Birthday Party Preparations LIVEBLOG

5:30. I am setting up the computer in the new location so the photo booth thing will work. Also downloaded a bunch of speed runs to show on the other monitor. Then to pick up around the house a tad and then jump full into playing with bread dough.

4:07. To-do list:

• Make Middle-Eastern-style hearty lentil soup for the veggies and anti-glutenites. Should be done around 7. So, with prep time, 40 minutes to cook until soft, and then a good 20 minutes after that, start around 5:45.
• Stuff and cook runzas. Also should be done cooking around 7. So, to cook 25 minutes, rise 15 minutes before cooking, and be able to be stuffed, start around 6.
• Fry wontons. To be ready at 7, and fry all of them, should take a good half hour to 45 minutes. Start at 6:15.
• Remember to get 2 extra selves.
• Open bags of chips for cheese dip stuff.
• Remember to tell everyone who can't make it to go to my new flickr feed starting at 7 to be able to see live picture updates every 30 seconds.
  
• Bring in noise and funk.
  

3:16. Has beef kind and doesn't has beef kind are go.





















2:52. Actually, it's time to get the cheese dip ready. Respite is off the table for now. (The saurkraut is long gone and in the runza mix, no need to freak out, cabbage-haters)















2:40. Other batch done. Eddie Izzard on the monitor. Dishes in the wash. Might have a bit of respite before I prep the lentil soup, and run the home stretch on the runzas dough.

2:05. Wonton! That's the word I was looking for. I'm making fried rice wontons. So, refrigerating the rice didn't work as well as I'd hoped; it's more mushy than I wanted, but I think it'll work out just fine as a filling. The chicken kind is wrapped and egg whited in the fridge, and the kind without any chicken awaits. Back to it, friends.









1:18. A quick peek at the two refrigerators. The first one is the downstairs. That's Jones Soda Cane Cola in the bottom left. Comes in cans now, apparently, and I know some people love cane sugar over corn syrup (and the non-fattening chemicals that sweeten, whatever those are: yikes, and wow I'm not as fat as I could be) to a degree that five years ago I could not fathom in a sweetener choice, so there those are. The Boulevard Wheat is from a few weeks ago, when a good friend of mine got good and fired for something not so much his fault, and we didn't drink any when he came over and we spent the day like eight-year-old versions of ourselves we played Mike Tyson's Punch-Out for 4 hours, but a few have trickled out over the weeks.






You may have to click on the second one to see all the pre-prepared dish ingredients sitting around in there, waiting expectantly for me to fish them out and toss them on the counter, ready to be mixed or kneaded, or cut, or drizzled, or stuffed, or sampled.





















12:47. Two batches mixed and set to chill for a couple hours. (my mixing bowl didn't seem to want to hold 12-13 cups of flour). Now on to the wraps (or, I suppose, egg rolls with fried rice instead of veggies, depending on your point of view): chicken kind, and there isn't any chicken kind.























































12:00.

























































Oh, my, yes. Food processors RULE.



11:48. So, it's cold today, and heating bills and leaky windows being what they are, the thermostat is set to 62 during the day, which is up from 58 last week, when we realized even with the both of us sitting in front of space heaters all day, it wasn't enough. But with the cooking, and the space heater at the edge of the kitchen, it's been just fine today.













11:46. Ugh, that was, like 4 hand washes. So gross looking, so delicious! The mixtures are saran wrapped (ok, off-brand plastic wrapped, which never, I mean NEVER, wants to come off the roll in a clean break) and away in the fridge. The chicken breast is cooked and ready to be shredded, which means my forearms are going to hurt tonight. WAIT! We have a wee food processor down here. Imona try that.











11:11. This batch of hamburger is done, and I've separated the three pounds into two bowls: one for the regular runzas, one for the pizza runzas. After looking at it, the bread recipie I'm making from scratch will require more fine fine timing than I thought to get the runzas out hot and on time, so I really want the stuff going inside to be standing at the ready. Stupid real life food preparation. How did The Ancients (also, most of the world alive today) do it?! Now to get all that set up and ready as the chicken for the wraps finishes cooking.

The dishwasher has been emptied, the dishes next to the sink stowed. Thanks be to Jill for getting all of that done last night while I was out carousing and living it up, er, I mean . . . at prayer group.




10:48. If you are one of the "privileged" few who have had opportunity to visit me in my job-search dungeon, you'll be familiar with the computer set up I've arranged on the kitchen counter. The orange-tinged book is the aforementioned cookbook. But, what, you may ask, is the second monitor for, recipes that require such complex machinations that you much see two pages of text simultaneously, and such? No, no, nothing so urbane. Throughout the day, I'm going to be watching various videos, DVDs, and internet phenomenon such as Look Around You: Maths.









10:25. The rice is done and off to the fridge to cool so the fried result is less gooey. The beef for the runzas (or bierrocks, as they're known in some circles) is cooking in the pan now. Although I'll be making the bread for that from scratch this afternoon, I want as much to be ready beforehand as possible.











10:12. The rice for the chicken, and not-chicken rice wraps is in the pot and boiling as dictated by our excellent Mennonite cookbook More-With-Less, an excellent gift for those of you either still tied into the consumerist Christmas lifestyle, or with relatives for whom not providing such a still-culturally-appropriate gesture of economic goodwill would cause your relationship to be otherwise strained. I will chill be pre-wrapping the rice, this morning in order to make the just-before-the-party- preparations less hectic.

9:58. I'd been thinking for a while about having a birthday party. In these latter days, with the military-birthday complex in such full stride, and the pressure on every front to celebrate in the most elaborate fashions with the most and modern methods, who doesn't wish for a most excellent celebration of his or her anniversary of emergence? And so, in the spirit of such a broad cultural phenomenon (but, may I say, not the particulars) I prepare. And all day, you, most careful RSS feed reader, and Facebook status minder, shall be kept abreast.