Well, it’s finally here. Ruthie and Grandma arrive at ABIA in exactly 12 hours (as of typing, posting may be a different story). I have nothing but joyous feelings, eager anticipation, and exhaustion coursing through me right now. Obviously the first 2 are expected, but as any of you who have been within earshot over the last couple of months, I’ve been working on the condo to prepare it for 3 people living in it. It’s been an experience I don’t with to replicate, and has made me much, much wiser. First off, ignoring a mess won’t make it go away. In fact, ignoring a mess for 9 years, 8 months, and change makes it significantly worse. However, even though the last few days have been crazy for me, it’s an anthill on the overall mountain that has required movement in order to make this happen. Ruthie’s the one who had to deal with the mountain, and if she had taken time to chronicle what she was doing, even minimally, it would have delayed her for months. I’m glad she didn’t, but it’s safe to say that once we move from the condo into a house, I think she’ll be done with the whole moving concept for a couple decades. Anyway, several folks who have seen the progress haven’t seemed very impressed, but I think I really nailed it when I described what I was dealing with as “Tetris without lines clearing” due to the limited square footage I’m dealing with, and seemingly unending cubic footage of crap I was moving around. I took a Rubick’s Cube approach - more setup than execution - in order to minimize the amount of duplicate work once I really got moving. The most painful part of something like that is that it truely doesn’t look like you’re making much progress, and it’s not entirely rewarding, which doesn’t do much for the motivation. It went exceedingly well, and I think the folks who were less than bowled-over by my progress over the last couple of weeks will be surprised by how little time-wise it took to get from there to where it is now. Anyhow, that’s done, and the Ruthie Living on Long Island Era officially ends in just under 12 hours now. I hope I get some sleep beforehand!

Also, the hailstorm was OMFG NUTS. However, it drove home what I knew was coming, and what Ruthie and I had decided on during my last visit to New York - the Miata Era is also over. It now has a LOT of damage, but most of it can be done paintlessly (except the hood), and the top is torn. I’m probably going to sell it as-is, and take the hit. I’m sort of ambivalent about the whole thing; the love affair wore off pretty fast. I think I can squarely blame the tires (Toyo T1Rs) for that, as their marshmellowy sidewalls did no favors for the already light steering, and anesthesized rear tire feel enough to lead to 2 losses of (dry surface) control - my first and second, in 12 years of idiotic driving. They had tenacious grip and have lasted WAY too long (they still have 3/4 tread after about ~20k miles!) for performance tires, so they’re great for Texas, and probably teriffic for anything made by Toyota. I’ll miss the good times, and probably remember them way, way too fondly, but after a great start, it dropped behind the Talon and even the Integra on my love list.

I have a few more posts coming soon, some food stuff, one about my first year with the Civic, and probably more once things quiet down around here, so check every month or so, and there should be fresh posts!

*I’d say era, but really, in terms of how long these types of situations USUALLY last, they belong together, albeit in differing magnitudes.

Okay, so I guess this is one good use for my site: Cooking! Since I fly by the seat of my pants when I am in the kitchen, but seem to do some pretty cool things, I frequently don’t repeat myself when it comes to actually cooking. I love to do it, but with all the delicious food in Austin with easy to justify prices, I don’t do it as much as I’d like. In the quest for The Big Move, I’ve had to work on my place, and that involved reorganizing the kitchen, which yielded counter space, leading me to actually use some things in my refrigerator.

As an aside, while I was at Costco, I picked up a bigass bag of Yukon Gold-like potatoes labeled “Butter Goldens” and have primarily been baking them. They are small, thin-skinned, and very moist, thusly being TERRIBLY DIFFICULT BAKING POTATOES. If I had a miniature fork and used a scalpel, it might be a bit easier, but my hands don’t do mini-me food very well (I’m looking at you, crawfish!). So, I’ve baked up a bunch of these little guys, and they’re pretty tasty. Not quite as “buttery” as the bag claims, but much more moist and flavorful than the usual Russetts that are used for baking. Just harder to get from plate to mouth. On with the cooking!

