Weekend Wrapup – Gastronomical Delights Edition

You know, my weekend did actually improve after my whole misery-guts Friday experience. It was a struggle, and took some epic willpower on my part (plus a lot of patience on the part of my friends who are really sick of hearing my stories) but I managed to hoist my broken carcass out of the depths of resentful misery and into a better, more productive place. Yay me.

Friday was errand-running during the day, with a surprise appearance by MyTodd™. I bought a new jacket, which cheered me. Then Friday evening was drinking and being irritated. Saturday morning was getting over myself and then some errand-running. I had to run to the grocery store and pick up about 62lbs of meat and seafood for Sunday dinner. Later, Todd and I ended up going out to dinner at Franco in Soulard, which was delicious. I had the mixed greens to start, Todd had the onion soup. We both had the wood grilled bistro steak for our entree, with raito, green beans and pomme frites. I had peanut butter ice cream for dessert, he had an apple tart/vanilla ice cream combo. We loved everything. I especially enjoyed the green beans, since I spent most of my life hating them until once I had them prepared correctly, so now every time I can find good green beans I get all excited. The interior of the restaurant was very nice, low-key, calm and modern. The staff were extremely friendly, to the point of an almost obscenely cheerful obsequiousness. When Todd got up to use the restroom, our server rushed over and refolded his napkin into a fancy shape. That’s a little OTT for me, but it never crossed the line to truly disturbing/offensive.

We skipped the industrial/fetish dance party on Saturday night, though I did hear surprisingly good things about it after the fact. I don’t know, I think I am past the point of finding such things either unique or interesting. Maybe with a big group of people it would be fun, but overall my seediness-tolerance has really gone down as I’ve aged. I want to see less and less of strangers’ wobbly bits, and I certainly don’t want to encounter any of their residual body fluids when I am walking around. I am going to check their mySpace page for pictures from this event, and then judge whether I want to hit it up next month. I am thinking probably no—but then again my mercurial moods are pretty well known.

Sunday morning was food prep for Sunday night (things had to marinate) then some Write Club. We went to Local Harvest cafe, which was too crowded and sweaty for my liking. Also someone there was stinking, and I don’t think it was me. I was hungry but since it was so jammed and I had my laptop I didn’t want to order anything that would take more than a few square inches of table space. I had a chocolate croissant that was passable, but nothing special. Mississippi Mud food is much better. Also, their iced chai was both expensive and teeny-tiny. So what if they grew it in the backyard? Tiresome. We moved over to Mangia where I marveled again at the intestinal fortitude of these people who really do start drinking at noon. Dunno how they do that. I would get too loopy and then have to go take a nap.

I headed home around 3 and started cooking in earnest around 4pm. I was cooking an authentic-as-possible Indonesian rijsttafel for 5 people, and that entailed 3 separate meat dishes, a noodle dish, white rice and fried rice. It takes some organization to have that many things ready at the same time, when you’re only one person. And I am, as far as I am aware, only one person. I made:

• Kip Satay with Gado Gado Sauce (Chicken Satay with Peanut Sauce)
• Bahmi Goreng (stir fried noodles with pork and vegetables)
• Nasi Goreng (fried rice with eggs, tomatoes and shrimp)
• Kip Rendang (curried chicken with coconut milk)
• Sambal Stir Fry with Shrimp (Shrimp stir-fried with tomatoes, onions and spices)
• I also served white rice, sereondeng (coconut/peanut topping) sambal oelek (hot sauce) and krupuk (prawn crackers) on the side.
  

I ended up making the stir-fried shrimp and satay first, and keeping them in a 200 degree oven while I cooked everything else. I was afraid they’d dry out, but the shrimp dish had a lot of sauce, and the satay had been marinating for 6 hours at that point, and both seemed as if they handled the wait-time pretty well.

Indonesian food can be a bit of an acquired taste – the first time I had it I thought it all looked like dog food, and I wasn’t enthused to try it, but I think everyone liked everything. A bit of a minor mishap with turning the front burner (with the pork for the Bahmi) as high as it would go, and turning the back burner (water boiling for noodles) down as low as it would go, instead of the other way around. This resulted in some adventures with the smoke alarm, which upset the doggies quite a bit. But the meat wasn’t ruined and I think that dish turned out really well. Overall I am going to call the night a success, even though I never got to the Pisang Goreng (deep-fried bananas) because by that point I was sick of frying things, and we were all stuffed. Molly brought some vanilla ice cream so we had that for dessert, then all sat out on the deck talking shit and having a few drinks. Scooter club was in full effect, so I got to see other people’s reactions to the sound of 25 chainsaws constantly running next door. See, it’s really annoying huh?

Yesterday I had this exchange w/Pervy Neighbor

PN: “Hey we had 55 guys here last night on scooters. Did we keep you awake?
Me: No.
PN: One of these days we’ll find something to keep you awake!
Me: (in my head) You’ve already offered something that you thought would keep me awake and I turned your skeevy ass down. Scooter-related or otherwise, your activities will never disrupt my sleep. Perv.

Anyway, that’s the weekend wrapup. My foot hurts and my knee hurts. I think my foot hurts more since I know it’s actually broken, illogical psychosomatic reaction or not. I think I had just been convincing myself that it didn’t hurt, and now that I know I have justification for it hurting, the pain is more intense. Brains are weird.

I just put in a refill request for Tramadol. My doctor had better refill that shit too, I think he owes me, the misdiagnosing asstard.

Now for my first 5-day workweek in a few weeks, which should be trying.