Adventures in Domesticity: Episode 1 – How I spent my Valentine’s Weekend

So this post is really late but here it is – my Valentine’s weekend…

Starting the Friday of Valentine’s weekend I was moving around non stop and barely took any time to slow down and breath. The end result – I barely made it out of the weekend alive.

Friday – what the hell was I thinking?

Thursday night I was doing my usual not-paying-attention-in-trial-ad thing and came across a recipe for naan. At that moment, I think primarily because it was dinner time and I was starving, I got it in my head that making my own naan and promptly eating a good portion of it would be a really good idea. So I read the recipe thought to myself  “self, this is easy you can TOTALLY DO THIS!” And so I planned to make a trip to the supermarket the next day to buy all the ingredients.

Except, I didn’t stop there.

With the hours I had left in the day I somehow managed to convince myself that I not only needed to make naan from scratch but that I should also make  some meal to go with it. And not a meal I take out of a box and throw in the oven. No, a real one. So I’m sitting there all thinking “hmmm , what goes best with naan?” Oh OBVIOUSLY some Indian food. So then I remembered that a few weeks ago Liz had made some Indian food for dinner so I asked her where she got the recipe. It turned out to be Pastor Ryan’s Chicken Tikka Masala posted by none other than PW. So now, not only was I going to make naan I was going to make this recipe as well. After reading over it I decided I wasn’t too thrilled about making a sauce that required cream so I cut out the sauce and settled on just the rice and the chicken – making the job easier and the meal healthier. Good job me!!! But I restored the pressure by deciding that not only did I want to make this food but I also wanted to invite Ken over for dinner.

WHY WOULD I INVITE SOMEONE OVER FOR DINNER IF THIS WHOLE COOKING THING IS AN EXPERIMENT? Just in case you all missed the memo – I don’t cook. Not at all. I own some kitchen stuff but generally don’t spend much time in that room. I pretty much go in there to get water or cereal and drop off cups in the sink. I DO NOT cook. So WHAT THE HECK was I doing?!

You use your boyfriend as a guinea pig not unsuspecting friends!!! Wtf was I about to put poor Ken through?

Friday I got up nice and early, did some work, worked out and then went over the Martins. After what felt like a year long hunt for some coriander I was on my way back home to start on the cooking. Now here is the best part – my cooking started at 2pm. Because in case you guys aren’t keeping up – I was making naan which is bread which requires yeast meaning it needs time to RISE! So I created, literally, an entire day project for myself. This bring us to lesson 1 of my weekend adventure -  I abhor the smell of yeast.

Look at it in there, dissolving in the water being all freaky and weird smelling. shudders yeast = yuck.

Turning all of the ingredients into dough took a lot of mixing and a lot of kneading but eventually it worked out. After that I had to get started on the rice. I was making Basmati so there had to be lots of rinsing and rinsing and soaking and waiting. The easiest part of this whole thing was the chicken  because chicken is chicken. It is easy to season, easy too cook, and in my opinion hard to mess up. But what do I know, remember I don’t cook. So a smoky apartment (on account of cooking the naan), a too small pot (for cooking rice),and a shitty oven later (lesson 2 – the ovens at Fischer are crappy and don’t heat up very quickly AT ALL), AND FOUR HOURS OF COOKING LATER I had an entire meal for three people. yay, me!  And my taste testers were more than thrilled! They ate everything? This could be (1) because if was actually good or (2) because one of them was excited about free food (KEN) and the other eats anything and everything (JOE). Despite being really full and so tired I went to a party after dinner and as a result went to bed really late.

I didn’t get any photos of the finished result but here are some of the prep.

Chicken Prep. The aluminum foil covered plate in the background in the freshly cooked naan waiting to be devoured.

Look at me being a busy busy bee.

***

Saturday – Better but not a ton.

Saturday I tried to relax a bit. I slept in, took a rest day from working out and spent a lot of time lounging. Well, actually I went and bought some new scissors and glue stick to get started on my crafts. I spent Thursday creating my stencils and cutting out letters for my Valentine’s banner. Oh yea, did I forget to tell you I made Valentine’s crafts and a cake from scratch. Oh my!

These are my main raw materials. I actually didn't use the tissue paper - my main materials were the red and blue cardstock. I was making a banner and some hanging garland so heavy cardstock was best considering my crafts required me to hand sew pieces of paper together!

These are the stencils I made in Microsoft Word. I basically used the text art function with font size 72 (I think), used Arial typeface bolded, printed, and cut. The hearts are simple shape art from word. I can't draw very well, so I figured it would be safer to print some hearts as a guide.

These are my letters once they were cut out from the cardstock. Also, my sister pointed out to me that the cardstock looks green. It is not green. It is teal.

***

Sunday – VALENTINE’S DAY!! When I really overdid it.

I woke up early Sunday, worked out and then got to work! Joe was heading to Martin’s that morning and I realized that there were a few things I had forgotten. So I asked Joe to pick them up for me. He came back and I got to work and also did laundry. I’ll tell the story through pictures.

Task # 1 was to complete the Valentine's banner. I decided to hand sew the letter together. I stabbed myself in my left pointer finger. Needle went clean through - there was an entrance wound and an exit wound. Ugh. I used a thin black marker to mark the points in which the needle needed to go through each letter. That made the entire process easier but didn't save my finger.

here is the banner hanging over the dining room table. Finally done after a really long time of sewing and a broken needle. Oh yea and my finger. sigh.

Close up of the banner. I am really proud of this.

This is the start of one of my other projects for the day. Little flags for the cake I made.

I made a strawberry shortcake cake - recipe from Pioneer Woman. These are the two halves of the cake cooling. As you can see, the two halves of the cake aren't the same thickness. oopsie. I just made the thicker piece the base of the cake.

The start of the frosting process. The recipe called for 1 1/2 lbs of powdered sugar. When I went to buy the ingredients my mind told me the recipe said 1 cup powdered sugar so I bought a 1lb bag. When I started making the frosting I realized I didn't have enough powdered sugar. I mean really!? 1 1/2 lbs?! But the frosting tasted just great with only 1lb. It was delicious.

yummy yum yum. Putting the frosting on. I made the mistake of not putting the frosting in the freezer to firm it up so the process was a bit hard with thinning frosting.

I managed to get the top layer on without a problem. wooo

Cake once frosted - yea it looks lopsided. whatever. And see, the frosting is weird - note to self let the frosting sit in the freezer before using it. I made sure to do that with the carrot cake and it was much easier to frost and in general the cake just looked better. Also, this cake stand is awesome and was really cheap.

Here is the cake with the decorations in it. Also featured in this photo, my pretty flowers and the heart garland I made.

 

Close up of the cake decorations and my flowers. The cake still doesn't look that great. bleh.

 

Close up of the garland.

In addition to the very lovely flowers,  Joe also gave me a wonderful card and we went out to dinner at Sunny Italy. I’d never heard of it before that night so it was a total surprise. The food was great and our waitress was very nice. After dinner we went home, had some o f the delicious cake (can I call it delicious if I was the one who baked it?), and spent the rest of the night relaxing.

So there it is!  My Valentine’s weekend – tiring but a great time!