Tonight's Dinner: October 5, 2012

We couldn't decide on what to have for dinner.  My original plan was to make another soup, but I had a lot of things to do to prepare for the weekend.  I have a baby shower luncheon to go to tomorrow so I had to gather gifts and go to Target for giftbags.  We also have a dinner with the whole Fong-Lee family for the Autumn Festival and it is Emmy's (human) birthday so I had to get frosting for the cupcakes I said I'd make and wrapping paper for her gift.  Not to mention, I wanted to tidy up a bit because Bonnie is coming over tonight before we go see Hamlet at the Shakespeare theater and girlfriends are coming over for a little bit tomorrow between the baby shower luncheon and the engagement dinner they're having for me.  So I knew that I wouldn't have time to do a lot of cooking.  When Nick got home, instead of ordering Chinese takeout like we originally planned, he decided that he wanted to cook.  I had bought chicken hearts and gizzards to make a soup.  We've made soup three times this week and we still have chicken broth left over.  That's just how much we had.

Nick marinated the chicken hearts and gizzards in ginger, garlic, and soy sauce (not sure what else) and then sauteed them while making a sauce from the marinading liquid.  He cooked up the rest of the spinach noodles and put them into some of the chicken stock to which he added a handful of white pepper.  The noodles were really tasty, but I didn't eat any of the hearts or gizzards.  Nick usually eats earlier than I do because I don't like eating early.  He said that the proteins were nearly inedible.  I guess he over cooked them so they were rubbery.  I have a built in taste tester.  So when he served up my plate, he only gave me noodles and soup, which was fine by me.  The sauce was extremely tasty too.   

In the time that I had because I didn't make dinner and clean up is much faster than cooking, I was able to get all my gifts packaged up, nails painted, house tidied, and pantry organized.  For some reason I had a lot of energy.  Must have been the whole small cheese pizza I ate for lunch kicking into gear.  I normally get in bed around 10, but tonight I was up and about putting things in order.

I've been searching for some storage boxes to organize my pantry so that all the small random packets don't fall over and get lost.  I liked some at Target that are a sturdy cardboard covered in cloth, but they all come with "handy" organizational sectionals in them now.  I supposed I could have cut out the sectionals, but what a waste.  I was also looking for a box that was actually a box.  I didn't want anything that tapers in at the bottom.  One, it wastes space in my pantry and two, it means that larger packets won't sit correctly in the box.  While I was at Target gathering gift wrapping supplies, I saw some red photo boxes on clearance for $3.50.  Perfect!  Really, all I needed was a shoe box or two, but for all the shoes I own, I haven't had a shoe box come in for a while.  I want to go back to get a couple more for my lower shelves too.  I love that they will all match in color and height, have labels, sit flat against one another, and I can use both the box and the lid for storage!  I'm super stoked for this inexpensive find!