I’m not much of a wine drinker, which explains why I was awkwardly thrashing around the kitchen, cell phone pinched between an ear and shoulder (definitely not recommended posture by the American Chiropractic Association) as I tried to pull the cork from a bottle of pinot grigio. The Best Friend was on the other end, helpfully offering to drive the 710 miles to Kentucky and do it herself, but finally I managed to wriggle it free and eagerly turned to the recipe on the counter to see how much was needed to make my salmon glaze.

One and a half teaspoons. All that work for one and a half teaspoons. I was so tragified I had to pour myself a glass to forget about it. (I later poured the rest of the bottle for The Husband, who got so giggly that he almost let me adopt a dog. He sobered up while I was extolling the virtues of pet insurance and that was the end of it, boo.) Some balsamic vinegar, three cloves of garlic, and some honey were added to the mix, then generously slopped over the waiting salmon. (Thanks for the stainless steel garlic trick, Courtney — it totally worked!)

Here’s the finished product — I had almonds to go with it, but completely forgot them:

The Husband has started laying out this blue dish towel so I can take my pictures on a backdrop other than the counter. He’s good, although I’m still bummed he won’t let me get a dog.

I’m very much looking forward to tonight’s dinner, which is being prepared by The Husband as I type. I spent today judging a forensics tournament on campus and I’m absolutely worn out, so I put him in charge of the menu: honey-mustard pork chops, mashed potatoes (my favorite!), and beets. It smells divine, so I suppose I’ll keep him even though our family is canine deprived. We do still have the bottle of white my father and stepmother gave us for Christmas — give me a few days and he might change his tune.

I don’t know what possessed me to think that I would have enough time before work to throw some beef stew in the CrockPot to simmer all day, but nonetheless, Thursday morning found me scrambling — hair askew, bathrobe flapping — to assemble that night’s dinner. The meat was already cut, so I pulled it from the fridge along with the bag of carrots.

The carrots were frozen. They were shoved into the very bowels of the refrigerator, so I guess they ended up near a vent or something because my fridge is definitely not that cold. The good knives and the cutting board were in the dishwasher, so now I’m hacking away at frozen carrots on a paper plate balanced on the stove burner and wondering why I felt it necessary to save a few cents by buying regular carrots rather than baby ones that require no slicing. It was right about then that a carrot top slipped through my fingers, skittered across the kitchen floor, and disappeared beneath the fridge.

We don’t have a yardstick, which is what my mother always used to tease out things stuck beneath appliances, so I pressed my cheek to the (filthy) linoleum and peered into the dusty abyss to see if my fingers would reach it. No dice. I decided to give up on the carrots and focus on potatoes, which went into the Crockpot with no issue. A little gravy mix here, some cold water there, and I was ready to roll … until I glimpsed the lonely onion sitting on a shelf in the fridge. Crap — I promised The Husband there would be onions in the stew.

Have you ever tried to cut the ends off an onion with a crappy serrated knife? I nearly took my fingers off. After much maneuvering and flinging of onion skin into the stove burners, I had a perfect round onion waiting to be sliced. Until, that is, I dropped it onto the floor, where it exploded. (“Outback’s got the bloomin’ onion — you’ve got the kaboomin’ onion,” quipped a friend at lunch.) I gathered it up, washed it off, and chopped it a bit more viciously than needed, but eventually I had not only a CrockPot full of stew, but onion-y fingers, a big splotch on the floor, and tears running down my face as well.

Not exactly a successful prep session, but here’s the finished product:

Don’t mind the spotty Dollar Store bowl — all the nice ones were dirty and I was lazy.

Perfect for Thursday’s 11-degree weather. What is this, Pennsylvania?

Emeril Lagasse’s fans may cheer when he breaks out the garlic, but I believe that’s only because they don’t have to chop it themselves. (Side note: Why would you cheer for garlic? I like asparagus, but you don’t see me turning cartwheels when O’Charley’s brings it out with my steak tips Monterey. Perhaps Emeril’s audiences were chosen for their lack of hobbies. Also, where did Emeril go? He was the Biggest Star in the World for a while, and now I only see him on toothpaste commercials.) The Dumbass Gourmet likes chopping garlic because it allows me to perfect my Food-Network-reject technique (definitely not as smooth as Guy Fieri), but hates chopping garlic because it makes my fingernails smell for days.

