It’s meant to be flexible and unfussy. Sometimes I brown some beef, sometimes I pour in a little beer. Lately I’ve been adding a can of pumpkin and loving it.

Tonight’s unscripted chili was a collaborative effort, pulled together by loved ones who unknowingly donated to this gigantic pot of food on my stove. Blame it on New York rent prices, blame it on the shitty economy, blame it on the fact that I have an English degree and made the silly decision to work at a non-profit and, you know, help people — no matter how you look at it, at best, cash is tight right now, and there’s nothing like a big bowl of chili to nourish me from the inside out.

My “recipe”:

-Peppers, tomatoes, and beer from a friend who took pity on my desolate fridge, the interior of which could be used as a stunt double in Ghostbusters.

-Cannellini beans from my sister.

-Hot sauce, a gift from my last birthday. I used half the bottle.

-An onion and garlic I borrowed from the Roommate. When you’re roommates, it’s borrowing.

-Canned pumpkin, purchased by the Roommate after Trader Joe’s inexplicably didn’t have any. (Way to let me down, TJ’s. I’ll just take my very cheap wine and be on my way, thankyouverymuch.)

-Packets of Sazon seasoning that originally belonged to an ex-boyfriend. I’m not sure how they ended up in my kitchen. Consider it alimony.

-A can of tomato sauce I stole from my mother the last time I was upstate. When I ‘fessed up, she said, in typical Mom fashion, “Oh, honey, I’m happy you took it! I was thinking that we had too much tomato sauce in the pantry anyway.”

Directions: while wearing yoga pants and an old sweatshirt, mix all ingredients together on stove top until they resemble chili. Serve over an old potato you found in the street. Recession, what now?

******

Footnote: I clearly need professional aid when decanting chili in freezer-friendly Tupperware containers, because the mess I made makes it look like I just murdered a Chihuahua. Which I would never do, because I am a dog-lover. Even of those stupid small ones. Mostly.

Preach it.

My dignity. Embarrassingly, I got pulled over for driving down the Taconic Parkway in my big ol’ Budget truck. I really thought the officer would take one look at this moron driving a moving van by herself and have pity. Alas I could not save myself from a ticket or his judgment.

Jack’s birthday present. It was this indestructible red rubber ball that holds little bits food. It keeps him occupied for hours so I can actually unpack without a wet dog nose investigating every damn box.

A $1 bag of dried black beans. I was really looking forward to a cheap meal.

Half of my cereal bowls.

Rags. You know, for cleaning a disgusting apartment that was apparently inhabited by monkeys before The Roommate and I moved in.

My iPod charger. How’s that for annoying?

One slipper. How is that for REALLY annoying?

Not lost, but not quite right:

My knee, which has been suspiciously swollen for days since we moved into our fifth floor walk up. I cannot bend it all the way back to stretch my quad. AARP will be calling me any day now.

My underwear (almost!). I paid the laundromat a huge visit the day before moving and washed every pair of my underwear besides the ones on my bum on that day. I put them all in one clean bag and then promptly lost that bag for a spell. It was incredibly traumatizing. Next time I will set some aside in a sort of panty insurance policy.

The little handle of my Anthropologie salt and pepper shaker set. It used to be you could carry them from counter to table and impress your friends with your $55 salt and pepper shakers. Now I have to have to hold them in my hands like a commoner. Anthropologie would be mortified.

The following is a text from my sister who was at her restaurant job this afternoon.

Linnea: We’re not serving roast beef sandwiches because it’s Ash Wednesday. First of all, WOW, this is an Italian establishment. Second, this goes against my firm belief in the separation of Church and Plate.

Linnea: I’ve been hanging onto that one for about an hour and a half.

1 soon-to-expire box of unsweetened baking chocolate

PLUS

the last 4 eggs in the carton?

Another reason to put off those New Years resolutions.

Fear not, Sid’s pudginess lives on! He now lives downstate with the Roommate. “Roommate” is more of an honorary title at this point because we had a HUGE FALLING OUT AND SHE MOVED AWAY. Actually she just decided to move in with her boyfriend and we still see each other and hang out and talk a lot and there is lots of mutual adoration.

Anyway, the absence of Sid created a cat-shaped hole in my heart, as well as Jack’s, so in November we adopted Penny. We had originally gone in to adopt an older cat like Sid, but when we walked by her, Penny reached out her two little arms and grabbed our fingers, purring all the while. We were hooked.

Penny likes…

-Food. She is a chubby monster and is quite vocal about her meals. As of late she has stopped growing taller and has started growing outwards. That girl is not afraid to eat.

-Ambushing Jack’s tail. Jack is roughly 8 times Penny’s size, but that doesn’t stop her from sneaking up on him at every occasion.

-FREAKING OUT. She’s good at it, too.

-Sitting on your shoulders.

-Balls of aluminum, bottle caps, twisty ties… she is something of a garbage cat.

Penny dislikes…

-Not much. She’s extremely brave and fearless and doesn’t seem to mind much at all. She isn’t bothered when you cut her nails or give her a bath or take her to the vet or yell at her to get off the counter. Don’t get me wrong, she’s BONKERS. But she’s the most bonkers, easy-going cat I’ve met. Considering she is the smallest breathing thing in the house that doesn’t live in an aquarium, she’s not afraid to run with a large dog and two giant humans.

Penny has been an energetic addition to our little family, but she never shies away from a good nap. She does well here.

I forgot about their amazingness for a while because my memory is the size of a bean. But recently they wandered back into my memory and I’ve been stuffing the heck out of peppers recently as a means of using up ingredients. I’ve strayed from the R.S. version, but mine are also real simple — and real quick. I’m impatient. The 20 minutes or so before dinnertime are not my prettiest.

Last night I made stuffed peppers using a leftover block of cheddar, brown rice, the dregs of a jar of sauce, sausage we’ve had since Christmas, and the other half of an onion that’s been wrapped in the fridge waiting for use.

Start with the basics: preheat the oven to 350 degrees and put on 1/2 a cup of brown rice to cook on the stove. Take 2 green bell peppers, seed them, halve them and place them in a microwave-safe pie dish (i.e. no metal, please). Cover them tightly with plastic wrap and microwave for five minutes. **They will be HOT when they come out of the microwave, so use oven mitts and watch for steam! (I may or may not have forgotten this useful tip which is why I remind you now. Bean brain, remember?)

Mince a clove of garlic, chop half an onion, and cook them with a little olive oil over medium heat. While they cook, dice up some sausage. I used half of what you see in the photo above — adjust to your preferences, or even eliminate altogether if you don’t eat meat. You could very successfully substitute sauteed mushrooms, no doubt.

Saute the sausage with the onions and garlic for a few minutes.

Add 1.5 cups sauce to the mixture. My favorite thing about this dish is that you don’t have to worry about seasoning it much if you use pre-seasoned pasta sauce. Sometimes I’m lazy.

When the rice is done cooking, add that to the pan, too.

Stuff each pepper half with the saucy mixture.

Grate a little cheddahhh right on top.

And pop ‘em in the oven for 10 minutes or so, until the cheese is all nice and melty.

Oh yeah.

I see no reason why you can’t douse the whole thing in hot sauce, as is my way. But a little salt and pepper will do you fine, too.

We never do because he’s a total bed hog who mercilessly steals covers. Plus he got a new fleece-covered doggy bed for Christmas so he sleeps in comfort. But last night I was feeling like a total softie so I let Jack hop into bed with me while I read Sherlock Holmes.

Things quickly became problematic. Jack passed out long before I hit the second page of my short story, his heavy canine head resting right next to me. He likes the feeling of a nice down pillow under his bony head, but it grosses me out to share pillows with my dog. I mean, he’s a DOG, for one thing, and he smells like movie popcorn, for another. I can’t for the life of me figure out why my dog smells like cinema-fresh Orville Redenbacher, but regardless I don’t want him stinking up my pillows.

I moved his head to my shoulder in a misguided act of kindness, but as Jack drifted further and further into the depths of doggy dreamland, his breathing got heavier and louder. His breaths sounded as if they were coming from miles away as their barreled down that big ol’ snout of his. His nose sounded like the blizzard in Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. It is particularly distracting trying to read about a 19th century detective in rainy London when your dog’s loud breathing snoring makes you think of claymation snowstorms.

So I gave up on Sherlock and turned out the lights.

I awoke the next morning to find that, in his efforts to cuddle with me throughout the night, Jack had actually turned me 90 degrees and I now lay with my head hanging off one side of the bed and my feet hanging off the other, a pillow shoved under my right side and Jack snoring loudly on my left.

“Morning,” I grumbled bitterly and promptly shoved him off the bed. Lesson learned.

***

I tucked Jack into his kennel tonight, thankful for the fact that I only had to share the bed with The Boyfriend instead of an inconsiderate zoo animal. As I closed the door of the crate I thought exasperatedly, It’s just so much more pleasant to sleep with a HUMAN, who at least has evolved enough to understand the concept of a SHARED living space.

I mean, sure, when The Boyfriend and I first started living together, I had to train myself to stop sleeping diagonally across the bed. Some people don’t like that. Apparently. But now we’ve worked through that. And now I also know that it’s not reasonable to take the entire comforter and turn myself into a one-man blanket ball just because it’s really, really, really cold outside.

The Boyfriend smiled fondly at me as I clambered into bed. “I was thinking about all the little things I love about you, and here’s one: your sleep twitches.”

I laughed. “Really? I twitch that much? It’s noticeable?”

“Yeah, it is. You twitch all night long,” he said in that fond voice you use to talk about your partner’s secret quirks. Then, turning to look at me with wide, worried eyes, he said in the slightly panicky voice you use when you realize your partner may be somewhat disturbed, “You twitch a LOT.”

Jack let out a snort from his kennel.

