I’m not the kind of person who likes to go around talking about my husband all the time. Sure, I’m rather fond of the tall, bald guy who occupies half (sometimes a little more) of my bed, but I don’t feel the need to slip him into every single conversation or drag him everywhere I go. I prefer instead to show my love in little ways, like picking up his favorite candy bar from the store or buying tickets to a show I know he wants to see. He doesn’t often think of himself, so I like to do that for him.

Of course, food is a big deal in our house. Since I joined the roller derby team I find myself eating more and sleeping less, so our typical Saturday mornings find me wide awake at 7 a.m., waiting patiently for The Husband to get up so I have company. After I have my bowl of cereal I usually stick my head back in the fridge to see what else we have, which is when I also notice the leftovers gathering in the corners. The Husband is a champ at getting rid of leftovers, and I like to do nice things for him and expedite the waking-up process so I have someone to talk to, so we end up with this:

Tomatoes, potatoes, Wendy’s chili, pepperjack cheese, and eggs.

It’s a win-win situation: I get rid of leftovers and he practically throws a parade because he thinks I’m the best wife ever. I only wish we had some sour cream to put on top, but he seemed happy anyway. It’s my own way of thanking him for putting up with the late nights when I come home sweaty and exhausted, the long days when I’m traveling to eastern Kentucky for my job, and the “dumbass” in “Dumbass Gourmet.” (In case you were wondering, Attempt #2 at eggplant was absolutely dismal as well.) He’s a trooper, and I’m glad I found him.

This one is for my dad, who’s been waiting patiently for a new post. In fact, we made some awesome muffins together in May that have yet to grace these pages. Sorry, Daddy! Enjoy this one.

Every now and then a gal has to revert to her teenage years to maintain a little sanity, whether that’s laughing until you cry at a fart joke, spending an afternoon trying out different shades of eyeshadow in the mirror, or spreading a blanket on the floor to have a sleepover with some friends. (I routinely do the first two, just in case anyone was laboring under the misconception that, at thisclose to thirty, I am an actual adult.) Life has been a little stressful for some of my closest roller derby gals, so we decided to have a slumber party last night and attempt what I’ve been trying to do for several months now: make stuffed shells. In a rare flash of foresight, I bought more ricotta and mozzarella than I needed last week while making lasagna for a dear friend’s going-away party so that I could finally make the stuffed shells and quit thinking about them, so we were all set.

With my ladies keeping me company in the kitchen, I executed the dish (in Top Chef language) in a stunning display of non-dumbassery, resulting in this:

Whoo-hoo!

The only issue I had was with the tomato sauce, which I blame on Kroger. I usually buy tomato puree so I can flavor it the way I want to, but all they had last week was tomato sauce, which kind-of tastes like Spaghetti-O’s. Since my parents never let us eat Spaghetti-O’s when we were kids (and since my mother made her own tomato sauce from the garden), I’m a bit of a tomato sauce snob. With a little Spatini and some sugar, though, it was pretty good. We would also like to register our displeasure with Kroger garlic bread, since the eight slices promised on the box turned out to be seven once we got it all laid out on the baking tray:

Scandal! I’m proposing a Law and Order episode entitled, “The Missing Piece.”

But we soon forgot our pain at losing a delicious slice of garlic cheese bread when we remembered that my dear “derby wife,” Full Metal Smack-It, brought chocolate and strawberries for dessert. Turns out, she picked up unsweetened chocolate, but we all figured it would be OK if we added some sugar to it to sweeten it up. Wrong!

Rejected.

Luckily, wifey brought some white chocolate too, so we had these for dessert:

Absolutely perfect!

In case this wasn’t enough to make up for several months of absence, I’ll let you know there is currently an eggplant sliced up and covered with salt in my kitchen. I couldn’t help it — I went to the farmer’s market yesterday and stopped by a stand to buy some tomatoes for The Husband, and there it was, all perfect and purple. I remembered my bitter failure with eggplant before, but I am determined to make this thing work. I read up on preparing eggplant, and  apparently you’re supposed to sprinkle salt all over it to draw out excess moisture and then rinse it off right before cooking. After it’s finished drying out a bit, I plan to bread it and broil it this time instead of baking, so we’ll see what happens. (And yes, Daddy, I will finally get around to posting pics of the muffins, as well as my failed attempt at making asparagus roll-ups.)

