An official update…I’ve finally been able to sleep for the last 3 weeks; I mean, really sleeping thanks to those Midnight Drops. Sleep is definitely underrated. I’ve had problems sleeping my whole adult life, so this is actually kind of weird.
I’ve always gone to bed later than Marty. Sometimes it’s nice to stay up and enjoy a little peace and solitude, but not being able to sleep on most nights sucks. Marty has always been the one who is up early, making a pot of coffee, and enjoy the early morning quiet.
Now I am up first; weird. What’s weirder is that I wake up on my own, ready for it?… Not tired at all! I’ve even been able to brew a pot of coffee without making a complete mess.
The peace and tranquillity of the morning hours are completely different from the evening. In the morning, it’s a feeling of the calm before the storm getting ready to start my day as opposed to at night when I start to panic, “Oh shit, I’m going to be so tired in the morning! It’s going to be a long ass day!”
Whenever an alarm would rip me out of a terrible night’s sleep, I woke up tired and pissed off while most people wake up refreshed since they actually slept. I forgot what it felt like actually being refreshed or to sleep for 5-6 hours straight. It’s amazing balls! More than that, it’s awesomesauce.
Laying in bed at night when most people are sleeping, and you can’t turn off your brain or even shut your eyes is maddening! It’s been used to torture people, for Christ’s sake! It’s a problem I see many of my Facebook friends are having as well. I see their posts in the middle of the night asking if anyone else is up—usually a shit load of people who should be sleeping answer back.
The bottom line is, thank God I no longer feel tortured, tired, or miserable in the morning. I don’t start my day anymore planning when I can fit in a nap which is priceless. Totally worth a four-hour round trip to the dispensary to stock up those hard-to-find Midnight Drops. 😴
Oh yeah, one more thing…One other big plus with the Midnight Drops is that the combo of CBD & THC is helping with my arthritis pain. I didn’t realize it at first; the build-up of the CBD over the last three weeks is definitely noticeable. A win/win!
I made us chicken marsala for dinner tonight with mashed potatoes. No veg, just cranberry sauce, I know it sounds gross, but that’s what I felt like having.
I love chicken marsala; I never order it out because it’s always a disappointment. Sometimes the chicken breast is too thick or overcooked. Sometimes the marsala sauce is flavorless or too thick and gloppy. One time the sauce was way too sweet. Ewww!
Yum! Hit the spot on a rainy night.
The point is, I love it and was really looking forward to it. I was even happier that I pounded the chicken breasts thinly a few days ago, dredged it in cornflour, and sautéed it in butter. I deglazed the pan with chicken stock; I put the cooked chicken and the stock into a Tupperware, so it was ready when I was.
Tonight, I sautéed some shallots, baby bella mushrooms, and some garlic. When the pan had a nice brown fond on it, I deglazed it with marsala wine. I scraped up the brown bits, added the stock, and let it simmer for about 10 minutes. I added the chicken and let that simmer for about another ten minutes. I added a bit of butter to give the sauce a little body to finish the dish.
Mashed potatoes, well, hell, I can make them in my sleep. I make the most basic kind, good russet potatoes, butter, kosher salt, and a little half & half. Did you know that Gordon Ramsey’s mashed potatoes are made with 60% potatoes and 40% butter? I’ve seen him several times making his famous “mash.” Listen up; this is why food in restaurants tastes better than anything you can make a home. It is fucking shocking the amount of butter, salt, and sugar that is used in restaurants and catered events. Staggering!
How do I know? I’ve seen it up close and personal and still can’t believe it. What bugs the absolute shit out of me is that most chef’s cookbooks are written the way people will cook them at home, not the way it’s done in restaurants. I can promise you this is 💯 true. One day my chef friend Martin and I will collaborate and write a blog post on this subject.
I am writing at 8:30 pm, 14 hours after starting my day. The first time I sat down besides eating dinner is right now. I stood up eating lunch while working on projects in our home. I started a huge project, bigger than I anticipated, and it took forever to finish. At one point, our entire upstairs hallway, bathroom, and bedroom were full of clothing, shoes, bags, donation piles, garbage piles, and stuff I didn’t know what to do with.
Poor Sam got up at 2 and wanted to shower and get ready for his 4 pm – 4 am shift and couldn’t get through. Lol! He did the same thing cleaning out his room and closet last week, and it was the same situation, just reversed. The mess has to get really bad and out of control before things get better—truth, 100% of the time.
