I can’t compete with that. Probably because absolutely no one is hotter than my boyfriend. But all of that said, I still had a pretty crumby week. So what do you do? A couple things:

1. Make this soup. It’s divine.

2. Make chocolate ice cream with peanut butter chips.

3. Take your computer breaking as a sign that you need to sit on your butt tonight.

4. Watch How I Met Your Mother while sitting on aforementioned butt.

5. Listen to Lenka while dancing in your kitchen.

6. Mostly, though, you’ve got to roll with the punches.

To put it simply, there’s a lot going on.  A lot.  All of it is positively amazing.  But whoa baby!  When I get busy, I get stressed.  Which means I stress eat.  Just kidding, I don’t do that.  Except I do.  I like to make homemade french fries that aren’t really fried, and then dip them in agave nectar.  Because I’m out of honey, duh.

And that’s the most exciting thing happening on the food front here.  But even if I don’t have much time to experiment with new recipes, I’m still collecting things I’ll be making once I’m in my new kitchen.  I wanted to share with you what’s been inspiring me lately.  Here goes.

These cupcakes need to go gluten free in a bad way.

I don’t know why it never occurred to me to do this before, but it’s happening.  Tonight.

Finally, I’m dying to make these, but I’m having a little trouble convincing the boyfriend that he doesn’t actually hate brussel sprouts.

What’s been inspiring you lately?  I’m dying to know.

Last night, this guy (probably at least 10 years my senior) came up to me and struck up a conversation.  Where are you from… what do you do… etc.  I was telling him about my job, and he asked how long I had been working there.  ”2 1/2 years, I guess… I started the day after I graduated, actually.”  ”Oh… you’re… young.”  He didn’t talk to me after that.  Do I know how to scare off the boys or what?

That said, my boyfriend is turning 38 today (tomorrow?  I never know).  He’s a fantastic boy.  This evening (yesterday evening?  this is weird), we played board games with his friends and ate the most divine chocolate cake of my life.  This was the cake, with this as frosting.  It was intense, to say the least.

At the risk of being like one of those disgusting high school couples on facebook…

Happy birthday, you dear, sweet boy!

I did, indeed create quite tasty food during the month, and I managed to finish out the month exactly $1 under budget.  A huge accomplishment for me.  I’m usually $10-20 over.  Sometimes more than that.  I’m going to try to keep this going this month, although, not being able to mooch food off my parents for a week is going to make that difficult.  On the other hand, not feeling compelled to cook for holiday parties will help.

Now let’s talk about cream.  I managed to make 2 different types of ice cream for Christmas.  First, my classic chocolate.  Second, cheesecake ice cream.  I recommend both.  But the real success was my garlic cream sauce.  I started with this recipe but cut it in thirds, and still served it with a pound of pasta.  There was plenty of sauce, still.  I may have still used the originally 6 cloves of garlic.  <shrug />

As I made these resolutions last month, I really wanted to resolve to make a really delicious loaf of gluten free bread.  I knew that the holidays would not afford me enough time, though, and I decided to put it off until January.  Sadly, due to personal things, I’m going to put this off again.  Nothing’s worse than making a resolution you know you’re not really resolved about.  Ok, a few things are worse, but still…

Here are my January resolutions:

1. More veg.  Tons more.
2. Figure out how to use egg whites.  And actually use them.

Number 1 shouldn’t come as a surprise.  Number two: I make recipes that call for egg yolks all the time.  I usually just dump the egg whites.  That’s no good.  I need to stop.  This month.  Currently, there are egg whites in my freezer, and I’ve got a plan.  :)

On two unrelated notes:

1. For some reason, Amazon recommended this to me.
2. I totally just noticed that Google reader has some highlights on the right side of the screen.  You know, things like “recently read”, “recently starred”, and my new favorite “recently kept unread”.  As it turns out, that last category made me laugh at myself because it shows just how passive aggressive I can be.  I’m too embarrassed to tell you why.  A quart of ice cream* for the person who can guess what rss feed I’ve been not reading for months.

* For people within a 10 mile radius only.  Your pick of flavors, though.

P.S.  I just realized this is the second post titled thus.  Perhaps the third.  Considering this, I’m resolving to not repeat myself so much.  For serious.  (That was just to see if you were paying attention, duh!)