It’s amusing to me how, on shows like “Top Chef” and “Chopped,” contestants (or “cheftestants,” which has to be the most annoying word ever) are always making deconstructed dishes. In my plebeian understanding of cooking, this means they separate all the elements of a dish to be … fancy or something, I don’t know. So a deconstructed clam chowder would have a pile of clams, a stack of potatoes, and a swirl of whatever chowder is made of, and everyone would coo over how wonderfully inventive and imaginative it is to deconstruct things.

So I decided to get in on this fancy action and make a deconstructed dish for dinner the other night. I found a recipe for balsamic-roasted broccoli and went from there, ultimately choosing to make beef stir-fry. At the grocery store, I picked up a container of baby corn, which I love because it always makes me think of this image macro:

The only problem with this plan is that the only baby corn the grocery store had was pickled. We bought it anyway and threw it in with the broccoli, some garlic, and a little toss of olive oil:

While that roasted, The Husband took care of sautee-ing the beef in garlic and olive oil, and I poked at the rice a little bit and tried to keep it from boiling over. We ended up with this:

Deconstructed!

The best reaction I can dredge up for this dish is: meh. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t the most amazing thing I’ve ever eaten either. What was truly amazing was the accompaniment I had to this dinner. Allow me to explain myself before you see this picture, because I imagine when you see what I was drinking your brain will refuse to comprehend anything else I have to say.

When I was a sophomore in college, I spent a semester in Germany as an exchange student. Each of us were assigned to a student who was supposed to be our mentor, but most of them only did it for the extra money they got. My mentor ditched me shortly after picking me up at the train station on my first day there, so I was unofficially adopted by Jon, an American from Nebraska who’d been living in Germany for the past several years. Since I was of legal drinking age in Germany, we would go to bars to play chess (seriously) and have some awesome German beer. One day, he ordered a Bananenweizen, which is a combination of banana juice and wheat beer (Weizenbier). After my initial revulsion, I ordered one … and was sold. It was delicious! I’ve spent the nine years since looking for an acceptable substitute, and last month at Jungle Jim’s in Cincinnati, I found one:

It was incredible — just like I remembered it, except without a chess game going on in the background. (Those of us who weren’t so good at chess invented and patented a new move — the Flying King — that enabled us to win every time.)  One of these days we’ll get back to Germany and I can have a real Bananenweizen, but until then I think there will be another trip to Jungle Jim’s in our near future.

(DG note: I started this entry three weeks ago and never got a chance to finish it. As most of you know, I travel quite a bit for work and am therefore largely unavailable for dumbassery. Great news, though — travel season is over until August!)

Today (April 10 — ed. note) is the opening day of the SKy (as in Southern Kentucky) Farmers’ Market, which is conveniently held in a parking lot within walking distance of my humble abode. In a fit of seventh-grade nostalgia, some friends slept over last night in honor of this monumental occasion (and because we wanted an excuse to eat junk food all night), and this morning we woke up at the crack of dawn to see what the farmers had for us. The great thing about the SKy Farmers’ Market is that everything there comes from somewhere in our region, and whatever you buy was either grown or made in our (figurative) backyard. My personal goal is to buy and eat more locally this summer, so I was very excited to wander among the items for sale.

Here’s today’s haul, carefully carried home in the crocheted grocery bag my friend Anne made for me last year:

I bought the coffee yesterday, but it’s still local.

The bounty includes fair-trade, organic Highlander Grog coffee from Spencer’s Coffeehouse (coarse ground for a french press); Swiss and tomato basil cheddar cheeses from Kenny’s Farmhouse Cheese; triple berry jam from Apple Berry Farms (the gentleman staffing the table said the three berries mean it tastes different every time you eat it); and jalapeno pepper bread from a lovely Amish or Mennonite (not sure which) family. After a bit more poking around, we saw a sign advertising eggs “from contented hens” for sale, which made me smile. My mother would have thought that was hilarious. Alas, we didn’t need eggs, so the girls and I walked back home. They left for their respective houses and I got busy making breakfast:

I included the pan in this pic because it’s so phenomenal. This omelet came out perfect!

That’s tomato-basil cheese oozing from that omelet, which was pretty darn fantastic despite the fact that the eggs probably didn’t come from contented hens. The jalapeno bread wasn’t too spicy, which is nice for my wussy taste buds, and the Highlander Grog coffee was spectacular, as is everything that comes from Spencer’s.

I hit the road for a few weeks shortly after I started this post, so recently my dinners have been along the lines of Taco Bell’s combo #3, Lunchables pizza kits, and the like. I’m beyond excited to settle down at home for a little while. I’ve been toying with the idea of requesting a plot in the community garden nearby, but my attempts at balcony gardening have been so hopeless that I’m almost scared to try. Anyone have any tips for successful summer gardening?

