Did our Xmas dinner shopping last night.
Sav-On, alas, also did not have pre-cooked turkey. Of any kind. I mean, I can understand them not having fully cooked birds.
But they didn’t even have the pre-cooked turkey meat in big slices, like it just came off the bird, either.
They didn’t even have the usual rotisserie chickens! You know what we ended up with?
Chicken strips. Fully cooked breaded chicken strips. Like KFC’s kitchen tenders. [1]
Delicious they will be, but festive they ain’t.
We also got some instant mashed potatoes, some good ol Stove Top Stuffing, and some powdered gravy.
I did not even know that was a thing til I saw it last night. No idea how good it will be, but all you have to do to make it is mix the powder with boiling water, so what the hell.
I, of course, will be doing the cooking for our feast. I am the most culinary member of this household and I love to cook for people I love.
I get real emotional about it, though, so I plan to do everything slowly and carefully because if I ruin a dish, I will be a sobbing wreck.
I am also pondering doing a dessert. Preferably something no-bake so that I don’t have to struggle with our finicky oven.
You preheat it. Open the door to put in what you want to bake. Then close the door, and the heat does not come back on.
So god damned frustrating. I then have to thump the stove to get the heat to come back on, and over time it took more and more force to do it, so I gave up.
I love to bake. But not under those conditions.
I also got some stuff for my own personal Xmas. Naughty stuff I should not have.
But Xmas day is the one day of the year where I eat and drink whatever the hell I want, and I am going to exploit the fuck out of that.
So I got myself a Pot of Gold (a box of chocolates, for you non-Canadians), and some mini peanut butter cups, and some Oh Henry! nut cluster type things.
The cups and clusters I will share.
The Pot of Gold I will not. (Mine! Mine! Precious!)
Well, except for the ones I don’t like.
I also got myself a bottle of champagne[2], and there is a funny story there.
I was looking for the champagne and the lady that worked at the beer and wine section of Sav-on asked me if I needed help
I did, so I said “Yes, where’s the champagne?”.
She asked me what kind I wanted. I said “Dry. ”
So she pointed out two different kinds to me…. both of which were $26.
And that’s where things got hilariously bourgeoisie because that is way more than I planned on spending. I was thinking $15 tops.
But I am way too middle class to actually tell her I wanted something cheaper, so I grabbed me a $26 bottle of fizzy wine.
Then later, I wanted to sneak back and look for a cheaper bottle, but I figured she would still be there and if she saw me doing it I would just die, so I didn’t.
And that’s why I have a $26 bottle of champagne chilling in the fridge.
You can take the boy out of the middle class…..
More after the break.
Eating (in) Peace
Finally got around to ordering from the Peaceful Restaurant.
Yes, that’s its real name. And yes, it’s an Asian cuisine place. Western restaurants never have cool, simple, direct names like that.
Western restaurant names don’t have adjectives.
I had been meaning to order from this place for a while because it is by far the highest rated place on DoorDash in my neighborhood. That’s why it keeps coming up on the first line of suggestions when I log in.
So now and then, I would click on it and check out their menu. And while some of the dishes looked quite tasty, there was nothing there that I recognized and so I chickened out and ordered from somewhere else.
But this time I noticed this menu item :
Sweet Soy Glazed Chicken
Crispy chicken tossed in a reduced sweet soy sauce with ginger and garlic.
And that’s my jam, dawg. My mother used to make this amazingly delish honey, soy, and garlic sauce for special occasions, usually to go on spare ribs.
So if this sauce is anywhere near as good, I will be in heaven.
Seriously, you’d eat the phone book if it had this sauce on it. It was that good.
On the medical front, yesterday my GP, Doctor Chao, left me a couple of messages asking me to contact him ASAP about test results.
And he sounded kind of stressed in the messages. Worried, even.
I tried not to read too much into that, but failed.
So I called him back today, and phew, my CT scan didn’t show anything to worry about. Apparently he was stressed out about something else.
My guess is that he, like me, does not like leaving voicemail messages. I always panic a bit at having to suddenly summarize what I had planned to talk about.
Then again, when my social anxiety is very bad, I actually prefer voice mail. Waaay less socially scary. There’s been times when I wished I could go straight to voice mail instead of risking actually talking to someone.
What can I say, social anxiety disorder is SAD.
I still haven’t tried either of my fast-acting anti-anxiety meds. I think I have lost my nerve. So now it will be less of a “this should be an interesting experience” thing and more of a “kamikaze! Today I die! AAAAAAAAH!” pushing myself off the diving board thing.
Much harder to do.
But I have to know.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.