Why in God’s name I started this after production, I do not know. Well, actually I do; I couldn’t find a black mini skirt and a white strapless bra. I thought both were stuffed in my belly dance costuming boxes. I was wrong. Then I decided to reorganize my costuming and put everything into smaller totes that are easier to manage. OMG, what a freakin’ mess!
In the end, I found the black mini skirt in my dresser shoved behind some black leggings. I have yet to find the white strapless bra, dammit. So annoying! I hate how careless I am with my things when I get busy.
Right now, every piece of my clothing except for what I am wearing is washed, folded, and put away neatly. Everything is hung up, and the closet is very organized. How long will it last? Jeez, I hope for at least a month.
I put a pork loin into the oven 3 hours ago, braising it to make pulled pork for dinner tomorrow night. It was a grand idea when I put it in the oven, but now I am so tired the last thing I feel like doing is pulling some pork. I wanted to have dinner prepared for tomorrow night since we eat around 8:45 pm after I get home from belly dance. I roasted some root vegetables earlier in the day, and they have to be reheated as well.
Medley of root vegetables ready for the oven.
Ok, I am done. The oven timer just went off; I need to pull the pork out of the oven and let it cool so I can pull it still tonight. You can’t pull pork when it is cold, so tonight, it has to be.
Goodnite! I wish you a great day tomorrow, guys! ❤️
Saturday after the farmers market, while we were sitting outside, Marty asked if I wanted to make deliveries on Sunday instead of Monday; Sunday is our scheduled day off.
“We can get up early and make the deliveries then find a place to stay for the night, a place with a pool, somewhere just to relax,” Marty said. Since last July, we haven’t been away for a night when we visited my sister Jen in NJ.
After checking the weather forecast, we decided that Marty’s idea was a good one. After spending over an hour looking for hotels with an outdoor pool somewhere in upstate NY, we went with something we already knew. Back in 2017, right after we started our business, we did the same thing staying at the Marriott in Albany, NY.
The Marriott is updated and modern with a nice outdoor pool and only an hour from home. Once we parked our delivery van in the parking garage, it didn’t seem like we were “just” at a hotel in Albany. Once on the property, we could have been anywhere, really.
The ladies’ room was very modern with a screen that changed every few seconds with info.
Before we checked in, we ate lunch. We went to a place near the hotel called Toro, a Mexican restaurant with a cool, hip vibe. We sat at the bar, we are bar people, and ordered drinks. We hardly ever drink during the day, but we were on “vacation,” so why not?
Shrimp tacos with cabbage, habanero peach salsa, and lime aioli. It had the right amount of spice despite the habaneros.
We both ordered delicious tacos; I had shrimp tacos and Marty braised pork ones, but the best thing was they had free gluten-free house-made tortilla chips with salsa! This is a huge deal to gluten-free people!
The food was good, the service was great, and I left with a good margarita buzz on. Toro is very gluten-free friendly and has a separate gluten-free menu. Again, this is also a big deal to gluten-free folks; I never trust a place that basically makes you free-ball your meal and hope you don’t get glutened. It’s happened to me many times; that’s how I know.
Cannonball!
We got to check in at 1 pm instead of 3 pm. We quickly changed into our swimsuits and hit the pool. We had the entire pool to ourselves…the whole day! Perfect since we just wanted to lay on lounge chairs and do cannonballs into the pool. “Cannonball!”
We stayed at the pool all afternoon, then we relaxed for a bit in our hotel room and took showers to go out to dinner. After hemming and hawing over where to go, we decided on an Asian bbq & hot pot place called Mosu.
We wanted to go somewhere different, with a different food experience. We picked a place with interactive dining. Whenever I watch food travel shows, and they do cool things, I always whine that I want to do fun stuff like that, so we did.
Mosu and was located directly next to Toro where we went for lunch. Their menu was clearly marked with gluten-free items making the meal stress-free. We first had to decide if we wanted to bbq our food or have hotpot. We picked bbq since it was warm out, and we wanted to grill our own food right at the table. Hotpot could wait until cooler weather.
Next, we had to choose if we wanted all you can eat or order plates and bowls of items to grill that were priced separately. We weren’t sure how quickly that would add up, so we chose all you can eat. In retrospect, we didn’t eat nearly as much as other people; next time, it will be less expensive to order items and add them up at the end of the meal. Lesson learned…but now we know for next time or hotpot.
Our server, Ally, was very nice, informative, and was knowledgeable about their gluten-free choices. We were given an iPad to look through the menu; the iPad is also where you started ordering your food. It took a couple of minutes to understand what to do, then Marty started firing away, ordering different things.
