tomorrow is the day of reckoning

About 3 weeks ago my job sent an e-mail out company-wide looking for people interested in a couple open positions, including collections. I sent an e-mail response for it. I work my butt off in my current position, but I am bored with it and feel like I could be doing more. Well, words have been swirling around, and I got an e-mail back from the VP today asking me to come to her office tomorrow. So tomorrow, I'm thinking, is going to be the day where i hear either a 'yes' or a 'no'. I'm kind of nervous and trying not to get my hopes up too much. I will be pretty excited if i get it. It's considered a lateral move within the company (i.e. there is no raise involved), but I'm considering it a promotion. I'll have certain accounts that I'll be responsible for and I'll have a lot more independence, not to mention a bigger cube that's got 3.5 walls (which is nice considering my 'cube' right now has a total of 2 walls. I will also not be forced to listen to anyone else's radio/music picks all day. Oh, the glee that will bring. I'm looking forward to the challenges that the new position would involve, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed tomorrow going in to work.
I was thinking about doing some baking tonight, but that was before I received the aforementioned e-mail. In lieu of baking, I bought a new blouse to wear with a skirt I have so I can look somewhat more presentable tomorrow. I did, however, come home and after doing the dishes, made myself dinner. The inspiration came from a recipe I found on tastespotting, but since I am poor, I did a lot of improvising. This recipe doesn't get a fancy name, but right now I'm thinking about Dwight Schrute and this line from the office keeps running through my head "I don't want Garbage! I want Sprinkles"

Delicious Pasta Dinnner (and enough leftovers for lunch tomorrow)
1) Boil 8 oz. pasta (I used rigatoni) until al dente.
2) Remove the casings from 2 links hot Italian turkey sausage and brown the meat in a skillet, crumbling the meat as it cooks. Drain the grease and set sausage aside.
3) In the same pan, heat a small amount of olive oil and sautee 3 cloves minced garlic, a small amount of finely diced rosemary, and a big handful of baby spinach until the spinach is softened but not mushy.
4) In a bowl, combine the spinach mixture, the sausage, 1/2 c. cottage cheese, and 2 tsp crushed red pepper. Add cooked rigatoni.
5) Bake covered at 400 for 20 minutes.

By the way, it was delicious. I have roommates that can vouch for that.

so my birthday's coming up

And somehow this game has been out since September without me knowing about it and I'm not sure why:

I was really hoping that Seth or Lacey would get voted off this week, but no such luck. If those two had a child, it would most likely only have two brain cells, and those two brain cells would probably both get lonely and die.

I was going to make these really awesome cupcakes to go with my watching of Resident Evil Degeneration (which was actually awesome) today, but my red velvet looks like poop and my mousse didn't set right. Flarge. And all that happened after I spent chopping a half pound of chocolate into itty bitty pieces for ganache. *Slaps self in face*. I think I might try to make Boston Creme cupcakes later this week and then I can just use the chocolate then.

That is all.

I'm drinking my dinner!

And for once, it's not booze! *insert round of applause here*
Because I lack the willpower to actually make dinner for myself today, I decided I was going to throw whatever I could find in the blender and call it a day. Contents:
(I would love for you to imagine these words being narrated to a choppy video ala Gordon Ramsay in 'The F Word')
1 green apple
1 pear
1 big ass chunk of pineapple
1 handful of spinach
1 big spoonful of coconut milk
Dole Pina Colada flavored juice.

It's interesting. And somewhat tasty.

Last week I made bananas fosters cupcakes. But it's my own secret recipe so you're not getting it. There was a slight mishap when what I intended to be a soft caramel topping turned as hard as a rock, but other than that, they were quite tasty. And just for shits and giggles I repeatedly kept dumping my cheap rum (I'm a whiskey drinker, what else am I going to do with it) into a hot skillet and setting it on fire. Good times.

My sister and our friend are planning on doing a 2 day walk for breast cancer. They each need to raise $1800. I'm having a bake sale for them at work (we all work together)
I think I've come to a conclusion on the line up:
Bacon, Cheddar, and Black Pepper Muffins
Raspberry Coconut Muffins
Banana Muffins
Milky Way Brownies
Jamaican Coffee Brownies
Peanut Butter Brownies
Red Velvet Cupcakes
The aforeblogged pineapple cupcakes
And one other cupcake, quite possibly in the stylings of Boston Creme.

That is all.

