Merry Mania!

I've been in full on manic-hermit-mode the past two days and have been cooking up a storm.  I've also been incredibly productive in the rest of my house.  It's taking time for me to make a dent, and I'm currently in the "chaos before the calm" stage, but I'm hoping it will be settled by the time I go back to work on Monday.

I'm desperately trying to decrease the clutter in my home, (and life?) by cleaning out.  If I haven't used it or read it or worn it recently, then it's finding a new home, either with another person or in the trash bin.  This goes for food as well.  I'm determined to make room in my pantry/cabinets/shelves.  I hoard non-perishable food as if the Armageddon is imminent.  Especially pumpkin, and I'm honestly not sure why.  If the second coming does happen to occur sometime soon, you'll know where to find the pumpkin pie...

Today I made some turkey, pumpkin and kale soup.  It turned out wonderfully and it gave me an excuse to use up the ground turkey in my freezer.  I browned the turkey, added seasoned salt, paprika, coriander, a bit of sage, a sprinkle of cayenne and turmeric, and a touch of herbs de provence.  I added a couple quarts of chicken stock, a couple cans of organic pumpkin and then a can of evaporated milk (because I also have a ton of that).  I've never cooked kale before.  It was pretty interesting to work with.  Really crunchy and pretty difficult to wash, but it looked amazing going into the orange soup, and, come to find out, tasted great too.  The soup was very tasty.  I was pleasantly surprised, because it was a complete coin toss.

I followed that up with some fudge, to help use up the fat free sweetened condensed milk I had lying around.  I made three types of fudge; the first was just classic chocolate with pecans, the second had hazelnuts, coriander and cardamom, and the third had, (please suspend judgement), tamari, toasted black sesame seeds and candied ginger.  Mmmmmm.  I can't tell which was my favorite.

While I was sorting paperwork, I decided to put a couple cans of full-fat sweetened condensed milk on the stove in a pot of water and let them boil for about 3 hours, keeping the cans covered with water the whole time.  Thankfully Brandy stayed long enough to get sent home with some dulce de leche, along with a variety of ingredients for Thai food that have been neglected in my cabinets.  I have to thank my friend Laura Simcik for the fabulous  dulce de leche trick!  Great on toast, cookies, ice cream, a spoon... and so simple to make.  Unfortunately I was a bit impatient when opening the first can and I ended up with a geyser of hot caramel shooting across the kitchen.  Totally worth it...

Tomorrow I'll make my mother's recipe for crabmeat triangles as well as two batches of pumpkin bread and two batches of pumpkin pie filling, all of which is destined for my freezer.  Needless to say, my poor freezers required some rearranging.  This is good inspiration for me to either eat the stuff that's been hanging out in there for a while, or throw it out.  I'm currently thawing turkey chili and a batch of cabbage and proscuitto soup.  Those should hold me over for the next couple days.

I also made a huge batch of cucumber and tomato salad with balsamic in the hopes of getting a few more days out those items.  It's what's left from the Costco batch of salad-makings from the lasagna night.

I have another batch of fresh kale in my fridge, as well as broccoli and zucchini.  Apparently I'm craving green veggies.  Not sure how I'll prepare those over the next few days, but I'll have to take a break from all the pumpkin chaos to make something healthy.

I almost wish that I had more people around to eat all this food, however that would mean putting on respectable clothes and partaking in human interaction, neither of which I'm particularly up for at the moment, (Kat and Brandy being the exception since that's pretty much like hanging out with myself anyway) .  When I'm ready to re-enter normal society, I'll have a fridge and freezer stock full of fun goodies for friends.