So around 2:00 yesterday afternoon the tomato sauce I was making (see yesterday’s entry for details if you’re all “Whuh?!”) finally reached the stage of thickening I like in a tomato sauce, and so I set it aside to cool and when Fred got home I made him taste it and he tasted it and there was this lonnnnnng pause and he said “It’s alright.” and then he toddled off to do something and I fumed and was all “FUCKING BASTARD AFTER ALL THAT WORK I DID HE IS SO UNAPPRECIATIVE I HATE HIM!” and then I tasted the tomato sauce.
And.
It.
SUCKED.
APPARENTLY if you put herbs and spices in tomato sauce and simmer it all for 45,000 hours, the herbs turn bitter.
WHO THE FUCK KNEW?
Not me.
I started to bag the sauce up to freeze anyway because GODDAMN THAT IS A LOT OF WORK, but then I stopped because I am a realist (sometimes) and I knew that if I put the bitter-ass sauce in the freezer then it would just sit in the freezer, never eaten, and eventually I’d just thaw it out and feed it to the pigs or the chickens or whatever.
So I cut out the middleman (ie, the freezer) and fed it to those who appreciate it despite its bitterness.
DAMN IT.
What have I learned? Two things.
1. Make a half batch next time so it all fits in the pot at the same damn time.
2. Wait until it’s gotten within a few hours of reaching the preferred consistency and THEN add the freakin’ herbs.
I’ll be glad when I’m on the other side of this learning curve. Or… is that how learning curves work? I don’t know. You know what I mean.
UGH.
The habaneros are growing like motherfuckers. Fred’s got like 150 habaneros put away in the freezer for whenever he feels like making habanero jam. And they KEEP ON COMING.
Last night I took about ten dried cayenne peppers and tossed them in the blender and I ground the hell out of those things.
(Despite the fact that there was no liquid in the blender, you better believe I kept my hand firmly atop that damn blender cover while it was going.)
And now we have cayenne powder, made from our own cayennes!
Kinda looks like red pepper flakes, doesn’t it? According to Fred it has “a zing” to it. To the normal person that means “This will burn your tongue off.”
Not that we use all that much cayenne powder. But, uh, I guess we better start.
Currently drying.
Yesterday, upon wiping up all the tomato sauce that had splattered all over the kitchen, I accidentally destroyed the web the tiny spider who lives above the kitchen sink had been tending so diligently. I felt horrible about it because I’m a dork, but she’s rebuilt and though she’s keeping a wary eye on me this morning, she seems to have forgiven me.
That, or she’s going to wait ’til she’s big enough to chew my face off, and then she’ll take her revenge.
Someone Fred works with had some extra corn on the cob that wasn’t fit for humans (it’d been left on the cob too long), so she brought it to work for Fred to give the chickens.
The chickens highly approved.
“Hellew.”
Previously
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: she’s got the skank lines rolling off her, doesn’t she?
2004: Fred is just amazed that one portly cat can have so many health issues.
2003: ::Sproing!:: he went, leaping at least a foot in the air, and I watched, impressed that he’d contained that much energy in his dry and dead-looking little body.
2002: “TUBBY GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!” I ordered, and grudgingly he did.
2001: No entry.
2000: Being completely, one-hundred percent useless in the slightest emergency, I slapped my hands to my cheeks and let out a horrified scream.