New England Roots: February 2012

Hello all,

And happy long February to everyone. February 1 was a finish line of sorts for me - seeing as I knew months ago that by today I would be done with the grad school application process and officially enter the waiting stage. Of course, I finished everything a couple weeks ago, you already knew that, but now that the official day is here I don't feel any closer to the final goal and end point that I only hope I reach.

Anyway, the good news of this week is that I have officially found a part-time job to begin filling in that gaping hole that seems to be in all my pockets. The bad news is, despite the fact that I was technically "hired" this past Friday, I still have yet to actually get my schedule, find out how many hours I'll have or how much I'll be paid or hear from them at ALL again. You all know I'm not the most patient of people but trying to calmly wait for that call is slowly driving me mad. Actually, no, it's happening quite quickly. I have gone from sheer relief and joy to frustration/grumpiness/sulking in just three days. It's at this point that my ridiculous and evil mind begins whispering things to me like "maybe they changed their mind" or "maybe they actually hired another Meg and messed up when they told YOU" or "maybe they actually hate you and are pulling a power play already".... any way I look at it I can't seem to escape extreme trepidation and huge shadows of doubt at this point. Jimmy keeps telling me to call them but I don't want to start a new job already being the annoyingly persistant new girl. No one ever likes that person. But I seriously can't spend another day in this house trying to fill my time and mind with new activities, work outs, projects and cooking. I actually ENVY how much work Jimmy has to do for law school. Because I have nothing, I repeat NOTHING to do. Going insane: NOW.

Ok maybe that's a little over-exaggerated. I do, actually, have an art class tonight, and every Wednesday night for the next 4 weeks. As part of my going away present the ICA signed me up for their Introduction to Printmaking course on Wednesday evenings. So there we go, that's one thing to do. Yipee. Although half of me wants to give it back to them and just keep working there. Just to be a part of something.

Herm what else, you ask? Well, much like my life, the weather has barely changed here either. Jimmy is still studying forever and then some. We tried some Coterie Cellars Roussane last night which was so good even Jimmy couldn't not like it (a Roussane is a white wine made from late-season white grapes that turn copper... hence the name "roussane" which means "red-head" in french.... and Mr. Jimmy supposedly doesn't like white wine. I just think he's been drinking all the wrong white wines). Since he doesn't have time to cook a lot anymore I have made him at least participate in the dinner process by a) acknowledging what a good chef I am by b) picking out some delicious dishes off our very elegant, in-house, menu:

That has the endless potential to, well, never end since I have at least 10 more sheets of paper that color and try at least one new recipe each week. This way, when I ask Jimmy if he wants anything specific for dinner he no longer can shrug and say "I dunno" but will happily skip over (ok, he might not skip, this is just my imagination, folks) and pick out something we haven't had in a while.

We're thinking of having a Pizza-Off between John (Jimmy's law school buddy) and yours truly since Jimmy and Melissa (John's wife) both declare us to be the best pizza chefs around. It might or might not happen this weekend. I'm ready. It's on. Like Donkey Kong in a thong. Spoiler alert: I'm going to win.

ANYWAY, to end this not-very-exciting-post, the new dish this week was Poached Eggs in Tomato Sauce with Chickpeas and Feta. Besides hand-crushing the tomatoes and chopping all the onion (which makes me cry like crazy now, how uncool is that?) it's pretty fast. And delicious. We polished off the entire meal ridiculously fast. Which means that will have to be added to the Menu de Megsybear. But enough talk, take a peek at how good this dish was: