Solitary Refinement

So I have had a lot more time to try out my Steam Buddy. I think I have gotten better at using it. This time I hung a shirt up on a hanger against the wall. This allowed me to “press” on the shirt a little more. It definitely got more wrinkles out of it. Once again I think the Steam Buddy would help remove wrinkles from light weight fabrics that could easily be burned by a regular iron. One huge plus the Steam Buddy has is the short warm up time. After filling up the water supply and plugging it in, it is ready to go in just a few minutes. The Steam Buddy is also great for traveling. You don’t use an ironing board with the Steam Buddy. Just hang the clothes on a hangar and steam the wrinkles out. If anyone has specific questions about my experience with the Steam Buddy feel free to email me at solitaryrefinement@gmail.com. Here is the shirt before and after using the Steam Buddy.

Kroger had a sale on pork loins the other day. I was able to buy a 3.5lbs pork loin for only $8.00!! Next step was figuring out how to cook it. I had never cooked a whole pork loin before. Everyone I talked to had different ideas. All of them sounded so good that I decided to mix them together and come up with my own dish. Here is what I used…

1 Pork Loin (2.5-3.5 lbs.)

1/2 cup white wine

Spicy mustard

6 cloves garlic

Salt and Pepper

I know 6 cloves of garlic sounds like a lot, but I love garlic. It was just the right amount. First I took the pork loin and put it in a roasting pan. I sliced some small holes in the top of it. Take the garlic and mince it up real small. I then stuffed the holes with as much as I could. I took the remaining garlic and spread it over the top of the pork loin. Then take the wine and drizzle it over the top getting into the holes as well. Now I took the mustard and covered the entire pork loin. Sprinkle the top with salt and pepper and it is ready to go in the oven. I cooked it at 400 degrees for 1.5 hours basting it every 15 minutes. Total cost to me was just the $8.00 for the pork loin. I already had everything else. Here it is coming out of the oven. It was cooked just right. Adjust the time according to the size of meat you have. It is also great as left overs!

Hello from Miami Florida! Sorry I have not posted in a long time, but I have a new job. It requires me to travel to Miami Monday through Friday. So far it has been great. One thing I am getting used to is hotel living. My days have been very busy, so I don’t have much time to explore Miami. All my free time is spent in the hotel. Does anyone have some ideas about how to make hotel living easier? I normally don’t like living out of a suitcase, but that is what I will be doing for the next couple months. Things maybe a little slow on Solitary Refinement until I get back to my normal Savannah life. Any suggestions would be great. Thanks!!

The other day I had Mexican for lunch at work. I wanted something different that I had not tried before. Huevos Rancheros sounded very interesting. Little did I know it is such a cheap and easy meal! Instead of paying $5.00 I decided it give it a try myself at home. This dish has many different variations that you can try. Here is my basic version…

2 tortillas

2 eggs

Salsa

Cheese

I started by frying the eggs. I made sure they were deeply fried to avoid the yolk from running. Then all I did was put them on top of two tortillas, add some salsa and grade some cheese over the top. I use two tortillas instead of one to keep the whole thing from falling apart. This is a very cheap and fast meal. Great for a quick breakfast before work. Does anyone else have any interesting ideas for this?

No wonder my photos of the food I cook don’t look good! Slashfood.com has an article about how to make food look good for a photo shoot. Here are some of the ways on their list…

- Half-cook barbecued ribs are painted with wood stain for a glossy, extra juicy look.

- Dyed, whipped shortening often subs for milkshakes because it looks so dense and creamy. Mmmm, Crisco.

- Motor oil makes great pancake syrup - super thick and glossy.

Interesting! I promise all my photos are the real thing. Normally I am so hungry to eat what I just cooked I don’t spend the time to make it look nice. Thanks to Mrs. P. for sending me this!

I used my new Steam Buddy for the first time today. My first impression is that it works fairly well. I think it is one of the gadgets that needs a little practice to master. I first tried a pair of pants. The pants were considerably wrinkled. A couple quick passes over them and the majority of wrinkles were gone. Not all the wrinkles were gone. I think with a little practice it will work really well. I did have some trouble with a heavy cotton shirt. The Steam Buddy uses the steam to “relax” the fabric and let the wrinkles fall out. The heavy shirt would just not relax. Maybe I am using it wrong. I think it would work really well on lighter fabrics. I still have not tried the creaser attachment, as soon as I do I will let you know how it worked. I will also post more about it when I have had time to try it out more. Here is a before and after of the pants.

