This Weekend, In Staying Warm

Posted on by Jordan

It remains really cold around Des Moines. I think the average temps are about 8-10 below historical norms for the month. Also, I read that we are only a few inches away from having the largest snowfall *ever recorded* in a single winter. I don’t know how close to the record we really are, but the only year we haven’t topped was about 130 years back.

So, that’s the context for why we have been staying inside 🙂

Friday Night: I made another pizza. Rolled some of the things I learned from the deep-dish pizza into a more traditional pizza, to see what I could come up with. I put the stone at the bottom of the oven, a cookie sheet at the top and started the pizza in a cold oven. The end result was a really crisp bottom crust, without burning the top. I think I got kinda lucky with the whole thing as the crust was nearly burnt, but I think I prefer that to being uncooked at the middle.

Saturday: I went to the church mens breakfast. It makes me feel terribly grown up to do that kind of thing. I suppose, given my age, job, wife… etc. I am in fact grown up. Still seems odd. Had a good time there, and somehow ended up cleaning parts of the church before I headed home.

When I got home, Heather and I tackled the second bedroom. I had worked on it a little mid-week, but there was sooooo much still waiting to be done. I have to give a lot of credit to Heather, because she did most of the work, and stuck with it until the room was fully cleaned out! When I say fully cleaned out, it still has two portable coat rack things, and two bookshelves in it, but at least there aren’t any piles on the floor, and it feels like a real room now.

We were talking about good “stay inside and be warm foods” and Heather thought chicken pot pie sounded good. I think maybe to get me out of the kind of small room she thought I should make it :).

I ended up settling on this recipe: Chicken Pot Pie IX

It went together really well, my only problem was that rolling out the crust before I started making the filling meant that the texture of the top crust was really soft. I think I would have had an easier time cutting the “N over N” into the top if I hadn’t rolled it out 30 minutes ago, or maybe at least laying that in the fridge to keep it firm.

That’s filling pre-gravy-ish step. That’s also the last picture I got with my camera before the battery gave out. I somehow lost my charger over the past few weeks. (I ordered a new one a few hours ago, so I should find it any minute now)

The only thing you should note in that picture is I forgot the peas. I was also going to add some corn… forgot both.

Finished product:

That’s a cell phone picture… not quite the quality I normally provide, but you get the idea. The finished product was really good.

Sunday: Heather has gotten really into coupons. I don’t think I have mentioned it here before. She got this Coupon Mom book and has really gotten into the game of finding deals. One of the deals she found is that the local gas station will give you a free Sunday paper if you get more than $10 in gas Sunday. The Sunday paper it seems, is the predominant source of coupons for the western world.  Heather and I both filled our cars up before church so that we could get two papers.

After lunch, Heather clipped coupons and planned a big grocery run, while I put on our Iowa plates ( a sad, sad day 😦 )  This did kind of ruin my “stay inside” plan, but it had to be done. I also stashed quite a few boxes in the rafters of our garage. The garage is really the only way our second bedroom is going to be open enough to get a bed into. I am glad to say we are on-track for that to actually happen now.

-Jordan

Shipping Woe

Posted on by Jordan

I had grand aims of pulling together a wedding anniversary one-year retrospective recap thing, but I just cannot begin to think how I would pull that together. Even if I did it would be a massive post, and really I try to avoid painfully verbose posts.

Instead I will tell you about the misadventures I had getting some items here from Amazon.

The catalyst for this was, interestingly  enough, my reflection on the year past and the upcoming year. Heather and I received several copies of the book The Five Love Languages during our engagement and as wedding gifts. We read it eagerly, and I think it was helpful then, but I thought it would be an interesting thing to re-read now that we have a tiny bit of perspective on marriage. Not surprisingly, after two  moves, we couldn’t locate the one copy of the book we had retained from before. I then jumped on Amazon to order a new one, because I felt I had fully torn the apartment up and clearly the book had been lost.

At this point, three things happened.

  1. Heather also bought a copy, because I was halfway wanting this to be a surprise and hadn’t told her about the order
  2. I found our copy of the book
  3. The Amazon shipment was listed by the USPS (United States Postal Service) as “delivered” on their website, but was not in my mailbox.

I should point out that the mailboxes at our current apartment are fairly large as far as apartment mailboxes go, and open with a key. I am fairly confident that the Amazon box would have fit into our mailbox. Even if it had not, there is a large drop box area with a single-use key system that allows the carrier to secure a larger box, and leave the key locked in your mailbox.

