I jinxed myself. A couple of weeks ago, Debi had said that she was congested, and I offered her a decongestant that I had in my drawer. She looked at in, then remarked on the fact that it didn't come from the "free" medicine cabinet at work, that it was actually "real" medicine. She suggested that I save it for myself for the next time I get sick. I informed her that I do NOT get sick. She shrugged and took the medicine.
Last Friday, after they had laid Debi off, the CFO had called a meeting. He called in customer service and their supervisor and me. They wanted to talk about how things were going to go, now that I had no back up.
This came after I had brought up the fact that I was originally told (years ago) that the credit department could never be unmanned. Now that it was just me, how was I supposed to take lunch? Now, I have probably taken 30 lunches in the past four years, just because getting the work done was more important to me than taking a break. I would rather eat while working than stay much later than five, or come in the next day, feeling behind before I got started. Apparently no one was aware of that (or cared), but even if they were, the subject had never been addressed, and it offended me. My first instinct was to just leave after the deposit was done, and take my hour lunch, and see what happens, but guilt and sense of duty did not allow me to do that. Instead I sent an e-mail to the new CFO. First it was just simply: "Lunch????". I hit the send button, then stewed on it for a while. That really wasn't professional, nor did he deserve the brunt of my anger, since he had no idea what went on prior to his arrival on the scene a couple of month ago. I hit the retract button and waited. The e-mail program informed me that it was able to delete the message successfully before it was read (thank goodness!). I replaced it with a very calm, professional: "How are lunches going to work now? Are we going to have to coordinate three hour lunches between me and the two customer service girls, or do we lift the rule that credit cannot be unmanned for an hour, or do I just simply not get one?"
So, the CFO called a meeting. The customer service girls and their boss were there and the CFO and me. The CFO told me that I could take a half hour lunch, for the time being, and Laura (from customer service) would man the desk "just for the time being" until we could figure out a better solution.
Anyway, this led to the topic of what is going to happen if I get sick. They spoke in vague generalities about having Laura train to sub in for me, if it were to happen. I didn't say it out loud (because I still wanted to reserve the right to call in sick), but I thought to myself "I never get sick". It would be nice to have a contingency plan anyway.
Well, apparently I was wrong.
When I came home from work on Tuesday, I started in on the bills. Tuesday is bill-day. I work on bills for the store, and I work on bills for us personally. I started with the mail. I open each item and sort it: recycle pile, shred pile, bring up to the office for entering, filing, paying, etc.
I had progressed to actually entering items into the computer (Quickbooks) when Jeff got home. I had poured myself some Crystal Light tea to get through the bill-organizing-and-hoping-to-pay process, but my throat started getting a little scratchy. I was probably a little dehydrated, and the house was probably a little dry. I am sure that we hadn't changed the setting on the humidifier since it started getting cold. I was
sure that was it. Jeff suggested that a martini might make it feel better. I concurred, but I was wrong again.
By Wednesday morning, it felt like a semi truck had parked on my chest. I didn't have a stuffy nose or anything like that, but my throat was really sore, and there was a heaviness in my chest. Still, I put on my work-out clothes, and headed downstairs for my morning workout. I tried. I really did, but half of my workout time was spent lying on the floor, wishing it would swallow me up. The bastard never did.
As mentioned previously, it wasn't an option for me to call in sick yet. I went to work. I performed the required duties, and I came home straight home afterwords. I was feeling better, but my voice was fading.
I was determined to take care of my pizza preparations, because I was sure that I would be well by then. Also, I didn't think that there were a whole lot of steps I could do the night before. So, I just convinced myself to do one thing at a time. I started thinking about the chicken and porcini calzone first. Did I really need cook up some chicken for this? I mean, it was just Thanksgiving, and I had plenty of pre-cooked turkey in the freezer. It took about 30 seconds to decide on that substitution, and I pulled a package of turkey out of the freezer to thaw.
