Positive Spin

Today. . . oh today! Today, as some may realize, is 1-1-11, or 01-01-2011, depending on how you write the date. Today was the start of a new decade, not just a new year.

Today's lesson: try to put a positive spin on "things" (things might be immaterial), even when it seems like nothing is going right.

First of all, I had difficulty sleeping (return of problems there), not to mention all the homemade canons going off at midnight. I didn't go to bed until much later, though, so it's not like they kept me awake. They did, however, make my heart skip a few beats each time someone shot one off, because it's a loud noise and noises startle me. We didn't do anything special, as we normally don't because, well, really, it's just another day.

So around 3 or 4 a.m., I was trying to figure out why on earth we didn't get our Navy paycheck. It should have been directly deposited hours before that, but there was nothing. I've got all my bills due this month (quarterly bills, every-other-month bills, and monthly bills), and the Navy isn't paying us. Now keep in mind I've been dealing with the Navy for over 15 years-- I'm not inexperienced when it comes to military stuff. But this is definitely new, and his has me absolutely baffled. How many other people are suddenly and unexpectedly not getting a paycheck? And right after Christmas! I will have to wait all weekend, stressing over this. I've done all I can possibly do, which is limited to merely information gathering and passing along said information to (hopefully) the right people (Hubby, for one). I have also decided that if the Navy is not going to pay us, then they had better send him home! Lesson to be learned from this little exercise? Obviously, patience. I'm not terribly good with that lesson, which is probably why I keep getting exercises on it!

I had an appointment today, about which I was rather excited, because I get to cook! I do love cooking, and I love people enjoying my cooking. I find it very full-filling (pun intended), to satiate people's taste and appetite. But that appointment was, unfortunately, um, postponed. Unfortunate because I had already started on making the extra pomodoro (tomato sauce) for the late lunch I was planning. Turned out to be an early dinner. Anyway, note to self (and my readers)-- even if you have a chicken in the slow cooker with LOTS of juice, it can be dry and tender. There's part of today's cooking lesson. And this is a chicken I've been making for... 16 years, and had actually started as a microwave-in-the-barracks recipe! Ah well.

The other cooking lesson was probably more for the baking of the dessert portion. I made a baklava-- I say "a" baklava because there is more than one recipe out there. This one calls for brewed espresso (no problem there, since I use my stove top moka pot that I bought over a decade ago while living in Italy), and a couple of spices and sugar. Like I ever measure anything! Ha! Well, I used the "convection" fan on the oven to speed up the process, because it was already early evening and I knew the chicken would continue to cook even though I'd turned off the slow cooker. That fan was all fine and dandy. Where I had a problem was actually at the very beginning of making the baklava, because I hadn't written down the directions very well when I got the recipe a couple of years ago. As such, I melted the butter and added the spices to it, instead of melting the sugar in the espresso w/ the spices; I made a slight correction, which seemed to have worked out fine. What I hadn't anticipated was how dry the phillo dough would be, or I'd have used way more butter! The syrup to drizzle over the baked... thing... was thick and smelled awesome! I poured it over, but I had forgotten to "score" the pastry first. Oops. I think the scoring and/or cutting must help the dough to soak up the syrup a little better. I made a little more syrup utilizing the remaining espresso and some more spices.

The result? I want to eat the entire thing tonight! Problem #1) there's a lot of sugar in that! Problem #2) it has a lot of espresso in it! Problem #3) my kids would never forgive me for not sharing more of it with them. I let them have a very small piece, as by the time it was ready it was late evening (around 6:30pm). Also, one of my 'additions' to the recipe (because heaven knows I can't follow what's written!) was a little bit of coffee liquor-- a "bit" being about 1/4 shot, if that. I figured if I added that, then maybe I could eat the whole thing tonight and not be too bothered by the caffeine! Yes, the reasoning is completely flawed, but who cares when something tastes so good?

The other nice thing was that the sunset tonight was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful in such an array of colors as it set. I got a couple of pictures from various angles, and am posting what I consider to be the best (which I believe is the one I took from my back deck). I am hoping I can post more than one pic, so that I can post the pic of the baklava. It may not look totally appetizing (apparently, taking food photographs is an art or something), but I guarantee it's delicious. *reminds self to not go 'try' another piece*

Did this entry come out as positive sounding as I hoped? Well, "it is what it is," as the Hubby says. Life isn't always positive. You just have to make the best of it, and sometimes that means one day or one moment at a time-- which seems to be the hardest time to have a clear perspective!

May the rest of this year and decade not be like today was for me! Well, other than the whole baklava part-- YUMMY!

~Cedeham~