Sharp. Real sharp.

I'm pretty stoked about some new kitchen equipment I just got. It's a set of 3 shiny, beautiful chef's grade kitchen knives by an australian manufacturer, Furi(http://www.furitechnics.com.au/) and endorsed by the very famous food diva, Rachel Ray. Before I go on, I should admit to being a devoted viewer of Food Network(FN) on TV. Gelatu sometimes calls me a FN junkie. The thing is, I'm really not that into TV, other than a couple of reality shows, so the only thing 2 channels I really enjoy watching on TV are FN (my TVland happy place) and BBC (which I am currently not subscribed to :( on comcast).

Anyway, I'd been lusting after these knives since the beginning of the year, when I noticed that Rachel Ray uses all Furi products on all her shows. I love Rachel Ray for the fact that she's more a food expert than a chef. More food basics, than food hype. Unlike chefs who beat about the bush, use 23 ingredients for a single dish, fuss around the kitchen for an hour and end up with a tiny plate of food that looks totally unapproachable; our Rachel Ray is a chef-next-door typa girl. She is the author and presenter of 30-minute meals, where she shows you how to be in & out of the kitchen in 30 minutes, cooking a complete meal for 4-6 people from start to finish. And Rachel Ray's Tasty travels - a travel show from a foodie perspective. So instead of the 23 ingredients, she'll recommend a simple pre-mixed dry rub you can pick up for $2.29 in your local grocery store without driving yourself nuts. Nobody I know has that much time to spend working on a grocery list, or in the kitchen on a daily basis. I love how practical and smart she is about everyday cooking.

Back to the original topic, these beauties make everyday kitchen chopping a total breeze. I'm no longer getting frustrated fumbling with those good-for-nothing, silly walmart knives. I think that you tend to be better and faster at what you do if you spend the time to gather up the right tools.
You can chop & slice tricky food like green peppers so easily(the shinier the surface of the vegetable, the harder it is to get past it because of the slipperyness that eludes the knife edge. This is a complete non-issue with these knives). In fact, they are so sharp, that the product comes with several injury warnings, for noobies, who might be experimenting with cooking. Oh yeah, these blades are not for the faint-hearted. They make me feel like supergirl working at a Benihana. Here are the first pictures I took of them when I first opened the package that had just arrived:




I love the neat gusto grip and they look very good too - they brighten up the kitchen with that tangerine color ! If you want some edge in the kitchen, check these out:
http://www.foodnetworkstore.com/ProductDetail.aspx?R=145952
They're pretty pricey at $99 at the FN store, so I decided to buy them off ebay for $25 instead. Of course, I spent some time to ensure that I was getting the real deal and not knock offs. They make kitchen prepping such a joy.

I can picture my hubby rolling his eyes at me even before I say this, but that's the point of this blog, I guess : Finally, this is the kind of threesome I can enjoy ;)

Lonely Friday.

The apple of my eye is off to the Big Apple. Which means I wont have him for Friday night or for the weekend. Which really sucks. His plane left at 3.19 pm on Friday afternoon. It was originally scheduled to leave at 2.35 pm.

Today was an extremely busy day at work. So much so, that I had no time to savor my daily caffeine fix from starbucks, which turned warm by the time I returned to my desk at around 2 pm( you know how when iced coffee sits around, it becomes warm and diluted with ice melting into it ?). I found just eight and a half minutes to eat lunch and no time to browse ebay (which is definitely high up on my list of favorite-things-to-kill-time-with).

However, when he called from the airport, I was at my desk and it was such pleasure to hear his voice. It was unexpected because he wasnt carrying his phone with him(he'd lent it to his dad, who left for NYC earlier in the week for sightseeing & catching up with relatives). His plane was running an hour late and he wanted my help in informing his NY relatives of this. I spent the next hour or so, finding reasons to return to my desk every 10 minutes or so, to track the progress of his delayed flight, until the status went from DELAYED to DEPARTED. And at that point, my status went from :-) to :-(

I left work later than usual, for a typical Friday afternoon, knowing that nothing would be waiting for me back home. As I pulled into my parking lot, I saw his car parked in the guest parking space. A little FYI here. We have an assigned parking spot that he sometimes leaves free for me, when he's in his extra-generous mode as a good hasband-y gesture. The other car (his car) goes into some guest parking spot. I do the same for him sometimes. So, as I pulled in to the parking area, I looked at his car and there was an empty spot right next to it in the guest parking. Then I glanced at my covered assigned parking spot that didnt look very appealing at all. Easy to guess where I decided to park:

I know this is very corny, but at least our cars can be alongside.

I dont know why I'm missing S so much. I mean, I'm not a highschool girl with a teenage crush here. I'm a grown up girl married to his guy. I know he's just gone for a weekend. I know he'll be back Monday night. And I know a weekend away is barely enough time to miss someone. I know it was my idea to stay home while he joins his folks for a trip to Niagara falls. I just didnt know I'll miss him like this.

One of my close friends in Texas saw her husband only on weekends during the majority of the first year of their marriage, because he was always traveling on projects. Gawd, they really did that for almost a year. I really marvel at the patience and self-restraint she has. And another friend has a fiancee in another country, almost 8000 miles away since October '07. And I'm having a tough time getting past Friday night. This is silly. Maybe a weekend isnt that much of a short span of time, when you get used to something unbelievably good.

