school is sucking away my life...

it's really not that bad.

you know i exaggerate. as my future-hubby will say though, i'm not good for much once i've gotten home from work. it's that getting up at 5:30 every day thing... which means at this point, being the total sleep-hound i am, that i should be in bed instead of writing, which i haven't done much of lately either.

the pickles, while still not posted, all sealed except for the spicy-sweet variety, which should be okay sitting in the fridge to steep. three weeks left and i can try my first batch!

i've been floating from crochet project to crochet project... started an afghan as a present for someone next year, been picking away at my afghan, working here and there on the potential wedding shawl, trying in vain to work with this gorgeous red/brown fuzzy yarn, and in desperate need for something quick and easy pulled a cheap skein of caron's out of the cupboard and commenced a shrug, for which i have no pattern and turned out not to be quick and easy as i measured my foundation chain and soon found out the stitches took up more space. so i got about six inches into it and frogged it all.

something will come around eventually.

labor day was yesterday, and i took the opportunity of staying at home all day, while future-hubby was in the garage messing with the cars, to try a real, gourmet, at home recipe. it had mixed results. i made chicken mole (pronounced "mo-lay") using a recipe i synthesized after looking at various other recipes across the spectrum of the internet, from foodnetwork to allrecipes and about four other sites in between.

chicken mole sauce is a mexican dish consisting of chicken (easy) drenched in this fabulous chile pepper-chocolate sauce. it doesn't taste like chocolate. i didn't even know it had chocolate in it. anyway, when you order this stuff at a restaurant, it is dark, smooth, almost glaze-like. i procure all the needed peppers and proceed to de-stem, de-vein, and de-seed all dozen of them (yes, this recipe made too much sauce) down to the tiny, 2.5" serrano peppers, saute them with onion and fresh garlic, toast almonds and pine nuts, put together a heavenly blend of spices with tomatoes and melted bittersweet chocolate....

i have to say, the smell was fantastic.

schlepped it into the blender (which was a great mess, i tell you... it's a great thing i had made my rooster-apron the night before!)....

and it looked like runny cat poop. or mostly-digested vomit. i mean the color, the texture... imagine a vat of diarrhea... it was absolutely disgusting.

i worked for three and a half hours on this damn sauce... i cooked it down some more, adding water to thin it, added another brick of chocolate, scooped it back into the blender until i thought the little motor was going to run out... it improved the texture, but the color still looked like, well, nothing pleasant, lest i recount the horrifying descriptions above. i finally coated some chicken with it and stuck it in the oven to bake. you're supposed to put it in a crock pot for 2 to 3 hours, but hey, i didn't have that kind of time. i should have covered it... the way it turned out was a little dark and dry on the top, richer underneath...

it tasted pretty good, layered into cups with rice and monterrey jack cheese and guacamole, but somehow i still didn't get the texture quite right, and for having a dozen chile peppers of three different varieties (anaheim, poblano, and serrano) it was not very spicy at all.

turns out i should have used dried peppers instead of fresh, and i definitely need to buy almond paste instead of trying to use almonds, and put a really nice food processor on my wedding registration list. then, come to think of it, the only dried chiles i ever see in the store are the tiny little red ones; not habaneros, i can't remember what they're called. so i'd have to dry my own chiles. in a house with no air-conditioning.

come to think of it, they sell mole sauce in the next aisle at the grocery store.