More January Thoughts

This morning we woke up to an inch or two of fluffy light snow. It was really easy to shovel but there's still some ice underneath so walking is still a little scary (well, for me anyway). Now it's evening and it's snowing again. I don't think it's supposed to amount to too much though. Today I got through a big stack of paperwork that's been sitting on my desk, and it feels good to have it done. The boys slept late and they are now online ordering their books for the next semester. The house is a mess and I still need to clean - really clean - but I think I will wait until next week after the boys have gone back to school. (Unless we get a call for a showing before then . . .) But whenever I am ready, I have a newly repaired vacuum to help me. Our upright vacuum was broken - not picking stuff up - and I was pretty sure it had something to do with the popsicle sticks I vacuumed up in the couch just before Christmas (oops). So yesterday I found the manual online, took apart the hoses, and voila! the popsicle sticks were right there. I took them out and now the vacuum works good as new. Amazing. But enough of thoughts of cleaning. I'd much rather think of cooking. This morning I read an article in the paper that got me thinking about some new ideas for stocking the kitchen. This comes after a really cool article yesterday about chemistry in cooking, something I can always use a lesson about. (For a person who isn't at all scientifically inclined, I am a sucker for cooking science. Last month's article about butter was an eye-opener to me. To most people, I'm sure, it was just old news . . .) Infact, last night's dinner was inspired by the chemistry article. It talks about the effect that vodka has on tomatoes in a vodka tomato red sauce. I was at Trader Joe's yesterday and they sell a pre-made vodka tomato sauce, so since I had vodka tomato sauce on the brain, I bought it for dinner. For no particular reason we've never had this type of red sauce before, and because they had never heard of it and the name contains the word vodka, the kids were really teasing me about it. Well, they will tease no more because they loved it! Next time I will make it homemade. And speaking of dinner . . . time to get cooking. We're having a flank steak and onion stir fry over rice.