#034

Tangy Chicken with Orzo Pilaf.

This is from the same "5 Meals for $50 or Less" feature as the egg catastrophe. Unlike the egg dish though, this was yummy! The only thing against it was that it was fairly labor intensive and time consuming - thankfully I had a toddler who was totally willing to watch a DVR'd episode of Sesame Street while I cooked.

The chicken and sauce were super yummy, and while the orzo was a bit bland, it was improved with the sauce. I will definitely make this again, though probably not until the weather cools off again - it involved a lot of standing over the stove and use of the oven, which is not a good thing when the weather warms up!

# 033

Baked Eggs and Tortillas in Creamy Tomato Sauce.

From the April 2010 issue of Everyday Food.

This was fairly gross. I was excited about it, because I like eggs, and tomato sauce, and corn tortillas and cheese. But together? Not so good. Enough so that we threw out what was leftover after choking down a little for dinner with copious amounts of hot sauce (for me) and ketchup (for Gabe) on it. Oh well!

Sorry for disappearing a for a while! Things have been busy, and making Martha dinners all the time was getting expensive, so I took a little break. Have no fear though, this week I am doing 5 Martha dinners (from the "5 for $50" in this months Everyday Food), plus Gabe and I have finally decided to get married (!!!) this fall, I believe (!!! again!), and since we're trying to do it on a budget, you can bet there will be a lot of crafting going on, from invitations to decorations.

I did recently purchase the new Martha Stewart Encyclopedia of Sewing and Fabric Crafts. While I haven't had a ton of time to look at it yet, it does seem to be really nicely designed and have a lot of great projects inside, plus a CD of patterns. There is one thing that really bothers me about it though.


The design on the spines of the books don't match. If you're doing a set of encyclopedias, and I saw Martha say on her show that there would be at least one more of these crafty books, wouldn't you want the spines to match so that they would look nice on someones bookcase? The first one was really nice, with the little picture, and then the text below it. Yet the new book has no picture, and the "Encyclopedia of..." font is even different!

When I was working in ad sales at the local newspaper, one of my big things was congruity, whether is be through just one ad or a whole campaign. Fonts, design, etc. I was pretty anal about it, and I find it really hard to believe that I am more anal than Martha Stewart, who I often think of as the queen of anal retentiveness.

It's not a huge deal, and doesn't ruin the book for me, but you would think with how detail oriented Martha is, this is something that shouldn't be so noticeable.