LadyGypsy.net – the blog of Kimberly Dowd of New Jersey

WM’s gone for a bit to visit his family for Mother’s Day so I am ruling the roost! And by that I mean cleaning out the fridge & tossing out socks with holes.

While cleaning out the fridge, I realized I bought an extra dozen eggs. I bought them to bake with, but I had eggs here anyway. “No problem,” I thought. “I’ll just boil a bunch and have them for snacks or perhaps a tasty egg salad!”

I loaded the eggs into a saucepan and blanked out. How do you boil eggs?

Could it be that I’ve never boiled an egg? My mind raced through my ever-lenghening history and no…I’ve never boiled an egg. While I’ve had boiled-egg-based foods, someone else did the boiling.

This revelation was obviously made for Facebook, so while the eggs were in the saucepan, I shared my stupidity with the world! (I’ve been blogging for years, I’m good at it.)

And immediately after posting, this appears in the Facebook sidebar:

You are one creepy genius, Zuckerberg.

I’ll give it to you straight – I am not a cook. I can cook about 4 dishes, all of which take HOURS of prep and assembly and aren’t suited for a quick weeknight dinner. I’m much more of a dessert person. So WM does most of the cooking. But he’s away this weekend. I went to the grocery store on Thursday hell-bent on having ONE meal that I cooked for myself.

So tonight, with much trepidation and a quick look through Google, I made chicken fajitas!

Earlier today I cut one chicken breast into strips and tossed it into a baggie with some chili powder, sugar, salt, cumin, red pepper flakes & garlic powder. I let that sit in the fridge for a few hours. Tonight I heated up some oil and cooked the meat. I put onions & peppers (Pre-cut from the food store. I know, waste of money but I am LAZY. Next time I’ll buy the veggies.) in for the last few minutes to get them all soft and look!

Lo! Dinner!

Real food! From my own stove! I nuked some corn tortillas (I prefer these to flour because they remind me of the Mission Tortilla Factory in Disneyland’s California Adventure. And they taste better.), wrapped up the stuff along with some cheese and salsa and BOOM! Dinner! My own dinner!

Okay. I misjudged and made far too much. But leftovers don’t hurt. As long as I remember they’re in the fridge!

About five or six years ago, I decided I wanted a breadmaker. But I didn’t want to spend a ton of money on it because everybody I knew who ever owned a breadmaker used it once or twice before it was put away forever. So I purchased one from a yard sale for $10. The original owner only used it once.

I have no idea why because to me it’s the easiest thing in the world to measure ingredients into the bread pan, push a few buttons and walk away. Three hours later, fresh bread! With real ingredients and no high-fructose glop, MSG, or lead.

That old breadmaker met its maker (ha!) this spring. So I spent some of my bread on a new one.

For some “Little House on the Prairie” reason, I do the bread machine does my baking on Sundays. It just seems like a nice way to start the week. I’ve baked white bread, wheat bread, Easter Bread, pumpkin bread and now…

Cinnamon bread! This is the second loaf I’ve done using this recipe and it smells and tastes like a dream. I toast a slice of it for breakfast every morning.

So next time you see a barely used bread maker at a yard sale, snag it!