I needed to think about the crust for the calzone. It called for 1/2 recipe of Classic Crust. I had 1/4 recipe in the freezer. Should I make a new batch? I looked in the freezer again, hoping that another 1/4 would appear. I found a brioche crust dough in there. What the heck? Let's try that, too. I pulled that out along with the classic dough and put them in the refrigerator to thaw.
Next was the mushrooms. I was unable to find "fresh" porcini mushrooms at Cub when I shopped for them, so I had settled for the dried ones. This turned out to be a good thing, since I had postponed this pizza two weeks. I never did find fresh ones on my return visits to Cub, so now I needed to rehydrate.
According to Wikipedia, porcinis are rarely sold fresh, because they haven't been successfully grown in cultivation. So apparently, it grows wild in a few places in the world, and then they are dried and shipped all around the world. That must be why they are so expensive.
I boiled about two cups of water in the microwave, poured it over the 'shrooms that I had placed in a soup bowl, and put a small plate over the top of it to hold the floating mushrooms down into the water. I left those on the counter to rehydrate until we were ready to assemble the calzones on Thursday.
With that done, I was still feeling relatively "OK", so I looked over the recipes to see what else could be done in advance. They both called for chopped green onions. Perfect. I decided to chop those up all at once for both recipes, and see how I felt afterwards.
I have several flexible mats that I use in lieu of the traditional cutting boards. I like them, because you can curl them up to form a makeshift funnel and pour the chopped items into a pan or container and then easily slip them into the dishwasher when you're done. Some of the mats I have are stiffer than others. I had chosen a particularly stiff mat for the job of scallion-chopping.
Once I had chopped a large pile of onions, I saved out some for the calzones. I looked over the spanikopita recipe to see what was going to happen to the scallions. I still had some energy left in me, so I figured I could saute the onions and spinach and get that ready for the next night, also. I grabbed the mat and started walking it over to my saute pan to cook them for the spinach concoction. I had curled the mat downward in the middle a little, so as to cradle the onions on my way across the kitchen. Halfway across the room, the mat objected and suddenly bowed the other direction, sending a shower of green onions (and the ulu I was carrying with them) across my kitchen.
Some of them made it into the pan...
I didn't lose as many as I could have, so after I swept up and threw away the ones on the floor and flicked the ones from the stove into my pan along with the remaining onions from the mat, I started on the spinach. The recipe called for one pound of spinach. I had an open 10oz bag that I estimated to be half gone, and I had an unopened 10oz bag. I decided that was close enough. I stemmed it all and chopped it up. I was surprised at the volume of that amount of spinach.
I was more careful this time traveling across my kitchen with the mat in hand, but it didn't cooperate in the end, when I tried to "funnel" the spinach into my saute pan. It didn't curl up enough to prevent the spinach from spilling out over the edge of the pan....
Or maybe my pan was just too small. Either way, it was an equipment failure rather than operator error.
I piled the spinach into the pan, turned it on, and waited for it to shrink up.
Once it had, I took it off the burner to cool. While the spinach was cooling, I stirred together the cheese, eggs, salt, pepper, and nutmeg. My last task of the day was stirring the spinach into the cheese mixture with the parsley and dill, putting it in the fridge, and cleaning the dishes.
Jeff came home while I was looking over the recipes again to make sure that I had everything. I stopped him before he came all the way inside and sent him out to the garage freezer for a package of mozzarella for the calzones.
While he was doing that, I started thinking about the drink of the week. We were going to have Vodka and Kumquat Lemonade last Thursday, since I had kumquats, but I hadn't realized that you needed to soak them in vodka for a few hours first, so we had made something else. I wanted to go ahead and make that Thursday, so I decided to start working on soaking the kumquats. I sliced them up, put them in a canning jar with a lid, covered them with vodka, and added some peppercorns that I had barely cracked in my mortar and pestle.
On Thursday, when I woke up, I hadn't been cured. My throat was till raw and my chest was still heavy. By the time work was over, after spending all day on the phone with customers and reps, I could barely talk.
