my best attempt at this whole domestic thing

I’ve definitely been neglecting posting, an action that can also be applied to the house that has also been getting some serious lack of attention. The whole place has been pretty sloppy lately and in dire need of some legitimate TLC.

Not like any excuse is good enough but there has been plenty of things going on, of which I like to think PERMITS my lack of attention. For one, we had this funny little pup over at hour house while her owners were off traveling in NY for a few days. Motzzi had the time of his life but the house was like really? Can you get ANY MORE fur off of you and onto my carpets? Our usually light blue carpets turned a lovely shade of dark brown for a few days. Side note: we have officially decided to get new flooring. More on that potential disaster soon I’m sure.

Also, organization seems to be a huge issue at the place. It all started going south when our beloved 3 hook fixture (that I inherited from my nephew when he moved out) bit the dust when one-too-many purses was hung from it. I must not have realized the hooks weren’t made for like 100 pounds of purses and book bags and camera bags… but the fact that it ripped out of the wall now just means my items that are meant for hanging are now forlorn and strewn about the place. Its a Stage 4 disaster.

However, I will say that I think a breakthrough is coming… yesterday, approximately 10 minutes after my buddies picked up their little pup, I busted out the glorious vacuum powder (which was now a semi-solid chunk mixed with coffee grounds, thanks to Mr. Sinkerator for busting & leaking again), smashed it inside a ziploc bag thanks for genius roomie to get it back to powder status, and vacuumed like a crazy person for a good doozy. My triangles weren’t perfect but I DIDN’T CARE. It was exhilarating! and clean! and awesome.

Today’s epiphany: there are really only 2 things that have come a really long way. Technology, and fake mashed potatoes.

Ever since pagers were considered cool, I’ve considered boxed mashed potatoes absolutely nasty. I used to gag a little every time I even THOUGHT about them. At my friends house, I would choke down their parents fake taters because lets face it, I was damn spoiled with my own mom’s homemade mashed heavenly goodness.

But the facts are these: I really don’t like grocery shopping to go often to buy fresh taters, and the first (and last) time I bought a bag of potatoes I forgot about them in the cupboard, and by the time I remembered they had grown these monstrous like claws and weird discolored vines that I didn’t know what to do and  just threw them back in the cupboard like the freaks they were. Cat Cora HERSELF could tell me they were ok but I would still have my reserves, they are just not normal. So at Sam’s Club the other day, it had come down to a 50 lb. bag of Russets, or this red box with Idahoan splattered across the top. And going off of pure instinct and the justification that since it says “Idaho” somewhere on it its got to be good, we purchased it and I crossed my fingers.

Fast forward a week to tonight, and after the weekly softball game I just wanted a nice hearty meal. The usual PB&J or lame attempt just wasn’t going to cut it. So on my way home I remembered this AWESOME breaded chicken my mom used to make… they made the house whole smell so delicious, they looked easy enough and man… some mashed potatoes would be so perfect along side them. BUT WHAT IF THESE WERE SUB PAR? What if they made me want to vomit like many past fake taters?

But oh the contrary. They. Were. Awesome. I was sooo doubtful at first. But I even tasted the raw bits and even THEY tasted good! The roommate remains skeptical. But thats because HE DIDN’T TASTE THEM! But Mike flipped out of socks when he saw I had made mashed potatoes, and scarfed all of it down. It was a success :)

Yesterday was this guy’s 2nd birthday.

He’s not exactly an upgrade or new fixture to the house but his presence in the house is definitely worthy of mentioning on here, especially since we make such stark adjustments to our home for him and he doesn’t even pay rent, have a job, or pitch in with household chores. In fact, all he does is eat, sleep, and party up and down the stairs, jumps on our beds, demands attention, is sometimes rude to new guests and is always rude to little kids, and leaves his toys strewn about and doesn’t even care.

However! All he has to do is give us that ONE LOOK, plop right on top of our feet, squeeze his little head by your laptop and onto your keyboard, behave alarmingly well in a situation, wag his entire butt when we get home… and instantly our hearts melt like butter and all that other stuff goes out the window. The fact that he is a neurotic piece of work makes him all the more endearing. Maybe just to us, but still. :)

He is crazy and has issues but we really love him and couldn’t imagine life without him. Motzzi is the best mistake we ever made!

And now I’m wondering if my mom could substitute “she” for “he” and “Emily” for “Motzzi” and repeat everything verbatum. Yikes.

All I wanted was a temperature gauge for the grill.

Mike’s brother came over and brought steaks and said “wheres your thermometer? I need to know when the grill gets hot enough.” After laughing at him for thinking this was Bobby Flay’s house I said just let it warm up man, it will be fine. 10 minutes later he checks on it, and comes screaming back in the house because flames are licking the top of the grill and coming out around the side and Rob’s gasping “IS THIS NORMAL?!” We check on it and sure enough, the grill is not normal. 2 foot flames are fueled by pent up grease and I’m like “Hey Rob! Get your steaks, I think its warm enough!”

