Story Time with Kathy

Story Time at Lincoln House comes in one of two forms: the Red-Hot Read from "Cosmo" and the crime report from our neighborhood newspaper.  The crime report has been very disappointing ever since the string of people being punched in the head and my personal favorite, a woman getting hit with a tree branch and mugged at 3 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon on the corner of our street.  Our neighborhood is extremely busy on summer Saturday afternoons, so the fact that someone was brave enough to heft a branch into someone's face and snatch her purse in broad daylight is pretty impressive.  Also, a woman once hand-cuffed her dog to a street sign while she went into McDonald's.

In any case, when the paper arrived last week I was pleasantly surprised by the following gems and proceeded to read/recite them to everyone I came in contact with for the next few days.  Gather 'round, children, Aunt Kathy's got a yarn to spin...

1) Burglary: Two garages on the 1200 and 1300 blocks of F-------- Avenue were burglarized between midnight and 8 a.m. Thursday, January 27.  Change was stolen from the vehicles inside.  The garage doors had been unlocked.

2) Theft: Car wash tokens were stolen from a vehicle on the 1800 block of B----- Avenue between noon and midnight Saturday, January 29.

and the greatest caper of all time:

3) Theft: Three teriyaki chicken sandwiches were stolen from the Subway in S----- Plaza at 8:00 p.m. Monday, January 17.

Food Free Post--by Laura

Cooking and talking about food are not the only talents we have.  We are also good at finishing other people's artwork.  For example, paint-by-numbers.  Kathy and I recently did Wolf paintings.  They are beautiful as you can see.  (Feel free to praise us).  Mine is the brown one.  Wolves are awesome by the way.  An online quiz once told me that my patronus is a wolf.  So.

 

 

I am currently working on a Panda paint-by-number.  But honestly, don't get me started on pandas.  I will post a picture when I'm done with it but I am working on it about as fast as a panda eats bamboo so it's gonna be a while.  I also have other projects to work on so I may "pull a panda" and abandon this one.

 

I also discovered the rare art of gold foil.  Gold foiling?  Or something.  Basically you get a picture that is black with some green markings on it.  Then you scratch off the green to reveal the gold underneath.  These pictures come in a variety of pictures including dolphins, unicorns, and other Lisa Frank-esque animals.  I went with an owl picture.  It turned out quite well.  Of course it was the easiest thing I have ever done so it would have been difficult to have it turn out poorly.

 

There it is.  Lovely.
If you are looking for quick and easy project I recommend you do the gold thing.  It only took me a couple episodes of "Wizards of Waverly Place" and half of "City Slickers" to finish. 
Who needs original art when you have such exquisite substitutes?

Reason #372 Why Being an Adult is Hard- by Kathy

Friday night Gwen and I had to deal with two aspects of a serious Life Problem.  She walked into my bedroom around dinner time and announced, "Cafe Latte doesn't have an on-line menu.  I really want some soup, but I don't want to walk all the way there if they don't have a soup I want."  I commiserated, "I know!  But the menu changes every day, so it would be annoying to update.  You could always call."  "Yeah," she agreed, "but then I would have to talk to someone."  Talking to strangers is something we here at Lincoln House avoid like the plague.  And since the world is overdue for another worldwide epidemic I don't think anyone has a right to judge us.

I then presented my related problem.  A side effect of not going out to eat as often has been my desire to make those purchased meals really, really worthwhile.  This was augmented by Pizza Luce dropping an ad off at our house.  It has been sitting on our dining room puzzle table for a week at least.  It highlights several of their more popular pizzas, and has a large picture of my personal favorite: Baked Potato Pizza.  For those of you who don't know about this pizza Pizza Luce offers the following description, "Pizza crust smothered in buttery-garlic baby red mashed potatoes and topped with broccoli, fresh diced tomatoes, cheddar cheese and a sprinkle of smoked apple hickory bacon.  Served with a side of sour cream."  Seriously.  It's like having your own slice of heaven, only instead of a slice it's an entire pizza.

I had actually been staring at the Pizza Luce website trying to get up the courage to order when Gwen walked in.  "I could order on-line, and they deliver, and it's free delivery, so that's all fine," I began.  "I would answer the door for you if you wanted," Gwen offered.  "Actually the issue is the tip," I explained, "I only have twenties.  And I hate having to physically hand a person their tip in any case, but to have them make change for me and then hand a small portion of that money to them as tip is just too much."  She nodded.