Since I’m apparently on a nostalgic trip back to my days as an undergrad, I’ll tell you now the story about how I came to love pesto. It was probably my first or second senior year when Dawn came to work at Manser Dining Hall, the food destination of choice for Mansfield University students. Dawn’s thing was overseeing a small pasta station, where she would combine your choice of ingredients in a little pan, simmer it on a little cook-station, and then glop some cheese on it before handing it back. Dawn, lovely lass that she was, made me a fabulous plate of penne pasta (witch nails!), pesto, chicken, mushrooms, and garlic, with a nice dollop of ricotta cheese on top … and I was in love.

The Husband usually doesn’t have an opinion on what we should have for dinner, so when he mentioned that he might like some pasta I jumped on the idea. I wasn’t in the mood for tomato or alfredo sauce, but it’s always time for pesto! Back in the day when I lived in an efficiency apartment in New York and scraped along on pennies, I would buy myself a container of pesto when I had some extra money or if I’d had a particularly bad day. This time, I decided I would make it myself. Coincidentally, Half-Assed Kitchen recently put up a recipe for pesto, so I dutifully copied down the ingredients and went to Kroger.

Now, let me pause here a moment and discuss how much I love Kroger. I would drag my bed into the ice cream aisle and live there if I could. I’m always finding nifty things at Kroger, like stuff on manager’s special for $3 and generic cereal that’s better than name-brand (I’m talking to you, Frosted Mini-Wheats). I strode confidently to the herb section and located the basil … which was unfortunately more brown than green. What’s up with that, Kroger? I put it in my cart anyway, reasoning that I could pick out the brown parts, and started looking for pine nuts. I located them behind a $5 price tag, and finally decided that I would just buy the stuff in a jar and forget about it. Ah, but then Kroger thwarted me again, when the much-cheaper generic pesto was located on a shelf so high I couldn’t reach it. I wandered around forlornly looking for someone helpful but there was no one in sight, so I sucked it up and bought Buitoni instead. (Good thing, too — we got the generic pesto a few nights later and it was terrible.)

So now what to do with the pesto? Make pesto-stuffed pork chops and witch nail pasta, that’s what:

The cheese is parmesan and the crumblies on top of the pork chop are garlic.

You’ll notice there isn’t a vegetable in this picture, and that’s because I failed miserably at the making of artichokes. I had never made them before, but I kind-of like artichokes in salads and on pizzas and whatnot, so I picked some out, bought a steamer basket, and read up on how to prepare them. I carefully pulled off the outside leaves, cut off the tops, sprinkled them with lemon juice, and, 30 minutes later, lifted this out of the basket:

Possibly the nastiest thing I’ve ever seen.

Needless to say, that one went into the trash. I made another one and cooked it for a little while longer, but it was still too tough to eat except for the very insidey parts. So we each had a flake or two of artichoke and chalked it up to me being a dumbass, as we chalk up so many things in this household.

Ah, but this is what we had for dinner tonight:

Steak with bleu cheese and avocado and a ginormous potato.

This time, The Husband was the dumbass one who mistakenly picked up gorgonzola, which sounds like the kind of problem that should be prefaced with a statement like, “Daaahling, tell Jeeves to bring the car around so I can run to the grocery. I’ve made the most terrible blunder — it’s quite funny, really — and purchased gorgonzola instead of bleu cheese.” (Everyone chuckles indulgently.) Luckily, Kroger is just around the corner, so he swapped the wedges while I toasted a baguette, then managed to both get brie everywhere and drop the cheese on the floor as I was trying to cut off the rind. On a related note, it’s time to sweep the kitchen floor again.

I still owe you some stuffed shells! I haven’t forgotten; I’ve just been too busy to do much besides speed-dial the Thai place lately. More to come (hopefully) soon!

The first time I ate asparagus, I was on a date in New York City. I was wearing my favorite polka-dot dress with the ribbon that tied around my waist and my ankle-strap heels, and I was with a boy named Cory who wanted very much to impress me. We stopped at a little Italian restaurant and he ordered asparagus with parmesan cheese, which we shared, probably in that mushy obnoxious way that people on dates do. Now is where I say something schmaltzy like, “… and Cory and I still love asparagus to this day,” but you all know that’s a load of horse schmoo. Cory and I lost touch years ago, but every time I have asparagus I think of him and that tiny restaurant, which I bet is exactly how boys who were trying desperately to impress a girl want to be remembered.