Anyway, fast forward into the week and I’m using any excuse to get back into the homeowners paradise called Bed Bath and Beyond, and that thermometer sounds like a good enough reason to go. I figure in case we attempt steaks on our own, I don’t want Mad Cow disease or anything. So Mike and I enter BB&B and as we are holding hands and skipping throughout the place with glee… all of a sudden, BAM! My world was knocked UPSIDE DOWN by this automatic soap dispenser sensor thing. um WHAT! Excuse me, I NEED THIS! I looked at Mike, and without even speaking he knew. I tried not to want it. I really tried hard to rip my eyes away from it. I tried to act like I could live in a world without it. We even looked at other normal soap dispensers for a moment but all I felt was emptiness inside. I imagined my hand under the sensor! I imagined how efficient, and magnificent it would be! Cleanliness, with great ease!

It had to be done. I snagged a recipe box, 2 frosty mugs, the soap dispenser from 2030 and walked away extremely happy.

Wait… oops. Forgot the thermometer. Aw shoot. Guess I’ll have to go back!!! ;)

Ok. I’m done messing around with my 3-5 wine bottles and the constantly half-filled rack. I am trying to figure out how in the world I can accomplish this wine cellar pictured above. HOW AWESOME IS THIS?! How long do you think the battle with HOA would be? Or technically, could they say anything since its not outside the house? I need to re-visit the CC&R’s on this one. Either way, this is a goal I am adding to The List. Please don’t be worried when you hear the sounds of demolition reverberating from my house. Wine party when I’m done! :)

Lately I’ve had these urges to bake, and at really late at night. Its really pretty ridiculous and totally inconvenient. But I HAVE TO BAKE! I didn’t even bake this much when I still lived at mom’s. I would get the urge like once a year. But in the past week I’ve made (and in this order): Cornbread from a box, sugar cookies, cornbread from semi-scratch, and brownies. Guess which one is pictured above.

I think the cornbread from the box (Trader Joe’s version) was so delicious and so easy, that it gave me this super false sense of super-hero baker and I was all THIS AIN’T HARD! I can do this, no sweat! But I made sugar cookies shortly after that (really since we didn’t have any other ingredients to make anything else) and they came out GREAT for the first 1/2 hour, and then after that they swayed to biscuit status and all they were missing was some gravy (per the other residents in the house). Then a friend came over and after politely choking one down referred to them as “snickerdoodles”. I really don’t know the difference, but this I DO know, that if you make something and someone calls it something else, you probably didn’t execute it all that well. Can you imagine making a great pot roast and someones all “Great chicken dip!”. Something obviously went awry. Even though I’m still not sure what. However, in retaliation, I thought hold up - I make a FANTASTIC cornbread. And pasta with sauce has been frequenting our dinner table lately, so I decided to make it again. Unfortunately this was another semi-fail, because although Mike was nice enough to eat half of the whole thing, it just wasn’t sweet like the Trader Joe’s kind and frankly, kind of nasty. So another fail there.

So what does a wannabe Top Chef do?! I’m just trying to bake with success. I remembered a friend of mine raved about some brownies I made in a jar for Christmas last year, the kind you put together and all they have to do is add water or something and bam! Brownies! So I dragged Mike to CVS, after debating that it WAS a necessary purchase and only after agreeing to buy another fish for the fish tank (since two unnecessary purchases equal a necessary one, duh), and voila! threw together the mix and threw them in the oven and wow… the brownies turned out AWESOME. I guess you can’t really go wrong with white and dark chocolate chips in brown sugar and cocoa mix, but it was the perfect potion to get my baking self-efficacy back up to the levels it should be… and also a new secret weapon for the next potluck they have at the office. Because they have approxiamtely 16 of those a week.

Sam’s Club! BEST PLACE EVER!

Where else can you get a jar of powdered creamer for 5 bucks that will last for the REST OF YOUR LIFE!
Where else can you buy necessary household items that won’t even fit into your already existing cabinets!

Literally this jug o’ creamer is as big as the entire coffee pot. The first words out of the roomies mouth were “You could cream the ocean with that”. Its a pretty legitimate amount of coffee creamer, definitely a worthy purchase. Although purchasing it was no easy task. I felt like I didn’t know where to begin in there. Like life turned into The Indian in the Cupboard, and we were the Indians. It was nuts. We also indulged in a 40 pound bag of shredded cheese (the luxury item for the week) and about 6,000 pounds of tortilla chips. Mike said “taco night tonight?” and I was thinking sure, we could have taco month if you really wanted to.

