What to eat...

Decisions ... decisions.

For a while now, I have been trying to figure out what treat I wanted to eat on my birthday ... to make it special.  But the truth is that I do not want to be alone on my birthday.  The isolation of my existence really bothers me at times.  Seriously, how pitiful is it that I have long conversations with the UPS man?  So, today, I abandoned plans to either cook a wicked meal or take myself out to a wicked (non-budgeted) restaurant dinner and casually asked my realtor if she and her husband wanted to come over for dinner that night.  She doesn't know it is my birthday and doesn't read my blog, so writing about this is not going to spoil the evening ... not going to make them feel pressured to celebrate or something like that.

Now, the problem is that I really was pleased with how miserly I was with the grocery shopping this month and so I want to figure out a way of cooking a real dinner for them—rather than serving the single dish freezer meals that I have been eating—without making too much of an inroad on my remaining grocery money (translate that milk money) for the rest of the month.

• I could make the Lemon Chicken Gyros with Tzatziki and Feta, which I would probably serve Smoky Roasted Cauliflower as the side and, perhaps, the Grilled Nectarine Salad.  Doing so would mean buying cauliflower, Greek yogurt, an eggplant, and nectarines.  I would also use up almost all of my lemon supply.  Maybe I could go without the salad?
• Another option would be to make my Roasted Butternut Squash and Goat Milk Cheese Pasta.  I have all the ingredients for that dish, but would need to have a salad and a vegetable ... most likely roasted broccoli.
• I could wait and try the new recipe for pasta with vodka sauce that evening, but I do not think I have the courage to serve an untried dish to anyone but Marie or Becky (were she visiting again).  I would still need a side and a salad with that.  
• I love grilling summer squash with mustard, ginger and butter marinade, but really I think that is best served with grilled chicken and I am not wanting grilled chicken as my birthday meal ... even knowing I make the most perfect of grilled chicken.
• I haven't had Basil Burgers in forever, but that would mean buying ground beef, rolls, tomatoes and lettuce.  I could, however, serve Grilled Corn on the Cob with Lime and Feta as the side dish.  I have all the ingredients of for the latter, but I don't know how long you can keep corn on the cob in the refrigerator.
• Another option would be the Red Lentil Dahl with Naan and serve it with Smoky Roasted Cauliflower as the side and the Grilled Nectarine Salad.  

I think that either the last option or the pasta with vodka sauce would be the most economical choice.  However, I feel rather cheap having economics being the main factor in choosing ingredients for a meal with guests.  Plus, I had wanted to buy myself one of my beloved Red Velvet Cakes from Wal-Mart as my birthday sweet treat, but having folk over to dinner would make that too expensive.  I had already planned to make Double Chocolate Dr Pepper Cake for Paul's graduation celebration the following Sunday, so I will make it early and have that as my birthday sweet treat.  How cheap is that??

I have a few days to decided what to pick, but I would like to know which ingredients I will need to purchase for the meal before I have to go out and fetch the next-to-last bottle of the erythromycin solution.

The one reason the grill comes to mind is that the replacement heat tent arrived.  Why replace your heat tent? you ask.

After 14 years, it is falling apart and no longer evenly distributes the heat (translate that my vegetable burn quite a bit and the meat has to be place in certain locations).

The underside is even worse!

If you look back at this first photo, you will see ... uhm ... stuff around the sides of the heat tent.  That heat tent is sitting above a deep well that contains the propane burner.  Now, do you think stuff should be peaking up over the edges???  Yeah, uhm, no!

I was truly horrified when I pulled up the heat tent and found the well FULL of 14 years worth of crumbs, ash, rust, and falling bits of metal.  I suddenly realized why it was my igniter had been finicky of late.  I removed an entire plastic grocery bag of stuff from the grill well in preparation for installing the new heat tent.  So ashamed of such clear and abject neglect of my beloved grill I chose not to capture it on film.  The photo above is bad enough.

In my defense, no one taught me that I needed to regularly clean out the well of my grill.  Just like, I would note, no one taught me that I needed to change the oil in my car when I bought my first vehicle.  I learned that three years after that first vehicle purchase ... the hard way.

Amazingly, when I tested out the new heat tent, the igniter worked perfectly once more.  Something about not being buried in stuff  improves its efficacy!

