Yeah, you, 2006. You did your best, bucko, but you failed. We’re still here and we’re not giving up.
Challenge, eh? You wanna talk challenges? Like messing up our house? Sticking us with hideous bills? Making our move more hellish than a rancid vat of velveeta? And in the end, you have the gall to take away our cat and we’re supposed to say oh, thank you kind year, may I have another because we so love your idea of a challenge!

Well, we got news for ya, 2006. You’re gone. History. Outta here. And guess what? 2007 is so much cooler than you. You thought you’d make us all better with that tough love crap. Make ‘em suffer. Then they’ll rise to the occasion, you said. Right. Nice one. Working real well for that Bush clown too, isn’t it?

Well, I’ve got a secret for you: 2007 knows where it’s at. 2007 is on our side, letting us pick our own challenges, and trust me, those challenges aren’t going to be the sort that just keep us treading water, no sirree bob. We’re talking kick-ass, get ahead in life challenges – you know, the kind you never let us touch, you scum sucking P.O.S. year, you!

So, take a hike, 2006, cuz us and 2007, we got plans. Big plans. Hell, I’ll even spill the beans and tell you what the first plan is: 27 days from now, it’s Chopper’s birthday, and the next day — 28 days from now — we’re going to have this house transformed from tornado zone into cozy cottage, all ready for one colossal, long-overdue house rewarming party. Oh, sure it’s going to take a hell of a lot of work. We’ve got shelves to build, a kitchen to paint, dozens of boxes to unpack, and a list of repairs and missing items a mile long, but you know what? We’ve got 2007 on our side and we don’t even care if we’ve got a budget the size of a single app at French Laundry: we’re doing it anyway.

And in February, we’ll have a new challenge, and in March, one more, and on and on, until, at the end of glorious 2007, we’ll have kicked butt all over hell and back and turned you, scuzzy little inconsequential 2006, into a distant, fading memory.

Sounds good? Good. Now don’t let the door hit your sorry ass on the way out.

Yes, in the immortal words of Froderick von Frankenstein, It. Could. Work.

“It” being this fantabulous bowl of Lucky Soup Chopper produced last night at about 25 minutes till midnight. We’re told (now that we’ve finally caught on to such things, being sequestered in the Northwest and all) that black eyed peas will change our luck if eaten on New Year’s Day. And, since our luck is in dire need of changing (see yesterday’s post, and the day before’s and well, you get the idea), and since we are all about the Cheap Eats these days, how can we possibly resist a meal that not only brings good luck but figures out to about fifty cents a bowl?

Yup, just get a half pound of bacon ends from the butcher (New Seasons Meat counter at a buck a pound), three cups of black eyed peas (a buck thirty nine for a bag), a bunch of collard greens for two bucks, throw in three quarts of that duck stock you made from those two duck carcasses you’ve got sitting in the freezer — you know, from those ducks that only cost a buck sixty seven a pound at the Asian market; those ducks that already gave you meals from their breasts, legs and thighs — then add garlic powder, salt and pepper, smoked paprika, and a teaspoon and a half of Valentina salsa picante extra hot sauce for that extra kick, and you are set, baby. So set.

In fact, better yet, eat just a little on the first day, then forget about it. Hell, leave it on the stove because you haven’t cleaned out fridge. Pop a bowl in the microwave while you’re watching football. Take a bite —

And oh my lord if it was damn good on New Year’s Day, on the second day of the year it’s transcendent. The soup of gods.

And it WILL work.

(Steamy-lensed photo taken with “Loaner,” Belly Timber’s unofficial temporary camera, with many thanks to our dear friend of the ginger chocolate chip cookies… cookies which would make for a fine dessert after this soup, I should add.)

Prologue:
At first, I was horrified. Cookiecrumb and Kevin hosting a Mac-n-Cheese event? But I can’t! You don’t understand. I just can’t. I cried to Chopper: Look what they’re doing, I said. How cruel. How evil. Can I ever forgive them? If you make mac-n-cheesy goodness and eat it alone, can I ever forgive you? Chopper merely shrugged and said, hey, it’s me here. I can make it happen. I bit my lip in fear. But… the history, I whimpered… my history…

1.A cheesy childhood.
Oh dear lord did I love mac-n-cheese as a child. It wasn’t just that it was vast and goopy and satisfying beyond all reason, or that it sometimes held the exquisite secret of little salami nuggets, tucked beneath its placid surface. No, it was this: It lacked vegetables. And for a child, especially one in a house wherein vegetables were routinely cooked to oblivion, this was nirvana. I always went back for seconds. Sometimes even thirds or fourths. If the mac-n-cheese pot had been bottomless and my plate accompanied by an equally bottomless glass of Nestle’s Quick, I would never have left the table. Not even for episodes of Star Trek.

2.College in a box
When one is single and one is in college and living in a tiny apartment, one’s episodes of Star Trek are accompanied by a box. The blue kind. You know the one. Gross, eh? I bet Spock’s Plomeek soup never tasted so bad. Perhaps it was just the way I (ineptly) cooked it, but my Kraft mac-n-cheese always came out a little gritty. Not that this stopped me. Nope, not one bit. After all, it was cheap and easy and isn’t college all about cheap and easy? Hey! I’m talking about food, here.

3.Is that a shot put in my gut, or am I just sorry I ate you?
We’re on break from the gaming session, it’s been five weeks and still no one knows my red shirt security goon is really a Romulan spy. I love surgical alteration. Now, if only I could get some surgical alteration on my gut, I could make it through this cheesy meal without feeling like I’ve been injected with an elephant’s dose of cordrazine. What is up with this? I used to love mac-n-cheese and now I can barely touch the stuff. Could it be… no, say not so! It’s true. My gut hates cows.

4.Cold turkey (sandwiches)
Are you coming over for dinner, the in-law says, I’m making mac-n-cheese! I attempt to hide my sour face and fail miserably. Oh, right (now, she remembers), you can’t do cheese. There’s some cold turkey in the fridge! Dave can make you a sandwich! I try very hard not to pout, but I’m just not good at it. Oh, I’ve no doubt the sandwich will be just dandy. Heck, it may even have fancy Dijon mustard on it, but must I watch everyone else eat mac-n-cheese? Can’t I go downstairs to the family room instead? C’mon, Sci Fi Channel’s running a marathon, and I could be communing with Chekov and the space hippies right this very instant! Hey! You think they solved lactose intolerance in the 23rd century?

5.Nirvana, with goat.
So, if I’m going to make it, Chopper says, I’m going to make the creamy kind. Not that crusty stuff that ends up tasting like a rubber waffle. We’ll have to get kasseri, since we know it melts and we know you can eat it, and we’ll need something other than cow’s milk. Um, I say, just a wee bit optimistic for once, would you believe I saw a quart of goat’s milk in the health food section at Fred Meyer? No way! Way! We (boldly) go, we shop, we find. Chopper cooks. He serves me up a small but perfect portion (not too much on my first try in over a decade), and I take a bite. Simple, unadorned with frivolity save for a dash of smoked paprika and a sprig of fresh thyme. Creamy, just like Mom used to make. I am in nirvana. Hey, I think, I should eat this in front of the telly with the boys in gold, red, and blue. But, damn, SciFi channel never shows Trek episodes anymore. Ah well, that’s okay. I get to eat mac-n-cheese.

Ilva has asked to see kitchen photos and I am compelled to comply.

I blame a web stat for this.

See, back in October of 2005, way back when Belly Timber was less than a year old and our notion of search strings was all shiny and new, we discovered something quite amusing: More people showed up on our doorstep because they’d googled “messy kitchen” then for any other reason.

The cause of this glorious notoriety was the photo I’d posted on our About page. Yes, that photo.

Funny thing, though: That wasn’t a photo of our current kitchen on San Juan Island. It was a photo of our Portland kitchen – a kitchen we’d deserted ten months earlier. So, not wanting to disappoint Seekers of the Mess, we then posted new photos of our new messy kitchen, complete with messy diagrams. Little did we know where that would lead.

Just a day later, Kevin took up the gauntlet (we’d thrown a gauntlet?) and posted photos of his kitchen. Shortly thereafter, Kalyn followed suit, and within hours of this first trio of posts, Kevin declared it a “movement” and announced it on Food Blog S’cool. Soon, everyone was showing off their kitchens and soon it became apparent that ours was indeed the messiest.

In fact, our messy kitchen photos took on a life of their own, appearing in unexpected places, sometimes even illustrating a cautionary tale, or a “how not to” Q&A on a blog far more serious than our own. (Geez, people, we thought, don’t you ever make messes when you cook?)

And now? Now we’re back in that Portland kitchen and though it’s still messy, it isn’t quite as messy as it was before. There’s a reason for that. (No, we didn’t clean up for the camera this time.) We’ve a new tale to tell: We’re renovating.