Ally lit our grill table, and the next thing we knew, servers started being small plates and bowls of the items we picked. We each had a set of tongs for grilling and got started.
We picked sliced filet mignon and thick-cut ribeye steak: garlic shrimp, pork belly, and pork collar. We also ordered a small bowl of white rice, spicy raw peppers, onions, garlic, kimchi, and the star of the show, pickled daikon radish. Weird that the radish was the star of the meal, right? The pickled daikon hit four senses sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. It cut through all the fat from the meat and balanced it out.
For the second round, we ordered more ribeye, garlic shrimp, and curried chicken. Then we hit a wall. I eat small portion sizes anyway; I tried to pace myself and not fill up too quickly since we picked all you can eat.
We did save room for a small ramekin of creme brûlée, which was delicious! One of the choices for dessert was s’mores, such a great idea for the grilling tables; even though it wasn’t gluten-free, Marty asked for just marshmallows since we can’t eat graham crackers. He’s a kid when it comes to toasting marshmallows. He gets an intense look of concentration on his face when he is roasting marshmallows. Lol!
I told Ally our server how much we enjoyed the pickled daikon, she told us we could buy some to take home, which is exactly what we did.
Pickled daikon radishes.
We slept great and checked out early, taking a different way home. We found a bunch of consignment and thrift shops on the drive. I picked up some really great boutique items for less than $5 each…and none of them were black. I’ve been buying different items in different colors to sprinkle into my once all-black wardrobe.
It felt so great getting away. Otto and Klausie survived without us, no problem. We are spending the night in a hotel this Sunday night as well. I have an early appointment at the IBD (Inflammatory Bowel Disease) Clinic at Dartmouth Hitchock. My doctor that I love left, his fellowship was over, so I need to meet the new providers caring for me. Luckily, I am in remission with my ulcerative colitis, so it should be an easy appointment. I hope I like my new provider as much as I liked Dr. Colburn. I am also off the hook and don’t need to have my next colonoscopy until next year. Yay!
We had a really fun time together. We didn’t talk about the business or look at our phones at all. I only used my phone to take photos and get directions to places. Now I feel rejuvenated and happy to have spent the day at a real pool and catching some rays; it finally feels like summertime to me!
A couple of weeks ago, I made a new Thai dish that was a huge hit; the bad news was I didn’t make enough, so there were no leftovers; Sam was beyond disappointed. Lol!
I actually make pretty tasty Thai food, as good as any of the places we have around here in Southern Vermont, which isn’t many. We literally live in a food desert; if you want something different or ethnic, you must drive at least an hour away.
I found a recipe for Thai Coconut Grilled Chicken when I was menu planning. I read through the blog post, then the ingredients and recipe. I’ve never used a few of the Asian ingredients the writer used in her recipe. Typically, I don’t add soy sauce or oyster sauce to my Thai food; I use traditional fish sauce as the umami.
Umami? If you have watched any cooking programs over the last 5 years, you must have heard the word umami at least 1000 times. For those who don’t cook or watch cooking shows, umami is considered the fifth sense of taste after sweet, salty, sour, and bitter.
Here is what Wikipedia says about Umami:
Umami (/uːˈmɑːmi/ from Japanese: 旨味 Japanese pronunciation: [ɯmami]), or savoriness, is one of the five basic tastes.[1] It has been described as savory and is characteristic of broths and cooked meats.
I followed the recipe exactly, except I used boneless breasts of chicken instead of chunks of chicken on skewers. I also followed the recipe for the peanut sauce even though I have one that I’ve been making for years, way back to our catering days. I like this one perhaps a little better; it has a deeper depth of flavor and is brighter than mine.
I owed my family a good meal after the disastrous shrimp skewers from last week. This time I doubled the chicken and coconut rice, leaving plenty of leftovers. Sam already had me pack his tv dinner type to-go dish for work on Monday; he wasn’t taking any chances that there wouldn’t be any left. A chip off the old block!
Sam loves food and looks forward to it as much as I do. He has learned from Mama Julz how to hide things you love and don’t want someone else to devour. For years I was able to hide good chocolates in the produce drawers of the refrigerator, God forbid someone looks for a piece of fruit or vegetables as a snack, so it was a perfect hiding place until Sam found it.
One of my favorite hiding spots is in a huge pot high up on top of the pantry. Sam found that one too. I cry laughing when I see some of his hiding places for his favorite snacks. Sam and I don’t eat each other’s hidden snacks; we hide our snacks from Marty and when Noah lived here. They can have their own snacks and hide them if they want to. Food is serious business for Sam and me.
