Beannachti na Feile Padraig!! Or Happy St. Patty's Day if you don't know Gaelic..Which I will guess, most of you don't. It being a dead language and all haha.
So much is going on.
I graduated Oregon Culinary School this month. Got myself a degree. Pretty impressed with myself. To celebrate I went to Sacramento and Ashland. It was fantastic. Visited Rouge Valley Creamery. Dude. I could eat blue cheese samples all day long. It is a bit pricey.. 43.75/lb for this seasons award winners.. but. TOTALLY worth every penny. I ate it on crackers, in salads and even made smoked blue cheese California BLT's.(recipe at bottom).
The entire trip was amazing. Until about two days before I left. When I called to get my landlords address and he informs me that, the owner of my house is not resigning my lease and I have tell April 30th to get out.
WHAT THE FUCK.
I do not deal with change well. And after living in this place for almost three years, my felt like I had been thrown in a blender. Oh and the fact that I am leaving Portland for 4 1/2 months on the SAME day as we are kicked out. UGH.
So I come home stressed out, but I have a job to do so I try to meditate and yoga it up alot to keep my head cool. When I first returned home from working in Montana last summer, my godmothers daughter emailed me. She was engaged and wanted me to cater her wedding. I spent months menu planning and costing everything out. Not a easy task when the bride and groom are wishy washy on how many people you are serving, where you are serving, what they want to serve, and how they want it served. But I finally had gotten a menu they were happy with. I had them over to my house to taste test and gave them a quote. They felt it was too high. SO with the couple (them being family friends since before i was born) I went through my costs and cut menu items and costs as much as possible. Before I left for California I sat down with them and said this is as far as I can cut, if you want to have your families do this instead, I understand. The costs of a wedding are high. They both said no we will work it out, go ahead.
So, taking "family" at its word, the moment I landed back in Portland I began wedding mode. I tried to contact them the whole week before the wedding to get some money.. can not buy food without money haha..
finally.. 6 days before the wedding.. the groom calls me. tells me I am jerking them around and not doing my job correctly. I listen to him tell me how much I suck for about 3 minutes. Before cutting him off and telling him that I told them that I would do this job for the price I told them. They both told me to go ahead. He says, but you know we were uncomfortable.. Yes But you told me to go ahead. I told him he can either pay me to do the job, or go to costco and go the veggie tray route. He said well that what we are going to have to do. I said Okay, well I would like to be paid for the 20 hours of time I spent on this, he said he would talk to the bride. And we said goodbye.
From there things got worse.
My mother had been helping me cook beef brisket sliders.. She had already purchased the beef. She had been sitting with me as I dealt with the couple so she saw how unfairly they had been to me. So when my godmother called and said how sorry she was that it didnt work out.. my mom was a bit pist.
My godmother told her that the bride had told her that I quit and hung up on them. Lies.
After this happened..
I got a bit depressed.
I closed my blinds, turned on some emo music and didnt answer my phone. This job was suppost to be the beginning of my career. I felt as if I had done something wrong. But the only thing that I did wrong was not get a contract signed before I got my check.
On Wednesday, I got up and went to my folks for a few hours. While there, my week got worse.
I had not heard from Parker in two days. I finally got a call saying that he was in the hospital in CA with pneumonia. he had finally worked himself to death. And
as im talking to him and his mother.. my mom gets a phone call.
the car i have been bothering since mine died last month, my sister had just crashed.
LOVELY.
It took me the rest of the weekend to pull out of my greyness.
By St. Patty's Day I was feeling bad to normal. However, a migraine at 6pm put me to bed instead of out and abooot. But I did do a bit of cooking this week. I did cornbeef 3 times. Okay.. once I got a bit stoned and fell asleep and let the water boil out and burned the shit out of it. But, whatever. I made a horrible looking, amazing tasting rum cake (i dont have a bundt cake pan..) and I am thinking a lasagna tonight is in my future.
I hope life it less bumpy for you, than it has been to me until next time..
<3 Sarah
My mantra for this week is: De reir a cheile a thogtar na caisleain. It takes time to build castles.
Recipes:
Smoked Blue California BLT
Loaf of your favorite toasting bread
1 avacado
1 tomato
1 lb thick deli bacon
4 oz Rouge Valley Creamery Smoked Blue Cheese
lettuce of your choice (we used a variety of garden grown "scary lettuces")
Special mayo!
special mayo:
1/2 cup mayo
2 TB dijon mustard
1 TB worcestershire sauce
S & P to taste
Build as you would any BLT! <3 So good!
Rum cake!!
I took this recipe from allrecipe.com.. I changed it slightly by adding a second glaze and adding another 1/2 cup of nuts. Make this as it says.. then after it is all cooled, mix 2 cups powdered sugar, 3 TB milk, 2 TB cinnamon 1/4 ts nutmeg and 2 TB vanilla.. add more milk or sugar to change consistency, which should like syrup. Pour over cake and let stand one hour to stiffen. The key to this cake is the longer is sits the better it gets. Store in the fridge.
Ingredients
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 (18.25 ounce) package yellow cake mix
1/2 cup dark rum
4 eggs
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 (3.5 ounce) package instant vanilla pudding mix
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup white sugar
1/8 cup water
1/4 cup dark rum
Directions
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease and flour one 10 inch tube or Bundt pan. Sprinkle walnuts over the bottom of the pan.
Mix together the yellow cake mix, 1/2 cup dark rum, eggs, 1/2 cup cold water, cooking oil and instant vanilla pudding. Pour batter over nuts.
Bake at 325 degrees F (165 degrees C) for 1 hour. Cool, invert on a serving plate and prick the top.
To Make Glaze: Melt the butter in a saucepan. Stir in 1/8 cup water and sugar. Boil for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove mixture from heat and stir in rum. Drizzle and smooth glaze evenly over the top and sides of cake. Enjoy!
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