The Pig and I

I'm here, and I'm not here. There's a lot of restructuring going on in the house, so not a lot of actual cooking is going on. There's also a lot of restructuring going on in my life, which kind of makes me not want to cook. Among other things, I've got a new semester starting (and I'm trying to get ahead instead of the staying afloat I did over the summer) and I quit smoking. It's a lot of stress, most of which I don't really want to get into here. But I wanted to pop in and say hi, and let everyone know I haven't forgotten you (despite the fact that I haven't even been reading other blogs as of late). I've just sort of been in my own little world, and oddly, food hasn't even been part of my life outside of quick take-out for the most part. I haven't even been grocery shopping, other than to pick up some juice here or there. I guess it's a good thing I have a lot of food storage, so at least there'll be food to eat if I do win

You guys know I'm going out of town tomorrow, and that's well and good. But what you don't know, is I might be gone from the blog for a couple weeks or possibly as long as a month. I have no interest in cooking right now, and I've got a lot to do to clear my head space so I can do well in the upcoming semester. I kind of feel like being responsible for anything I'm not truly responsible for (i.e., paying my bills) is a little more than I can handle right now. If I thought I wouldn't be lynched for tossing my phones in the Gulf, I'd do that too. I'm just not really in a people kind of place right now. So, I'm not ditching you guys, but I am ditching you. For a little bit.

We ate these when I was growing up, and I just loved them. I believe my mother learned to make them from her Depression-era parents (though I could be mistaken), but given the economy I thought it might be nice to recirculate this tasty breakfast. I'm just listing it as serving one, but you of course can multiply it to serve as many people as you're feeding. One of the best parts of this recipe, other than it being inexpensive and tasty, is that the egg and toast are combined. If you're a runny yolk kind of person, it's set up perfectly for the dipping. Hope you enjoy! 1 slice bread 1 egg salt and pepper to taste pat of butter (or you can use saved bacon grease or any other kind of fat) Heat up a pan. Melt the butter in the pan, then tear out a hole from the middle of the bread (ball this up and eat your bread marble, or it's a nice treat to appease the dog who is going to be angry you didn't make him an egg too). Put the bread into the pan and break the

This was a really weird week for me. I broke down and needed some synthetic food, in the form of a Big Mac. So I got one. Then I went to a baby shower which was at a sushi restaurant. I didn't think I'd ever had food budget money again, but apparently the shower organiser had decided to cover the bill. So that was good and I was off the hook for another total potential fail this week. So, here's the business of the week. P gets back in town tomorrow. He tends to like for certain things to be on hand that don't necessarily fit into the $10/week budget. However, I'd intended to stay on this budget until the 21st. So what I'm going to do is reopen access to the Cave, in order to defray some of that increased cost, and also to try to stick with the budget. I'm not sure how well this will go, so it's possible I might go over. But I'll try not to. If it looks like going over is unavoidable, I might modify things to give me $10/week/person instead of just $

This week, I wasted: Nothing!

So, mangoes. I think you guys heard about the mangoes in the freezer for like, 2 months. I actually managed to do something with them. I thought about mango quick breads and mango cupcakes and all sorts of other mango things, but at the end of the day, I mainly just wanted a smoothie. Kind of a creamy-ish version of pureed fruit. So, here it is. Hope you enjoy! 2 cups frozen mango 1/2 cup almond milk Put them in a blender, and blend, blend, blend. If you want to make it protein-y, add some protein powder. Serves 1 (2 if you're more polite than I am).

I wanted to eat some chicken recently, but I wasn't quite ready to eat the Italian dressing thing again (though there's no particular reason why I wasn't - I just wanted to do something different with it this time). I was peeking around in my Fridge-of-Holding, and I remembered I had some Caesar dressing in there. I probably should use that up, since I honestly don't remember when I bought it. If you want to make your own Caesar dressing, here's my favourite recipe for it (with the extra bonus of other dressings as well). Anyway, I really like chicken caesar salads, but I didn't actually have any romaine lettuce. So I decided to turn it all into a pasta salad. It's more filling and stretches further this way too, which is also an extra bonus. Aside from the addition of pasta and the lack of lettuce, there are a couple other deviations from the normal Caesar-type thing, since I wanted to have some variance in texture. Hope you enjoy! 1/2 pound pasta, cooke

I mentioned yesterday that this was a really pedestrian version of Magnolia's Mud. That's pretty much true. I went the super lazy route, not bothering to buy a tomato to make a proper pico, using the last of the pickled jalepenos instead of ponying up the 5 cents for a fresh one, and using entirely less cheese than one probably should use. I also didn't add the fresh items (avocado excepted) to the mix after it was cooked - I just dumped everything into the saucepan at once and let it figure itself out. I was really hungry, what can I say? Though on the cheese front, I actually used less because I like my queso a lot more tomatoey than most people do. Given I'm the only one eating it (with pita chips!), I figured I should just do whatever I want. So, I'll put the normal person way in parentheses below. I ate this as a meal (okay, 2 meals), but mostly it'd be served as an appetizer to feed more people. Hope you enjoy! 1/2 pound Velveeta or similar (1 pound) 1