Susan likes to participate in National Blog Post Month (NaBloPoMo) every November, but this year she forgot. NaBloPoMo is a grueling exercise where Susan has to write a BLAHg post every day for a month.

Every day.

Ugh. 

Susan maintains high standards and can't always come up with something interesting to share every day, or every few weeks even. You've all seen the frequency with which Susan has been BLAHg-ing lately, that's her high standards in action. Luckily there is no standard for NaBloPoMo beyond frequency. 

Day One Susan will give you a Bolognese update:

So, last week Susan found the white Bolognese recipe, while she was eating leftover restaurant Bolognese and pondering why her own Bolognese efforts never come close. 

Anyway, Susan made the Bolognese then stuck it in the back of the fridge all week because she wasn't in the mood to do anything more productive than climb into bed in her work clothes. 

Fast forward to this weekend, Susan made a pot of mezzi rigatoni, saved a cup of the pasta water, heated up the Bolognese and ate it.

Perfecto!

It was a teeny bit salty, so she wrote on the recipe 'watch the salt' and then served it to her children for their opinion. Her children liked the delicious Bolognese so much they approved it to be put into dietary rotation. Then the son's friends showed up and ate every last bit of the delicious Bolognese even though they were already filled with pizza and chocolate donuts.

Susan may tell you a risotto story on Day Two. 

Susan has loved Rigatoni Bolognese for years. She even tried to make it herself the real way with red wine and letting it simmer on the stove for four hours. Susan personally finds it unnecessary to let anything cook on the stove for more than 40 minutes. And four hours? Didn't help. Another issue may be that Susan doesn't like to cook with red wine. She loves Cabernet, but not in her food.

Susan tried a few more times before giving up. It never tasted the way it was supposed to. She assumed the universe was keeping the secrets of the delicious Italian Bolognese out of her Irish-Polish outsider's grasp.

Earlier this week Susan brought together her work pals & her friend who talks to dead people for a spiritualist session. She did not accompany them opting to meet up afterward to find out how things went. Once all together, they talked, drank, ate, and some tried to pick up the check (Disclaimer: not Susan).

Susan ordered an appetizer version of the Pappardelle Bolognese and marvelled at the creamy wonderfulness, with a hint of fennel, that clung to the delicate wide noodles.

Jesus. She had to figure out how to make this sh*t!

Susan ate half the dish & took the other half home to scrutinize, and finish for lunch.

Two days later, she heated up the remaining portion of her obsession, searched for clues in the sauce, and wondered why it was so different from the versions she's made at home. When she was done she sat at her desk messing around on the computer. Scrolling through Instagram she saw something on @nytfood and read the accompanying recipe for White Bolognese.

WHITE Bolognese?
Gasp!
No tomatoes and no red wine!

She was back in business with the universe.

Susan cried into Cousin Lisa's stuffing on Thanksgiving.
It wasn't just Lisa's recipe recreated for Thanksgiving, it was actual stuffing made by her own formerly alive hands.
At first Susan didn't understand, she just thought it was stuffing. But when Cousin Danielle hipped Susan to the deal, she felt stunned.
Stunned by Sausage Stuffing!
Susan filled her Thanksgiving plate with food and nestled Cousin Lisa's stuffing next to her daughter Danielle's orzo with spinach. Susan took a seat on the staircase and ate her food. She didn't intend to cry, but she's not in control of these things and began almost immediately, until tears were rolling down her cheeks. Eventually she was found out, knocked off the crying and resumed the enjoyment of her Thanksgiving.

Susan is roasting asparagus for Acme Heaven Sent's Thanksgiving lunch tomorrow. She roasted them in batches, making the first over-done and limp then each subsequent batch a little less so.
She envisions treating her coworkers to asparagus gruel after an hour of sitting over a sterno.
Susan also made the apple cider punch undrinkable with a heavy handed addition of cayenne. But, not to worry because she managed to pour half of it all over her kitchen counter.

Susan promised everyone a normal topic for Day 18 and here it is; Eggplant Pizzas!

This is the sort of thing that Susan would never think up on her own because she's got an inside-the-box brain. Her aubergine averse kids might even eat these although nowadays Susan doesn't care if they eat what she makes.

There you have it, all Susan's years of maternal effort have brought her to this point; she doesn't care.

Susan had two extreme soup experiences today.

At lunchtime she ordered seafood soup from the local Chinese food place. There was no description on the take-out menu, just seafood soup offered in a quart size for $6.99. Susan envisioned a steamy broth with shrimp and scallions, maybe some vegetables.

What it arrived it more closely resembled a container of goopy lobster sauce with pink imitation crabmeat sliced into rings. The sight of it disgusted Susan. She reluctantly ladled a small amount into a bowl, tasted it then chucked the whole jizzy mess into the trash.

