so that's where they come from! or birthday dinner part 1

Yesterday was Idle Husband's birthday.

He did not want a cake this year.

I always make a cake. That's my thing. That's my special gift. Any cake! Any kind, any icing, any flavour! Made to your birthday specifications!

But this year, the request was for no cake.

It kind of bummed me out, I'm not gonna lie. What on earth was I going to do if I couldn't make a cake?

Dinner. I focused on making an amazing dinner. And that focus quickly turned to filet mignon. Why filet mignon? Well, recently, IH has been obsessed about it. He heard about it from Gordon Ramsay; he had it at the steakhouse; there's not a week that goes by where he won't fondly tip his head up and say, ahhh filet mignon. And just that, too. Not remember when I had it? and it was good? No. Just ahhhh filet. mignon.

So I made it my mission to find some butcher and find filet mignon.

I kind of hated this plan, because this plan required me to drive somewhere unfamiliar, and I do not like to do so by myself. I really wanted to have the GPS, but it was in IH's car and I thought it would seem really suspicious if I had asked him to bring it in for me, just cuz. We both know I hate that machine. I don't trust it. It's gotten us everywhere we didn't know how to get to, but I'm still nervous to use it by myself. So I thought I'd have to do it the old way. Google, print, and cross my fingers I don't get stuck on a one-way coming home.

But then guess what happened? Luck of all luck, one of my favourite blogs in the whole blogiverse, The Art of Doing Stuff, made a video about cutting your own steaks.

I'm really surprised I watched it since it's my own personal rule not to watch anything that goes over one minute -- well, maybe not a rule per se, more like if I see a video over a minute, I generally don't want to bother myself with it -- and this video was over 8 minutes long. I really like Karen, though, and I pretty much read everything she writes whether I think it relates to me or not. Besides, I'm already cutting up my own chicken, why shouldn't I be cutting my own steaks? This seemed like information that might come in handy in the saving money department eventually.

So I'm watching along and chuckling at her commentary and video editing skills when all of a sudden, this pops up:
Tenderloin Steaks are also known as...Filet Mignon
Say what now? Rewind that! Filet mignon comes from tenderloin? And you bought your tenderloin at Costco? That means that there is some shred of possibility, some glimmer of hope, that I might be able to find a tenderloin...at Superstore?! Seriously?

Major. Breakthrough.

So trimming and cutting my own filet mignons quickly rose to the top of my list. I have no idea how much an actual filet mignon costs from a butcher, but I know it's expensive in a restaurant, and if I could get a tenderloin and do it myself for less money, well, how could I not entertain that idea? I'd be left with the perfect birthday surprise plus filet mignons for many dinners to come.

My plan was solid. I had to get groceries yesterday anyway, so I'd look, frantically if I had to, all over the meat department at Superstore. I'd ask the butcher there if I had to. I'd find it. If it meant cheap + avoiding a harrowing trip to some place new, I'd pester everyone at Superstore until I found a tenderloin.

As it turned out, I wandered into the meat aisle and immediately found a tiny hunk of tenderloin. I was pretty elated. I was a little miffed it wasn't like Karen's. Small, already half trimmed, on the expensive side for maybe four steaks.

I turned around, and right there, in their feature bin, were three -- three! -- tenderloins exactly like Karen's! Shut up. And cheaper. Cheaper than Karen's! I had no idea which to choose. I had no idea which looked best. So I opted for the middle priced roast and discarded the first tenderloin nub I'd found.

To say I was even more excited now would be an understatement. If anyone noticed me, I was grinning ear to ear and talking to myself about how friggin' genius I am and how perfect everything was gonna be.

You can watch Karen's video about trimming the tenderloin and I'll spare you my details, but let's just say mine didn't look as pretty as her's. Maybe I cut too much off? Maybe I dislocated something that should have stayed attached? I don't know. I was just happy to have been left with at least 10 pretty good looking steaks. I don't know if they're the proper thickness or size. And I don't care. All I know is that they each cost about $5, and I learned a life skill that I'll use forever and ever. I don't know if I'll be able to buy two good steaks for over $20 ever again. Scrap that. I do know. I won't. It's tenderloin forever now.

although...embarrassing myself is a small price to pay for a whole new (free) wardrobe

I just realized something. I'm in the most terrible clothing rut. Ever. Possibly of my whole life. To say I don't suddenly feel like I've been left behind in a decade would be a lie, because I feel like I've been strutting around in the same shlumpy clothes that I was wearing in high school.

