Night at Our House

One of the benefits of my silly work schedule (24 hours on/12 off/36 on) is that I have a couple free days during the week.  So, I get to do fun things like take mega-naps and cook big schmancy dinners for no reason at all without caring that cooking eats up 5 hours of the day!

So today I made tapioca pudding from scratch and also a summer vegetable risotto.  And they came out pretty darn good.  Since my regular camera is extremely back logged, you’re getting bleh cell-phone quality pics, but still… I think the yummi-ness manages to jump out atcha despite poor pixel quality.

Our Night, in photos:

(starting the risotto)

Begin with a base of onions, shallots, a leek, garlic and a hot pepper sauteed in butter/olive oil.  Then add a couple cups arborio rice.

Risotto part 1

Add a cup of white wine, salt, pepper, parsley, whatever spices suit your fancy and mix er up nice and good.

Risotto Part 2

Start adding water and veggie stock, a half-cup at a time.  Wait for the rice to absorb the water and stock before you add the next cup.  When you get about 3 cups in, add ze squash.  I threw in some mushrooms here as well.  We had a mix of starburst (pattypan) squash and summer squash.  I HATE pattypan squash.  I think it’s pointless, gross and stupid.  It barely even has any nutritional value.  Yet Earl keeps bringing it home from the farmer’s market.  (@#!~!!)  So I basically made this recipe around the fact that I wanted to “use up” the stupid pattypan squash.  Heh   Next time if I ever cooked this again, I would chop the pattypan squash up even smaller, so you could barely tell it was there.

Risotto Part 3: add the squash

Keep adding water and veggie stock, a cup at a time until the rice is a bit soft/chewy and you’ve got a nice creamy consistancy.

To finish it off, I added a hearty amount of grated parm cheese, a chopped up bunch of basil, zest of an entire lemon, and garnished with saffron.  Man, this came out so good.  We have a TON of leftovers, too, which should last a while and also I can freeze to stuff in peppers and tomatoes and whatnot.

Risotto end product!

We had a bageutte with dinner as well, but the risotto was so rich, creamy, filling and good we didn’t even eat it!  Linus got served the “butt” of the baguette (like he always does, if he is good), however we did make him work for it.  Here he is doing his “Manners” trick:

Do you have good manners?

He’s looking a tad aggravated, wouldn’t you say?

freaking lady better stop taking my picture and let me eat this freaking baguette or she is gonna get it.

Post dinner, I did laundry while Earl and Luces napped on the sheetless bed.  Notice how messy his side endtable is, compared to how organized mine is?! Ha.

Lucy's new box!

Lucy is enjoying her new box, which my $200 EMT combat boots came in.

EMT boots make good boxes for kitteh

I skooched Lucy aside (she’s not very snuggly when she’s in her box anyways, who want’s to cuddle with cardboard corners) and Linus and I stole her spot in Earl’s arms. This was a tough shot to get because every time I leaned my arm out to snap the photo, Linus was disturbed and acted all disgruntled that I was moving. How rude of me!

hard angle to get a shot

I realize now that I’m posting this that I forgot to snap a picture of the tapioca pudding, but rest assured it was scrumptious, and Earl has a whole bunch left over to take to work tomorrow and give his coworkers (since we don’t want it around the house tempting us all weekend!).  Also, on the topic of things I forgot to do- I had some spicy Italian sausage that I was planning to add to the risotto, and I TOTALLY FORGOT.  Derr.  I didn’t even remember until now.  Shesh.  ::shakes head::  Oh well, it was pretty good any way.  But, man.  What a bummer, I bet that would have made it GREAT.  Drats.