She just tipped a dude to deliver food that she took from him and threw out.

When Susan got home she was hungry from having no lunch and immediately took her daughter out to eat. They entire dinner was most unremarkable except for the spicy miso seafood soup; a heavenly bowl of smoky broth that made Susan woozy and silly.

This notwithstanding, Susan spent money all day long on meals she didn't care for, she's got to start cooking again.

Susan was bewitched by this photograph of a raw vegan carrot cake from This Rawsome Vegan Life and made it even though she knew no one in her family would eat it.

Other than Susan's cake not being quite as tall, nor all tarted up with pecans and pumpkin seeds, it looked exactly the same.

Her son the wrestler flat out refused to try it telling her you lost me at vegan. The daughter took a forkful then just ate the icing. The husband surprised Susan by eating his whole slice declaring it flavorful but sweet.

Susan thinks her cake more closely resembled a chewy lemon-carrot-coconut cheesecake, although the only thing it had to do with cheesecake was that it must stay refrigerated.

She chopped off a quarter of the cake and took it along to her friend Sharon's, submitting it for an opinion. Sharon took a bite, then another, said she liked it but Susan's going to check her fridge next time she's over and see if it's still in there.

Two days later Susan served a piece to her little sister, who ate it concurrently with a slice of German apple cake to balance the sweetness. Susan applauds her strategy of eating two pieces of cake because one was too sweet.

The day after Susan's little backyard party for her son found her wandering the landscape of her yard like a zombied hostess collecting all the borrowed tables, chairs & coolers for return to their owners. There was very little trash because the party guests, including the teenagers, cleaned up after themselves, which is what civilized people do.

There was nothing fancy about the party, Susan made most of the food herself and even forgot a central component of the dessert, shortcake for the strawberries, but no one noticed because they were topped with cream whipped five minutes prior to serving. There were a few other failures, such as her panforte and inability to keep the food hot, but this did not deter her guests from eating everything except some grilled pineapple slices. 

Susan maintained a relaxed posture with her guests all afternoon which was directly proportionate to the amount of yelling at her family she had done that morning.

Special thanks go out to Susan's next door neighbor KB, who made a wonderful spinach & strawberry salad including a dressing which had to be prepared twenty four hours in advance. 

And to Cousin Greg for crawling underneath Susan's kitchen sink to tighten her faucet after asking 'What's with this faucet?'. He also bestowed an awesome gift of tequila in a bottle so large it could not fit in Susan's bar.

Teenage guest, Mike showed up after dark with a box of Entenmann's chocolate donuts resulting in eight grown-ups licking chocolate from their fingers in record time.

           *               *               *               *

Susan spent her Party Recovery Sunday moving very slowly, doing very little, staying within collapsing distance of the couch.

Susan did a shockingly uncivilized thing today, she ate a cookie while sitting on the toilet.
She's never done that before and can't guarantee she won't do it again.

Susan fed her family tofu for dinner.

And they ate it.

Sunday morning all of Susan's frustrations with her children let loose as she loudly and demonstratively admonished them for being the lazy, passive aggressive pricks that she raised them to be. Afterward she felt a better but it still didn't keep her from stomping around the house and starting in on the husband.

She got herself to relax by rolling some Asian meatballs.

The previous evening, Susan's little corner of the universe was reintroduced to winter temperatures complete with snow, not much, but still snow. After Susan's righteous hysterics, the daughter headed out to her figure drawing class in a little denim jacket and sockless feet tucked into her shoes but was blown back inside by a blast of arctic winds.

Susan's son, the high school wrestler, was dispatched out of her sight to clean the subterranean living space so that G-mama and Pippity Pop (the Old Folks) could sleep down there on Tuesday night.

After the meatballs, Susan prepped Slow Cooker Experiment Number Three  and dumped the mess into the slow cooker for the next eight hours.

With the yelling out of the way Susan settled in and spent the entire day in her PJs, it was very relaxing for her.

Food verdict: The slow cooker experiment lacked complexity, but Susan's stubborn so she's going to work on it. The family was split on the Asian meatballs but Susan didn't like them so that's that.

Susan HATES

Susan's second slow cooker experiment was crowned a failure when she managed to make stew.
The daughter remarked that Slow Cooker Experiment Number Two tasted like vinegar.

OMG, how Susan hates vinegar stew.

Susan Doesn't HATE Anything Today

As previously disclosed, Susan is on the hunt to find three slow cooker meals which fit her simple criteria;

that they not make her gag.

