d'oh!mestic

I finished the first of the gloves last night, and I am not at all ashamed to proclaim my love for it, even if I did a slipshod job on creating the thumb. The second one is just past the wrist cables, so I have about a lunch hour and an evening’s worth of Netflixing before they’re through. Mmm. Gratification.

In other news, we thought the house was about to burn down this morning. We were both in the kitchen, going about the breakfast routine, when the Capt’n stuck his nose into the air and asked if I smelled . . . that.

And boy, howdy, did I. Smoke. Lots of it. Coming from the general direction of our furnace closet. But only the smell of smoke. Throwing open the door revealed nothing but a happy, not-currently-destroying-everything-we-own furnace and no smoke. Definitely no fire. So we ran around some more, sniffing the air in hopes of identifying the source. I remembered that I had a bagel in the toaster and went to sniff that, but nope. The Capt’n stuck his schnoz in front of the new furnace thermostat (a wiring project he undertook two weekends ago) and inhaled, but again, nothing.

And the smell was dissipating.

As best we can figure, one of our new neighbors stepped into the space between the houses to have an early morning cigarette (or six) and the smell drifted. At least, that’s what we’re telling each other. It’s 90 minutes later, and the house is still here, sans smoky flavoring.

Still, we turned the furnace off and started talking in the general sense of What to Save. I ran through the checklist. Ferrets and kitty into the car first. Laptops. Cameras. If there’s time, upstairs to grab the boxes of camera lenses, maybe an Uglydoll or two. I offered up the suggestion of grabbing my yarn stash basket — hey, it’s nearish the door and represents a good chunk of my earnings since the beginning of this summer — which is when the Capt’n made a whimpering noise and asked me to instead save some of his project toys.

And then he kind of laughed and said, “Well, if the house does burn down, it’ll give you a whole new spin — starting the domestic life from scratch!”

Uh, no.

He ruffled my hair and said it was probably just cigarette smoke (again) and left for work, but I did notice that he took his camera with him.

Just in case.

When I rang the Capt’n, it was a catalog of doom which began and ended with “The Civic blew up.”

While that’s not exactly true — only the battery went kablammo — it’s knocked us down a car, and the Capt’n is already in the middle of an engine transplant. My car is it  for the time being.

From three cars to one and a whimpering Capt’n — that calls for dinner.

We had a bag of beautiful brown Italian mushrooms the Capt’n found at Albertsons, some cream cheese, a half an onion, cheese, some herbs from the windowsill and one teeny-tiny jalapeño.

I destemmed the mushrooms, sliced up the onion and threw the whole mess into a sauté pan with some olive oil.

And then, while thinking about it, I threw in some rosemary from the window garden, some salt, the baby jalapeño, some garlic, some salt, some New Mexico red.

When everything was nice and delicious-fied, it was mixed in with an 8 oz. package of cream cheese, more rosemary, more garlic, more salt, and more New Mexico red. The mushrooms were stuffed with the mixture, and for an added kick of the ridiculous, I covered everything with cheese.

It went into a 350º oven for 10 minutes. The result?

Damn tasty.

Crappy Monday Mushrooms:

• 18 – 20 big brown “Italian” mushrooms — stems removed from caps and diced
• 8 oz cream cheese — softened
• 1/2 yellow onion — diced
• garlic powder (add in some some freshly minced, if you have it lying around)
• kosher salt
• enough rosemary to last until Judgement Day
• olive oil
• New Mexico red chile powder and a small jalapeño
• Shredded cheese — whatever is lying around

Sauté the mushroom stems, onion and jalapeño in olive oil, and season with salt, garlic, rosemary and chile to taste.

Mix the softened cream cheese with the same spices as added to the mushrooms and onion.

Mix the contents of the sauté pan with the softened cream cheese. Fill the mushroom caps with the cream cheese mixture. Sprinkle with shredded cheese.

Bake at 350º F  (175º C) for 10 minutes.