Dude, I want lori to come to my house with her saw! GF was just complaining about how she had to do all the "man" chores around the house. I tell her we should hire someone but she doesn't want to and I certainly can't do the "man" chores.

Please forgive if I make no sense. For, lo, I am drunk on Boston Cream Pie martinis and waiting to drunk!Test our database when it (finally) comes back online after the office move!

Seriously, Sumi.

FNL - OMG! Matt's Grandma and the tiara!!! I loved that - and cannot believe that I almost forgot about it.

That was a great bit! $2400 though? Has she never heard of ebay ?

Oh and it cost $2400.00 !!!! Grandma Saracen has expensive taste.

Hee-- you missed my whitefont, which I just made more obvious.

I, um, plan and premeasure and label and date and freeze and make up a schedule and then decide to just do something easy instead and find the nicely premeasured and dated frozen stuff when I have to clean out the freezer after the next big power outage.

I am Amych.

I also tend to plan and premeasure and label and date and then realize on the day of that I've forgotten that one ingredient that needed to be added fresh.

Speaking of which, I have chicken thighs and leeks I need to use up. I should do something with chicken and leeks tonight.

Last night I was walking home, I saw a refrigerator that someone was throwing out. The freezer was one solid block of ice -- with a carton of Häagen Dazs sticking out of it.

I have a good number of one-pot soups/stews that I am excited to get back to cooking again, now that it is FINALLY CHILLY YAY!

Black bean soup (add sausage if you're not veggie), chili in several forms, a wonderful vegetarian chili-ish thing with barley and black beans, assorted Indian dishes, a lot of sort of 'creative' things from The Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home that sound a little weird but are actually good. We make a cooking list for the week when we grocery shop, but don't determine days for the cooking; that's the next step, but we aren't that organized. I always pack a lunch, and in winter it's usually leftovers; we don't often end up freezing stuff since there are 4 of us and I eat leftovers for lunch.

My mother has a Costco membership, and when she visits we've bought things like mega sacks of pistachios, olive oil, multi-packs of the kind of pasta sauce we use, Quik, freezable fancy sausages (chicken with feta and spinach, yum!). My rule is to not buy anything we wouldn't ordinarily eat anyway.

The $3 bread machine I picked up at a PA thriftstore turns out to work after all (it was in seriously never-used condition) and has produced a small loaf of bread. Plus, although the bread pan is really kind of teensy, because the loaf is so small, it bakes up in 2:20! I foresee all sorts of bready-treats this winter.

I could only wish to be so organized that I could shop for meat and so on, but seriously, I have a small-enough number of commercially produced products I can buy, anyway, because of my bizarro dietary restrictions. When and if Whole Foods starts up a WF Club (which, really, Trader Joe's already IS) I'll be there.