• Baked Tostitos Scoops: they’re obscenely expensive, especially when compared to any other tortilla chip.  But they’re baked.  And they’re scoops.  Yes, I’d definitely want these.
• Bananas: I’d want them delivered daily (I guess I wouldn’t complain if it were every other day).  They should be yellow, absolutely no brown, with the slightest bit of a greenish tint.
• Pebbles: Each week, I would alternate between fruity vs. cocoa.  Variety is the spice of life.
• Peanut butter:  I go through this like you wouldn’t believe.  It’s a baker’s lifeline if she’s going gluten free.
• Udi’s: All varieties.  Every week.  Yea, I’d eat that much Udi’s if I could.
• Skintimate:  This is totally stupid, but shaving gel is one of those things that’s a total luxury item to me.  It’s reserved for days when I’m feeling crummy and want to rock a totally short skirt to prove to the world that I’m awesome.  If every day I wore a short skirt and proved to the world that I was awesome, I think I’d be pretty happy with life.
• Fancy Pants Shampoo: It’s been so long since I’ve used good shampoo, I don’t even know the brand I’d choose.  But really ridiculously expensive stuff.  That makes your head feel good about itself.
• Headphones: I’m hard on headphones.  I don’t really know why, but it probably has to do with the fact that I forget that I’m wearing them and stand up from my desk while they’re still in.  Kind of a lot.  About a pair every month or two would do, I think.

If I could get someone to deliver perfect bananas to me every single day, I’d go with that one.  Otherwise, I think I’m leaning towards the scoops.  Can you blame me, really?

I’m making lists for my Christmas presents.  I’ve got one last thing to pick up, and I’ll get that on Sunday.  Bam!

I’m planning out all the chores that need to be accomplished in the next few days.  I’m planning like crazy.

I like to plan.  It looks good on me.  But this year, I’m not planning a Christmas dinner.  Whoa, right?  I thought it was funny how much Wilde talked about missing Thanksgiving dinner this year.  It’s a little funny, but it also makes sense.  When you talk and think as much about food as food bloggers do, it’s hard to just turn that off.  And people are used to your inability to just turn that off.

But the thing is, there are things I like more than food.  Like my boyfriend.  And he and I have planned out how to see both our families on Christmas day, but it’s going to mean traveling rather than cooking.  So that’s just that.

On the other hand, I’m anxiously awaiting the goodies our respective families will create.  I’m looking forward to banana bread and cranberry bread (I need to figure out a gluten free variation for my mom’s recipe).  I’m looking forward to hot chocolate at breakfast, and probably another cup in the evening.  I’m looking forward to excited nephews.  I’m looking forward to hanging out with my sister all next week.  And boy, oh boy, am I looking forward to presents! That’s not lame, is it?

P.S.  Dear Boys, Your girlfriends think you’re swell.  They really do.  But when their friends strongly suggest that you purchase a very specific gift for your girlfriend, you would do well to listen.  A girl’s friends know her ring size, whether she prefers gold or silver (or platinum ), and definitely what she wants for Christmas, especially if it’s a piece of jewelry from that hippie store across from a favorite bar on Main Street (just saying…).  Sincerely, Jenny.

P.P.S.  Lest you think that was me hinting to my boyfriend, you all should know that my boyfriend is absolutely the best gift giver in the world.  And while I can think of some things I hope he gets me, I’ve also been with him long enough to know that he’s going to get me something far better than I could possibly even imagine to hope for.  It’s what he does.  (No pressure, sweetie.)

But then I got sick.  The party was cancelled.  But the timing worked out well, because I was totally going to make gluteny ornaments.  It hadn’t even occurred to me not to.  Had I not cancelled the party, I wouldn’t have seen this in time. Going gluten free with these ornaments was an excellent decision.  The baking sheets never touched gluten, the counters too.  But mostly, I didn’t have to stress about cross-contamination, which is always a plus.

A lot of families seem to have these very eclectic Christmas trees with ornaments collected from various occasions over several years.  And a lot of young single people seem to have Christmas trees that might as well belong in a department store.  I’m not saying one is better than another (yes I am), but…

2 recipes of these ornaments and the boyfriend’s tree totally has that eclectic feel to it.  We wrapped the tree in ribbon and tulle (which sounds hideous, but really isn’t, I promise), then hung the ornaments.  It’s really quite a lovely sight.  I’d post a picture, but the lighting is all wrong any time after 4pm, and since I’m a regular 9-5er, that’s just not happening.

A few notes about the ornaments.  I plum forgot to poke holes in these babies before they went into the oven.  Halfway through their baking, I realized my mistake and started to freak out a little.  The boyfriend had some similar ornaments growing up, and they just had hooks glued to the backs of them.  Fine.  That was just what we would have to do.

