I’ve got the “so much to do I just can’t deal so I’m going to sit down and do nothing instead” blues going today. So far today I have cleaned about four square feet of the Den (OK, I’m being modest…it was a small area, sure, but it was a very thorough cleaning that included washing the walls for Pete’s sake, which is not something that is generally on my list of “Must Do” cleaning except that I have these little varmints running around called children and they do things that cause you to suddenly stop in your tracks, peer at the wall like you’ve just seen the image of Christ [or probably Satan, actually, given the kind of reaction one has to what one thinks one is seeing on that wall] on it or something, start to ask, “Whaaaaaaaaat…?” then realize you really do NOT want to know the answer to the question you were about to ask and go find your Murphy’s Oil which has somehow migrated out of the cupboard where it belongs to some random place like under the master bathroom sink – you know, the one room in the house where you would never, ever in a hundred years find yourself needing Murphy’s Oil to clean anything), pulled a few dozen weeds, bought 3 gallons of milk, one bell pepper, a couple packages of lunchmeat that were on extreme sale, five pounds of onions…and a package of onion seeds, a package of bak choy seeds, and a huge amount of dirt.
Which is kind of funny, because part of what I really need to do today is to remove a huge amount of dirt from inside the Den. It’s a fairly impressive disaster zone in here right now.
Bet if I just dumped the contents of the vacuum cleaner cannister into the pots, I could totally plant potatoes with what I’ve already got here in the house.
Oh. And I made this…hmm. What to call it. It’s not a curry, exactly, but it’s kind of…well shoot. It’s…
3 pounds stewing beef, cubed into bite-sized morsels
3 large onions, diced
2 tablespoons minced garlic
2 teaspoons minced ginger
2 tablespoons ground coriander
2 teaspoons ground turmeric
2 bay leaves
1 jalapeno, diced
3 cups coconut milk
2 cups beef stock
And then you sear the meat and dump it into a crockpot, and then you sauté the onions and garlic until they’re nice and sweet, and then you add the ginger, coriander, bay leaves, jalapeno and turmeric and sauté until it’s all aromatic and your husband suddenly finds he has all kinds of stuff he needs to do in the kitchen, then you put that in with the beef, add the coconut milk and beef stock, stir, turn the crockpot on “high” for about four hours or so if it’s a newer one that actually boils stuff, longer if it’s an older one that doesn’t run quite so hot, and then you serve it over rice.
Not very well liked by the kids due to being “too spicy”…which could be remedied by leaving out the jalapeno or substituting a milder chili or even just plain black pepper…but the husband and I are pretty fond of it as is so the kids can just eat some boring old rice or something and serves them right for being such picky eaters.
So there. Nyah.
I still have about 95% of the Den to clean.
And I just really don’t wanna.
I don’t wanna so thoroughly that I can almost work myself up to not caring about the state of things – which are cluttered, dirty, sticky in places, slick in others, dusty in still others, with a solid inch and a half of cat hair on everything (Dharma is shedding big time right now as our temperatures are doing their usual thing where one minute we’re shivering and there’s ice on the rooftops and the next we’re in the 80s by 10:15 in the morning inside the house) and really…kind of disgusting, actually.
And I almost don’t care.
Almost.
So…close…
Oh well. Guess I’d better slouch down there and get busy. If I can just get four more areas cleaned, I’ll have half the Den done…and then I can feel all self-righteous and smug when I refuse to do even one.more.thing all night long.
(Plus I won’t be all pissy about the house being in such a state. I hate doing housework, but I hate having a dirty house even more. It upsets my delicate little nerves something terrible.) (Oh.My.GAH, I have definitely become my own mother…sigh…oh well, there are worse things, I suppose…although I’m still not as put-together as The Lady My Mother always is, and am more regularly seen without makeup than with and tend to color my hair in ways that amuse me rather than ways that necessarily look good, which I think actually causes her physical pain but she’s too classy to say anything…)
Recipe Tuesday: Hoisin Chicken Tray Bake
3 days ago
3 comments:
HAHAHAHAHA!! I hear you! And one of the ongoing mysteries of life (to me, at least) is how a house that was SPOTLESS last night is now, this morning, on the EPA's list of Places Not To Go. Yea verily, the filth doth multiply in a most unseemly manner. Makes me crazy. My cleaning supplies migrate, too....in fact, I was out in the workshop the other day, and realized that I was looking at my dish soap, perched happily atop a pile of sockets and pliers and such. I didn't even ask. The car got fixed, that's all I need to know. :-)
I want to know why it is that I can go to my sister-in-law's house to elder sit with my mother-in-law, AND find the time to Clean her Refrigerator (mine has science experiments in it from years ago), wash her floors, change the sheets on hers and Mom's beds, bathe Mom, cook a wonderful Mother's Day Dinner, but NOT do any of that stuff at my house. (Probably because I don't wanna do that stuff at my house - I have much more important things to do like read and knit.) I feel your pain.
Nancy FP
Ha! You sound like me, who was helping her children clean their rooms on Mother's Day because the sweet of having their rooms SPOTLESS when I walked by was just a hair weightier than the time and excessive energy required to assist them in cleaning them, plus the fact that it was, well, Mother's Day and isn't Mom supposed to get a REST for gosh sakes on Mother's Day?? And there I was, two hours later, tired but with clean kids' rooms. Meh, sometimes you just have to dig in even when you don't wanna.
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