I started Jen out with the dough for the calzones. I explained (in my squeaky whisper-voice) how the recipe had called for half a recipe of dough, and I had a quarter, so I thawed the brioche dough, too. She asked how many circles she needed to roll the dough into. I told her that the recipe said it made three 8 inch calzones, but that would be too hard to split between seven people (or five, if the kids weren't going to have any, which was likely), so I wanted her to make four circles and get them as close to 8 inches as she could.
While she was doing that, I started the layering of the spanikopita. That really is a tedious process. I melted the butter in the microwave and started by brushing an 8x8 Pyrex baking pan with it. Then, I placed one layer of phyllo one direction, with the last inch or so of the dough hanging over each edge of the pan. I brushed that with butter. Then, I put another sheet of phyllo over it crosswise, hanging the extra over the other two sides of the pan. I repeated this process until I had six layers (or somewhere close to that - I often lost count).
Jennifer had finished her four circles of dough, so I set her on to make the drink:
VODKA & KUMQUAT LEMONADE
from The Ultimate Book of Cocktails by Stuart Walton
3oz. Kumquats
4oz. Vodka
3 Black Peppercorns
1T White Curacao (we used Grand Marnier)
1T Lemon Juice
1/4 Pint Sparkling Mineral or Soda Water
Thickly slice the kumquats and add to the vodka in an airtight jar with the cracked black peppercorns. Set aside for at least a couple of hours or overnight, if possible. Fill a pitcher with cracked ice and then add the curacao, the lemon juice, and the kumquat-flavoured vodka with the sliced kumquats (but not the peppercorns). Using a long swizzle-stick, stir together well. Add the mineral or soda water and a few fresh mint leaves and gently stir everything together. Pour the drink into chilled glass of ice. Add slices of kumquats to the glasses and garnish with extra mint sprigs.
I told her that I had tripled the kumquat, vodka, and peppercorn combo, so if she just wanted to make a pitcher of the stuff, she should triple everything. She painstakingly picked all of the peppercorns out of the mixture I had made the night before. She poured it into a pitcher and followed the rest of the directions. When she got to the part, where she should add fresh mint leaves, she asked me where those were. I had to think about it. When I had originally planned this drink, it hadn't really been cold yet, and I had a whole deck full of mint that had taken over during the summer. I didn't buy mint, because I was planning on using some of that. I looked out the window at the snow that blanketed the back yard. With a sigh, I grabbed a pair of scissors and headed outside. The mint definitely didn't look good. It was dried, dark, and shriveled. I cut a hunk of it off anyway and brought it inside.
Jennifer and I examined it sceptically, and then we sniffed it. It smelled great. She reasoned that many people freeze their herbs at the end of the season, and this really wasn't any different. It was obviously going to taste like mint. It just wasn't that pretty. She crumbled it up and threw it in the pitcher.
She decided on the big globe wine glasses for this drink. She filled them with ice, poured some of the drink over it, and fished out some kumquats to add to the glass. She (smartly) skipped the mint garnish. It was beautiful. It tasted tart without being overwhelmingly so with a hint of sweetness and a slight effervescence. It was a breeze of summer on a cold winter's day. The peppercorns gave it an almost imperceptible heat on the finish. It was lovely!
Once I had my drink in hand, and the spanikopita was assembled - after the 6ish layers of phyllo came the cheese and spinach mixture, then 6ish more layers on top - I looked at her handiwork on the crusts for the calzones. She had made four, as I had instructed, but the brioche dough hadn't been touched. I showed it to her, and we laughed. She could only hear half of my instructions and didn't want to ask me to repeat it, since talking was such an effort, and couldn't figure out what I was going to make with the brioche. Well, since it was already thawed, and I think we had a rather large amount of ingredients for four little calzones, I decided we should roll those out as well and make eight calzones instead of four.