Cinematic dilemma

We dont have a lot in common at all. We're definitely a ying-and-yang type of couple. He makes a beeline for outside seating in the sun at a restaurant patio when it's a 105 degrees day, whereas I'd rather sit in the cool comfort of the air-conditioned indoors. I mean, why do we have to be at the same temperature as the food we're eating ?

The one thing we both love doing is going out for a good movie. We're both movie buffs and it's good, easy, affordable entertainment. Friday night is our designated ditch-dinner-and-go-out-for-a-movie-and-popcorn night. The only problem is we're also ying-and-yang about the kind of movies we like. He loves superhero movies, action/thriller/disaster/sci-fi flicks. I love a good comedy or a nice feel-good romantic flick. I'm not saying I only enjoy the candyflossy youve-got-mail and pretty-woman type chic-flicks. I like sci-fi and thrillers too(I love Minority Report, True Lies, Terminator, Mission Impossible, Kill Bill and several others), but I'm a bit more selective about them, and I cannot get myself to stay awake & interested watching senseless, purposeless action or a sci-fi movies with no real story.

The month of April was pretty hard on me as far as our shared movie trips go. He strongly suggested we watch Leatherheads in the 1st week of April (painfully slow and belaboured movie, plus the sport movie aspect didnt settle well with me given the fact that we watch assorted sports on TV about 90% of the time when he's at home). 2nd week of April we watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall. I didnt care much for it because it was a bit pathetic and wayyy too graphic for my taste. 3rd week of April he ployed - he turned our Saturday going-out night into guy-movie night by inviting friends to watch Harold and Kumar Escape to Guantanamo Bay as a group. It was a funny movie but it was so crass. What's a girl to do ?

Anyway, come May 2nd, I demanded that we go to watch a girlie movie for a change, so he reluctantly agreed to take me out to watch Made of Honor. Coincidenly, Iron Man released the same week and this was the dilemma that he was faced with as we made our way into the movie theater:



The next show for Iron Man was around 10.45 pm and he had a sad puppy dog look on his face as we made our way into the Made of Honor theater. The movie stank, because it was so mediocre and the storyline was a bad remake of My best friend's wedding. But after 3 weeks of enduring stupid, lewd or plain boring guy movies, it felt so good to watch a girlie movie. Even a bad girlie movie. I think that the most satisfying part for me was the payback factor - the annoyance and frustration he felt as he walked away from the Iron Man theater was priceless. Gosh, are we madly in love or what !!?! ;)

It's Friday the 13th again !

This is a quick one. He gets spooked so easily. He carefully avoids horror movies like the plague. All claims of machismo bite the dust when I slide a horror movie into our DVD player. The only ghost movie he can watch without screaming and ducking under the covers is probably Casper. So here's to you, Mr tough-guy. Another Friday the 13th, this way comes. Let's hope you survive it !

(Dont) Look !

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Dont be Fuel-lish aka Gambling with the odometer

Recently, on the long weekend of Memorial-day, we made a trip to the Oregon coast. It was two-and-a-half days of sedate bliss in a quaint town called Cannon beach. Two-and-a-half days away from home in a quiet oceanside town, at a gorgeous inn property right on the beach. Two-and-a-half days of sun and sand and plenty of fresh air to relax. He, of course describes it as one of the most geriatric trips he's been on, simply because it lacked thrill, mind-numbing excitement and psychedelic nightclub lights. But that's another story for another time.

I reserved a modest economy car online prior to the trip to get us to Cannon Beach from Portland International Airport (PDX) and so that we could get around the town. While at the Hertz car rental counter at PDX on our arrival on Friday night, he decided to get the car on full fuel, because fuel rate offered was cheaper than the city. We got a Saturn 4-dr, dont remember the model, but this clearly wasnt the most fuel efficient car available.

Anyway, we drove to Cannon beach (about 2 hours from PDX). When we got to the destination we drove the car everywhere - to the beach, to dinner spots in the downtown, to another small town (about an hour away from Cannon Beach), and everywhere else we needed to go.

Now, on Monday afternoon, when it was time to leave, we started our drive back to the PDX. About halfway to our destination, I glanced at the odometer and noticed that the fuel level had almost dropped to the nearly-gone mark. Now, I admit that I'm somewhat of a fuddy-duddy. I like setting the alarm to 15 minutes prior to my actual wake-up time, I get to the airport a good 2 hours before boarding time, I make checklists for everything. In the same vein, I like getting fuelled up as soon as I reach the halfway mark on the fuel indicator. Cant say the same for him AT ALL. I think he gets a kick out of challenging fate and showing it the proverbial middle-finger by taking frivolous risks. Kinky as hell, but I've stopped complaining.

So, I gently/breezily warned him of the situation, trying not to be a nag about it. I mean, with the GPS showing 23 or so miles to the airport, it was obvious he would do something about it. But he refused to get refuelled. At first, I thought he was joking. But he was quite determined. To him, handing over a vehicle with a couple of ounces of fuel leftover meant allowing the eff-ing rental car company to eff him, which was unthinkable. So we keep going and my anxiety and uneasiness keep building. We are now 17 miles from the airport and this is what the fuel indicator looks like (I took the pictures on my cellphone, so they're not the best resolution):

My brave warrior of stupidville just kept going with a singular promise - he vowed to get us to the car rental drop-off location, without refuelling. And after 20 minutes of crossing my fingers so tight they hurt and praying to every known deity, we arrived at the rental drop-off and I exhaled. I turned to my left and looked at him and his eyes were lit up with a victorious grin as he smirked at the fuel indicator. Another feather in his cap-of-reckless-cockiness. Never a dull moment, I swear.