When I went to buy a grill, I asked my father to go with me.  I knew nothing about grills.  Of course, I was shopping amongst a class of grills (and in a store) he would not have shopped himself, but he did help me.  After much prowling about the selection at Wal-Mart, my father chose this Brinkmann grill.

Fourteen years ago, I paid $119 for the grill.  This past week, I paid $19.84 (the shipping was as much as the part) to restore its performance to full surface use.  To me, I think this was a most stellar purchase and has been a perfect grill for a single person.  It was a mercy of my father to help me with this purchase that has multiplied over the years.

Two other times, I would note, my father really stepped up for me.  One was when I bought the house in Alexandria.  It was a 872-square foot duplex and had over a dozen immigrants living in it without running water (translate that it was in wretched condition).  I had bid and lost on many homes prior to that one because the housing market in the DC Metropolitan area was brutal.  As I have noted before, I now have a house that is nearly four times as large as that tiny duplex and yet that mortgage payment was four times as much as the one here was.  Said purchase was the best I could do in such a crazy market, where renting was often even more than buying.

Well, when my one local friend came to see the house, she blurted out, "What have you done?!?"  I was crushed.  But when my father came to see it, he was pleased with the purchase.  He could see what the house could be, rather than what it was.  I very much appreciated that moment with him.

I had an overlap of rent and home ownership (that first month where you don't have to pay the mortgage because it is in the closing costs) that lasted six weeks and worked like a dog to get the place ready to live.  My mother visited for two of those weeks and painted along side me.  I took two weeks of vacation and worked every evening and all weekend long to be able to move in there.  The kitchen had to be gutted down to the studs and was so disgusted that the men I hired to do the demo vomited.  I really wish I had been brave enough to demo myself back then.  Demolition is very cathartic.  I also learned a lot of very hard lessons about contractors and inspections and sellers lying about the condition of a home.

Just writing about that reminds me how very blessed I have been with this home, especially buying it unseen.  Yes, the flipper made some poor decisions.  Yes, as an old house, there were far more electrical needs than even I anticipated.  But it is in extremely good shape and has excellent bones.  The owner prior to the flipper spent her entire life here, I suppose inheriting it from her parents.  You can tell that she and her husband cherished the place as do I.

Sweet Emily emailed me after my porch floor post about a show on cable entitled "Rehab Addict." I thought the title a bit off-putting, but I love how Emily described it: "...where this lady and her crew restore old homes in Minneapolis. What she does is a gift to her community and humanity."  Oh, how warm the cockles of my heart became at reading those words.  Emily understands what I am trying to do with my house!!

I was able to watch four episodes on the show's website and thoroughly enjoyed them.  That woman would totally understand why I: 1) moved the vanity in here and 2) replaced it with something more in keeping with the house even though the one there was in usable condition.

Such a bad decision it was to add these to the parlor in this fashion.  My realtor said that the reason the house was on the market so long was because people would walk into the parlor, see the toilet and vanity, and not be able to also see a solution for the problem.  Move the vanity across from the toilet and put up a room divider and already the space seems more usable. 

Of course the Rehab Addict woman would also agree that a wall was needed.

And she would rejoice in the fact that I used (non-economical) reclaimed wood and the repurposed-bookcase-doors-turned-transom-windows on the wall in the parlor to separate the added bath from the rest of the room.  I used wood that was pulled out of a home just like mine.  The result looks as if the wall has always been there.  [Note: the bathroom wall color is the same ... the light from the window is throwing it off in the photo.]

But I digressed.

The other time that comes to mind was one day when my father came over to watch movies and brought with him a box of four place settings of my dishes.  He had spotted the box on a clearance shelf and thought it was my dishes.  The box was a mere $4.98!!  Anyway, that means I have 16 place settings instead of 12.  The extra place settings have come in handy—even though I am introverted social oaf wallflower hermit and have no need of extra dishes for company—because it means that I can go at least a week, if not longer, before running the dishwasher.  The miser in me wants the dishwasher completely full before I run it.

Anyway, the grill is now ready for more grilling ... more successful grilling.  And I have a few days to  figure out what will be the most economical way of not being alone on my birthday.

What to eat...