My husband left on Sunday for a professional development thing and isn't making his way back home until tonight or tomorrow. When he left, I cried like a baby. I haven't done that since our college days and I felt like such a wimp. I hate being alone in the house for extended periods, I have little to no desire to have a social life beyond the dog park, and I don't like to sleep alone. Sleeping in a room alone is fine but sleeping in a house alone is different, I hear every freakin' sound and think the house is being attacked. I don't know, I've had the problem since I was a kid but usually don't talk to anyone about it. Hank knows about it but he likes it when I stay in the living room for extended periods of time because it means cuddle time for him.
Literally five minutes after my husband left, I got a notification from my bank that I went below my preset account threshold. Gah! It's still a decent amount of money but if I'm not careful it could disappear rather quickly. Between gas for the car and food for my belly, the money would have been gone quick. I kicked myself for 1) not keeping better track of my bill paying and lunch buying and 2) for not taking advantage of the husband sponsored grocery trip we took prior to his leaving. Shit! I should've had him buy my the salad mix, the Diet Liptons, the apples, and the sweet potatoes.
I looked through our food supplies and figured that I had enough to get me by without making a shopping trip. I am fortunate to have the ability to travel home for lunch but was seriously lacking on quick lunch foods so I actually made things in advance for once. I also went to Subway one morning and got a $3 Breakfast Combo and a $5 footlong. The footlong served as two lunches which was awesome and since this month's $5 footlong is the Oven Roasted Chicken sandwich, I scored a healthy sandwich!
One thing I enjoy about not having my husband around is the fact that I can experiment a little with my cooking and not have to force something down his throat. He's an eater but he's not a veggie eater, so when one of my dishes includes veggies, I actually feel bad for making him eat it. So this week my inventions were Baked Rigatoni and Pizza, both were made almost completely from scratch and in less than 45 minutes.
Now this may lead you to believe that I am a domestic semi housewife but that is not the case. I have failed to fold my laundry from a week ago and I still have dirty dishes in the sink. But damn it, I can make homemade Pasta and Cheesecake cupcakes for you any day of the week!
The Rigatoni was homemade using the "Poor Man's Pasta" recipe, which is slightly ironic since I'm moonlighting as a poor WOman. 2 cups of flour, 2 eggs, 1/4 tbsp of olive oil, and 3 tbsp of water, plus I added some fresh ground pepper and home grown basil leaves to the dough. You couldn't really taste the basil so I'm a little upset about that but I think that my portion of basil could be significantly increased and it would be OK. Now that it is finally out of it's box, my KitchenAid stand mixer is my best friend. The pasta attachment is the greatest thing I could imagine because I can make six different types of pasta. So I mixed, kneaded, pushed the dough through the machine and got speckled Rigatoni. I boiled the noodles for a couple of minutes (fresh stuff takes 2-5 minutes depending on the consistency), tossed it in a pyrex with some sauce, stewed tomatoes, onions, and carrots, seasoned it with crushed red pepper and cumin, topped it with provolone cheese, and baked it for 15 minutes. And there you have it, four meals for one person (do I need to mention that I ate it in three?). Next time I'm going to make my pasta sauce from scratch but that has to wait for a the weekend.
The pizza dough was made from a no yeast recipe that I was really scared about trying. Typically, pizza dough with no yeast is no bueno. But damn was this recipe is good! I found it here. Really, really easy. The only hard part is getting the crust how you want it and if you've never made pizza like this before, it's really hard to judge. Luckily, I've rolled out my own dough before (Winco sells fresh pizza dough that we love using!) so I was pretty happy that for ONCE, I got a pretty good looking circle. Now, I could have made a MUCH thinner crust and I would have had a larger pizza but I'm partial to deeper, thicker crusts. The bottom didn't really brown to much but it was only in the oven for 15 minutes. The inside of the crust was nice and soft and the outside had a tiny bit of crunch. I used pasta sauce, fresh cherry tomatoes, sweet basil, and variegated basil from the garden, chunks of garlic cloves, some of Brian's home ground, low-salt Italian Sausage, and both provolone and mozzarella cheeses. I liked this pizza so much that I am going to make it again. And again. I'm really excited about the possibilities of family cooking nights where we all get to make our own personal sized pizzas. (Making pizza is one of my favorite memories from when Brian and I first moved in together. We made a Boboli pizza together in the kitchen of his little apartment and to date, I think it was one of the most innocently romantic moments we've shared. We cook together all the time but for some reason the first pizza experience was the best.)Now, I need to think about when I'm planning to run off all of this food! My new favorite sayings are, "I run to eat" and "Run now, beer later". :)
(P.S. The new heart rate monitor that I won on eBay is working really well. I'm having some problems off the treadmill but I'm working on it!)
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