March Month in Review + Past 10 Days

March Recipes in Review

New Recipes:
Gourmet's Chicken Curry with Cashews
Pasta all'Amatriciana
Beef Noodle Soup
Gourmet's bean burritos
Deb's cornmeal fried porkchops and goat cheese smashed potatoes
Spicy shredded pork from Slow Cooker Revolution
7th Hill inspired pizza with mushroom, red onion, goat cheese, capicola, sausage, and oregano
Roasted chicken with shallots and vinegar
Slow cooker pork with egg noodles and apple relish
No-knead bread
Avocado and white bean salad wraps

I think I am getting better at selecting the new recipes to try- we liked everything on this list enough to make again, except the porkchops. Those were good, but they were too much work and created too many dishes.

This is not as paltry a list as I expected it to be, although I feel like we are cooking a lot less. House-hunting takes up all of our free evenings during the week, and combined with tutoring and the occasional happy hour, I feel like I am never home during the week. The restaurant moratorium has not been lifted, however! I am getting very adept with leftovers, and we still eat at home basically every night, just...much later than we used to. Leftover pulled pork became tacos and sandwiches on multiple occasions, and leftover chicken and vegetables became pasta.

Basically, I am a pioneer woman- right?

Lemon cream pasta with chicken and asparagus

Pork with apples, brie, and caramelized onions

Highlights and Lowlights of the Past 10 Days

Highlights:

• Julia's bachelorette party. We rented a cute cabin on a working farm in Madison, VA and got up close and personal with the cows and chickens. Rita fulfilled her dream of cuddling a chicken and we learned that roosters actually do make a cock-a-doodle-doo sound. Very fascinating. We ate a lot of farm-fresh eggs and went on a beautiful hike. I made pies, among other things.

Black bottom oatmeal pies

Ummm, I think that was the only highlight.

Lowlights:

• Tuesday was a bad day. Tuesdays are always bad, because of their general Tuesday-ness, plus tutoring, but last Tuesday I was going to find out if I got my preferred project assignment at work, as well as the outcome of the house we bid on in Brookland. Neither of these things went my way.

• I think we are going to take a break from house-hunting after this week. Mostly because we are going to be out of town for something like four of the next six weekends. But I also need some time to get my head straight. I still struggle with the things I wrote about before, but it's more than that. All of a sudden, the city I loved has become much less attractive to me. I feel resentful all the time, and then I get mad at myself for feeling that way. I used to admire the cityscape, walkable lifestyle, and quaint streets for their lovelyness and charm and now all I can see are twee neighborhoods that I can't afford. Just two months ago, I thought my life was pretty perfect! I used to be able to tune out the type-A crazies and opt out of all the competitive nonsense, because I just do not care. But now I care, and have entered into the fray and I can't compete. It's like Black Friday shopping, where every time you reach for something you like, a mob throws themselves in front of you and steals it away, leaving piles of cash in their wake. (I'm guessing, having never participated in Black Friday, in the tradition of opting out of competitive nonsense.) So all I see is what I can't have, and that is not the frame of mind I want to have. Then I think, DC is not even that great! (Defense mechanism?) How can they get away with these prices? Half the city is a bombed out construction pit, and even the nice part has some pretty lame stuff. If I am going to pay this much to live here, I want some pretty nice amenities, not an [expletive] SuperWalmart. Why am I fighting to give all of my money away?

To conclude on a high note, Sal: