I am home sick today. Were I not pregnant, today would be a tough-it-out day for sure, but I’m a little concerned by the fact that this bug seems to be lodged lower in my throat than a usual head cold. (Plus, I sound like a 40-year smoker trying to be quiet in church.) After finally admitting to myself that yes, I probably do have a somewhat compromised immune system, and no, I don’t want an upper respiratory tract infection or pneumonia, I decided to stay home and attack this thing with both barrels.

And now, a piece I call Why I’ll Be Surviving the Zombiepocalypse; or, Take That, Virus:

1. Cheerios with milk.
2. Orange juice.
3. Pineapple juice.
4. Yogurt.
5. Vitamin C, Echinacea with Vitamin C, prenatal multivitamin, prenatal DHA
6. Gatorade.
7. Banana.
8. BACON!!!

Breakfast of champions, friends.

Now, if only I could find my copy of Glory Road, today’s bug-in preparations would be complete.

Since we’ve been without a beer post for a while, I thought I’d regale you all with tonight’s selection:

Yeah yeah, I know… Close enough.

At least I’m having this along with it:

Organic, grass-fed beef tri-tip. Peppercorn marinated. Charcoal BBQed to medium perfection. I can almost cut it with the fork. SO GOOD.

Gipper would like me to know he’s interested in some sort of food-sharing arrangement. But not too interested.

And here’s what happens when I don’t share quickly enough:

He’s so nonchalant about his thievery - he won’t even get up to steal. Further proof the cat is king of the household. 

Okay, I took a nap, so now I can think semi-straight and hopefully compose coherent sentences.

1) The yak was a smashing success. I wound up braising it for several hours, in the crock pot, in a full bottle of Merlot, with a sliced yellow onion, two large (chopped) carrots, several (chopped) celery stalks, five crushed garlic cloves, and a bit of tarragon. I’m glad I chose to use so much wine - the alcohol all cooked off, but left enough of a lingering sweetness to really highlight the delicate yak flavors. I made a simple gravy/sauce from the runoff - the wine made it a little tangy, which was a perfect accent to the meat. My candied sweet potatoes were good, but not as good as the candied yams from Thanksgiving. (The sweet potatoes were a result of a lack of options… Safeway didn’t have any yams yesterday.) My signature freaking awesome green beans were freaking awesome, and… I was too tired to make anything else. I even bailed on my glogg plans - I had Bailey’s instead.

2) Joey is, as I expected, being an absolute shit to Artemis. I think he’s gotten a little better over the course of the day, but he is not happy about her being here. He’s not moping, which I kind of expected him to do, but rather taking it out on her any chance he gets. I’m sure they’ll figure it out over the next couple of days. In the meantime, I get to play middleman.

3) Artemis is so smart. She’s already figuring out the housetraining thing (kind of), she fetches, she immediately took to her crate, she’s really good about listening when we tell her not to chew something (and chewing her approved toys instead)… I’m impressed. She’s definitely a winner.

4) I took my new exercise equipment for a spin (hardy har har!) earlier… for about 30 seconds. I think I pulled something. Strippercize is going to take some easing into, methinks.

Anyway, it’s been a spectacular Christmas. I hope you can all say the same! :)

I need help with the yak. Turns out it’s a 5lb. bone-in yak roast. (The friend providing it couldn’t remember the exact cut, he said he thought it was a shoulder-something or round-something.)

I’m thinking crock pot… Oooh - or I have a cast iron Dutch oven, forgot about that…

Anyway, I’m undecided on the seasoning. With a regular beef roast, I’d generally do a basic onion blend. When I’m being particularly lazy, I use the Lipton Recipe Secrets stuff (complete with approximately 23510385% of your daily sodium!), but I figure I’ll go a little more from-scratch for Christmas.

Any suggestions? Should I go with a traditional roast seasoning blend (onion, garlic, salt, pepper, maybe some basil, couple bay leaves?) or something a little different? Should I prepare some kind of a sauce or just a regular gravy?