What led up to this over the years is looking forward to eating a leftover or snack all day, and it isn’t there. Someone ate it, not out of the love of the food, but out of boredom or just because. OMG, I used to lose my shit, “Who the hell ate my whatever? Are you kidding me right now? Is nothing sacred? I’ve been looking forward to this all day! Son of a bitch!” And so on and so forth. It became easier to hide what I wanted to eat later, and it saved a lot of me bitching about it. As I said, food is some serious shit here at the Irion place.
Photo credit Sam Irion
After making the Thai coconut grilled chicken for the second time, I have to tell you it’s a winner of a recipe. Kudos to the woman Prasanna whose website I found the recipe on. Here is a link to the recipe. If you like Thai food but don’t have all the ethnic ingredients, I urge you to pick them up and not start substituting or leaving them out. Each ingredient is important I found after making and tasting it for the second time.
Happy Friday! It’s almost the end of another week that has flown by this summer. Have a great weekend, everyone; I’ll catch up with you on Sunday. Goodnight!
This is my 200th blog post! I started my blog on January 24, 2021, unsure about everything…who, what, where, when, how, or why. I can answer some of those questions now.
Who…what to name the blog and under what category. It took a while, but “Julzie Style’s A Journey of Cooking and Living” felt accurate, falling under the lifestyle blog category instead of a food blog.
Who is going to read my blog? I knew my Facebook friends who have been pushing me to start a blog would; I wasn’t sure who else though.
I picked up quite a few subscribers when my friend Jon Katz an award-winning writer, author, and photographer, gave my blog a plug on his called The Bedlam Farm Journal.
I took this photo early this morning for today’s blog post, then just a few minutes ago, I saw that my friend Jon Katz took photos of lilies today with his new camera. Shoot, I never take photos like this, and I wanted something different. I decided not to use it for the cover shot since it looks like I copy-catted Jon. 😂 Click on his blog link to see those gorgeous lilies.
I also picked up some other readers on my Julzie Style Facebook page when my friend, Jon’s wife, and belly dance student Maria Wulf mentioned my blog in one of her blog entries. Maria is a successful artist with many followers. Her blog is called Fullmoon Fiber Art. Check it out it’s fun to read and see what she’s working on or what’s happening on Bedlam Farm.
Over time I’ve picked up a few new subscribers and lost a couple. At first, I panicked about why someone unsubscribed to my blog; then, I realized I am not everyone’s cup of tea, and that is perfectly fine.
What…Ok, so I wanted to write about cooking, belly dancing, travel, food, family, and business. A food blog alone would have bored me to tears since there I more to me than cooking.
Where…I am not sure how to answer this one. 🤷🏻♀️
When…this can mean a couple of things; when do I write, and what time in my life would I be sharing. I like to write about some of my favorite memories growing up in NJ or whatever is happening right now.
How…how the fuck should I know? Seriously, I am one of the most ignorant people when it comes to technology. I don’t have the brain to compute how to do it or the patience to figure it out, back to me being a right-brained thinker.
Marty and Sam helped me set up my blog. My blog is straightforward, and I wanted to make it better as time went on. I also didn’t realize that the blog easily cost about $400 to get up and run. I needed to buy a domain name, find a hosting agent, and some programs I wanted to use, like Grammarly.
Marty bought me a laptop so that I could work on my blog anywhere inside or outside. If I had to sit upstairs in our tiny office at our desk computer, I wouldn’t have liked it at all. Ah-ha! This falls under the where category!
Professional food bloggers use professional web designers, fancy and expensive recipe programs, real cameras and filming equipment, and lots of other bells and whistles. They rely on pop-up advertisements to get paid for their work, blog expenses, and then some.
These ads and videos pop up multiple times whenever I read a food blog or a recipe. This makes me insane! It’s so hard to keep X-ing out of the videos and ads. After I click out of the first one and another one pops up, I am out of there. Before I started my blog, I knew that I didn’t want my readers to put up with that annoyance.
I have support my blog button on my homepage that I felt uncomfortable putting there in the first place. I want to thank all of you for your donations to my blog. Every little bit helps; I have all my donation money in an account to put towards all the fees I’ll have to pay again when the blog’s year is up.
I know that I should ask or remind people how important it is to support someone’s work. I want my blog to be free to everyone, but I have asked if you were enjoying my blog or recipes to consider a small donation.