Anyway, I was trying to re-create that awesome asparagus the other night and came across a recipe for sauteed asparagus that sounded interesting. I usually boil it, but that’s such an inexact science for a dumbass who never sets a timer or keeps an eye on anything so it usually comes out one step too far toward the “mushy” side. After chopping off the gross bottoms, I dropped the stalks into a frying pan with some butter and diced garlic and sort-of pushed them around for a while:

Crispy!

Meanwhile, the oven was incubating one of our favorite dishes: honey-mustard pork chops. The sauce is, exactly as it says, a mix of honey, dijon mustard, and a smidge of chili powder. I decided to indulge The Husband’s fiery tooth and squeeze in a little spicy brown mustard and cayenne pepper as well, then spread the mix over the pork chops. While they were cooking and the asparagus was saute-ing, I minced some more garlic and boiled up some egg noodles, and here’s what it looked like when everything finally came together:

I didn’t have any grated parmesan, so I used asiago instead.

I wish I would have drizzled some extra sauce on this chop before taking the picture, because as it is here it looks a little boring. Trust me, though: the taste is absolutely amazing, and I was beyond thrilled with the asiago-dusted asparagus and egg noodles. I finished the meal in minutes, then brought the pan containing the leftover egg noodles into the living room so I could snack on those while watching TV. The leftovers I ate at work the next day were just as good, which is saying something because normally leftovers are the realm of The Husband. (I can only stand certain reheated foods, and apparently, strangely, pork chops are on that list.)

In other news, my two favorite reality shows, “The Amazing Race” and “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” are back on the air! I don’t have a favorite team on TAR yet, although I like that grandma’s tenacity, but Pandora Boxx has emerged as my favorite drag queen on RuPaul’s show even after a hairdo I didn’t like in the first episode made me think she might be a hot mess. In previous years I had three favorite reality shows, with “America’s Next Top Model” rounding out the trio, but ever since Tyra got all crazy and started inventing words like “smize,” I’m over it. RuPaul may wear evening gowns and stilettos, but at least he doesn’t make up words. (Also, his video messages to the contestants are called “She Mail,” which makes me laugh every time.)

Coming soon: stuffed shells! I’ve had empty pasta shells sitting in my cabinet since Christmastime, so I think this weekend I’m going to turn them into something delicious. Stay tuned!

It gets exhausting being a dumbass all the time, so when our friends R and J offered to come over and make dinner for us, I almost peed my pants with joy (as opposed to peeing my pants because I’m getting old). It’s a little bit sad that our apartment kitchen is the largest of the three, but we didn’t mind a bit playing host to a non-dumbass gourmet … especially since our new pots, pans, and knives, courtesy of The Great Daddoo and my stepmom, were fairly crying out for some attention.

Much better than the five-year-old Wal-Mart pans we were using.

R, the male half of R and J, is the cook in the couple, so he took up residence in the kitchen while J and I talked roller derby in the dining room with the incredible plate of cheese and crackers I prepared:

My cheese and crackers will run circles around your cheese and crackers.

The Husband was in the kitchen, too, monitoring the desserts he’d made earlier that day — creme brulee and angel food cake. In a spectacularly non-dumbass move, he prefers to make them at the same time since one requires egg whites and the other egg yolks. This requires a type of forethought I, unfortunately, do not possess. I’m the one who runs around every morning like a crazy person trying to get everything I need for the day into my purse, while The Husband gathers all his belongings by the door the night before so as to expedite the process. (You’d think I would understand by now, after six or so years in the work force, that I go to work every weekday morning.)

Anyway, R sauteed some garlic and shallots, then added sausage, heavy cream, and a bunch of other stuff that I don’t remember but that tasted incredible. The whole shebang was mixed with penne pasta, which is my favorite kind of pasta despite the fact that it doesn’t taste any different than any other kind. It’s the shape, you see, and how you can both put it on your fingertips like witch nails or blow through it to make noises (see also: rigatoni). He also brought over a block of parmesan cheese, which we grated over the pasta like little curls of awesome:

Yummy!

The pasta would have been excellent otherwise, but it was made even more so by the fact that we got to eat with R and J, whom we love dearly … and the fact that someone else made it, so it was approximately 99% less likely to make you hurl than something I managed to turn out. Soon after dinner the angel food cake came out of the oven and the creme brulee came out of the fridge, so we all crowded into the kitchen to watch The Husband wield a flamethrower in his pursuit of caramelized sugar:

We’re all thinking of Madeline Kahn as Mrs. White here, so go ahead and say it out loud.