Before…

After…

The Steam Buddy has just arrived! Mr. and Mrs. T bought a Steam Buddy for my birthday. I can’t wait to give it a try. It is another product from the “as Seen on TV” people. I only had the time to take it out of the box. I hope it works! I should have a review up in a couple days.

Sorry I have been so busy! With so little time to cook and do things around my apartment I thought today would be a good day to share the “Wiener Water Soup” recipe that Mrs. P. found online.

WIENER WATER SOUP

This recipe is really online at Cooks.com. Here is the LINK if you don’t believe me. I guess they let anyone just post a recipe without checking it!

I saw this recipe on Running With Tweezers and kept meaning to try it. I finally got the chance to the other night and was very happy.

Sausage and Broccoli Pasta - serves 4 as medium sized entree portions

• 1 lb. bulk roll Italian sausage or link style, removed from casings
  
• 1 16 oz. box penne or shell shaped pasta
• 12 oz.  fresh broccoli - rinsed, dried and cut into florets
• 1 tsp. extra virgin olive oil
• 1 lemon to use for zest
• 1 tsp. dried red chili flakes
• fresh ground salt and pepper, to taste
• freshly grated Parmesan cheese, optional

- Fill large pasta pot with water and heat until water is at rolling boil. Add pasta to water and cook according to product directions. About 3 minutes before pasta is done, add the broccoli florets. They will blanche quickly in the pasta water. When pasta is cooked, drain and set aside.
- While pasta is cooking, crumble sausage in a large skillet into large chunks and begin to brown. Don’t break the pieces up too small or they will disintegrate. Let them brown and caramelize in the pan. When thoroughly browned and cooked through, DO NOT DRAIN THE FAT. This is your sauce.
- Pour cooked and drained pasta & broccoli back into the pasta pot and add the sausage, including the oil and such at the bottom of the skillet. Drizzle the mixture with the teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil and mix thoroughly. If the pasta is too dry for your liking, add olive oil as desired. Sprinkle red chili flakes on pasta. Zest lemon over pasta and add salt and pepper to taste then mix all the ingredients together one last time. Grate Parmesan over the pasta before serving. Serve immediately.

I learned a couple things with this recipe. What is a floret? I found out quickly at Kroger that a broccoli floret is just the top of the broccoli. The good thing is you can just buy florets and not have to cut them yourself. This is a nice easy recipe. I highly recommend giving this a try! Here is the price breakdown…

Pasta - $0.88

Lemon - $0.69

Broccoli florets - $1.54

Sausage - $2.00

Total cost - $5.11

Here is everything cooking…

Here is the final dish…

I never expected so much interest in my Wonder Washer and Spin Dryer! After attempting to answer over 50 email with various questions I knew I needed to revisit these awesome machines. So below you will find two new videos and a FAQ. Feel free to email me with any questions you might have (solitaryrefinement@gmail.com). I hope this helps!

Q. How many jeans can you wash in the washer?

A. I found that one pair at a time is the best. Any more and the machine starts to bog down.

Q. Can you wash sheets in the washer?

A. Yes, but my sheets will not fit in my spin dryer.

Q. Can you wash large items like comforters?

A. No, too big.

Q. Is there a rinse cycle? Or how do you remove the soap from the clothes?

A. There is no rinse cycle. You have two options. Rinse the clothes out in the sink or empty the dirty water from the washer and add clean cool-cold water and repeat the wash cycle.

Q. Can you use fabric softener?

A. I am working on this. Does anyone know what cycle in a regular washing machine the fabric softener is introduced?

Q. How long does the washer take?

A. It has a 15 minute timer. I let the machine work for the full 15 minutes to make sure my clothes are really clean.

Q. Is this a replacement for going to the laundromat?

A. No, I still need to go for larger items. It dramatically cuts down on my trips though.

Q. Does the spin dryer use heat?

A. No, it just spins the clothes very fast to remove water through the drain hose.

Q. How dry do the clothes come out of the dryer?

A. Surprisingly dry. It all depends on how heavy the clothes are. I find after hanging them up for a couple hours they are fully dry.

Q. How much can you put in the dryer?

A. Not too much. I have the small machine, and find about one shirt at a time is about right. Or one pair of jeans.

Q. How long does it take for the dryer to remove the water.

A. 1-2 minutes is good for me. The timer goes up to 5 minutes.

Q. Can I buy you a beer?

A. Sure! Send me an email!

Hope this helps! Enjoy the videos! (No making fun of me)