previously purchased and discounted loaf of garlic bread: $.33.

I ended up splitting the meat in half and packing away a large container of it. The other half got tossed into the sauce pot along with several ladles of the pork juice. The pasta was tossed in.

This fed the 3 of us on Sunday. Of course, we only ate half of the pasta, so we’d generated leftovers.

Monday: I dove into the remaining pork.
I split half of it out of the container (lovely now-gelatinized juices and all) and plopped it into a large pan. I set it on low and just let it melt.

The remaining half of the onion got cooked with 2 cups of rice. What’s that cost? About $1.00???

I thawed out a Mexican-type green sauce that I had made the week before. It had probably cost about $6.00 to make and I thawed half. So, the dinner-related expense was $3.00.

I simmered the pork until a lot of the juices reduced out. This left me with super-concentrated pork. I put the rice and onions on a plate, spooned on a helping of pork and put the sauce on top. Viola! Dinner. The rest of the salad was served on the side.

We managed to eat nearly all of it. We left a little rice behind.

Tuesday.
We’d gone through the lettuce the night before, so we needed to buy more. $1.49 down the drain. Shmuppie ate some leftover ribs and the rice for dinner and JewelrySlut and I had the remaining pasta.

Mind you; at this point, we still have enough pork left for another dinner.

So, let’s run that math and see how I did:
Pork: $7.42
Sauce fixins: $2.25
Pasta, Lettuce, garlic bread: $3.02
Rice and onion: $1.00
Green Sauce: $3.00
More lettuce: $1.49

Total: $18.18. And…remember, we still have pork left over for tonight. I sense burritos or tacos in my future.

Math rules: Let’s count Shmuppie as half a person when it comes to food consumption. She makes up for it in her “Pain in the ass” factor so she comes out whole.

I got 7 1/2 adult servings for $18.18. And the math says: I didn’t make it. It came out to $6.06 per meal. However: I have another dinner tonight to make and am still using that 2nd head of lettuce and the remaining meat. I may not quite make it under budget, but will be damned close.

What’s my point? As usual, I don’t have one. But, when I saw the price of that pork, it got me thinking that I could probably produce food good enough to make you cry and do it very cheaply. This is a big help, especially when you consider the wine bill from this week. But, we’ve been economizing there too and the wine of choice for us is 3-buck Chuck.

The lesson learned: It doesn’t have to be expensive to be damned good.

That s all.

***Basement update on the left*** (or right)

“Are you wet?”
“No”
“Then go to the bathroom and go back to bed!”

I drift back to sleep. Through the haze, I hear the cat yelping.
(In my head) “Goddamn mother blerging stupid cat…my life for a pellet gun”

“Daddy?”
At this, I leap straight out of bed, hit the ceiling fan, bounce off the ceiling, suffer a heart attack, stroke, and a series of involuntary muscle twitches
“Wha?”
“I don’t feel good”
I hold out my hand, in a “Get over here and press your head against my hand” motion.
She stands still.
(Hand still extended) “Come on!”
She feels slightly warm and is also reporting “Boogs (short for boogers) in my mouth”
I have no idea what that means, but it sounds nasty. I crawl out of bed, happy that I don’t have to pee (Men everywhere just nodded in appreciation of what I’m really saying) and stumble to her bathroom.
She turns the lights on.
I recoil like a vampire and nearly fall down. Blinded, I reach for a bottle of any kind of medicine. Cold Medicine? That’ll do. I pour a shot of it, hand it over and stumble back to bed.

6:00: CREAK!
SON OF A BITCH!
“What’s wrong?”
“I need to go potty”
I drift back to sleep…only to wake up 3 minutes later remembering to set the alarm.

Meanwhile, the cat decided that now is a good time to crap and yell about it. Earlier this week, I had to move the litter box to the landing on the stairs because the basement’s been taped off and the litter box is too big for any of the bathrooms. So, we get to listen to scratching and yelping in F-minor.

Shoot me.

6:30: BEEP BEEP BEEP
Snooze.
6:39: BEEP BEEP BEEP
I stumble out of bed, brush my teeth, shave, pee and get dressed. Into her room I go.
“I don’t feel good”
I feel her head…it feels warm. I get the thermometer. She’s warm. I fetch some Tylenol, hand over a shot and tell her to go to sleep.
“If I feel better later…”
“NO!” (CrazyAnne had offered to have her over this evening for movies with her grandson.) “Go back to sleep”

I stumble downstairs and decide that today warrants a full pot of coffee. I normally make a mug of instant during the week. Don’t make that face at me. It’s quick and it has caffeine in it. As long as you can get to the place in your head where you stop thinking of it as coffee and think of it as “what you drink in the morning”, it’s passable acceptable. As it brews, I start composing this story in my head. Chuckling to myself because, let’s face it, I’m just so darned witty, I start reading the paper. 4 minutes later, I’m done with the paper. My favorite part today was how the NAACP plans to picket the town of Wilson, NC because they have higher than average utility bills. Clearly, it’s because they’re racist and has nothing to do with how Wilson has decided to buy power from the grid…

In my head, I’m making a list of what I need to do.
Move the car so the drywaller can get the spot
Dial in to my 8:00 call
Think about doing a restore on the finally-repaired laptop

7:40:
Out loud, I mutter “OK…move the JESUS CHRIST! WHAT ARE YOU A GODDAMN NINJA?”
The child is standing right in front of me. I didn’t hear her sneak into the room.

