Cheesy Hashbrown Casserole

I have died and gone to comfort food heaven!  I was squeaking in under the wire with this month's new recipe (#73).  This stems from a recipe that my dad's wife makes.  She is a great cook, and her version of this casserole is a favorite of her kids, too.  I have never quite been able to get the whole recipe out of her, but I think that's more because she doesn't follow an actual recipe than her trying to keep it a secret or anything like that.  So I ended up doing a Google search (seriously, what did we do before the internet???) and found, literally, thousands of recipes with an inifinite number of variations.  I've actually had the ingredients for this for a while now and had originally intended to include ham in it to make it more of a main course, but I had a ham that needed to be cooked anyway, so I ended up doing that separately (more on that in a minute).  I have to admit that I definitely went cheese-heavy on this, but basically it's a mix of sharp cheddar, greek yogurt, cream of potato soup, frozen hash browns, salt, pepper, and cajun seasoning, topped with parmesan and asiago.  Healthy, this is not.  It baked for over an hour, and merged into a perfect blend of cheesy potato goodness!  You can't really taste the cajun seasoning, but it gives it a slight kick and keeps it from being too one-note flavor-wise.  I just finished off a bowlful and it was beyond tasty, but I do have to admit a craving for some sort of green vegetable now.  *LOL*

(this picture is for you, Mashelda!)

Now for the ham.  It was cooked on the stove in a pot with an onion and a two-liter of Coke, a la Nigella Lawson.  I have fixed this once before, but I wanted to mention it anyway because it is so easy and so tasty!  Last time I took it to work for a carry-in, and everyone raved over it.  I love that by cooking it on the stove, it frees up the oven for whatever else you are fixing to go along with it.  And the Coke/onion can be reduced down to make a glaze if you like to do that.

So now, between the casserole and the ham and some frozen veggies, I have meals for the week.  Yummy!

Bedroom, Books, and Blood

I know.  It's been a long time since my last post.  For a while, there just wasn't much to write about, and then, for some reason, I just wasn't in the mood.  But I have finally decided that I need to suck it up and write... something!

I am to the point with decorating my bedroom (#16) that I'm thinking about paint colors, so I decided I really needed to find out about air conditioning for the upstairs.  My house was built in 1941, and one of the previous owners finished out the attic into a master bedroom and bathroom, plus there's an extra room where I have a TV, chair, and my rowing machine.  I found out after I moved in last summer that there are no air conditioning vents in the bedroom, and the ones in the other room are totally insufficient for that whole area.  It was completely unliveable last summer, and I spent those months sleeping in the first floor guest room.  I had a handyman come through and give me some estimates for different things last year, and he guessed that putting in a separate air conditioner for the upstairs would be around $4000.  It's a lot of money, but this is my forever house, so for me it is completely worth it.  I have to be cool in the summertime!  So a few weeks ago, I had three different companies come give me estimates.  First, it turns out I can't get a conventional air system put in because there's no room for the blower in the remaining attic space and no real room for duct work.  I will have to get a "mini split" system that involves having a 1x2 foot unit installed in the wall... doesn't exactly fit in with my decorating scheme.  I will also have to upgrade the electrical system, so it can handle the extra load.  That alone will be $1500-2000.  Then the estimates for the air unit were $3500-$8800 on top of that (the higher one also involved putting an additional blower in the extra room).  Wow.  Not at all what I was expecting.  I have been building my savings back up, but I still owe my dad money that he loaned me last year to buy the house and I don't expect to get my tax return back (with the first time homebuyers credit) for a couple of months.  That whole situation really depressed me for a while.  I still can't think about it too much, and I've basically decided to postpone doing anything until I get my tax money back.  Which means it will be back to the guest room before too long.

I have set The Fountainhead aside for the moment (#66).  I like it, but it's a long book, and I haven't had enough time to get very far.  I did have a Groupon for Barnes & Noble and bought two more of the books from my list of fifteen.  Consequently, on one of my days off, I ended up reading Night completely through one morning when I was off.  It's only about 140 pages, so it only took a few hours to read.  Here is the synopsis from the Barnes and Noble website...

Night is Elie Wiesel s masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by Marion Wiesel, Elie s wife and frequent translator, presents this seminal memoir in the language and spirit truest to the author s original intent. And in a substantive new preface, Elie reflects on the enduring importance of Night and his lifelong, passionate dedication to ensuring that the world never forgets man s capacity for inhumanity to man.

Night offers much more than a litany of the daily terrors, everyday perversions, and rampant sadism at Auschwitz and Buchenwald; it also eloquently addresses many of the philosophical as well as personal questions implicit in any serious consideration of what the Holocaust was, what it meant, and what its legacy is and will be.

I've read and seen a lot of stories about the Holocaust, but this was, by far, the most personalized account.  Most of the other authors seem to have separated themselves somewhat from what they went through, but reading this made me truly feel what he went through in a very base and physical way.  It was horrible, and I honestly don't know how any of the survivors managed to put together any sort of life afterward.

Elie Wiesel has written a lot of books, which I didn't realize.  I happened across one at the library the last time I was there, so I checked it out and I'm interested to see what it is about.  I would definitely recommend Night to others, but they need to know what they're getting into.

Finally, last Friday I got off work early because I had come in early another day, and in anticipation of that I scheduled an appointment at the local blood bank (#1).  I had been putting it off, but I knew that in order to be able to donate six times, I really need to get started!  I've been turned away from donating in the past a few times because of being slightly anemic, so that always makes me a little nervous going into the appointment.  So I got to there, filled out all the preliminary paperwork, had my blood pressure checked (122/66 -- yea!), and had my hemoglobin checked... 14!  (the cutoff is 12.5 -- up from 12, which really made me nervous)  They took me back, and the first nurse checked both my arms and decided she didn't feel comfortable sticking me.  I had warned her that I am sometimes a hard stick, but I bleed really well once they get the line in.  So she got another nurse who found a vein in my left arm that she felt good about.  Unfortunately, once she got in there with the needle, the vein rolled and she couldn't get it.  I told her if she wanted to try the other side, I was fine with that.  She found a vein that was a little superficial, but she thought it would work.  Boy, when she stuck me, blood went everywhere!  But then it didn't want to flow.  Previously I thought I remembered the blood just went by gravity, but this time it was going through a small pump into the bag, and even though she kept adjusting the needle, it just wasn't maintaining enough pressure to keep the pump going.  She finally decided to stop, because it was taking too long and she knew it was hurting me.  I was so disappointed that I was nearly crying.  I think this meant a lot more to me than I actually realized.  I was definitely in a funk for the rest of the day, and I ended up with a small bruise on my left arm and a pretty substantial bruise on my right arm as well as an area of phlebitis above the stick site in my right arm.  It's been painful the last few days, but it's finally looking and feeling much better (almost a week later).  I had mentioned to my mom that I was going to donate, and she said to think of her while I was there.  She used to donate regularly, too, and they always called her to make appointments because she's O negative.  After having cancer twice and chemo twice, she can no longer donate, and it was hard for her, because they kept calling her to make appointments for a long time, even after she repeatedly told them to take her name off the list.  It was hard for her, because it was a reminder of what she'd been through.  So I think between the significance for blood donations for both of my parents and wanting to do it for myself, having this failed experience was very frustrating and depressing.  On the bright side, I did get a cute t-shirt!

So that's where things stand right now.  Not a whole lot accomplished, and a lot of frustration.  But, in a strange way, I still feel like I'm making progress, so I do feel good about that.