Tipping is an extremely uncomfortable situation for me always, even when I get to write a number on a slip of paper that I then tuck upside down inside a bill... folder... padded... thingy.  Digital money unseen by any other real people until after I make a hasty retreat from the restaurant makes me break into a panicked sweat.  Forget having to look someone in the eye just to the left of their head awkwardly and hand them a couple crumpled dollar bills.  I just can't handle the stress of facing someone who as a result of my tip either thinks I'm a sucker or cheap.  I'm not either; I just have zero confidence in my math and people skills.

Gwen and I migrated to our adult room and sat at the puzzle table trying to gather the strength to attain the meals we desired.  After about five minutes we both gave up and ate left-overs from the fridge.

When I related this story to Erica all she had to say was, "I would have done the same thing.  Typical Lincoln House... you should blog about it."

Champions of life.
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It is also getting sort of ridiculous that I actively try to blog about something other than food but even our non-recipe ideas are food related.  I have tried multiple times to post a Miley music video Lu and I made but I can't figure out how to get videos to work.  Sigh.

Gluten Free Stuffing- Laura Style

My sister has Celiac disease so she can't have any gluten. Lame. For Thanksgiving I decided to make a Gluten Free (GF) stuffing that she could eat because I am the best sister ever.  I don't remember three minutes ago much less three months ago but I think I can give the basics of this recipe.  Here goes...
The night before Thanksgiving I made the croutons. I bought two loaves of really expensive GF bread, cut it in cubes, sprinkled with oil, parsley, and other seasonings, and broiled it until crunchy.  You could do this the same day I guess but you will probably be too busy stirring gravy and mashing potatoes Thursday morning so you should do as much as possible the day before. 
Thursday morning I sauted mushrooms, onions, and celery in oil, with garlic I'm sure.  Then I mixed the veggies in with the croutons and some Swanson's broth.  Swanson's is GF.  Then I baked it for a while.  It was really awesome.  I wonder what herbs I used....thyme?  Maybe.  Whatever, it was super good. 

Obviously the reason I am posting this recipe is because of the amazing picture I took of it.  Look at this picture, it's like something out of m-er f-ing Martha Stewart magazine.

Notice how the light hits the dish as if God is looking down on our meal and wishing He was there.

Look at the beautiful green bean hotdish too.

  And the mashed potatoes...

Thanksgiving is the best holiday ever.  Eating.  That's all.

Julie & Julia & Food & Dreams- by Kathy

Yesterday I watched 'Julie & Julia', after which Lu and I created a list of what that movie made us wish we were:

• Successful bloggers
• Really good cooks
• Married to Stanley Tucci

It just seems unfair sometimes that we are so brilliant and talented and have extreme awesomeness in spades, and yet no one wants to offer us start-up capital to fund our genius.

Case in point:
As you have probably gathered, food is quite important to us here at Lincoln House.  It's more than just sustenance or calories or taste to us.  It's happiness.  It's companionship.  It's all sorts of Hallmark sentiments.  But it is also inspiration.  Not so much in a 'here's an original recipe that is going to blow your mind' way, but a 'here's an original idea of how you can incorporate food into every moment of your day even when you're not hungry/eating but simply sitting around doing crosswords and drinking wine and wishing you could enjoy the company of food without having to prepare/eat it' way.  Which obviously led us to invent savory candles.  We're not really a flowery bunch here, and not just because our cat eats any and all plants (including fake plants) that are brought into the house.  Nothing brings us greater joy than walking into the house when someone else is cooking something cheesy and garlicy.  Here is a sampling of the savory candles we wish we owned:

• Sauteed onions, garlic and green peppers
• Toast
• Maple Bacon
• Texas Toast
• Grilled Cheese

No one's house ever naturally smells of lavender, or vanilla roses, or mountain spring air.  Burning candles with those scents not only doesn't make sense, it makes you a liar.

-----

In any case, we have also decided to start documenting our ideas so if someone steals them we can sue those dirty scoundrels for millions of dollars and end up with our own start-up capital.  Be warned.

Cheese and Onion Quesadilla- Kathy Style

Oh hey.  Think a cheese and onion quesadilla is like totally the most easiest thing to make ever for realz?  Well yeah, it is, but look how amazingly crispy mine is!  Lincoln House makes cooking cheese and carbs into a competitive sport in which we are gold medalists with happy tummies.  Everyone else is jealous, and bronze medalists, and from some country that only sends one athlete to the Olympics and it's for some strange sport like ski shooting that nobody watches/understands...?  I'm not so good with sports analogies.  This meal goes best with beer and Teen Best Friend Week on The Wheel of Fortune.  And a second quesadilla.

case in point.

More of a normal Lincoln House dinner. But you have to admit, we do it well.

Creamy Wild Rice Soup- Kathy Style

One of my February financial goals is to only go out to eat once a week, which means spending more of my life providing my own sustenance. I am currently out of string cheese, so I was forced to get fancy.

