Plays well with stouts

I've been cooking less often than usual, but what does get made has been pretty tasty, if I do say so myself. Now's the time of year for hearty comfort food, which I usually don't feel like taking the time to make. Here's the last few months of standout cooking.

For Thanksgiving I was planning some fancy pies, but when a six-year-old requests a classic pumpkin you can't say no. So I made pumpkin and pecan. Lucky for me I married a man who loves to make pie crust, so he did the heavy lifting.



A while back I made Sunday pot roast. I didn't get the chance to take a picture of the final product, but here's the meat looking all delicious:



And here are the other ingredients:


Notice the Founder's Breakfast Stout, an inspired suggestion from my beer- and meat-loving brother-in-law. The roast turned out so well Jim gave me permission to make it again, which is really something since he usually despises hunks of meat like this.

And finally, tonight we had $5 foot-longs from Subway, which is not the most satisfying dinner in all the land. So I did a mental inventory of our cupboard and realized we had all the fixins for bread pudding. Here is the rough recipe:

2 cups milk
hunk of butter
3 eggs
2/3 cup brown sugar
vanilla
cinnamon
nutmeg
3 cups of torn up pieces of French bread

Heat up the milk and butter until sightly warm and the butter is melted. Whisk in the eggs, sugar and seasonings. Pour over the bread pieces in an 8x8 buttered pan. Sprinkle in some pecans and chocolate chips. Bake for 45 minutes. Eat that shit!

See, I clearly got the last bit of the instructions right:

The Art of Oatmeal

Check out these great oatmeal faces. I only wish they weren't photoshopped.

When I was little, my mom used to make us "Surprise Faces." Basically just snacky foods arranged to look like faces on a plate. There are few things more thrilling for a six year old than realizing that an orange slice can be transformed into a smile, or raisins into eyebrows.

At some point my mother's food art became less appealing to me, at the time I thought she had run out of ideas. Grapes halves as eyes again? But really I think I just got too old to appreciate it anymore.

In which I attempt assent to Maslow's next level.

Well, that's unfair, really. I mean, I have a place to stay. So shelter is sort of covered. But really, home ownership would fall under the category of Self-actualization if you ask me. I mean, then I know I've arrived.

I've looked at countless houses online, 12 in person. We've got an offer in at one house that is like, for real, dude, totally sweet. I must devolve my language skills to convey how awesome this house is. It should be totally out of our price range. But it isn't. So we went for it. 

But somebody else went for it first. This is like dating, or job hunting. You get yourself all worked up, talk yourself into it, and then it turns out something completely out of your control (like having no real job skills or not enough money) has kept you from realizing your dreams. 

We haven't given up hope quite yet on the Perfect House. But we're going to continue to look at less perfect houses in the meantime.

Also, if one more person tells me it's a "buyer's market" I will spit. It's a buyer's market for houses that nobody actually wants.