Buffalo Chicken Tacos and a Great Loss

It’s been a rough 24 hours for our little family. Last night, our little baby Pickle suddenly passed away. Pickle, our 5-year old calico kitty with giant double paws that looked like oven mitts, a ridiculous love of dairy (especially laughing cow cheese), and even more ridiculous fear of heights. Pickle, buddy to “little brother” Bert and lap-sitter on anyone who walked through our doors.

She was a pretty special cat and kept me company through a lot of good and bad times, so we’re really mourning this loss in our family. Our other sweet cat, Bert, was loyally by her side as she was failing, and he is noticeably upset today — not knowing quite what to do with himself.

Pickle is the little baby on the right in this pic. Bert is in the bag, per usual. Check out those ample paws!

She and Brian adored each other. I used to joke that they were dating and used to lovingly call her a little slut — she owned it.

He’s pretty devastated.

What does all of this pity party have to do with Buffalo Chicken Tacos? Well, nothing, really, except for the fact that this is what I made for dinner tonight and for a moment, both Brian and I were happy, enjoying our yummy meal, and not thinking about the sad thing that has so quickly changed our lives. Make this next time you need a distraction – it works.

Festive

This is what my weekend looked like: Many, many mini muffins for the staff at work, old school tori amos, mini christmas tree, football, general merriness.

Clams as apology.

I will be glaringly absent over the next couple of weeks while I move…these beautiful clams are an offering to tide you over until we get settled again. 🙂

Marinated Flank Steak with Blue Cheese Dressing

I love Costco. Many of my friends blatantly JUDGE me for hoarding and buying everything in bulk, but I don’t care. I like knowing I’ll have toilet paper through the apocalypse, and I always find fun treats there, like these yummy cashew clusters we picked up yesterday. Already addicted. Anyway, this recipe is neither here nor there, but I won a little war when we bought this flank steak at $4/pound at Costco, and had some in the freezer from Stop & Shop for $8/pound. Bam.

On to the steak. This recipe was found in Ellie Krieger’s new cookbook, So Easy, which I received as a Christmas gift. The steak was delicious, and while I was a little apprehensive that the blue cheese sauce would overwhelm the flavor of the meat (I tend to be a steak purist), I ended up really liking it together with the bed of radicchio. We served it with faux-fried onion rings from Now Eat This, which unfortunately, you won’t see posted here yet because I don’t think I seasoned them enough and they were a little bland.

Crafty.

I used to go all out in terms of decorating my apartment for Christmas. Well, by “all out”, I mean I would invite my garden club president of a mother over and she’d bring lots of garland, branches, lights, spray painted tin foil trees, cranberries, etc. and go to town on my window sills. These days, partly because of the huge liability that pickle and bert (our cats) present, I’m lucky if I get my Christmas tree up and decorated in a half-decent way.

So, since I was feeling a little extra crafty last night (and I had some time to kill while Brian assembled our sweet new media stand thing) I decided to decorate a little for an upcoming holiday party on Friday, namely by gift-wrapping my only two kitchen cabinets.  Cute, right? Let’s see if the cats (and me) can resist tearing it down for a few days!

And, if you’re anything like me, you like a good peek in your friend’s cabinets. C’mon. You know you do. Click in for more…

Spice Cabinet Civilization

I’ve been wanting to organize my spice shelf foreverrrr. I am definitely a person who enjoys a nice, crisp font labeling my various sundries…if that makes me a geek, so be it.

I quit my job to cook all day!

Well, not really. But I do find myself with 2 weeks of unbridled free time and guess where I plan on spending it? That’s right, cart-ramming with the best of them at Market Basket and Costco. Hopefully the next two weeks will let me cross some of the more obscure recipes that I’ve been dying to try off my list… and, at the very least, I get to amuse myself in pretending that my fantasy of playing with food and feeding people for an actual living has finally come to fruition. This week’s many projects include seafood alla arrabbiata over polenta, muglai chicken with spiced rice, and chicken with BLT gravy. Then, of course, Christmas! Eighteen tentacle-loving diners await the my family’s annual Christmas Eve Feast of the Seven Fishes, and then some fun appetizers are planned for Christmas Day. Loving this new job of mine already.