Life on the Outside
Tuesday was a domestic day. One of the advantages of life outside the normal corporate framework is the ability to make time for small but important things in life. You can set aside a day to do all the errands that you would normally have to dump on evenings or Saturdays. Grocery shopping. Getting the process started for rolling over 401Ks. Getting the oil changed. Having lunch date with a friend that we've pushed back three time already due to work schedules. Short walk along the Soos Creek (knee is still acting up).
And taking back the kitchen.
That's an important part of the process here. Even if you help out your spouse in the kitchen, or cook on your own once a week, you fall into ruts. When you're working with your spouse, you are the sous chef, doing the chopping, dicing, and stirring as need be. When you cook on your own, you may grab one or two old reliable recipes because you have other things to do. Tuesdays Kate does pizza with her regular gaming gang, so this was a chance to re-establish my kitchen props.
I did a mild sausage and tomato sauce yesterday, and served it over pasta. No biggie. The dish was from a Italian cookbook that is pretty straightforward (no weird cooking terms, no arcane ingredients). The recipe was to serve it with polenta, but I went with pasta, hedging my bets. Sausage, bacon, onions, carrots, red pepper instead of green (Kate hates green peppers), realized halfway through I didn't have any red wine open, so I went with a reduced amount of red wine vinegar, which gave it in interesting kick. The end result was pretty good, and in addition it got me familiarized with working around the kitchen on my own - where everything was (or had been moved to), how to make substitutions, keeping track of everything, and getting it all cleaned up.
Back to the grind today. Need to finish a short story and start working on another. I've been accepted into a new fantasy anthology, for a campaign setting which I find particularly interesting - more when I know I can talk about it.
More later,
