Pantry Project - day 1 and 2

this thing has been going pretty easy since i only had to make breakfast yesterday and today i only had to make dinner, plus i've got some pretty normal ingredients to work with right now.  i guess if you call frozen avocado halves and two-year-old frozen pork normal ingredients.

Yesterday was our one-year anniversary so we went out for dinner, which i don't consider cheating this project because you do what you gotta do.  I did make breakfast though, a copycat of what david likes to get at Rooster Cafe, and david even said it was better than the original but probably because i used quality cheddar jack cheese or he was just being nice because it was our anniversary.  He was even brave enough to try the best by august 2010 frozen avocado halves from trader joes which i totally gave him an out for but he chinned up and ate it anyway.  I mean they looked fine to me and obviously i bought them before i discovered i liked guacamole (which my definition is garlic flavored green mush. i eat it only for the garlic).

breakfast tacos: scrambled eggs with a few dashes of tapatio, medium chunky salsa, cheddar-jack cheese, defrosted avocado, all in some warmed corn tortillas

first course and appetizer at Scott's bar and restaurant for our anniversary dinner.  David ordered the new england clam chowder, we split an order of lemon garlic calamari, and i ordered lobster bisque.  They were the best soups of their kind i think we've ever had, fyi.  I forgot to take pictures of our main courses but david got a ribeye and i got the branzini.  We were both kind of meh about the main courses because david compared his ribeye to ones he could eat at Mastros just up the street and my fish was a little too briny, it sort of overpowered any other flavors.

You are probably more interested in the pork loin stilltasty.com says i should have thrown out 15 months ago.  Well david had the rest of his ribeye with dinner and considering i think stilltasty is a little on the conservative side and also because i pretty much have a stomach of steel (and current health insurance), i decided to eat the pork chop for myself.  I paired it with the israeli couscous you may have seen in the purple box in the previous post, which i toasted in garlic olive oil and then added some frozen chopped bell pepper medley i found in the freezer and some fresh chopped onion found in the fridge and chicken broth, and served it with some steamed fresh green beans that have a surprisingly long fridge life.

I had to cut it several times to check if it was done because it was like the great uncookable pork chop or else i was just too impatient to start my food poisoning adventure.

If you want to know what 40$ champagne looks like it looks like this.  Sort of like regular champagne, only you know it is much tastier.  If i had 40 dollars to drop on champagne every time i drank champagne i could probably also afford to hire someone to write this for me so i could drink more expensive champagne.

here is the bottle of fancy champagne and also a sneak peek of my fridge, which looks a lot like my fridge regularly does only with slightly more bacon-wrapped hot dogs (courtesy of david).  We each picked out a bottle of champagne for our anniversary and then a third, backup bottle in case both of the ones we chose were unpalatable.  Yesterday we drank david's choice and tonight we are drinking mine, and you can see the third bottle poking out from between chinese food takeout containers and those bacon-wrapped hot dogs on the middle shelf.  I think we just wanted an excuse to buy more champagne.