I say this was quite the successful shopping trip, although I did feel a little out of place. I kept feeling like every corner I turned, Jon and Kate plus 8 would be there and they’d be all “Oh hi! So how many little ones do YOU have?” and we’d have to fess up and be like “Uh, none” and they’d gawk and be like “Ok, see you in 6 months then when you run out of that food”. Which is why I really like Sam’s Club actually. They don’t discriminate against the childless, or the young just trying to save a buck or two by buying in bulk. We were the only people in there without kids and far below the median age of 40. They didn’t ask any code questions either on the application like “Approximately how many soccer games to you attend per week?” Thank you Sam, for treating us all alike. We appreciate the opportunity to binge shop too.

Well thanks Palmolive! For the force-clean of the cleaning supplies cabinet!

Seriously, I would never think to clean out the cabinet under the sink that has all the cleaning supplies. Isn’t that similar to disinfecting rubbing alcohol? I know its clean in there, I mean it always smells awesome in there, there is no trash or anything down there… everything down there cleans itself anyway! The dishwater packets, soaps, sprays, the ever awesome Glade carpet deodorizer , and more… had it not been for the fateful fall of this huge bright pink bottle of thick gooey dish soap or whatever its called I am pretty sure it would never have struck me to clean out this clean cabinet. Is this a major error on behalf of the fledgling domesticiress?

Either way, the tower of pink molasses goo took a nose dive forward and approximately half of its guts spilled all over the bottom of this cabinet, enough to start blubbering out onto the weird linoleum. Not only did I CLLEEEEAAAANN that thing out, it took an entire paper towel roll, it sudsed up probably a boatload worth of bubbles, took 2 gallons of water to thin out, and sparkled with such glean after that I think I saw a mischievous glint in the bottom of that cabinet’s eye. I’m not exaggerating when I say it took half a night. Ok, I am exaggerating, but really though, it took way longer than necessary. Especially considering that the necessary amount of time it should have taken was NOTHING because cleaning out cleaning closets is stupid. Stupid!

Its been a while since the last update - what can I say, I’ve been busy whipping up gourmet meals in the kitchen. Trader Joe’s frozen food bags are considered gourmet right? Actually, truth is - the only thing I’ve made from the ground up (twice) is this ridiculously awesome Key Lime Pie, which is just as equally easy as it is ridiculous. And no, I’m proud to report that I didn’t make it twice because I jacked up the first one, I made it twice because a) the first time around it was a hit (all of those plates were filled and emptied above), and b) Mike wasn’t home the first time around and was insanely jealous that my family got to indulge in the exquisite fare and he missed out. I’m likely exaggerating by flinging around adjectives like “exquisite” - but you know what, none of my fam ralphed immediately onto the plates after taking that first bite, so it was Emily for the win. I had already had a semi-loss earlier, when someone suggested ordering pizza in, and I was all “Wait! I am so prepared! I have a —- wait for it —- DiGiorno Pizza in the freezer! I’ll just pop that baby in, and dinner. is. served. !!!” I was SO excited for having such an effortless and savvy solution, beaming with glory, when I busted it out and all of them took one look at the hor d’oeuvre size snack and melted into a fit of laughter, because oh wait, how is an 8 slice pizza supposed to feed 6 grown people. Whoops.

Needless to say - I messed that one up, but I think the Key Lime Pie from out-of-nowhere helped a ton. At least my it helped my domestification self esteem! :)

In need of some inspiration or at least guidance, I was so graciously allowed by mom to steal a few cookbooks from her overflowing bookcase to take home with me. Since there were 8 billion to choose from, I went off of Attention-Captured-by-Title and pure instinct. I grabbed 3 immediately: World’s Best Recipe’s (kind of a bold statement, don’t you think?), COOKIES (speaks for itself, at least the capital letter do), and Dinners in 30 Minutes or Less (I’m a fan of efficiency). I never understood why she such an overabundance of recipe literature, considering everything she made spewed straight from her brain and onto the dinner table. The only time I saw her crack open a book was around the holidays, when everyone except me would contribute with cooking and I think she only had it there to make everyone else feel better about THEIR cooking abilities. I wasn’t allowed in the kitchen, even to observe, because I had no issues with walking by a hard-working chef and grabbing an entire handful of raw dough and asking why they even had to cook it, it was good as is, save yourself the time. Such a nuisance was not appreciated in the kitchen, so I never got to experience Mom’s kitchen stadium, thus never learning how to cook, hence this blog spot, right here, right now. Like SlumDog says, it’s all written.

I thought I could fool anybody into thinking I could cook though, I mean just because my entire family knows of my spaz status in the kitchen, doesn’t mean it’s plastered on my forehead does it? When I walk by a stranger, they can’t tell just by looking at me - can they? Apparently. I’m all excited for this new adventure of becoming the next Top Chef contender ready to take on Bobby Flay when I come home and show off my new cookbooks to anyone that will listen … that day it was the innocent bystanding roomie. One look at the 30-Minutes-or-Less cookbook and he says “30 minutes? So it should take you 60?”

Funny. Verrrrrrrrrry funny. I take back all those nice things I said about your toaster.