Whenever I receive a $2 donation from someone because they loved how my recipe came out makes me so proud and happy.
I recently looked at recipe programs that would help me with serving sizes, a jump to recipe button, a print button, nutritional counts, etc. Those programs start around $200 bucks, so that will not be happening anytime soon.
Why…I used my personal Facebook page for 10 years as a cooking and lifestyle blog. I wanted to start a blog but didn’t know literally where to start. I read up on Blogging for Dummies and watched YouTube videos. The actual writing part came; naturally, the rest of it is still hard to figure out.
My blog started during the pandemic when my life and our business wasn’t nearly as crazy busy as it is now. At least I had some extra time to figure out my voice as a writer. I was excited when I received my first donation because it meant I was a writer since someone paid me to write. Yay!
I just found this photo, obviously from my black only days. I have absolutely no idea where I took this selfie; nevertheless, I like it. Things have changed both in my closet in terms of color and how I started accepting myself.
My blog has had many ups and downs depending on what I was writing about. I didn’t expect my writing to become so emotional, bringing out good memories and, unfortunately, some awful ones that I had hidden deep inside me.
My blog has introduced you all to some of my family, friends, and a list of regular characters I encounter. I have more people to introduce you to and, unfortunately, some that I can’t. I always respect anyone’s wishes who don’t want me to write about them.
What do I want for the next 200 posts? I want to continue to enjoy writing and sharing myself with you. I want to stay honest and authentic as promised. I want my blog posts to keep jumping right from my brain to my laptop, with the words flying out easily and naturally.
I am open to suggestions, comments, recipes, or how-to requests. I still have so much to share with you guys, and I look forward to writing, which I’ve done almost every day. If you don’t see a post on a certain day, my day was nuts, and I ran out of time.
Thank you, Jon and Maria, for inspiring me and for all your input. Jon spent endless time with me, shaping me into becoming a better writer and to always think about my readers.
Thanks to Marty, Sam, and Noah for being open to me and including them in my daily posts and for their continued support.
I appreciate all of you for taking the time to read my blog. I love reading your comments that encourage me and help me not feel alone when struggling with emotional issues. When I read comments cheering me on, well, this makes my day a whole lot brighter.
Finally, thanks, guys; from the bottom of my heart, there wouldn’t be a blog if no one read it; psst…tell your friends about it, too I would love to pick up some new readers. ❤️
I cook a lot of pretty delicious home run food, but now and again, I strike out. Each time I strike out, I learn something. Last night was one of those strikeouts. Ugh!
I bought a pineapple last week and wanted to make a Polynesian dinner. In my head, I wanted to make marinated colossal shrimp and veggie skewers, coconut-crusted crab cakes with a dipping sauce, and Hawaiian coleslaw. Sounds good, right?
As I prepped my dinner, I tasted everything along the way. My marinade, dressing for the coleslaw, and the dipping sauce was all good. The crab cake mixture tasted better than I thought. I practiced my knife skills…precision cuts, and speed. Everything was going to plan.
I skewered the shrimp and veggies and got them ready for the grill. I quickly pan-fried the crab cakes and finished them in the oven. Tossed the coleslaw and poured the dipping sauce for the crab cakes into small individual bowls.
Everything smelled delicious, but the meal wasn’t good. The shrimp became mushy from the marinade, which has never happened before, but I never used this type of marinade before. Now I won’t again.
The Hawaiian coleslaw sucked along with the dipping sauce for the crab cakes. The sauce was fine on its own but was too heavy for the crab cakes. Dammit! The coconut-crusted crab cakes on their own were good, at least.
No one said anything at the table except that the crab cakes were good. I always try to take Julia Child’s advice to never apologize for a bad meal. Here’s what Julia says:
Photo credit Julia Child Foundation
“I don’t believe in twisting yourself into knots of excuses and explanations over the food you make. When one’s hostess starts in with self-deprecations such as “Oh, I don’t know how to cook…,” or “Poor little me…,” or “This may taste awful…,” it is so dreadful to have to reassure her that everything is delicious and fine, whether it is or not. Besides, such admissions only draw attention to one’s shortcomings (or self-perceived shortcomings), and make the other person think, “Yes, you’re right, this really is an awful meal!” Maybe the cat has fallen into the stew, or the lettuce has frozen, or the cake has collapsed — eh bien, tant pis! Usually one’s cooking is better than one thinks it is. And if the food is truly vile, as my ersatz eggs Florentine surely were, then the cook must simply grit her teeth and bear it with a smile — and learn from her mistakes.”
