A rainy Thursday

Here I sit at my kitchen table on a rainy and dreary and cold Thursday taking a break from my job search which isn't hard since job searching is not at all fun and your mind tends to wander or wonder. For instance, I wonder what happened to Fall, last week the trees had all their beautiful many colored leaves and now nil. I wonder how my morning glories are still blooming like mad even though the nights produce frost:

I wonder why the stupid squirrels ate ALL my pumpkins so that on Halloween not only did I not have one to carve but I had none at all to decorate my stoop. Usually they only eat the one I've carved because it has a hole in it.

I wonder why so many foods taste better when you simply put an egg on it:

This by the way is polenta with a fried egg on top which is something my Mom made for me as a child in Cuba. Cubans eat polenta (or harina) like mad; I use to have it for breakfast with condensed milk poured over it which makes me wonder why I wasn't some roly poly child who didn't fit through the door. Then sometimes I would have it like this with the egg for lunch or dinner. Polenta is easy to make, you bring about five cups of water to a boil and slowly whisk in about one cup of coarse yellow corn meal, lower the heat to medium and continue whisking until the polenta thickens and comes away form the sides of the pot. This takes anywhere form 20 to 30 minutes depending on how vigorously you whisk and how high the heat is. If you overdo it and it becomes too thick you can let it cool, slice it then fry it and put an egg on top. Or another way is to make a meat sauce and pour that on top:

This is actually made with sausage. I'm not much of a recipe writer but I'll give it a shot here. Sauté one medium chopped onion, one medium chopped carrot and two chopped celery stalks in about 2 tablespoons of EVO until soft, add two minced garlic cloves and sauté that for about a minute. Add about 1 lb. of sweet Italian sausage removed from its casings and crumbled add salt, pepper, dried basil and oregano and cook until the meat has browned. Add about one glass of red wine and bring to a boil scraping the bottom of the pan, lower the heat to medium and add about five whole canned plum tomatoes breaking them up with a wooden spoon and stir in some of their juice. Cook the meat sauce at a medium flame, adding more liquid if it gets too dry, for about 30 to 45 minutes until meat is cooked through. Serve over polenta (or pasta) garnish with shaved parmesan cheese.

I wonder where my little Maxy is?

Happy Halloween...not.

Max hates Halloween

all that doorbell ringing, kids screaming, laughing, etc. interrupts his napping and what for this stuff?

He can't have any.

Aaahhh! Fall

We love Fall, when nature puts on a monster show

which disappears all of a sudden, boo hoo.

And to top it all off the f#%$*#& squirrels decided to carve my pumpkin for me, aaargh. Max is not amused!

Anyway Fall brings beautiful colors. leaves, breezes, and apples so that we can make these absolutely delicious apple cheddar cheese scones which I found on smitten kitchen and they are scrumptious. if you want the recipe you must go there because I don't plagiarize. That's cafe con leche with it by the way. 

And then for dinner we had cuban marinated pork chops with arroz con frijoles, yummm!

...and it begins

So after soooo many years of working continously I find myself an unemployed statistic. Completely blindsided, knocked over the head, hit by a brick, etc. etc. And still like an idiot doing work from home to finish up...let's not talk about the (non) pay. So what am I to do now...guess what...don't know. But like my lovely Frank  says:

Find yourself! Didn't know I was lost but I guess I am.
So during my first week of full unemployment (almost), I planned a dinner party; decided on a Moroccan theme starting with homemade hummus with pita (is this Moroccan???) roasted almonds and marinated olives. Dinner began with roasted marinated eggplant:

served on my Mother's china and one of the beautiful embroidered tablecloths she's given me throughout the years and a lovely lamb tagine, which I neglected to take a picture of since I'm new at this, with baked jasmine pilaf. And of course too many wines to mention. We invited our neighbors Louise and Michael and ate and drank too much...and all on a Thursday no less. Unemployment has it's charm.

Max was the perfect little gentleman! No begging or anything.