Except when they actually came out, the boyfriend decided to pull out his power drill.  And I told him it wouldn’t work.  And he said he wanted to try on one of the ugly ones.  And I said that none of my ornaments are ugly.  And then he apologized.  And then I said he could try to drill a hole in one of the bells (we had quite a few, and in truth, one of them was quite ugly).  So drilled holes he did.  And that worked out just marvelously.

I was crafty.  He used a power tool.  It’s an all around fabulous project.  I promise.

Let’s have a recap of this week.  Last Friday, I got glutened hard core.  I was sick all weekend.  And then I made things worse by glutening myself a few times.  Like with ibuprofen.  Did you know that was a thing?

I stopped eating gluten.  All day Monday, I drank apple juice and ate bananas.  That’s all.  And I got better.  I’m still feeling a bit of the aftermath, but I’m well on my way to recovering from that.  It seems like the better I get at avoiding gluten, the worse it is when I slip up.  But I learned some things (like about medicine having gluten in it sometimes), and I’m ready to do this thing called life.

There’s this episode of Gilmore Girls where Emily is freaking out because Grandmother Lorelei is coming to visit.  And Lorelei explains the secret to dealing with impossible people: laugh.  Today, I got super frustrated with someone.  You know… the I-have-to-leave-the-room-so-I-don’t-lose-my-temper kind of frustrated.  A few hours afterwards, though, and I’m kind of amused by the whole thing.

Life is just loads of laughs, and I’m learning to enjoy them.  Like earlier this week when this totally mortifying thing happened.  A coworker asked me if I had a sec.  I told him that I had lots of secs.  Out loud.  In real life.  That happened.  I didn’t even realize it until minutes later.  Because I’m slow like that.  In real life.

I got glutened.  Which is totally unbelievably frustrating.  But it’s also kind of amusing that the things I did to make it better actually made it worse.  Because that’s life sometimes.  It can just be like that.

Here’s to finding the frustrating amusing, to eating our vegetables, and to not taking ourselves so seriously.  It’s been quite a week.

The first recipe I tried out was “Beef and Bean Tamale Pie.” Basically, it’s chili with cornbread on top. You cook the whole thing in the crockpot, and the chili juices soak up into the bread. It turned out great!

Beef and Bean Tamale Pie

I changed the recipe around a bit. First of all, they called for cornbread mix, but I made my bread from scratch. Also, I wanted more fresh ingredients than they called for, so I added a pepper and some tomatoes. Also, the recipe was originally for a 3 1/2 to 4 quart cooker. Mine is bigger, so I increased some ingredients. So here goes:

Beef and Bean Tamale Pie

• 1 lb lean ground beef
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 15-oz cans kidney beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 10-oz can enchilada sauce (I used a “tomato and chiles” sauce)
• 1 15-oz can diced tomatoes, juice included
• 1/2 red bell pepper, chopped

In large skillet, cook ground beef and onion over medium heat until beef is thoroughly cooked. Drain and place in slow cooker. Stir in beans, enchilada sauce, tomatoes, and bell pepper.

• 1 1/2 c cornmeal
• 1/2 c flour (gluten-free folks can probably substitute cornmeal)
• 1 t sugar
• 2 t baking powder
• 1 t salt
• 1/2 t baking soda
• 1/4 c butter, softened
• 1 1/2 c buttermilk (or milk with vinegar)
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 c cheddar cheese
• 1 jalapeno pepper, finely chopped (include the seeds if you want it more spicy)

Mix all ingredients except cheese and jalapeno together, beat vigorously for 30 seconds. Stir in cheese and pepper. Pour into slow cooker over top of beef mixture.

Cook on low setting for 5-6 hours, or until bread is done. Cornbread is done when you can insert a toothpick and it comes out clean. Serve topped with sour cream and chopped green onions.

There’s nothing quite like being sick all weekend to make you realize that you really aren’t in control.  That all these plans you made – well, they just aren’t going to happen.

I’m coming out of this sick fog I’ve been in for the last couple of days.  I’m realizing how much I want an antique wardrobe to match the bookcase I bought this summer.  And I’m also realizing how much I like planning in my imagination.  Mostly, I like planning.  I do it in my imagination too, is all.

Last month, I resolved to blog every day.  This month, I’ve resolved to do two things: 1) become more frugal while still creating tasty food, and 2) use more cream.

The second is a little bit silly, but I would really like to master a good cream sauce.  I really should be able to use cream for more than just ice cream, and I don’t know that I ever have.  My skinny jeans are not happy about this.  They can deal with it.