While we were eating breakfast, Marty said, “Don’t get mad, but I have to be honest about something.” I always know what that means. Marty told me, “Dinner last night wasn’t very good.” No shit Sherlock! I agreed with everything that he said.
I cook dinner almost every single day and know any cook can have an off day. Yesterday was mine. I move on and don’t let it bother me anymore. I learned from the bad meal, and thankfully I never try new shit out on company; I think I learned that piece of advice from Ina Garten. Trying new recipes out on family or friends is fine, and you’ll get their honest feedback.
My feedback last night…Your meal sucked, Julz. Another lesson learned on my cooking journey. Aloha! 🌺
Last night as I was going to bed, Sam started getting things out to make biscuits…delicious flaky biscuits loaded with gluten. He had the same look in his eyes that I get when he starts imagining what he will make. Sam said goodnight to us at 10:45 pm and told us he was making breakfast.
This morning when I went into the kitchen, there was no sign of any cooking or baking. The kitchen was cleaner than when I went to bed. The dish drainer and dishwasher were empty from last night’s dishes; the only clue he left behind was a ziplock bag with biscuits in it.
After looking around at my sparkling kitchen, I knew I had to make us some gluten-free biscuits. I decided while I sipped my coffee that I would also make sawmill gravy & scrambled eggs.
Normally, we have a quick bowl of yogurt while gulping down our coffee, but I had time since today wasn’t a production day.
If I had to choose two of my favorite breakfasts, they would be biscuits & gravy or eggs benedict. I really miss ordering those in a diner or restaurant; luckily, in our town, we have a new place called Bonnie & Clyde’s Corner Market where I can safely order my third favorite breakfast thing a pork roll, egg, and cheese sandwich. Yum!
My dry biscuits…
So, to be honest, I used a store-bought gluten-free biscuit mix which I wish I hadn’t because they were very dry; it’s a good thing the sausage gravy was going on top of them. While the biscuits were baking, I started my sausage, aka sawmill gravy. I’ve been called the “gravy master,” yes, a shameless pun on the meat browning product. I make really good gravies and sauces. If I could go back to my younger days, I would have loved to have been a Saucier Chef.
From Wikipedia:
A saucier (French pronunciation: [sosje]) or sauté chef is a position in the classical brigade style kitchen. It can be translated into English as sauce chef. In addition to preparing sauces, the saucier prepares stews, hot hors d’œuvres, and sautés food to order. Although it is often considered the highest position of the station cooks, the saucier is typically still tertiary to the chef and sous-chef.
My sausage gravy starts with browning some bulk sausage in an iron pan. After the sausage is nicely browned, I remove it from the pan. Next, I melt a dollop of butter and whisk in some potato starch after the butter has melted. Once the butter and potato starch are bubbling, I add whole milk, kosher salt & black pepper. I add more milk a little at a time if I need to loosen the gravy up a bit. I add the sausage back to the pan and simmer. The gravy is done when it a spoon leaves a separation trail but fills in again. Finally, I taste the gravy to check the seasoning.
Dragging a spoon that leaves a trail in the gravy means it’s done!
I wrote about mother sauces in my veloute post during the wintertime. To make a basic white, gravy, or veloute sauce, the ratio is always 1:1:1. One Tbsp of pan drippings, butter, or other fat. 1 Tbsp thickener of choices such as flour, cornstarch, or my favorite old standby potato starch. Plus 1 cup of milk or broth/stock if making gravies or veloutes. When you need to double or triple, use the same ratio…2:2:2 or 3:3:3 and so on.
When the sawmill gravy was ready, I made some soft and creamy French-style scrambled eggs. I plated our breakfast at the last minute to keep everything hot and yelled to Marty outside, “Breakfast!”
I made enough sausage gravy that Sam could have some for his breakfast before his overnight shift; I know he will be super happy. Yay!
Yes, the biscuits were dry as hell, but it satisfied the craving Sam left me with right before I fell asleep. Dry biscuits aside, it was yummy!
One of my very first blog posts was about how to peel a banana properly. According to my son Sam and husband Marty, both left-brained thinkers, they peel their bananas from the bottom up. My older son Noah and I are both right-brained thinkers and peel from the top down.
Many readers agreed with my theory, while others proved it wrong. Well, either way, here’s your chance again to decide…how to eat cereal.
This morning at 5 am, when I was packing up for the Troy Farmers Market, Sam came into the kitchen for his “midnight snack.” Sam’s body clock is opposite ours since he works overnight shifts as an RN in the emergency room.