Creamy Wild Rice Soup
(I made a double batch for some unknown reason, so if you want to halve these amounts you'll kind of have what the actual recipe called for... except they wanted chicken instead of garlic. And only a quarter cup of onion.  Fools.  I mean, I'm sure your version is also delicious, Nick...)
1 cup wild rice (uncooked)
1 chopped large onion, white or yellow (Mine was yellowy white?)
3 cloves chopped garlic
4 cans (14 oz.) Cream of Potato Soup
32 oz. Chicken Broth
3ish cups of chopped carrots
2 cups of Half & Half
...and let's be real here...
2 additional cloves chopped garlic

Prep Time: Approximately one play of Aly and A.J.'s "Insomniatic" CD.  But I'm a very slow chopper and get easily distracted by Aly and A.J. and the cat.

In typical me fashion as I was chopping the vegetables the onion and carrot vastly overwhelmed the garlic so I ended up chopping more garlic at the end.  I was completely flummoxed that the original recipe didn't call for any garlic.  If I'm going to spend my afternoon cooking there better be garlic.  If you wanted to use chicken this is the point where you would chop up some chicken thighs, but then you would have to touch raw poultry which is something I leave for the professionals or Nick.  I am unclear whether you need to pre-cook the chicken before putting it in the soup, but I'm sure the Internet can provide that answer.  I'm moving on.

Find a large pot and put it on your 'power boost' burner.  Scoop the four cans of Cream of Potato soup into the pot, an extremely fun task.  Pour in Chicken Broth; splash yourself and realize you forgot to put on one of your roommate's super cute aprons.  Whatevs, you're in your pajamas anyway.  It is 2 p.m., after all.  Then pour all your chopped veggies in carefully.  Actually, you could probably put those in before the Chicken Broth and not have to worry so much about splashing but life is about exposing yourself to a little bit of danger.

Cook Time: About half hour's worth of bustling around the kitchen cleaning up, the SuperBowl episode of "Glee" streamed online (which means short ads but multiple stops for buffering, and even more stops to go obsessively stir your soup), plus a short struggle fest trying to find lids to match your Tupperware.  Expect to have the soup heating for somewhere between an hour and a half and two hours.

Bring soup to a boil.  Then turn burner down to a simmer.  If you don't know what a simmer looks like... well, we're in the same boat.  So every time you get up to stir the soup (I estimate I stirred this soup about thirty-seven separate times, but I think stirring things is the greatest activity ever... so...) fiddle with the burner level, varying it from 'low' to one dot above 'low' then back to 'low' then slightly higher as you near the end of the episode and your taste tests of the rice reveal it is still quite rigid.  Shrug a lot.  Eventually the carrots will get soft.  And onion is good at any consistency.  The wild rice, however, will refuse to soften no matter how long you cook it or how many cute kitten YouTube videos you show it and that's just how some kinds of rice and some people are in this world.  That's life.  Moral of the recipe.

When it gets to the point where you're really bored waiting and figure since there isn't any meat that might kill you with its rawness you can pour in the Half & Half.  Stir some more.  At this point the soup will look like real live Creamy Wild Rice Soup and you'll feel pretty proud of yourself.  Scoop some into a soup bowl.  You'll know it's a soup bowl if it is clearly labelled 'SOUP', like mine.  If you don't have a soup bowl any other bowl will work too.  Eat.  I bet dipping bread in it would be quite delicious, but if you don't have bread you can use taco chips too.  Or pretzels.  Freeze the left-overs.

And now some pictures for proof:

Fried Rice -Laura Style

Okay, cooking is one of the many topics we will be blogging about.  The Lincoln Ladies typically dine on such delicacies as chips and cheese, grilled cheese, and mac and cheese, but once in a while we branch out and try new things.  For example, fried rice.  Here is the way I made it...

4 cups cooked rice (2 uncooked)

3 carrots

6ish (one bundle from the store) green onions

10ish (one package from the store) mushrooms

a bunch of soy sauce (or however much you want)

oil

1 clove garlic

a couple eggs (optional)

I cooked the rice in my Rice Cooker while I sauted the chopped veggies in oil and garlic until tender.  When the rice was done I put it in a large skillet (wok) with the veggies.  I then added several tablespoons of soy sauce even though other recipes told me one would suffice.  I like my way better.  I then scrambled a couple eggs in the same pan and mixed them right it.  It was awesome.  It totally tasted like fried rice.  Kathy and Gwen can concur.

Shameless Self Promotion

We are awesome and should have our own TV show.  So, we are starting what will soon become a very popular blog.  Enjoy.  You are totally going to love it.