I filled out a missing parcel form on the USPS website a day or so later. After three or four days, I started to think maybe that wasn’t going to get any traction. I thought I should contact Amazon, as maybe they could demand a little more attention from the Post Office. I sent an e-mail to Amazon, explaining the missing package, and that I was still waiting to hear from the Post Office. I should point out I did not in any way imply they were to blame, nor that I expected them to do anything, just that I wanted them to be aware of the situation.

I got an e-mail back from an Amazon representative within ten minutes! The e-mail stated that they were sorry the package had been lost and they would be happy to ether re-ship the package or refund my order, and they would do so as soon as I responded to their e-mail.

I replied that I would like to have them re-ship the order (I had several books in addition to the now duplicate Five Love Languages).

The Amazon representative then communicated that they would be unable to re-ship the Five Love Languages as they were sold out, I would be refunded the price of that book and my other books would be shipped over-night express for no charge. The order would have been shipped express even if they had been able to ship all the books.

The next day, UPS dropped of my order, several hours after I got the call from the UPS guy using the entry way system to our apartment, I finally got a response from the USPS regarding my missing parcel. To their credit, they actually sent out a postmaster to check the “large package drop box” and area around the mailbox before responding to me. All the same, I have to point out the incredible speed Amazon had compared to their process.

The end result of the USPS investigation was that the parcel was lost. The recommended I fill out another form on their website for “stolen mail.” I filled out the form just to try and keep their attention on the issue. I don’t know if a package being shipped to the wrong person and them not sending it back is really theft, but frankly the frequency with with which we get mail in our box that clearly has someone else s name and address on it makes me willing to pursue any option I have to try and steer attention to our local mail system.

Three to four days later I got an e-mail saying my report had been processed and would be used for statistical reporting by the USPS. As far as I can tell, they consider the mater closed.

I almost feel obligated to write this post simply to thank Amazon. I never intended to ask them to eat the cost of the lost items, and am amazed that they would do so without hesitation.

-Jordan

Pumpkin Pancakes

Posted on by Jordan

This isn’t really the post I had planned for the weekend, but I managed to reproduce a good pumpkin pancake this morning, and wanted to document it. 🙂

Jordan’s Pumpkin Pancakes:

  • 1 cup of Hungry Jack Complete Wheat Blends pancake mix
  • 3/4 cup water ( just like the box calls for)
  • 1/2 cup pumpkin puree, thinned

Mix the pancake mix with water as directed on the box.

Mix canned pumpkin with water until the consistency is roughly the same as the pancake batter.

Add 1/2 cup of the pumpkin mix to the pancake batter. Cook like you would a normal pancake, being aware that the pumpkin holds a lot of water so they are going to cook slower.

That felt really over-dramatic for some reason. All the same, writing this down is important! Heather really likes pumpkin things, and I knew pumpkin pancakes are possible. The problem is that the canned pumpkin can hold a lot of water before thinning down. For no good reason I never actually looked up a recipe for this, and just kind of winged it. The first time I tried this, things went rather well. In the subsequent three or four times I was unable to get a good water / pumpkin balance. Too much pumpkin makes the pancakes act like sponges. You can get a nice crust on the outside, but they will be runny in the middle still.

I think the secret is to mix water into the pumpkin before you add it to the pancakes, meaning you don’t have to mess with adding water to the entire batter mix. The other key seems to be not adding too much of the pumpkin mix. I was disappointed that the pumpkin flavor wasn’t prominent in the pancakes. Adding more pumpkin means adding more water, and the end result isn’t very pancake like. I think perhaps adding some cinnamon and nutmeg, or “pumpkin pie spice” might bring out the pumpkin flavor more, but I think a half-cup is the limit for actual pumpkin.

Now I have to remember to check my blog before I try to make these again. 🙂

-Jordan

Pizza!

Posted on by Jordan

One thing I can say for certain, is that it is January here.  The past week has felt almost tropical, when the temperature slipped above freezing for a few hours during the day. The piles of snow around our apartment are so large you cannot see over them anymore. To put it gently, there isn’t much to make you want to go outside.

With that in mind I have been looking for interesting cooking projects.  One I found was for a Chicago style pizza that looked interesting.

I ended up using a recipe my mom gave me for the crust instead of the one listed, used normal sauce instead of the diced tomatoes, hamburger instead of sausage, and an electric oven instead of gas. So pretty much I only used a small fraction of the guys idea, but still….

Anyway, the dough covered a much larger area than I really needed, so it kind of flopped over the edges. I figured I could deal with that later, and added quite a bit of hamburger.

This is about the time I realized I hadn’t really planned out how closely I was going to stick to the advice online, because I didn’t want to try the diced tomatoes track. I figured some garlic couldn’t hurt though, so I chopped up a few cloves and dumped them in. I sprinkled in some oregano too for good measure. Then I topped that with *a lot* of cheese and some mushrooms.