Sam proclaimed there is a proper way to eat cereal from a bowl pack. He likes bowl packs better than a plain bowl; it makes it easier to make his cereal the way he likes.
Sam said, “Here’s the proper way to eat cereal from a bowl pack.” Oh boy, I couldn’t wait to hear this one. “You only peel back the top of the package a little bit to pour in the milk.” What’s with this kid and the way he peels things?
Sam continued, “After you pour in the milk, you close up the bowl pack again. This way, it pushes all the cereal down.” I took the bait and asked why. He said, “This way, all the cereal gets the same amount of milk saturation.” He is too much I almost fell on the floor laughing. 😂 Saturation…
Proper milk saturated cereal…😂
He likes all of his cereal to be soft after being “saturated” with milk. I like my cereal crunchy, adding only a small amount of milk and eating it fast before it gets soft and mushy. “No! that’s not the way to eat cereal!” That was Sam’s reaction.
When our older son Noah was little, he used to eat his Cheerios in a bowl dry without any milk. My father always tried to talk him into putting milk on his cereal, but Noah liked it dry. It was funny to me that my father was so concerned about how Noah ate his cereal.
I just asked Marty on our ride to Troy, NY, how he likes his cereal, and he said without any hesitation, “Crunchy.” “Why?” I didn’t answer him and said, “You’ll see.”
So there goes the right vs. left-brained thinking theory. Like the banana, Sam puts a lot of thought into things and amuses me with his findings and preferences.
As we left for the market, Sam was headed up to bed for his “night’s” sleep; we will most likely wake him up when we come back home and make all that “racket.” His words, not mine. 🤣
Fridays are Broadway show tunes day in our spätzle production kitchen. Marty and I both love Broadway show tunes, and listening to them at the end of the week pushes us through production quickly and with tons of fun, lots of singing and dancing on my part too!
We all know the oldie but goodies musicals, but we tend to listen to the more modern ones. Of course, our favorite musical is Hamilton, which took the place of Jesus Christ Superstar after decades of being our # 1 pick.
We also love to belt out tunes to Rent, Six, In the Heights, Dear Evan Hansen, The Book of Mormons, Mean Girls, and The Greatest Showman, which technically isn’t a Broadway musical but was a movie. This is the shortlist because there are so many wonderful musicals to listen to.
My first ballet slippers and dancing skirt…I was 2 years old.
My love of singing and dancing started when I was two years old. I took ballet, toe or point, and tap dance private lessons for about 8 or 9 years. I took classes at Miss Joyce’s School of Dance in Elizabeth, NJ. I loved dancing and went twice a week. I was good at ballet, but at tap dancing, I could keep up with my teacher Miss Joyce from the time I was 5 on.
Compared to a standard dinner fork, look how small my shoes and skirt were. 🥰
I looked for more of my dance photos this morning, but there is a box of photos somewhere in our house that I can’t find. So many photos I want to share with you are in that box. It may be a wintertime project to find those photos.
Me and Miss Joyce after a performance
Posing and an action shot 😂
After we moved from Elizabeth, NJ to Iselin, it became an ass ache for my parents to bring me to dance classes. At some point, they made me choose between cheerleading and dance. Since all my friends were on cheerleading, I chose that one. I am sure my parents let out a big sigh of relief. I remember thinking since I was a “tween,” if I wanted to take dance seriously, I would have to take classes in NYC, and that wasn’t going to be an option. My parents hated New York. I loved and still love it.
All my life, I’ve been some type of performer and quite a bit of a ham. Even as an adult, I love being a performer. When I started belly dancing, they asked me if I was interested in performing. You bet your ass I was! Three months later, I started my belly dancing career as a performer, teacher, and always a student.
Yup, I am a performer…Lots of different looks, for lots of different gigs
When my sister Jennifer found me through Ancestory, I started to learn things about the paternal side of my family. It seems that many of my family members were performers; they sang and danced…some professionally. Many grew up and lived in NYC; they also loved to cook and were pretty good at bartending. Sounds familiar, right? So weird that things like that are in my genes.
When I was growing up with my adopted parents, my love of music came from my dad. My father always had music on no matter where he was. I remember being in the back seat of his car singing also to 50s music with Cousin Brucie. We also listened to ethnic music in our kitchen on Sunday mornings. I knew every Dean Martin and the Rat Pack songs by heart.
