oh, the lack of decent food!

You'd think that working two jobs would give me more money to get food with, but you'd inexplicably be wrong. The reason I haven't posted anything in so long is because we've been soooooooooooo poor that we haven't even been able to buy groceries, and therefore we haven't made anything in ages (well, we made fried chicken last night, but I forgot to take pictures because I was so unused to the idea by now).

I plan to scrape up money for the holiday baking I didn't get to before Christmas, but who knows if I'll be able to-- I also planned to make preserves and didn't.*

I want to bake cookies. This has been such a crappy year that I'm craving all things normal and traditional that will assure me that life is moving on and that things still flow as they should. ::sigh:: I want my mom's Chocolate Chip Cookies, Sugar cookies and Peanut Butter Cookies. And I want sugarplums, which I managed to make three years in a row, but couldn't afford this year. And I want to try new things, like fruit candies and new flavors of cookies.

So we'll see how the new year goes. I've got to save up for School and a Laptop and ICFA and running shoes and school loans and paying off the backlog of bills I owe my room mates, but maybe I can manage it... Flour and sugar are cheap, right? And I've still got all those acorns to make into flour, and there's going to be rowan berries as soon as the frost makes them edible...

* This is why I'm extending my Year of Living Seasonally-- to fill in the gaps I couldn't make work this time, and the hardness will work into the text. Also, I need to get all my research and interviewing done.

carribbean mash

Last night, we had porkchops cooked with one of those ready-made seasonings-- the citrus one-- in a roasting bag, and for a side, we had this amazing and original mash that D discovered in a dream:

He took red potatoes and boiled them with green plantains, to start, adding the plantains a few minutes after the potatoes because they don't take as long to cook. He said that they boil nicely, but they make weird black bubbles that are kind of alarming, though they drain away like any other boiling water.

While they were cooking, he sautéed peppers, onions and garlic.

Once everything was done, he mashed it all together with salt and pepper, and it was really amazing. The red potatoes already make a pretty smooth mash, but the plantains made it almost creamy, and gave it a little tang like they'd been made with buttermilk. The slight fruityness of it went really well with the citrus porkchops, and mellowed the onions and garlic so that all the flavors blended better than they do with just potatoes. And they tasted excellent with the citrusy meat-juice left in the roasting bag.

Keeper!