“Um…Um…Daddy? Um…I…um…”
(I lean back against the kitchen counters and put my head in my hands)
“I…um…I…Daddy…”
(At this point, you should be imagining the Chocolate Cake routine)
“I didn’t tell the truth…I…um”
(I now bend over at the waist with my head in my hands and pray for death)
“I only slept for 15 minutes…I didn’t tell the truth…um…I…um…then I read for a while”
“OK…whatever. Go back upstairs and get slippers and a blanket”
“Can I have breakfast?” Here’s where I notice a gleam in her eye. Time to test her because I think I see where this is going.
“Eggs and bacon and toast!”
“You’re kidding me. How do you feel?”
“FINE!” I check her head…she’s cooled down.
“Do you want to go to school?”
“YES!”
(I die a little inside)
“Go upstairs and get dressed”

We head upstairs and she proceeds to get confused. Today, at her esteemed, hopefully soon to be former, school is Pajama Day! Next week, we’ll have “Let’s make up another excuse not to educate your children while the teachers sip bourbon day”. She puts on another pair of pajamas. I log into the laptop. I need to tell the 8:00 people I won’t make the call.

Here’s the email I send:

I will certainly be late and may not make the call.

Remind me weekly to thank my wife for all she’s done during the MANY times I’ve been away over the past 5 years. I’ll probably need to put in a standing order at the local florist.
**Work stuff follows**

“Are these too small?” She’s got on long sleeved PJ’s that stop mid-forearm. She’s also not wearing underpants.
(Groan.)
She gets another pair. These are skin-tight.
“You look like a fool” (To self…we may need to buy more PJ’s) “This school of yours is so stupid”
She brushes her teeth and goes into her room. Clearly pissed at me, she gets another pair and VERY SLOWLY gets them on.
I die 467 more times.

Downstairs we go. I nuke some pancakes and she eats.

7:50
We head to school where she is signed in as “tardy”

I sign her in as such and leave a note for the school’s Data Manager. The same woman who, a week ago, sent home a note claiming that the child had not been properly vaccinated. This was discovered after she was bitten by another student. Of course, they sent home the other child’s medical records to our house…in which we could clearly see that this child was not properly vaccinated. Score 3 for Wake County! Nothing like a good old fashioned medical-related privacy violation to the home of the kid whose father had made a career in the business of managing people who routinely make such errors and then gets blamed for them thusly causing him to switch jobs to a far more rewarding job at Xerox with a lot less stress and annoyance in which he routinely thanks coworkers for being so darned wonderful and not publicly humiliating me to the point that the child can now perfectly imitate the voice of a Senior Director who liked to call me “Rooooooooooooob”
(Whoa…I may have gone into a fugue state there)

They decided she’d been improperly vaccinated because she got some shot before she was 6 months old. However the rule says “24 weeks (6 months)”. She got it at 24 weeks and 4 days. Rather than argue the point to the woman at school who claimed not to have access to a 2002 calendar (making me wonder how a Data Manager exists without the internet), the child had gotten shots on Wednesday…the day of the delayed opening and early release from school…in other words, a 3 1/2 hour school day.

JewelrySlut gets home tomorrow. I shall hug her when I see her.

World’s Greatest Shave

That there’s a link to a site for a reader’s daughter and she’s doing this for the 2nd time. To say that I’m enamored with said reader, her family, and everything about her is an understatement. some day, I’ll get my ass to Perth and we’ll all have a good hug. Until then, I’ve done my little part and I ask you, all 3 of you who comment, but also the 4 others who lurk, to pony up a few bucks.

It’s for more than a good cause.

And…Judd said it better over here

So…do me a favor.

Also, poor JewelrySlut is going to FLA next week to go see her father and step-mother (I never know how to refer to her…) They haven’t met Chicken yet and it’s time for her to suck it up and leave one asylum for another.

I’ll be flying solo with Shmuppie for the week.

That’s OK. At least she won’t be able to damage her sister next week.

What you ask?

On Sunday, she was giving Chicken a bottle. Suddenly, Chicken started screaming…and not a normal cry. We both dashed into the room to find a screaming baby and a 7-year old.

WHAT HAPPENED?
She drank too fast.

We couldn’t really process that comment at the time because poor Chicken was losing her shit big time. Like absolutely screaming like a lunatic…or a baby in pain.

