use real butter

auggggggggggggg!

That’s me for the first minute of icing my ankle each time.

Drizzle and gray skies welcomed us this morning. It was one of those days when you are happy enough to snuggle with the pup for a few more minutes – especially since you can’t run out for a hike in the rain due to a bum ankle. Perfect timing to make a double batch of chocolate stout chili! The jalapeno peppers had some zing to them this time.

onions, peppers, and garlic are good for you

bowl of steaming hot goodness

The first bowl is always a little soupy, but when I ladled the whole batch into tupperwares this evening, the consistency was thicker. Yay for crock pots!

We had planned to go to Boulder for sushi tonight (MIL gave us a couple of gift certificates to some of our favorite restaurants in Boulder for our bdays), but a heavy fog rolled in this afternoon, or rather, the ceiling dropped below 8500 feet – same thing. I love the stillness of the air when that happens, and the way sounds are sucked into the damp. Even better than that is right after a fresh snowfall when all echoes are absorbed by the snow that is padding everything, and the clean feeling you get when you draw in a sharp, cold breath of air and exhale as if you are a tea kettle. Anyway, we ordered pizza, which we haven’t done in a while – but there are some days when I want to eat something I didn’t cook for dinner. The whole wheat crust was particularly well done today. Sleepy now…

I chatted with Jaime the other day about food. Since she’s pregnant, she’s not feeling in the mood for certain foods and then other times all she can think of is a particular thing to eat. I said I was having a food problem of my own – getting all excited about cooking a dish and then when it’s done, I don’t want to eat it. Of course, I can’t blame that on pregnancy (I guess I could, but that wouldn’t make any sense). More like, it’s a sign of my state of mental well-being. But there is a food I never tire of and I rediscovered it this week.

I love sandwiches.

Being an unfan of breakfast foods, lunch and dinner are my preferred meals. Lunch, however, is the topper of the day because it’s so flexible. You can eat anything for lunch and I like to eat when there is daylight, if that makes any sense (none at all, probably). I like cold sandwiches, hot sandwiches, grilled sandwiches, open face, panini, subs, hoagies… One of my favorite sandwiches is the reuben, which we had for dinner tonight.

on the grill pan – the trick is to brown the bread until golden

i have to admit that i love sauerkraut and most pickled vegetables

My mom told me she had a fruit salad at one of several ladies’ luncheons this past week. She declared, “JenJen, it wasn’t like a normal fruit salad, it had Grand Marnier in it! It tasted so much better!” I offered that most things tend to taste better with booze and she giggled and I realized that maybe Mom had a little too much fruit salad…