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Here’s a thing that happened…

WP_20160322_22_06_35_Rich_LIThat is my hand from a little while ago.  As you can see, one of my fingers seems discolored.  That’s because it is.  I smashed it pretty badly with some free weights.  It turned my finger this delightful shade of purple.  Maybe even damson (at the height of all the swelling).

Anyway, it made things difficult for a while since I’m right handed and very right hand dominant.  I mean, I do have some left handed tendencies, but for the most part my left hand is pretty dumb and uncoordinated.  At least the damage was to my ring finger, the most useless of all fingers (yes even more so than the pinky), and not like…my index finger or something.  My finger did swell up to where it was about 1.5x the size of my other ring finger and I was able to use it to scare people for about a whole week.

It’s been maybe a month now?  My nail didn’t fall off, since most of the damage was to the other side of my finger.  Sometimes I wish the blood pooled mostly under the nail because then I could have relieved some of the pressure by poking a hole through my nail.  Oh well.  I think I might have a hairline fracture at the tip, judging by how it feels.  Meh.  Not much I can do about that other than wait it out.  And maybe stop forgetting that there’s a fracture there and hitting my finger against stuff.  Yeah, that might help.

I make! Garbage strata edition

You know how I’m always trying to get rid of food?  Yeah.

I’ve been seeing a lot of stratas recently floating around the food blogs and social media.  I’ve never made one before, but I have made quiches and the like.  A strata seemed much easier since I didn’t have to work with a pie crust (not that pie crusts are hard, but I’m lazy and don’t want to make one for quiche purposes).  But I did have sliced bread I wanted to use up, as well as some aging grape tomatoes and some frozen French cut green beans.  Garbage strata it is.  Added benefit: you can assemble the night before and bake the following morning.

I had half a loaf of Dave’s Killer Bread 21 Whole Grains and Seeds (not so much that it was whole grain as because that I like seeded breads) that I wanted to use up.  Also, my grape tomatoes were starting to get kind of shrively.  And the frozen green beans had been in my freezer for a while.  It was definitely time to get rid of some of this stuff.

I grabbed my cast iron skillet, because it was just sitting there, and covered the bottom with six slices of bread.  Then I layered some deli sliced chicken over the bread, followed by halved grape tomatoes, then covered the top with green beans, and finally maybe about half a cup of shredded extra sharp cheddar (also something I’m trying to get rid of).  Dusted the top with pepper and poured a mixture of six beaten eggs and 2 cups of milk (1% because that’s what I had, but I would recommend whole if you have it) over everything.  I didn’t add any salt because the chicken and cheese were already pretty salty.  I covered everything with plastic wrap and stuck it in the fridge overnight.

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I took the strata out in the morning when I started preheating the oven to 350degF and then stuck it in the oven for about an hour.  The top wasn’t quite as brown as I wanted so turned on the broiler for a few minutes before taking it out of the oven.  The middle of the strata will probably be a bit jiggly when you take it out.  You will have to let it sit for 5-10min or so and it’ll firm up.

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End result: delicious.  The cheese and chicken imparted enough salt to their surroundings, so I’m glad I didn’t add more salt.  I think next time, I might put a little more cheese and add green onions.  The strata is also very good with some Tabasco.