Ok, maybe not the same exact clothes as high school (though, my pajama wardrobe would say differently), but the same style. The same ideas. The same thing.

I've really started to realize that the way I've been viewing certain articles of clothing is wrong.

Like my ridiculous rule that my jeans have to cover at least 90% of my shoe. They have to look a certain way when I look down. I can't describe how, they just have to look right.

Or how I can't seem to shake the sneaker habit. I know, I know. They're great because I walk. A lot. But there are lots of good looking shoes out there that are perfectly good to walk in, and I'm not wearing them. Why? Because I think my toes look stupid? Earth to me, they don't look stupid. It's all an illusion. An elaborate illusion I set up for myself back in 1999/2000 when I thought I was dressing pretty swell.

So there. I've confessed. I feel like I'm still living in 10 years-ago-style.

Something needs to change and I want to start with my jeans.

Do you know that feeling you get when you get a new haircut? Or maybe you wear glasses and after trying on half the store, you find the perfect new pair and suddenly, you feel like you need to get a whole new wardrobe or, yes, even a new hair style, to match? Do you know that feeling? I want to get that feeling with jeans. I want to find a pair that's so 2010 and updated that everything else will fall into place.

Shirts will naturally get updated; shoes will become easier to shop for; heck, I might even get myself a new pair of glasses and a new haircut.

That's where I want to go, but getting there is going to be difficult.

You see, I hate shopping for jeans. Well, pants in general. They're just never right. When they looked at women's bodies, they looked at everyones' but mine. Or at least that's how it feels.

So I think for all my life, I've just been okay with the jeans I've been wearing. There might have been one aspect of each of them that I liked, but the rest was either ill fitting or just wrong in some small way. I think I've been only just getting by in this department.

Now I'm at the point where I feel like the jeans I currently wear are so terrible, so ill-fitting, so out of date that I can't even believe I'm still going out in public in them. So it seems like an obvious place to start, and I think that instead of just settling for a pair that does a halfway job, I'm going to invest the time and try on as many pairs of jeans as I possibly can. I don't care what the label says or my stupid rules on what I think they should look like even before they go on. I'm just going to try them all and hope I find a winner.

For example, previously I thought I couldn't wear a skinny, legging-type jean or one that tapers a little at the ankle. Do you know why? It's because I have this 1999 view of what a tapering, skinny legged jean is and that's not how they are now.

I had to return something to Walmart on Monday, so for fun, I searched anything they might have had labeled as a skinny jean or a jegging (that term really gags me) and tried it on. Surprise! I actually really liked how my legs looked in the skinny jean (the jegging, not so much). If the waist had fit better, I probably would have bought them.

So now I really know that my preconceptions of how things were and how they are now are completely wrong. I guess you just get used to seeing yourself a certain way for so long that it can be really hard to switch gears and keep modern. I'm starting to have a whole new understanding and appreciation for some of the more deeply style-rutted people on What Not To Wear. I've always sat there, watching that show, and I thought, How can they not see how completely out of date they are? Yeah. I get it now. I feel their pain. At least it didn't take embarrassing myself on tv to figure it out.

So I'll just be busy reinventing myself, now, one pair of jeans at a time.

fall colours

sunday brunch

french toast with caramelized nectarines

This is a really yummy breakfast plus it's super easy and adaptable. You could use any fruit you have around. And just so you know, pretty much all of the stone fruits are on sale right now. Peaches would be really delicious!

I took two nectarines, quartered them, and placed them in a small frying pan with some margarine (be generous, about 1/4 cup) and about 3 teaspoons of brown sugar. It takes some time but eventually, you'll be left with a delicious nectarine flavoured caramel sauce.

The french toast was the easy part. While the nectarines are cooking, take four slices of bread and soak them in a mixture of egg (I did one egg per slice, but I could have gotten away with three), milk, and cinnamon. Once both sides of the bread have been coated in the egg mixture, move the slices to a griddle and cook them until both sides are golden brown.

Top the french toast with the nectarines and enjoy!

nutty

Yesterday was walnut day. Not technically or anything. It wasn't observed around the world. There wasn't some festival showcasing the nut -- unless you were in our house. Then it might have seemed like I was preparing for a walnut showcase. Or something. I just happened to use a ton of walnuts in our main meal and in our dessert.

It kind of started because of this kataifi dough I purchased a long time ago for a sweet cheese dessert. The package had been in my freezer for almost the whole summer and every time I opened the door and saw it staring back out at me, I thought I should really get on making that dessert.