Well, we got to the bottom f things and it turns out big sis had bitten little sis. Why? We don’t know, but, judging from the demo I requested on my finger, I swear to Christ, we’re lucky she didn’t bite the baby’s finger off.

Things have been fun lately.

I know that the older sibling always tries to kill the younger sibling. I did it. JewelrySlut did it. The issue, as always, was that Shmuppie lied to us about it. And she was quick to develop the lie.

That said, she won’t do it again.

Also, on a related note, we’ve put in an application to transfer Shmuppie to a new school for next year. she’d be going year-round; an idea we like. It will also get her out of the school she’s in and the less than desirable population that seems to be in it. Recently, she was called a “Dumb white person” by a classmate.

It’s time to move to a different school. We think we’ll get in because few people want to go to year-round and even less want to leave a Magnet school. We’re asking to do both.

Remember this? Yup….my pal’s up to tricks (as they are) again.

So…Saturday.
Basketball at 8:00. I was none too pleased considering that there was snow on the ground from the night before. I don’t mind 1″ of snow, but the yahoos here do. I told JewelrySlut ans Chicken to stay home. There was no need for them to go out in to the slush.

They got creamed. Her team sucks. The 2nd half offense officially was “Give Shmuppie the ball and let her score”. Exactly what I don’t want her doing…

From there, we had errands to run. Shmuppie was going to my parents’ house for the night and I needed to shop for dinner.

Stop 1: In Basketball Saturday tradition, we stopped at Dunkin Donuts. I got coffee, a donut for Shmuppie.

Stop 2: I had kicked a bottle of rum 2 nights before so I needed another. Oops…store’s not open at 9:30.

Stop 3: Fresh Market. JewelrySlut had made one request for her belated birthday dinner: seafood. While pricey, Fresh Market has the best selection. Not Saturday…They had overpriced salmon, tilapia, flounder and Chilean Sea Bass (an overrated fish if you ask me). I scored one last piece of snapper for way too much/lb. I also picked up some large shrimp. I had not a clue what to do, but I had ingredients. Oh look! Poblano peppers! We’ll make rellenos! I picked up a dozen roses and 2 bottles of wine.

Stop 4: Ace Hardware (not the same one with the crazy guy though). I needed varnish and sandpaper.

Stop 5: Kerr Drug. They don’t sell milk.

Stop 6: Harris Teeter. They do

Stop 7: It was after 10, so the Hallmark store was open.

Stop 8: Kerr Drug…I forgot the cold medicine.

We finally got home and Shmuppie and I sanded, finished and varnished my work desk. Little did I know that mere hours later, we’d decide it would not fit in the office and that it was about to become Shmuppie’s homework desk in Basement V2.0.

We got rid of the child.

Background: Tuesday had been JewelrySlut’s birthday. But, it was a Tuesday and we had swimming and homework and it turned into a Tuesday. This leaves out the detail that I didn’t get her a gift. We had planned to rework a piece of jewelry that I had bought when Shmuppie was born to include the girls’ birth stones, but that would not work and the cost of a new piece was way too high (Sell your gold while you can. It’s worth a fortune). So…no gift. I owed her a decent meal.

5:00: Tomatoes with fresh mozzarella and some wee pitas I had picked up. Bottle #1 of wine was opened.

(During this, JewelrySlut was watching the Olympics)

I had roasted the peppers earlier in the afternoon. I peeled, seasoned and roasted the 8 large shrimp. After they cooked, 4 were plated and brought to the lady of the house (along with more wine) and the other 4 were chopped, mixed with ricotta and cream cheese and stuffed into the roasted poblanos. I rolled them in corn meal and baked them. That worked out rather well.

All the while, I was working on the sauce for the snapper. There’s a link over there on the left for my Vera Cruz recipe. It turned out wonderfully. The fish was perfect and I made rice with the “sauce juice”. A nice dry Riesling made it a lovely meal.

Then we had another bottle of $3 Chuck just because. That’s 3 bottles of wine for the night. We were drunk and happy.

So, here’s my point. It’s not to pat myself on the back as a wonderful cook who knows how to make a nice meal.

The dinner was a cross between birthday and Valentine’s Day. So, I’d wanted to do something nice for the woman I love.

That made me think… My parents never did stuff like that. To start, my father can’t boil water and my mother doesn’t eat. And, she grew bored with cooking decades ago and knows he’ll eat whatever she cooks. But, cooking like that is a sign of affection if you ask me. I toiled away for about 2 hours, and enjoyed every moment of it. I knew JewelrySlut was loving every minute of it and that made me happy. Lord knows she deserves it. Look who she’s married to!

The point of all this is that, at the end of the day, simple things always end up being the best things. I love her and had a great time with her last Saturday. I only hope that everyone gets the opportunity to share their life with someone whose company they so thoroughly enjoy.

Until then.

See that page marked “Basement 2010″? Yea…that’s it…go there please