First, though, I wanted to put the spanikopita in the oven, because the recipe indicated that it was going to take 50 minutes. We had already had the oven on, because we cooked the requisite chicken Alfredo pizza for the kids. Since that had already been taken out (and mostly eaten), I reduced the oven temp and looked at the spanikopita. The instructions said to cut off the extra phyllo dough that was overhanging the sides, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. The more crispy phyllo layers, the better, right? So, I folded the overhangs back inside the pan, making a sort of pile around the edges.
Jennifer started shredding the turkey while I rolled out the brioche dough. She had a captive audience in Pele and couldn't help but give in to his cuteness and toss him some turkey every now and then. It is hard to ignore him when he can stand on his hind legs and reach the counter with his paws. I'm not sure how much turkey she gave him, but after it was all shredded and the onions and mushrooms had been added to the mix, Pele had to take a time out and rest his belly.
After Jennifer spread the garlic olive oil over each of the crusts, I came along after her and plopped some ricotta on each one. She followed behind with the turkey, we folded up the calzones and placed them on a cookie sheet.
We had increased the temperature of the oven to 350º and slid the tray of calzones in with the spanikopita.
Pam arrived just about then and asked if we saved her anything. We let her know that we hadn't even gotten anything out of the oven yet (we omitted the part about the chicken Alfredo pizza that kids (mostly) ate). We poured her a drink and got caught up on her day of flying with a student.
When the time was up on the spanikopita, it was gorgeous! The phyllo had turned a warm golden color, and it was almost as if each layer was standing at attention, ready to be eaten.
The calzones didn't even come close to the warm golden color of the calzone. They were a little white and pasty looking, actually, but the ingredients were leaking out of the edges of the seals, so I figured they were done and pulled them out. We let them rest a little before we ate them. We didn't want any scalded tongues at our table.
Meanwhile, I cut the spanikopita. It was too much of a challenge (especially after some vodka kumquat lemonade) to cut the end product into enough pieces to be divisible by 5 (to give each adult the same amount of pieces). There was also the added challenge of the corner pieces. I knew that all three of us girls were hoping to get a corner piece - all the more crispy goodness. Was it fair to make the boys have the inside pieces, or would they even care? Jeff doesn't particularly care for crunchy things, so I knew he wouldn't care. I asked, just in case, and he chose the middle edge piece. Problem solved. It was rich and buttery with the salty tang of the cheeses. It was warm and homey and delicious.
The calzones were also delicious. They had great flavor. The creamy ricotta nicely enveloped the turkey, and the mushrooms gave it a lovely earthy flavor. The crusts, despite their sickly appearance were crispy in the right spots and warm and bready on the inside. Of course, I only tried one type of crust, and I wasn't sure whether it was the classic crust or the brioche (pretty sure it was the classic, though), but I didn't hear any complaints about the other variety, so either it was good, or my family was too polite to say anything negative. Someone did pipe up and say that they thought that it would be better with some regular cheese, too, to sort of hold everything together and add a gooey-ness. I started to agree and then jumped up! There
was supposed to be cheese in there, and we had forgotten it! It was still tasty, but it hadn't reached its full potential. Once again, I had served the diet version of the recipe.
I actually remembered to "wash" the periogi before putting them in the oven this time. I didn't remember at the last pizza night for the mushroom pierogi. We will see what the difference is. I think I also had twice the amount of dough than I did for the mushroom pierogi. I remember being able to see through the dough to the mushroom filling, because the dough was so thin. This time, it wasn't like that. Last week, I had pulled the dough out of the freezer, giving me the impression that it was half or less of a recipe amount, and since I was now using the entire recipe, it only made sense that it would be at least twice as much dough for the same amount of filling. Once I had pulled them out of the oven, it was obvious that there was more dough. They were beautiful, though. They were puffy, glossy, brown, and pillowy. The egg wash was definitely an improvement, and our fear that the filling was going to leak out was apparently unfounded.
