Foraging
The bad news: we’re not moving back East anytime soon, so here we are in CA, which will now be our home at least through the next few months. We’re staying. Time to get a car and a bed. Time to get a TV and put the suitcases permanently away.
The good news is that earlier this week was trash day in our neighborhood, so Andrew and I went foraging for furniture. We got a haul: a bookcase, a squat leather armchair, a bar cabinet complete with lock and key, and two plastic chairs for the terrace. Our apartment looks marginally more homey with our finds; once we get a bed it might actually be cozy.
Yet frustrating setbacks persist. Wednesday night we tried to grill what we thought would be a delicious meal: chicken legs, eggplant, zucchini, and red peppers. It was a disaster. The vegetables either shriveled to the consistency of cardboard without, somehow, ever cooking completely through (eggplant) or barely cooked at all (zucchini). The chicken, which burnt to a crisp on the outside, was, to our horror, raw when we cut into it on our plates. We threw the entire meal in the trash and went foraging for dinner by calling Pizza Hut. Not sure what happened with this grilling disaster; we’re apparently missing some vital information, despite our previous grilling successes. Even Andrew, master griller, who can whip up a tasty marinade from even the sparsest refrigerator contents, was humbled by these stubborn vegetables and icky meat.
The good news is that earlier this week was trash day in our neighborhood, so Andrew and I went foraging for furniture. We got a haul: a bookcase, a squat leather armchair, a bar cabinet complete with lock and key, and two plastic chairs for the terrace. Our apartment looks marginally more homey with our finds; once we get a bed it might actually be cozy.
Yet frustrating setbacks persist. Wednesday night we tried to grill what we thought would be a delicious meal: chicken legs, eggplant, zucchini, and red peppers. It was a disaster. The vegetables either shriveled to the consistency of cardboard without, somehow, ever cooking completely through (eggplant) or barely cooked at all (zucchini). The chicken, which burnt to a crisp on the outside, was, to our horror, raw when we cut into it on our plates. We threw the entire meal in the trash and went foraging for dinner by calling Pizza Hut. Not sure what happened with this grilling disaster; we’re apparently missing some vital information, despite our previous grilling successes. Even Andrew, master griller, who can whip up a tasty marinade from even the sparsest refrigerator contents, was humbled by these stubborn vegetables and icky meat.
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