I stole this presentation idea from the local tapas bar.

I’m not normally a big fan of angel food cake, but The Husband’s offering was delicious:

Made with real angels!

The evening ended relatively early, as J and I had a scrimmage against the Nashville Rollergirls the next morning. The combination of so much heavy cream and sheer terror at the prospect of having our butts handed to us on the rink wreaked a little havoc on both of us, but we recovered … and I’m proud to say that I earned my very first roller derby bruise courtesy of Nashville’s Showstopper, who rammed her shoulder into me with so much force I hit the floor, bounced, and slid. It isn’t culinary, but feel free to check out the damage:

Please don’t try to guess which body part this is. Unless, of course, you never want to eat again.

I blame it on the USA Network.

See, we had plans today. We were going to check out the beach (although, regretfully, it’s too cold for even a quick wade in the waves) and visit a little seafood place called Slightly Up the Creek. We woke up mid-morning, refreshed from our New Year’s Eve revelry, and settled into the couches to eat breakfast. That’s when we discovered that USA is running an all-day marathon of Law and Order: SVU. Some eight hours later, we’re both still parked where we were this morning, unable to tear ourselves away from this smorgasbord of interrogations and arrests and sick, sick characters. (Aside, of course, from the two hours that Maury Povich was running paternity tests and sending belligerent teenagers to jail for a day.)

Which is why we had to come up with something for dinner that didn’t involve leaving the apartment or the television. Since The Best Friend has been uber-hospitable this past week, I offered to make dinner. There were some leftover shrimp in the freezer, so she suggested shrimp scampi. Perfect! When I was working as a waitress in my aunt and uncle’s restaurant during high school, dinner was always either a patty melt or shrimp scampi, and I haven’t had either one since I went to college and, by default, quit working there. I found a recipe online that called for white wine, butter, garlic, breadcrumbs, and not much else, so I grabbed a slice of bread and set about mashing it into crumbs. That’s actually one of my favorite things to do, right behind mixing dough or meatloaf with my bare hands.

While the angel-hair pasta boiled on the stove, I set about making garlic bread out of some bratwurst buns.

The Virginia humidity claims yet another innocent spice.

After stabbing the garlic until it was powdery enough to sprinkle, I threw a stick of butter and loads of garlic into a saucepan with the shrimp. It. Smelled. Incredible.

Bubbly!

Then it was time to add the white wine, which as you may remember presents a bit of difficulty for me as I am absolutely hopeless with a corkscrew. The Best Friend was out investigating a residence hall issue, so I hunted around until I found a corkscrew and attempted to yoink the cork out of the bottle. It was a good thing TBF came back when she did, because I was about to smash the cursed bottle against the countertop. She extracted the cork for me and everything progressed smoothly from there on out. Some broccoli were steamed, our garlic bread came out of the toaster oven warm and garlicky, and the final product was just incredible:

The perfect complement to eight hours of onscreen depravity.

And so my week of seafood experimentation comes to a close, as I fly back to Kentucky in the morning to resume my regularly scheduled life. I hope everyone had a great holiday season!

I feel as though I owe my loyal blogreaders an explanation for this extended absence, and it is this: I have been busy like you would not believe. Between roller derby, teaching two classes, and embarking upon a new profession as an admissions counselor for WKU, I was lucky to grab five minutes to scarf down a crust of bread, much less create a pseudo-gourmet dinner. I did actually cook Thanksgiving dinner (for five people! no one died!) and dutifully took pictures of it, but my trusty old Kodak finally ceased focusing. Since no one wants to see fuzzy ham, I decided to take a break for a while since I was going crazy anyway. I am happy to announce that I received a brand-new midnight-blue Coolpix for Christmas, though, so let the dumbassery resume with gusto!

(The townspeople rejoice. Go on, rejoice!)

Speaking of rejoicing, check out my new GourMetpron! It comes courtesy of my Aunt Patti, who is so awesome she’s also my derby namesake. (That would be Patti Whack!, terror of the rink. Go on, try to hit me. I will knock your face off.)

Ruffles! I love ruffles.

