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Oct. 13th, 2009 06:55 pmThe solitary nature of my days has become habit, but this really doesn't get any easier to get used to. The past two weekends began with disappointment, as his flights didn't work out, and rather than arriving late Thursday night, he wasn't able to get a working flight till Friday morning. That's the schedule for this week too, but at least we're expecting it this week, rather than it being an issue of weather problems.
I started to cry out of sheer frustration the moment I woke up on Sunday, from the oppressiveness of there's just no time. Two days and three nights is very little to cram contact into. On the other hand, it's not all horrible. His birthday was Friday, and we tried a new local restaurant that specializes in local, organic foods. The service was very friendly, the food was *wonderful* and it was a really nice way to spend a few hours. I do believe it's a decent replacement for our old favorite Italian place, since that closed down when the chef returned to Sicily a few years ago. We'd been so spoiled by Carmello (who would do things like a special 6 course meal for my birthday based on my favorite ingredients, I still dream of that meal) that we'd generally avoided Italian places since then, figuring it couldn't live up to his standards.
I've been doing a lot of my own cooking too. Since I really can't be bothered to cook every night, once a week I'll make a one-pot meal and eat that for the rest of the week, interspersed with pear-and-blue-cheese sandwiches. The first week was an Indian dish called kitchari, which turned out very so-so. A little too bland, a little too dry. Eh. The second week was vegetarian chili, which tasted like chili! Go me! The texture wasn't very chili-like since I'm both far too lazy to do that much fine chopping, and too unskilled to manage the knife and my long nails, so it was rather more chunky than a good chili should be, but still - it tasted like it should! For me this is quite something. Today was another Indian dish that I know as chana saag, chickpeas in a spinach gravy. The site I've been using calls it chole palak, though. There's got to be a regional difference as well, the dish turned out more spicy than I'm used to, and is somewhat different in flavor than what I get from our Indian takeaway place. Still, it's *very* good, and was easy! I'm quite lucky, one of my nearby supermarkets has a huge Indian section, so I'm well set to try the rest of the recipes on that site - next week is likely to be either pumpkin dal (with acorn squash rather than pumpkin), or squash curry.
During the day I've been focused on finishing a few outstanding art projects, and I'm coming to the finish line on one of them, which is actually quite something - if I screw up now, there's no saving it, and replacing the materials is rather easier said than done in our current financial situation. It's difficult to work up the courage right now. So, I've been working on painting masks for Faeriecon for the past two days, after browsing Etsy for inspiration. That's going quite well, on Sirs' mask in particular - I'd gotten some domino masks from a drugstore last year, and I've painted his copper, working the brush to give it a lightly hammered finish, and I'm painting some faux maple leaves to match, and I'll affix the leaves to the mask in a crown style. So far it's looking quite rich and elegant, and I have plenty of ideas for more. Those that we don't want to keep for ourselves will probably be put into storage to await the opening of my Etsy shop.
I started to cry out of sheer frustration the moment I woke up on Sunday, from the oppressiveness of there's just no time. Two days and three nights is very little to cram contact into. On the other hand, it's not all horrible. His birthday was Friday, and we tried a new local restaurant that specializes in local, organic foods. The service was very friendly, the food was *wonderful* and it was a really nice way to spend a few hours. I do believe it's a decent replacement for our old favorite Italian place, since that closed down when the chef returned to Sicily a few years ago. We'd been so spoiled by Carmello (who would do things like a special 6 course meal for my birthday based on my favorite ingredients, I still dream of that meal) that we'd generally avoided Italian places since then, figuring it couldn't live up to his standards.
I've been doing a lot of my own cooking too. Since I really can't be bothered to cook every night, once a week I'll make a one-pot meal and eat that for the rest of the week, interspersed with pear-and-blue-cheese sandwiches. The first week was an Indian dish called kitchari, which turned out very so-so. A little too bland, a little too dry. Eh. The second week was vegetarian chili, which tasted like chili! Go me! The texture wasn't very chili-like since I'm both far too lazy to do that much fine chopping, and too unskilled to manage the knife and my long nails, so it was rather more chunky than a good chili should be, but still - it tasted like it should! For me this is quite something. Today was another Indian dish that I know as chana saag, chickpeas in a spinach gravy. The site I've been using calls it chole palak, though. There's got to be a regional difference as well, the dish turned out more spicy than I'm used to, and is somewhat different in flavor than what I get from our Indian takeaway place. Still, it's *very* good, and was easy! I'm quite lucky, one of my nearby supermarkets has a huge Indian section, so I'm well set to try the rest of the recipes on that site - next week is likely to be either pumpkin dal (with acorn squash rather than pumpkin), or squash curry.
During the day I've been focused on finishing a few outstanding art projects, and I'm coming to the finish line on one of them, which is actually quite something - if I screw up now, there's no saving it, and replacing the materials is rather easier said than done in our current financial situation. It's difficult to work up the courage right now. So, I've been working on painting masks for Faeriecon for the past two days, after browsing Etsy for inspiration. That's going quite well, on Sirs' mask in particular - I'd gotten some domino masks from a drugstore last year, and I've painted his copper, working the brush to give it a lightly hammered finish, and I'm painting some faux maple leaves to match, and I'll affix the leaves to the mask in a crown style. So far it's looking quite rich and elegant, and I have plenty of ideas for more. Those that we don't want to keep for ourselves will probably be put into storage to await the opening of my Etsy shop.
