Expanding My Culinary Horizons

I come from the land of hotdishes and jello "salad". Most people's culinary palates aren't what you would consider refined. We put ketchup on everything (I know two people who have eaten and enjoyed ketchup sandwiches; my grandpa always eats mashed potatoes with ketchup on it if gravy isn't available), seasoning for most people is limited to salt and pepper, and everything is too spicy.

Okay, so I am generalizing. I can only speak for myself. I grew up on a very bland diet. My grandma's idea of meatloaf is eggs, bread crumbs, and hamburger. No onions, no seasoning, just the basic ingredients. My mom mixes anything she can with cream of mushroom soup. A staple in our home is ground hamburger, cream of mushroom soup, and instant potatoes. Oh god, don't get me started on instant potatoes. It's like baby cereal. Every once in awhile, my mom and step-dad get crazy and buy garlic instant potatoes. Variety is not the spice of life in my household and some sort of red meat is consumed at least 3 nights a week (overcooked chicken or boring pork chops, leftovers,  pizza delivery, and Green Mill take up the rest of the nights). My point is, I have been trying to spice up my diet for quite a few years now. I have forced myself to eat different foods that I have never liked or have never tried. I have learned what goes well with what and I like to try different combinations. Some are really weird (like the time I added cinnamon to Sloppy Joe's. Why? Because I wanted to see what it would be like. Word to the wise, not good, but at least I tried).

When I went away to college, that helped some. Though I was mostly eating cafeteria food, I was still able to experiment on my own when I was on duty over break and when I worked at school over the summer. I slowly introduced myself to good food. I also went to my cousin's a lot and he is an AMAZING cook. He actually likes flavor.

Now that I am back at home, cooking is harder. Not only do I not have a lot of money to spend on good food, but our stove and oven are pieces of shit and don't properly work. It makes me sad, but I still do get to cook every once in awhile. Going to Kelly's helps a lot because they actually cook good food and eat vegetables and spices. I love it.

Tonight my step-dad got this new Philadelphia Cream Cheese stuff. It was Italian Herbs and Spices or something like that. He decided to make chicken and noodles and mix everything together. It was actually decent, aside from the consistency. I have a weird thing about consistency, so I didn't finish it. The reason he chose to do that was because there was a recipe on the container for it. The recipe called for other things like green onions and zucchini (two things that I happen to be fond of), but my mom "doesn't like them" so we had to leave them out. Now, I highly doubt my mom even knows what zucchini tastes like. But oh well, there's nothing I can do about it now.

My step-dad and I also got into a heated debate about canned vs. frozen vegetables. Now, if possible, I love fresh vegetables, but sometimes they are out of season so I go with frozen. My step-dad HATES frozen vegetables apparently. He prefers canned. If someone told that if I had to eat canned vegetables or die, I would probably die. I loathe canned vegetables; they make me want to vomit. They have that tin can taste to them and lord knows how long they've been sitting in that sugar infused water. Bleh. It makes me want to puke just thinking about it.

Anyway, this was more of just a "I can't sleep, so I am going to blog" post. If anyone has any good ideas for recipes I should try, just let me know :)

Holy Hell, I suck at this blog thing

Really, my life isn't so overwhelmingly busy that I don't have time to blog. Most of the time I just plumb forget about it. Oh well, it's a terrible excuse, but it's the best I got.

Kelly and I started our Lia Sophia business. We are really excited about it, but right now it's really discouraging. We are having a huge problem finding people to have parties and most of the people who decide to have a party either cancel (to be fair, once it was because of a snow storm and the other time the hostess has mono (I swear that if I get mono, Chittles, you are dead)) or have all of 2 people show up. It's frustrating, but we can't blame everything on the hostesses. We didn't get the guest lists like we should have and we definitely need to work on our hostess coaching skills. We also need to find a hostess that we snowball off of. She has a party, her friends book parties, their friends book parties, etc. We are hoping that her mother-in-law to be will help with that. If not, we are planning on going up and down Summit Ave and putting our business cards in mailboxes and stuff. If you know anyone that wants to have one, just let me know! :)

My other job is going just swell. I actually am liking it a lot more than I ever thought I would. It's mostly the people I work with (okay, like 2 of the people I work with). Aside from a couple run-ins with the spawn of satan, I have had really awesome customers. I finally feel like what I have been doing is getting recognized. We have these "Magic" cards that workers can fill out when they want to recognize great work done by associates. Twice in one week I got one. Neither of them from my manager. One was from another manager, Heather. It was for excellent customer service. Apparently a customer called in and said that I was really great with her. I was SUPER excited about that. I have a feeling I know which customer it was and I loved helping her! She was so sweet. The other was from the STORE manager, Jen. The freaking STORE manager. It was for reaching my loyalty goal for February. I was giddy when I found out that I reached it because that is one of the things that I am working hardest at. I also found out that Nancy recommended me for an award (what?!?!). It just finally feels good to know that I am actually doing a good job and people are noticing.

Nancy also said I should talk to our manager about being a manager myself. Yikes! That's a scary thought, but definitely something I wouldn't mind doing.