But like all things frozen, it had to thaw in the fridge for 24 hours and then sit on the counter for another 2 hours and, me being me, I would think, hey! I should make that cheese dessert tonight! And then I'd go over to the freezer, take out the box, read the thawing instructions, curse myself for not thinking about it the day before, and put it back in the freezer. And this has been going on all summer long.

Finally, on Wednesday, I took it out and put it in the fridge. I had since scrapped the cheese idea. It's best served warm straight out of the oven -- like most cheese things -- and I figured I'd never get my act together to actually have it ready to cook for an after dinner dessert anyway. So remember how I've been kind of inspired by things cooked in muffin tins? Well, that's what I've been thinking about. Baklava cupcakes.

Baklava is something I've made twice before but with phyllo dough sheets. Kataifi dough is basically phyllo dough but it's shredded and it looks like this:

There are recipes on the box for both kataifi rolls and squares which I thought might be easier options, but when I read the recipes, they're almost identical to my baklava recipe except there's about a cup more sugar. There's already enough sugar going on here. I didn't feel like adding another whole cup would really be necessary. The other problem was how to work with it. For a kataifi roll, the box says to "flatten a section of the kataifi...and roll up." Uh, are you looking at what I'm looking at? What the heck makes up a section? How do I get that section out? How do I flatten it? Kataifi rolls. They're not happening. So I kept on with my original idea.

Here's what I did for my baklava cupcakes.

First, it's important to note that you should make the syrup before you start anything else. It's important that one be hot and the other be cold. That is, the baklava has to either have the cold syrup poured over it immediately after it comes out of the oven or you have to wait for the baklava to cool and then pour boiling hot syrup over it. Whichever is fine, I just find it's easier waiting for syrup to cool rather than waiting for the baklava to cool.

first, I doubled the cupcake liners hoping that would help contain the syrup a bit better. Then I ripped out enough kataifi to cover the bottom of a muffin cup and brushed on some melted butter.

I sprinkled about a teaspoon of ground walnuts mixed with cinnamon and cloves onto the kataifi, ripped out some more dough to cover the tops, and brushed them with a little more butter.

Then all I had to do was pop them in the oven for about 15 minutes. (On hindsight, I think these could have cooked for another 5 minutes just to brown the tops a little more.) After they came out, I poured on the syrup immediately.

pouring the syrup on was a little more difficult because I didn't know how much should go into each cup and the stupid measuring cup I have doesn't pour very cleanly if I'm trying to pour slowly. So every inch of my kitchen is sticky right now. Fair warning.

I ended up making 24 cupcakes, but I opted to use the last of the kataifi in a loaf pan instead. There's too much dough in that box. I would have had close to a hundred cupcakes if I'd kept on. Ok, maybe closer to 50. Whatever count I would have ended up with, it didn't matter. Over 24 is too many for us.

The verdict? They're very good and taste exactly like baklava. I think they look really cute, and it's nice to have them in a small, bite-sized package. Most importantly, Idle Husband is completely in love with them. I had no idea, but kataifi rolls are his absolute favourite dessert. Good thing they're exactly the same as baklava except for the dough and the amount of sugar.

Here is the recipe I use for baklava. I like that I can really taste and distinguish between the honey flavour and the walnuts and the cinnamon with this recipe. And even though it seems like a lot of sugar for the syrup, these really don't turn out as sweet as they could be. I've had authentic greek sugary syrup desserts and trust me. One tiny bite of those and you go into a sugar coma almost immediately. These are nicely sweet. Not overpoweringly so.

Now remember I said we had walnuts for dessert and for dinner? Well, I stumbled on this roasted walnut balls recipe last week and thought it would be perfect to try for our meatless dinner night. It just so happened to coincide with when I decided to pull out the kataifi. Strange. Maybe I was subconsciously craving walnuts.

I don't have pictures of the walnut balls because mine didn't look as nice as the recipe's, so you might as well look at those pictures instead. And you should, because I have to tell you, they were delicious! When I was making them, I wanted to eat the raw dough because they smelled so good. Then they smelled amazing while they were cooking. And the taste? Actually, they taste a lot like a regular meatball. They really do. We had them with ketchup, but I didn't feel like I needed to have ketchup. The white sauce went perfectly with them. And they're good the next day, too. I had the leftovers for breakfast. If you're looking for a meatless recipe, you should definitely try them!