There was still room left in the skillet, but I didn’t think it would be a good idea to use any more mushrooms. I still had a little hamburger left though, so I used the last of that. Then I added the remains of a can of Prego red sauce. I was really afraid this would make things too runny, but the hamburger and mushrooms seemed to be soaking it up really well.

Again, I realized that I wasn’t planning too well. The pseudo recipe I was using appeared to use pepperoni to kind of shield the top of the pizza from burning. I think the comment said something about the top getting “crispy like bacon” but at the same time it wasn’t going to seem very pizza-like if I didn’t at least put cheese on the top. In hindsight, the one time I had pizza in Chicago, they clearly baked the pizza, then added the sauce right before they brought it out. That pizza was different than what I was shooting for here anyway. I ended up adding some cheese.

As you can see, I also trimmed off the extra dough around the edges. At this point I used the tip somebody posted later on in that pizza thread I was using as a recipe, and placed the pan at the bottom of the oven, and a cookie sheet on a rack clear at the top. Then I set the oven for 500, waited for it to get up to temp, and backed it off to 400. The only thing I did that may have changed cooking conditions was I swapped out the top cookie sheet for one that had bread stick things from the extra crust for a few minutes after I turned the temp down. The final result looked promising.

The crust had a lot of structural strength, and didn’t stick to the pan at all (did I mention I had aggressively  rubbed butter on the pan before I started?). I was able to lift and slide the pizza out without any problems.

Cutting it up was a little difficult, due to the fact that it was a little soupy. I was initially afraid that was from too much sauce, but it turned out that was just because the cheese was still melted.

After just a few more minutes things began to set a little more, and we ended up with nice thick pie-like slices.

I was quite happy with the end result. It took way longer than I had planned, partially due to the prep time on the dough for the crust, and partially due to the cook-time being a lot longer than the ~40 minutes I was expecting (pre-heat takes more than 10 minutes when you go up to 500). The crust was good, but nothing like the “pan” pizza from say Pizza Hut. I shudder to think how much oil I would have to use to get that effect. I think I am happy with the effect I got, and I don’t see a reason to pack a ton more fat into what isn’t really health food as it stands, I was just expecting something different.

So to summarize:

  • Grease the skillet, but don’t expect a fried-bread crust
  • Electric ovens seem to work fine, if you use a blocking sheet for the top element
  • Cheese only works as a topping, although I would like to try pepperoni next time
  • Plan ahead so you have 2+ hours to make this before you want to eat

-Jordan

Coffee!

Posted on by Jordan

Heather and I are just winding down our first weekend in Des Moines for 2010.

One of the great things I got for Christmas was a coffee maker! Somehow A year ago this time, I didn’t really drink coffee. This meant that we didn’t put a coffee maker on our registry or buy it when we were equipping our new household. I don’t really know how I made the transition, but at this point it seems like I have always liked coffee. This has been a slight problem on weekends, because I really missed having it to start my day off with. Needless to say, I was excited to get the chance to try out making a pot of my own this weekend.

…

Heather always makes fun of my taking pictures for the blog, and just now I realize I didn’t get a picture of that momentous occasion. I guess you will have to use your imagination.

Anyway, the coffee was great, and I think adds a lot to a relaxing Saturday morning.

I did however find that I may be making it all wrong

I just don’t see it being worth all the work those guys go to for a *small* cup of coffee.

-Jordan

New Year Wrap-Up

Posted on by Jordan

This post is going up a touch late to be a true new years post, but it’s clearly as close as I am going to get.

Heather and I trekked out to McCook to celebrate the new year, and to catch up with my parents and brother, as this was my first Christmas away from my family.

We really enjoy McCook every time we get a chance to go there. I am sure a big part of it is just being away from the normal grind, plus being at mom and dad’s house, but it ends up being incredibly relaxing. The relax and unwind factor was there this trip, and we ended up with a bonus new years event!

McCook was hosting a special event for new years “First Night.” I won’t go into a ton of detail, but Heather and I had a lot of fun with everything that was going on there.

first_night_10

Due to the wedding, we didn’t really have much energy / time to observe the new year last time around. That was kind of sad because the new year marks a somewhat important date for us. We spent our first new year’s eve at the Gutschow farm, with Heather’s grandmother “Gigi”, and sometime on the drive home late that night decided to become “Facebook official” (Actually we just decided that we really were dating, and the most obvious step was to change our FB status)

The other fun thing about the night is that it’s one of the few that I can keep Heather up past 9:30pm. She did about fade away on me, and I have to admit it was a little cold outside, but Heather made it all the way to the end, greeting 2010 (just minutes after that picture was taken)

Hope the new one is as much fun as the last 🙂

-Jordan