I have music on all the time; while cooking, cleaning, working, driving, etc. Listening to music in the production kitchen helps keep me focused, even though I know some people may think music is distracting. Music helps me focus when measuring ingredients because I am not thinking or, deep in my head, losing track of what I am doing. The few mistakes I’ve made over the last 4 years happened when we didn’t have music playing.
Until 2 years ago, I attributed my love of music to nurturing. Now I found out that it also came from nature. Nurture vs. nature is pretty interesting stuff. I count myself lucky to have had both shape me into the music-loving performer I am today.
Still lots of energy on my home after working and 3 hours of belly dance. And look… I am still wearing colors not just black anymore.
I can’t tell you how amazing it feels to be sleeping soundly finally. I started taking Midnight Drops, a combo tablet of CBD: THC that I got at the dispensary last week for my insomnia.
I take a tablet an hour before I want to fall asleep, and boom…I am asleep sometimes beforehand. Even if I get up to use the bathroom, I go right back to sleep; I’ve never been able to fall back to sleep easily until now.
I bought one bottle of 20 tablets Midnight Drops and found out they are super popular, and they sell out every time they get a shipment…crap! I’ve been checking their website daily to see when they come in; I can order online and pick them up. Needless to say, I’ll be buying more than one bottle even though they are $45 each plus a significant MA state sales tax. A good night’s sleep is priceless.
Getting a good night’s sleep is something to be cherished; take it from me. I used to wake up exhausted, think about napping all day, wanting to lay down. I was literally dragging myself around all day long. I wanted to be able to focus on things, and I was forgetful. Being tired mentally and physically really takes a toll on you and those around you.
After production, I made us lunch, then was off to make a delivery and run 5 errands all around Bennington. On my way to Bennington, I heard on the police, fire, and rescue scanner that a vehicle was flipped over in a ditch and took down electric and phone lines, snapping a telephone pole in half.
I heard Marty on the scanner; he was on the scene as a first responder. The good news is the driver wasn’t hurt. His trailer he was towing caught the wires and pulled them down while snapping the top of the phone pole. The trailer disconnected from his truck and rolled down the ravine.
Photo credit Marty Irion
The bad news was that the accident took out power for hours. I know we are a spoiled society and count on electricity, but we NEED it to keep the spätzle we just made nice and cold. Our walk-in refrigerator is insulated very well, but we had no idea how long the power would be out. The freezers would be fine for even a day before we would need to panic as we did with the walk-in.
I got home from my errands at the same time Marty did from the accident scene. We didn’t open any refrigerators; we made a plan. We have a couple of generators for emergencies, but we didn’t have the right plug for the walk-in.
Quickly, Marty hooked two empty refrigerators up in the production kitchen to the generator. We waited a bit for the refrigerators to come back up to the proper temperature, under 40-degrees. When Marty finally went into the walk-in it was still very cold and under 40-degrees, but we still had to get the spätzle transferred to the other refrigerators just in case power was off all night.
It’s a good thing I had tons of energy because we worked together like energizer bunnies moving the product from one place to another. Luckily, the power came on a couple of hours later. Marty did the opposite, waiting for the walk-in to get back to the “safe zone” temperature before transferring everything back.
One of the refrigerators running off the generator we transferred product to.
People in the foodservice industry know how important electricity and properly running refrigerators and freezers are. If food gets out of the “safety zone,” it has to be thrown away, resulting in staggering losses.
When we were both school lunch directors, we held our breath going through our kitchens every day. It’s a total and complete nightmare when there is an issue. I still will never get the smell completely out of my memory cleaning out a freezer because someone unplugged it over the summer, and the food rotted. It was fucking disgusting! I was dry heaving the whole time. It was the grossest thing I’ve ever had to do. It’s funny now, but it wasn’t then. 🤮
I am glad the driver was ok and gave a big round of cheer when the Green Mountain Power guys turned the electricity back on the right by our house. If I had been exhausted as I had been, this would have made me very irritated and nasty, but instead, it was a snafu in our day that was resolved quickly.
Gorgeous sunset last night and our campfire.
We ended up making a New Haven-style white clam pizza on a cauliflower crust and making a campfire. It was the most gorgeous sunset we’ve witnessed in a while since we’ve been so busy. We relaxed by the fire with a couple of cocktails and had a great night. Our friend Martin and his son Luke stopped by for a drink and sat around the fire with us. I wasn’t tired one bit until I took my Midnight Drop and fell right to sleep! 😊
I pulled over on my way home from belly dance to take a photo, something I never do, but it was too beautiful for words, the photo does not do it justice.
