Kneaders fail

This morning we went to Kneaders. I was really, really interested in getting their all-you-can-eat chunky cinnamon french toast.

And despite our goal this month to not eat out on our own dime, I was feeling extravagant on this holiday weekend. What is Thanksgiving if not indulging in gluttonous impulses? Proof of this holiday's meaning to me: All I have been doing lately (besides preparing a Thanksgiving meal Wed/Thurs) is eating, sleeping, and thinking about food.

So we drove out to Fort Union, ordered two of all-you-can-eat french toast, got some water, and sat down to wait. Approximately ten minutes later, Tim stood to see what had become of our order. We had also heard a Kneaders employee saying they were out of chunky cinnamon bread. Whaaaa? That is what MAKES the french toast what it is. Travesty.

When I joined Tim at the register, he passed along the news: they had lost our order and they were in fact out of the chunky cinnamon bread. We got our money back and left.

Then we drove out to the Kneaders in West Jordan. But then we thought about how we didn't even get a free cookie from that last disaster, and we thought about our goal to not eat out, and we saw the parking lot and how crazy-crowded it was there, and we didn't go inside.

Our goal to not eat out is inadvertently kept. Maybe next month we can avoid purchasing premade foodstuffs (this is our working definition of eating out) due to our immense self-control rather than Fate thwarting us.

I do have to say that we've made a lot of improvement in this area. Tim and I got in the habit of "eating out" a lot when we were dating and engaged. It remains a weakness, though we've severely toned it down. It's a good thing, too, because we're pretty poor.

pasta pasta

So I have been on a pasta-making kick recently for reasons unknown.

Last week I made gnocchi:


Last night I made . . . ravioli? Tortellini? Some formless sort of stuffed pasta. That's better.

The dough was so easy to make, and when I was rolling it out, I said to Tim, "I should make all of our pasta myself!" But by the end of it all I no longer wanted to make all our pasta myself. It's laborious.

Formless, see?

I made a filling with ground chicken, spinach, mozzarella, and parmesan cheese, which sounds better than it actually was, but the best part was when I put two chicken breasts in the food processor to grind them up. I should have cut them into smaller pieces probably before I put them in the food processor, because when I turned it on, the lid came unscrewed due to the crazy balance in the bowl. The chicken shot up and out of the bowl and slammed into the wall, knocking out a tealight candle on its way.

I really want to see this moment recorded, but unfortunately this part was not caught on camera.



Still fun though.