I am currently smack in the middle of Christmas Tour ’09, which has landed me in Newport News, Virginia, with The Best Friend. The bonus of this location — besides the obvious — is that it’s much closer to the ocean than southcentral Kentucky. As I’m less than experienced in the ways of seafood cooking, we decided seafood cooking would offer the best chance of dumbassery. Since that’s what we’re all here for, we headed to Harris Teeter for some scallops, then hit Trader Joe’s for brussel sprouts, mushroom risotto, and baby portobello mushrooms to beef up said risotto.

No appendages were harmed in the dicing of these mushrooms.

Oh yeah, and we stopped by Food Lion for some liquid refreshments:

I chose Arbor Mist because it reminds me of being flat broke and in college. Mmm … flat broke.

The Best Friend was named the Scallop Preparer by default since she cooked scallops once before and they turned out spectacularly. (She has that effect on things.) As the risotto bubbled merrily on the stove, she busied herself preparing to bake our fine fishy friends. Virginia, like most of the South, suffers from humidity levels that clump the seasonings in their bottles, so she thwacked each one on the counter before shaking it onto the scallops.

Whoops.

It was a slight setback, but we rallied. An additional unexpected setback came in the form of cat yarfage courtesy of The Best Friend’s beautiful feline and a dish of shrimp, but luckily she handled that while I suddenly became intensely interested in stirring the risotto.

ForMicha, pre-yarf.

The scallops were seasoned with garlic powder, onion powder, and seasoning salt, then baked. The brussels sprouts, which we bought specifically because The Great Daddoo told us that fresh sprouts could beat up frozen sprouts with one hand tied behind their back (taste-wise, of course, not literally), were steamed in the microwave and tossed with butter and a little seasoning salt, and the risotto turned out so nicely, not even Gordon Ramsay could swear at it. (Although he probably would.)

Delicious!

People, I am so excited to get back into the swing of DG! One can only eat fast food and Totino’s frozen pizzas at midnight while grading papers in my derby gear for so long, you know. It’s time to dust off the Betty Crocker cookbook and see what there is to see! My Sims have started making French, Chinese, and Egyptian cuisine, so maybe it’s time for me to figure out what in the world shawarma is and attempt to make it. For now, though, the Arbor Mist is waiting.

Don’t go in my kitchen.

Seriously. It’s gross in there, like a cesspool of tomato sauce and salmonella. It’s been a busy couple days, so I thought I would take advantage of an afternoon off to make another of my mother’s fabulous recipes: porcupine balls. They’re basically meatballs with rice in them (which, in a world not populated by a dumbass cook, sticks out like porcupine quills) served in tomato sauce, so I assumed it would be a quick and easy dinner that I could throw in the Crockpot for a while and go watch Judge Judy.

Allow me a second here to laugh at my naïveté. Nothing ever goes as planned in the world of the Dumbass Gourmet, and this dinner was no exception. I started with a bowl full of ground turkey, which I figured would be a good substitute for ground beef. I added in the rice, some diced onions and garlic, milk, an egg, and italian seasoning, then set about making breadcrumbs because we were out of the handy kind that come in a canister. The Husband recently bought a nifty little food processor that I’ve avoided for fear of slicing my finger off, but I screwed up my courage, ripped up a piece of bread and carefully fed it into the grindy-place. Aside from a faint burning smell, the processor worked really well … except when I tried to dislodge the blade. I struggled with it for a moment, then finally wrenched it free and in the process flung bread crumbs all over the counter.

In the meantime, tomato sauce mixed with Spatini and sugar had been warming in the Crockpot, so I mixed up the meatballs and began to carefully dunk them in the sauce. I got about six of them in there before the thing threatened to overflow, so I dug around with a spoon and began to bail out some of the liquid, while at the same time managing to mash up most of the meatballs. I looked at the Crockpot and at the bowl that contained the rest of my meatball ingredients and sighed the sigh of a person who would really, really like a beer right now.

It was then I realized we were out of Yuengling. *horror movie scream*

Aggravated, hungry, and covered with bits of ground turkey, I dumped the contents of the Crockpot into a pot on the stove, mushed the remaining ground turkey into vaguely meatball-like shapes, slammed a lid on top of the whole business, and ignored it for an hour or so. Turns out, that’s exactly what you’re supposed to do:

These are actually separate meatballs even though they look like one great big lump of mush.

There was a bright spot in my frustrating dinner preparation: When I was looking over the garlic bread box I noticed the fine people at Pepperidge Farm have decided their garlic and cheese bread “takes meals to a whole new level.” I figure that, since my cooking is below average and this garlic bread is apparently above average, dinner works out to be just about edible. Thanks, garlic bread people!