Hooray Home Depot Guy!

Lunch: Turkey Nachos (boy I’m sneaky, I didn’t tell them it was turkey)
Dinner: Italian Chicken and Sausage Soup

Oy, it has been a hectic week already! Is this week over yet? Cooking for 40+ requires soo much more work. It also makes it more difficult in that I only have 1 oven. There is only so much space which means that things have to be cooked in stages, and it is likely that something is going to cool down or dry out. The lovely roasts I made last night ended up a little dry because I had to make them hours in advance in order to make the roasted potatoes. I should have made gravy, but I didn’t think about it. Today I made my Italian chicken and sausage soup for the guys and Tyler was completely jealous. He loves Italian chicken and sausage soup. The problem is our stove is currently non operative. Mom and dad graciously donated their stove to us because the one that came with our rental house was old and icky. The landlord was also kind enough to run in a gas line for us. The problem is getting it all connected. We went out to get a new gas line (as you’re supposed to do) but the connections didn’t match. The kit only has one male/male connector and we needed two. I went to every hardware store in town trying to find one that A. knew what I was talking about and B. had the piece. I really didn’t think this was rocket science. Here’s how the conversation went at Ace Hardware:
I brought in the kit with the piece I needed and showed it to a person in the department and said “I need another one of these”.
Ace Guy: “You need a male/female one?”
Me: “No, I need this exact one. Male/Male” I show it to him.
Ace Guy: “Hmmm… well let’s see what we can put together for you”
He then tried to put together some sort of contraption with all sorts of expensive connectors, and it still wasn’t what I was looking for.
Ace Guy: “Well, you know, I think you should have everything you need in that kit. You shouldn’t need another one”
Argh!
Then I went back to Home Depot. The first time I was there I couldn’t find a person to talk to. Then Tyler went. Then I went back again. You see they have only one type of connector for gas lines. Unfortunately, it’s the wrong size. Why would you have a gas connector that doesn’t fit the lines you sell? It makes no sense. Well, the final time I went I found a gentleman in the plumbing area. He helped me look for a minute, and then he pulled down one of the kits, “You just need this part right here, right?”
Me: “Yes!”
Home depot guy then ripped open the package, took out the part and handed it to us. He said we could look at every hardware store in Atlanta and we probably weren’t going to find it and he wasn’t going to make us buy a whole new kit for a $2 connector. So, I would just like to say, in a public forum, thank you home depot guy you restored my faith in humanity. It’s good to know not everyone out there is a soulless boob like the people at ATT&T (more on that tomorrow, the anger is still too fresh).

The moral of the story is, we currently have a non operative stove and I don’t like eating fast food. We’re definitely putting the old crock pot to good use. Tomorrow I’m going to try making Italian chicken soup in the crock pot for Tyler. I’ll have to let you know how that turns out. Last night we made mock beef burgundy. I generally hate any sort of recipe that has mock in the title… so we’re going to christen this recipe “Faux Beef Burgundy”. Faux sounds so much better than mock. Someday I’ll tell you about Mock Yummy Good Surprise. This recipe is great if you just want to throw stuff in a pot and forget about it. That’s all you do; you dump the ingredients together and forget about it until you get home and smell the wonderfulness. It is excellent served over egg noodles or mashed potatoes (while they are nowhere near as good as real mashed potatoes, if you use the Oreida steam and mash variety you can get dinner on the table 10 minutes after you get home.)

Faux Beef Burgandy
Serves 6

1 ½ lbs Beef Stew Meat
1 can Beef Consommé
1 can Condensed Cream of Golden Mushroom Soup
1 packet Onion Soup Mix
1 soup can worth of Dry Red Wine
1 jar Button Mushrooms, drained

Put stew meat and mushrooms in crock pot. Mix together the onion soup mix, the beef consommé, the golden mushroom soup and the dry red wine; pour over beef and mushrooms. Cover and cook on low for 6 to 8 hours.