misangela – Page 59

March 13, 2016March 13, 2016

Learning Curve

So the earrings I made and subsequently sold to my friend Josie did not stay together. Boo! I used cold weld to attach the wires and that, obviously, did NOT do the trick. It was these:

I clearly did not use enough cold weld. SO, I refunded Josie’s money and will repair them and send ’em back. Nick has some silver solder and he is sure he can fix them. While I like the idea of having the wires attached, that was not the original plan. I’d planned to make them standard dangles, but I forgot to drill the holes in the clay before I fired them. Oops! Live and learn.

I’m also testing out the graphic for crossposts. I can’t understand why it’s fine for TEV but screwy for my site. ? Argh.

March 12, 2016April 15, 2017

Baked Chicken with Creamy Sun Dried Tomato Sauce

This is a rather decadent sauce, but OH so yummy! It’s a bit high in fat, but low carb if you serve with veg rather than a starch. This is excellent with roasted broccoli.

Baked Chicken with Creamy Sun Dried Tomato Sauce

Ingredients
4-5 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs, trimmed of excess fat
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
3 tablespoons butter, divided
Olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
3/4 cup diced cremini mushrooms
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes (Less if you’re heat sensitive)
1/2 cup julienned sun dried tomatoes in olive oil, drained (one small jar)
1 tsp dry mustard
1 teaspoon fresh thyme (1/2 tsp dried)
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 cup chicken broth
1/3 cup white wine
1/3 cup grated Parmesan (not shredded, grated)
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 Tbl cornstarch in broth
Garnish: 1/4 cup basil leaves, chiffonade

Instructions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
Season chicken thighs with salt and pepper, to taste.

Melt 1 tablespoon butter and several turns of olive oil in a large oven-proof skillet (or dutch oven) over medium high heat. Add chicken, skin-side down, and sear both sides until golden brown, about 5 minutes per side; set aside.

Swab out excess fat from the pot with paper towels.
Melt 2 tablespoons butter in the pot. Add garlic, mushrooms, sun dried tomatoes, thyme, oregano, basil, mustard and red pepper flakes, and cook, stirring frequently, until fragrant, about 1-2 minutes. Deglaze pan with wine, then stir in chicken broth, heavy cream and parmesan. Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer until slightly thickened, about 3-5 minutes. If the sauce is too loose, add 1 tsp cornstarch dissolved in stock. Return chicken to the pot. Sauce should come up about halfway on chicken, skin should be on top so it gets golden and crisp.

Place into oven uncovered and roast until completely cooked through, reaching an internal temperature of 175 degrees F, about 25-30 minutes.

Serve immediately, garnished with basil, on small pasta, rice or roasted broccoli.

Nutrition Facts (from original recipe, so this is approximate; pasta not included)
Serving Size 1 thigh
Calories 277.2
Calories from Fat 203.4
Total Fat 22.6g
Saturated Fat 9.9g
Trans Fat 0.2g
Cholesterol 94.6mg
Sodium 165.0mg
Total Carbohydrate 2.6g
Dietary Fiber 0.3g
Sugars 0.9g
Protein 15.9g

February 23, 2016

Curried Beef Stew

This is a super easy stew with tons of flavour! I made it in a dutch oven, but it would probably work in a slow cooker if you hold out the carrots and sweet potatoes until the last hour.

Curried Beef Stew

1-1.5# stew beef, cleaned of fat and cut into same size pieces, then seasoned with S/P
olive oil
1 can coconut milk
1 med onion, large dice
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbl curry powder
1 Tbl All Purpose red curry paste (OR just double the dry curry)
2 Tbl brown sugar
juice of one lime
3 carrots, large dice
1 med sweet potato, large dice
lime and cilantro garnish

Preheat oven to 350F. In a dutch oven, put a few turns of olive oil in and heat over med hi. When hot, add in stew beef and sauté. Do in batches to get good sear. When beef is done, turn down heat to med low and cook onion and garlic until soft and fragrant. Add beef back in, along with curry powder and paste and brown sugar. Stir until meat is well covered. Then add carrots and sweet potatoes and cook for a couple of minutes. Stir in coconut milk and juice of one lime, put lid on dutch oven and put in oven for about an hour or until meat is soft. Serve with lime wedges and cilantro. This is also good served with rice if you want it to be more hearty.

February 18, 2016May 22, 2016

Current Events

I’ve been fiddling with some new projects lately. I have begun working with PMC (Precious Metal Clay), PMC3 pure silver, to be specific. I totally love it. It’s clay, so you can make something, remake it, or do something entirely different without losing material. Even if it dries and you decide you don’t like it, you can grind up the dried clay into a powder and rehydrate it to use again. Brilliant!

Like most hobbies (for ME anyway), this one will cost you about $150-200 to get started. I’m not using a kiln (add $300 to that startup cost), just a simple butane torch. This limits the sorts of things you can make with PMC to earrings and pendants because of strength issues. In order to get a very strong metal for a ring, it needs to be fired for a long period of time in a kiln rather than fired for 2.5 minutes under torch. Which is fine, there is a ton of special supplies you need to make rings anyway. We’ll see about rings if I sell any of the stuff I’ve made. These are the things I’ve cranked out so far:

They will be up for sale at my Etsy shop shortly. I gotta get photos done for them. The small ones will be approximately $15, the larger ones will be approximately $30 for just the pendant. The chains will run $15 and up. I hand oxidize the chains since they are hard to find pre-oxidized. PMC3 runs around $1.88/gm so I’ll have to run the numbers to get the final prices.

It appears that the hormone induced insomnia is back. I knew my few months of good sleep was just a respite from the horrors of menopause. I think the Mirena is losing steam, as I figured it would. Gyno says that it should continue to work even tho it’s at the prescribed end of its life, but I doubt I’d get that lucky. We’ll see.

I’m having a low period in general. I feel very unconnected and vaguely depressed. I’ve been limiting drinking and counting calories for a couple of months and lost all of TWO pounds. Fuck. I’m going to have to get the sleeve, I think. It just feels like everything is costing tons of money and it’s all OUTGOING rather than INCOMING. It’s not entirely true, we’ve been selling stuff on eBay and making some money, but I still feel that we’re hemorrhaging money. I think the anxiety of Nick’s job ending is fucking with me. He said the other night that he’d need to make $250/day to bring in the same money as now. That figure terrified me. $250 a DAY? How will we accomplish this? I’ve no idea. Fuck.

We’re toying with the idea of buying pallets of overstock from liquidation.com for pennies on the dollar and then selling that stuff on eBay. LOTS of people do it and make a living at it. We’re also trying to find some good dumpsters to dive – retail stuff, like Best Buy, Office Depot, etc. There are people who make livings doing this, too. We are scavengers by nature, so this appeals to us, but we drove around Gwinnett the other day and found pretty much nothing usable. Liquidation.com will probably be our first thing to try. But $250/day… Fuck.

I realise that two nights of VERY limited sleep is making me overly anxious today. It’s hard to keep it together when your brain is buzzing with completely random SHIT and playing the same three songs endlessly. ARGH. I’m trying to stay off FB so I won’t continue the fight I’m having with a pompous ASSHOLE that I’ve still got on my FL for some reason. I should mute his ass. But today is not the day to make those decisions. I’m too volatile.

I think I’ll go grocery shopping. Maybe drive around for a bit. SOMETHING. Blaaaahhhhhhh.

January 28, 2016

Warm Spinach Salad Dressing

Recipe for the dressing since, uh, there’s no prep to spinach in a bag! LOL I bought the pecans toasted/salted or a sweet candied pecan would be awesome, too.

Warm Spinach Salad Dressing
olive oil
2 Tbl diced pancetta
1 small shallot, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
5-6 medium creminis, halved then sliced (small pieces)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
juice of one orange
2 Tbl sherry vinegar
1 Tbl honey
1 tsp sugar
prewashed spinach
toasted/salted pecans (or candied would be good)

In a small skillet, put a couple of turns of olive oil and pancetta, then turn on med low heat. Render the pancetta for about 8-10 minutes until it starts to crisp. When it’s crisped, add in the shallot and garlic – keep an eye on the heat so as not to burn your aromatics. When the shallot and garlic have softened, add in the creminis and cook for 2-3 minutes. When mushrooms have given off their juice and have gotten soft, add S/P. Then add the juice of one orange, vinegar and honey. Stir and taste for sweetness. My orange wasn’t very sweet, so I added the extra sugar. Let this cook down for another 2-3 minutes then kill the heat and let it stand for 2-3 minutes.

I always cut up and removed the stems of my spinach before I plate it. I hate big pieces. Put the prepped spinach in bowls and top with a few pecans. Pour warm dressing over the salad. I also dressed the spinach with just a turn of olive oil.

This is enough for 3 small salads or two large ones.