On Tuesday night, I was going through and found me some chicken breasasis. Hell yeah, I’m gonna make something FIERCE. I threw 2 of my peanut-sized potatoes in the convection oven, let them bake at 400F for about an hour, and went to work on the chicken. I wanted something spicy, so I gave them a good coating of generically-named chili powder, added an equal amount of Asian 5 spice, a bit of salt, and some minced-but-not-terribly-fresh garlic. Cooked it up on the stove on medium-high heat in a bit of butter because butter is awesome, and man was that chili powder deceiving. Not spicy at all, but the combination of garlic, 5 spice, and chili powder was an interesting mix. It was probably equal parts of the 3 when it left the pan, and it had an initial taste that was lead me to think, “Oh crap, I WAY overseasoned it” but, it didn’t go past that. Just a solid, but deceitful flavor that didn’t quit. The taters got a bit of garlic butter, which was OK, but the technical challenges of eating something that small gave me fits, and I basically smashed the little jerks and scraped their carcasses for meat.

Tonight, I decided I would prepare the rest of the chicken so that I could eat it more quickly. Tonight’s ingredients were dead simple: Herbs de Provonce (which are actually FROM Provonce, thanks to Ruthie!) and sea salt. Brought a pan up to medium heat to melt some butter (of course) for cooking it in, then cranked it and tossed them in. At this point, I decided I should make something OTHER THAN BAKED, IMPOSSIBLE TO CONVENIENTLY INGEST POTATOES. I recalled one of the things I LOVED in Switzerland, as basic as it is: rösti (say it rooschtee). Basically a biggie-sized hash brown cake. I decided a smallish one would leave me enough for an additional serving later, so I shredded a pair of the potatoes, lightly salted the carnage, and then grabbed a slice of creamy Havarti. Heated a small pan up real proper like, EVOO’d that fool, and sprinkled in half of the taters, added the havarti, then layered the rest of the taters on. Once they were nice and brown on one side (I like a good bit of crisp, more bronze than gold, but nowhere near burnt), and then realized that I had to flip it over neatly. This is the hard part, so I used an intermediate plating device as a holding cell for the slab, yanked it out, added a bit more oil for coating action, and managed to get about 96.28% of the slab into the pan intact. Booyah, Jim Cramer? Booyah. At this point, I had browned the chicken to my desired level, brown a bit past bronze, and then cooked up the last nug. Total time was roughly 30 minutes, and I have a meal, plus an extra chicken boob for a snack.

My review? Rosti turned out great, cooked quickly, and only needed 3 ingredients. I could have probably done with a bit less oil, because of the moisture of the potatoes, but I didn’t go overboard and deep-fry the guys. The first chicken was surprisingly good, and is something I would like to evolve into a reproducible recipe, or convert it to a sauce. I’d probably use a spicier ingredient, possibly fresh jalapeños or serranos that are cooked in with the chicken, or a pepper sauce, and use some freshly pressed garlic, rather than diced, to get more sharpness (and garlicky goodness!) into it. The second chicken will probably be my quick and simple chicken recipe for occasions that call for an easy, fast protein. I oversalted it a bit, and could probably taste just as good with just salted butter and the herbs. I’d also probably thin the meat, because I think getting a crispier texture would maximize the efficiency of the herbs’ flavor, and really make for a great panini with a slice of Emmenthaler melted on top.

Okay, so the New Year was rung in with some songs and drinks, and since then it’s been off to the races. Ruthie and I did a whirlwind job of getting everything done to get the wheels moving on The Big Move. Her organization and my gut have made a great team thus far, but each component of The Big Move is fairly daunting: Packing NY, Selling NY, Buying TX, and Shipping/Moving. We’ll get it done, but we have our work cut out for us!

So far this year has been so ridiculously busy, unpredictable, and also enjoyable (for the most part) that I’m probably going to write a year-in-review between now and then, and kick off my more regular postings with that. I have some plans for 2008, too, which I’m going to use this to track and motivate myself.

I’m going to work on getting comments going on here, so that my 1 reader (Ruthie :P) can leave supportive comments and things for me.

Anyhow, if you’re bored and want to waste some time, I’m playing 2 little web-based games, Inselkampf and Travian. If you start playing, let me know and I’ll friend you and send you resources. They’re low overhead and enjoyable for playing dumbed SimCity/Civilization with other people.

This year has been absolutely, completely insane. I’ll write more…I finally caved and installed a pre-built (and more modern!) writing tool. It’s nice :) Anyhow, I’m just playing around right now.