See that corner just past the stove? We’ve got a gas cooktop for that corner. It’s going in at a 45 degree angle, with a nice big counter that stretches from near the doorway over to the drawers just right of the sink. Above it, we’ll have a range hood, and instead of those half-broken drawers? A dishwasher – our first kitchen ever with a dishwasher! Oh, and that scungy linoleum floor’s going away, and needless to say, we’re painting the walls and the ceiling, and check this out:

It’s our work island. Cute, eh? Don’t worry, it won’t be that small forever. Soon it’ll be taller, and have shelving, and be suitable for vegetable slicing in all its butcher-blocky glory. And just beyond it, we’ll have more counter space, and storage space, and (oh, I love this part!) a pot rack above so we’ll finally have a place for all our pots!

Oh, and… shhhh… we’ve got a secret:

We’re barely spending anything.

How’s that?

It’s like this:

• All the paint? We’ve got from the Habitat for Humanity store Habitat ReStore and from the mis-tinted five-buck-a-gallon section at Rodda.
• The gas cooktop is from the last time my brother renovated his kitchen. We snagged it at his yard sale for free.
• The pot rack, Chopper’s step dad made from copper pipe scraps at his place of work.
• The butcher block island is an old table my sister’s restoring for us as a Christmas present.
• The shelving? We’re building it ourselves and the lumber’s all used cedar decking, free from Craig’s List.

We’re still on the prowl for flooring, more counter tops, a dishwasher, and an oven (or a double-decker, if we’re extra lucky), and we’d die happy if we could score replacement cupboards, and of course this would be tons easier if we could just hire a contractor or buy everything new, but here’s what makes this extra cool:

Not only have we spent just twenty bucks on the entire project so far, we are saving trees from the lumber mill and junk from the landfill! We are frugal eco-warriors! Woohoo!

And, naturally, because we’ve got lots of searching and building to do, this project will take quite a while, and that means one thing for certain: many many messy kitchen days in our future!

Last Saturday, my daily browse of Boing Boing brought us the sad news of the death of Momofuku Ando, the inventor of instant ramen and personal savior of many a broke college student. He was a ripe old 96, which has got to say something for the greatness of ramen, and because we here at Belly Timber salute ramen’s greatness by buying it by the case, we couldn’t let this passing go unnoticed.

There’s a bit of advice I’ve seen on more than one personal finance blog. It goes something like this: Don’t ditch your broke college student lifestyle the minute you get out of college; ditch it when you’re absolutely certain you can pay off all your student loans.

Now some advisors to the young and in debt suggest a year of living like a student, others suggest five. Some even say keep it up till the loans are gone — which scares the heck out of me, let me tell you. I got out of college ages ago; Chopper’s been out of culinary school for just two years: does this mean we must continue to live like broke students till I’m old and gray?

(Eh, I’m used to it.)

But, back to the noodles. The thing about ramen is that it can be boring. (What’s for dinner? Starch and a flavor packet, again?) The other thing about ramen is that it doesn’t need to be boring, even if you’re living like a broke college student.

For our tribute, we didn’t so much as concoct a recipe, as raid the fridge and create our very own faux phở. (How faux is our phở? So faux, the noodles aren’t even rice.) No lemon grass, no strips of beef, just what we had on hand, college student style, in honor of Momofuku Ando who once said “Peace will come to the world when the people have enough to eat.” Amen to that.

Now, for the details:

Ramen, we’ve discovered, can be had at our local WinCo for just $1.98 a case. That’s 24 packages, so it figures out to a mere 8.25 cents per package.

Most of the remaining ingredients came from our local Asian market, and that too saved us a bundle. Not only is their produce super-cheap, but you can find extreme deals on other items as well. We snagged a bag — not a tiny jar but a big bag — of gari (pickled ginger) for dollars less than the equivalent amount in the “ethnic aisles” of a Fred Meyer or a Safeway.

Here’s the breakdown:

Note that all fractions of cents were rounded up in an effort to allow for the smidge of soy sauce we added at the end. (If we’d had lime juice handy, we would have added a smidge of that as well. Lime juice is a great way to punch up a bowl of faux phở.)

Our three bowls (at just $1.30 a bowl) were huge, by the way. So huge even Chopper couldn’t finish his and had to stow it back in the fridge for later.

I should also note that without our two splurgy items — the sausages and the tempeh — our faux phở comes to just 53 cents a bowl, and it’s still mighty tasty, and still proof that broke college students need not live on starch alone! (Or Cheetos and PBR for that matter, but that’s another story for another time.)

So, Momofuku Ando, for your tasty, portable, dirt cheap, and versatile contribution to the culinary world, we at Belly Timber salute you and say so long, and thanks for all the noodles!