pie & presents & personal injury

I was a walking accident the whole long Christmas weekend, and of course many of my little accidents happened in the kitchen. Some of them were more painful than others. Not only did I get a big old second-degree burn on my arm from the oven, I managed to accidentally pop the burn blister the next day when changing a pillowcase. This ensured that the burn would be the most painful burn I've ever had. Less than an hour after that lovely incident, I stepped on the claw of a hammer and took a chunk out of my big toe. Specifically, right on the joint of the big toe, so that every time I bent my toe, it would hurt. Don't ask me why there was a hammer on the floor. The next day I cut my finger while trimming fat off the brisket. I actually hardly ever cut myself cooking so I was kind of pissed. What the hell was wrong with me? Then, the ultimate in stupid accidents. This one didn't involve personal injury, unless you consider feeling stupid a personal injury. I spent all this time laying out the lovely lattice crust on my Sour Cream-Walnut Apple Pie for Christmas dinner, when I realized that I had forgotten to add the walnut layer to the pie. The layer that goes underneath the crust. I had to remove the entire freaking crust, add the walnuts, and place the crust a second time, only now the lattice strips were all slimy from the sour cream filling. Great.



Anyway, it wasn't all lame, because of course there were presents. J-Cat overdid it, as usual, and presented me with a parade of gifts throughout the evening, which culminated in my new shiny friend:



That's the Breville Juice Fountain Elite and it rocks. It's super powerful, great looking, and it's not such a pain to clean. Actually, it's very easy to clean being as that J-Cat is the one who has cleaned it every time. He's obsessed with it. The first night we searched around for something - anything - that we could juice, but all we had in the house was one very big carrot. Not surprisingly, we did juice that one carrot, and it yielded a pathetic amount of juice:



But now J-Cat is crazy for juicing, and has been making delicious juice every morning this week. By the time I'm out of bed and done working out, I've got a fresh glass of juice waiting for me. It's awesome. It's almost better than coffee. He's been using carrots, beets, kale, apples, watercress, parsley, ginger. I think I pretty much like anything with beets in it. This weekend I'm going to get a bunch of other fruits and veggies and do some more experimenting.

I didn't think presents could be better than that, but there is one more that I'm really excited about. He got us tickets to the Moscow Cats Theatre for tomorrow. Awesome.