She is happy to report that she's had her first success with a smoked sausage cassoulet.
While it was bubbling away on her counter she was positive she'd hate it.
Positive.
She was stunned when it revealed itself to be all smoky deliciousness.
There is no hate in Susan's universe today!

Susan and the husband celebrated their ninetieth anniversary...wait, ninetieth? It only feels like ninety, it's actually nineteen years.
Susan and the husband celebrated their nineteenth anniversary by going food shopping.
She was in the mood for soup so she bought some carrots, two pounds of butter, sweet potatoes, peaches and a bunch of other stuff keeping within her budget.
Tre romantic!

Susan made a peach pie on Saturday morning then she and the daughter ate it for breakfast.
Pie for breakfast is f*cking awesome!
This wasn't one of those lattice topped, egg washed things, Susan's pie was sliced peaches over a simple crust the edges of which were flopped back over the fruit leaving most of it exposed. The recipe was cut from her local paper three years ago and waited until this magical day to come to life.

Susan would be spending another Saturday in the house due to you know why; one car shared by two people with three jobs. She cleaned the kitchen, baked the pie, made a double batch of chili adding cubed sweet potatoes & cinnamon then cleaned her fridge and found she already had two bunches of carrots. One was questionable so she threw it out and was back down to two. She also discovered that mint infused simple syrup does not last indefinitely. Yuk.

Susan's topics are reduced to food when she has nothing interesting to BLAHg about, but you knew that already, and perhaps you've even forgiven her.

Susan is periodically gifted with an aluminum pan of smoked pork by the husband of her friend, CB. 

Susan spends the rest of the week distributing smoked pork into every meal she can, on the last day she throws the scraps into a pot along with some onions, garlic and vegetables on the verge of perishing to make awesome stock which she turns into awesome soup.

Don't you envy Susan?

Susan's teenaged children will eat twenty yogurts instead of bending down to look through the refrigerator for something substantive.
I don't like leftovers the daughter commonly sez making her little sour pickle face to which Susan counters, That's ridiculous.
The son is no better, although he remains largely silent not divulging any information that his mother may be able to use against him in an argument.

Today Susan came home and found the remnants of something she couldn't identify in a dirty pot.
What's this? she asked the daughter.
Spicy Peanut Noodles.
You made this?
Yes.
Susan looked into the pot struggling to understand, you chopped up onions?
Yes.
Did you use soy sauce?
Yes, and sesame oil and red pepper flakes and peanut butter.
You cooked something using grown up ingredients?
Yes.
Unable to contain herself Susan threw her arms around the daughter and cried I'm so proud of you!

Chili Cheese Dogs

Susan has no fear of eating a chili cheese dog purchased from a truck on the side of the road or from a carnival although hers never look this good.

Susan turned on the TV at the exact moment the Barefoot Contessa whipped out a puff pastry.
Oh, yes!

Pesto and goat cheese and sundried tomatoes and toasted pignolli.
It just got better and better!

Susan finds the Barefoot Contessa's conversational style to be very soothing. If only Susan could vault the ten foot hedge out in East Hampton and be Ina's friend. She might even help Susan meet Alec Baldwin.

Susan never revealed that she went to high school with Alec Baldwin, did she? He was two years ahead of her so the closest she ever got was to pass by him in the hallway. She can't explain why she was aware of him at all because she didn't associate outside of her grade. She wasn't involved in sports or the drama club or anything extra curricular. She didn't have a boyfriend or friends with boyfriends. Who knows.

It will have to remain a high school mystery. But there's no mystery to her obsession with puff pastry.
That is a love of pure, flaky butter.

You all know that scene with Julie Andrews twirling against the backdrop of the Alps? Well, that's how Susan feels about her new obsession,
PUFF PASTRY.

Every weekend Susan sautes something delicious and wraps a puff pastry around it.
Mushrooms, sausage, broccoli rabe, goat cheese?
Yes, yes, yes, YES!

Susan can't believe that she's gotten to her advanced age without it.
Carmelized onions, prosciutto, mozzarella?
Yes!

Pears, walnuts and bleu cheese?
No!
That was a test.
Were you fooled?

Susan is going to tell you something then ask if you've ever heard of such bullsh*t before in your life.

Susan is able to maintain a stash of dark chocolate in the house because no one else likes it. They don't like it so they don't look for it. Even still, Susan keeps her dark chocolate eating restricted to the husband's company. She trusts him.

The lure of dark chocolate was too much and drove the husband to weave a web of bullsh*t.

Let me see that chocolate he sez.

You don't like it.

Yes I do.

No you don't, it's not sweet.

It absolutely is sweet.

You're completely full of sh*t and will say anything to get my chocolate.

I like dark chocolate.

F*ck you, liar.