Upon pulling the two chicken breasts out of my fridge today I was dismayed to find they still had their skin on. A surprise twist like this is usually the point in the cooking process where I whine to the Boyfriend and he comes to rescue me from animal flesh or fires I’ve set or milk I’ve spilled or any other culinary catastrophe I am experiencing.

But he was in the middle of a much-needed nap, so I manned up and did it myself.

Barely.   

With fork and knife and lots of “ew ew ew”-ing, I ripped the skin from the chicken, threw the breasts haphazardly into the pot, doused them with 1/2 cup of the marinade, and jumped around the kitchen frantically until the heebie jeebies passed. The feeling overcame me again when I had to wash the skin-y cutting board, a task I performed using lots of scalding water and half a bottle of Dawn. To stave off future panic attacks, I also bleached the counters and microwaved our kitchen sponge to within an inch of its life.

In short I’m not sure the hype about the Crock-pot’s “ease” is believable. It was a pretty tense and panic-stricken morning for me, I’ll tell you that.

[courtesy of gocomics.com]

Six short hours later, as my kitchen filled with a sweet hickory aroma, I slipped off the top of the Crock-pot to find tender — and FULLY COOKED — chicken meat falling right off the bone, no assistance needed from me.

I didn’t even call the Boyfriend in for Animal Flesh Control.

We ate it with baked potatoes (no bones in those!), which cooked while we took Jack on a snowy walk around neighborhood.

This is one hearty dinner for a snowy day. And unless you are me, stress-free as well.

I started off the year as a recent college grad who was holding down three part-time jobs and trying desperately not to become hopelessly discouraged. Looking through iPhoto it appears that, besides working a lot, all I did from January to April was cook and eat. Which makes sense — I had no money and the Boyfriend was still in school — what else are a poor post-grad and a senior college student supposed to do in the cold Upstate NY winter? During these first few months of 2010, I did make scallops for the first time, jump back on the bacon bandwagon, and enjoy several lunches on our back porch, but aside from that there was nothing particularly new and noteworthy in the early months of the year.

April is when it all turned around for me. On the evening of April 1st — April Fool’s Day, mind you — I got a call about a job I had interviewed for in February. The interview had gone so well and I’d immediately clicked with the team, but funding fell through and so did the job. This phone call, however, signaled the rebirth of the job and the hiring of one very thankful Page girl! I’m currently exploring the Development side of non-profit work and I find it suits me well.

This spring brought me a new job and it brought a college diploma for The Boyfriend. And in keeping with the Spring Whirlwind, the Boyfriend, Roommate and I had to deal with the end of our apartment lease in May. The Roommate made plans to abandon us and move downstate to live with her boyfriend, taking Sid, her fabulous cookbook collection, and all of the clothes I used to borrow with her. Meanwhile my boyfriend and I struggled to find a landlord who was willing to rent us an apartment even though we have a dog. Yes, even dogs as cute as Jack are unwanted by landlords.

The stress of not potentially not finding a place that was okay with Jack’s size and overall canine-ness wore away at us throughout the spring until we finally found a gorgeous place in a quiet neighborhood:

I really love our apartment — the location, the size, the style. It’s really perfect for us and our growing zoo.

In June I turned 23 for the first time with the help of my family and some sombreros.

Compared to Summer 2009, July and August were fairly quiet. The gang made a trek north in August to do a little camping — our first group trip together.

And by “camping,” I mean eating, drinking, boating, swimming, eating, kayaking, campfiring, drinking, S’moresing, eating, and sleeping in real beds.

(Jack only went swimming twice: once when he fell off the boat trying to rescue the Boyfriend and as seen above when he ran into the water trying to rescue the Boyfriend and I from our kayaks. That’s puppy love.)

October was a banner month: the Boyfriend got his EMT certification, had a birthday, and carved his first Jack o’lantern.

Jack is so proud he’s fighting back tears.

My big moment in October was the 17th, when my sister and I took a supersecret trip up to Saratoga Springs…

…to get tattoos!

I was incredibly nervous, but it’s been a wish of mine to get a tiger lily tattoo for a few years now. Tiger lilies bloom in the summer right around my birthday and my dad brought my mother a bouquet when I was born.

The pain is not as bad as you think. The actual art of having someone draw on you is far more impressive than the sting of the needles. (By the way if you’re in the Capital Region and looking to get a tattoo, go to Needlewurks. They are professional, friendly, talented, and clean!)

My sister got a Linnea flower after her name.

As the months turned colder and cuddling became more necessary, I began to greatly miss my pudgebucket, Sid. So in November I dragged The Boyfriend to the animal shelter where we found Penny:  

Who, like her doggy brother, is an odd mix of lazy and crazy.

“Excuse me, are you gonna eat all that?”

To round out the year, in December the Boyfriend and I celebrated our anniversary on Cape Cod.

And finally, Santa topped off the year nicely by bringing me one of these for Christmas:

(image courtesy of gdgt.com)

It’s love.