This week I have officially crashed. The combination of having no furniture, never-ending tasks, and not being on a consistent routine has finally caught up with me. I still wake up grateful every day but I have been a little (a lot) irritable, especially toward the end of the week.
Though, I am happy to report that our bed was finally delivered and a good night’s sleep has everyone in the house feeling much more settled. The cats have been on edge for the last few weeks too. I mean hello, their little life was shaken up in the biggest way possible. Ollie spends most of the day in the closet and Chaz howels every night when we turn the lights off. Friday night everyone slept in the new bed and the energy in the whole house feels much better.
Besides a few friends that live close by we haven’t had many guests over yet. It’s hard to have dinner when you don’t have a table and I don’t want to make anyone sit on the floor. Tuesday morning, one of my oldest friends sent me a message saying he just moved close to us. Without even thinking I replied, “come over for dinner tonight!!” I panicked for a few minutes about the state of our house immediately after. Then I told him I was so excited to see him and…we are eating on boxes.
I am a Virgo, a planner, a curator, and a little OCD. I like every little detail to be planned and executed with perfection. I want to make others feel happy and have the best experience they can have. For the last three weeks I have been telling people that once we have furniture, we’ll have them over for dinner. Which, by the way, is a very normal thing to say but what I have to remind myself over and over is that no one cares about perfection as much as I do. Most people, especially our friends and family, are just happy to see us and our new home.
So after going to the DMV, we headed home with two hours to get things ready for dinner. Besides cooking, all I really did was light a candle and wipe down the bathroom counters. While I cooked, in a beautiful home with a beautiful kitchen, I was filled with so much joy and excitement. All the things I have dreamed about happening are finally happening.
When it was time to eat dinner, we grabbed trays and hopped on the floor without hesitation having a wonderful meal. We have both known Ryan since we were kids and plan to be friends for many many more years. At the end of the night, we joked that one day in the future when we are sitting on a couch we will remember the time we first moved in and ate on the floor together.
I woke up the next morning remembering that you can’t wait for the perfect time to make memories. There is no perfect time and if you wait, you’ll miss them. More importantly, if someone is judging you in your own home they don’t belong in your home.
Let’s talk about corn…Last week I post a Korean Corn Grilled Cheese recipe from Ben Mims. If you missed it, you can find it here. This is the second year I had sent this recipe out because when it resurfaced this summer, it looked just as yummy as the previous year. So I have made a few corn grilled cheeses inspired by that recipe and I am here to tell you to MAKE A CORN GRILLED CHEESE!
Follow the recipe above if you need help or just throw some corn in your grilled cheese. Make one before sweet sweet corn is gone for the season.
Another fun project I attempted recently – pomegranate molasses! Normal molasses is made from sugar cane. When sugar cane is crushed the juices are boiled to create sugar crystals. Remove those sugar crystals and what is left behind is molasses. Boil it once you have light molasses, boil it twice you have dark molasses, boil it a third time and you end up with blackstrap molasses.
More on molasses HERE in my Chocolate Rye Molasses Cookie newsletter.
Pomegranate molasses is made by simply boiling pomegranate juice into a thick syrup. In fact, almost any fruit juice can be boiled down to make fruit molasses. Mashama Bailey has a MasterClasses series where she teaches Southern cooking. You can watch it for free on Delta flights like I did. In one recipe she boils watermelon juice to make watermelon molasses, which I have been wanting to try. It also gave me the idea to play around with making peach molasses from peach juice to drizzle over pork chops. Yum, right?!
I used pomegranates from my tree and a few extra from my neighbors, about 10 total. I blended up the arils and strained the juice from the seeds. That juice was simmered on the stove for about an hour and a half until it was thick. Once it cooled, I poured it into baby jars and gave half to my neighbors.
It was a lot of work for a little pomegranate molasses but a fun experiment. Next year I will definitely do it again but make a larger batch. Most of our pomegranates are gone because I have told the workers to snack on them if they get hungry. Oh, we have workers at the house because we are building an office in the backyard! More on that next week…
A random Twitter thread about how cars in comedy movies are always yellow…
What’s the Difference Between Natural, Vegan, Organic, Biodynamic, and 00 Wine?
Should You Still Pay For Dinner If You Were Robbed While You Ate It? *An interesting incident to think about. I don’t think the restaurant should comp their meal but a round of drinks or dessert on the house would have been a nice gesture.
The Chef Who Owns No Measuring Cups *Past articles from Ruth Reichl on Alice Waters.
More on how to make Pomegranate Molasses
🚨New wine shop alert: We are on the hunt for our new neighborhood wine shop and this week we popped into Vinovore. All natural wine, all made by women winemakers, cool! They have so much more than wine that it is more like a bodega and we loved it!
I love Melissa Clark!
Nostalgia and PTSD in one video. IYKYK!!!
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Best thing I ate this last week: Dan Dan Noodles from Joy.
Slowly I am figuring out where and how to store everything in my kitchen. We have two tall skinny cabinets on either side of the stove and I quickly noticed that if I fill it up, I can’t reach the items in the back. Two clear acrylic lazy susans solved the problem! I’m considering a few more for other cabinets, maybe one for the counter, and even in the fridge…you need one too.
The last few days of this week have felt like this:
Talk to you next week, Xx M