Anyway, today’s Kroger shopping trip yielded some bone-in chicken breasts that were on sale for more than 50% off, so I picked them up despite having never cooked chicken with bones in it. The Husband and I looked at it for a while, trying to decide what to do with it, and finally decided on an olive oil/garlic/salt and pepper concoction that would taste fabulous tonight, but wouldn’t affect the taste of the chicken when I break down the leftovers into soup. (Garlicky chicken corn soup = OK. Barbecue chicken corn soup = barf.) I’m hoping the olive oil will make the skin crispy and that the garlic won’t be too overpowering.

I’m thinking I might be getting better at this cooking thing, especially since the only stupid thing I did tonight while making dinner was search the entire house for the sea salt/peppercorn grinder when it was right there on the kitchen counter, behind the box of Triscuits I left out last night. Hey — you never know when one of us has nuked something for dinner, then wandered into the bedroom with the shaker in tow to eat in front of the computer. We’re just classy like that.

Speaking of classy, here was dinner last night:

A lovely shrimp ring, some Brie, a little leftover sharp cheddar from the mac’n'cheese I made a while ago, and a new cheese we’d never tried called kasseri. It was interesting — a little too hard and dry for my taste, but not terrible. A lot of Brie I’ve had in the past tastes vaguely of dirt but this stuff was pretty good, maybe because the rind wasn’t on it. Needless to say, I enjoyed the champagne very much and had a fit of giggles on the couch before falling dead asleep and having some really strange dreams.

And here’s dinner tonight:

I accidentally grabbed the wrong package of green beans at the store — these are “italian” green beans, which are (as you can see) wider and flatter than regular green beans — but they taste about the same. I also decided to try low sodium Rice-a-Roni, which doesn’t taste a blessed bit different than normal Rice-a-Roni. I did have to fashion a lid for my pan out of aluminum foil because my pan doesn’t have a real lid, but that was about as dumbass as I got in the kitchen today. I’ll try to do better next time!

My family absolutely loves Mexican Crap, a pseudo-ethnic dish we got from one of those recipe books they sell by the registers at the grocery store. It consists of ground beef (I use ground turkey or chicken instead), Mexicorn (corn with red and green peppers), salsa, and chili powder, all served over rice. Sprinkle with cheese and serve to the family, then wait for my older brother to poke it and say, “This looks like bat barf!” (See also: “Can I have another plate? Someone puked on mine.”)

We open with a view of my kitchen, which is somewhat cleaner than last time (I finally washed the sink full of Tupperware) but still cluttered with empty Diet Pepsi cans and a grease-stained Papa John’s box. Yours truly, the Dumbass Gourmet, is chattering away to The Best Friend, a cell phone pinched between my ear and shoulder, while scraping ground chicken into a pan. We’re talking about Bridezillas and weddings, a conversation that moves me to underscore my points by gesturing with a spoon despite the fact that it’s got little pieces of chicken stuck to it.

The chicken is nearly done by the time I figure out that I forgot to put the rice on, so into the pot it goes while the timer counts down from 15 minutes. We’re talking a mile a minute as I tell her about an article I read about the first year of marriage when I smell something burning. Not to worry — that’s what hood vents are for. Our conversation is interrupted several times as the rice keeps boiling over no matter how low I set the burner, and I finally, regretfully, let her go after I dump grease down the sink without thinking about it.

It’s time to put in the salsa, and I am momentarily blinded by my own genius as I think of a way to get the last dregs of salsa out of the jar: I will pour in the Mexicorn (which comes packed in corn juice), and the juice will get all the salsa off the sides of the jar. This is all fine and good until I dump corn all over the sink as I transfer it to the jar and — crap! — now corn and salsa are stuck to the inside of the salsa jar. Humbled, I scrape it out with my spoon and mix everything together. I suppose not all ideas can be good ones, hmm?

The rice is still simmering away as I pull a block of cheese from the fridge to grate with our horrid cheese grater. This thing is the bane of my existence, as I haven’t figured out a way to use it without getting grated cheese everywhere. Crap again, now the timer for the rice is going off, the rice is burning to the pot, and I have cheese all over myself. But DG perseveres, and here is the result, beautifully posed atop the Papa John’s box:

Here’s a glimpse of what it looks like before it’s covered in cheese:

If I were to imagine what bat barf looked like, I’m pretty sure I’d come up with something similar to this, but with more blood. Bon appetit!