LB cake

This weekend I was going to make blood orange cupcakes, but I wasn't able to find any. So i used this thing I had sitting around instead:

It was amazing. Also, I'm thinking something quite lovely is going to happen to me within the next couple days, so I'm drinking an entire bottle of wine. That's how I do. Oh, and watching Hell's Kitchen on youtube. I really don't know what I'm going to turn my attention to after I'm all caught up on this. On a side note, bacon and scrambled egg tacos with Cholula are an amazing dinner.
Last night, I decided I was going to get a chicken sandwich from McDonalds. And then I remembered why I stopped eating fast food. The only thing I could taste was dirty fryer grease and it was horrendous. Today was terribly busy at work and it was like one thing after another going wrong. Thankfully, the countdown to Reno has begun. I leave you with a recipe, for what I did with that delicious pine apple.
Fresh Pineapple Pound (cup)Cakes

Cream:
2 sticks butter, softened
1 1/2 c. granulated sugar
Add:
3 eggs, room temp, one at a time
Mix in:
1 tsp. vanilla extract
Followed by a mix of:
2 c. all purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
Mix in:
1/2 milk, room temp
Fold in:
1 c. chopped pinapple

Pour batter into lined muffin tins (I came out with 16) and bake at 350 for 20 minutes. While the cupcakes are cooling, make the frosting:

Coconut Buttercream:
Beat:
1 stick softened butter
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
3 Tbsp coconut milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract.

Frost those cakes. They're bad ass.

Alton Brown Schools Me. Week 1

So I've taken it upon myself to conquer cookbooks that I've had sitting around for awhile and haven't done anything with. The first one I have is "I'm Just Here for the Food" by Alton Brown. I love Alton Brown; he's really nerdy. Not only does he tell you how to make something, and make it well, he also tells you the most random bits of knowledge about what you're doing or why you should do something a certain way. I also like that his cookbooks are separated by cooking method rather than the type of dish. It's a concept that works really well for him, because of the scientific way he looks at food. So I decided that I would try to do one recipe a week from the book, doing a different chapter each week.
The first chapter is on searing, and there are a lot of really good sounding recipes. Since we're all trying to eat a bit better and cut some of the meat out of our diet in my house, I went with 'Bar-B-Fu'. I love tofu. A lot. A lot of people at work apparently don't like it. I'm thinking that they've never had it cooked right, or they've never had it at all and just have some sort of misconception about it. When I lived down in Champaign, I wasn't a big fan of it. Most of the places that I had tofu down there only used the soft tofu, and it was always steamed. Definitely not a fan of that. I like firm tofu, and I like it pan fried, dammit. If I wanted Jello that's what I would have gotten. Fortunately, Alton Brown likes the firm stuff too. The sandwiches, just so you know, were served with a side of doom zucchini oven fries, were only mediocre. That's what I get for relying on the internet to tell me how to cook my vegetables.

Bar-B-Fu (adapted from Alton Brown)
1 19 oz package firm tofu (I get the kind that comes in 4 chunks, and then i sliced each one in half to get 8 big squares)
3 Tbsp minced garlic (I like garlic. A lot)
1 Serrano chile, seeded and minced
1/3 c. original Sweet Baby Rays (the only brand of BBQ sauce I will buy)
1/4 c. white vinegar
kosher salt & fresh ground black pepper
sub rolls
3/4 c. Goose Island 312 (out of a 22 oz. bottle, the rest of which I enjoyed while catching up on Kitchen Nightmares. I have now seen EVERY episode)

Drain your tofu and press between paper towels to absorb as much excess moisture as possible. Whilst doing that, mix the garlic, Serrano, BBQ sauce, and vinegar.

Season the tofu with salt and pepper and place in a large zup lock bag. Put the sauce in the bag and *GENTLY!!!* shake to coat the tofu. Shake too hard and it's going to look like scrambled eggs and you're going to look like a nincompoop. Let sit for an hour. Enjoy the rest of your bottle of beer. If your day was anything like mine, you earned it.

Drain the marinade from the tofu. Alton's recipe says to reserve it, but my tofu sucked the life out of it and there wasn't much left. What I did instead was take the 3/4 c. beer and a hefty amount of bbq sauce and simmered that in a hot pan, cooked it down, and had beerbeque sauce. Good enough. Heat a separate (NON-STICK) pan over high heat. DO NOT ADD OIL. Add tofu squares and cook on each side for 2 minutes, without moving the tofu around. I know you want to, but don't. AB says if you do, you're not going to brown your tofu. Heat your rolls up (room temp breads just don't do it for me), cut a slit, stick your tofu in and add sauce. Delicious.
The tofu was nice and flavorful, spicy in an enjoyable way. I do love spicy foods, but not the kind that I feel like I'm dying spicy, like the horrid noodle mess that we had the misfortune of eating last week.

And one thing to leave you with from this week's Asian food shopping adventure:

I wonder if it's anything like CHUD.