thunderheads were forming

I had another delightful day, all in all. My fitbit says I've been getting ~45min more sleep per night than usual, which I would say is probably about right - not sure how I'm going to adjust to going back to work, but it's only three weeks until I'm off for Christmas, so hopefully I'll make it.

So I got up, made coffee, wrote in my journals, took care of some tings, showered, and ate some leftover chicken and mashed potatoes for a late breakfast / early lunch. Then I had a v. long video chat with Heather (aka dear respected madam) - we hadn't caught up properly in months, and so we talked for almost three hours. It was a delight to chat with her, as usual, although it made me sad that I have not seen her (or anyone else from California, with the weird exception of one night with Adit in Iowa) in months and months.

Then I did a bunch of house stuff - I decided to finally tackle cleaning up my guest room, and while I'm not done, I did manage to haul multiple boxes / tubs of stuff from the second floor to the basement. Having a basement is dangerous, since it means I can horde stuff in 900 sq ft of space that doesn't have any other clear purpose. I'm pretty tidy in my hoarding down there - in fact, I spent some quality time rearranging my canned goods this afternoon - but still, it is v. dangerous for me to have a place to keep things that I would otherwise consider jettisoning.

sssanyway, I did as much tidying as I felt like doing, and then I took a break to make dinner. Tonight's project was my gram's ham balls - I grew up eating them all the time, but I probably haven't had them in a decade because they take gluten and are also not something I could readily get the ingredients for. But I had recently found a gluten free bread crumb (actually, panko) that was good enough to be the base in a different dish that requires bread crumbs. I also have a meat grinder attachment for the Kitchenaid mixer that my aunt gave me, which means I can grind my own ham - ham balls require ground ham and ground pork, and while ground pork is usually available, ground ham would require a weird conversation with a butcher.

So, I mixed up the ham balls, put them in the oven, sent a picture to my dad, was informed that I had used the wrong pan (I remembered Gram using a roasting pan, but that was probably for a double or triple batch, which would make sense since she made them for bigger gatherings), and so pulled them out before they got too hot and transferred them into a different dish. They turned out really well - maybe I'm biased and now overselling them because I was so happy to have them again after a decade, but I thought they were great and definitely worth making again.

It's also kind of funny - I've been cooking so much that I'm starting to recognize the components that make something great, and I realized that this is basically a second or third cousin to sweet and sour pork. The sauce is vinegar, brown sugar, and dry mustard, which definitely creates a sweet/sour tang - and the ham adds a bit of umami (although possibly not as much as using fish sauce or some other umami bomb). Granted, a ham ball with the sweet glaze-y sauce is pretty different from a texture standpoint - but the flavor combos really work.

So, I was delighted to have ham balls, and they went really well with yesterday's leftover potato gratin and brussels sprouts. Then I did a bit more house stuff, attempted to make a Christmas shopping list, etc. And now it's midnight and I need to sleep - goodnight!